Light in the Darkness

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Peter De Franco on
November 30, 2008, The First Sunday of Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent. Does anyone know what the word advent means? The word advent comes from two Latin words that mean coming toward. I wonder what is coming toward us? Or who is coming toward us? Christmas is coming toward us. Jesus is coming toward us. For some of us, Santa Claus is coming toward us.
Do any of you remember from today’s gospel what Jesus said is coming? Let me remind you of what Jesus said is coming:
Jesus said that something terrible is coming. Listen to Jesus’ words: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” (Mark 13: 24-25) What does that sound like to you? It sounds like I don’t want to be around to see that happen.
What would that mean if the sun is darkened and the moon does not shine and the stars fall out of the sky? It would be pretty dark when that happens. We would all be living in shadows. We would all be in the dark. How would that make you feel? I think that I would be afraid. I would be scared.
What happens when everything is dark? What do you need? You need light. You need something to shine in the darkness. You need a light.
I think that Jesus is not only telling us that something terrible is going to happen. But Jesus is also telling us that something wonderful is going to happen. Jesus tells us that when terrible things happen, that kind of world has to end. Jesus is telling us that a world where people do bad things to other people has to end. Jesus is telling us that a world where people do not have enough clothes to wear, enough food to eat, enough space to live has to come to an end. So when Jesus talks about the sky becoming dark, it is only part of the story. Jesus is talking about a world where bad things happen. That bad world has to come to end.
Jesus is also saying that he will come to make everything better. Jesus called himself the light. But Jesus is also talking about the dawning of a new light to replace the darkness. This are the words from the Gospel: “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. (Mark 13: 35-36)
Do you notice the references to time in the Gospel and how time progresses from evening to midnight, to cockcrow to dawn. Jesus is advising us that we need to keep alert. To pay attention, that we might see when the light dawns and perhaps even more than see.
I want to share a story with you about the battle between darkness and light, a story that played itself out only a few blocks from us. Last Sunday, as the congregation from the 10:15 service were going into coffee hour, a tragedy played itself out at St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox church on Third Street. You know the story of how an angry husband traveled from California to New Jersey to take his wife, the wife he brutalized and beat for years, back with him to California. We all know how that story played itself out in the Narthex of the church, how the husband came into the Narthex, demanded that his wife return with him, how a young man intervened along with the woman’s cousin. Shots rang out in the church, leaving the wife dead, the young man mortally wounded and the cousin still is in a coma on life support in St. Joseph’s Hospital.
On Thanksgiving night, I spent evening at St. Thomas Church along with other clergy, members of the family of Dennis John and the many people who were touched by his short life. Again on Friday night, I sat in the pew, praying for Dennis and his family, for his congregation, and listening to the words of friends, of priests who knew him, of members of his congregation. They spoke of his outgoing character, his profound love for people, his deep caring for others.
When I was asked to speak, I did not have a prepared text and these words of the Gospel came to my mind: Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friend. Jesus spoke of those words to describe how he would lay down his life for us. But countless Christians after Jesus have laid down their lives for others. Dennis did what Jesus did. In the midst of that dark hour, Dennis’ sacrifice was a shining light.
Priests came from all over the country. From India came a bishop who is the equivalent of our presiding bishop to lead the prayers and to comfort Dennis’ family and the congregation. Now I am not asking you to become a martyr. Only God can give us that grace. Seeing his mother crying without comfort let me ask God not only for her comfort but that other mothers be spared similar sorrow. Let us pray that none of us are called to that role.
But when a martyr arises in our community, we should recognize that what the world sees as darkness, we Christians see as the dawning light. What the world sees as loss, we see as gain. For the weakness of our human condition, God transforms into God’s own strength. The tragedy of human loss, God transforms by the power of the resurrection into new life. We are all called to be a light in the darkness. Not as dramatically as Dennis in his sacrificial death. But in smaller, humbler, hidden ways.
Perhaps by giving a Christmas gift to a stranger, providing food for someone who is hungry, showing love and affection for someone who is forgotten, you become a light in someone’s darkness. Make your heart a shining light that when you find darkness, the light of Jesus may shine through you.

An Incomplete Sermon on Stewardship

If you were to put an anxiety thermometer in the mouth of our society, you would see the mercury explode the thermometer and bounce in bubbles on the floor. Unless we exert extraordinary concern, each of us can become infected with the collective unease our society is feeling over the ups and down turns of the stock market, fears over the possibility of yet another buyout by the federal government of first insurance companies, then banks and now perhaps the auto industry.
If you think that today’s stock market is a gamble perhaps you did not pay careful attention to today’s Gospel story. The parable of the talents comes close to high rolling with mutual funds.
But for us to understand the high risks of the story, lets start by converting the biblical money into dollars.
When the Gospel talks about talents, a talent is not a good trait you have, a talent is a sum of money. A talent is worth about 6,000 denarii. A denarius is a day’s wage. How much do you make in a day? If you make $80, then one talent is $420,000. Two talents is $840,000. Five talents is $2,100,000.
If you make $160 a day then we are looking at $840,000, $1,680,000, and $4,200,000. I think we are now in the league with Warren Buffit and Bill Gates.
The investors in the Gospel story take the money they receive and the first two double it.
The third one sits on it and does nothing. What is this money that Jesus is talking about? Let’s face it, Jesus is talking not about small amounts of money, he is talking about excessive money. Money that we might imagine a Wall Street Stock Broker makes. Money being given to the CEO of a major corporation. Money that a Mafia godfather collects.
What is this excessive money in God’s eyes? When God invests in the world, God throws out money in abundance. God flings the money at us. God’s mercy overflows. God’s love is endless.
God wants to invest lavishly, loving without restraint, showing mercy without limit.
The parable invites us to be lavish spenders, unrestrained givers, limitless hosts. God does not hide God’s money under a mattress. God invests it in the world.
You know that today is the day we are going to look at our parish’s money, where it comes from and where it goes. I guess that when I was talking about lavish spenders, unrestrained givers, limitless hosts you might have begun to wonder if that is the way the Vestry spends your money or perhaps worse, how the Vestry expects you to make your financial commitment to the church. If our congregation included Warren Buffit and Bill Gates, I would hope that they would exercise some excess in giving. I don’t know about you but I am no Warren Buffit or Bill Gates. So let’s take a look at this budget and see where the money comes from and where it goes.
Most of the money we receive comes from you. The members of the parish contribute $104,000. Our next biggest source of income comes from donations from the various groups who use our property. You can see that in our budget, on line 24, we are not taking any money out of our endowment. That means that we have a balanced budget.
Let’s now take a look at where our money goes. We give money back. On line 29, you see that we give $7,567 to the Diocese and $630 to Episcopal Relief and Development which supports a variety of charities throughout the world.
We clergy are a large expense: on line 47 you see that we account for 45.6 % of our expenses.
Our buildings make up a good deal of our expenses. Starting at line 62, you will see the cost of our utilities, maintenance and insurance comes to 40,900.
Beginning on line 70, you will see the cost of our office supplies on l77 the total is 17, 300.
Our education costs start on line 78 and with Sunday School, the youth program, and other expenses, we come, on line 87 to $6,500.
Those of you who have been members of the parish for a while know that for many years we have been taking money out of our endowment to balance our budget. When that money was taken out of the endowment, it was called a loan.
On line 96 you can see the repayment of that loan back to the endowment.

I think when it comes to the expenses of the church we are not practicing today’s gospel message of liberality. We really try to keep our expenses in check. In a letter I wrote to you, I invited you to consider your own situations from the perspective of abundance. I invited you to consider that God has provided enough for you to do what you need to do for yourself, your family and your community. I invited you to consider your priorities and work to arrange your priorities so you would be able to support yourself, your family and your community and your church.
I know that we are entering into a difficult economic time. When considering your pledge, I ask you to try to at least sustain the level of giving you presently make.
At this point in the sermon, I think that I am on National Public Radio or Channel 13, doing a fall campaign. So bear with me as I make this pitch. If each of us sustains that level of giving, we could easily make our budgeted amount of $100,000. If you have not pledged before, I invite you to consider making this your first year. If you have pledged before I would ask you to consider moving your pledge to a new amount.
All of us have found a home at St. Peter’s Church. Together, we make this place the inviting community it is. Together, we make possible the ministry by which we serve the broader community.
Remember the God who has so lavished you with love, and be generous in your own giving.
Now I bet you think the sermon ends there.
It only begins. I invite you during coffee hour to talk with someone about your experience of giving.
Not about how much you give. Not about how much you plan to give. But what it means for you to contribute to St. Peter’s Church. Tell someone why you do it. Tell them what you get out of it. Tell them how it changes your relationship with God. So you see, the sermon is not ending, it is only beginning. Amen.

Forming Character

Most of us live with laws. In this area of Clifton, we put the garbage out on Monday and Thursday nights. If you want the garbage collected you have to obey that law. Driving down the street, we come to a traffic light, or a stop sign or a yield sign. For the common good, we obey these laws so that we, or the other driver, does not slam into another car. Every April 15, we have to meet the deadline for filing our taxes. Now while here in New Jersey we always hear of government officials not obeying that law, most of us dutifully file our taxes and most of us comply with the laws that regulate those taxes. If you are a young person living at home, you know full well how your parents regulate your lives with rules to be followed. How many of us have heard or how many of us have said: If you live under my roof you live by my rules.
We all live according to rules, some of those rules are imposed on us by the government, some are accepted as rules for polite society, some regulate our private lives at home. Yet most of these laws do not impact our relationship with God.
It was not so for Jesus and the Jews of his day. Any observant Jew in Jesus’ day would observe 613 laws. The same is true for most observant Jews today: If you want to be a true Jew you must observe the Law, all 613 commandments. Read through the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and you will see laws covering every possible situation in the ancient world. These rules established a system of justice and equality, sometimes to an exacting degree. The law ranked high among the Jews, not only as a way to establish their society, but foremost as the revelation from God and the means of keeping the covenant they made with God.
In today’s gospel, when the lawyer comes to Jesus and asks him what is the greatest law, Jesus knows that the lawyer is setting a trap for Jesus. Everyone knew that the correct answer would have been: all 613 laws are important and all are to be observed.
Now this Lawyer would have known that Jesus failed to observe some of those 613 laws. He broke the law when he worked on the Sabbath by healing the sick. He broke the law when he associated with sinners and those who did not observe the Law. He broke the law when he and his disciples did not follow ritual laws about bathing, hand washing and eating particular foods. If Jesus does not praise all 613 laws, he is breaking down respect for the entire law. If he does endorse all of those 613 laws, he condemns himself and discredits his ministry.
Notice what Jesus does: He turns the question on its head.
He establishes as the highest law the commandment which every Jew would have said every day from Deuteronomy 6: 4-5: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Therefore you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind.” Then he adds to it a small verse from Leviticus, 19; 18: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. He shifts the argument away from the law to the heart. Jesus does not deny the value of the law, for he quotes the law in his answer. But he makes observance of the Law subservient to the movement of the heart.
For all of us here today, if we are the ones who impose the laws or the ones who observe the laws, or if we are both, I would ask you how do the laws you impose foster the development of love? If we think about the purpose of the laws we impose on our children, or the laws our parents imposed on us, those laws are intended to develop good habits, patterns of healthy behavior that become second nature to us. We do not usually hear much talk about character development, but I think that many of us would agree that laws are in place so that we can develop those habits which we believe to be the mark of a responsible and healthy individual and a person who has developed those habits we call a person of character.
Jesus lays out for us two important areas of character development: love of God and love of our neighbor. I would summarize those gifts as worship and service. Notice how Jesus frames our worship and love of God as engaging our not only our hearts and our souls but our minds as well. We Episcopalians do not shy away from engaging the hard questions and we do not give out predetermined answers to the questions. Episcopalians wrestle with the hard questions about the faith and we form our own answers to the questions. It is not always easy living under a big tent where the answers to the questions are all slightly different.
But we agree on the boundaries to the questions. We call those boundaries the Baptismal Covenant. We agree to a minimum of beliefs which are summarized in the Creed. We also agree to a standard of behavior, we commit ourselves to worship and to respect for others.
As we look at the way we carry out our baptismal covenant, today’s Gospel challenges us to look at our motive for doing what we do. Are we engaged with God and with one another because of love? Are we working with each other because of love? When we come together for worship, do we go from this place with our hearts expanded? When we gather during this week to work on the Rummage Sale, when we cook a meal to share with others, when we prepare a lesson for Sunday School, when we bake for coffee hour, when we sing in the choir, are we doing these things to grow in love? For all of us love because we have been loved, loved with a passionate love by this God who has taken on our flesh, lived our life, suffered our death and in the power of his resurrection opens to us possibilities we have not even imagined.

The Spiritual Gift of Water

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Peter De Franco
At St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton NJ

Today we heard in the first lesson the story of the parting of the Reed Sea. That story brings a variety of characters. Whom would you say are some of those characters?
(Moses, Pharaoh, the Chosen People, the Egyptian Army) One character we tend to forget, and it’s the character whose name appears in the title of the story: The Reed Sea.
Bodies of water play major roles in many stories in the Bible. When you open the first pages of Genesis, in the second verse, you cannot move deep into the chapter one before encountering the primeval waters over which hovers God’s Spirit. When you come to chapter 2 and the description of the Garden of Paradise, four great rivers water the garden home of Adam and Eve. Only a few chapters later, Genesis tells you yet another story of water, when God destroys the earth and rescues Noah, his family and the sets of animals.
We hear stories of wells of water. You will recall how Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac and Rebecca is discovered at a well. Moses finds his wife when she and her sisters draw near to a well in an oasis to water their sheep. Jesus also meets a woman at a well in Samaria. wonder if God is telling us that if you want to meet the love of your life you should go to the local watering hole. But let’s get back to Exodus.
Moses and Aaron changed the waters of the River Nile into blood. Moses gives water to the Chosen People out of a rock in the desert. Joshua leads the people through the waters of the Jordan River. That Jordan River witnesses the cleansing of Naaman the leper. Later, John the Baptizer will baptize people in that river Jordan and the disciples of Jesus will continue that water bath as they also baptize.
Not only in today’s story but throughout the bible, water is a significant character in many stories. Water brings life to people, it nourishes crops, it provides for cleansing.
Water also brings death. Its destructive forces overwhelms people. Just recall the fate of the Egyptian army in today’s story about the Reed Sea. All of them are drowned in the waters. Noah’s flood makes us think of the December 26, 2004 Tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean. We have only to consider Hurricane Ike and the water destruction along the Texas coast line.
Water is both beautiful and terrible, a source of life and death.
We all live close to some body of water. What is the body of water closest to your home? What is your relationship to that water? How many of us know what is happening in Weasel Brook? What are the issues around the Passaic River as it moves through Clifton? What do you know about Barber’s Pond in Garrett Mountain, or the New Street Reservoir, or the Great Notch Reservoir? Does anyone know where Highland Lake is? When was the last time you visited the Paterson Falls?
Or the Dundee lake and dam in Garfield?
We are all surrounded by water. Much of that water is in danger. The Passaic River is slowly being restored after once being called the most polluted river in the country.
The water that surrounds us on all sides forms part of the great mystery of water about which we read in the bible.
While we considered it as a character in many stories from the Bible, water is also a character in our lives. I wonder what would happen if we make the water near us a part of our lives?
I wonder what would happen if we began to relate to the water around us in a more conscious way? Would we take time to find a favorite spot on the water and watch the water flow at different times of the day? In the dance of the soft morning sun, in the strength of the afternoon’s light, in the beauty of the sunset, in the gentle moon light? Would we weep when we saw the water polluted? Would we cry when we saw bottles and other debris floating down the water? Would we be concerned when we knew about the chemical pollutants that infect the waterbeds and aquatic life in the water?
Water is not just out there. We are water. Do you realize that we about 50 or 60% water? If you understood that you are about half water how would you relate the rest of the water that surrounds you? Would you begin to see that the water that surrounds you and the water that is you are but one?
Would you begin to see that the water that surrounds you, the water that is you is part of that original sacred water, that original holy water, over which the Holy Spirit hovered and sanctified? Would you begin to see that the sacred water in which you lived in your mother’s uterus is part of the sacred water in which you received the new life of baptism? Would you see that our most important sacramental actions involve water, bread and wine? Would you begin to see that you are part of one sacred pool of water that flows through the earth as its life blood, spreading the holy life of God through the planet, through your body, through your soul?
As we consider the water of the Reed Sea, I invite you to consider the sacredness of water in your life. To open your heart to the mystery of water that surrounds you. To feel the beauty of water that is you. To sense that you are one with the water of the world, one with the sacred flow of water from the heart of our God. When you come into the church, touch the water not only to remind yourself of your baptism but of the mystery of water in God’s creation. Of the mystery of water that is God. Of the mystery of water that is you.

Transitions in Leadership

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, NJ
November 9, 2008

In any society the transition of leaders brings no small amount of worry. In today’s first reading, we heard about the end of the rule of Joshua. This reading follows on what, if it were not for All Saints’ Sunday, we would have heard last week: the transition from Moses to Joshua. When Joshua began to lead the people, Israel entered a significant new era. The generation of slaves who escaped from Egypt under Moses had died. The bible says that because the slave generation rebelled against Moses and God they could not be enter the land of promise. I read biblical commentators who state that a generation of slaves could not inherit freedom. That slave generation needed to die off and a new generation, a generation of free persons, a generation which did not experience slavery in Egypt, would inherit the land of Israel. Joshua brought the free generation across the river Jordan into the land God promised to Abraham. Just as the generation of slaves crossed through the Reed Sea, the freed children of slaves crossed the Jordan River into the land of promise.
When Joshua crossed into Canaan, all hell broke loose.
He unleashed a wave of terror on the inhabitants of Canaan, killing kings, decimating armies, destroying the entire populations of cities. We are spared those chapters of the book of Joshua which detail the war of conquest by which the Jews overtook the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. Today’s reading brings us to the completion of the conquest. Today we hear Joshua speaking to the nation of Israel at another historical crossroad. Joshua is about to die. He is asking Israel not to backslide and betray the God who brought them into the land of promise. The people stand at this historic moment and promise that they would be faithful. They promised fidelity and then the tribes slip into the greatest period of anarchy among the Jews.
For four hundred years, the Jews existed as a loose confederation of tribes and they were constantly attached by one of their enemies or another. That generation did not live up to the challenges of freedom. It would take 400 years until Samuel was called as a prophet in Israel and he would anoint as King first Saul and then David, the greatest of the kings of Israel.
The Sunday readings do not always present a parallel between the situation of the bible story and the times in which we live. The story from Joshua is one of transition. We as a nation are in a similar situation of transition.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, you must admit that we have witnessed a most historical week in our national history. We elected the first African American President in our history. If any of you stayed up on Tuesday night, you saw tears streaming down the faces of so many people as they heard the CNN and NBC declare at 11:01 that Barack Obama was elected president. General Colin Powell, in an interview following the election, said that he was profoundly moved, moved to tears, at the news of the election of President Elect Obama. Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee all cried at the news of the election results.
I was a high school student in Paterson when Dr. Martin Luther King visited the city only a few months before his assassination. Many of us remember Dr. King. We remember the struggle for civil rights which Dr. King lead. Who among us could have imagined we would have lived to see the day an African American would become president. No wonder tears flowed on that night.
I do not want to celebrate the triumph of one candidate over another. I think something profound is happening in our country,
Something profoundly religious is happening. Just think back with me over the past two years since the candidates began the road to the White House. Think back with me, not on the bickering and the political antagonisms. Think back on the language the candidates used. Were you startled, as I was amazed, by the religious language which the candidates used.
Both candidates used the word change in looking at the past few years in our country. We have a religious word for change.
We call it conversion. In religious terms, both candidates were saying that the United States needed a conversion.
Then other words crept into the political discourse. Words like hope and humility and healing and cooperation.
I do not think that any one person can change our country. I doubt if any of us think that we have elected the messiah. But like the Jews of old, we too stand at a crossroads.
Many of you know Maya Angelou. Some would consider her the premier African American writer. When she was interviewed by CNN about Barack Obama’s election as President she remarked: “With this, the country is finally able to see through complexion and see community.”
Together let us pray that God is using the election of Barack Obama to heal our nation of the sin of racism that has divided us for centuries and is uniting us as a community.
Together let us pray that God is healing our nation in the sight of the other nations of the world so that we can assume our place, not as the political or economic or military leader of the world but as the moral leader of the world.
Together let us pray that God is healing our nation of the uncontrollable greed that has undermined our economy and brought our nation to the brink of disaster.
Together let us pray that the Spirit of God will so blow over this country with a purifying fire to cleanse us of all that has defiled us and bring us today, like the people of Israel of old, into that land of promise, rich with promise for all people.
We stand at a crossroads, as did the people did in the days of Joshua. Let us be attentive to the ways God is looking to heal us, bring us together, lead us forward, forward into a land of promise.

The Cross and New Life

A Sermon preached by
the Rev. Peter De Franco
at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
August 31, 2008

Last week, we heard the story of Peter identifying Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus thought that God gave Peter a unique insight into Jesus and his mission. Jesus was so impressed with Peter’s understanding that he called Peter the Rock on which Jesus would build his church. Peter must have thought himself very special.
I have some Spanish friends and they gave me a word to describe Peter: Especial. It means someone who thinks of himself as better than others, as velvet compared to cotton, a Don Perignon champagne to Boon Wine, a Lamborghini rather than a banged up Impala. People who feel themselves to be Especial usually have a bit of an inflated ego. And that was Peter.
After all, Jesus singled him out from all the apostles and let him know that he saw things that they did not understand. Since Peter recognized that Jesus was unique, Peter must have felt that he needed to protect Jesus. He must have felt, as any friend would feel, that he had to protect Jesus from harm, shelter him from danger, shield him from disaster. We all would feel the same. None of us would want any disaster to fall on our best friend. If Peter was anything to Jesus, Peter was his dear friend.
Just after Jesus called Peter the rock on which Jesus would build the church, Jesus then goes on to tell the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Peter hears those words and goes into protective mode. Just imagine Peter as a huge Israeli shepherd; Peter would not allow anyone to touch his Jesus. Suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests, being killed, and that nonsense about rising on the third day – Peter would have none of that for his Jesus. We all would have felt the same. We all would have tried to protect Jesus. All of us except for Jesus.
Just as quickly as Jesus inflated Peter’s balloon, so Jesus did not fail to pop that balloon. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Satan – that is what Jesus called Peter. The Rock becomes the demon. The most important becomes the least important. Apostle Especial becomes first class devil.
If the rest of the disciples do not understand what Jesus is saying, Jesus spells it out for them in no uncertain terms: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Those are very hard words. But let’s just look at the week that has passed. I am sure you read the newspaper articles about two young boys, athletes both, who died tragically while preparing for the football season. On Thursday, we received the tragic news that Fred Richter, a beloved parishioner of many years, died suddenly and his funeral was on Friday. Another member of the parish buried her aunt. Another member of the church underwent major surgery. We could go through a litany of woes that we are all carrying, problems with children, spouses, finances, work and health. Just because it is summer does not mean that problems take a vacation.
As we gather on this the last Sunday of the summer, we find that Jesus is talking to us about a cross. Perhaps this is God’s offer at making sense of the crosses that come our way. To be a follower of Jesus involves us in a process of death and resurrection.
Now I don’t want you to imagine that I am endorsing a Christianity that is all about suffering. Let’s thanks God that Jesus suffered once for us all and we do not have to repeat that cycle of suffering. I think its bad theology to imagine that we have a God who delights in disrupting our lives with anguish, pain and suffering. God does not send pain into our lives to crush us, to punish us, to get back for those offenses we committed at one time or another.
But Jesus knows that suffering is part of all our lives. When Jesus invites us to take up our crosses, Jesus is asking us to enter into the life process where we let go and surrender the old patterns of life that new forms of life might begin.
There is a tendency in all of us, when we listen to these passages about death and resurrection, that we stop at the death part and don’t move on to the life part. We get stuck. Jesus is addressing that pattern of getting stuck.
In today’s Gospel, Peter got stuck. When Jesus told the disciples about the process of death leading to life, Peter could only hear the death part and not engage the life part. For that reason, Jesus calls Peter Satan since the Rock was caught and could not imagine how life could come from death. But God could imagine that process. God could think of a way to get beyond death and make the way of the cross a way of life and peace.
I invite you this day to find those places in your heart where you are suffering, where you feel the pain of the cross, and ask yourself what you need to surrender of your old life to allow space for new life. I invite you to look into your soul, to find those places where you feel the weight of the cross, and ask yourself what you need to surrender in order for resurrection to happen. For in this holy process of life and death, we are not in it alone. God is the one who is drawing new life out of the old. God is inviting you to leave behind the old patterns and enter into the new life God is preparing for you. God is the one who is inviting us to leave behind the womb of our old lives to enter into the new birth of a life we cannot imagine.

Let us pray.
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

Hunger for Heaven

A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on August 3, 2008

Nothing about the history of Sara Miles would have brought her to the place where she is today. An avowed atheist who was raised by atheist parents, A radical reporter on the staff of the left wing publication, Mother Jones. A journalist who covered the 1980’s war in Nicaragua. A sometimes cook in New York restaurants. A Mother of one. A wife of another woman. She is the last person you would have expected to walk into a church. But stranger things have happened.
When Sara Miles walked in St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, little did she anticipate it would be the day of her conversion? Why did she do it? This is what she said: “I was curious. You know, I'm a reporter, and it's a big, beautiful, wooden-shingled building. And it has this gorgeous mosaic icon outside and a sign that says, "All That Is Prays to You." You walk inside and you are struck by this huge mural of dancing saints, only the saints are people like Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez. It's very surprising.”
Sara Miles walked into St. Gregory of Nyssa Church and heard the invitation to receive communion: “Jesus welcomes everyone to his table and so we offer everyone, without exception, the bread and wine, which are Christ’s body and blood.” Deacons and priests came into a congregation standing around a circular altar giving to all a piece of bread broken from a loaf. They passed around chalices with wine. Sara describes her experience in these words: “A woman put a piece of fresh bread in my hand and gave me a goblet of some rather nasty, sweet wine. And I ate the bread and was completely thunderstruck by what I felt happening to me. So I stood there crying, completely unsure of what was happening to me. I thought I’ve got to get out of the church as quickly as I could before some strange, creepy Christian would try to chat with me. And I came back the next week because I was hungry, and kept coming back and kept coming back to take that bread.’
Completely Thunderstruck by what was happening. Now how many of us are thunderstruck when we receive communion?
Here is another way she describes communion: "It was pretty good bread, a nice whole-wheat bread. The other was that God was alive and in my mouth. It was bread, and it was God."
But that was only the beginning. She came back, week after week, drawn to satisfy a hunger that she had long known but could never find the food to fill her. Sara knew that the invitation to receive the body and blood of Christ echoed the radical welcome Jesus gave to all whom he invited to share his table.
We heard that invitation which Jesus extended to 5,000 men. I wonder why Matthew did not include the women and children. To all of them, to girls and boys, women and men, anyone who could eat food, Jesus and the apostles spread out, like those priests and deacons spreading out through the church, giving to one and all a lunch of bread and fish. It was a bountiful meal. There was so much food that they put together doggie bags, twelve baskets of leftover food.
Let’s recall that the gospels speak in symbolic language and when they talk about 12 baskets of extra food, they mean food to feed the 12 tribes of Israel, all of God’s people have enough to bring home. Sara knew something of that generosity of Jesus. She knew that hunger not only touches the heart, as it touched her. Hunger cripples the body.
San Francisco is close to the bountiful fields of northern California. People in the city began to organize food pantries where the bounty of the fields would be sold to food pantries. Sara had the bright idea of starting up a pantry.
St. Gregory’s church does not have a parish hall. The church is a double room. One room has chairs that are set up to face one another. The other room has only one piece of furniture in it: an altar. Sara asked to set up the food pantry in the church, with tables surrounding the altar. Food would be brought in every Friday morning. Volunteers would set out the food on tables surrounding the altar. Melons, fruit, tomatoes, lettuce, rice, beans, boxes of cereal, pasta. People would come with their bags and slowly enter into the church. Candles would be burning in front of icons. Flowers decorate the church. Five tons of food would be handed out to 450 people. They do that every Friday.
The Food Pantry at St. Gregory’s Church was only the start. When you do God’s work, God sees that the work will spread. Money started to come into her pantry and she gave the money to other places to start pantries. Only one church joined her effort. But parents in schools, people in the projects, volunteers started to come from all different places to find food. It all sounds a lot like us.
I invite you this day to come to this table that Jesus sets for us, come with your hunger, come with your heart desiring to be filled. Perhaps this day you too can say with Sara: God was alive and in my mouth. It was bread, and it was God."

Cultivating A Garden of Weeds

A Sermon Preached by the
Rev’d Peter De Franco at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church,
July 27, 2008

Just think about what will happen today at St. Peter’s Church. We celebrate the baptism of our youngest member and the birthday of one of our oldest members.
So you would imagine that with the parable of the mustard seed, I would preach a sermon where I would compare Ava to the mustard seed and Rosemary to the mustard tree. We would all think that the sermon would encourage Ava’s parents and family to help her grow into the tree, that they would water her soul with love and instruction and discipline and all the things that good parents do for their children. Sort of like the thinks that Rosemary’s parents did for her so that one day Ava will sit in this church and celebrate her 90th birthday and someone will read this same gospel and compare her to the mustard seed that has grown into the mustard tree. Wouldn’t that be a perfect sermon? No, not by a long shot. That sermon would be too predictable.
Whenever we hear Jesus speaking in a parable, we should train our ears to discover the unpredictable. So let me tell you a story.
Someone, way back went in the history of St. Peter’s church, thought that it would be nice to plant morning glories around the church. They thought that morning glories would look really nice where they could do what they did best: climb. So they found the things on which the morning glories could climb: the railings up the steps of the parish hall and the pole in the front of the church. I am sure that the first year the morning glories were planted they were beautiful. Lovely blue flowers opening up to the sun, and every week more and more flowers began to grow on the vine. Every week, the vine must have taken over the railings so that it became impossible to use the railings going up to the Parish Hall.
Every week the vine must have grown up the sign at the front of the church till it covered the sign with a waterfall of blue morning glories cascading down the sign. Were the morning glories a thing of beauty or a weed?
When I first came to St. Peter’s Church, three years ago, there were huge bushes that flanked the entrance to the parish hall. Growing on the crooked branches of those overgrown bushes were morning glories. As they grew closer to the railings, people would pull out the morning glories. I cannot remember a single morning glory flower. No flowers mean no seeds. But, even this year, you can see morning glories sprouting on either side of the parish hall and Fr. Ed pulls them out so they don’t take over the new gardens. And next year, I am sure that we shall continue to find those morning glories continuing to sprout in places where they have not been seen in years.
Morning Glories are invasive. Once you plant them you will have them forever. For those of us who are gardeners, morning glories are like bamboo, or mint, or dandelions, they have a habit of taking over the garden.
In Jesus’ world, mustard was like dandelions, morning glories, bamboo or mint. You would have to be out of your mind to plant it in your garden. Unless you wanted your entire garden to be taken over by the weed. Does that make any sense?
Now every parable of Jesus has something in it that does not make any sense. There is always something in a parable that baffles the one who hears it. A smart shepherd would not risk the lives of 99 sheep for the sake of one lamb. A thrifty housewife would not spend a hundred dollars on a party when she found her silver dollar. A smart gardener would not plant a weed that would take over the garden. Who would plant dandelions? Who would plant morning glories?
Perhaps a God who knows about dandelion wine. Perhaps a God who loves the blue of morning glories. Perhaps a God who knows that mustard can heal and season and prevent disease. Perhaps a God who invites us to look into those places in our lives where we do not expect or even want God, in the dark crevices, in the ordinariness of our days, in the disorders of our minds and hearts, all the places we neglect.
Perhaps, if we anticipate God coming to us in those places we neglect, as we would neglect a weed, we will find God lightening the darkness, cheering our ordinariness, restoring us to peace. It is the crazy seed of God. It is God’s unconditional love. Available to us this day in the sign of water poured, bread broken and a shared cup.
It is the crazy seed of God’s love, that spreads through the world as much as dandelions, when, on a windy spring day the breeze lifts the seeds and spreads them through all the gardens. Not many of us deal with mustard seeds, but many of us know about dandelions, and morning glories, and mint and bamboo.
Today God plants a seed in the soul of Ava. It’s the seed that God plants in each of our hearts when we are baptized – that wild and crazy seed that God plants in mustard plants, dandelions and morning glories. It is God’s unconditional love. That we are loved by God, no matter what we do or say or become.
If you ever watch very young children, and those of us who are parents might remember this happening to us, young children do not seen dandelions as weeds. Children love to go to the lawn and pick a bouquet of dandelions because of their ready made beauty. They see them as a heaven sent gift of God planted in the lawn as a ready gift to pick and bring to mom or dad. Children have that eye to see the beauty of ordinary things. I think they have that eye because they see like the God from whom they have come.
Let us pray this day that we might be overrun with weeds, with dandelions and mustard and mint and bamboo. Let us pray that Ava’s soul will be overgrown with that weed of God’s Love. Let us pray that Rosemary’s heart will continue to be overrun with that same pesty weed. And let us all go out and gather the dandelions and give and receive bouquets of God’s love.

No Condemnation

A Sermon Preached by the the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church,
Clifton, New Jersey
July 13, 2008

Over the last six weeks, we have been reading sections from the letter to the Romans. The first week came as the most positive of all those readings and it has been a steady downward spin as we listened to Paul describe the increasingly dire situation in the world. Last week we heard one of the most difficult passages in Paul, not because we cannot understand what Paul says but because his words are as a mirror to our souls caught in the dilemma of wanted to do God’s good works but also drawn away from God’s good works. Each of us is painfully aware of that tension between what we would want to do that is good, holy and blessed and what we actually find ourselves doing which is less than our idealized plans. Paul speaks of an energy in us that spirals downward, not unlike the flush of the toilet that spins the water and the refuse in a circle and down the pipes and into the sewer. Last week, we ended the reading on a terribly depressing note with the question: What A wretch I am. Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? Not the best news in the world.
But today, we come to a turning point in the letter to the Romans. Today the water is not being flushed down the toilet. Today the water is dancing like a fountain, spraying upward in joy and delight, as we hear described for us the effect of living in the Spirit. Today’s reading begins with those phenomenal ords: “There is no condemnation for you.” Just imagine that: No Condemnation for you!
I shall speak for myself, but I am not a sterling saint. There are some of us here who have been living the Christian life with devoted energy for a long time and they approach that sterling shine, but for the rest of us sinners, I cannot imagine greater words of joy: There is no condemnation for you.”
Just imagine the person who for their entire lives was told that they could not meet the standards that their parents set for them as children, who for their entire lives lived as underachievers since they could never hope to reach that impossible standard: There is no condemnation for you.
Just imagine that person living with family members who constantly live on a downward spiral so no matter what they do, they cannot reverse that negative energy: There is no condemnation for you.
Just imagine that person who knew that they were lesbian, gay, or bisexual and were told that they would be condemned to hell realizing that God does not create to condemn, that there is no condemnation for you.
Just imagine whatever your circumstance in life, whatever situation drains you of energy, whatever circumstance hampers you from feeling the fullness of life and joy, there is no condemnation for you.
In Christ Jesus. That is the hitch. Condemnation has been lifted because of a relationship. A relationship with Christ Jesus. That relationship begins with our Baptism. Something mystical happens to each of us at Baptism. Something of a miracle. We become part of Jesus. That dipping in water, those words spoken over us, effect a miracle in our souls. We become one with Christ. So when God looks at us, God sees us as part of God’s own Child, Jesus.
If we search deep in our hearts, not just on the surface, but in the very depths of our souls, we will discover an energy deeper than our own spirit, in the depths of our hearts, God’s Spirit is welling up, like a fountain of water, springing up to water our souls and lead them to discover new ways of acting, new ways of seeing, new ways of relating.
I would like to tell you a story about a couple of girls who experienced this strength to follow Christ. The story is told by a woman, a shy woman, who stepped out in the public to become a community organizer. When she was asked why she took this step she told this story: “When I was a young girl in North Caroline, my sister and I began to attend the local Roman Catholic Church. In those days, blacks sat in the back pews. Now I was a very large young girl, rather heavy, and so was my sister. When we went to that church, I saw no reason why my sister and I should sit in the back. So one Sunday we went right up and sat in the first pew. The pastors and ushers were upset. The pastor came over before Mass and asked me if we would please sit in the back, like all the other blacks. I was scared as I could be, but I just couldn’t see where God would care where we sat, so I said no. Finally, the ushers came and carried me and my sister to the back. Carried us right down the aisle of the church. On the next Sunday, my sister and I sat in the front pew again, and the priest came and the ushers came and they hauled us off again, huffing and puffing. On the third Sunday, the same thing happened.
By this time, we were pretty well known. The black girls who got carried away to the back of the church every Sunday.
“My family, my mother particularly, was frightened at what we were doing, but she said we were doing the right thing. On the fourth Sunday, the priests and ushers didn’t do a thin. The Mass started, the choir sang, we took our seats, and from then on we sat where we wanted in that church and in any Roman Catholic church we ever attended.” (Roots for Radicals by Edward Chambers)
God’s Spirit lived in those two girls. God’s Spirit gave them the courage to do the right thing.
Each of us also faces unique challenges, those places where we need to find the grace to move into greater freedom. If you wonder how to find such freedom, just listen to what Paul says: Set your mind on the things of the spirit and you will find life and peace.(See Romans 8: 6)
Those two girls found that peace. They experience that life. You too can move into that life and peace. You too can experience that freedom.

Peter & Paul, A study in Contrasts

A sermon preached by
the Rev’d Peter De Franco at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, NJ
on June 29, 2008,
Feast of Saints Peter & Paul.

Famous pairs find their way into every area of human life.
Just think of a few you might know: George and Martha Washington, Abbot and Costello, Venus and Serena Williams, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, Sonny and Cher, Chip and Dale. In Christian tradition, Peter and Paul endure as a matched pair of saints, as two sides of a coin, as matching book ends in your library. Peter and Paul are as different as salt and pepper yet closely linked as those two spices are bound together on every table at which you sit. Let’s think of the two for a minute and let’s start with Peter.
Of the two of them, only Peter saw the Lord Jesus in his fleshly existence. From the Gospels, we know Peter as an impetuous, hot headed, loud mouthed leader of the apostles. He is hardly the person whom I think would qualify as the CEO of a major company. Don’t you wonder what Jesus saw in Peter?
Jesus saw in Peter a strong leader. Jesus changed his name from Cephas to Peter, the Rock. Jesus wanted Peter to serve as a stone in the temple Jesus was building, the temple of which we are all a part. Perhaps it was Peter’s big heart that so loved Jesus that Peter left behind his family, his expensive fishing enterprise, his prominent place in his society to follow Jesus for that year of intense preaching, healing and even confrontations that lead Peter with Jesus through the backwoods of Galilee to that fateful week in Jerusalem when Peter would deny the Lord he loved and then see that Jesus transformed from the crucified one to the Risen Lord. After the Spirit descends on Peter and the other disciples on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit transforms those fearful men into bold evangelists, proclaiming the word of Jesus’ Resurrection to their fellow Jews and at the Spirit’s urging to include the Gentiles among the people of God. I cannot imagine Peter, a devout Jew from Galilee, ever thinking that he would be the one who would ever eat with Gentiles. Just imagine whomever it was that your parents told you not to associate with, the kids who always got in trouble, the girl who was a little loose with herself, the boy who would find himself on the other side of the fence, just imagine finding out that those very people were devout believers and that you would join them in a supper at church. Strange things that God has in store for us.
Then there is Paul. The Acts of the Apostles first calls him Saul, a Pharisee, a ancient version of the Congregational style of Christians whom some of you know as going to church at least twice on Sundays and rigidly observing the Sabbath.
They are the Christians of the no: No cards, no dancing, no alcohol, no work on the Sabbath, perhaps even no fun. Hardly Episcopalians! Saul was like them. The No Saul had in his head was No Christians and he started by helping to stone Stephen to death and then leading a band of self appointed self righteous bounty hunters to search out, jail and execute those Christians.
Such would have been his lot in life, and a life which later generations would have forgotten, except for that voice from the heavens and that blinding vision that called out to him: Saul, Saul why do you persecute me? Strange words when you think about it. Saul was not persecuting Jesus, he was persecuting the Christians.
Yet from those words, Paul would understand that all Christians are linked together with Jesus in a mystical bond that makes us but one body with Christ.
Saul would become Paul, the one who persecuted the Church changed into its premier apostle, going through the what is now Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and ending up in Rome where his preaching of the Gospel lead to his death. Those words from Second Timothy reflect what must have been Paul’s sentiments in the Roman jail when he knew that his execution would be immanent: I am already being poured out like a libation and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Saul, turned into Paul, another hot head, another zealot, another one who, like Peter, Jesus turned around and made into a herald of the Gospel. Strange things that God has in store for us.
What does it all mean for us? Are Peter and Paul only a quaint pair of saints we polish off once a year and use their day to do what we do best: have a party? I would suggest that Peter and Paul come to us as a pair to remind us of what is remarkably similar in the lives of these very dissimilar saints: that God has strange, unexpected tasks in store for us. Strange and unexpected tasks – for those of you who love adventure, you are thrilling at such possibilities. Strange and unexpected tasks – for those of you who hate change, you are appalled that God would so upset your apple cart with such a world shattering proposal. Perhaps you would prefer the words of today’s collect, you know standing firm on the one foundation of Jesus Christ and not venturing into the unknown fields where the lost sheep are scattered.
Peter and Paul fulfilled those words of the prophet Ezekiel; they were shepherds who sought the lost, brought back the strayed, bound up the injured and strengthened the weak. They did it all because of love, love for Jesus who called them, love for Jesus who loved them.
As you share in the same Eucharistic feast that fed Peter and Paul, I invite you to draw strength from this table not to stand on the one foundation, but to go into the world. Find those who are on the edge and invite them to the table that nourishes you. Find those who are wounded and invite them to share in the cup that heals you. Find those who are lost and lead them to the home you have found.
For then Peter and Paul are not two dusty saints from the past. They are living models for you and I to imitate. For we, like Peter and Paul, hear those last words from today’s Gospel, words beckoning, not Peter and Paul but you and me, those two words leaping off the page into your ear, into your heart, those two inviting words of Jesus: Follow Me!

Finding our Home in God

A Sermon preached
on April 13, 2008 by the Reverend Peter De Franco,
Interim Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey

My mother attended school in the days when class would begin with a reading from the Bible. That bible was always the King James Version. Even though she was a Roman Catholic, she would occasionally go with her girlfriends to attend their church services. I don’t think that her priests would approve stepping into the pasture of another church, but with that wisdom that believers have she knew that God is one and we all worship that one God.
Through the bible readings and her Sunday afternoon trips to the protestant church, she learned the 23rd Psalm. I think it is her favorite prayer. I think of her whenever we come to this fourth Sunday of Easter which is called Good Shepherd Sunday and we usually pray Psalm 23.

I am sure that while many of you read the words of that psalm from our Book of Common Prayer in your head and perhaps even on your lips formed the words of the King James Version.
The Lord is my shepherd; *
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; *
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul; *
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his
Name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; *
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of
mine enemies; *
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

We all love this psalm. I think one of the reasons we love this psalm so much is the accumulation of images from this psalm brings our hearts great comfort.

Many of the psalms present God as a Warrior who battles for the people, as a King who rules over them with Justice, as a Judge who brings a fair ruling to the people. A recent commentator on the bible called these the psalms of Homeland Security. Secure the borders, summon the army, bring the villians to court.

Psalm 23 takes an alternate approach. In this Psalm, God comes as a shepherd. If you hear this psalm with the ear of your heart, you will find yourself surrounded by feelings of great comfort: Not being in want, finding sufficient food and drink, protected against enemies, enjoying a rich banquet where perfumed oils scent the hall, and your cup is never empty. Those feelings of security come together in the final sentence: And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

If you had to find a word of comfort to summarize all those feelings, I think that word would be home. Even if our childhood memories of home left something to be desired, there is a longing in our hearts to find and to build a perfect home. There is something deep inside us that yearns for that place of abundance, of warmth, of protection, of assurance. If we were to put a name on that home of our heart’s longing, we would call that home God.
In God’s home we are free of want. Let’s remember that this psalm was written by a person who lived in ancient Israel. In a country where the pastures were green only two months of the year, God leads us to perpetually green pastures. In a land where flowing waters could sweep away the sheep, our shepherd brings us to still waters so we can both drink from the waters and even cross them in safety.

Like every good prayer, this psalm enlists not only our trust in God, we are invited to place our trust in God especially in the midst of the most difficult crises of our lives. No crisis can be more difficult for us than death. The thought of our own death or the death of those near and dear to us strikes terror into our hearts. Our souls are crushed whenever we have to endure the death of a member of our family, our parish, our neighborhood or our city. Yet whenever I walk with someone through that valley of the shadow of death, I always say Psalm 23.

I think of my mother who spent the night alone on the day my father died. I wonder what comfort my mother drew from psalm 23 in the night she first heard of my father’s death and mourned the loss of her husband. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
I fear no evil, even in the face of the greatest evil. For the rod which Jesus, our good shepherd carries, is none other than his cross. The cross on which he walked through the valley of the shadow of death. That cross gives us comfort for on that cross Jesus has destroyed both death and fear. He has first gone into that dark and deadly valley and come through with the light of resurrection, of new life, of life in that place where the pastures are always green, where the waters are still, where food is abundant, where faith displaces fear, where want is replaced by plenty.

God creates for us a new home. That home is God. A home where we know that the final victory is on the side of life, even if we walk in the valley of the shadow of death. A home where we can be assured of a meal, a banquet in the sight of those whom we fear. A home we enter through the door who is Jesus. Through that door, all can enter. Through that door, all can find a safe haven. Through that door, all can experience the home their hearts desire.

So listen this day, listen carefully to your heart, and in the depths of your heart, if you listen carefully enough, you will hear the voice of our good shepherd calling us into the sheepfold, calling us home.

Moko and the Whales

An Easter Sermon for Children
Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey
Easter 2008

On the other side of the world on an island country named New Zealand, a park ranger was patrolling the beach. He would check this beach every day since it was the time of year when whales would sometimes get confused and beach themselves on the sand. The whales would just swim into the shallow water until they swam out of the water and were laying on the sand. This bright sunny morning, the park ranger turned on the beach and he saw the sight he was terrified of seeing: A mother pygmy sperm whale and her baby were stranded on the beach. It was an emergency.

Pygmy sperm whale are not the largest whales. The mother was about 10 feet and the baby was 7 feet. But they were in serious danger. The people had to get the whales back into the water. There was no time to lose. The park ranger called for help and other park rangers and other people came to the beach. They all worked very hard to move the whales. After an hour and a half, both the people and the whales were totally exhausted. Four times they got the whales back into the water. But the whales stranded themselves on a sand bar off the beach. Unless the ranger could get the whales back into the deep water, he would have to kill the whales to spare them from a slow and agonizing death.

Then suddenly, Moko appeared. Moko is a bottlenosed dolphin who would swim along that part of the beach. Many people knew Moko since Moko likes to play with people in the water. Mako is a dolphin most of us would love to meet. When Moko saw the stranded whales, Moko knew that the whales were in trouble. Moko started to talk to them. Dolphins have their own language and Moko was speaking it to the pygmy sperm whales. Strangely, the two whales started to talk to Moko.
Moko swam up the whales and when the human pushed the whales out into the sea, Moko directed them to swim past the sand bar and into the deep water. The park ranger and the other people saw Moko direct the mother whale and her child into the safety in the deep ocean waters.

Today we saw another story about someone calling out someone’s name. Mary was in the garden and she was totally sad. I wonder why she was sad? (Children: She was sad because Jesus had died.) Suddenly Jesus came to her. But she did not recognize. That is something that we can learn about Jesus after he was raised from the dead. You just don’t know when he will appear to you. She thought that Jesus was the gardener. But then he called out her name: Mary. And something in her heart stirred. She knew the voice of her Jesus.
Jesus calls us too. Not in a voice that we can hear with our ears. But in a still silent voice in our hearts. Jesus lets you know that he loves you. No matter what happens to us, no matter the things that we do, or the things that we see, we can know one thing for sure: Jesus loves me. Jesus ALWAYS loves us. Can you say that with me: Jesus Loves Me. I cannot hear you. Jesus Loves Me. One more time. Jesus Loves Me.

Today, you will renew the promises you made when you were baptized. You will tell Jesus that you will be his hands, his feet and his heart in the world. You will promise that you will pray, that you will help other people, that you will treat everyone fairly and with love. We will then sprinkle you with water to remind you of the water that we poured on you when you were baptized. When you feel that water, know that it is a sign that Jesus loves you. When you taste the host and drink from the chalice, know that it is a sign of what? Jesus loves me.
God bless you with a blessed Easter!

Three Ways to Meet the Risen Christ

The Three Ways to Meet The Risen Christ
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey
Easter Sunday, 2008

Dark was that Easter morning when Mary Magdalene woke from sleep to hasten to the tomb of Jesus. Any of us who have lost a loved one know that feeling. After the funeral and burial, the grave becomes the new kitchen table where we sit with him and share morning coffee, the tombstone become the couch we sit on and talk about the problem child who just cannot adjust, the lawn of the cemetery the garden we share in the evening twilight and just know again each other’s love. Mary went to the tomb to find such comfort in being close to the body of Jesus. She dare not imagine the possibility of Resurrection. Hers was the simple hope of sitting on the other side of the stone that she might be close to the body of her beloved Jesus. On that dark morning, her heart lead her to the one she loved.

As she drew near to the tomb to pour out her grief at Jesus’ grave, did her eyes believe what they saw? Imagine her horror as she makes her way to the entrance of the tomb to find that the stone had been removed. She runs, says the Gospel, not walks, she runs to find Peter and the disciple Jesus loved. She runs to report that “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have laid him.” The three of them then race back, Mary, Peter and the Beloved Disciple and each has a different experience at the grave. Each of them represents three types of faith when confronted with the empty tomb. Mary is the disciple of Love. The Beloved Disciple is the follower in Faith. Peter is the Disciple of hope.

When the Beloved Disciple gets to the tomb, he does not enter. He waits for Peter to arrive. Then the two of them enter the tomb. The place is a shambles, much like their confused souls. The linen wrappings were lying there and the cloth that wrapped Jesus face is rolled up in a place apart. The forsaken burial cloths might remind you of the abandoned cocoon from which Jesus, the butterfly, has emerged from this life to the new transformed life of the resurrection. The Beloved Disciple sees and believes. He sees the empty tomb and believes. He needs no further evidence, no appearance, no lunch with the risen Christ on the beach. The empty tomb is enough.

There are some of you like that first disciple. You are the ones who live your life by faith and not by sight. You have given your hearts to God and experience that God coming to you, walking with you. You might not always feel that presence but you know that presence as sure as you know your very selves. You are the disciples of faith.

Mary is the second disciple. The disciple of love. While the male disciples cowered in fear, terrified that the authorities will give them the same treatment they gave to Jesus, Mary shows the love that casts out fear. She stayed with Jesus when he died on the cross. She hastens to the tomb in the dark of that Easter morning. She is the one to whom the Lord appears on that first Easter day. Jesus comes to her for Christ knows that the heart who loves him will be the heart that sees him.

Many of you here are like Mary. Many of you approach Jesus by the way of love. Perhaps some of you are like Mary. Your lives might be a bundle of trouble and grief. You bring your burden to Jesus. You approach with love for you know that Jesus will heal them with love. You know that Jesus will come to you, will dawn in your hearts. You know that love brings your heart to God and opens the eyes of your soul to the vision of God. You are like Mary, the disciple of love.

Finally there is Peter, the disciple of hope. Peter comes from Missouri. He sees the empty tomb, he beholds the shroud that covered the body of Jesus, and he lays eyes on the linen cloth that covered the face of Jesus. These are all meaningless pieces of a puzzle that just do not fit together. Peter goes from the tomb as confused as when he came to it. At the greatest moment in Christian history, on the morning of the resurrection, he does not understand. The Gospel says that “He returns to his home.” He does not yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.

Peter is like many of you. A disciple of hope. Like Peter, you do not yet fully understand. But you trust that Jesus will come through for you. It is just not now. Yet you will receive just as Peter received. For Peter will see Jesus. Jesus will come to Peter with the promise of forgiveness for his denials and with the commission to go and care for the flock of Jesus. Many of you are like Peter, a disciple of hope. You wait in expectation for the promise of Jesus to be fulfilled.

Some of you may find yourself as disciples of faith or of love or of hope. I somehow think that there is a part of Peter, a part of Mary and a part of the beloved disciple in each of us. Each of us comes this day to this great Easter mystery with something in our hearts of faith and love and hope. Each of us returns from this mystery with a deeper experience of the Risen Christ.
As we move ahead with the renewal of our Baptismal Covenant and the Eucharist of Easter Morning, may your hearts be expanded to know Christ’s presence in your souls and your lives reflect that love toward all whom you meet. May you know Easter Peace!

The Doubting Thomas in Each of Us

A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco
At St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey
March 30, 2008

Every year, after all the hoopla of Easter, every year we gather again on this day called Low Sunday to contrast it to the High Celebrations on Easter Day. We hear on this Sunday after Easter the most comforting Gospel for many of us – the story of Doubting Thomas. This morning I would like to share with you some stories about doubters.

The first story comes from my best friend in grammer school. I will call him Tony. Tony had a terribly scared face. Some childhood circulatory disease of childhood cut off blood to his extremities and left his face horribly scared. You would have thought that he was terribly burned the scars so disfigured him. But somehow, in the way that children understand reality, I did not compare him with the rest of my friends but only thought that this was the way Tony would look. He was my friend so it was all fine.

His mother marveled that his friends only saw the person and not the scars. For her, Tony was terribly disfigured and she was terribly angry. Angry with those countless trips to the hospital for plastic surgeries. Angry that her hope of a normal life was upset by this child. But mostly angry with God that God would allow such a terrible thing to distort her life and make of her beloved baby a disfigured angel. That anger with God led her to lose her faith.
She could not imagine a God who would allow such a disaster to befall her baby.
She is the first type of Thomas. She is the Thomas whose faith is lost when they experience some life changing tragedy and assume that the only God who exists is one who creates a perfect world, not the real world where health is not guaranteed, where fortune is not assured, where stability cannot always endure.

When I was going to seminary, one weekend we visited a couple whom we had known for a long time. One of the women grew up in a neighborhood not unlike my own, with a devout Italian mother who insisted that she go to Roman Catholic School and made her First Communion and Confirmation. As an adult she created a phenomenal career for herself climbing up the ladder in a large and prestigious corporation until she reached the summit of her department. We all praised her intelligence and political savy in negotiating the corporate structures.
That night at dinner, she said that she was an atheist. I congradulated her on taking a positive step in her religious development. For as we were talking about her understanding of God, I realized that, for all her adult understanding of the business world, she still clung to a child’s understanding of the divine world. God for her was the old man in the sky, a distant father figure with whom she could not longer relate. She too lost her faith. But this faith was best left behind. She outgrew the faith that sustained her as a child but did not discover the faith that would sustain her as an adult. She too was a doubting Thomas. The Thomas who doubts because faith has seen a better day.

Doubt is as vital a part of your spiritual journey as is faith. Many of us think that something is wrong with us when we experience doubts in our spiritual path. Doubts arise in our hearts for a variety of reasons. Doubts come when we are faced with a tragedy that overwhealms us. It could be the loss of health, someone we love dies, a financial crisis takes away our security, the evil that exists in the world touches us and we cannot bear its presence. Doubts arise in our mind when the ideas we have about God no longer work for us. When we are moving from our childhood idea of God to an adult idea, we are caught in the middle when we have no viable idea of God. Doubts arise in our minds when any idea of God does not satisfy our mind. When the encounter with the living God robs us of any adequate image that would embrace the living God.

When doubts arise in our hearts, the first impulse is to leave. We sense that the church is the place where believers gather and we find ourselves in a place in which we do not fit. If only we could understand that we are moving from faith to faith, that our minds and hearts are on an interior journey to deeper faith and sometimes we are caught in the middle. When we are in the middle, we can rely on the community to support us in the transition.
When we collectively profession our faith week by week, we affirm that faith as a community so that if we feel that we cannot make that profession with a full heart, we can rely on the others in the community to make that profession with us and for us. The journey of faith is a lifelong journey. I think that Jesus invites Thomas to put his finger into the nail mark in his hand and into the spear slash of his side as in invitation to join in the pain of transformation into new life.

Jesus invites you into that transformation of faith. Put your finger this day into his hand and know that presence in your heart of the one who never abandons faith in you.

The Man Born Blind and Our Journey of Faith

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Peter De Franco at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, NJ
March 2, 2008

How many of you are believers? Raise your hand if you believe. Faith is a hard thing to have in today’s world. We live in a world that places a value on what you can see, what you can measure, what you can touch and feel and hear and smell. So when you tell people that you believe, you place yourself in conflict with many people in our society.
Today’s story of the man born blind can help us all to understand our faith and our journey from faith to deeper faith. The story comes from John’s gospel. John writes with rich symbols and in the story of the man born blind we can see a person growing in faith. The Blind man’s growth in faith is a mirror in which we can see the pattern of our own journeys of faith.
We might think that we begin our journey of faith but it does not start with us. Listen to what the gospel says: “As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.”
Just as Jesus came to the blind man so too Jesus discovers us. Jesus brings us what will really help us. Jesus is bringing the man a gift which begins with his sight.
Jesus puts mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to go and wash. The man does what Jesus tells him. So too with us. For our part, the journey in faith starts when we do what Jesus asks us to do. You know what Jesus wants you to do: Go to your room and pray to your Father. Love your enemies. Forgive those who sin against you. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless.
Once we do what Jesus tells us to do, we will find ourselves in conflict with those who oppose Jesus. With our culture that invites us to pamper ourselves rather than care for others. With our society that values conflict rather than peace. With our neighbors who fear the strangers and sinners whom we welcome into our midst. With our very selves that run from the daily commitment to pray and talk with God.
When others challenge us, when they ask why we do what we do, we might respond like the blind man: “The man called Jesus told me.” The man called Jesus. For some of us that is where we are in our journey of faith. We look to the man called Jesus.
The man who is the best person who ever lived. The man who is the model of our human lives. The man who lays down the path we walk in.
But let’s go back to the story and see the next step in the blind man’s journey. As the Pharisees confront the blind man and challenge him somewhere in the confrontation the blind man begins to understand that Jesus is more than the man who cured him. When the Pharisees challenge the man: “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” A prophet. Notice how this man’s faith is growing. A prophet. That is how some of us think of Jesus. He is a prophet. No, not someone who can foretell the future. But a person who speaks in the name of God. A person who mirrors who God is and reflects that for us.
In one of the moments of the greatest irony and hidden humor in this story, the Pharisees again confront the man: “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.”
Cannot you hear that same accusation hurled against you when you make those choices that mark you as a Christian. “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of consumerism.” You are his disciple, but we are disciples of the latest fad.” “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of ….. fill in the blank with whatever you experience as the point of conflict between you Christian life and the life of the culture and society around you.
At this point, the Pharisees came to the end of their tolerance and they expel the man from the synagogue. The religious leaders have rejected this man. His parents have denied him. His society has thrown him out. In this state of total abandonment, notice what happens: “Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This is Jesus, the good shepherd, seeking out the lost sheep, searching for the lost coin. When everyone else has let him go, Jesus once again searches out this blind man to finish what Jesus began when he opened his eyes.
Jesus asks the strangest question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” This man has faith in Jesus. But Jesus is leading the man to understand that Jesus is the Son of Man. Jesus uses that strange title because the Son of Man is the one who comes from heaven to bring those who believe in him into a relationship with him and with God.
Jesus seeks to bind this man to his heart.
He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”
Jesus replies: “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
You have seen him. The purpose of the opening of the man’s physical eyes was to behold Jesus. You have seen him. The opening of his physical eyes was not as important as the opening of the eyes of his heart. When the eyes of his heart are opened then the man confesses: “Lord, I believe.” He falls down and worships Jesus.
The climax of the journey of faith is to enter into this relationship with Jesus, to have the eyes of our hearts opened that we might see Jesus and in seeing Jesus to see the face of God reflected in the face of Jesus.
At this midpoint of Lent, I pray that may you too enter more deeply into your hearts that you may discover Jesus inviting you, wherever you are on your journey of faith, to an ever deeper relationship with him. As you open your heart to trust in this Jesus, may you find yourself totally immersed and sustained in the mystery of our God.
May you discover Jesus opening the eyes of your heart not only to see Jesus, but in looking into the face of Jesus you will behold the face of your God. Amen.