Pink Hearts

Pink Hearts
A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on December 16, 2007 – the Third Sunday of Advent

One of the most exciting trips I’ve ever taken brought me to Israel. If you ever have the change to visit the Holy Land, do not let it pass you by. You will come back forever transformed by the sights of the bible, by the knowledge that you set your feet on the very street on which Jesus’ sandals trod, touched the very temple where the apostles prayed, and perhaps view the very rock which saw the shadow of Abraham’s hand as he took his knife to slay his son Isaac. In the north, in Galilee, you find places of unspeakable beauty, the blue Sea of Galilee surrounded by the rolling green hills.
From the heights of Mount Tabor, you can behold the far expanses of towns and fields, lush with people and crops. When you travel south, you move into the barren wilderness.
Of all the places in Israel, nothing is as desolate as the deserts surrounding the Dead Sea. As you stand in the dry wilderness and look out over the salty waters of the Dead Sea, you look up at the bleak stark hills and across empty miles of wastes which cannot sustain life. The salt water is useless, the soil is dry and worthless, the hills are bare of grass and trees. I, for one, was grateful to get back on the tour bus and head up the mountains to the comfort of our Jerusalem hotel with a ready supply of water, a tasty meal and the comfort of a soft bed. I, for one, would not want to make the desert my home.
Yet as I look around me, I find that many of us are living in an emotional state that resembles those dry waste lands of Israel. The trees are bare of all leaves and their drab grey and browns do little to uplift our spirits. While the snow looks beautiful as it falls, give it a day and the soot turns the lovely white into a dull gray. The uplifting blue skies are hidden by clouds. The sun appears every so briefly during the day and all of us can feel the intrusion of the wintertime blues.
For many of us, this holiday season brings us terrible burdens. There just do not seem to be enough hours to bake all the cookies, clean and decorate the house, put up the tree, finish all the shopping and wrapping for those perfect Christmas gifts, send out the cards and attend all the Christmas parties. Somewhere in the picking up the kids from an early dismissal due to two inches of snow, the realization that no store will have the perfect gift for our child, the anticipation of preparing a Christmas dinner after an exhausting week of gift wrapping, cookie baking and snow shoveling, we realize that our smiles are empty, our hearts are breaking and we would love to find the comfort of a log cabin where we can curl up with a good book or movie, near a warm fireplace, with our ideal lover next to us and enjoy the intimacy of a quiet night.
Rather than singing: Have a holly jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year.
We would rather sing: You’ll be doin all right, with your Christmas of white, But Ill have a blue, blue Christmas
When I look over today’s readings, I think that many of us can identify with John the Baptist, locked up in a prison. But the bars that contain us come in the form of fulfilling the expectations of others, with our own needs totally unmet and time coming to a crashing halt as December 25 draws ever closer.
I think we can all identify with John the Baptist sending for news of where the Messiah can be in the world around us, a world filled with hustle and bustle and none of the peace we so yearn for at this season. Like John in prison, we too can find ourselves trapped in expectations laid on us, duties we take on ourselves; situations in which we might find ourselves hopeless to find a solution. Like John locked in his cell, we can find ourselves burdened with losses perhaps too heavy to carry, the gnawing pain of situations we are powerless to change, the loss of loved ones who have died either recently or in the past, the distance from family and friends when we would have them close to us. In our prison cells, we can send word to Jesus and ask him what can we expect of him? What word can he speak that would bring us comfort?
Jesus says to us what he said to John’s disciples.
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These are the very words we also heard from Isaiah: “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
Jesus is saying that the time is changing, that the world is shifting and God has drawn close to the people. In the midst of all our busyness, we all need to find a place to sit alone for a while, even if only for five minutes. If we regularly sit alone, we need to reach out to someone, to touch the life of someone else, to show compassion for someone in need. Whatever we are doing that is driving us crazy, we need to stop and do the opposite.
Then, in the midst of the frantic days before Christmas, we can retreat to the source, to the love of our souls, to the peace seeking to be born in our hearts. For the Christ who is coming is not to be found in Christmas trees, gifts, lights and cookies. Wonderful as these things are, yet more wonderful is the one who wants to open our eyes to a vision of peace we cannot imagine, to unloose our tongues to sing God’s song, to steady our feet to walk in God’s ways, and to establish us into those right relationships that herald the dawn of God’s presence among us.
Thy kingdom come, dear Christ, thy kingdom come. Fill our hearts with the joy we so need to balance our sadness. Touch us. In the coldness of this third Sunday of Advent, kindle a fire that will make our hearts glow. That will turn us a wonderful shade of pink.

Entering the Riegn of the Anti-King

Entering the Reign of the Anti-King
A Sermon preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco on November 25, 2007 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, N.J.

A friend of ours lives in Denville, New Jersey so we regularly travel through that town on Route 46. As you travel west on Route 46 toward the center of Denville stands St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church and School. In the front of the school, they raised a statue of Christ the King. Jesus looks as if God the Father just placed the crown on Jesus’ head and, like Queen Elizabeth, he too is posing for the coronation statue. He stands with a crown on his head, a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. This image of Jesus as the King is among many such images you can find. Jesus sometimes wears one crown while other pictures show him with a double crown. He sometimes stands but he usually sits upon a golden throne, surrounded by angels and other royal attendants.
All these images are related to many of the hymns which are occasionally sung on this day. You will recall the words Crown Him with Many Crowns, the Lamb upon his throne or bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all.
I sometimes wonder how Jesus feels about this day. In the Gospel according to John, Chapter 6, verse 15, the author tells us that when the people wanted to take Jesus by force and make him king that Jesus withdraws from them. That does not sound to me like someone who enjoys wearing the royal diadem. If the Gospels picture Jesus as King, Jesus is really the Anti-King who wears thorns rather than gold, is nailed to a cross rather than seated on a throne, and is mocked by priests and criminals rather than acclaimed with cries of Long Live the King.
If we look to the Christian Scriptures, the only place we find such a regal image of Jesus is in the Book of Revelation. Out of the pages of that wildly imaginative book we get the phrase King of kings and Lord of lords. I am sure that many of you who love Handel’s Messiah can play in your head the music from the climax of that oratorio when the Hallelujah Chorus proclaims Jesus Kings of kings and Lord of lords and he shall reign forever and ever. Those phrases are all taken from the Book of Revelation.
Both ends of the Christian Scripture, the Gospels and the Book of Revelation acclaim Jesus as King but each does it in almost the reverse images. It is good for us to recall that the Book of Revelation comes out of a period of persecution of the Christian community by the powerful Roman Empire. In protest to the imperial power of the emperor, the Christians acclaim a different King, the lamb who was slain, who is the real power behind the world. The power of the emperors is but an illusion.
We Americans of the 20th century are closer in our political and economic power to the Roman Empire than to the powerless Christian communities of the first century. I think that the images of Jesus as King are dangerous for us not only because Royal families are foreign to our American psyche but also because we are far removed from the situation of persecution out of which the book of revelation was written. I believe that the image of King Jesus is a dangerous image for contemporary Christians since we can use that image to invest ourselves with the power and authority of the world and so find ourselves outside the very reign of God which Jesus proclaims. We need that subversive image of the Crucified King to teach us the real lessons about power and control.

Jesus on the cross teaches us that power comes to us in direct correlation to our vulnerability. Jesus on the cross gives us a model of weakness, defenselessness, exposure and being at risk. Only if we break through the illusion of our own power, our own strength, and our own invincibility can we hope to enter into the reign of the crucified King.
Today’s gospel story presents as a hero the repentant thief. Notice how in the gospel, the people of power and authority stand against Jesus. The leader and soldiers scoff at Jesus. The other thief challenges Jesus to prove himself the Messiah by saving himself and the two men crucified with Jesus. That thief is looking for a show of power. He wants a show of worldly strength. These people stand in the kingdom of this world. These people look for the security of power and invincibly. But Jesus proves his kingly strength, not by stepping off the cross but by staying on it.
Hanging on the wood of another cross is a criminal who acknowledges that he suffers a just fate to underscore that Jesus’ fate is unjust. Strung up on the cross, weak defenseless and exposed, he stands in contrast to the arrogant thief even as in an earlier parable, the humble publican stands in contrast to the proud Pharisee. In the recognition of his own need for mercy the thief, like the publican, finds the ultimate mercy extended to him. In the words of Bishop Fulton Sheen, the repentant thief proves himself a thief to the end since in the final moments of his life he pulls off his greatest heist and steals heaven. Jesus lets himself be robbed of mercy with these loving words we all would want to hear on our death beds: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Lk 23: 43)
We live in a world that values power, strength, brute force, manipulation, control. If we imagine that King Jesus values those same qualities, we place ourselves in the company of the leaders and soldiers who mock his reign. If we imagine that King Jesus amasses troops and weapons, we place ourselves in the company of those who have not entered into his reign. But if we align ourselves with the weak and vulnerable, we seek mercy as do they and so draw near to that Crucified King. If we come close to the cross as did the good thief by surrendering our illusions of power, we will find the strength to enter into that reign. If we pledge our allegiance to the crucified Christ, then we too will be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power.
In the midst of any conflict that meets us on the way, if we acknowledge our vulnerability, we create that place where God may enter and manifest God's presence among us, a hidden presence, yet the ultimate presence. We too will know that peace that has been won for us through the blood of the cross.

Forming our Souls

Forming our Souls
A sermon delivered by the Rev’d Peter De Franco on November 18, 2007 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, N.J.
I think most us feel a little uncomfortable when we hear talk about the end of the world. Such unsettling talk is what we heard in today’s Gospel: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” (Luke 25 10-11) We usually associate such talk with the street preachers whom, if we all were totally honest, most of us think that the guy fell down the stairs when he was a child and there were always a few screws loose after the fall.
So when we hear such words out of the lips of Jesus, we just think that Jesus was having a bad day and he let his imagination get the better of him. We don’t really like to hear such talk on the lips of Jesus. Such talk puts Jesus in the company of the lunatic fringe and we would not have our Jesus being anything but just like us.
But I have to say that I think that something deeper is at work in this passage for I am just captivated with those final words of Jesus: “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” (Luke 21: 19) Most of us think that our soul is something we have, like our own inner Casper the friendly ghost that will take off after death and soar into heaven.
We don’t think of our souls as something we gain, and, if we look carefully at the text today, we see something that is even more troubling than that strange end of the world talk.
We see that the way we gain our soul comes through yet a more challenging door: conflict.
Listen to what Jesus says: “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 16You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17You will be hated by all because of my name.” (Luke 21: 15-17)
17You will be hated by all because of my name.
Those are not the usual words we would preach to get new members into church. But if we are honest with ourselves, if we really admit the truth in our hearts, all of us know that conflict is a regular part of our lives. If we are really honest, we will admit that being a Christian increases the level of conflict that we encounter. In a world where greed is considered good, we preach a gospel of sharing with the poor. In a world where compassion is considered weakness, we practice a radical hospitality that gives food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless. In a community where our neighbors are afraid of people whose skin is a darker color, whose first language is not English, who do not have the right documents, in this city of Clifton we sing a song that dares to say: All are Welcome.
“17You will be hated by all because of my name.”
Thank you Jesus for putting us in such a mess. Yes, thank you, Jesus, for putting us in such a mess. For in this mess, we gain our souls.
The conflict that Jesus predicts will meet us is the very battle that Jesus fought against the forces in his world, that conflict against the forces that would not welcome all to the table, the conflict against the forces that would give priority to the acquisition of wealth even if that involves engaging in unjust conflicts, the conflict against the love that creates this world and seeks to build a just and inclusive community. It is in conflict that we discover our identity, that we discover the presence of Jesus. He assures us: “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. (Luke 21: 15) For the discovery of our identity is not only to discover who we are but whose we are. We belong to Jesus. We are in the hands of a powerful God. The wings of the Holy Spirit encircle us. All we need to do is to maintain our calm in the midst of the storm and we shall sense that presence who will strengthen us. By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Now you must be thinking that this is a very strange sermon to deliver on Thanksgiving Sunday. You might have thought that I should have preached on those beautiful words we heard from the prophet Isaiah who described the vision of a just society, the vision that inspired the Pilgrims who came to our country to find and build a better world.
They thought themselves heirs to the promise of Jesus who dreamed of a just world, a world where freedom would be enjoyed by all.
Like those Pilgrims, we give thanks for the blessings we have received from our God. We give thanks that God has called us into this community to share with one another the task of building an inclusive community among ourselves and sharing that inclusive vision with those among whom we live and work. We show our thanks in more than just words. We show our gratitude this day in the pledge that we make this day, the pledge to share the monetary gifts we have received with others, the pledge to share our time and our talents with others.
Our pledge is part of that subversive, countercultural activity of Jesus that would make this a better world. Our pledge is part of that work to allow some members of this community to dedicate themselves to the world of building that community of faith. Our pledge enables us to share our gifts with our diocesan family that the work of building up the reign of God will continue in our diocesan and our national church. Our pledge of our time, our talents and our treasure places us in the battle that Jesus promises that we will engage in the world.
Giving to our church is one of the disciplines we all practice that we might gain our souls. By living up to a standard that others do not have, we differentiate ourselves from others, we show to ourselves and to others what we value, and in doing so, we gain our soul. No, not some nice little Casper in our hearts, but a person strong because we have been tested, steadfast because of conflict, faithful in the face of fear.
As we offer this day our thanks to God in our prayer and in our pledge, let us be grateful most of all for conflict, for those times that test our Christian values, for those times that place us in the fire. Let us be grateful for these soul forming times.

"Your faith has made you whole." The healing of the heart

“Your faith has made you whole.” -- The Healing of the Heart
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Peter De Franco
at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey
October 14, 2007

Today’s Gospel story of the ten lepers is familiar to most of us. We all know the story of these ten people, lepers all of them, and because they are lepers, they are outcast, people who could not associate with anyone other than a leper, people who could not worship with others, live with their families, connect with their friends in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in their village.
All that was familiar for them was taken away for once the priest declared you a leper, you were cast out, you were forced to tear your clothing, you carried a bell that would ring to alert people to your presence, and you would live on the fringe of society begging or scrounging for food and shelter.
Perhaps some of you know this sign. Looser. That is what lepers were losers one and all. No hope. No relief. No future. Losers
Little wonder, then, when they know that Jesus is in the neighborhood, they find their way to him. They have heard of cures, even people raised from the dead, so where they had no hope, Jesus brings hope, where they had no relief, Jesus brings relief, where they had no future, Jesus opens a door.
Notice when they cry out to Jesus they do so from a distance. They dare not approach him. But they cry out nonetheless, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!
When Jesus hears their cry, he tells them to go and show themselves to the priest for just as the priest would declare them unclean so too the priest would declare them clean, restored to health, free from the disease that marred their skin they could once again return to their homes and families, to their communities, they could sleep in their own beds, eat at their own tables, worship in their synagogue. Jesus sends them back to their old world.
As they go, one of them, only one, looks at the skin once diseased and now restored, only one of them sees not only his restored skin, but that he is not in his old world. A new world has broken in. The reign of God has slipped into his world without his looking. And now nothing will be the same. Nothing will be the same. Nothing will be the same because of that man Jesus.
So he returns to Jesus. Notice how before he kept his distance. Now he draws near to Jesus and falls at his feet. Notice how before he cried out for mercy. Now he cries out in praise. Notice how before Jesus sends him into the old world where priests mediate God’s presence. Not he goes into the new world where God’s presence comes in the person of this Jesus.
There were ten lepers who were cleansed. Only one leper was able to see the new world of God dawning on the horizon and that light was streaming into that former leper’s heart from the eyes of Jesus. While his skin was cleansed, that was not the miracle. The miracle happened not on the leper’s skin but in the eyes of his heart. Those eyes were opened and he could see. That is why Jesus says to him your faith has made you whole. In our world, we are all beset with physical ills that weigh us down. The older we get the heavier that burden becomes. We pray that our bodies might be cured like the ten lepers in today’s story.
Not all of us will be cured of our illnesses. But all of us can be healed. Like the leper in today’s story, do we look only for our bodies to be cured of what ails us and not seek the real miracle. The real miracle happens in the opening of our eyes. The realization that the reign of God is dawning for us and the we only need to go to the dawn of that first Easter day to feel the warmth of the Son of God rising in our hearts.
For our bodies will all give out and if we invest all our hope in cures for our bodies we will be left sadly disappointed. But if we look for the healing of our hearts, if we look to find that a deep harmony unites our hearts with God, then we will experience healing even if we do not know a cure. For healing happens in our hearts. Restoring our hearts to harmony with God. Restoring our hearts even when our bodies begin to wear out.
I invite you this day to look in your hearts for those places where Jesus invites you to behold a new world dawning, a world of restored relationships, a world of hope where there was hopelessness, of spiritual relief where solitude locked us in on ourselves, of a future where we had given up on ourselves. Pray to God for the vision to see the gifts that surround you. Pray to God to behold the miracles that start even before you open your eyes. Pray to God for the insight to discover a grateful heart. A heart that counts each day the blessings that surround you. A heart that does not leave Jesus disappointed with our ingratitude but a heart that beholds Jesus opening new doors for us every day. A heart that has been opened to the world, in its beauty and its pain, its joy and its sorrow, its triumphs and its tragedies. A heart that knows that no matter what happens, we have a God who is so near to us that all we need to do is to fall at the feet of Jesus and worship the nearness of our God with us. Amen.

Clay in the Hands of God

Clay in the Hands of God
A Sermon preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on September 9, 2007

I have a bag that I brought with me today. I think that you might recognize some of these things. An old water bottle. A bottle for apple juice. A bottle for orange juice. There are some cans in here also. A can for cat food. A can for coffee. I think there are also bottles. A wine bottle. A bottle of pasta sauce. Plastic, tin and glass, these are the ways we carry things today.
In the 6th century before Christ, when Jeremiah walked the streets of Jerusalem, people carried things either in baskets or clay vessels. We call Jeremiah a prophet because of his ability to reach into his own heart and hear the meaning in the heart of God. When Jeremiah felt the broken heart of God, he expressed those words from the heart in a dramatic fashion. If you read his book, you will see him wearing a yoke around the city to warn the people that if they did not heed God’s word they would go into exile.
So in today’s story shows when he goes to the house of the potter, Jeremiah again shows his propensity for the dramatic.
For many of us, potters are people who make pots and vases that we use to decorate our house. We classify potters among artists and crafts people. But in Jeremiah’s day, potters were like people who produce plastic bottles, or glass jars, or tin cans. They engaged in mass production of utilitarian products. Now when you make a pot, you get a large heap of clay and put it on a wheel. The potter would turn the wheel with a peddle he would move with his feet. He would shape a pot from the clay. Usually the pot would come out just the way the potter wanted it to turn out. But sometimes, the potter would make a mistake and he would have to start the pot all over again. Pots are useful things.
When Jeremiah went to the potter’s house, he saw the potter make a pot. Then God told Jeremiah that God is like a potter. God is the potter. And we are the clay. God shapes us into something useful. God takes the most ordinary of things, meet dirt and clay, and shapes it into something useful.
On Friday, I saw a movie called Spider Man 2. If you have not seen the series, begin with the original movie. Not only are the special effects great, but you will enjoy the story.
Spider Man has a big problem. He leads two lives, one the life of a super hero and the other the life of Peter Parker. As glorious as is his life as a super hero, so dismal is his life as Peter Parker – though a brilliant scientific student and a daring pizza delivery man, he cannot keep up his grades or his job because he is compelled to rescue people from danger. He cannot confess his love for his girlfriend since he does not want to subject her to possible reprisals from his enemies. When he is Spider Man and he helps other people get out of trouble, he does not have time to do the things that he wants to do.
We would say that Spider Man has a problem with boundaries.
The only way that Spider Man was happy was when he was helping other people. I think that Spider Man knew that God has a special place for him in the world and Spider man has to do what God gave him the special gifts to do special things.
You are all like Spider Man. I invite you like Jeremiah, to go into the deep places of your heart and listen there to the silent word of God inviting you to take your place in God’s great design. I don’t think that any of us will be bitten by a genetically altered spider and find ourselves able to race down the streets of New York City on webs strung from skyscrapers. I don’t know about you but I am too afraid of heights to perform such stunts. But we are all given gifts both for ourselves and for our community. We are all invited to use those gifts at the service of the community in the various places where we sense that God invites us. By using those gifts in the service of others, we allow ourselves to become clay in God’s hand, we allow ourselves to be shaped into the form that God wants us to take. More and more we shall discover that form involves us in service to the community in ways we might not have imagined.
I want to tell you something more about Spider Man. In Spider Man 2, Peter Parker decides that he will give up being Spider Man. He spends a few weeks finding a new job, getting the best grades at school, even making a hit with his long beloved girlfriend. But something is missing. Something is not right. Unless he gives himself to the community as Spider Man, the villains will harass the innocent, children will lack a hero, and a man will frustrate God’s plan not only for him but for his community. When he surrenders to his place, when he allows God to mold him into the vessel God has in mind, he finds not only his own fulfillment but he also realizes all the deepest desires of his heart.
So take the clay. Surrender to God’s plan. Discover the beautiful person God wants you to become.

Relieved of the Weight of the World

Relieved of the Weight of the World.
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on August 26, 2007

Two years ago, my mother, my sister and two of my nieces all came to the rectory for a Mother’s Day celebration. It was a great event for us all to be sitting around the table, enjoying a good meal and better company as we celebrated the lives of four mothers across three generations in the family. Since my mother lives with my sister in Browns Mills, which is close to Fort Dix in central New Jersey, they could not make it to the Holy Eucharist. But if they had, you would have had the opportunity to meet my mother. All of us are proud of our mothers and I feel very proud of my mom. At 87, she has survived two heart attacks, two children, four grandchildren, five great grandchildren, three episodes of Congestive Heart Failure, and the usual ailments of old age such as arthritis, numbness in her fingers and high blood pressure. If you sat next to her, she could carry on a conversation on almost any topic since she reads the news paper daily is a student of the Television news and is an avid fan of Oprah Winfrey.
But when she stands to walk, it is then that you would notice that she has a most debilitating case of osteoporosis. Her back is so bent that when she walks, all she can see is her feet. It pains us all to watch her go from her room to the living room since she takes the slowest steps to move from one place to another. So you would understand that when today’s gospel makes its round in the three year cycle, that my thoughts would go to my mother. For if ever I want an image of what the woman whom Jesus cured looks like, all I have to do is to think of my mother. When she walks, her torso is at a ninety degree angle to her body. She bears the weight of a disease that cripples her.
But she is not the only one whom I remember. I also think of other women whom I have seen. I think of the woman whom I meet in hospitals who keep vigil for a family member who is seriously ill and everyone imagines the worst as they wait for news from the doctors. When these women walk to get a drink of water, their backs are usually a bit bent over. I think of the women who come into the pantry for food. Many of them hold their heads high, but many also have a hard time lifting their heads since they are bent over by shame and embarrassment that they cannot do what mothers should do for their families – provide them with food. I think of the women I have seen at funeral homes who carry the burden of a life without their husband, the women who have children who have become addicted to drugs and who do not seem to have a way out of their addiction, the women whose husbands abuse them with words, hands or emotional manipulation.
I think of the women who think that all about their lives is a failure, their job is not what fulfills them, their earnings barely make ends make, and their relationships leave them empty and unfulfilled. I think of the weight that all these women carry and how their backs are bent over.
I think that these women are bent over, but more than bent over. When Luke describes these women in the gospel, he writes that she was bent together, bent in. All these women are bent together, bent in, so bent under the weight of what they carry that they can no longer distinguish between themselves and their burden for they have become their burden. And their burden has become them, like the women we meet every day who are so burdened, the women many of us are, the person so many of us have become, bent over with care, crippled with anxiety, doubled over with pain. It is to this bent and twisted woman that Jesus comes.
Notice that the woman does not come to Jesus. Jesus comes to her.
It was Jana Childers who first helped me to imagine what that encounter between Jesus and that woman was like. Let’s remember this unnamed woman always walks like my mother, looking at the ground. Her vision of the world is dirt and sand and her dirty feet.
Into that world of dirt and sand and dirty feet comes the face of Jesus. Yes, Jesus must have bent down to that woman, bent down to see her, bent down in the dirt and sand and looked up at her with eyes of utmost compassion. Perhaps tears feel from his eyes as he saw her pain; perhaps those tears touched her feet and washed some of the dirt away.
Undoubtedly, she felt Jesus’ love as he said to her: Woman, you are set free from your ailment. She felt Jesus love lift the burden of whatever had crippled her for those eighteen years, lift that burden of emotional pain, of estrangement from her family and community, of separation from her own heart.
Such is the God whom we have, a God who gets into the dirt and sand of our lives, into those places where the burdens of our lives have crippled us and bent us over, into those places of the heart where we feel so unlovable, so abandoned, so alone and washes our dirty feet with a tear of compassion and invites us to be free from the burdens that weigh us down. Such is the God whom we have in Jesus. Such is the God who comes to you this day, who touches you where you are bent like a pretzel, who brings you that love you so desire and yearn for. Such is the God whom we have in Jesus.

Hooked on Hope

Hope on the End of a Hook
A Sermon preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco, Interim Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on August 12,2007

Every once in the while, even while we enjoy the beauty of summer, events crowd together that erode the joy of the season we all want to enjoy. News from the mine in Utah is pretty grim as efforts to reach the trapped miners comes up with little hope. Yesterday, three churches in Newark conducted funeral rites for three young people gunned down in what appears to be a senseless robbery gone bad. On Friday night as many of us tuned in the late night news, we heard that the New York City police stepped up security measures in search of a dirty bomb that an Israeli website claimed would be brought into the city.
Such events make us pause and reflect on the deeper pattern at work in our world.
Is there any reason that we can assume that things are getting any better? Sometimes we feel tempted to give in to that tugging sense of despair that borders on hopelessness. It is at times that these, when caves fall in and we can hear no sound from the outside, when promising young people are gunned down, when the threat of violence knocks on our neighbor’s door, it is at such times that we come upon a set of readings that lift our hearts and give us reason for hope.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Do not be afraid, little flock. In those opening lines to today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us yet again to surrender our fear of the events that seems to indicate that the world is falling apart and look deeper into the world to see that God’s hand is creating, even in the midst of disasters, a new world, the place we call the kingdom of God. We can hone our ability to see God at work in the midst of disasters when we hope. When we look beyond the crisis at hand to the hand that is leading us out of the crisis, then we are learning the skill of hope.
At the start of today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews, we heard these words: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith in the assurance of things hoped for.” When I heard many people talk about faith, they speak about the beginning level of faith: they believe in the existence of God. For many of us, our faith consists in believing in God, in affirming that a reality exists that lies deeper than our experience of the world we see.
For most of us our faith lies in the second part of the definition of faith we heard in today’s second reading. Our faith is about the conviction of things not seen. We believe in God, even though we do not see God. We are convinced of the presence of Jesus even though our eyes do not behold him. We are sure of the presence of the Holy Spirit as sure as we are of the love that is in our hearts. We are convinced of things that we do not see.
But faith is more than that. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” “Faith is the Assurance of things hoped for.” There is energy in faith that directs us to look into the future, to seek what lies ahead, to long and pine for a reality that God is preparing but is not yet in front of us. I think that such a desire is implanted by God in our hearts so that we can move to that place where God is working and where God is establishing the city in which we will dwell: the reign of God which ever lies before us.
I recently read a story about Harold Russell. When he heard about the attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Harold signed up with the US Army on December 8th. An accident turned around his dream to fight for his country. He didn’t know that the an explosive he was handling for a training film had a defective fuse which went off as he touched it. When he woke up on his bed after surgery, both his hands were missing. All hope seeped out of his heart. His entire life seemed to me nothing more than a tragedy. He was filled with despair.
At that moment, he received a visit from Major Charlie Mc Gonegal who also lost both his hands in an accident. Charlie encouraged Harold to conquer his greatest enemy: his own fear, his own bitterness, his own hopelessness. “How can I get along in life,” Harold asked, “as a cripple?” “You’re not a cripple,” said Charlie, “you are only handicapped.”
Harold was fitted with two hooks for hands and went on to Boston University.
While studying, he was featured in an army film, Diary of a Sergeant, about soldiers recovering from loss of limbs. Director William Wyler saw that film and cast Harold as a recovering soldier in his movie, The Best Years of our Lives. Harold won the academy award as best supporting actor.
Such is the character of Christian hope; God creates a new world where we thought the old world had fallen apart. As we pray this day for the dawn of God’s kingdom among us, let us go to those places in our heart where we find the circumstances of our lives challenging our faith and pray that our eyes may be opened to behold the new city that God is creating for us to live in. For God is always at work creating new possibilities. We only have to open our eyes to behold God in all God’s creative work.

Becoming the God We Worship

A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on July 29, 2007.

If you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, you can behold images of the gods of the ancient world, imposing statues of warrior gods, threatening gods, gods that fill your heart with terror. Strapped to the belts of these gods are swords that are ready for battle. To these idols the people of the ancient world fell down in worship. They would offer sacrifices of animals to these statues to satisfy the desire of these gods for satisfaction of wrongs committed against them. And for the ancients, all the gods were warrior gods, ready to march against the enemy, engage in combat and carry home the booty of battle. It is little wonder that the ancient people were constantly at war with one another for they worshiped gods who constantly were at war with each other. As psalm 115 puts it: Those who make them are like them. Or in other words, we become like the God we worship. The ancient people worshiped warrior gods and became warriors.
What about us? But who is the God whom we worship? And are we becoming like that God?
For us Christians, we believe that our image of God is the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The God whom we worship in Christ Jesus is the God who is working in the world the work of reconciliation, restoring the brokenness of the world to order, bringing about our restoration. That restoration comes into the world through the work of forgiveness. God has forgiven all of us our offenses. God has taken away the guilt of our sin. God forgives us so that we in turn can forgive others. So that we can become like the God we worship. For that forgiveness we not only ask God to give to us, but to give us in the measure that we give that gift to others. Those words we pray whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer.
You probably noticed that the version of the Lord’s Prayer we heard today from the gospel according to Luke is somewhat shorter than the version we shall pray later in the Eucharist. Perhaps we might have wished that Luke would have forgotten that problematic phrase. Perhaps we might have desired that the biblical scholars would have said that the phrase was only included in some of the later texts of the gospel and we could delete it. But no such chance. We are called to that difficult task of forgiveness.
I wonder if Jesus invites us to be persistent in prayer because he knew how difficult it would be for us to let loose of the sins that others commit against us.
You know those hard things you have endured from others, the pain, the betrayals, the rejections, the times you were used by someone else, the times you were treated like a thing and not a person. And to those painful situations, Jesus asks that you go and forgive those who have offended you. Now if Jesus were Dr. Phil, he would say that you should forgive others so that the weight of holding on to those offenses would be lifted from you and that you can go on with your life free of that heavy burden. But no.
Not Jesus. He invites you to forgive so that you can be a part of his own work of forgiveness in the world.
If this work of forgiveness seems impossible, I would like you to hear the lesson from a girl made famous during the Vietnam war. Some of you might recall the Vietnam war and the horrible pictures that flashed on the nightly new of the horrors of that war.
I am sure that all of us here will recall the picture of a young Vietnamese girl running down the street, her clothing burned away by the napalm bomb dropped by an American plane on Saigon, the pain of her burning flesh and streaming down in her face in tears.
That young girl’s name is Kim Phuc. After the war, some Canadians brought her to Canada for reconstructive surgery and she still lives in Canada.
Another person is a part of that story and his name is John Plummer. John is an ordained minister in the Methodist church. He is also a Vietnam Veteran. He piloted the plane which dropped the napalm on Kim. When he saw that picture of a child so mutilated by his action, John became an alcoholic until he was able to find forgiveness from God for the deed he did. He met Kim at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. and asked for her forgiveness for the pain he caused her. Even though she still suffers from the pain of the scars of that attack, she found it in her heart to forgive John. She said to him: “Let us live in love.” She forgave John, not to ease the burden of her heart but to ease the pain in John’s heart.
That is the way God forgives. God forgives us to ease the burden of guilt only God can ease. We too are called to forgive others with the gift only we can bestow on them: the restoration of the hearts who have offended us.
I know that I am inviting you to a task that is hard and difficult, the very task that Jesus invites you to do. If you find this forgiveness too hard to do, then ask Jesus to help you to do it. Knock on the door of heaven constantly until you heart is moved to that forgiveness. As Jesus says to us: “Ask, and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened.”
Pray that you might become the Christ you worship: the Christ who opened his heart on the cross for love of you.

For Freedom Christ Set Us Free

For Freedom, Christ Set Us Free.

A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on July 1, 2007

On this Sunday closest to July 4th, many of us are probably planning something to do on Independence Day. Perhaps it will be a barbeque. Perhaps some of you will attend the Clifton City Picnic this afternoon and then attend the fireworks display in the stadium. I am sure that there is at least one or two among us who will venture into New York City to watch the Macy’s fireworks display.
For most of us, thoughts of July 4th spell out the words party, celebration, fireworks, and fun. Perhaps a few among us might recall the reason for this celebration is that on a hot and humid July 4th in 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the declaration of independence was signed this day declaring that the thirteen colonies were free from the rule of the British monarch. Perhaps some of us might recall the words of some of our founding fathers. Among them stand out Patrick Henry’s famous words: Give me liberty or give me death. Perhaps some of us might know that those words, while they were delivered to the Second Virginia Convention urging them to commit the Virginia Troops to the cause of the Revolution, that those words come from a speech delivered in St. John’s Anglican Church in Richmond Virginia.
So on this weekend, it comes as a sort of blessing that our second reading from the letter to the Galatians lays out a theme close to the heart of many of us: Freedom.
Strange as it may seem, the word freedom does not occur once in the Declaration of Independence. Four times is the word free used but not once is the word freedom written.
Yet in today’s reading from Galatians, Paul proclaims: For Freedom Christ has set us free. In that word Freedom we find a link between the celebration of our nation and the celebration of our faith. When we recall the declaration of independence, we recall that the colonial leaders were declaring their freedom from the King. For all the wrongs committed by King George, the colonists declared “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.”
Many of us consider freedom as a release from some form of oppression. Just remember when you were a teenager, and for some of us that comes as a real effort of our imagination, but you can recall how you longed to be free from…. Free from the demands of your parents. Free from the rules of your teachers. Free from the restrictions that hemmed in your time, your friends, your activities.
Yet notice how Paul defines freedom in a radically different manner. The freedom that Paul presents for us is a freedom, not from others, but from self. Listen to what Paul says: do not gratify the desires of the flesh. And if we have any question as to what the desires of the flesh include Paul lets us know: Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.
If you carefully examine this list of vices, you will see that at the root of them all lays an intense need to gratify our self. These are the needs of a superficial level of our ego so that if we live our lives gratifying these superficial needs, we will find ourselves living superficial lives. Lives trapped in the endless satisfaction of the needs of our superficial ego.
In contrast to this shallow life, Paul assures us that Christ came to set us free.
Free from the demands of a phony life. Free from an endless gratification of our infantile demands. Let us acknowledge that all of us are somehow trapped in gratification of these needs. Eating when we are looking for emotional comfort rather than satisfying our hunger. Making ourselves a doormat so that others can take advantage of us. Allowing ourselves to be caught in endless cycles of enabling others in their superficial needs. Trapped in the various forms of addictive behaviors be they patterns of anger, disorganization, pettiness, sexual addictions, the need to control. If we take a look at ourselves in these sad cycles in which we occasionally live, if we look at ourselves with the compassionate eyes of Christ Jesus, we can open ourselves to the grace of Christ which comes to us to set our hearts free. To set our hearts free, from the patterns that oppress us. To set our hearts free, from the behaviors the restrict us. To set our hearts free, from the smallness that limits us.
As we continue with the Eucharist, let us confess to Christ those patterns that keep us living life on the surface. Let us ask Christ for the liberty to live life in the depths. Once day in 1775, Patrick Henry said, Give me liberty or give me death.
Let us ask our great and loving Christ Jesus to give us freedom, to give us liberty, for without the freedom that comes from Christ, we are already dead.
Let us pray.
O Gracious Lord Christ, open our eyes to look with courage at those places where our lives are limited, where our patterns are addicted, where our freedom is restricted.
Open our eyes to hear your word and our hearts to feel your love, for your word convicts us of our sinfulness and your love assures us of our loveableness. Set us free this day. As we receive your Body and Blood this day in the Eucharist, may we taste not only your love, may we taste our own freedom. And freed from a shallow life, open our hearts to love and serve others. We make our prayer for your love’s sake. Amen.

Christ on the Loose

A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco
at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Easter, 2007

If you ever take a close look a really close look at the bible, you must come away with the impression that God must be a gardener. If you remember back to the first book of the Bible, you will remember that when God make Adam and Eve, he placed them in a garden. The garden of God was planted as a place of ultimate harmony, of a peaceful co-existence between creatures, of delightful contemplation of the beauty of landscapes, of pleasurable participation in the waters of streams and rivers, of that soul satisfying delight of walking with God in the cool of the evening.
Even though they were expelled from that garden, I imagine Adam and Eve always felt a deep longing in to return to that garden, to the perfect harmony of the place, the scents of the flowers and the plants and vegetables God prepared for them. A longing for the beautiful rivers in the garden in which they would bath and drink and behold water in its beauty.
I sometimes think that we all inherited from Adam and Eve that deep longing to return to the garden. Those of us who are gardeners know that pleasure of digging the spring earth, cleaning away the debris of the winter, tilling the soil, preparing it for the new plants. Those of us with less than green thumbs know the pleasure of beholding the beauty of a garden, be it our neighbor’s garden or the vast expanse of a manicured garden estate. Little wonder then that God started it all over again in a garden.
When the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross, his friends completed a hasty burial in a tomb, a cave in which a tomb was newly carved. But let’s not forget that they found that cave in a garden. To that garden Mary hastened on Easter morning to go as mourners go to the place where the body of the beloved lies buried. Perhaps many of us know that feeling, of going back to the place where we buried our loved ones, finding there some comfort as we weep and mourn their passing from us. Perhaps that is why so many cemeteries are festooned with flowers and plants. My own nieces and nephews called my fathers’ grave Grandpa’s garden since we always decorated his grave with flowers.
Yes, God drew on that deep instinct to return to the garden to start the world over again when God raised Jesus from the dead. God drew on that deep desire for us to return to a place of harmony and beauty, of delight and comfort, of joy and abiding peace. God drew on that deep desire in God’s own heart to replant the garden of paradise and the first seed God planted in that garden was the body of his own son. For in God’s garden of the resurrection, God plants all the worse that humanity could devise against Jesus and transforms it as gardeners do.
As gardeners take old leaves and transform them into mulch, God took what the world considered so useless in the life of Jesus that the world crucified Jesus on a tree and transformed Jesus into the beginning of a new humanity. As gardeners take cast off bricks and transform them into garden paths, so Jesus took the disciples starting with Mary Magdalene, and transformed them into paths on which we could walk to God. As gardeners takes a bulb from here and a plant from there and arranges them in a new design of beauty so Christ has taken us the mismatched of the world and changes us into the new pattern of beauty in this church, Christ’s new creation in Clifton.
God has set Christ loose in the world through the power of the resurrection. God has set Christ loose in the world to transform the world beginning with you and with me.
God is working in the world to change the world, one heart at a time. This work of transformation begins for each of us with our baptism, the moment when God grafts us onto the vine who is Christ, the moment when God washes us in Baptism’s waters, the moment when Christ gives us new birth from the opening in his heart’s flow of water and blood, even as our mothers give us birth in water and blood. God transforms us in our baptism not only that we can profess our faith in this hidden gardener who is creating the world anew. God transforms us that we might be the faithful people who acknowledge God’s presence by our prayer and our faithfulness to this Christian fellowship. God transforms us that we might be the people who with God resist evil in the world even when those around us conspire against the forces of life and liberty. God transforms us that we might be a people whose lives and words proclaim with God the reality of the resurrection. God transfigures our eyes that we might see Christ in the countless forms and faces of people and not only see Christ but serve Christ. God transfigures each of us that we might struggle with God in the world to be instruments of justice where the world deprives people of their fair share, to be soldiers of peace in a world torn by strife and war, to be envoys of respect helping one another discover anew the dignity that God bestows on each of us.
Look out and beware. For Christ is on the loose in the power of the resurrection.
You can be sure of one thing. Christ will not leave you unchanged.

Aflame with the Love of God

Proclaiming the Good News: You are Loved by God
A sermon preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco, Interim Rector of St. Peter’s Church, Clifton, New Jersey on Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2007

On May 17, a tornado touched down in Allendale, New Jersey and nothing was the same. Trees were torn from the earth and their roots exposed while the wind knocked down other trees and sent them smashing into homes and on top of cars. The town was a tragedy. Such is the power of the wind.
In the tornado belt, there are people who are captivated by Tornadoes. When tornado season comes, they closely follow the weather and when conditions are ripe for a tornado they get into their cars and search it out for the thrill of seeing a funnel cloud touch down with its unspeakable power and twist and destroy everything in its path. These people are thrilled to be in the presence of such power and strength. Their cousins on the east coast hurry to the beach when a hurricane is lashing the coast to witness the power of the wind and water as it churns the ocean, devastates the coast and even sends houses crashing into the water at the onslaught of such power.
I am not sure if the wind that blew on that Pentecost morning in Jerusalem morning registered as a tornado. I doubt it. I do not think that God is in the business of terrifying people into belief. But the transformation in the hearts and souls of those first Christian women and men on that Pentecost morning more than matched the transformation of the land and sea with any wind storm.
Just imagine who the disciples were before Pentecost. They were the ones who denied Jesus. They were the ones who left him to die alone. They were the ones who were slaves to fear, afraid of what the Jewish and Roman leaders might do to them, afraid to follow Jesus, afraid to share the story of what happened to them.
But then came Pentecost. That group who left Jesus alone to die would go out into the world and all of them would suffer death for the Gospel they proclaimed> That group who were slaves to fear were filled with faith. That group who, before the crucifixion, were afraid of their own shadow covered the known world with the message that Jesus was raised from the dead and that God’s love for them would sustain them even in the midst of the harshest tests that came their way.
Let’s take a look at the patron of our church – Peter from Galilee. Something changed in that man. After Pentecost Peter acted as he never acted before. Something shifted in his heart. The Spirit did something in Peter’s heart. For you see, Peter was a fearful man. Yes, he would brag a lot. Yes, he would say that he would follow Jesus no matter what. Yes, he would be the leader of the disciples. But when it came to the cross, Peter tucked his tail between his legs like a frightened dog and ran off for the house and hid himself under the porch.
After the resurrection, Jesus restored Peter to a new friendship with him. But that was only the start. When that flame of Pentecost burned over his head, it first burned in his heart. That flame of love burned in his heart, burning away the fear and replacing it with faith. Peter, who cowered before a slave girl, who denied Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest, who ran and hid when Jesus walked the walk to the cross, was a changed man on Pentecost. He was a changed man because the Holy Spirit displaced fear with faith. Peter stepped out in faith and laid aside his fear. He shared with others the unspeakable story that we are loved, loved by our God and cherished, cherished and cared for even in the midst of any cross that comes our way.
We for our part are called this day to be like Peter. We can do nothing less. Today many of us are wearing red and four of us will win prizes for the most red clothing. That contest is supposed to make you stand out, it is supposed to make people look at you. And when they look at you, I invite you to tell at least one other person this day that the flame of Pentecost has touched your heart. That you are a person who is loved by God. That you want to share with others the good news that God is pouring down from heaven a fire storm of love burning in our hearts and changing us into disciples who carry the good news into the world.
On this day, Christina and Carmine will be born again in the water of Baptism and will be anointed with the Holy Spirit. They will profess their faith in the love of God who draws them this day into the circle of God’s family. With them, we shall affirm our own baptismal covenant when we promise that we shall proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
On this day, you shall all receive a lapel pin with the flame of the Spirit and the cross. I invite you this day to wear that pin in a place that others can see it and share with someone the good news that you received this day. News of faith. News of release from fear. News of Love. News of faith giving you strength to proclaim the good news of God’s compassion for you this day.

Where is the Spanish Mass

Taking Down the Walls
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episocpal Church, Clifton,New Jersey on May 6, 2007.

Perhaps we have all met some who has a case of Know It All syndrome. The major symptom of Know it all syndrome is that no mater what you say, they already know the answer. Now Know it all syndrome comes in a various decrees of severity.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we regularly meet people who have a milder case of the Know It All Syndrome. Last week, we met a mild case of the know it all syndrome in the person of Ananias. You will recall that after Saul is blinded by a vision of the Risen Christ, that same Christ visits Ananias in a vision and tells him to go and baptize Saul.
Thinking that the Lord did not read the latest news in the Jerusalem Journal, Ananias reminds the Lord that Saul have been persecuting the church and so asks the Lord to reconsider his plans for such an unworthy candidate for baptism. God lets Ananias know of God’s bigger plan for Saul. Ananias finally gives in to God’s vision.
In today’s reading, Peter is the one who shows signs of Know it all syndrome. In today’s reading, Peter has been called on the carpet by the church in Jerusalem for baptizing and eating with Gentiles.
For us who are gentiles, we make the assumption that the church always included us. Do we consider ourselves outsiders whom God has brought in? Yet that is exactly how the Jewish Christians would have thought of us. For Peter and the other leaders of the church in Jerusalem, we were the ones who were on the outside, who did not belong to the Church. We seldom think of ourselves as outsiders for we have been a part of the church for most of our lives. Yet until that first meal that Peter ate with Cornelius, all of us who are Gentiles were outside the family of God, excluded from the promises, and strangers to God’s Family.
When God tells Peter that it is OK to eat the Jimmy Dean Sausage, Peter gets an attack of Know it all syndrome. Peter tells God that never has he eaten unkosher food.
God has a bigger plan. Peter does not yet understand that plan. Only after Peter goes to the house of Cornelius and witnesses the Holy Spirit descend on Cornelius and his family does Peter get a glimpse into God’s broader vision. Peter puts it this way: The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.
The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.
I want to tell you another story. Many of you have seen the large sing put up by St. Peter’s Haven advertising the ESL classes. Many of you know that those classes have grown from one class in September to 5 classes this April. We shall begin a Citizenship class in the summer. We are making efforts to help those in our community to become a part of our broader community.
A Spanish speaking volunteer at the Haven is among those studying English. She attends class two days each week. We speak with each other, she in broken English and I in broken Spanish, and she told me that some of the students coming to the class asked her: When is the Spanish Mass? When is the Spanish Mass?
When I first heard that question, I asked myself who is asking the question. It was not the student who was asking the question. In that student’s voice, I heard God asking us, in the voice of that student, when is the Spanish Mass? The people who have been coming to the haven for shelter and food and now education are asking when they can come here to worship.
Today, I am asking us to begin to listen to that question. I am asking us to begin looking at moving out in ministry to the people who are around us but are not a part of this community because we are separated from us by a different language.
I know that many of us might feel as if people who live in the United States should adopt the culture of the country to which they have moved and language is a critical part of that cultural scene. But let’s think for a while about language and prayer.
For most of us here, English is our first language. We speak in English, think in English and naturally speak to God in English. Some of us here have parents and grandparents whose first language was not English. My Grandmother came to the United States from Hungary and she spoke 8 languages. Her first language was German and whenever she prayed she would pray in German. For her, German was her first language and a person’s first language is the language of their heart.
Our conversations with God come from our hearts and flow from our hearts in our first language. So while people can become part of the community in speaking English, the language in which we speak to God is in our first language. By opening our church to those who are different than we are, we can start with a Spanish Mass and eventually move to occasional bilingual services and even to sharing food with one another in fellowship meals.
That would mark a very big change for us. It is not unlike the change to which God invited St. Peter. Peter put it this way: The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.
Today I am asking questions, opening a dialogue, inviting you to consider. In the future, as we look at the future shape of our ministry, we can engage in a dialogue on this issue. This is a complex dialogue, with many dimensions, and we all need to talk about this, to express our concerns, to figure out how we can go from here to there, to figure out if we even want to go there.
I know that you had begun to talk about this form of ministry while Hank was rector. I am making that same invitation. Today’s reading is about God breaking down walls that kept people apart. To take down this wall will gradually change our lives together. We were once on the other side of that wall. By God’s gracious gift we have become insiders. Part of God’s family. Can we find it in our hearts to extend to those who are currently outsiders to our community an invitation to make them insiders? Can we begin to tear down the wall of language that separates us from them?
The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. Just as Peter was changed by his vision to include the Gentiles, is God calling us at St. Peter’s Church to move into a new vision?

Clothed With The Sun

The Mystery of the Assumption
A Sermon by the Reverend Peter De Franco, Jr.
Interim Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey

When was the last time you saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars? Not even in Times Square would you see such a sight, unless it might be on Halloween or if you were high on something, but she is not the person whom you would gingerly meet on the way. Yet she is the person whom we encounter with the opening antiphon of today’s liturgy: A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
With this language, strange and unworldly, we enter into the world of the apocalyptic. No, this is not the world of those misguided souls who would hasten the coming of the end of the world that they might catch the greatest 4th of July fireworks display. No, this is not the world of those who would more quickly pray for atomic war so as it have the world’s international scene fit their misconstrued notions of the end of times.
No, this is the world of those who are tired of the politics of this world and know that only God can usher in a new world order, and that world order does not need an atomic bomb blast but the gentle wind of the Holy Spirit to cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. An apocalyptic world view pushes us to edge of the symbolic world, a world where image defines a deeper reality and where flights of fantasy take us into a world of hopes, deeper than the power of the human imagination but not craftier then the might of the divine heart. An apocalyptic world view takes us into the season of Easter, with promises of new life being formed from the ashes of death and the reality of God’s new order formed in the potter’s hand from the clay of the old creation.
In an apocalyptic world view, we behold a world on the brink of disaster rescued by the divine EMT who hastens into the fire and snatches us from the foe. In an apocalyptic world view, we experience a God in the birth pangs of a new creation, crying aloud as a new child enters into the world, a new child with all the hopes that child brings. In an apocalyptic world view, we encounter the breaking down of one world as God creates a new world, the sunset that changes to dawn, the rain gives way to the sun, and the mourning veil is lifted.
This apocalyptic world view is enacted in signs this day: a statue is carried around a church in procession as a sign of the glorification of a woman with the garments like the sun, stars forming her crown and the moon as her foot stool. We process this day, though in the role of the accompanying angels. The angels come as sure signs that we are dealing with an apocalyptic stage for wherever angels appear the wonders of God’s new world soon dawn.
While an apocalyptic vision places us in the world of the symbolic, we stand at the place where the symbol is giving way to reality. At the point where the symbolic gives way to the real stands the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That resurrection is the moment of breakthrough when the birth pangs of God give way to the new creation of the Christ, the head of that mystical person emerging from the birth channel even as through baptism and the Eucharist the body continues to take form and emerges through the font, the womb of the church, to the breast of the church where the faithful are fed with the milk of the Eucharist. We receive these gifts of new life in hope and so we receive them symbolically, yet with symbols so rich in grace that we call them sacraments since they effect in reality what they proclaim symbolically.
With the assumption, we stand on the other side of that symbolic world, where the language of a new world order gives way to a bodily entrance into the reign of God. The icons of the Assumption describe this reality: the dead body of the virgin lies on a bier as her new body that of an infant lies in the arms of her son -- A divine reversal of roles as the child gives birth to the mother and the mother suckles at the child’s breast. With this mystery of the assumption, we are ushered into the realm of the spirit where the new creation begins, where new life shapes our souls, and the promises of God for the redemption of our bodies begins takes its place even in our very flesh.
The assumption is that moment when the promises become real for one member of the mystical body of Christ and so assure us all that the symbolic world indeed is giving way to reality. That reality is the resurrection of the mystical body of Christ and its formation in the world across the boundaries of time and space. It is a reality that we form even this day, but we form in faith and in hope, heirs of the promise that we hold this day in clay vessels as we await the redemption of our bodies.
Mary has passed from the symbolic into the real. That is the first meaning of this day’s feast. We, in the heat of the summer, oppressed by the heat of our lives and the weight of its deep humidity, find renewed hope for the redemption of our own bodies.
We stand this day in hope, even as we look to heaven to behold a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

With Open Arms and Open Hearts

With open arms, with open hearts.
A Sermon preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco on June 24, 2007,
the Patronal Feast of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, NJ

On this day, we gather in St. Peter’s church and celebrate the memory of our community’s patron. I have always felt blessed to serve in a church with which I share a name. Whenever I go to Sikora’s, the religious goods store in Passaic, they all know me as Father Peter from St. Peter’s. It’s a fun thing.
Now St. Peter and I go back a long way so I want to tell you a story about me and St. Peter that happened when I was in the second grade. When I was a child I attended St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic School in Paterson, New Jersey. It was October and Halloween was approaching and the nun who taught our class had the bright idea that we all should dress up as our patron saints. Concetta, the girl who lived down the street from me, dressed as the Virgin Mary; my best friend was named Joey and he dressed up as St. Joseph and of course I dressed up as St. Peter.
It was a family project to put the costume together. My mother was a seamstress so she designed a white robe and a cord belt for me. My father, who loved to work with wood, made a three foot key for me. The key was almost as big as I was! And the crowning piece of the costume was a white wig and white beard. I looked like Santa Claus in a nightgown!
On Halloween day, we all came into school in our saint’s costumes and then paraded around the street with all the other children in our school for the Halloween parade. I really felt proud of my key. For years, that key hung up in our living room on a pillar that supported the ceiling near a bay of windows.
We all know that all the saints have symbols. If you look at the stained glass window of St. Peter here in church, you will see two symbols of St. Peter: a set of Keys and an inverted cross. The keys recall those words of Jesus to Peter: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. The roman church uses that gospel story about St. Peter to remind them of the connection between Peter and the Bishop of Rome. I think they want to remind their people who has the power. Thank God we don’t have that story.
You see, we use a different gospel and it refers to the second symbol of St. Peter: The inverted cross. You will recall after Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him and three times Jesus invites Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep. Jesus then says something rather strange: Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” 19(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)
Jesus is telling Peter something that must have totally frightened Peter. Jesus is telling Peter that when he is old, he will stretch out his hands and another will lead him where he would not go. Peter knew full well what Jesus was talking about. For but a few days before Jesus had stretched out his hands when a soldier fastened Jesus’ hands to the beam of the cross. Peter would follow Jesus to that same crucifixion. A venerable Christian story says that during the persecution of the Christian Community in Rome under the Emperor Nero, Peter was captured and condemned to death by crucifixion.
He asked that he be crucified head downward since he felt himself unworthy to die the same death as did Jesus. The upside down cross is a reminder of that final following by Peter of his Jesus.
You will all recall that when Jesus was going to the cross, Peter was so frightened that when a little servant girl asked Peter if he knew Jesus, Peter denied it as fast as he could. Somehow, Peter’s fearful heart was transformed into a courageous heart.
I think it had to do with that day on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus forgave Peter for his betrayals and restored Peter to friendship with Jesus. In healing his heart, Peter’s heart was opened. Somehow his heart was opened and he learned the important lesson of embracing all people.
For in the days after Pentecost, Peter is the one who brings the Gentiles into the church. Peter is the one who breaks down the barrier that divided Jewish Christians from Gentiles.
Deep in the heart of this community lays a similar commitment to open our arms in welcome. On this day, we bring together both the celebration of our patron as well as pride day, a day when we open our hearts to our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered sisters and brothers. The seed for this pride celebration comes from Father Hank Dwyer who saw the civil rights movement of the 1960’s embracing the struggle of the LGBT community to achieve full equality. I believe that Hank saw the Spirit of God opening up hearts and minds of Christians to embrace those whom God already loved. God is putting into our hearts a desire to love others with the same love God has for them. The beginning of such love lies in opening our hearts and minds.
For us Christians, we, like Peter, learn how to do that from Jesus who stretched out his arms on the cross. Jesus learned that lesson when his own arms were stretched out on the cross – that God opens our arms that we might open our hearts to include all in the embrace of our love. To open our hearts like Peter comes as an invitation to overcome the fear that keeps our hearts closed. A first step in overcoming that fear is to see the other as a person like us, a person loved and cherished by God, a person. I believe the deeper we go in opening our hearts to the love of God, the easier it is to release fear from our hearts.
We are in a time in our parish life when we are asking ourselves where is God calling us as a community. We are a community who have done so much with so little.
In part, we have done so much because we are a people who love much. We do not only receive God’s love into our hearts, but we ask how can we share that love?
What is God asking us to do in the next five years? Shall our response be one that flows from closed arms or from open arms? I invite us this day to look to the example of our patron, to look in the way we have opened our hearts and minds to embrace our Lesbian, gay and bisexual sisters and brothers. We have the courage to continue to open our arms in welcome for God has opened our hearts in love.
So if you see a little boy with a white wig and robe carrying a key in his hand, ask him for the key. It will open your heart.