Category: Sermons

By The Rev. Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

Prayer: Dear Lord, we humbly welcome you into worship with us. Please guide our study of your word, illuminating its meaning according to your will. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen

My best friend’s father was 87 years old when he passed away in 2017. His only son married a woman that he did not approve of in 1998 and they stopped speaking to each other at that point. A very large financial amount had been withdrawn from the father’s account but nothing was ever done about it. His two daughters had constant contact with the  son and knew what he had been doing but never told the father.

Father had become ill in 2014 and he had to be institutionalized. He would not give any of the children power of attorney so their family attorney had to step in. He had some  wealth and he always threatened to disinherit any of the kids that defied him. As his condition worsened the family was told to prepare for the worse and hope for the best.

His daughters informed their brother and he came to the hospital to see their family. Dad was so thrilled to see his son, they hugged and kissed and apologized to each other. He continued to visit his father daily. His sisters were not pleased but did not say anything as long as dad was happy. The father instructed the attorney to come to the hospital so that he could amend his will. The father asked to see his grandsons that he never met.  The father died within the hour and never met the kids. The son thought that all was forgiven with dad.

The reading of the will was devastating to the son. All of the properties, money, etc went to the two daughters. Father wrote that the two of you tried to keep me strong at the weakest point of my life. The son received a letter stating that you stole from me out of hatred and revenge. I allowed you to keep the life you chose.

This modern day story shows similarities to today’s gospel

The parable of the Prodigal Son only found in Luke’s gospel more accurately should be called the Forgiving Father

In the gospel, this father did not just forgive a younger son, his prodigal son. He also forgave an older son, a dutiful son. A son who was very much like the Pharisees who were listening that day. And we miss the point if we don’t deal with both of these young men.

Luke tells us up front why Jesus is telling his story. His preaching was attracting tax collectors and sinners. In other words, they were upset that Jesus was hanging out with drug dealers and addicts and thieves and alcoholics and prostitutes. They were upset that Jesus was hanging out in the neighborhood around Triune.

In the parable, the younger son asked his father to give him his share of the property that belonged to him. So the father divided his property between them.

This younger son was a piece of work. Asking for your inheritance before your father’s death was an insult. It was saying to your father. “I wish you were dead”.The younger son took all that he had and left. He squandered his property into dissolute living. He spent  everything and a severe famine took place throughout that country and he began to be in need.He worked on a farm feeding the pigs and contemplated eating the pods fed to the pigs because he was so hungry. He began to think of how well the hired hands working for his father were being fed. So he decided to return home and throw himself on his father’s mercy.

While he was far off, his father saw him.Now the story turns the spotlight on the father. The father saw him far off which makes you believe the father never stopped watching for his son’s return. The parable tells us something else too. The father was filled with compassion and ran toward his son. This doesn’t sound odd to our ears. But it was shocking to Jesus’ first century audience.

The father lavished his son with symbols of welcome and respect and restored his place as a son of the household restoring him to his original position. The father gave a big party and stated that this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found

Now the oldest son being informed by the hired hands of the treatment his brother is receiving from the father is furious and refusing to go in the house. The father came out and pleaded with him. In his rage he told the father how he had been working like a slave  for him and never disobeyed him yet the youngest fully disobeyed and disrespected him.

Again the father repeated that his younger son had been lost and now he is found .

Now don’t forget who is listening to this story along with the tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees and scribes are there, people who focus on right and wrong, people who focus on religious law. In this story, Jesus was talking about tax collectors and sinner who like the prodigal son were offered the gift of grace.We like to see the Pharisees and the self righteous get their comeuppance in the scriptures. We root for the underdog, the prostitute that poured perfume on Jesus feet,for the tax collector who prayed in the temple with his head bowed, for Zacchaeus hidden in tree.The gospel is not the gospel if it is not available to the self righteous Pharisee

The problem, as this parable points out, is that it may be easier for the tax collector and the sinner, for the prodigal son, to accept God’s grace than it is for the Pharisees and the scribe and the older son

If you are always right, it is hard to see that you need forgiveness.

There were tax collectors and sinners and grumbling Pharisees and scribes. Jesus told them a story about a God who forgives them all.

Their challenge, our challenge, is to realize that forgiveness is available and forgiveness is necessary to every single one.

Amen

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Sunday, February 27, 2022, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By The Rev. Stephen Galleher

“Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had
been talking with God.” (Exodus 34:29-35)
“All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though
reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from
one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2)
“The appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling
white” (Luke 9:28-36)
This Epiphany season we have been tracing the wonder and
miracle of light, without which none of us would be here this
morning, a light that shone at the beginning of creation (if creation
had a beginning), the light that announced the birth of one who
personified light, a new light that was coming into the world. Light
announces light. And we saw how light plays a role in our everyday
lives when we speak, say, of “seeing the light” or of “having light
shine upon a situation.” First ignorance and darkness; then suddenly
or gradually, brightness and understanding.
And Epiphany has traced the birth and ministry of Jesus from
his Baptism, when God announced that Jesus was the one with whom
God was well pleased. The nearest example that comes to mind was
when Ed McMahon announced night after night, “Here’s Johnny!” to
awaken us to the one who was about to appear. And from this solemn

dedication by God of the ministry of Jesus at his baptism, we are led
to today’s story of Jesus’s clothes and face turning a dazzling white.
Whether this story happened literally as written, who can be certain?
Similarly, Moses’ face shone because he had been in the presence of
God. Moses’ face was so bright in fact that it startled the
congregation upon his return, and he had to veil it to keep the crowd
from panicking.
It’s about light, and it’s always about the light. The light that
illumines and the light that dazzles. We know that flood lights can be
so intense that we can barely see what it shines upon. Similarly, to
look at an intense light can be painful, no matter how hard we
struggle to see the object more clearly.
So, the transfiguration of Jesus was the explosion, so to speak,
of the true meaning of who this man was. Jesus was a humble
carpenter all right; he walked among us with no great credentials or
pretense. He spoke, it seems quite quietly, in parables and modest
aphorisms. And yet the gospel writers report something more—a
depth in the man, a portal opening through which we see something
we have never quite seen before. We are looking, so to speak, into the
face of God itself.
You know when you look through a peephole in a door to see
who has rung your doorbell. You don’t see much, right? Once the
door is flung open, you see the entire person and what surrounds him

or her. Our point of view has changed. It can be quite startling at first,
but if it is someone we have longed to see, our eyes widen, the smile
erupts on our face, and we welcome our friend with open arms. This
is what the disciples saw, I believe, on that mountain that day. That is
transfiguration.
You know how children, when confronted for the first time with
something new, how their mouth drops open, their eyes pop, and they
stare and then perhaps laugh. This is transfiguration. They are seeing
the world for the first time with delight, and they are changed by it.
So, I ask you this morning to consider those times in your life
when you have been transfigured. Perhaps it is someone who said
something to you, did something for you, who themselves were
transfiguring agents. Notice how I am putting this question. I am
asking how you have been transfigured. For Jesus’s transfiguration
wasn’t so much about what Jesus did or became, but more about how
the disciples understood so dramatically just who Jesus was. In a
sense, the transfiguration was about the disciples. Remember how
they were so moved that they wanted to construct a chapel to
memorialize the event. Jesus rightly understood that transfiguration
wasn’t about bliss and grand cathedrals, but a life lived humbly in
love. This was what transfiguration was: a lesson in love.
So, I ask you to please consider those moments of
transfiguration in your own lives, for such moments can be life-

transforming. Somebody may have said something that changed your
life forever for the better. It may have been a word of encouragement
or consolation. It may have been a challenge—something that you
initially were uncomfortable to hear. And perhaps the strongest
evidence that these events (for I hope there has been more than one)
is not so much what was said or what happened as how the words or
event made you feel. Didn’t you feel better about yourself? That you
mattered, really mattered, and that you were loved.
And the reason we use such a special word for these
events—the word “transfiguration”—is that these are portals through
which we see into God itself. And this change in us, this light that has
fallen on us, turns us into a transfiguring person. Transfiguration is
the receiving of light and our emission of this same light.
Now, you know I’m not just talking abstractly! Haven’t we
known people so full of joy, so full of the grace and fullness of God
what we feel special just being around them? And this something that
they have becomes part of who we are. Light is transmitted like that.
Love is contagious like that. These people don’t have to be
particularly “religious” as we commonly understand that word. They
may be a nurse’s aide we met in the hospital. They may be a clerk
who made a lasting impact on us during a recent transaction. They
may be a grandmother reading to us as a child. Or the laughter shared
at a recent lunch between you and an old friend.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the
grandeur of God, and it will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”
The image I have is the shaking of aluminum foil with light flickering
off it in numerous directions, like the sound of a windchime or the
sudden eruption of a cathedral choir.
I truly believe that the message of the gospel is that we, too,
manifest this grandeur. We can be transfiguring agents as we let our
light flame out like shining from shook foil.
Ray Stevens can tell us,
Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night or a snow- covered winter’s day
Everybody’s beautiful in their own way
Under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find a way
Amen.

By The Rev. Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

Please join me in prayer:
Lord, take my words and speak through them, take our thoughts and think through them,
and in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen
For several weeks now the gospel has been focused on God’s love.

Today we look at learning to love like God.

Each one of us can think about a time in our lives when someone did or said something that hurt us. It hurt so bad that you couldn’t forget it.  We all know what it is like however it hurts even more when it is someone we once loved or respected, a former spouse, good friend, family member, a member of your church .

Resentment begins to build up and you want revenge. It grows to the point where you become enraged or anxiety begins eating away at your souls.

Jesus has some hardcore words on the subject of resentment and how to deal with it. “if someone slaps you on your one cheek, turn to them the other also.” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you”

These are hard, hard words

I will not lie. There are somethings that Jesus has said that take you back and makes you think and pray on what you can accept or not.  God forgive me, I can’t see anyone standing still and letting someone slap you around intentionally and you walk away like nothing happened. You ask yourself is this considered an act of love.

In some neighborhoods they would consider you weak, easy, a coward, a “punk” if you did nothing to stop someone that deliberately hurt you. This can be an attraction or invitation for other enemies to do the same.

When evil meets no opposition, but only patient endurance, it at last meets an opponent which is more than its match. And the Cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate power in the world which proves that suffering love can and does defeat evil.

There is no doubt this teaching is hard, as is much of what Jesus teaches. Its not just some simple recipe for self help, although it does help us. It does affect our thinking, our inclinations, our desire, our will. It might be tempting to read this passage of scripture and say we do this forgiving stuff because if we do, we will have a great reward.

I mean, who doesn’t want to hear something like, if you love the one that hurt you, then Jesus will love you all the more, and your reward will be great, you might even get a better seat in heaven. But reading this passage that way erases grace because it infers that the love of God is conditional and transactional but its not.

The great reward has nothing to do with full pockets, big houses or even a fancier room in heaven. It does have everything to do with who we become, for there is much grace and transformation needed for us to live out the radical faith Jesus calls us to. There is no greater reward than to be seeking to love and act the way Jesus acts toward us.

God loved us while we were yet sinners or better God loved us while we were still enemies of God. Be merciful, Jesus says, “just as the Father is merciful.

Love your enemies just like the Father does

Love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return, if you do, you will have a great reward. You will be acting the way the children of the Most High act for God is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. Be compassionate just as your father is compassionate.

For it is loving like Jesus loves that we find true freedom, true peace, true joy and true life.

Jesus know that we will never love our enemies without the amazing grace that transforms us daily and makes us different than we are.

What changes us and allows us to love is God’s grace; a grace that is much, much greater than sin.

When we begin to get just a glimpse of seeing other people the way God sees people we begin the journey of learning to love others the way God loves others. Only when we discover that this is the kind of God we have, will we have any chance of following today’s scripture the way we live our lives.

To God be the glory.

In closing, what the world needs now is love, sweet love. No not just for some but for everyone

May the church say   Amen

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, February 13, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Friendship and Living in the Light

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

A fellow clergyman and I were talking about the delivery of sermons, and he felt strongly that each meditation should begin on a positive note. I swallowed hard and shaded my eyes because you who know me know I often start with a mini-rant about something in the scripture reading that annoys me. This is indeed perhaps a bad habit. I say “perhaps,” because I am assuming you, too, may be startled or put off by some of the stronger passages about hell or about God’s severe judgment on the wicked. I just do not sit well with a God who promises to be more severe in his punishment of me than my own father would have ever been.

          We’re talking about love here, and about light. Because it’s always about the light. The light that shines on us all; the love which bathes us in its glory, minute my minute from birth to death. Even on the cloudiest days, like these gloomy days of mid-winter, the sun, we know, is behind the clouds. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty; heaven and earth are full of thy glory!” Not one corner of our lives is removed, outside this permeating light and love.

But then we have the opening lines of the Old Testament reading. I know, Jeremiah is one of the major prophets. He is on fire with the justice and judgments of God. But, answer me this, would you like to sit next to him on a long airplane flight? How about being thrown with him as your dance partner at a formal dinner party? Jeremiah starts the passage we read a few minutes ago with these lines:

          “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals…. They shall be like a shrub in the desert…. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”

          Do you see what I mean? This is a man with a very low estimation of human nature. One wonders if he has been hanging with much of any support group. For, according to my lights, I not only have trusted in what he calls “mere mortals,” but I continue to do so…and, what’s more, I want and enjoy doing so. I trust in dozens of people every day. Of course, there are some scoundrels among us, in fact, some plainly evil people. And, of course, all people—family, friends, associates—come and go in my life. Some stay for decades; other for only a season. I can depend on them and I can be disappointed in them. Trust can be broken, sometimes in shocking and consequential ways. I enjoy my dependence on people, but I also know the pitfalls of co-dependence, depending too heavily on people, to the detriment of my own independence and sometimes integrity. I know that people pleasing seldom truly pleases with myself or the person I am pretending to be so kind to.

A friend was recalling in outline that wonderful book by the British author and theologian C.S. Lewis called The Four Loves. In it, Lewis outlines love as eros (romantic love), affection (called storge), philia (friendship), and agape (unconditional love). This friend said that the first three of these loves can lead to our understanding of this last and greatest love, the love of God. Now that’s a fairly straightforward analysis, but I think it misses the point. The point isn’t that love is the crowning love, the love of God, it is that agape (unconditional love) permeates and infuses and is expressed in all of the others as well. The love of God is not something else. It is the love of a mother for her child, the affection of the child for its pet dog, the camaraderie of a group of friends in the local tavern. Love can be divided only through the prism of our lived life circumstances. Some of our worldly loves are warped, twisted, not healthy, but they all come from and are embedded in the one and only love—namely, the love of God.

          And to prove this, or at least to illustrate this from my own life. I was reflecting with a couple of clergy I meet with most weekday mornings on Zoom on the value of our friendship. We were wondering how we learn about and come to experience God’s love if not through our earthly, worldly, day-to-day friendships. I know in my life, and I ask you to reflect on your life, just where have you experienced the love of God? I think of my childhood, my school days, my adult career, my social life, and now, my retirement years and I wonder—just where were those special moments that will never escape memory. Maya Angelou said it well with her famous quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Is there any greater gift than this. One of my favorite lines in from Winnie the Pooh, when Pooh said, “It’s more fun to talk with a friend who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”

I, like you, have known many, many people throughout my life. Some we took little or no notice of. Just like many, many people in our lives have taken little or no notice of us. That’s the way life seems to unfold. If we all felt the same way towards everyone else, think what a weird world we would live in. It just wouldn’t work, would it?

          But in my reflection on those people I have known, indeed, my memories are surely of things we have had in common, experiences shared, and times enjoyed; but the memories are basically the love that has been communicated. And that love has taught me about God. The best lessons about God have come from other people and the love they have shown me. Sure, no friend is perfect. Ideally, I do not expect them to be, as I do not expect them to think anything like that of me. In fact, under the best circumstances, we can laugh at each other’s foibles and joke about our silly humanity.

          Strange, how some of the strongest memories I have of the wisdom I have received come from what might be thought of as unexpected places. I was conducting a confirmation class years ago when I asked the class what it was they liked most about their friends. And one of the pimple-faced young seventh graders said, “A friend is someone who makes you feel good about yourself.”

          Simple, right? Beautiful, right? And tell me how this trait of a good friend differs in any way from what we learn about the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus took the time to just be with everyone he encountered. And he even seemed to spend more time with the least fortunate, those who were the least admired, the outcasts even. Because he knew that they felt very poorly of themselves. His presence boosted them, ennobled them, blessed them…just where they were. The sinner, the leper, the prostitute. No reproach, no condemnation, just presence and love. The friendship of God knows no boundaries, lives with no exceptions.

          So I ask each of us to reflect on those friends, sometimes close friends, sometime perhaps only passing acquaintances, who have left you feeling better about things—about yourself, your world, your everything. And I ask you how you could possibly separate that feeling from the love of God that surrounds us, the light which shines on us every moment of our short but dazzling lives?

What I Can Do for You by Kelly Murphy Moreton

I cannot give you possessions. I can promise you passion. I cannot guarantee you security. I can make you smile. I cannot open doors of opportunity for you. I can expand your imagination. I cannot dissolve your concerns. I can strengthen your spirit. I cannot change the world in which we live, But I can encompass you in love.

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, February 6, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Abundant Life & Being Good Enough

“[God,] give us…abundant life.” (Collect Epiphany V)

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)

“For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.” (I Corinthians 15:9)

“But when Simon Peter saw [such a large number of fish], he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)

Today’s themes are about the disheartening fact that we human beings are ingrates and have trouble appreciating a good thing because of our oneriness and ingratitude. Yes, that’s right. All of the lessons are about slapping down a beautiful thing when it is staring us in the face. Just how long do we stay on the sunny side of the street?

Our collect asks God to give us abundant life. Abundant life: what a great phrase for the unlimited, illimitable spectacles called our lives. Consider just the smallest favors you have been given and then consider that your lives have been enriched, surrounded, overflowing with bounty, even in the midst of the trials and challenges you have faced.

          In the call of Isaiah, we have a full-blown opera set with the fledgling prophet seeing God sitting on a throne with a long, flowing robe filling the temple. Angels hovered over God, each with six wings, covering their faces and feet. They flew with the remaining two. And they were singing one of the most spectacular outbursts of joy in all written literature:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.”

          Cecil B. DeMille could not have choreographed such a scene. It is almost beyond our imagination. In fact, only our imagination can describe the scene as the writer of Isaiah does. Remember that I suggested that we substitute the word “beauty” for the word “glory”? The whole world is full of the grace and beauty of God.

          But this young whippersnapper Isaiah. He just feels sorry for himself in the face of such a vision and says, “Woe is me! I am lost and I am a man of unclean lips.”

          Paul is more sophisticated. He admits to his earlier terrible persecution of Chistians. But he has come to see his earlier defiance as a vehicle for his conversion to the graceof God. “By the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”

          And then there is poor Peter, who is a bridge to us modern people. The guys in the boats were complaining to Jesus, who had gotten into one of them, that they had gotten no fish. But Jesus told them to put the nets down into the water. Shortly thereafter they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break, and the boats were beginning to sink for all the fish! Peter, instead of rejoicing at the gift of the catch, falls at Jesus’s feet and says, “Leave me, Jesus, for I am a sinful man.” Sure. Here is the theme of our meditation! Ingratitude and not feeling good enough.

          Before we scold Peter, perhaps we too fall victim to self-pity and never feeling quite adequate for the glory that surrounds us, the light that continually falls on us.

          It is truly amazing. Someone chided me recently for not accepting a compliment graciously. This could very well be a posture of false modesty and of feeling really not worthy of receiving the compliment offered. Could be. For sure enough, there are a thousand and one ways we underestimate our own glory, we strip the gold from the people that we truly are.

          Have you ever heard that wild song by the talented musician named Beck? It is called “I’m a loser, baby. Why don’t you kill me?”

          We seem to sit—or, better, wallow—in our imperfections and concentrate on what we think we don’t have.

• I’m not good-looking enough.
• I’m not healthy enough.
• I don’t have enough money.
• I don’t have many friends.
• I want more hair.

I had been living in New Jersey a few years when I received a letter in the mail informing me that the storage facility in which I had two units full of old letters, slides, diplomas, camping equipment, etc., had burned to the ground and that everything was lost. It’s amazing how brief my grief was, for, after all, what could be done? It was gone and that was that.

And I have just moved and gotten the lesson again that I own more than I need. A friend said the other day, “Being happy with what you have is the only way to do it.” Being happy with what we have is, indeed, the only way to do it!

But, no, I am a child and I give myself messages that do not focus on the glory of what is around me. As St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “The farther away light is from one’s touch, the more one naturally speaks of the need for something else.” But the irony of this, of course, is that light is never absent from one’s touch. All we need do is reach out and touch it!

          We are very clever strategists. We create powerpoints in our heads with conclusive evidence that we are not good enough.

 “God doesn’t care about me.” And let’s be honest, isn’t there a side of us that kind of enjoys these negative emotions? A lot more happens in our heads that happens outside our own homes.

          So we don’t think that God cares for you? I heard of a patient in a therapist’s office who was bewailing his sad lot in life. “What a failure I am,” he lamented.

          The therapist replied, “But I love you and God loves you.”

          “But I just can’t forgive myself for the things I have done.”

          Just then the therapist stood up, pounded the desk and yelled, “Who do you think you are? Smarter and more knowledgeable than God?”

          There is a time for therapists to pound on their desk, and this therapist struck the right note and should pound whenever you or I catch ourselves feeling sorry for ourselves.

          But we can continue to dwell in the land of darkness if we want to. And we can continue to feel cut off from the sunlight of the spirit. I can tell you I love you till I’m blue in the face, but that just isn’t a message strong enough to pull us out of funks.

          God does not demand, or even expect, perfection. The life of Jesus should show us definitively that God blesses imperfection. In fact, a poet proclaims, “Light baptizes life wherever it falls.” And that light falls right here on you and on me! It’s always about the light.

          So I’m going to take us all to theological seminary this morning and give you a degree in thirty seconds. This will save you a lot of money, and you can get your degree and become a fully accredited priest in under a minute—at least, if you want to!  Just don’t tell our bishop!

          So, welcome class. The first question you must master is this:

1. Where is God?

Yes, the answer is EVERYWHERE.

And the second and final question is:

• Why? Why is God everywhere?

Answer: Because he likes us!

So, I now award you your divinity degree.

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty. Heaven and earth are full of your glory!”

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, January 30, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Greatest of These

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
(Jeremiah 1:4)

“I have been sustained by you ever since I was born; from my mother’s womb you have been my strength.” (Psalm 71:6)

“Love never dies.” (I Corinthians 1:13)

          The readings appointed to be read in our churches are on a three-year cycle, so here we are this morning with one of the supreme passages in all of the New Testament, in fact, in all of world literature—a hymn, a theological statement on the subject of love, one that resonates down the ages and touches us closely in our everyday lives. It is often read at weddings, but it should be posted on our refrigerators and, indeed, embedded in our hearts—not just read in church once every three years!

          For love is a tough subject, isn’t it? You know, love plays a role in all of the major world religions—from the sutras of Hinduism, to the summary of the law in Judaism to the love lyrics of the Islamic poet Rumi. Rumi typically writes, “All the universe is born of love—but where did this love come from? Love your soul in God’s love, I swear there is no other way.” But nowhere is love as central as it is in Christianity.

          God says to Jeremiah as he calls him to be his prophet, that he knew him as he was being formed in the womb. He was rendered holy even before he was born. And the same is so with us, according to the psalmist: ““I have been sustained by you ever since I was born; from my mother’s womb you have been my strength.” If love stretches even to the placenta of our births, surely this confirms and strengthens the message that God is love, loves us, from the first and until the last.

          But I said, as you remember, that love is a tough subject. Why? Because not only can it be a challenge to believe that God is love, but the commandment to love as God loves seems far beyond our feeble means.

          To call God love can be quite shocking, since many of us have inherited an idea of God as a judge or potentate or stern Father or indifferent unmoved mover or cause of Fate. It is a radical paradigm shift to transform these forbidding and abstract images into a God of gentleness, compassion, understanding and intimate love.

          Even more challenging is the belief that we are worthy of such unconditional love. Because we think that what we really, really know about ourselves discounts us, rules us out of the party of love-making that God invites us to. I was thinking of the terrible culture wars that seem to be infecting (yes, infecting, like Coronavirus itself) our public life. We read about people creating havoc on airplanes from refusing to wear masks, of plots to overthrow our presidential election, of corruption so pervasive that our heads spin. And of talk of war, of this juvenile obsession with territorial aggression. Can you believe that we are actually making possible the destruction of the earth over squabbling over Ukraine? I wonder what Andrei thinks of such insanity? Bad enough that we have this tin-pot dictator Vladimir Putin, who can’t resist bearing his bare chest to photographers, pining for a return to the boundaries of the Soviet Union; perhaps as bad, if not worse, that the United States wants to threaten this aggression with deadly weapons that will make all parties lose and lose fatally. When is the world, and that includes us, going to stand up and demand an end to war? It can be done. We just have to do it.

          I consider myself a millimeter from being a full-blown pacifist. But I know that there is aggression and animal nature within me. The mob that stormed this Capitol last January were ravenous traitors, all right; but I, too, could be lured into joining a lynch mob. Under certain circumstances, my rage could be aroused to the point where I, too, could do something heinous and illegal and deadly.

          Everyone wants to be loved and loves to be loved; but few of us are willing to do the loving. Being loved results in returning it. It is not only a natural consequence of being loved, it is our obligation, our happy obligation to love others as we have been loved.

          One way to turn around our pinched attitudes, our reluctance to love under the numerous circumstances when we withhold it, is to consider all those times and places, and all those people who have loved us. I think we will be amazed, in fact, to consider just how much love has come our way. We are children of grace, every single one of us. And this love is not just confined to us human beings.

          I recently read the story of a wounded dog, a Doberman named Khan, who after just four days into a new and adopted family with a 17-month-old baby saved that baby’s life by suddenly picking it up by its diaper and tossing it across the yard. At first the bystanders thought the dog was attacking the baby—until they realized the dog took sick very suddenly. Rushing it to the veterinarian they learned he had been bitten by one of the most venomous snakes in the world—the Mulga snake of Australia—and Khan was near death for days as the vets struggled to save its life. Instead of killing the baby, the dog had saved its life, had intervened when he saw the snake approaching the tiny child, and put its own life on the line. As it turned out, the dog lived. And the child too. Love among the animals. This too is love; this too is God present.

          I close with a reading of our Epistle, this time the Message Bible translation:

The Way of Love

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹ When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, January 23, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Stop, Look and Listen!

“Give us grace to answer the call and proclaim to everyone the Good News.”
(Collect for Third Epiphany)

“Then all the people listened—they were all ears—to the book of the law.”
(Nehemiah 8:3)

“The heavens declare the glory of God, *
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

2 One day tells its tale to another, *
and one night imparts knowledge to another.

3 Although they have no words or language, *
and their voices are not heard.” (Psalm 19:1-3)

“And [Jesus] rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him.” (Luke 4:21)

It’s truly remarkable how the themes of Epiphany weave themselves together so wonderfully. We have spoken about the light, the light of Epiphany that shines on us, from us, outwardly through us for all the world to see. The light that shone over the cradle in Bethlehem is the same light that lightens Jews and Gentiles and every single soul on the planet Earth. That’s what light is, what light does. It does not discriminate. It’s always about the light. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

And this light is something that is revealed. Like the answer to a riddle, the solution to a puzzle. It is what has been there in plain sight, but perhaps unnoticed, un-turned on, for as long as we can remember. Except we seldom noticed.

Let’s look a few moments at noticing. What are the requirements for noticing something, for really noticing, not just out of one corner of our eye, not just for the briefest, most superficial attention?

I suggest that the requirement for an epiphany, for enlightenment is to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN.

These are the themes of the scriptural passages I cite this morning, and they seem to be the ingredients of insights that move our lives from indifference to excitement, from sluggishness to exhilaration.

Our collect this morning asks God to “give us grace to answer the call and proclaim to everyone the Good News.” Sounds attractive enough, but how can we answer the call or proclaim anything until we stop and pay attention to what that call is, until we have a clue as to what to proclaim!

What do you think God calls us to do? Have we thought about this? My guess is that many of us haven’t even a clue—which, when we think about it, is kind of pathetic. Am I being too callous? I wonder, because I do not exempt myself from this challenge. What are we called to proclaim? Can we put it in a simple sentence that will call other people’s attention?

Remember as kids when our teacher would tap us on the shoulder as she or he would walk up and down the aisles of the classroom> “Sit up straight! Pay attention! What’s the answer to this question!” We may have been too busy doodling with our blunt pencils, passing notes to our buddy next to us, or counting the minutes to the end of class. So we may not have been paying attention. So unless we were paying attention, we cannot have answered any call or proclaimed much of anything. Sad. Someone must have missed this good news which we could have passed on.

We may not be children today, but, if you’re like me, you are easily distracted. Either by multitasking, trying to do too many things at one time, or by getting diverted to do too many things, either serially or at one time. Our heads can whirl and we can miss out on a lot that’s going on around us.

This reminds me of the suicide bomb instructor when he was giving a lecture to new recruits. “All right, lads, pay attention, because I’m only gonna show you this once!”

The Old Testament lesson talks about a group of people who indeed did listen to what was read to them. One translation puts it in the vernacular: “They were all ears.” That’s a heap of listening—all ears! Love it.

The psalm speaks of stopping to look and listen as well. It talks about a marvelous thing. It reads:

“The heavens declare the glory of God, *
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

One day tells its tale to another, *
and one night imparts knowledge to another.

Although they have no words or language, *
and their voices are not heard.”

What is said in this passage is that what is seen and what is heard is too beautiful, too marvelous for words; this light, this enlightenment goes beyond words. It can only be experienced. These voices are not heard by our ears, as they were by the Jews in the Old Testament reading. These things were experienced, felt: the heavens declare this glory as one day tells its tale to another. So beautiful, so fragile, so glorious that we are in the realm of the sublime.

          How can this be experienced unless we Stop, Look, and Listen. Do you know the beautiful Christmas song, “Do you hear what I hear?”

          Sometimes it takes the sound of silence, as it did for the psalmist this morning. Sometimes it takes a seismic event in our personal lives, like a slap in the face, to wake us to certain realities we have been avoiding. Other times, it may be a quiet piece of chamber music, an off-the-cuff statement made by a friend, or a poem heard as if for the first time.

          Perhaps nature sometimes hears what we do not hear. After all, nature seems stopped all right: and it seems to be looking and listening.

          This poem is entitled “I See You More Clearly Now:

One hundred and sixteen souls,
counted with care.
My inspiration
on a quiet afternoon
to get to know those who live
around me.
 
Mostly oaks, some spindly
and just beginning,
others like grandfathers
with wide open arms.
A towering pine that was a
miniature Christmas tree
twenty-five years ago.
The sycamore planted
before our daughter was born.
An elm, that shades
where we sit on the patio.
Mulberries lining the driveway,
their leaves dessert for the deer.  
And a small eucalyptus grove,
where trees are tall enough
for the hawks to nest.
 
To each I say, I see you.
I honor your presence,
and gritty patience
with battering winds,
sunbaked earth,
birds that squawk and titter
from your branches.
Being the guardians
that you are, I can believe
you love all of this.
Beautiful, sacred trees,
I see you more clearly now.

Isn’t that marvelous? Hearing this writer stop and notice all those trees inspires us to stop, look and listen.

Then a similar poem by Robert Frost. You probably know it. It is called “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

          Having those who stop and look to serve as examples helps us enter that deep awareness wherein, perhaps, we touch on everything, it is like looking into the source of light itself. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

          Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, January 16, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

It’s Always About the Light IV

“Jesus Christ is the light of the world.”
(Collect for Second Epiphany)

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of God.”
(Isaiah 62:3)

“How priceless is your love, O God!…You give them drink from the river of your delights.” (Psalm 36:8)

“Jesus [turned the water into wine], the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.”
(John 2:11)

Here we are once again at home, meeting and worshiping together via Zoom. I bet you’re as tired as I am of this seemingly endless COVID pandemic and want to be shoulder to shoulder with your friends and fellow parishioners. But it is very dangerous out there, and safety should be our motto until things ease up. In the meantime, greetings and let’s make the best of this less than ideal situation.

Epiphany, as we have seen, is about light. It’s always about the light. The light that was coming into the world. The light that came into the world through the remarkable and dazzling light of one named Jesus, and the light that shines in our hearts as we see how transforming this light really is—a light that is reflected from God, that wells up from within and radiates out into the world around us. Let our light so shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Epiphany means an uncovering, a revelation, a manifestation of something that we may not have seen, that may have eluded us. It’s not that something was not there and is suddenly there. It may have been there all along, but we just neglected noticing. Of course, if we don’t notice something, it’s as good as not being there. How many times have we said, do we say, “Oh, wow, I never noticed that before”?

Like when we look in a mirror [photo #1]. Or like when water becomes wine [photo #2].

We are told, or we have heard, that we are created in God’s image. Now, that’s a lovely phrase, but do we believe it? Do we really, really believe that we reflect, that we emanate the light of God? Remember, it is always about the light. It can be challenge, especially as Father Time gets the better of us, when we look in a mirror. Some of us have never been pleased when we brush our teeth in the morning and get a glance at the face staring back at us [photo #3]. One smart aleck wrote that when he sees really attractive people, he laughs because he knows if we lived in the Aztec culture, they’d be sacrificed to the gods for their beauty. It may seem a strange way of coping with not being really attractive… but it works for him.

What a shame really. Most of us aren’t Sophia Loren [photo #4] or Marilyn Monroe or Brad Pitt or Bradley Cooper [photo #5]. And if we get really, really serious, I think most of us want to remain exactly as we were created. The light we are given is sufficient for us. In fact, this image of God in us is not confined to the human race. Caterpillars have it [photo #6]; crocodiles have it; chimpanzees have it. And, can you believe: ostriches, elephants, platypuses, kangaroos. What in heaven’s name? This place right here is more bizarre than the bar scene in “Star Wars” [photo #7]. In fact, the mountains, the oceans, the forest, all manifest this light, this image of God [photo #8]. Coming to understand this is to step into heaven itself. It is to see that water is wine, already [photo #9]. Jesus just calls this to our attention. The miracle at the wedding in Cana supposedly reveals the glory of Christ. “Glory” is a wonderful word with many surprising meanings. One of these meanings is “beauty,” Next time you hear the term “glory,” substitute the word “beauty” for it, and see how it can help us see something in a new light. Like an epiphany. The beautiful chorus from Handel’s Messiah sings, “And the glory of, glory of the Lord, shall be re-vealed!” That is epiphany. The curtain lifts, the penny drops, the eyes see, as if for the first time, the unimaginable bright light that shines from and in and around everything we see. Light, light, light. It’s always about the light.

And perhaps, just perhaps we underestimate our own glory, our own beauty, because the God we worship is too small. This God is not an old crabby guy with no sense of humor. God every minute is bursting out of the little tin boxes we try to put him in, through God’s wonderful creations. When  I was musing about light the other Sunday and wondering if light traveled in a straight line or could go around corners, I was informed that the light we see around corners is reflected and that colors are that reflected light. That’s what colors are: reflected light! Isn’t that great? We are the colors of God, reflecting what comes directly at us as pure white. And white light contains all the colors unrefracted and unreflected, and we cannot see those colors until they are reflected in you and me and the trees and mountains.

I close with a favorite poem of mine, one that I had to memorize when I was in the fifth grade, when doing such things was a lot easier than it would be now. It is called “Rhodora” by Ralph Waldo Emerson [photo #10].

On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

It’s always about the light. Before I could not see what was right before me. Now I see.

Amen.

By The Rev. Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (From
John 1:1-18; First Sunday after Christmas)
Bishop Hughes recommends that since things
are so hectic we can take a break and we do
not have to write sermons each week. She
suggested using prepared sermons to present
available for priest on the diocese website.
Today’s sermon and last Sundays sermon are
from their website with some revisions….

How was your Christmas? People will be
asking each other that question for weeks
to come. While I understand what is being
asked. I also hear an underlying assumption
that Christmas is over. It is the same
assumption that underlies the birthday
wishes to Jesus. “Happy birthday Jesus”
suggests that Christmas is the celebration of
a past event, an anniversary. It is the reason

why in at least a few homes the tree has
already been taken down, the decorations
are being packed away for another year,
and the leftovers thrown out.

I raise these three points not as a criticism
or judgment but to show that we are event
driven people. We tend to live our lives
from one event to the next. If you don’t
think so, take a look at your calendar. It is a
schedule of events.I look for holidays for
days off from work. CVS, Walgreens, Target,
Walmart already have Valentine’s Day,
Easter and St Patrick items for sale. If we
have nothing scheduled on any given day, it
is as if there is nothing for us to experience
or learn that day.How different is St. John’s

understanding of Christmas, life, and
humanity.

In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was in the beginning with God. All
things came into being through him, and
without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.

This, for St. John, is the Christmas story and
it is set in the context of creation, “In the
beginning.” Creation is not an event of the
past but the ongoing life of God with his
people. St. John echoes and continues the
Genesis story of creation, “In the beginning
God said, ‘Let there be…’ and there was….”

Land, sky, vegetation, living creatures from
the water, birds of the air, living creatures
from the earth, and humankind made in the
image and likeness of God.

Christmas is God continuing to give life to
his people. “And the Word became flesh
and lived among us.” Christmas, says St.
Gregory of Nyssa, is the “festival of re-
creation.” It is God giving God’s own life to
his people. It is as if God said, “I want
humanity to see my face. I want them to
hear my voice. I want them to touch me. I
want them to smell my sweat. I want them
to eat my body. I want to live their life. I
want them to live my life.” “And the word
became flesh and lived among us.” This is

God in the flesh, the divine human, holy
humanity.

This festival of re-creation is God’s
celebration of humanity. It is God
entrusting God’s self to human beings, to
you and to me. It is God’s reaffirmation of
humanity’s goodness. It is the sharing and
exchanging of life between God and you
and me. That’s why the early church could
say that God became human so that
humanity might become God. The Son of
God became the son of man so that the
sons of men might become sons of God.

That is really nice… Imagine what that
means for us. It means we are holy and
intended to be holy, not as an achievement

on our own but as a gift of God. This is the
gift of Christmas. We have been given the
power to become children of God. This
happens not by blood, or the will of the
flesh, or the will of people, but by God.
“And the Word became flesh and lived
among us.”

God sees humanity as the opportunity and
the means to reveal himself. Yet far too
often we use our humanity as an excuse. If
something goes wrong we are the first to
say “what do you expect I’m only human,”
we declare, as if we are somehow deficient.
We fail to see, to believe, to understand
that in the Word becoming flesh and living
among us we are God’s first sacrament.
Human beings are the tangible, outward,

and visible signs and carriers of God’s
inward and spiritual presence.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a
sacrament? Have you ever looked at
someone across the street and said, “Hey,
look! There is the sacramental image of
God?” Why not? Why do we not see that in
ourselves and each other? After all, “The
Word became flesh and lived among us.”

In the Jewish tradition rabbis tell a story
that each person has a procession of angels
going before them and crying out, “Make
way for the image of God.” Imagine how
different our lives and world would be if we
lived with this as our reality and the truth
that guided our lives.

Everywhere we go the angels go with us
announcing the coming of the image of God
and reminding us of who we are. That is the
truth of Christmas for us. It is also the
Christmas truth for the person living next
door, for those we love, for those we fear,
for those who are like us and those who are
different, for the stranger, and for our
enemies. “And the Word became flesh and
lived among us.”

The implications are profound. It changes
how we see our selves and one another, the
way we live, our actions, and our words. It
means that Christmas cannot be limited to
an event. Christmas is a life to be lived, a
way of being. It means that Christmas is

more properly understood as a verb rather
than a noun. So maybe we should stop
asking, “How was your Christmas?” Instead
we should be asking, “How are you
‘Christmassing?’” Are you recognizing the
Word become flesh in your own life? Are
you recognizing the Word become flesh in
the lives of others? Do you see the
procession of angels and hear their voices?
“And the Word became flesh and lived
among us.” The Word became flesh and has
never ceased living among us. The Word
became flesh and will never cease living
among us. So make way. Wherever you go.
Whatever you are doing. Whoever you are
with. Make way for the image of God.
Christmas your way through life.
Amen..