[Propertalk] Draft of sermon for Pentecost Sunday, May 31, on John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15

[Joe Parrish]

Here is a draft of my sermon for Pentecost Sunday, May 31, on John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15.  A final version will be posted on our church web site on the worship tab and sermon archives page by early this week, God willing.

Peace and Pentecost blessings,

Joe

St. John's Episcopal Church

61 Broad Street
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201

The Sixth Sunday of Easter (B)

May 31, 2009

A Sermon by the Rev. Joe Parrish

The Holy Gospel according to

John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
     
     Be our Advocate and healer, O Lord of our life.   Amen.

     I have heard that there are about 135 different languages spoken in the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, here, about the same number as in the United Nations.  And if approximately ten or so percent of those languages are close derivatives of others, the number of 120 languages as were spoken on the first Sunday of Pentecost are right here in our city's midst!

     The city of Elizabeth is a hub of immigration circled around the Newark International Airport, the (sea) Port of Elizabeth, and the New Jersey Turnpike; now about 60 to 80 percent of the people in the city speak Spanish, and here at St. John's we are close to taking in a large new Spanish Anglican Catholic congregation who want to become Episcopalians.  

     Almost every week I go over as a volunteer chaplain to the Elizabeth federal immigration detention center, the largest non-criminal facility of its kind in the United States.  Last week we had fourteen in attendance at our Bible study, and they hailed as usual from all over the globe.  Some spoke Spanish, others French, others Arabic, others various African dialects, some spoke Creole.  Fortunately about half also spoke English, and the rest spoke Spanish; and we have a DVD of the Alpha Bible study that has Spanish subtitles and English as the spoken language, so everyone was able to understand the lesson.  Hooray! I have had some in prior weeks who spoke Uzbek, Croatian, Serbian, various Chinese dialects, Russian, Ukrainian, Danish, German, you name it, they all probably have been spoken there in the past nine years I have been a volunteer chaplain there.  Once I came in to the facility, and the officers had mistakenly announced that a Chinese chaplain was coming, so everyone in the group spoke Chinese, but fortunately a few spoke English and could translate for me to the others.  It is a rather amazing ministry!  But always, the Holy Spirit seems to be right there, looking out for me, and looking out for all the detainees, as well as for the officers.  Of course the detention officers have much the same and even larger challenges than I have, and thus a variety of languages are spoken by the guards in addition to English.  We in reality have the world at our doorstep here, as we are only about forty minutes from JFK International Airport and five minutes from Newark International Airport, where most people arrive without all their necessary visa documentation.

     Some escape from difficult situations back home with only the clothes on their back and an airplane ticket.  A few years ago when Rev. Novella Lawrence and I did Bible study program there for the women detainees, I spoke to a woman who had been a mayor in a city of the South American country of Colombia who had run afoul of one of the drug cartels by trying to root them out of her city; she had been targeted to be 'eliminated' shortly before she boarded the plane north to New York.  In other countries, some women had been raped or harassed by unscrupulous police and were unprotected from the [quote] 'protectors' [unquote], so they escaped.  Others constantly faced very tense lives--Christians in some parts of Egypt are targeted regularly and suffer destruction of their automobiles, homes, and businesses, as also happens in some other Muslim dominated cultures, and there are quite a few of those countries and areas around the world.  

     Sri Lanka is home to all four major world religions: Buddhism, 70 percent; Hinduism, 15 percent; Christianity, 8 percent; and Mohammadism, 7 percent.  Last Sunday, the orthodox Hindu Tamil forces declared a virtual cease fire in their over 25 year long civil war, so peace may finally be returning to that island country soon.  But the numbers of people who had been caught in the cross fire of the government and Tamil forces was great, and the level of immigration was large, so almost every week since I have been going to that center from the year 2000 I have had Sri Lankans in our Bible study; we actually recently trained the prayer leader of Alpha Sri Lanka! And prayer has played a major role, I think, in the final resolution of the conflict, as it did in Northern Ireland, where Anglican Franciscan Brother David Jardine and Roman Catholic Sister Margaret McStay raised up a mighty prayer team of over 100,000 people whose prayers for peace in Northern Ireland were finally answered just a very few years ago.

     The Holy Spirit is a mighty force, always has been, always will be.  The visible appearance of tongues of fire on that first Pentecost was a special manifestation of the Spirit of God, who has been with us from the beginning of time and has continued with us always.  The Spirit moved over the face of the Earth in the story of Genesis, producing the vitality of life in the first human being.  And since the Ascension of Christ, the Spirit's function of bringing to us the recognition of Jesus' words filled the gap of the ascended Savior's physical absence from us.

     So if today you are seeking power in your life, get right with God's Holy Spirit.  That may seem easier to say than to do, but that is the secret to all spiritual success.  I don't think it is so much exactly how we pray, but that we do pray that counts--being open to God's cleansing in our lives and in our thought world.  The Spirit sees all, knows all, understands all, yet remains our friend as long as we are doing God's will in our lives.  Now that may be the challenge we all face, determining just what God's will is for our lives.  We can pray and pray, but if we are praying against God's will, our prayers will appear feeble and ineffective.  So we need to "get right with God", seek God's direction for our lives, and get on with living a God-empowered life.

     One of the biggest challenges for most churches in encouraging God-empowered lives, including ours, is not racism but classism.  Classism is something that pervades New Jersey, as we are organized into about 560 separate townships and cities, and each unit has major control over its budgets, schools, and municipal services.  What has happened is that the areas with more expensive housing have rooted out less expensive housing, they have better schools, but also have lower tax rates; whereas less expensive housing is associated with poorer schools yet higher tax rates just to keep critical services afloat.  Several years ago the State Supreme Court ruled these housing divisions are unconstitutional and mandated that twenty percent new affordable units be available in every area when new housing is built, but of course that has not happened.  The state legislature recently overturned the loophole for keeping the affordable housing out of the richer areas, but now real estate developers are seeking other ways of discriminating based on economic class, probably in cooperation with local authorities, and still they do not want to build affordable housing amongst the higher priced housing, even though studies have shown that mixed housing produces more stable communities.  The not so subtle discrimination in new housing production is still with us.

     And in our diocese, the churches pretty much mirror the communities they are in: we have richer churches in richer communities and poorer churches in poorer communities.  And even here in the Diocese of New Jersey we don't effectively share resources between richer churches and poorer churches, so we can't point fingers at the townships really.  So our economic issues remain unsolved and our spirituality, I believe, suffers greatly.  This year, there was about an enormous twenty-five percent cut in the budget for mission churches, and those of us with no aid who are struggling financially are essentially 'left out in the cold'.  Times are very tough, in other words.  We have to have different worship services to provide for different needs of people, and that results in having four different services each Sunday: one with organ, two with karaoke, and one acapella.  Each service has to bear its own cost, or so we think, and as a result, we are a microcosm of the same malady that affects the state as a whole!

      How do we approach this problem as Christians?

      I think that prayer is the only way out of these difficulties.  If prayer worked for Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, why not here in Elizabeth and the Diocese of New Jersey?  So my suggestion is that we begin to set up a larger and larger prayer team in the diocese and among churches to seek God's way through this problem we all have here.  And that prayer has also to extend to our separate worship services as well, I think.  How can we be more inclusive, in economic terms?

     Bishop Romero said he was a part of a church in Guatemala that did try to intermingle economic levels, and it didn't really succeed.  That just means we have quite some praying to do!

     So let us try the Holy Spirit's route, which is the same as God's direction.  Let us begin praying fervently for a solution to our economic disparities, in our church, in our churches, and in our diocese.  Can we join together in this?  We will need some prayer leaders, some regular times to pray together, a day or days we will do this, and go from there.  How does that sound to you?  We need to create some new prayers for resolving classism in our midst and in our diocese.  So that is an assignment for all of us, to suggest prayers, write them down, suggest days for praying, and times each of us will be here to pray together, since when two or three are together, Jesus says he will be with us, through the Holy Spirit.

     The power of Pentecost is the power of prayer.  So let us drink from the waters of the Spirit, let us breathe the Spirit's passion for justice and peace, and let us work together to make New Jersey new, to make St. John's new, and particularly to renew ourselves as well.

     May God continue to bless you and keep you.  And may God continue to guide and enable us to do God's will here at St. John's and in our diocese, and in our world.

     Amen.  


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