Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday

By Ulysses Grant Dietz

Dear God, open my mind and set it free;
open my heart and set it on fire.

You see me today dressed in the full “vestments” of my position as an American curator--something I gave up wearing to church many years ago. This is the uniform I drag out when I go to meetings of the Museum’s board of trustees, or maybe to openings at another museum: the native costume of my people. Think of it as equivalent to the floor-length cope that Bernie wears every year when we chant the Great Litany at the start of Advent. I wear this today because this is, for me, a momentous and somewhat intimidating occasion.

One reason I was chosen to preach today (Bernie sort of tipped his hand in the announcements last week) is that I am entering my second year as a board member of the SO/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race. The Coalition’s mission statement is to achieve and sustain the benefits of a thriving, racially integrated and truly inclusive community that serves as a model for the nation. Words to live by indeed; words that have inspired me for years, and a mission that surely reflects the goals that MLK Jr. set out to achieve fifty years ago. But while I continue to learn how to live out that mission statement here in this town, and to understand how to be a useful member of that organization, you must all understand that it is because of my twenty-five year membership in this parish that I could accept the call to be part of the Coalition’s board. In this place the lessons of my life have come together. This is where my spirit lives and thrives and continues to grow. I just wanted to be clear about that from the start.

The other reason the Absalom Jones Committee zeroed in on me was the accident of my birth. I am the younger son of the youngest daughter of the only son of the eldest son of Ulysses S. Grant. Got that? Great-great grandson; the youngest descendant of my generation. But the unfortunate truth is that in the generations after Ulysses S. Grant won the war that freed the enslaved people of the United States, my Grant ancestors embraced the prevailing racism that followed the collapse of reconstruction. As proud as I am of my longstanding Republican ancestry, it was only when my then 92-year-old mother voted for Barack Obama in 2008 that—for me—the lingering taint of racism was once and for all washed away. It was a watershed moment in my mother’s life (representing the ongoing liberal influence of both of her sons, I might add); a spiritual and intellectual journey of which she was and remains inordinately proud.

I used to joke, thirty years ago when I first started my job at the Newark Museum, that on any given day I was the whitest person in Newark.  I have lived my entire life as a child of WASP privilege, from the silver spoon in my mouth at birth, to my prep school and Ivy League education, to the thirty-year career as a museum curator in what is probably the whitest of all professions in America. Through Ulysses S. Grant I am a descendant of Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620—although I say so with mixed feelings since I share that same line of descent with the actor Richard Gere, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the folk artist Grandma Moses—oh, and Sarah Palin.  You really can’t choose your family.

You can, however choose your heroes.

Being a dutiful St. Georgian, let’s briefly revisit today’s scripture. Isaiah gives us some great material:

“I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
Thus says the LORD, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD…who has chosen you."

Well, that seems to work. I can see the life and work of Dr. King in that scripture.

It’s just as well that Paul’s epistle was eliminated for today in favor of an excerpt from Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, because I couldn’t get much out it anyway. John’s Gospel is much better—the well known verses about John the Baptizer being the forerunner of Jesus who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.  I can’t think of a better foreshadowing of the life of MLK Jr.—prophet, leader, martyr, Christian saint.  But, enough scripture...

I can’t pinpoint the moment in my life when Martin Luther King Jr. became a hero to me. I am fairly sure that my more mature, deeper understanding of Martin Luther King Jr. in all his human complexity—his strength as well as his human weaknesses—came to me through the writing of Taylor Branch, and through his monumental trilogy on Dr. King’s life—Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and  At Canaan’s Edge. But I know that even before reading these books, my admiration and respect for Martin Luther King Jr. had long since taken root.

I can remember, perhaps six years ago, taking my son Alex to the Lincoln Memorial on a cold rainy Thanksgiving weekend and standing with him on the bronze plaque marking the spot where MLK Jr delivered his “I have a dream” speech. For me, to stand on that spot was to visit a holy place, and I was glad that my children are of the generation for whom Dr. King’s importance is taken as a matter of course, and who are taught his life and work in school.

And I also can vividly recall an annual meeting of the Ulysses S. Grant Association held in Washington, DC, perhaps a decade ago. One of our activities that weekend was a private visit to the archives of the Library of Congress, where the curator pulled out various Civil War documents that we were allowed to hold and study closely.  At one point the curator, knowing my connection to the Civil War general, handed me a thin sheaf of typed pages in a protective Mylar sleeve.  I wondered what interest this could be until I read the first words:

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”

There in my hand was the typescript of the “I have a dream” speech—the actual speech that Dr. King held in his hands as he made history that hot summer day in 1963. It might as well have been a piece of the true cross. I trembled to hold that paper in my hands.

It embarrasses me that I have no vivid childhood memory of Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968.  Surely I was aware of him, but I was thirteen, in 8th grade, and my only real memory of that spring was our class trip to Washington DC. I’m sure I was shocked, but I am also sure that Dr. King’s death didn’t affect me the way it did African American teenagers on that sad day. His death seemed distant from my reality, in spite of the headlines that would have come into our home through newspapers and television. But I can say that it was almost certainly the first time the death of a black man had ever made it onto my personal radar, or that of any of my white friends growing up in Syracuse, New York.

I asked my brother Jed what he remembered about this day—he is eight years my senior and was a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He remembers that day vividly.  He was vice president of the powerful student council at UNC Chapel Hill—an ardent young Republican deeply committed to civil rights (which might sound odd, but this was the 1960s, when the idea of a moderate, or even a liberal Republican, had not yet become anathema). That very evening my brother was presiding over the student council in a heated debate over whether the university should actively market itself to black high school students in North Carolina.  Apparently, students in North Carolina’s mostly black urban high schools in the years after integration were still unaware that they actually had the right to apply to UNC, so deeply ingrained was the traditional pattern of segregation. The southern democratic members of the student council were vehemently against this marketing outreach, fearful of how it might change their alma mater. It was the young republican contingent—my brother among them—that was arguing for reaching out to these students who, till that moment, had generally been ignored by this elite southern university.

But the debate ended when the news was received of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis. My brother suspended the meeting and these students—privileged white students—dispersed to ponder the violent death of a figure that, whatever they thought of him, mattered in their lives and had already reshaped life as it was lived in the American South.

It also shames me that I can’t give any account of how Dr. King’s life and death affected someone who was a constant presence in my life as a teenager: a woman named Vernice Curry, the black woman who cleaned our house and took care of us as a family for seventeen years—all of my childhood. If you have read, or even heard of the recent best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, The Help, set in Jackson Mississippi in the early 1960s, you will know that its plot revolves around the complex relationships between a group of black maids and their employers. I remember reading this fascinating book last year with a sense of superiority because my family wasn’t mean like those people in Mississippi were.  I was brought up short by a close friend who asked me just how different my world in Syracuse really was from the world depicted in Jackson?  My life in Syracuse in the early 1960s was full of these black women. Virtually every family on my street had their own Vernice: I remember seeing them going home from work at the end of each day—those who didn’t live in—in their white or pink or pale blue uniforms and white nurses shoes, heading up the hill to the bus stop that would take them to the part of Syracuse I rarely saw or even thought of. It never occurred to me watching Leave it to Beaver or—even more bizarrely, The Andy Griffiths Show, set as it was in the rural South—that a crucial element of my life was missing from those supposed depictions of the world I inhabited. I can vividly remember kissing Vernice’s plump cheek every day when I got home from school. I can remember sitting with her in our family room, while she ironed my father’s shirts and we watched Let’s Make a Deal together.  I can remember her the morning after the sudden and unexpected death of my younger brother in 1969, serving coffee and breakfast to the shocked gathering of my grief-stricken family, dressed in her best crisp white uniform, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. But I have no memory of the Friday morning after Dr. King was killed, or how hard it must have been for her to come to work that day. Did I ask her how she felt?  Did I tell her I was sorry?  How I took Vernice’s presence for granted; and how little thought I gave to what Dr. King meant to her.

Ironically, if my sheltered WASP upbringing wasn’t designed to help me embrace MLK Jr. as a hero, it did prepare me in other ways. It was at my elite New England prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy, that I first had black classmates—classmates who were in many cases my seniors and thus had to be respected. I remember Paul, from Detroit, who called me “boy” and took good natured pleasure in lifting my scrawny little carcass up over his huge afro (I was small in the 10th grade and he was very tall). And I remember another black student, another Paul, slender and effeminate, who lived in my dorm and was the first gay classmate I ever knew from Exeter. He now lives in LA as a performer under the name Paul Outlaw.

And it was in the hallowed halls at Yale that I lived in close contact with Jews for the first time in my life—Yale’s housing service must have assumed my German last name was Jewish, and so all three of my freshman roommates were Jewish. It was from them that I began to learn about the vast Jewish community in the tri-state area around New York City. Growing up in Syracuse I’d never even eaten a bagel. The unwritten quotas that had kept the number of Jewish students strictly limited at the Ivy League schools into the 1960s were gone, swept away in the rapid cultural changes spearheaded by the civil rights work Dr. King. And, of course, it was also at Yale that I met Gary Berger, and became the first person in my family’s history ever to marry outside the Protestant country club, in more ways than one.

But it was also during my Ivy League education that I came to grips with what being part of a disenfranchised minority could mean. Being gay at Yale in the early 1970s meant either being invisible (a path not open to black students, or for that matter, Jewish students) or being marginalized and denied access to the sort of power networks that made Yale such a good place for the Bushes, the Buckleys, and even for the Clintons.

But I don’t want to minimize the importance Dr. King’s legacy by trying to make too much of myself as part of an oppressed minority. I was born lucky, and my life has been blessed, and unlike Dr. King I am lucky enough to have lived long enough to regret growing older—but I have also lived long enough to see the young fruit of Dr. King’s labors begin—just begin—to ripen.

Choosing to settle down in Maplewood 30 years ago was a stroke of luck.  I wanted to find Leave it to Beaver, to recapture the blinkered vision of my happy childhood in Syracuse. We arrived here, fully expecting to be tolerated at best by the people in town. Instead, Gary and I a found a town that may have looked like the 1950s, but was already starting to live out a new vision—the vision created by MLK Jr in the 1960s and fostered by folks like the people who founded the SO/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race fifteen years ago. But these towns, like this church, remain to this day a bubble of integration and acceptance of diversity in a state that is still among the most segregated in the nation.

Dr. King said on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963:

I have a dream that one day... little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. [W]e will be be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands..."

My children, who are not white, have never been taunted because of their skin color, nor because they are adopted, nor because they have two fathers, nor because one of their fathers is Jewish.  They have black friends, and Asian friends, and white friends, and even gay friends—all of which would have been unimaginable in the Syracuse of my childhood.

The road to civil rights paved by MLK Jr. is not complete. The legal instruments of justice and equal civil rights for all Americans are largely in place—with some glaring exceptions. Living into those legal facts, however, is still, as we all know too well, a work in progress.  But we are on that road, and together we are moving forward.

Martin Luther King Jr. died a year before the historical beginning of the gay rights movement (or, as the conservative right calls it, the Gay Agenda). Coretta Scott King, in 2004, two years before her death, angered the more conservative side of her community when she spoke out in favor of same-sex marriage, saying “Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union…” You can’t imagine the impact that her words had on me and my family.  Mrs. King didn’t need to say that. Her late husband’s legacy would have been safe even had she kept silent. Which is why her speaking out made such a difference.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission was to bring justice and equality to his people.  And his people were black people.  But his people were also all people. Jesus was the messiah for the Jews—but he was also the messiah for the gentiles. His people came first, but he embraced all people, especially the despised and the marginalized. Dr. King spent his life reaching across the gaps that divided black from white, one religion from another.

Let me close with a quote from a recent song (introduced to me by my children) called I’m Not Afraid:

I'm not afraid to take a stand
Everybody come take my hand
We'll walk this road together, through the storm
Whatever weather, cold or warm
Just let you know that, you're not alone
Holler if you feel that you've been down the same road.

If you don’t already know it, the song is by Marshall Mathers III, better known as Eminem. I don’t pretend that MLK Jr would remotely understand the anger, violence, or misogyny that routinely appear in Eminem’s lyrics. But I do know that this brilliant wordsmith has formed a bond with the community of black hip-hop and rap musicians that is unprecedented in the history of American music. Eminem, like him or not, could never have happened without the work of MLK Jr. We are all on the same road, and if we choose not to walk alone, we’ll follow Dr. King’s example and reach out for each others’ hands. The chief lesson that I’ve learned from my years in this parish, in this town, and now on the board of the Community Coalition, is that we’re all in this together. And the seed of that lesson lies in the life of MLK Jr.

As a final blessing, here’s the simplest possible prayer, one that my father said to us every night as children, as he marked our foreheads with the sign of the cross. Both my brother and I carried on this tradition as long as our children would allow us to.

God bless you, and keep you, and fill your heart with love.

What more can we ask? Amen.

© 2011 Ulysses Grant Dietz

What Would Martin Say?

By Aleeda Crawley

On my first trip abroad, I met a Hungarian woman, Marta, in Paris; she and I continued to correspond for many years, and finally I persuaded my travel buddy Michelle to take a trip with me to Budapest. Marta spoke very little English, and I spoke very little French, and no Hungarian. Over the years, her husband translated my letters for her, and Michelle and I, having misunderstood a dinner invitation joined them for our second dinner one evening. We talked about the U.S., and the flow of many East Germans into Budapest, anticipating the fall of the Berlin wall. Over dessert her husband leaned back and said, “So, you are from Harlem? As it turned out, neither Michelle I lived in Harlem at the time, and we explained that all black Americans did not live in Harlem. We still laugh about t hat evening to this day. Stereotypes make it easy to understand the world, but they make for a humorous and sometimes dangerous shorthand.

I often see bracelets and bumper stickers with the letters WWJD, standing for What Would Jesus Do? In a lot in Maplewood Village, I’ve seen a strange twist on this question: Who would Jesus bomb? My question today is yet another version: what would Martin say? Here’s what Martin said: “the most segregated hour in America is 11 a.m. on Sunday morning.” In my personal experience, I would add to that any hour in barber shops, beauty salons, country clubs, board rooms. I don’t doubt that Dr. King would see this church as progress--seeing how far our nation has come, but I think he would be shocked at how far we still have to go. Maplewood/South Orange is one of only five communities in the U.S. where integration is visible on a block-to-block basis, and we are an anomaly in the fourth-most segregated state in the union. Within a few miles of this church there are marginalized citizens who do not have access to affordable housing, quality education, or basic healthcare. Within a few feet of my voice, there are friends who are denied the right to marry, which may seem frivolous to those of us whose partners are not denied insurance benefits, hospital visitations, or public displays of affection.

Dr. King is celebrated, and rightly so, as a civil rights leader. Unfortunately, so many people have characterized his work as being on behalf of African Americans, and this is a gross oversimplification. Dr. King was a human rights leader, speaking in favor of social justice for ALL people, and in favor of peaceful conflict resolution. He spoke of economic inequality, of a debilitating poverty that ultimately will impoverish everyone. The world seems so much more complex than it did 50 years ago. Still I looked at Dr. King’s words as I was preparing my homily, and believe that had he lived 3,000 years ago, like Isaiah, he would have been called a prophet. Today’s old Testament reading, with just a few changes, might have been spoken by him: For America's sake I will not keep silent, and for Washington’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. If he were living today, he would be considered a visionary. His ideas are as powerful and valid now as they were to his audiences in the middle of the last century.

In a 1967 rally speech in Montgomery Dr. King asked the question: Are we really making any progress? He described three attitudes leading to different answers on the question. In it I saw that these attitudes haven’t changed, whether we are discussing race, or poverty, or human rights. The extreme optimist argues we’ve come a long, way, and society has just about solved these problems. The extreme pessimist says we’ve not seen meaningful progress; we’ve created more problems than we’ve solved because our flawed human nature cannot be changed. Dr. King concluded that both these arguments had one thing in common; they both led people to do nothing to change, one side because the work is done, the other because it cannot be completed.

Clarence Clark, a fellow parishioner, once told me that it was very strange coming to NYC from the south. In the south, the demarcation was clear; you knew where you could go, and where you would not be welcome. In NYC the lines were never so clearly drawn. I never understood, until I was older, why my parents resisted my frequent requests to “come on over” to Palisades Park as they invited us to do on those radio jingles. A post-civil rights era, young Yankee girl does not always recognize the slights of discrimination. As you get older, you notice awkward silences when you enter a room and NYC taxicabs passing you by in the evening. Martin said there is a third attitude, the realist: “The realist seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites while avoiding the extremes of both.” The two conclusions are not mutually exclusive. Martin would say the realist understands we have come a long way since Clarence’s days in NYC but we still have some way to go in Aleeda’s time.

Dr. King stated that the realist, unlike the pessimist and the optimist had the responsibility to do something about righting a wrong. He said it many different ways: ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’, and ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” A couple of years ago, I was asked to be on the nominating committee of an African American group I belonged to. We had chosen someone who was highly qualified for the office and was in every way just like her predecessors, with one exception: she was white. On the day of the election, another African American member not only asked the chosen candidate not to run for that office, but had the temerity to ask her to consider a lesser office. This member saw no wrong in doing this, but I was appalled, and left the group. I expressed my disappointment, asking if it was 1957 or 2007. The candidate, in her graciousness, did run for the lesser office, and was elected. I’m here to say today that racism is not dead, presidential elections notwithstanding, nor is discrimination limited to a particular group. I’ve heard it said that one type of discrimination is not the same as others. I’ve heard the bible quoted in support of some of these discriminations. Martin said: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” I remind all of these folks that the bible was used for hundreds of years to support the morality of slavery. Separate but equal is always more separate and less equal. Discrimination is immoral and unjust, and on this Martin was clear: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

We substituted today’s New Testament reading for the words of Dr. King, but part of today’s Epistle is truly appropriate for the celebration of Dr. King. 1 Corinthians says: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. When I look out at you, I do not see black, white, Hispanic, Asian, straight, gay, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, Democrat, Republican, young or old. I see mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters…friends. We are different, but the humanity that links us is more powerful than all the labels we use to divide us. More powerful than nationality, race or religion. More powerful than sexual orientation, gender or class.

In times of natural disaster, we look more like the world Dr. King would have wanted. We suspend our divisions and work together on a common task . The earthquake that struck Haiti this week brought me to tears. They were the same as the tears I shed when I watched the World Trade Towers collapse, when I saw the devastation of the tsunami in Asia, when I watched people waving for help from their rooftops in New Orleans. My horror turned to anger when hearing Pat Robertson condemn the victims as receiving a punishment they deserve. How wonderfully convenient to see the world as sinner and saved. Pat Robertson does not speak for me or my God, does not reflect my kind of Christianity. I want to tell Pat Robertson that I believe Dr. King would be ashamed of him and his lack of compassion for the suffering of another human. I also believe that Martin would say: Put aside your anger. Pray for Pat Robertson. Do whatever you can to ease the suffering of the Haitian people.

This world unity soon fades, and we slowly slip back into our old –isms and phobias. I have often thought the only time when we will abandon our tendency to see differences in each other is when some powerful alien attacks Earth, determined to annihilate the human race. The alien won’t ask how you voted, what your nationality is, who you slept with or what God you worshiped. They will unfortunately possess the unity humans have abandoned.

Martin thought that Jesus’ most important lesson was "Love your enemies." He said: "There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. If you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. If you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption."

Martin’s book Where do we Go from Here? Chaos or Community?, published posthumously, contains a powerful essay, The World House, in which he writes: “We have inherited a large house, a great "world house" in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” He continues: “Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, too late." I hope it’s not too late for us and our children, and our children’s children. Sometimes, when hearing or seeing how creative mankind can be in its divisiveness man I fear that it is too late. I see dismissive labels and stereotypes that give people permission to denigrate, deny and defame the humanity of people seen as “other”. What sustains me is those glimmers of proof that may not be too late. My parents grew up in an America where they could not live, eat or shop where they chose; where they could not vote freely, where opportunities for higher education were limited, where their lives could be threatened for some imagined slight. My dad never lived to see an African American elected President of the United States. I could not have imagined peace in Ireland, or a post-apartheid South Africa in my lifetime. Who could have predicted that Iowa would offer their gay citizens the right to marry before we saw such legislation passed in NY or NJ? The Red Cross raised $9MM within 72 hours following the Haitian earthquake. We have, for the moment, turned swords into plowshares; the military forces of several countries are there helping the people of Haiti. The outreach of support and aid has been as rapid as the destruction. I could not have predicted it, but Dr. King wrote of such things: This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This often misunderstood and misinterpreted concept has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.

We have a responsibility to love everyone, and ultimately to forsake the idea of enemies versus allies, of them versus us, of inferior versus superior, of any type of OTHER. We are one, connected not by those things which separate us, but the one thing that is within us all, no matter how scarred: our humanity. We simply cannot survive as a species if we continue to identify people as “other”. There is a Cherokee proverb: One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." To this I can only think Dr King would say: let the church say Amen.

© 2010 Aleeda Crawley

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few

By Elaine Bennett

The bulletin says we're celebrating a lot here today at St. George's, including our Sunday School teachers and Juneteenth.

I'm not an authority on either subject, but I will say this: How we raise our children speaks volumes about who we are as a parish today, and what the world will be like tomorrow. I am always moved and amazed when I encounter the work going on in our Sunday school. So thank you.

And Juneteenth is a holiday I never heard about before I came to St. George's. It commemorates the day that slavery finally ended in the United States. Those of you who know your history will know that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 -- it went into effect on January 1st, 1863. But for obvious reasons, that particular law was not observed in the Confederate states.

And it wasn't until June 19th, 1865 that Union soldiers got to Galveston Texas and told the men, women and children who were enslaved there that they had been free for the last two and a half years.

They had always been free under God's law, of course. But I imagine it's hard to feel free when there's a guy with a shotgun who says he'll kill you if you leave the plantation.

So Juneteenth has a lot to teach us about freedom. And about how easily institutions can deny it. Especially if we allow them to.

And as a gay Christian, that is a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

So Happy Gay Pride Month, everyone.

And Happy Father's Day, too. Since it is Father's Day I thought I'd start with a little story about my father, Charlie.

When I graduated from college, I moved back home with my parents. And that summer, I went to my first Gay Pride March.

I was excited about it but I was also a little nervous. See, I get sunburned really easily, and I knew if I was outside all day, marching from Greenwich Village to who knows where uptown, I was going to come home with a big sunburn and I needed a cover story. A friend of mine told me to say I was going on a picnic.

So when I left that morning, I said, "Bye! I'm going to a picnic in Central Park."

Little did I know that the Gay Pride March would be culminating in a huge rally in Central Park. And also little did I know that that the entire affair would receive massive coverage on the evening news.

When I came home that evening, my father made a big joke about it. He said, "How'd you like your picnic with the..." and then he used a crude word for gay men.

Well, that got my attention -- my father never used words like that. He was a pretty sharp guy in some ways and I felt he was trying to tell me that he knew about me. So the next day when we were alone, I came out to my father.

I said, "You're right, Dad. I was at the march. I'm gay."

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting him to say. But what he did say was, "You're our daughter and we love you.... Just don't tell your mother."

In case you're wondering, I did eventually come out to my mother, too. Buy me lunch sometime and I'll tell you about it. The bottom line is, I was able to tell both of my parents that I'm gay, but to the day they died, I was never able to tell either of them that I'm Episcopalian.

Hey, we were Roman Catholic. And I was very Roman Catholic.

You know how hard it is for most parents to get their teenagers to go to church? My parents had trouble getting me to come home. In fact, I regularly attended two masses every Sunday: I was the lead guitarist with the folk group at 9:30 and then played and sang as part of a duo at one of the two masses held at noon.

Growing up, just about every major event of my life revolved around church, including my first date and my first kiss. And in high school and college I went to weekend-long retreats designed to fill me full of the self-esteem teenagers so badly need. They gave us buttons and banners along the lines of "God Loves You."

My favorite one said -- quote -- "God Don't Make Junk." I was never able to figure out whether the bad grammar was an attempt to be hip or a subtle commentary on the nature of the Trinity. "God Don't Make Junk."

Well, a couple of years after I graduated from college -- I was living in the city -- and my parents decided that we should go to Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. So we did.

Then the following June, the Gay Pride March rolled around again. Now, every year during the march, the gay Catholic Group -- Dignity -- used to stop at St. Patrick's and hold a brief prayer service on the Cathedral steps. But that year there was a new Cardinal in town, and Cardinal O'Connor said gay people praying on the Cathedral steps was "sacrilegious." Can you imagine -- telling anyone that praying is a sacrilege?

Cardinal O'Connor announced that he was going to block off the steps of the Cathedral. In fact, he didn't even want gay people walking on the street in front of the Cathedral. So the Archdiocese sued New York City, trying to get the entire Gay Pride March rerouted off Fifth Avenue.

He lost his lawsuit, but I got the message loud and clear: When the church -- my church -- didn't know who I was -- when I was just one of the nameless thousands at Christmas Eve mass, I was more than welcome. But when they did know who I was, they didn't want anything to do with me.

It was the ecclesiastical version of "You're our daughter and we love you, just don't tell your mother."

And that was the last day I considered myself a Catholic.

It took a long while for me to trust God -- and organized religion -- again. People told me I needed to learn to separate God's actions from man's. But it's hard to remember that you're equal and loved by God when "man" -- in the form of the Archbishop -- won't let you in the church door.

(One of the other actions Archbishop O'Connor took was to ban Dignity from meeting or celebrating mass in Catholic Churches. And that edict spread to other dioceses, which is why to this day, the local Dignity group meets here at St. George's. I came across their meeting by accident one day. They were playing Bingo.)

So I struggled with religion for a long time. But eventually I found the Episcopal Church at St. Ann's in Brooklyn. And when my partner and I were getting ready to move to Maplewood, we found St. George's.

The Gay Pride March played a role in that, too. Oasis -- the gay & lesbian fellowship of the Diocese of Newark - was marching in the parade. We went up to them and talked with some people and Cheryl Notari and her partner Sharon told us about this fabulous parish right in our new hometown. I'm not sure I believed them, but I decided to see. And I have been here happily ever after.

Now, as these "coming out" stories go, mine is pretty tame. My parents didn't throw me out of the house. But I do feel that Cardinal O'Connor threw me out of my church. Through his actions, as the representative of God and the Roman Catholic Church in New York, the community that I had always relied on suddenly decided, "Well, after all, you know, maybe God Do Make Junk. And -- guess what? -- you're it."

I'm willing to bet that most of the gay people here have some sort of story like that.

And so do the vast majority of gay people who are not here. Because, remember, there are thousands of people out there who are too scared or too hurt to even think about walking into this building.

Now we know that once they get in here, they can sit in any pew, shake hands with any person and find someone who welcomes them and cares about them and wants to give them space to repair their broken relationship with God. We know that. But how do they know?

These walls are pretty thick. Nobody outside can hear what we're doing in here. The windows are really high up and full of all that colored glass. People can't pass by and see what's going on inside. So how do we reach out? How do we tell those scared, hurt, unchurched gay people that not only does Jesus love them, but we do too?

How do we do it? We do things -- individually and collectively, as a community.

We have events. We have "Marriage Equality Weekend" and put a rainbow flag banner across the front of the church. We march in parades, like the New York City Gay & Lesbian Pride March coming up in two weeks.

Last year, with our elders riding in style down the route, we showed that support for gay people is not limited to the young. We had a lesbian priest marching in her clerical collar -- strangers hugged her. We also had many other parishioners, gay and straight, toddlers riding on their lesbian moms' shoulders, young Keenan walking out front, waving like the Mayor of New York.

I can't tell you how many people shouted "thank you." Some cried. Others said, "I know someone who lives in Maplewood." And thousands of people saw tangible evidence that "Christian" does not always mean "homophobe." And that at least some Episcopalians really do mean it when they say, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you."

Because as wonderful as St. George's is, it's easy to forget that not every Episcopal church really stands behind that slogan. And I'm not just talking about parishes in Florida or Texas or Virginia, where there are bishops and priests who want to separate from the U.S. church because we allowed an openly gay man to become a bishop. There are parishes right down the road -- parishes in our very own diocese -- where gay and lesbian people do not feel welcome.

These are the parishes Bishop Beckwith was talking about when he said one of his goals for the diocese is to practice "radical welcome."

You know, for the longest time I didn't even know what the phrase meant. The Bishop would talk about "radical welcome" and I was like -- "Huh? It wasn't until a month ago, when we had the priest from Connecticut come down to talk about becoming a welcoming parish that I realized that the phrase "radical welcome" basically translates as "being nice to gay people and people of color." Radical.

I guess there are a lot of parishes that need to work hard at that. It's pretty much business as usual at St. George's, thank God.

But once we leave the friendly confines of our parish, and of this town, the rest of the world is not quite so radically welcoming. In fact, especially in the last year or so, parts of my new church have started to feel a lot like my old church.

Case in point, the Lambeth Conference that begins next month in England. That's the gathering that happens every 10 years, when all of the bishops of the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church gather to talk. And once more, the media will be filled with stories about how Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, is being excluded. These stories will mention that the only reason he is being excluded is that he lives in a committed relationship with another man.

Now, imagine for a minute that you're someone who doesn't know much about the Episcopal Church. You know about as much about Episcopalians as I know about the Lutherans or the Amish. Which is to say, you know they're there and they believe in Jesus. But that's about it.

Now imagine being a gay man or a lesbian who left or was thrown out of his or her church. And you start hearing these stories about the Episcopal Church. Yes, it's great news that one tiny, little state "hired" a gay bishop. But the whole rest of the world seems to be mad about it.

So if you're an unchurched gay person, which part of that story makes the bigger impression on you? The part that offers hope -- or the part that reinforces everything you've already learned about organized religion?

We may believe that when it comes to the future of the Episcopal Church, there's much more reason to hope than to despair. We know our bishop is a good guy. And we know that there are lots of other good guys and good women wearing those pointy bishop hats. But I've been an Episcopalian for 15 years and a part of this incredibly loving, spirit-filled parish for 16. And I have to tell you, some days it's hard for me not to think, "Here we go again."

If all those leaders of my church won't welcome Gene Robinson to God's table with his brother and sister bishops, then maybe I'm not welcome either. Not really.

On days like that, it's hard for me to remember that I'm safe here. That even though our Bishop and our Presiding Bishop are going to leave Gene Robinson behind physically -- and leave me behind metaphorically -- when they walk through the doors to the Lambeth Conference, we will still be in their hearts. And they will be advocating for us.

You know, 15 years ago when I was received as an Episcopalian, confirmations were still held at each parish. So I was received here at St. George's. Bishop Spong was here and our Rector, Barry Stopfel, was standing at his side. And of course Barry was one of the few priests at the time who was openly gay. His presence gave me the courage to believe that this church really was different.

There I was, an open lesbian, with my partner standing up for me, and the Episcopal Church was saying, "Yes, Elaine, God loves you. We love you. Be with us."

And when I knelt down before Bishop Spong, I just burst into tears. I mean, I turned into Niagara Falls. I couldn't stop crying. And the Bishop looked at Barry and whispered, "Is she okay?"

And Barry whispered back, "She used to be Catholic."

I still cry a lot in church. And not just at weddings and funerals like everybody else. I cry at baptisms -- and I cry buckets at ordinations. I think it's because even after all these years there's still a part of me that doesn't trust that the welcome the church is extending in those sacraments is going to last. There's a part of me that's still waiting for this church to pull the rug out from under me just like the last one did.

As members of St. George's, where everyone truly is welcome, that may be hard for you to understand, but I think it's very important for you to hear.

You know, in many ways St. George's is an island, a "radically welcoming" island. And that's great. But we have a choice. Are we going to be a tiny island, the St. Kitts of the Episcopal Church? Or are we going to be an island like Australia -- so big and expansive that it takes up an entire continent?

It's not what we do inside this building that makes us Christians; it's how we take what we do here out into the world. In today's Gospel, we heard Jesus tell the apostles, "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord to send laborers out into the field."

We can't wait for somebody else to send the workers. We know what needs to be done; we have to do it.

So, please, don't just enjoy the inclusiveness of the St. George's community while you're here -- take it out into the world with you when you leave. Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers. Come out of the closet -- whether you're gay or straight, come out of the closet as Christians who welcome gay and lesbian people into community with you.

Take back the word "Christian" from the bigots and the haters. Their voices are loud right now, but our voices can grow louder as more people join in our welcome and our island expands, until the whole Diocese is on the same island, and one day the whole Episcopal Church will be, too.

I've had people say to me, "I'd like to talk about this stuff, but what can I say?"

Talk about your experiences, talk about your life. I think any sentence that combines the words "gay," "church" and "welcome" will be a revelation to many people.

And if you prefer to use humor -- my father always told me that people remember things more if you can make them laugh -- here's a quotation that was given to me by a dear friend of mine who happens to be straight. It's a quotation from that famous theologian, Dorothy Parker.

Now, Dorothy Parker started writing in 1919 and she wrote all the way through the 1940s, so you know this quotation has been around a long time. Dorothy Parker wrote, "Heterosexuality isn't normal; it's just common."

I want to close with a prayer Bishop Beckwith used as a blessing at the end of his Consecration. I can't offer a blessing, but I can share it with you as a prayer. So please pray with me:

May God give us grace never to sell ourselves short,
Grace to risk something big for something good,
Grace to remember that the world is too dangerous now for anything but truth
And too small for anything but love.
Amen.

© 2008 Elaine Bennett

Martin, Malcolm & Me

By Cheryl L. Thompson

When I was asked by Marlene to speak to you, my first reaction was, how do I get out of this, I don't even sit on the pulpit side of the church. But I remembered that Jesus often asks us to step out of our comfort zone for some reason. I don't know the reason for this, but I guess I have a story to tell. I have always been a believer. I have many conversations with God and am always grateful for the way things turn out and believe that he or she has a hand in that outcome. I don't really believe in coincidence, and sometimes, small things happen that are evidence to me of God's presence in my life. My big blessings, are my husband, although not always, and my son, again, not always, but I feel that my life could have taken so many turns, that would not have left me in the place that I am now. Another blessing is this Church. I feel like I have a home. I didn't feel that way for many years.

I was raised as an AME or Baptist depending on whether or not my mother was going to send me to church or attend church herself. My father briefly attended church and then stopped, but I believe he was typical of a preacher's kid. My parents met and married in New York, so that I am a native New Yorker. Most people believe New York is an integrated city or at least people get along peacefully. I'll get back to that later. When my father stopped attending church, he found a group called the African American Cultural Society; this was a group of mostly black men with thick glasses who sat in my father's room and discussed books they had read about African history. I was seven years old and I served the role of typical hostess, which I learned from my mother. I would serve them tea and cupcakes which I had made on my little stove and I would listen to some of what they said. Other times, my father would have me read to him from these books, so that I have forgotten more African history than most people ever learned.

By the time I was eight, my father became interested in traditional African religion, which meant Voodoo here, but Yoruba in the outside world. My father traveled to Cuba to become initiated in the religion. He changed his name to an African name, taking on the name of one of the Nubian Pharaohs. He changed his clothing to African attire, which I had to make for him, because there was no store or on line ordering for such clothing. He found that he could escape some of the rules about black limitations in this attire. Because people assumed he was not American. He enjoyed this greatly. When it was time for the second phase of this initiation, he could not return to Cuba because a revolution had happened. He then traveled to the village of Ife in Nigeria to complete his training. After several years, he became a Yoruba priest. He explained to me that the gods had two sides, a good and bad, that some of the gods were tricksters. He had altars for several gods in our house and a bloody cross on the inside door of our apartment. The cross represented the belief in the connection between the ancestors and the living with the horizontal representing life on this plane. Thus, the cross had a symbolic connection with the African slaves in their religious experience. In addition, he always had food for the dead on the floor in a New York City apartment, I don't believe that food was consumed by the dead, but it was eaten. I was terrified. There were blood sacrifices of birds, chickens, goats, and lamb, in my house. I told other people and they didn't believe me. They would say to me your father is just ahead of his time, or that my imagination was overly active. At one point, he was involved in a ceremony that involved cutting spots in his head and mixing his blood with the blood of others. I was convinced that this would kill him. It didn't, but it sent me running to the Roman church. I learned there that it was a sin to conjure up the evil spirits and I believed that my only protection was the power of God and the saints of the Catholic Church. I attended CCD alone. I spent hours in the church lighting candles and praying, I mostly prayed for safety. I was baptized when I was 15 years old, alone. Only my godmother and the priest were there. When my father finally found out what I had done he was totally outraged. He wanted to know how I could become a part of the oppressor: didn't I know that Catholics was purveyors of the slave trade. He believed that I had lost my mind. I believed that I was saving my soul.

While these events were occurring in my house, the outside world was also affecting me. When I graduated from 6th grade, I was notified that I would be attending a junior high school in upper Manhattan because of my grades and IQ score. This was in 1957. I was 12 and I was once again terrified. I had seen what was happening to the children in Little Rock and had no reason to believe it would be different for me in New York. There were streets in New York that you could be hurt on just because of your race.

I was so afraid, I asked my mother to come with me to school on the first day. She was afraid too, but would not admit it, because she believed she had to be there for me. My entrance into the school was uneventful, but I was never included in any social interactions. I was once told that I might have been invited to a party, but no one wanted me there. I learned to be with myself and to do my work. But I also learned to be quiet. I did my work and never shared unless called upon because my classmates were not happy with my ability. I even had a teacher who accused me of cheating on the Iowa Exams, when I had the highest score in the class. I simply asked her whom could I have cheater from. We never got along after that and my grades in English were always lower than my grades in Spanish, a language I have not mastered to this day.

Needless to say my faith has been shaken and stirred, so James Bond, I am not. Shaken came first, John Kennedy was assignated, it was the first Sunday that I did not go to Mass since my conversion. My father and I sat together glued to the television. When God did not reach his or her hand out of heaven and destroy me, I realized that I would not die if I didn't go to church.

A man I adored was killed, my heart was broken, I was angry with God. At a time of such hope, there was national despair. I could not believe that weekend. Two years later, I man I had quiet respect for was the next assignation: Malcolm X. He was a soft-spoken man who adored his wife and four daughters. His intelligence and charisma brought him to a place he never expected to be. He was a child of limited resources and hope. He visited our home on several occasions because my father was involved in the Black Nationalist movement so that they developed a relationship based on shared beliefs. His fiery public rhetoric stood in stark distinction to his private life. His ability to see that his situation was a result of circumstances was his strength. He was able to express the dark side of Martin Luther King's hopefulness. Martin was a man who came from circumstances that were hope filled. Martin was entrenched in the black middle class. Malcolm was entrenched in the black underclass. These men saw the world differently and while both were deeply religious, their needs and sense of society were diametrically opposed. I never met Martin. I simply loved him as I did JFK. There was such principle, hope and conviction that life could be better

Malcolm did not share a belief that life in America could be improved without a revolution. Malcolm was clearly bright but understood a piece of American life that is often missing among the middle class. Martin understood this, and wrote an essay to social scientists saying that while he understood the morays of the South and that a non-violent movement was the most powerful tool for that area, the cities were different and he did not know what tools would be appropriate. He called upon the social scientists of the time, to teach and to help with the ways in which cities were responding to the civil rights movement. He did not want to see riots but he couldn't find a tool that would be responded to in the cities.

Malcolm believed a revolution was necessary. This is not such an unusual thought; Thomas Jefferson thought there should be a revolution in every generation. Martin appealed to the educated, those people who were ready to move into an integrated society. Malcolm appealed to those people who were not going to be released from the barriers of discrimination. His rhetoric was extreme, but it resonated with black people who felt defeated and hopeless. Martin's rhetoric resonated with blacks who just needed to be unshackled. Around 1964, Malcolm X did what Muslims are supposed to do. He made the Hodge, the visit to the Holy City of Mecca. It is here that he met Muslims from all over the world. People dressed in the same garments, there was no way to determine who was rich or poor, but he saw people of many ethnicities. He came back to the United States feeling a need to express his new understanding that much of the problem in the U.S. is economic discrimination. He became Islamic in a broader sense of the word and was no longer limited to beliefs of the American Nation of Islam, which may or may not be interpreted as a cult. His awareness that some people were held in poverty and that the political system needed to address this. He saw the problem as one that exceeded race. He spoke of all people deprived of the American dream. His ideas became inclusive; he understood that many groups in America were deprived of the chance to achieve. This awareness resulted in his alienation from the Nation of Islam and ultimately resulted in his assignation. He was aware that he was in danger. I knew him as a father who adored his daughters and loved his wife. His ideas changed over time, but I believe that Martin needed Malcolm. The two standing in apparent opposition allowed people to choose a civil rights activist they could trust and follow. Martin had appeal to blacks and whites because he acknowledged the need for the humanity of all people to be recognized. He did this from a deep belief in Christianity, a conviction that most of us could relate to.

His non- violence in the light of the violence we saw on TV raised our commitment to the civil rights movement. He was the right man for the majority. Malcolm was the right man for the minority.

In 1965-66 Martin Luther King began to speak about poor people, he began to speak about the Viet Nam War and to talk about discrimination of black, brown, red and yellow people in this country and in the world. He planned a Washington, D.C. Resurrection City after the Memphis garbage man strike. This would move Martin from a black civil right leader to a leader of oppressed people. Just as Malcolm had come to the awareness that poverty is a major problem for Americans and for all people all over the world; Martin also began articulating the same belief. When he spoke about this with the plan for all people to come to Resurrection City on the great lawn between the Jefferson and Washington Memorials, he was killed. He was killed in 1968. While I know I can be a conspiracy believer, it is striking to me, how these two giants of the civil rights movement were killed at the same point in their thinking. The recognition that there is a deep philosophical and economic basis for the maintenance of the status quo appears to me to have resulted in their deaths, my final shaking of hope and belief was the assignation of Robert Kennedy. I remember listening to the radio through the night, and saying to God, I know this is wrong but if someone had been killed let it be McCarthy, I wasn't really wishing him dead but was so overwhelmed by the loses in the public arena, I didn't think I could accept another one. At this point, I was so angry with God that I stayed away from any formal practice of religion for almost 20 years.

Then my faith was stirred, I had given birth to a boy who needed moral development, I know people believe that this can be done without church, but I still believe that Jesus is present when two or three are gathered in his name, which to me means a community. I was not concerned about his spiritual development because I know or believe that we are hard wired to seek God. I wanted him to have the comfort I had once enjoyed in the Roman church but I wanted him to have none of the craziness. I knew he could not be catholic, but I had been so nurtured by my local priests, the church was always open in those days, you could sit in safety and silence. There was time to be with God. While I am not always happy with his current practice of his religion, I trust his belief because I have seen it since early childhood.

I was at once afraid that I had left the one true church, until I saw the consecration of Bishop Barbara Harris. That experience helped me understand, that God is the base of the Church and humans do whatever they do but it does not change God. This stirring set me free.

Back to Malcolm and Martin, without them with their diametrically opposed approach to civil rights would anything have happened? The Northern States could have felt comfortable in their de facto segregation and the South would continue to feel justified in their de jure segregation. I have lived through both and have seen the value of both perspectives. One could not have existed without the other. The more frightening Malcolm, even though dramatically changed after the Hodge, was killed first. The other, Martin, entrenched in the black middle class, began to talk about economic deprivation in the richest country in the world was killed also. For me hope died and did not find resurrection until 1982. At that point, I was ready to return to an interactive relationship with God. I am not without fear and doubt, but belief helps me get through life's challenges. What I have learned from all of these experiences is that God is always present. And we must learn to listen to what God is trying to say to us. We cannot reject anyone because he or she may be the return of the Messiah. We must see God's presence in each and everyone we encounter, despite the difficulties we sometimes experience.

Amen.

© 2008 Cheryl L. Thompson

The Stewardship of Time and Talent

By Chris West, Stewardship Co-Chair

The Stewardship of Time and Talent. That is the theme of today's Ministry Fair. Time and Talent. Seems pretty simple. Not always easy - but simple. A bit of time given here and there. A sharing of talent - of personal gifts - well - maybe that seems a bit more complicated.

Still - it is a new year - not liturgical, not by the calendar. This month we return to Sunday School and regular worship hours and the choir singing and Dinners For Eight and a host of other activities that mark this time.

And we return to Stewardship - that calling out to consider both the new and the renewal of our commitment to share with St. George's (and therefore with each other and the greater church and the larger community) our treasure, our time and our talent.

I'm not going to talk about the treasure part this morning. The Stewardship Committee wanted very much to give full voice and visibility to the other aspects of Stewardship. So today - our Time and Talent Fair.

I want to shift a bit now - to today's Gospel lesson. The one where the writer of Luke almost seems to be telling a story where Jesus is telling his disciples - be smart: be shrewd like the "children of this age" not the "children of light".

A story where a manager is doing a poor job for his boss - and when he gets found out - he decides to add cheating to wastefulness. In his fear as well as his disdain for working or begging - he comes up with the idea that he'll just help everyone that owes his boss money and thereby ingratiate himself with them. And the boss - he seems to think this is fine - because the manager "had acted shrewdly".

At the end of the telling of this story - Jesus says "make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes."

The whole thing makes no sense. A boss who's angry with an incompetent employee and then thinks he's great because he cheats him. And - even more confusing - Jesus talking about being shrewd and being dishonest, like that's a good thing.

But the final sentences - the summing up of the story if you will - are very clear.

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful in much - and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. No one can serve two masters - we will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. We cannot serve God and wealth.

Our faithfulness - our keeping our part of the covenant - in little things and big things - is required. And we cannot give short shrift to the small stuff - because when we do - we give the big stuff short shrift as well.

This is what happens when we are not whole and complete. Or maybe it causes that fragmentation. I'm never sure which comes first.

But the splitting of our selves and the battle that can rage between our yearning towards the God of our understanding and the world's demands - can be overwhelming sometimes. A lot of times.

A favorite of my remembered biblical stories is only one of my favorites because as a child I completely misunderstood it.

It is the parable of the talents. And it goes (the quick version) like this: A man going on a long journey leaves his goods with his servants. Now in the bible - the goods are talents - an amount of money, which somewhere or other I read, is the equal of about a thousand dollars today.

Two of the servants invest the talents and double them. When the man returns, he's happy. But the third servant - afraid to lose the talents - has buried them for safekeeping and the man - pretty upset at not having the talents increase - is very angry. This is one of those stories that end in weeping and teeth gnashing.

The thing is - I didn't know the talents were money when I first heard this story. I just thought they were talents - like singing or dancing or playing the harmonica. So I thought the point was - don't bury your talents. I may have also confused this with not hiding your light under a bushel.

Anyway - you get my point, I hope. More about this later.

Christian and I were on vacation recently in Maine - we did a bit of research before leaving about what there was to do and where we wanted to go. But when we arrived we found the most amazing Tourist Information Center. It was amazing because it was filled with everything you would need to know about Maine ... and it was organized in a way that satisfied even my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

We went there three separate times - to browse, to get ideas, to be sure we hadn't missed anything - and to revel in the numbers of activities, places, events, restaurants, galleries, nature walks, scenic drives open to us. And everyone else there was doing the same thing. Wandering through this large room - ducking in and out between aisles of shelves. We were part of this small community of sojourners. It was great.

As the weeks leading to today's Fair galloped along, I kept thinking about the Center. And in this last week - when even more parishioners suddenly seemed to jump on the idea of hosting a table - I thought about it some more.

Because when you go down stairs after the service and wander around our very beautiful Parish Hall - you'll have this whole host of opportunities in front of you.

Please don't think of them as duties to be fulfilled - or obligations to be met. Pretend you are going into the Center in Maine the way Chris and I did. And see the smorgasbord of all these things to do and let your appetite be whet. We are entering this hall together - surveying this smorgasbord as yet another community of sojourners.

There are opportunities for fellowship, chances to un-bury talents and let them increase, occasions for grace when our commitment to our life of faith overcomes the calls of a world in which faith, grace and fellowship seem unsupported.

And today you get a One-Day Dispensation from the sin of Pride - (see your bulletin). Good today and today only! Because we want you to be bold, to brag, to pop your jerseys, to let both your big talents and your small skills get put to good use.

Now why do I say 'put to good use'? That's a bit presumptuous I guess.

So let me tell you how it is I really came to be standing here this morning - speaking to you. I have been a member of St. George's for about 12 years I think. I've done a few things here in that time - but the one that has brought me the most joy is teaching Sunday School - 4th, 5th or 6th graders depending on the year. I've done that most of the years I've been here.

I don't think I'm that good at it. But I love it. And I love the children who have been in my class.

I watch with anticipation all the even younger ones - and I start thinking about how eventually I'll get them in my class. So each year when I consider how maybe I'll ask Jane Cates for a year off, I think of someone I've been waiting to see in my class and I postpone for another year that brief sabbatical.

Let me reassure you - this ministry is not without its frustrations. Aside from my own insecurity, there is of course the occasional Sunday morning when I'm certain no one is listening - no one cares - the whole group is out of control and I'm just about to bust.

Following one such Sunday - as I was shepherding the little lambs to the church (there's an irony to our joining you all at the Peace) a few of the children made a stop at the water cooler.

This is pretty routine with them. I slipped into my normal pose and tone of voice when this happens and shushed them along - reminding them "Come on - we're going to church now."

And then something happened. I felt this great sense of calm - of certainty - and I had a waking up moment. I thought - this is their church. They know this place. They know every nook and cranny - from the stage to the altar to the cloister garden to the playground to the kitchen. They've crawled and run and walked over every surface. They feel comfortable here - this is a place they know. The faces are familiar - some grownups even know their names (though I wish there were more of them).

And someday - 20 or 30 years from now, they may be sitting in a newcomers' meeting at a rectory telling people about the church they went to as children. And that will be this place. This church. St. George's will be the church of their memory. It will be the place they remember and even if they don't know that now, it is true.

We create - in our covenant with God and with each other - this memory. It is the work we do here, the worship we pray and sing here, the ministries we embrace and engage in and are engaged by, the place from which we reach out and the place in which we may turn inward, the place we meet the comfort we find in each other with the strength we find in ourselves, the place we try to name the un-nameable.

It is the place of our memory - which we carry with us all through the week if only we will stop to hear, and look, and remember it.

There is ample opportunity today for us to continue - or to embark upon - this memory-creation.

When you walk downstairs look for Joy. Be bold. Take chances. Over-reach. Build a memory - for yourself, for our children, for each other.

Let us pray -

Lord, guide us to be faithful in a little so that we may be faithful in much, show us the way to wholeness and completeness, remind us of our many talents, relieve us of our fears of the finiteness of time, and guide us to continue to create and re-create this church in which we give you thanks and praise. Amen.

© 2007 Chris West

Tribute to Bishop Croneberger at his last Diocesan Convention

By Michael Francaviglia
Administrator of the Diocese of Newark, Secretary of Convention, and St. George's parishioner
Given at the Diocese of Newark Annual Convention

Go now, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. (Isaiah 30:8)

Good afternoon.

I have been privileged to share in the ministry of Bishop Croneberger and to serve as a member of the staff. His light-heartedness, sense of humor and dedication to ministry have made the years pass by so quickly. Besides being your Diocesan Administrator and Secretary of Convention, I have also been a witness to some marvelous things accomplished under his leadership; a leadership that began at the dawn of a new century. Not many employees these days can say with candor that they will miss his or her departing boss. But Jack is an exception, because he has been exceptional. I'd like to share just a little of that with you.

Just about seven years ago to the day, on a Saturday in January 2000, Bishop Croneberger delivered his first State of the Diocese address. It was on the afternoon of his investiture when he took full responsibility as the diocesan bishop and the call to lead. His episcopacy was just beginning. He used the address to set forth his ideas and outlook for ministry within the diocese. He spoke about leadership and specifically the leadership arts described by one of his favorite authors, Leonard Sweet, in his book Aqua Church: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church in Today's Fluid Culture. This book and the bishop spoke about the need for team work and collaboration, the necessity of risk taking, the shaking up of the status quo (or Vibrations as Sweet would write), and of course having a Vision. It was another writer, Joel Arthur Barker, that the bishop would sometimes quote with "Vision without action is merely a dream; action without vision just passes the time; but vision with action can change the world." He wanted us to see things differently. And surely he has and, in so doing, left his mark on us all.

Bishop Croneberger recognized and understood that the world around us was changing, locally and globally and wanted us to take action. That the responses had to be bold and had to make the church and our mission relevant to the lives of us all. That the effort had to be collaborative and partnered with risk taking, vibrations and visions. And it had to include absolutely everyone, "youth, seniors, baby-boomers, GenXers, gay/lesbian, straight, persons of color, differently challenged, traditional and cutting edge liturgists, urban, suburban and rural residents, conservatives and liberals, ordained and lay" into a process to envision a future for our diocese. And, so it began.

It wasn't much later that some of you were called together to participate on a design team to fashion a process to inquire into what's best in our diocese, what is the work of our diocese and how do we envision what our future together could be. After several months of study, it was decided that the start of the 21st century would have the Diocese of Newark gather for a two-day visioning convocation. In preparation for the event, many more of you participated in vestry gatherings, committee meetings and district sessions to answer such questions as "What have we done to create changes in our congregations and our communities? What were the outcomes? What happened afterwards? What supported the power and life-giving character of this experience? All of this work was done in the context of our baptismal covenant and it formed the structure of the convocation. As you know he takes seriously our baptismal covenant; it is at the core of his values.

Do you remember learning about the assumptions of appreciative inquiry during our visioning process? For instance, it is important to value differences. Or, in every society, organization or group, something works. Or, people have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (the unknown) when they carry forward parts of the past (the known). You may or may not recall them, but I think they have quietly been imbued into the fabric of our diocese as we have come to appreciate and value the gifts of each other.

We are in a much different place today after these seven years than we were in 2000. Some of his initiatives were met with uneasiness -- district confirmations -- is one such that comes to my mind. (Little too much risk taking there, Buddy?) Several others were embraced for enriching our corporate lives in ministry -- increasing involvement of deacons, strengthening the operation of Cross Roads Outdoor Ministry, encouraging clergy collegiality, and sharing his episcopacy with assistant bishops.

Others were exciting because they presented opportunities for positive and effective long range change. Having the vision, willing to take the risk but knowing there would be vibrations, he was unafraid to be bold. He challenged the Diocesan Council to take on its canonical responsibilities (dare I use a sports metaphor, "to step up to the plate") and it has done so admirably. He urged congregations to become vibrant, life-giving faith communities that proclaim the Gospel in their own unique manner. Today there are many places expanding their capacity for ministry and feeling the vibrations of change. Knowing the value of resourcing, he established the Congregational Growth and Development Fund in partnership with the Trustees.

These I have witnessed. I have marveled at the ability of this gentle, patient and humble man to know what he wanted to do, make decisions that weren't always pleasant, work diligently daily, and find creative and different ways to accomplish the changes and to make them acceptable.

We still may not know what will result from the changes he introduced. We may even forget his role in initiating some of them. But we all will in some way and in some measure be affected, and I think touched all for the good. We are blessed. I am lucky and thankful to have witnessed Bishop Croneberger work his ministry. I wish him and Marilyn well and the best in their future, as do all the other members of the Episcopal House staff.

Godspeed, Bishop Croneberger. How can we thank God enough for you?

Go now, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever.

© 2007 Michael Francaviglia

Stewardship Luncheon Sunday

By Dan Austin, Chair, Stewardship Task Force

We all have had "aha" moments, that time of revelation when something we see or hear gives us insight into how this world of ours really works. One of my best aha moments came almost 25 years ago, while sitting in the pews of a small Episcopal parish in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. The rector, a Welshman who truly had seen everything and wasn't fazed by any of it, announced from the pulpit that, after much prayerful consideration, he had concluded that there are, really, only two kinds of people in this world. There are people who wake up every day and say, "Good morning, God!" And then there are those who awake, look at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows, and say, "Good God, morning."

I never forgot that. I'm now -- in late middle age, 60 years out and starting to head home -- a good morning God person.

No doubt some of this is due to the aging process. In my misspent youth -- in college, I was a member of the original animal house fraternity -- partying well past midnight was the norm, and the harsh light of morning was seldom welcomed. Nowadays, I'm usually sound asleep by 10 if not before. But I think one reason I'm happy to welcome the morning -- and my creator -- is that my view of life, of God and of my place in God's universe, has changed.

I am not here to tell you that I was a sinner, and now am a saint. No, this place is still a hospital for sinners, and on more than one occasion, I've needed the emergency room.

But I am here to tell you that I am undergoing a conversion experience. It's nothing exciting, no blinding light, no voice from the burning bush, and it's full of fits and starts, and it seems to never end. But it is bringing me a peace that I, a classic type A, take-no-prisoners kind of guy, never thought possible.

It is broadening my capacity to love my neighbors, even the blockheads next door, and along the way, it is helping me replace rough edges, even anger, with understanding and empathy. And, miracle of miracles in this age of instant gratification, this conversion process is showing me that by giving first of myself, by giving my time, my talent and my treasure, I receive much more in return than any effort to keep up with those nasty Joneses ever brought. I want to share my conversion story because it has everything to do with stewardship, specifically, the stewardship of money, the offering of personal treasure for the benefit of God's people here at St. George's and in the wider world. My hope is that my story won't be what Bruce Springsteen, in his epic song "Glory Days," called "boring stories, eh."

My hope is that my story will make you think about your own story. About where you are as a child of God, as a member of the human race, as someone's son or daughter, as someone's parent or spouse or partner, or perhaps as someone who has chosen to worship God in this beautiful place.

I'm a cradle Episcopalian and through my high school years, was active in my parish, a cathedral parish on the high plains of western Kansas. The dean of the cathedral, Frederick Litchman, was a hard-headed, high-church New Englander who, despite his austere countenance and intolerance of fools, especially young fools, inspired great loyalty in me and other youth. He also taught us a Christianity that went well beyond what we learned in Sunday school.

One quick example: in our Kansas town in the early 1960s, "urban renewal" had arrived, and what it meant then was that a neighborhood of older, smaller homes, which housed a good portion of the town’s minority population, would be bulldozed, replaced by a park and a new Interstate exit ramp.

The residents of this renewed neighborhood would be relocated to what had been military housing on the other side of town, near a Strategic Air Command base.

Needless to say, the residents weren't in favor of being renewed, let alone being removed, or having their houses and their churches torn down. They fought the renewal effort in court, and lost. The pastor of a Baptist church in the neighborhood organized a protest, but few outside that African American community listened. Finally, the town fathers, impatient, decided to proceed with demolition, got a court order to back up the decision, and then sent the county sheriff to enforce it, authorizing him to remove the residents by force if necessary.

On the Saturday morning the bulldozers were set to begin their work, Dean Litchman assembled a squad of acolytes, with yours truly as crucifer, and the cathedral choir, and led us -- all vested -- in car pools to the demolition site. There we encountered a scene straight out of the movies. On one side, the Baptist pastor and several dozen of his flock stood, arm in arm. On the other were two bulldozers, engines running, and an assortment of sheriff's deputies, town police and highway patrolmen, batons at the ready. Right down the middle, led by the dean in his black biretta, stole and purple cassock, came the acolytes -- a crucifer and two candles -- and the choir of Christ Cathedral, singing "Onward Christian Soldiers." The sheriff, who knew most of us, shook his head, put the court order back in his pocket, and told the entourage of police and construction workers to go home.

That day, I saw the power of the Holy Spirit, acting through a small group of people and their priest, change minds, change lives and alter the course of events. The scene would stay with me, filed away deep in my mind. And deep it was. Indeed, within just a few short years after that Saturday morning -- when I had felt so close to God -- I began to fall away from the church, first through the haze of the later 1960's -- and by the way, anyone who tells you he or she remembers the 60's probably wasn’t there -- then the army and Vietnam, and then the launch of a professional career as a journalist, working for one of the most powerful, respected newspapers in the world. There were moments when I would edge back to my faith roots: a rocket and mortar attack in Vietnam, where I learned there truly were no atheists in foxholes. The difficult birth of a child, in which I found myself in serious negotiation with God.

Mostly, though, my wife Gail and I were simply too busy for church. To humor my parents, we would go on Christmas and Easter, usually. But the idea of giving money to the church? A non starter, for us. I was a journalist, not an investment banker. When our first child was born, Gail wanted to stay home with him through at least the pre-school years -- a nice idea but after a move to expensive New Jersey from inexpensive Detroit, an idea we quickly discovered we could no longer afford. She found weekend work, I became Mr. Mom on Saturday and Sunday, and we scraped by. A couple of bucks in the collection plate, even on Christmas, seemed a stretch.

That began to change with the birth of our second son. I had remembered enough of my religious heritage to know that the child needed to be baptized, even if I couldn’t remember quite why. We had Dean Litchman come out of retirement to baptize our first son at that cathedral in Kansas, but his declining health ruled that out the second time around. We had just moved to Pittsburgh with our newborn, didn't know a soul and so decided to church shop.

I would like to say my conversion began there, the day we walked into St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Brentwood, PA, with a baby and a four year old in tow. And in a way it did. We were greeted warmly, I got over the shock of the 1979 prayer book -- I had missed all the controversy that preceded its adoption -- we began to make lasting friends, our baby was baptized and, believe it or not, I soon found myself leading a bible study -- I hadn’t had to cram that hard since my western civ exams in college.

But as we became more involved in this Western Pennsylvania community, I found myself reflecting more and more on why I was back in church after all these years, and why it felt so right.

I recalled the example my Kansas parish and its cathedral dean had set in taking on the urban renewal bulldozers. And then it struck me: they had sought to follow the mind of Christ, even at personal risk, and they had prevailed.

In the epistle today, St. Paul tells the Hebrews that "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edge sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

What a concept! God knows who I am, sees through all my artful dodging and prevarication, and still chooses to be active in my life, moving me, and others like me to stop acting for ourselves and start acting on behalf of our families and friends and neighbors, even on behalf of our enemies, to let loose ties that bind us -- the ties of material want instead of material need, the ties of hate instead of love -- and free us for the truly good life!

My faith continues to be a roller coaster ride, but at each turn, I've come closer to grasping this essential truth: it is better to give than to receive.

St. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Billy Graham adds, "Give me five minutes with a person's check book, and I’ll show you where their heart is."

Thus, my conversion experience really began in that suburban Pittsburgh parish when Gail and I decided to begin giving regularly to the church we were coming to feel comfortable in.

It wasn't much at first -- probably around 2% of our income -- and it didn't always grow every year. But the more we gave, the more we gave. It wasn't only to the parish church either. Episcopal groups, charities of other denominations, secular non profits with humanitarian aims, educational institutions, art museums, all begin to get checks from the Austins. Not big checks, mind you, but regular ones. By the time we got to St. George's, we didn’t need to be told twice about the importance of stewardship -- writing out a check every week and putting it in those little envelops had become a pleasurable habit. Eventually, and I do mean eventually, we realized that our annual total giving amounted to about 10% of our gross income -- the biblical tithe -- and that we weren't missing a penny of it.

I'm still not sure I would be comfortable with Billy Graham or Bernie Poppe looking at my checkbook. They might wonder about the check to Dave's liquors for a case of that great pinot, or might be inclined to ask if I really needed a new car every three years. Moreover, I know that financial circumstances change. When our last child graduated from college, and I was no longer on a first-name basis with the Cornell bursar's office, it felt like I had gotten a gigantic raise. We were happy to share some of this windfall with the rest of God's creation. On the other hand, last February, in a variation of Jesus' warning that he who lives by the sword shall die by it, a corporate restructuring and cost-cutting effort eliminated my position and sent me into an unplanned retirement.

Our financial situation is now unclear. I got a decent severance payment, but while I'm now close to accepting another job, I know it won't pay nearly as well. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter. We'll get by -- we’ve lived on hot dogs and beans before, and we'll do so again if necessary. We have learned to be good stewards of whatever we are given, and to give cheerfully in return. St. George's, this wonderful parish with its great people, ministries and outreach, along with other very worthy causes and groups, will still get 10% of whatever we have. How could we not support this loving community! More important, I will continue to wake every morning, rain or shine, and say silently or aloud, "Good morning, God!"

Amen.

© 2006 Dan Austin

Annual Meeting Sunday

By Ulysses Dietz, Senior Warden

Today's scripture was all about water, and about being called into a covenant with God symbolized by water. In Genesis God called Noah to build the ark and save his family from the Flood. God's rainbow was his guarantee that he would never again abandon humankind. The Epistle of Peter reiterates that covenant, comparing the Flood to baptism (which is a creative way to think about it) just as baptism is God's call to us to be cleansed of our sins and get ready to do God's work. The Gospel focused on Jesus' own baptism in the Jordan, and his call to go into the wilderness in preparation for his final call: to give himself in sacrifice to save all of us. What strikes me particularly about these parallel stories is that neither Noah nor Jesus remotely wanted to do what they were called to do. We don't always answer God's call willingly.

We are baptized, most of us, without our consent. We are called to be part of God's covenant with mankind for our own good by our families. It is later, first at confirmation, and then when we join a church as adults, that we are called to fulfill the promise of that baptism; to live into the covenant with God that baptism represents.

Each of us is called to do the work God has given us to do. We are not, however, called to do all that work flawlessly. And there is often a substantial difference between what we are called to do and what we want to do. In some ways that lifelong tension between what we are called to do and what we want to do defines us as humans.

This past Thursday evening, as I was setting up for a funeral, I was standing up at the high altar, smoothing the fair linen down after having changed the frontal from purple to white. My cell phone rang. It was the marketing director at The Newark Museum, urgently trying to find me to ask me to write up something that night for a promotional collaboration with the NJ Performing Arts Center for next year. Something about trying to connect a show about the Rat Pack (you know, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin?) with an exhibition I'm planning on contemporary studio glass in 2007. Somehow I had trouble seeing the connection.

This week at work I was also called to draft a letter for my boss to take to Governor Corzine to sign, to try to convince the CEO of a huge corporation not to sell of part of the Lenox China archives at auction, because we think it should stay in New Jersey. And I had to draft a fact sheet so that my boss could explain to the governor why we are asking him to sign the letter. In the meantime, I was trying to work on the text and labels for an exhibition of jewelry (called Objects of Desire) that I'm opening in early May, and I also had to finalize the checklist and text panels and label copy for a huge exhibition of 20th-century ceramics from the Museum's collection that opens next week in a corporate art gallery in New York -- which I spent all day Friday installing, and which I will spend all day Monday installing. And I had to assemble the slides and write the script for a lecture I'm giving on the evolution of the American home at a Drew University fundraiser next Sunday afternoon. And on Wednesday I had to visit an elderly couple in Teaneck, whose middle-aged daughter is dying and who therefore want to leave the museum the collection of art pottery they had intended to leave to her.

And I was called this week to leave work early to take my son to get his next round of braces and learn how to crank up his palette expander each night for the next six weeks; and to go into work late so Gary and I could meet with our daughter's teachers and discuss how we're going to arrange her special education resources at school next year; and help her through the fourth-grade-build-a-model-of-the-solar-system project; and celebrate our son's 10th anniversary of his arrival from Guatemala; and try to teach Gracie what a perimeter is, even though she totally didn't get it; and sit and do long division problems with Alex, even though he totally does get it and just likes me to do the work with him. And I was called to sit and watch the Daily Show with Gary at 11:00 each evening, which is virtually the only time we have alone together on any given day.

St. George's called me to do the flowers for church last Sunday, and clean up after the eight-o'clock service; and count the money with Kirk Petersen after the service (did we ever get the bank key back?); and during the week I needed to set up three Ash Wednesday Eucharist services for Bernie, as well as the funeral I mentioned before; and then I had to gather the biographies I'd forgotten to gather last week for the candidates for vestry for whom you'll be voting this morning; and poll the vestry about who would bring what for the lunch you'll be eating after this service; And also wash and iron a load of altar linens from last week, which I brought in this morning. Oh, and write this sermon.

And that was just last week. It reminds me of a T-shirt I saw once. On the front it said:

GOD PUT ME ON THIS EARTH
TO ACCOMPLISH A
CERTAIN NUMBER OF THINGS.

And on the back it read:

I AM SO FAR BEHIND
I WILL NEVER DIE.

We all feel this way sometimes. Perhaps too much of the time.

Beginning with our baptismal covenant, we make covenants in many aspects of our lives. We make a covenant with our employer (ok, a contract), by which we are bound to serve and for which we receive money. Unfortunately, employers sometimes don't see their covenant with us in quite the same terms that God does.

We make a covenant with our friends; and with our spouses; and when we are called to parenthood, we make a very special covenant with those children. (When you adopt, that covenant is made quite literal by the adoption process, but it only underscores the truth for anyone who is charged with the welfare of a child). These covenants with people are, to me, the most important covenants we make in our lives, for in them we most closely emulate God's covenant with us.

When we, as Christians and Episcopalians, become members of a parish; we are called to enter into a covenant with a community. We are called to live out our baptismal covenant with God by being part of that community. Notice that on the weekly bulletins that all the people of St. George's are called its ministers. We say that for a reason. Without all of you -- you sitting here in this building now and those St. Georgians who are somewhere else right now -- there would be no St. George's. A church is defined by its people; the priest may set the tone, but without the people he or she is just a lonely soul in an empty building. How each of us answers our call to do this part of God's work defines what St. George's is today, and what it will be in the future.

Some of us are called simply to go to church on Sunday. That is a precious calling in this secular world, where it sometimes seems that only fundamentalists and the extremely orthodox go to church regularly. This is to me a terribly important way to live out our baptismal covenant. However, as well all know, perfect attendance in church won't get the work done and it won't pay the bills. That is why we are called to be ministers and not only worshipers.

Some of us are called to get involved in Parish ministries, committees and task forces; ranging from staging Broadway shows to Bible study, to hosting coffee hour to knitting afghans to washing and ironing the altar linens. Some of us are called by a specific talent to, say, sing in the choir or sit on the Capital Projects Committee. Some of us, because of our particular skills, are called to avoid anything that remotely resembles what we do in "real life." Some of us are called to try out different things at St. George's over time; others to do various different things all at the same time. And, luckily for us all, some of us are called to be leaders, and to chair ministries and committees and task forces -- and to run for Vestry.

The Year 2005 at St. George's was an amazing year. We as a parish were called to do a tremendous amount of God's work. A wide variety of Centennial events filled the calendar, and if that wasn't enough, we embarked upon the first year of a three-year capital campaign, to raise money so that we can begin to transform this group of old buildings into a place where we can all live out our baptismal covenant more effectively and in community with each other.

We have, so far, managed to gather pledges to the tune of $660,000 for the capital campaign. While this won't let us accomplish everything we have dreamed of doing with our church and our parish hall and our resource center, it will certainly get us well along the road to fulfill our dreams for the future.

Perhaps most amazing to me is the fact that our centennial year was also the most brutal year in my memory in terms of global natural disasters; and from the pews in this parish we also raised some $20,000 in special charitable contributions to assist those in this world who have suffered.

And on top of all of this, the people of St. George's have been called to pledge some $270,000 in stewardship, to keep the lights on and the phones answered and the floors mopped for 2006. Part of that stewardship pledge will help St. George's keep its covenant with the Diocese of Newark; and in turn that will help the Diocese keep its covenant with the National Episcopal Church. We here at St. George's are part of a global covenant.

We are called to do many things to live out our baptismal covenant with God. But only God can give us the will to do that work in all its different aspects, with our time, with our talents, and with our money. Not everything that we want to do will get done in 2006. There are things that each of us might like to see happen this year that simply won't happen. This is true in our work lives; this is true in our home lives; and this is true in our lives as ministers of St. George's. This is not failure. This is reality. We can only do what we have the will to do.

Each week in the post communion prayer we ask God to "send us out into the world to do the work you have given us to do." This is not a guarantee that we will accomplish everything we want to do, or even everything we need to do. But it is a guarantee that God will be with us each step of the way. The moment that sacred water was poured on our heads in baptism, we received that guarantee.

For me, it is this guarantee of God's unwavering love that lets me face each day sure that, whether I succeed or fail, I will not be doing it alone.

Amen.

© 2006 Ulysses Dietz