Sermons Preached at Church of the Redeemer

The Reverend Timothy Crellin

Last Sunday after Epiphany * 22 February 2004

Luke 9:28-36

            Good morning.  I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here today!  This place, and all of you, mean and have meant so much to me, and you have never been far from my thoughts and prayers over these four and a half years since I left.  You surrounded me with love and support on the day nearly seven years ago when Bishop Ihloff stood right there and placed his hands on my head and made me a priest.  Your love and support gave me the confidence to take on the great challenge that I have found at St. Stephen’s.  I will always be mindful of, and grateful for, the wonderful start you gave me in my ordained ministry. 

And, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to be here to thank you on my own behalf, and on behalf of the people of St. Stephen’s, for the amazing generosity you’ve shown to our congregation as our partner church.  We’ve made a lot of progress at St. Stephen’s, and I’m aware every day of the great contributions that all of you have made, directly and indirectly, to the new life that has been breathed into our little church. 

            There is great poignancy for me in the contrast between these two first chapters of my ministry.  Here at the Redeemer I got to feel a degree of success.  Your response to my ministry and preaching, the work we did with the youth – I left feeling like I knew what I was doing, and that I could do it fairly well.  St. Stephen’s has given me a unique, spiritual opportunity to grapple with discouragement, failure and hopelessness.  In theological terms, I could say that my time at St. Stephen’s has forced me to confront the reality of Good Friday, of the crucifixion.  In fact, I sometimes say that doing the kind of work we do means facing an endless series of Good Fridays.

            Yes, we have come a long way.  We have revived St. Stephen’s, and restored a sense of dignity and vibrancy to our community of faith.  We do make a difference in the lives of many people in our neighborhood, through our after school program, which serves thirty-five children every school day; through our summer program, which serves forty children; through our food pantry, which provides more than two tons of food a month to people in need; through simply being there, having our doors open, and being ready to listen, to help, to comfort when we’re called on.  And sometimes, it’s enough.  But more often it’s not. 

            The lives of poor people are getting harder and harder.  I’m not talking about India or China, or Mexico or in Appalachia or even in South Central LA.  But here in Boston.  Here – five miles away.  I wish it wasn’t true.  But it is.  I work in the projects.  I’ve been into the prisons and the homeless shelters.  I go into the schools.  I visit the nursing homes where the elderly poor go.  I’ve been in the courts – criminal and housing and family.  I see, every day, the broken lives – lives broken by poverty, by injustice, by neglect.  I see the tragedy of Good Friday.  I see the Christ of Matthew chapter twenty-five – the least of our brothers and sisters – crucified, suffering, alone.  I see it all around every day.  Here, in Boston, five miles away from where we are right now. 

            José* is eighteen.  He lives with his mother, two brothers, an orphaned nephew and two cousins – in a tiny two bedroom apartment.  He’s a good kid.  He went to school and graduated.  He worked after school.  He helps his mother.  He doesn’t do drugs.  He’s not in a gang.  He wants to be an elementary school teacher, and he’d be a good one.  But English is not his first language, and he failed the MCAS four times.  Where does he turn?  What can I say to him?  He knows that the government is spending eighty-seven billion dollars in Iraq.  And he knows that he can’t go to college, and that the minimum wage is not a living wage.

            I buried Stephen this fall on one of the first cold days of this cold winter.  His two beautiful little children held balloons and flowers as I said the words of the committal at the grave.  His grandmother wept quietly at my side.  Stephen was murdered – the eighth funeral I’ve done where the cause of death was either murder or drugs.

            Many of our children appear at the after school program, even on the coldest day, with no hat and no gloves.  But Chris and Mike often arrive without socks, and with filthy jackets that don’t zip.  One day recently, Mike’s behavior in after school program was so disruptive that I decided to walk him home and have a talk with his mom.  I discovered that Chris and Mike live in squalor – squalor – in a basement apartment in the projects.  No wonder Mike acts out all day, enough so that I think he’s now internalized the idea that he’s a bad kid.

            A couple of weeks ago, just a few feet from Mike’s apartment in the plaza, early on a Saturday evening, an argument escalated between a security guard and a resident who was sitting in his car in an illegal parking space.  In the end, there was a scuffle and the security guard pulled his gun and shot the man in the chest, killing him.  A crowd of our children watched the whole thing. 

            Carlos, whose twenty-nine year old mother I buried after she overdosed, is in jail at age fifteen for the third time.  His uncle – the closest thing to a father he has ever known - has AIDS.  He has two teenage cousins that are addicts.  He has profound learning disabilities.  I don’t think Carlos has ever had a happy day in his life – and I doubt he ever will.

            Since September, two little girls in the after school program have been full of excitement and anticipation because their father, who they barely know, is finally coming home after five years in federal prison in the south.  Just after Christmas, they received a letter informing them that their father, having served his time, would be deported directly to Cape Verde, the country he left at age two, and would never be allowed into the United States again.

            Several times, every day, people come in to the church with heart-wrenching stories and pleas for help.  Some of the stories are true, and some are inspired by the need for money to buy heroin – a huge problem in our neighborhood. 

            It takes many forms – and we could talk about whose fault it is and the bad decisions people make – but the cross, the agony of the crucifixion, menaces from many dark corners of life in the city.  And my job, our job at St. Stephen’s, our reason for existing, I believe, is to do nothing less than to turn Good Friday into Easter.  In the face of all the discouragement, failure and hopelessness that attend Good Friday, we have to hold onto our hope in the Resurrection.  I no longer allow my staff to say, “We have a problem,” or “We have a crisis.”  Instead, we say, “We have an opportunity.”  An opportunity to shine Easter light – resurrection light – into Good Friday darkness.

            In the Gospel this morning, Peter finds himself on a mountaintop with Jesus.  And Jesus, Luke tells us, is transformed.  “The appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  Moses and Elijah appear, representing the Law and the Prophets, and an aura of glory and fulfillment attend the moment.  Peter is overcome, and suddenly it occurs to him that this is the triumphant conclusion.  No more bad stuff.  No more lepers.  No more crowds of hungry people.  No more problems.  No more controversy or threats from the authorities.  And so he suggests to Jesus: let’s stay here.  Let’s just stay here in peace, in the glory of God.  But Jesus, being Jesus, says no.  They have to go back down the mountain.  They have to go to Jerusalem.  They have to go to Calvary – through the worst of it – to win the victory.

            Sometimes, when the agony of Good Friday feels particularly strong, and I’m weighed down by the sense of hopelessness and discouragement that pervade the lives of the children we see, I think about what it would be like in the most basic terms to win the victory.  I think about what it would mean to turn Good Friday into Easter.  And in my prayer, the victory starts with our children knowing that they are loved and that they are valued.  That they’re intelligent, and talented and artistic – but most of all that they are loved.  And I’m not talking about love as a word or a catchphrase, but love in the strongest sense – the love of God.  Paul describes it in those familiar words addressed to the Corinthian Christians: the love of God which is patient and kind; the love of God which rejoices in the truth; which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.  The love of God which never ends.  The redemptive love of God for God’s creation, for humanity – the love which triumphed on the first Easter.  I want our children to know that kind of love, and to believe that they are included in the embrace of a loving, compassionate and eternal God.  That, for me, would be the first step towards Easter, the first step toward getting them to believe that their lives have value, that Good Friday is not the end of the story.

            But part of getting them to believe that is that I have to be able to show that it’s true.  I have to be able to show – to prove in real ways – to José, and Mike and Chris, and to Carlos – to all of these children that the world cares about them, and that they are not being cast aside by society.  It does no good for me to offer them something that I can’t deliver on.  I can show them that I love them, but for them to believe that God loves them, that they have a place of importance in God’s world, I have to be able to back it up.  Right now, I can’t.

            That’s where you come in, and people like you – good, faithful people who know what Easter is about.  In order to win the victory for these children, in order to turn crucifixion into resurrection and not leave them in the dungeon of despair that is Good Friday, I have to convince you that these children are in no way less valuable, less deserving, less important than your own.  I have to be able to reach that place in you where you know that it’s not okay for them to be poor, to go hungry, to live in the projects, to go to bad schools, to receive inadequate health care, to have statistically little chance of living in the promised land that is all but guaranteed to your children.  If I could do that...

            How would that happen?  Probably not through anything I or anyone else could say from the pulpit, or any article you could read in the newspaper.  I believe it could only happen through relationship.  Jesus is a relational savior.  He is God’s attempt at something new – providing us with the example of relationship – real, human connection – as the way to salvation.  But perhaps the most important lesson I have learned in this ministry is that we do not make the difference, we do not cross the great chasm between Chestnut Hill and the Villa Victoria by trying to be Jesus in the relationship.  The most real, enduring, effective way to cross the divide, is to come looking for Jesus, wanting to serve Jesus, wanting to love Jesus, wanting to learn from and to be healed by Jesus.  Approaching the least of our brothers and sisters in this manner, as Jesus suggested, may be the key not only to their salvation, but to our own.  In order to do that, however, as I have learned again and again, we have to be prepared to confront Good Friday.  We have to be prepared to stand before the cross.  We have to be ready for heartbreak and hopelessness and failure and discouragement.  For many people in our society, a decent, dignified, healthy life is out of reach.  There are no quick and easy solutions.  When we go in search of Christ, we have to be ready to see him suffering. 

            But we can go into the bleakness of Good Friday with the truth of the resurrection in our hearts.  God does not let us wallow in despair.  The cross is not the end.  We who have some perspective beyond suffering and pain can bring the good news of resurrection, and we must.  Because the truth is that the glory of the resurrection – Easter light, Easter love, Easter victory – is not fulfilled until the light shines on everyone, until the valleys are raised up and the mountains made low and nothing blocks the light from reaching all of God’s children.  Just as Jesus would not allow Peter to bask in Transfiguring splendor, we cannot glory in our own victory.  We must bring the resurrection to those who need it most.  We, the people of God, must bring resurrection to Christ himself, wherever Good Friday still oppresses him, wherever despair still reigns, wherever hope is absent, wherever all seems lost, wherever the road seems to end at the foot of the cross.  There are a lot of problems.  But each one is an opportunity to love and to serve God.    

                One of the things that keep me going in the face of my discouragement is the belief that it’s possible.  I know there is enough room in God’s heart for all of our children.  And I know there’s enough – enough food, enough money, enough of everything for everyone.  And I believe that people are good, that people care, that none of us wants to live in a world where children suffer unnecessarily.  And I believe in the Church as the Body of Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives.  With God, anything is possible – even bringing Easter out of Good Friday.  Together, we, the Church, can lead society in making itself over on the foundation of justice and love.  Together, we, the Church, can shine resurrection light into every dark corner, into every life.  Together, we, the church, can work and struggle and will this world from the cross, to the resurrection and on to the kingdom of God on earth.  I cling to that belief and to that hope.   

            Search your heart for the source of everything that is good in your life.  And let that source, and your strength and your love and your faith lead you out in search of Christ – that together, in finding and in being found, we may be raised with all God’s people into the glory of unity and peace that Christ promises.  Amen.

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