St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church - Elizabeth, NJ

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  • Home
  • Welcome
    • History >
      • Historical Sizzle
    • I'm New
    • Let's Get Acquainted
    • Rev. Canon Andy J. Moore
    • Leadership
    • Mission
    • Habits of Grace: Prayer into Action
    • Bishop Curry Who is my Neighbor >
      • Bishop Curry
    • Make a Gift
    • Services
    • Gallery >
      • May 7 Covid-19 Testing
      • 25 Years of Priesthood Gala >
        • 25th Years of Priesthood Gala
        • 25 Years of Priesthood Gala
      • Harvest Sunday
      • Sunday School Father's Day 19
      • Men's Club Community Flea Mkt
      • Community Christmas Party
      • Thankgiving Baskets
      • Celebration for High School Gradates
      • Homecoming 2018 >
        • Homecoming
      • Music in the Garden
      • Mother's Day 2018
      • Mother's Day 2018
      • Sunday School Youth Sunday
      • Maundy Thursday
      • Christmas Mass St. Elizabeth's
      • Christmas Eve Mass
      • Christmas Eve Mass
      • Christmas Eve Mass
      • Community Christmas Party
      • Frist Presbyterian
      • Feast of All Saints
      • Sanctuary Sunday 2017
      • International Food Festival
  • Get Involved
    • Sunday School >
      • Sunday School Lift Ev'ry Voice
      • Black History - MLK
      • Sunday School Black History
      • Sunday School Black History ii
      • Youth Ministry
    • ESL Cerificate of Achievement
    • Computer Literacy
    • Episcopal Church Women
    • Mens Club
    • Outreach
  • Hall Rental
  • Calendar
    • News & Events >
      • Bishop Curry Easter 2022
      • Bishop Chip Heart of The Matter
      • Bishop Curry Address the Nation 1/6
      • Bishop Curry Christmas Message
      • Christmas Poinsettias
      • Advent Worship Services
      • ECS Sunday - Bishop Chip
      • Bishop Chip COVID-19 Testing
  • Contact
  • Realm E-Giving Launch
  • Living Like Job
  • it's Friday....but Sunday Comin!!
  • Bishop Curry
  • Past Masses
    • Zoom Service Aug 23rd, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 16th, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 9th, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 2nd, 2020
  • Lenten Sermons 2021
  • Thanksgiving Basket Nov 22nd
  • New Page

Father Abraham had many Sons

6/30/2020

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Genesis 22 :12-14 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So, Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided

 As a child we sang lustily in Sunday School:
“Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let's just praise the Lord
Right arm!”

If so what went wrong?

One of the interesting developments as part of the fall out effect of the George Floyd revolution is the growing interests in slave stories. These are collections of some of the experiences shared by slaves about life on the plantations that fueled the economy of the U.S.A. There is much that one can glean from such writings that continues to affect race relations even today. Many times, slaves who were the trusted drivers of the plantation owner would desire to offer words of advice to his owner. These owners often lacked the discipline or business acumen and managerial skills needed to transform a floundering economy of scales while many a slave had gained tremendous knowledge and wisdom that will later be translated to successful ventures. The problem was the owner will allow his whiteness to blind him from accepting the wisdom of any one outside his cultural settings. In the end all would suffer as the plantations became overwhelmed by debt and slave families were broken up as commodities for debt servicing.

In many ways today there remains that lingering reluctance of how much can one really share to save our nation. How long must truth be sacrificed for the greater good? For too long we had to bear our wisdom, knowledge, and expressions in silence as leaders of both the nation and church hurtled to their own demise. We would agonize in many ways before we dare raise our voices and even then we had to shout to be heard. It took a dying whispered breath “I cannot breathe” for our white brothers & sisters to stop and listen. How hard must God shout the words “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him!”

This I suspect can be the lens we are invited to view the readings for today. Abraham and his household is gripped by fear. In their cultural settings human sacrifice may possibly be the norm. Abraham is fearful to carry out the act because either way he loses. He is a prisoner of his cultural system. Isaac suspects he is carrying the tools of his own death. The servants who are going along are fearful witnesses. Sarah is at home gripped by fear to the point that one tradition has it that Sarah died while Abraham and Isaac were on the way to Moriah. She was literally scared to death. How could she live without her son? Some even go as far to say that even God was gripped by fear for, he was not sure if Abraham would stop when so ordered. So, the road to Mt. Moriah becomes a journey of fearful silence.

There is so much we can all gain from a close study of these readings for in many ways we are all caught in a trap called fear. Some fear reparation, some fear revenge, all fear to trust. So like the slave and the owner we are hurtling along to our mutual demise. The fear is driven by the inability to see that there is enough resources available for all to live well. Greed and fear are dancing to the music of hate dirges. During this ‘dance macabre’, black lives along with their hopes, dreams and aspirations are being sacrificed. These including Dr. Martin, Trayvon, Michael, Alton, Bothan, Sandra, Atatiana, Freddie,Tamir, Breanna, Philander, George and thousands of others were sacrificed on altars of cultural whiteness.

 Then God breaks into the world of fear and declares “in me and through me there is enough for all.” Look there is a ram in the thicket”

Then Jesus came and revolutionized our understanding of God’s Holy word. Mathew 10:40 -42 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." Jesus bought us all into a relationship of both equality and equity. In Jesus what we discover is not unity over diversity but a truly diverse and equitable unity. My friends this is a time for Christians to fully activate their faith in God’s love for all.  For, it only through this faith, will our nation be saved. No longer can the Church which has so often supported structures of inequality, collaborated corrosively with power, colluded with colonialism remain passive. For too long those who confessed their belief that all human beings are made in the image of God have so often presented the world with a God whom they have made in their own cultural image. On Mt. Moriah a new promise was given in order to live out the promises of God. This was a chairos moment, in which God transforms fear into loving action through faith.

“Father Abraham had many sons
Many sons had Father Abraham
I am one of them and so are you
So let's just praise the Lord
Right hand!”

Or in modern chant “Black Lives matter!”

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Overcoming Faith

6/15/2020

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Genesis 18:14 Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." Genesis 18:14 
Facing the impossible with faith and hope in God amidst suffering seems to be the undergirding for our readings this week. Today we encounter Sarah who seem to lose her patience in God. She seemed to have resigned to her position of barrenness. Caught in a world of lost dreams, cynicism, and loss of faith she truly believed that God had forgotten. Maybe he had placed her prayers on the discard list. Often, we find ourselves railing against God in the face of what seems to be unsurmountable odds. The weight of oppression, false hopes and broken dreams can become a gateway to hopelessness.
 
 
For many years I have been crying like a voice in the wilderness declaring the church has found itself on the wrong side of God’s work among humanity. The church has found itself celebrating the wrong values for as much as it sought to clothe itself in clothing of liberalism in its response to the challenges of human sexuality the one sin which has plagued it from Philemon to Jim Crow is that of the human invention of racism. From the moment Constantine the European weaponized Christianity to become a tool of oppression against the marginalized, the church became part of the same oppressive structure which Jesus challenged.  
For the God of Jesus is one of care for the oppressed, neglected and discarded. The God of the Old Testament who encountered Abraham was one of universality as reflected in the story of Isaac and Ishmael and threads its way throughout the scriptures. God’s people were never by race, creed or class but those who recognized His presence in all people. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Rev.7:9) 
 
Today’s Old Testament report shares the roots of welcoming all people for in so doing you welcome the very presence of God. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Hebrews 13:2  

It all began when Abraham refused to count God out! Jesus modelled this understanding of God by eating and drinking with sinner thus when one witnesses Mathew’s edit to ignore the gentiles we are witnessing a call to culture rather than faith, That remains the biggest struggle of the Christian of having to choose between culture or faith. 

“John Dominic Crossan has studied the historical Jesus extensively, placing him squarely in the context of the first century eastern Mediterranean world in which he lived. Archeology, history, and cross-cultural studies all help to reveal Jesus’ world. It was a world dominated by the Roman Empire, a world in which the Jews saw that the land given to them by God was being appropriated for commercial farming through high taxes levied on impoverished peasants. Some Jews lost their lands to debt and became day laborers. Some had to sell children into slavery to have sufficient resources for the rest of their families. Crossan said, “In any situation of oppression, especially in these oblique, indirect, and systematic ones where injustice wears a mask of normalcy or even of necessity, the only ones who are innocent or blessed are those squeezed out deliberately as human junk from the system’s own evil operations.” Thus, the poor Jews were “blessed,” although they surely didn’t feel like it. Jesus used parables to help people see beyond his culture’s “normal,” to see the world as God would have it, a world in which caring for each other with compassion and equality would bring the Kingdom of God to them, right there where they lived. Jesus modelled this world. He ate with anyone who chose to eat with him, disregarding cultural taboos. Crossan commented, “Open commensality is the symbol and embodiment of radical egalitarianism, of an absolute equality of people that denies the validity of any discrimination between them and negates the necessity of any hierarchy among them.” ( John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, (NY :HarperCollins, 1994) 70. 6 Ibid, 79.) 
So today as we witness the an Episcopal President standing in front of an Episcopal Church waving a Bible to sustain oppression should be a clarion not just for the church to rail in condemnation but it should assume a position of penitence and begin the work of reconciliation within it’s own walls prior to calling the world to reconciliation. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? (Mathew 7:3) As our nation struggles with the emerging power of God who visits the poor and oppressed in His time, the church now must set about setting wrongs right! Is the church willing to finally free itself from the cultural prison which has provided much financial benefits while costing it very soul? 

Our call at this is to understand that our God will never be imprisoned by human culture and its trappings. Sarah fertility being restored is a proclamation of God’s presence and power stands outside human understanding or control. That is the faith which led insignificant people to triumph over seeming unsurmountable challenges. It is that faith which Jesus shared with His disciples and by extension challenged them to take into the world. For Jesus, religion is that which subsumes itself to culture and faith is that which triumphs over culture. 
​

My friends that remains the greatest gift that as African Americans we offer to the world. No other community practices their faith in larger numbers than us. No other socio—economic group has placed deeper faith in God than our community. Thus, when God raises voices around the world to shout our songs of freedom it is a testimony of whose side God is on. We then are called to lead the counter-culture cry by saying peace, forgiveness and reconciliation by inviting our oppressors to take a knee with us the presence of God.( Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,) We are challenging our oppressors to begin the work of restorative actions for unlike their culture we are offering the gift of love and peace. For the battle is not ours but has already been won by God. The Christian message is about having faith in the impossible. ​

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Hands Up! Don't Shoot!

6/1/2020

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​Acts 2:7,8 &2   Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Today is the feast of Pentecost, and we gather in memory of the fulfillment of Jesus’ promised gift to his disciples.  It has been fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection.  For the past days, Jesus kept appearing to them in various ways to remind the disciples of his radical teachings of the power of God’s transforming love.  “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:23)  Jesus had invested heavily in teaching the power of peace and forgiveness as the fullest expressions of God’s love. It was a subversive movement struggling against a powerful oppressive culture.  And, fifty days after Jesus was crucified, the disciples were struggling with the enormity of the task of carrying on the teachings and practices of Jesus while living in fear of the cruelty of the authorities.  It must have been a paralyzing fear that kept them trapped in hiding places. The over-riding question might have been, “How can we do this without Jesus?”  Oh yes, there was much trepidation.

This week I lost a friend and brother, his wife lost a husband, and his sons lost a father due to the horrible effects of the COVID-19 Virus. We prayed; we hoped; we laughed, and in the end, he died.  Now, we do not know how to grieve; how to say farewell because the world has changed so much our rituals regarding grief are now so different; succinct and compressed.  Our fear, pain and sadness are so overwhelming, and we can’t cling to the old traditions which we used for comfort and support.  The COVID-19 virus has ravaged our communities robbing us of the few who had any semblance of generational wisdom as well as the economic stability we work towards when we work in the now dangerous places like hospitals and grocery stores. 
 
My friends, in many ways, I believe we are in the same place as the disciples were on Pentecost; struggling as a church, as a nation and especially for us, as communities of color. We are deeply perplexed and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of sustaining hope and God’s love amidst our deep-seated fear and overwhelming pain and deepening anger.  Some of the perplexing questions are:

How can a religion formed by an oppressed people travel to Europe and the Americas and evolve into a tool of oppression?
How did a religion, built upon universality and equity, become a corner stone of colonialism and slavery?
How can a church, born out of God’s fire, become complicit in the ongoing racial injustices that lie at the heart of our nation?
Wouldn’t it be surprising and disheartening to discover that Dereck Chauvin was a Christian?

 
This dissonance was also so graphically revealed in the recent Central Park incident in which the scab of liberalism was ripped away to reveal the truth lying just below the surface of our society.  Sadly, many of our liberal friends and leaders are yet to understand that the sounds they make as they shout from positions of privilege ring hollow in our communities.  It is called white noise!  For oppression to end it must be acknowledged, and the perpetrator must assume the position of penitence. The oppressor must seek the forgiveness of the oppressed and set about making restitution. This process of confession and forgiveness lies at the heart of Christianity. Many get excited about the flames of Pentecost and neglect the work and responsibilities which Pentecost demands. The Church acknowledges its complicity in the havoc wreaked upon communities of color.  But has the Church ask for forgiveness and will it make restitution?

George Floyd’s death was triggered by a questionable $20.00 bill. While this may seem upsetting to some, it is the reality of life in black and brown communities where distrust tarnishes every encounter. We are constantly viewed through the lens of hate and distain forever destined to a life of vulnerability.

Many believe our cities are burning simply because of police action, a poor decision, and these people turn a blind eye to the huge disparities in education, health, finance, and mental health. They are silent when the need to ensure our sons enjoy the same comforts as their own sons. We as a people have been diminished and discarded due to other people’s short-sidedness and unfounded fears. The Church has been quite complicit by its unwillingness to be an agent of healing to repair the breach by telling the whole story of our presence in the room on the day of Pentecost. The scripture shares there were representatives from Libya and shares that an Ethiopian eunuch was one of the first Christians. To simplify the issue, today inhuman policing leaves us just like the disciples, sitting in a room in Jerusalem cowering in fear rather than spreading the truth of the tremendous power of God.  We are all in the room together.

On the day of Pentecost, as overwhelming as the task may have seemed, it was not beyond the power, wisdom, and vision of God. The disciples experienced for the first time the greatness of God and became living witnesses to His power.  They were set on fire and assumed the position of Jesus and released themselves to fall in love with God through Christ Jesus. The cross became a symbol of freedom and a clarion call much as “My Hands Are Up! Don’t shoot.”

 “The Resurrection has proved its power; there are Christians—even in Rome.” This is how Karl Barth, renowned Swiss theologian, described the conversion of the Roman Christians in his famous work The Epistle to the Romans. What he meant was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ had proved its reality.  “There were, in fact, Christians in Rome, the capital of the oppressive empire whose authority had crucified Jesus, and that was indeed sufficient grounds for thanksgiving and belief.” (Why the Enslaved Adopted the Religion of Their Masters—and Transformed It. Dante Stewart)

Can the fires of Pentecost reveal there are Christians in America? Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For they know we are Christians by our love! Our Hands Are Up! Don’t Shoot!

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    Rev. Canon, Andy Moore 

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St Elizabeth’s
305 N. Broad Street
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07207

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