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Sherman & Sobeyia Richmond

3/25/2021

Sherman and Sobeyia have been volunteering for several months with our Food Justice Ministry. In addition, they were the main power behind the transformation of our parish hall into a room that could host the vaccination clinic this past month!

They are Episcopalians and had been going to another church, when they discovered Church of the Mediator, which is much closer to their home. We are so glad to have them!

Lourdes DeJesus

3/25/2021

Lourdes DeJesus has lived in the Marble Hill area for 17 years. Prior to that she grew up in the Kingsbridge Road area for many years. She has been a city employee for the past 20 years. She currently works as an Executive Assistant at the Bureau of Learning & Development which is the central course of training within New York City government for managerial, clerical, professional and technical employees which takes place in their training center.

Hobbies: traveling, hiking, foodie

Aaron Miner

3/25/2021

Aaron Miner is a recent graduate of Union Theological Seminary, and a candidate for ordination in the ELCA. Growing up in a conservative church, he struggled to reconcile his Christian identity with his identity as a queer transgender person. As an adult, he found spiritual community in a storefront Lutheran church in the Bronx, where he helped build a radically inclusive drop-in ministry. He works as a database developer. He enjoys spending time with his two teenage kids, going on long urban hikes, and cooking with friends and family. He sees church as a place for healing, community building, imagining a different world, and beginning to see ourselves and each other with God’s delight.

Fiery Serpents

3/14/2021

Num 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21;Ps 107:1-3, 17-22

We begin our remarkable set of scriptures this morning with the story in Exodus of the wilting courage and growing anger of the Israelites in the wilderness. They are so sick of Manna. They cry out to Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” And “We detest this miserable food!” They thought the worst thing about the wilderness was the lack of food and water, but that was before they met the poisonous serpents.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word used in Exodus for these poisonous serpents is “Seraphim.” The exact same word that Isaiah uses for the angelic beings in the famous story of his calling. Isaiah’s winged angels spent their time calling back and forth to each other these familiar words: “Holy Holy Holy Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory…”

Then one of these winged beings brings a glowing hot coal to the reportedly unclean lips of Isaiah, his lips are made clean, and he says to the Lord, “Here am I, send me.”

The Old Testament goes back and forth from descriptions of an all-forgiving God and a punishing one. But in this case, it seems God has had about enough of their whining, and gives the ultimate punishment. The scripture tells us that many of the Israelites died from the bite of the poisonous serpents.

But our story then takes a surprising turn. It seems that the redeeming, angelic nature of the Seraphim now manifests.

Because Moses, at the behest of God, makes a model of one of these seraphim, raises it up on a stick, and rather than poisoning people, this icon of the serpent heals anyone of the snake bite they have suffered. This seraph is now an agent of God, like the coal-bearing one in Isaiah’s story. This serpent now brings life, not death.

Life and death are the subject of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as well.
But here he speaks of a spiritual death brought by sin- by a self-separation from God. And he tells us that it is God’s tremendous love and mercy that brings us back to life- though grace- not through our works. We are returned through grace to the people we were meant to be. He tells us, “for we are what he has made us.”

And now in our Gospel we have Jesus compared to the Seraph- Jesus too is raised up- and the Greek word means both lifted up and exhalted- as the ultimate manifestation of God’s grace and forgiveness.

It is fascinating that Jesus and the snake are so closely compared in this passage- that the snake brought life, and Jesus brings eternal life. In many ancient cultures the snake symbolized immortality, because of the continuing shedding of its skin and the appearance of a constant rebirth. The Jewish understanding of the snake as an agent of evil was a very late one, and apparently the memory of its previous status as an agent of life remained in some Old Testament texts.

Next we have the passage in John that has often been called the whole gospel in one sentence:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

This is the only passage in John that says that Jesus was “given” by God, rather than “sent by God.” The difference is important because it shows us that the incarnation- the gift of Jesus- springs purely from God’s great love for the world.

As is so often the case in the Gospel of John, the great contrast of light and darkness is used to separate the believers from the non-believers.

But we all have periods of darkness. Perhaps a period of mourning, or a period of depression. Loss of our livelihood, loss of our health, loss of our family. And we are all familiar with the feeling of wanting certain deeds to remain in the darkness. We may have periods in our lives where we love the darkness, as it provides us with some element of cover. We may not wish to be seen. We may believe that no one wants to see us. We may believe that no one would reach out to us in our darkness.

But then we might have an experience of a blinding light coming into our lives. The birth of a child, the finding of a great love, a vision of God or of an angel, an experience of God saving us when we could not save ourselves. Or perhaps a calling when we feel, in our darkness, that we have unclean lips. We have all been bitten by snakes in this life, and if you are listening to me now you have survived by grace.

Sometimes being saved will not look like we imagine it might. It might hurt. It might be as painful as a snake bite to give up those things we know we should. It might feel like starving to death, or dying of thirst. But so often angels do appear for us, in many different disguises. They save us. They lift us up, and, with grace, they bring us into the light.

Amen.

Don’t think about it too hard. Just drop your nets and follow.

1/24/2021

Epiphany 2021 (January 24)

After Jesus’ baptism, the heavens open and the Spirit descends. God calls out to Jesus, proclaiming that he is the Son of God, and then Jesus is driven by the spirit into the wilderness. Our Gospel begins just after this 40 day wilderness journey. In the very short version in Mark, only three things happen to Jesus during this time: He is with the wild beasts, he is tested by Satan, and angels minister to him.

And after he has been able to survive the company of wild beasts, and the temptations of the devil, and the angels have shown him the way, he is ready to begin his ministry on Earth.

At the very beginning of our gospel, Jesus comes to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

Last week’s story was about a calling, and this week’s story is as well. This is a story of the calling of the Kingdom of God.

Anyone who is a Christian has answered a call. Whatever it may seem like, it is a call to usher in the Kingdom of God, here, now, on this earth.

The Kingdom of God is a state of grace, where peace, prosperity, justice and plenty are manifest everywhere. The time and place of its arrival varies from gospel to gospel. Sometimes Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” And often it is seen as a future state of grace, which Jesus inaugurates with his coming. As he says, “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.”

We can understand more of what Jesus thought the Kingdom was by the people he says it belongs to. He says it belongs to the little children. In the beatitudes he says it belongs to the poor, or in Matthew, for a more affluent crowd, to the poor in spirit. And he says it belongs to those who are persecuted because of righteousness. He also says, famously, that it is very difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.

So the Kingdom of God belongs to the very innocent- the very humble, but also to the very brave. The innocent have not yet experienced hate or violence. They are already living in the Kingdom of God. The poor have not much to their name but their humility. And those who hold onto innocence and love and justice in the face of persecution- well, they too are living in God’s Reign.
So this is our calling. To be as innocent as children and as brave as martyrs. And if we follow this difficult calling, ours too will be the Kingdom of God.

This, as Jesus’ disciples said, is a difficult teaching. Who can follow it? Well, we can all follow it, but we can only follow it imperfectly. Like the disciples, we follow it clumsily. We will often note that for all our good intentions, we too are sometimes, indeed of little faith.

Jonah the prophet, of our Old Testament reading, was specifically called by God to tell the people of Nineveh to repent. But when the people did repent, and God decided not to punish them, Jonah was so furious that he lay down under a bush and declared that he was angry enough to die. A very imperfect prophet of God. But he was surely called.

The disciples fought amongst themselves for power, and violently threatened to burn up some unwelcoming Samaritans. And, of course, Peter denied Jesus three times. And yet this greatest betrayer was the one Jesus called “my rock.” The very first bishop.

So as you consider your calling, don’t reject it because you will not do it perfectly. Do not reject it, as I initially did, because you feel yourself unworthy. If God did not feel you were worthy enough, she would never have called you, and you would not be a Christian.

Don’t think about it too hard. Just drop your nets and follow.

Amen.

Sherman & Sobeyia Richmond

Lourdes DeJesus

Aaron Miner

Fiery Serpents

Don’t think about it too hard. Just drop your nets and follow.

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