April 19, 2024

 

Hey Friends,

I hope a number of you were able to enjoy the Reel to Real presentation about Mother Cabrini. There’s still some time to see the movie about her. But the real legacy she leaves, of loving your neighbor and helping them, is always available. We’re touring First Letter of John this Easter season, a letter that tries to explain God’s love to the church. It boils down to this one thing: God loves us so we can love each other. That entails help, forgiveness, laughter, sorrow—companionship. He calls his church his little children, that is, a family of faith. And that’s what God makes all of us, as different as we may be.

There is no need to be scared of differences between, just as there is no need to steer clear of what is the same. One of my favorite quotes from the Daniel Tiger/Mr. Tiger's universe is “in many ways we're different and in many ways we're the same.” We need to lean in on both: my brother is different than I am, a wholly distinct person, the protagonist of their own epic. But we are the same blood, same kind, sharing the same needs. We are pieces that fit together, sharp edges and deficits finding the right space for one another. In the Christian community we honor our differences and celebrate our unity. If I were a more accomplished scientist, I’d have something smart to say about polarization and polarity, but the spectrum of people God has made is beautiful and needful. It’s good for us to make our community in that image.

Speaking of forgiveness, I hope you can forgive the Zoom audio that past couple of weeks. We got new speakers which involved a lot of tweaking. I thought it meant mostly tweaking inside the sanctuary, but it turns out it also meant tweaking for Zoom. Jesse came by and twiddled various knobs this week, and we think everything is ready to go for Sunday. If you’re a Zoom person, tune in to find out!

See you soon,

Pastor John

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April 12, 2024

 

Dear Friends,


Just up the hill from us, in very mid-century modern building, overlooking the river, lies one of creepiest things I've ever seen: the full wax replica of Mother Cabrini’s body encased in glass under the altar. Maybe it was my introduction to it: when I first went to the shrine I asked about the church and the woman behind the gift shop counter leaned forward into me and pointed towards the sanctuary and said, “She’s waiting for you,” as if she were a very hungry and carnivorous goblin. 

It’s too bad, because Mother Cabrini was an amazing person. She deserves our reverence and remembrance. As a Protestant, I have to insist that this is not because she was superhuman, or somehow perfect and without flaws, but because through her, the work of God was revealed in a particular way—the welcome of the stranger, the outcast, the neglected. In her time, there was great strife between the Italians and the Irish, and the Catholic church in New York City was mostly an Irish affair. Some parish priests kept the Italians in the basement for worship because they were “dirty”, that universal word for racism that never seems to go away. Mother Cabrini had suffered racist names, racist attitudes and actions, and in many ways suffered the same things immigrants today suffer. But she persevered, and now is remembered by people of all faiths as a model of service and love.

There’s a movie out about her these days, brought to you by the people that also do the show The Chosen. It’s got great reviews, and it’s really fun and dramatic. But if you want to take some time to find out what’s real and what’s “reel” about Mother Cabrini, come with some folks from OSA to the Cabrini Shrine on the 18th at 6:30. Sign up at this link to go, or just show up. It’s a great way to learn about one of New York’s great heroes, and faithful Christian whose life can inspire us today.

Talk to you soon,

Pastor John

 

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April 5, 2024

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Dear Friends,

He is risen!

After the storm the sun comes out, and what a glorious day it is. Sometimes it feels like the worse the storm, the more glorious the day—except, of course, when by the light of day you see all the wreckage the storm left behind. But the storm of Good Friday is the opposite: it brings healing and renewal and a day more glorious than any could be, the day of Jesus’ rising. It’s pretty great.

I’d like to invite you to our game night—family friendly fun at 6:30 tonight in the sanctuary. Bring your favorite game (Frances has already made a plan to write charade prompts and put them in a bowl, but she’ll need some teammates) and snacks and settle in for fun. I hope to see you there.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be concentrating on the First Letter of John in my preaching—or at least I think I will be. You never know what the future holds, really, and I may have to shift focus. But if all goes according to plan, we’ll spend a lot of time with this letter, one of the most tender and loving letters in the Bible. It’s a mystagogical letter, which means it’s trying to teach the mysteries of the faith—Christ is risen, perhaps, being the most mystagogical mystery of all.

Next week, we’re starting our class on Isaiah, Thursdays at noon on Zoom. Isaiah is the most quoted book of the New Testament, and we’ll be approaching it from that perspective. I think that class will last about 6-8 weeks. Just read the first four chapters by Thursday, or don’t, and just join us. Watch out for the link to the class.

Finally, I hope you take some time to get outside while the weather is nice. Take a nature bath—leave your phone behind. Just go until your mind slows down and your body wakes up and say a prayer to the One who created all that you see, whose goodness is everlasting, whose grace never fails.

See you soon,

Pastor John

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March 28, 2024

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Dear Friends,

It is the peak of the church year, here at OSA, and across the world. Everywhere people are preparing their Easter feasts and ready to end their Lenten fasts. Tonight we turn to the cross, where our Lord suffered for us—tomorrow we visit the tomb, where we will not find him. Sunday we celebrate the risen Christ, who has fulfilled the Father's will and through whom God will fulfill all his promises. So, obviously, there will be a potluck. Bring food and friends. It’s spring. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Strangely enough, I’m feeling a lot of hope this year at Good Friday. I don’t know why. The evidence for hope is mixed a best. The ice caps are melting, the ocean currents are changing, the wildfires are smoldering across the earth. Ships, so long unregulated and under-inspected, brought down a bridge, unleashing nightmares (at least in me—every time I drive over a bridge on my way to D.C. I imagine falling off and I shudder). 

But the cross is a hopeless situation. If anything is a nadir, the cross is it. How can death be overcome? Doesn’t it seem like it’s the end? The disciples all huddled in secret rooms in fear. This is the one they thought was the Messiah—how foolish they must have felt, how let down. Of course they loved him still, but—it’s hard to say you upended your entire life for a mistake.

But the cross, the nadir, this darkness, was necessary, as necessary as death in a tragic play. Jesus takes all of us, everything, into his life. And that means death, too. It was just the final step, God’s last wish. Or should I say penultimate wish—God’s last wish was to hearken back to before the dawn of time and say, “Let him be raised,” and he was raised.

If Christ is raised from the dead, then what should I call impossible? What business have I with despair?

That’s why I’m filled with hope this year. No matter what comes, God is in charge. Nothing can stop God. Ain’t no grave can keep my body down, as the old hymn says, and ain’t no news that can keep my soul encumbered. We have a great and glorious God, and we will spend all week singing his song.

Hope you can join us.


Pastor John

 

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March 22, 2024

 

Dear Friends,

This week is Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday. Our journey through Lent has reached its climax: now we remember Jesus’s long ride from the country to the city, surrounded by the shouts of the public, the acclamation of the people, a ride that took him to the heart of faith and public life, which he would proceed to disrupt and condemn.

It’s easy to experience the story with the patina of hindsight. We often, out of necessity, isolate and highlight passages of Jesus’s story, but the Gospels are a narrative, tightly constructed—there’s a reason they’ve survived so long. Ride on, ride on, in majesty, the hymn goes, but in Mark, Jesus rides on, rides in, and causes trouble for three chapters, about a sixth of the length of the Gospel. He takes a whip and drives out the moneychangers from the temple, he mocks the religious leaders with thinly veiled stories about their ignorance, he defeats their traps and arguments, he renders them speechless when he asks them questions. Finally, he predicts the immolation of the system, and says the whole place will crumble.

All of this can lead to one place: the commemoration of Good Friday, Jesus’ death, and the apparent victory of the powers over the peasant from Nazareth. Troublemakers like Jesus usually wind up dead, hanging from some death-dealing device somewhere. Should be the end of the story.

It can be tempting, hearing the story told this way, to think of Jesus as a revolutionary. Indeed, his story can be told in so many different ways: radical, revolutionary, even reactionary. But our political overlays of Jesus’ ministry, while valid in some ways, must always fall short. Because Jesus, much to the chagrin of the people waving palms and laying their coats on the road, is not interested in those sorts of things. They will be byproducts in time, but not the point. Rather he is here to save us from the morass that chews us up every day until it swallows us into oblivion. He will steer us through death to the power of life that lies only in God’s hands.

If you want a revolution, this is a great disappointment. If you think that you have a way to God built on system, or perhaps a method of assuagement or exchange, this is a threat. If you think the point of the universe has nothing to do with God, or that there is no point to the universe, then this is nonsense. But that’s what this ride does—it pulls you into a choice. It’s not revolution, although revolutions will follow; it’s not a deal with the gods, although it is worship; it is meaning that finds us, rather than meaning that we impose on what is out there.

And that’s why the Gospel is always a threat and always discomfiting, wherever it happens. Our ways are not God’s ways, nor are our thoughts God’s thoughts. It’s a continual surprise to find that out, but that’s the truth, and that’s what’s happening this Sunday at OSA.

See you soon,

Pastor John

 

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