Across the Tracks

Christ bridges the gap that divides us, no matter its consistency or form...



Epiphany 3a 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.

Two weeks ago I told you a story that involved people who live “on the other side of the tracks.” Not every town has a railroad, of course, but almost every town and country has a way of dividing the haves from the have-nots, the rich from the poor. Sometimes the dividing line is as clear as a railroad track, cutting across a field and separating those on the poorer side from those on the side that is more well to do; you can stand on those tracks and look one way to see the rough shacks lining the dirt and gravel roads, and look the other way to see the neatly painted homes with green lawns facing paved streets.

In our part of the world, here in the Beautiful Bronx, the tracks don’t run side to side, but up and down. You can’t help but notice that the subway trains are literally “sub” in most of posh Manhattan, but that they suddenly come above-ground once they hit Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens! It is no accident that the tracks — and the noisy Number 1 trains they carry — come above ground on Broadway just at 125th street on the West Side, and the commuter trains out of Grand Central emerge at 98th Street on the East. Welcome to Harlem... surprise, surprise.

Closer to home, in fact, just outside those very doors, when the Lexington Avenue train came north along Jerome Avenue in the teen years of the last century, the leaders of this parish tried to convince the city to run it underground at least from Burnside to Kingsbridge. Sad to say, the bloom was off the rose at Saint James by that point, and the membership — which a generation before had included the Mayor of New York himself and many of the other City bigwigs — was no longer so powerful or persuasive, certainly not as successful as their counterparts over on Grand Concourse, at the time truly grand as it was meant to be New York’s version of the Champs Elysée in Paris — so while the D train runs underground out of sight, out of mind, under the Grand Concourse with no visible tracks or train to upset the carriage trade, here on Jerome Avenue we’ve had to live with the clickety-clack, don’t talk back, for almost a hundred years.

As I say, every culture and country has its way to distinguish the in from the out, the rich from the poor, the posh from the hoi polloi. It isn’t always as obvious as a railway train or its tracks. For the folks of the Prep Schools and the Ivy League, it might be the accents of the rednecks of the deep South. For the farmers of the Great Plains, it might be the manners and airs of those suspiciously effete people who live on the coasts — East and West. For the Russians it might be the language and customs of the Uzbecks; for Australians, those of the aborigines.

Sometimes there are subdivisions even within these divisions, separating the merely poor from the desperately poor. It is one of the sad relics of the institution of slavery that there was a class distinction even among slaves, as house slaves looked down on field slaves. If you saw the Django Unchained film last year or Twelve Years A Slave this year, you know and can see just how hard and terrible those divisions could be, even within that oppressive horrible institution — some still thought of themselves as better than others.

Ancient Israel was no different. The center of things was in Jerusalem of Judea. But far to the north there was a place that the Judeans regarded as a place of darkness. It was so overrun with Gentiles and their pagan ways you might just as well write off the Jews who lived there as pagans themselves — “Galilee of the nations,” they called it; and “nations” is just English for “Gentiles,” pagans, literally “ethnics.”

And the early church was no better, as we see from Paul’s First Letter to the church in Corinth, where people have already started to divide up as they place their bets respectively on Paul or Apollos or Cephas. Sectarianism and denominationalism is nothing new in Christianity! No culture or institution seems to be immune from divisions and disagreements — even one like the church, which is supposed to be the loving family of God.

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The good news is that it is into these very divisions and disagreements, into these very dark corners of the land, that the grace of God and the light of Christ have come to shine. This should come as no surprise, for after all Christ reminded us that it is the sick who need a physician — it is those who are divided who need to be united, and it is the dark places that need light! And Jesus is not only the Good Physician who comes to bring healing, but he is the Light of God to shine in the darkness, and the source of unity to overcome division.

The people who walked in darkness have been shown a great light; a great light has shined upon them — and as Pogo so wisely said, “they is us.”

For as long as there is division and dissent and discourtesy, as long as there is a sense of who is in or who is out, of rich or poor measured only by the outward signs of dress or accent or bankbook or “income inequality,” of divisions and pride based on race or culture or clan, or even division within the Christian family based on which Christian teacher one chooses to follow — as long as such virtual train tracks divide us, we are walking in darkness indeed — or worse than walking, maybe riding an express train to perdition.

All is not lost, however. The light has shone forth in the darkness — as Jesus began his ministry precisely in that dark land that the pious Judeans of Jerusalem thought was lost and beyond saving. You may recall how they scoffed and said, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee!” Yet that is just where Jesus begins and carries out most of his ministry. It is right there, right by the sea, by the beautiful sea, that he gathers the beginnings of the apostolic band, he gathers those followers, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; along with the sons of Zebedee, our patron James and his brother John. This is the land on which the light of the world first shined his Gospel acclamation, the roads upon which he set his feet, and set his hands to work, proclaiming the good news and curing every disease and every sickness among the people, and especially the sickness of division.

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The medicine this Good Physician applied continues to be available to us today — and it is plentiful and free. It is the water of baptism, the water in which all Christians are baptized, and which should thereby remind us that we are one in Christ, not divided one against another, or in teams or sects or subdivisions following other teachers. Saint Paul reminded the Corinthians of this truth, when he reproached them, in strong language, for their quarrels. “Is Christ divided? Was I, Paul, crucified for you? In whose name were you baptized?” For it is Christ and Christ alone into whom and in whose name we were baptized. That simple fact should stop us in our tracks — if those tracks are meant to divide us!

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So let us not, my sisters and brothers in Christ, let the tracks of trains, or the signs of race or language, or of religious distinctions, divide us when the great unifying light of Christ is shining on us, when the plentiful water of the one baptism has washed over us, making us one people worshiping one Lord and proclaiming one faith. To all who have been saved and are being saved and will be saved — by Christ — this is the power and the love of God, in whose name we pray, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.+

Christ Our Captain

SJF • Proper 12b 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.+

It is good to be back from the meeting of the General Convention. I have to say that at times it felt a great deal like being in that windblown boat with the disciples on Lake Galilee. There was, as usual, controversy to spare, and the usual moments of high drama.

But as anyone who knows the history of the church or who can read the epistles of Peter and Paul knows, there is nothing new to controversy in the church. As with most aspects of life, there are ups and downs, ins and outs, and tos and fros. Paul describes the situation as like that of children being tossed to and fro and being blown about by powerful winds. I can imagine he may have been referring to the amount of hot air that emanated from some of the people with whom he had to contend, especially the ones he called “super apostles.” Of course, Paul himself was no lightweight when it came to rhetoric and he could blast his opponents with a force to equal whatever it was they blew in his direction.

What’s strange, though, is that we think of the church as a source of stability — and there have been times in history when the church did provide a shelter from the stormy blast; for example, when the northern barbarians were besieging the Mediterranean world, the church was largely responsible for holding that civilization together.

But the times when the church has served as ballast for the rocky boat of the world seem to be few and far between. More often than not the church was not the brake to slow things down in a runaway world, but the engine that drove the conflict. Like a mad Captain Ahab, instead of cutting sail in the midst of the storm, the church’s leaders sometimes put up even more canvas, and drove the boat onto the rocks. To use another analogy, far from quenching the flames of a world gone mad, the church has often played chief arsonist, and added fuel to the fire.

Sometimes, of course, those flames were literal. During the English Reformation — that long struggle through much of the reign of Henry VIII, all of the reigns of his son Edward and his daughter “Bloody” Mary, and well into the reign of Elizabeth I, who finally settled things down to a simmer — all through those 30 years from about 1530 to 1560 people on both sides of the raging ecclesiastical storm were imprisoned, executed, and sometimes even burned at the stake because of the controversies in which the church was embroiled.

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The long and short of it is that looking to the church as a source of stability in and of itself is looking in the wrong direction. It seems the more trust people put in the institution the more suspicious we should become. If the sinking of the Titanic taught us anything it is to be cautious when people try to assure you that a vessel is unsinkable or infallible.

So, if the institutional church is not going to be a source of stability, a trustworthy vehicle, where can we look for security and a sure promise. I think we need to look no further than to Jesus Christ himself. Notice how the winds rocking of the disciples’ boat only stop when they let Jesus get into the boat with them. I sometimes wonder if Jesus was at all welcome on either side in the churches of the Reformation — if those who were so eager to silence each other, imprison each other, or burn each other up, would have recognized Jesus or been recognized by him. I can imagine them looking at the Prince of Peace as he passes them by on the stormy sea, as they are hard at work at the oars, as he urges them to calm and charity, and saying, “Who are you? We are doing the work of God!” — burning each other up! Being unable to see the presence of God and hear God’s message can afflict anyone, especially when the demands God places upon us conflict with the contrary devices and desires of our own all too human hearts.

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I’m reminded of the story about Abraham Lincoln’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Edwards. She had never really approved of her sister Mary Todd marrying that lanky country bumpkin. Even after his assassination and towards the end of Mary’s unhappy life when Elizabeth rescued her from the insane asylum she had been committed to, and took her into her home, Elizabeth still nursed resentment — a resentment not aided by the fact that Lincoln had removed her husband Ninian from a government post in which he had performed poorly.

But then one night Elizabeth had a dream. In the dream, there was a knock at the door; she went to open it, and there, standing outside, was Jesus. But he had bare feet, and those feet had not been washed recently; his seamless robe was dusty, and his hair and beard were wild. And so she wouldn’t let him in!

Fortunately, when she woke from this dream she realized what her resentment about Lincoln had done to her own life — she had missed the chance to come to know one of the wisest and best men of that century; and had been harsh to her sister as well.

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How often have the members of the church refused to let Jesus in because he didn’t meet our expectations — didn’t let him in to our home, or our boat, or our hearts, or our church? It seems sometimes we would rather be tossed about in the storm, or blown to and fro by the winds of eccentric doctrines, even to give ourselves to the mercies of pirates or mutineers, rather than to find the calm and settled state that can come only if we let Jesus in.

It is hard, of course, to live up to what Jesus expects of us; as Paul says, “to live a life that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

It is hard to do this, and we cannot do it on our own. Our General Convention has tried to do this: being truthful about where we stand and what we stand for, in our willingness and our desire to remain in communion with our brothers and sisters around the world, while still standing — as we believe we do — with Christ in his Gospel based on love and forgiveness, and respect for the dignity of every human being. It is only when we do this, standing with Jesus because we have let him into our hearts, our homes, our church, that we can be stabilized by his presence and inspired by his Spirit to do all we are called to do. It is only through his presence that we receive the gifts with which he means to equip the church to do the work of the ministry we are called to do. It is only through him that we are empowered to pass through the changes and chances of this life, the temporal ups and downs of the rocky ride the world will take us through, so that we do not lose hold of that which is eternal.

It is only by holding fast to him, the way a drowning person holds fast to a life preserver; it is only by allowing him to come aboard and captain our boat, that we will safely come to port. The church, after all, is his, not ours: we are only passengers and crew; and we had best not spend our time fighting among ourselves but put our elbows and backs into the work of keeping the church shipshape.

We need not fear the winds of tempestuous doctrines, or the trickery of those who spend their hours scheming in craftiness, the pirates and the mutineers. With our hearts open to Christ, the only wind that need concern us is the blessed wind of the Holy Spirit. We have the Scripture for our chart, the cross as our compass, and our captain at the helm — and, God bless us, it is Jesus Christ our Lord.+

The Fire Alarm

SJF • Epiphany 3b 2009 • Tobias Haller BSG
And immediately they left their nets and followed him.+

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, once said that the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater. He was assuming, of course, that there was no fire. It would indeed be a dangerous prank to shout “Fire” in any crowded place — when there is no fire. People could be seriously injured, maybe even killed, in the panic.

But what if there is a fire? What if there is some imminent danger and you see it? What do the signs in the subway warn us? “Si ves algo, di algo — if you see something, say something.” Surely it is incumbent upon you to do something to warn those around you of danger they — and you — are in, and shouting might just be the best way to do it. This is part of our understanding of civic duty — the responsibility we bear for one another. And it is no accident that the ancient rabbis taught that one of the principle failings of the wicked city of Sodom was precisely that people there did not look after one another, did not look out for others. It was said that the people of that wicked town were the sort who if they saw both your and their house on fire, would fight the fire at their own house but leave yours to burn.

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In today’s Gospel Jesus bursts upon the scene fresh from his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, which in the headlong style of Mark’s Gospel have taken up only the first thirteen verses. We are hardly off the first page, and yet the story presses on. The story has hardly begun and here is Jesus storming in and crying out, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And immediately, to use one of Mark’s favorite words, immediately he calls those four disciples — Simon, Andrew, our own patron James and his brother John — and immediately they follow him, leaving behind their nets, their boats, and in the case of the two sons of Zebedee, their bewildered father and the hired servants. It is as if Jesus has burst into the crowded theater and shouted, “Fire!” and the audience has jumped up and run for the exits, tossing buckets of popcorn in the air and leaving their coats and handbags behind in the rush to escape the disaster.

That is the immediacy with which Jesus delivered his message, and the immediacy with which the received it — at least by some of those who heard it. And let us recall what “immediate” means — with nothing in between, no intermission, no transition or connection. Those who follow Jesus will leave behind all the connections to their former lives: their nets, their boats, even their families. They will be transformed into disciples, and given a new task, to fish for people. And it happens all at once, without preparation or warning or transition. Jesus calls; they follow; no questions asked — immediately.

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It seems strange then to turn to our reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In contrast with the panicked immediacy of Mark’s gospel it is as if Saint Paul is saying, “Not so fast!” He says, “Let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned,” and later, “Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.” Could it be, after Jesus calls out, “Fire!” that Paul should counter, “Sorry folks; false alarm”? Of course not, and if we look more closely at what Paul is saying, we can learn that far from contradicting Jesus’ gospel, Paul’s warning is — in its own way — a realization of it.

Paul is not saying, ignore the call of Christ: on the contrary Paul is saying that Christ is calling at least some of the Corinthians to do what they are already doing, because that is what God wants. Let each of you lead the life, he says, that the Lord assigned, and the state in which God has called you.

While Jesus did and does call some to leave their nets and boats and families behind to follow him as disciples on the road, Paul assures the Corinthians that Jesus also calls some people — in fact most people — to stay right where they are, right as they are, to “bloom where they are planted” as the old saying goes. Paul assures us that God calls some to stay put and do the work God has given them to do with singleness of heart, and to do that work with the newly discovered commission that it is God’s work, and that the kingdom needs those who toil at home as much as it needs those who toil on the road. And what could be more immediate than continuation? Continuing to do God’s work without intermission, being assured at last that this is the task the Lord has assigned? Discipleship takes many forms: for some it means totally changing their lives, for others, a deeper commitment to the life they already lead.

For what matters ultimately is how one’s heart stands with God, how well one’s heart is attuned to God’s will for each and every one of us. The Corinthian congregation was being split apart by some troublemakers who were insisting that in order for Gentile men to become Christian they had to be circumcised. Others felt that anyone who had given in to that teaching had betrayed the faith, and should seek to remove the marks of circumcision. It is hard for us to imagine the church being torn apart over such matters, though we have been through many similar debates in recent years, which centuries or decades from now may seem just as absurd as the circumcision argument did to Saint Paul. “Circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing,” Paul affirms, “but obeying the commandments of God is everything. Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.” The problem, of course, as I’m sure some of the Corinthians must have said to Paul, is that the Scripture was clear. The Scripture demanded circumcision of any Gentile male who wanted to be part of the holy people, anyone who wanted to eat of the Passover. But as Paul would also say to the Corinthians, “That was then; this is now. Since Christ has come, he is our Passover who has been sacrificed for us. Things have changed, and Paul is trying to get the Corinthians to hear God’s call to them in the blood of Jesus, over the noise of their squabbles — and they squabbled over just about everything, spending their time in useless controversies instead of building up the church for which Christ died and rose again, and to whom he gave his body and his blood. That is the thing Paul keeps trying to call them back to again and again — the significance of that holy meal, the Holy Eucharist. But, of course, they even argued about that!

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This is a powerful lesson for us. This is a lesson for us as a congregation, and a lesson for all Christian congregations, a warning not to act like the Corinthians and let the church fall apart over matters about which God doesn’t give a hoot.

But there is also a lesson for us as individuals. Some of us will be called to life-changing tasks, like the fishermen by the sea-side, called to follow Jesus by leaving behind the nets of entanglement with the old life, abandoning the boats that provided security and livelihood, and even forsaking the comfort and support of family and home. Other of us, and if we can judge from Paul it will be the majority, will be called to follow Jesus by finding his commandments for us in our hearts, by discovering, like little Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” that there’s no place like home, and that we can be most effective blooming where we’re planted, bearing fruit in season and flourishing with leaves that do not wither.

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Downstairs in my office is a picture of a liturgy in this church from about 1985, and I can see myself in it, and I’m sitting right there. Father Basil Law is opposite on the other side, as Bishop Paul Moore preaches in the aisle. I had no idea at the time that God would call me one day to follow him on a path that would lead me to seminary and to priesthood, and a parish up in Yonkers; but then by his grace to be planted right back here just a few feet from where I was almost 25 years ago!

But that is how the call of God works sometimes. Sometimes when God yells out “Fire” you will discover that the fire is in your own heart, and it is a fire God doesn’t want you to put out, but to share, and God will help you find the place to share it best, if you will let him. That is what Paul tried to tell the difficult Corinthians, that by squabbling over the gift they were destroying it, like peevish children who fight over a toy and end up breaking it beyond repair, and neither of them can enjoy it. God calls us, all of us and each of us, sometimes to journey, sometimes to remain, but always to be his. God calls us each by name as I said two weeks ago, and gives us each a task as I said last week. He knows our going out and our coming in, our rising up to follow on the road, or our sitting down to work where we are. May we — each of us and all of us — answer his call, be faithful to our task, and ever conscious of his presence, the burning of the Holy Spirit, the fire of his love in our hearts; to whom we give — as Father Basil Law was always wont to say from this pulpit — as is most justly due, all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forever more.+