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.