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
    • Sunday Service Aug 30th 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 23rd, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 16th, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 9th, 2020
    • Zoom Service Aug 2nd, 2020
    • Gallery >
      • 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
    • Moments in Black History 2019
    • Black History - MLK
    • Sunday School Black History
    • Sunday School Black History ii
    • Youth Ministry
    • ESL Fall 19 Classes
    • ESL Cerificate of Achievement
    • Computer Literacy
    • Episcopal Church Women
    • Mens Club
    • Outreach
  • Hall Rental
  • Calendar
    • News & Events >
      • Free Testing for COVID-19
      • Robin Pierre DCN
      • Pastoral Letter April 24th
      • Holy Week Schedule
      • Church Services Suspended
      • Reading Lent4 - Mar 22nd
      • Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing Challenge
      • Absalom Jones Service Sunday 2/16
      • Brad Kleiman in Concert
      • Annual General Meeing
      • Christmas Service
      • Cathedral Day 2019
      • Bern Nix Jazz Festival
      • All Saints Sunday, 3rd, November
      • Sight & Sound 2019
      • Int'l Food Festival July 13th
      • UMHA - Workshop Canceled 6/15
      • Prayer Breakfast Mar 16th
      • MLK Day of Service
      • UMHA - Sunday Dec 16th
      • New Year Eve Service
      • Christmas Celebration Fun Night
      • ECW Trip to Lancaster PA
      • Homecoming 2018
      • Music In the Garden
      • Saxophone Recital
      • Elizabeth Homeless Coalition
      • From Your Door to Heaven's Door
      • Urban Garden
      • Black History Events
  • Contact
  • Realm E-Giving Launch
  • Harvest Baskets Giveaways
  • Rector's Harvest Message
  • 25 Years of Priesthood Gala
    • 25th Years of Priesthood Gala
  • 25 Years of Priesthood Gala
  • Sunday May 5th
  • Lent 2019
  • Living Like Job
  • Operation Warm Heart
  • 9th Annual Food Festival
  • it's Friday....but Sunday Comin!!
  • Bishop Curry
  • Poor People's Campaign
  • Zoom Sunday Service Oct 4th
  • Stewardship Sunday 10/18/2020

Working with Jesus to make a Miracle

7/28/2018

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​John 6:9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.  But what are they among so many people?”
 
This is one of my all-time favorite miracle stories.  I often use it as a sermon for children because they can relate to the pure excitement of a child their own age.  It is about a little boy who ran home and told his mother, “Jesus and I made a miracle today”.  Yet, there is nothing childish about the story or by extension the readings for today.  The Old Testament is definitely rated X, and the Epistle can be rated R and the Gospel could be rated PG. 
 
In the today’s readings we learned how David struggled as a leader who lacks the moral courage to balance his power and his sacred duties as king.  The duplicity used in gaining his position continue to plague him as he sits on his throne.  He now begins to realize that in ‘shaking off the tools of his trade”, honesty, fairness, respect for the laws of God, and for his people, he has lost the fear of God.  David failed to understand that his worldly power could not replace God’s power and because of this lack of understanding, collateral damage is caused by his hand; lies are told, a child would eventually suffer, a marriage is destroyed, a man loses his life and a loyal general loses his integrity.  God’s miracle is to make something of value out of the carnage created by the mental and emotional instability of a man called to greatness. My friends, aren’t we living in similar times; where are leaders disregard the law and take advantage of power and of women? 
 
It is the similar situation which Jesus faced when he approached Phillip with the challenge to go beyond Phillips support of His simply delivering sermons and to Jesus’ reaching out to his followers and feeding them.  Jesus wanted to touch these people by feeding them physically and spiritually.  Phillip possibly didn’t see this as Jesus’ responsibility to care for the physical needs of the followers.  Maybe he was just overwhelmed by the thought of being responsible for more than a chosen few.  Or maybe he was captured by the spirit which even today in our time takes hold and has us tell our friends, neighbors and family, “You need to be on your own.  You need to care for yourself.” There are many of us who thrive in small settings and may prefer to be alone. This selfishness is a hurdle to overcome in order for the church to grow.  Like King David, we become selfish and afraid of the responsibilities given to us by God. We establish artificial relationships on Instagram and Facebook.  We think we are important because we have one thousand hits on Instagram or five-thousand Facebook friends.  These people don’t know us.  God knows us.  Jesus knows us.  We are our bothers keepers!!! We cannot forget this.      
 
It is that same spirit of togetherness or oneness in which St. Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians.  There were two distinct groups struggling to find a way to God’s kingdom.  The Jewish Christians were convinced that it was their responsibility to guard the faith from the unclean and unworthy.  The gentile Christians were struggling with a heritage of being locked out from experiencing the fullness of God.  In other words, some were struggling to keep people out while others were struggling with the hopelessness of ever being accepted.  Paul preaches a message describing Jesus as a bridge for those who are the gatekeepers and those who are being kept outside of the gates, “I am now the gate through which all can now enter into the very presence of God.“  In Ephesians 3:14-21, Paul states, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with the all the fullness of God.”   The key here is All God’s people.  This is nothing short of revolutionary. 
 
We now dwell in a world where exclusivity becomes a badge of honor.  We revel in our exclusive status which may be under the banner of race, color or class.  Based on the State Farm Insurance ad, we love our “she-sheds and man-caves”.  But, we also see the power in a collective voice.  The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement and now, the Me-Too movement have changed laws and changed basic cultural beliefs.  One voice may be lost in the wind.  Bathsheba didn’t go looking for David.  He took her from her husband, and it was Bathsheba who suffered.    
 
Jesus preaches a revolutionary message that draws us into community.  We become partners in healthy relationships so that there would be no need for Bathsheba to suffer, no need for people to starve as they search for Christ’s love.  Women would be respected and honored, children would become important partners in the kingdom building process.  We become willing to share in the God given resources of the world and food would be available to all.  God is the love that bridges all differences.  Jesus started a revolution based upon love through justice.  There is no longer room for any exclusive group to lay any greater claim to God’s love or power.  There is no King or leader whose rights can or should impinge upon the poor or powerless. 
 
Jesus is love.  Jesus is our bridge.                    

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Living in Christ

7/22/2018

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Church State Collusion

7/14/2018

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2 Samuel 6:12b “So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing.”
 
Today we witness the collusion of state and church as a means of consolidating power. From David to Herod to Constantine the tendency to capitalize on the spirituality of a community as means to exercise one’s power is witnessed.
 
David in a bold effort to consolidate his power moves The Ark which represented the very presence of God, to his newly restructured city of Jerusalem. Herod, struggling with his moral failures uses his guards to intimidate the truth speakers. Constantine uses the cross as a tool of war on other nations; yet, even as all of these incidents are occurring in the main plot, deeply embedded in the sub-plot is the presence of not just a moral lapse, but the eerie presence of mental illness. David’s dance in the presence of The Ark, long viewed as an act of jubilation and license for many liturgical expressions, is viewed with distaste by the daughter of Saul who grieves deeply for her father. But, of greater concern is David’s decision to eliminate the role of the Levites, whose duty it was to move The Ark. David’s zeal and abuse of power may reflect something much more troubling within David’s soul. Herod uses his loyalty for his daughter to affect a horrible and gruesome act. What manner of man would not only execute a man by beheading him, but handing the head of the dead man to his daughter?

My friends,  over the last couple weeks I have been inviting us to assist in moving mental illness outside of the proverbial closet while it wreaks havoc within our communities. We have all been touched by this tragedy in many ways. Many of us struggle with depression in its various forms. Many of us have lost loved ones to suicide. Many of us have struggled with addiction in its various forms. Yet even as we challenged the Church in the main plot to be the moral voice and not the servant of the state, so must we allow the church to be a haven for those who are struggling with mental illness. Unless we do that, then like with David and Herod both, we will collide, and this will lead to horrible circumstances. These old stories are a reflection of what is happening today.  We can compare the old kings to Trump (Trump's unstable and dangerous politics/his madness) and compare the modern-day Christian left to how the old kings used the symbols of Gods strength to make war, lie and fool the people.  What is our responsibility as Christians and beliers in God?   Do we look at the two-dimensional trappings used by the modern-day church to find solace and forget, even ignore what the State is doing to compromise our mental health and our well-being, or do we take a three-dimensional view of God's and Christ's words, of Christ’s mission and of the miracles he performed to find the true meaning of faith?  Do we forget our own power as Christians? The ability to discern what is right and what is wrong is a Christian/God given ability.
 
 Jesus' life was a political one; didn’t he kick the money lenders from the temple?  Wasn't his death due to politics gone wrong?  Moses' Ten Commandments tells us we 'should not put any other God before Me'.  It is up to us, the faithful, to maintain our Christian beliefs and understand the force of those beliefs to change the tide of politics to help those who are struggling with poor, deteriorating mental health.    


When leaders, struggling with mental health challenges, are given state power, their actions put communities at great risks. We need priests who are willing to be prophetic even when it is unpopular. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shared “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic intensity it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.” (A Knock at Midnight, June 11, 1967).
The work of the church within our communities is to go further than helping people to be happy and comfortable in the midst of the struggles for equity in the treatment to those struggling with mental illness in our communities. We must be demanding more than providing greater access to marijuana next to the liquor stores, but demanding treatment centers and support groups that are desperately needed. Let’s not confuse kindness for equality or religious platitudes for justice.
 
My friends, Jesus chose to be a friend to the sick. He offered God’s mercy to the poor and comfort and healing to the broken spirited. On our own we can’t make someone get better. We can’t make someone take the necessary steps toward healing and wholeness. As much as we’d like to fix everything, we can’t. But Jesus can! We believe in the combination of faith, medicine and caring support we can be there, in whatever way we’re allowed for those who are struggling. Let them know they’re not alone.

Please join us Sunday, to fellowship  in a deeper understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ teaching. 



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Living Beyond Our Limitations

7/9/2018

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Mark 6:5 & 6 “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.”

There is much excitement in the scriptures for today as we witness God followers moving from fledglings into maturity. David owns his kingship, St Paul is acknowledged his fullness as an apostle and the disciples are growing in their Christ driven power. Dreams are now becoming reality and faith is now leading to action.

My friends, over the past couple weeks we have been exploring a need for greater awareness of the disease of mental illness within our urban communities. The goal is to move it from the shadows
into the open with the hope of providing greater support to victims and their families.

Jesus, and by extension the church, willingly participated in bringing a sense of meaning and purpose to those who were struggling to maintain some semblance of sanity in the midst of all the
disappointing fragmentation of life. There is more than enough proof that racism and it socio-economic fallout effect has created a huge disparity in the way that healing is applied to our urban communities.
​

The question therefore is; how can one’s faith become a counterweight to that of prevailing culture?  One of the deep struggles one must come to terms with is the understanding t the not so subtle nuances of culture (i.e. systemic racism and poverty) are pervasive and their impact can be so deep-seated that we unconsciously participate in our own self destruction as a people.  And, much of today’s addictive pop-cultural aspects (i.e. music, sports, entertainment) can create distractions from the goal of discovering what I call God power.

God power is that energy that drives us to achieve what early philosophers titled as Summum bonum (
Summum bonum is a Latin expression meaning "the highest good", which was introduced by the Roman philosopher, Cicero. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in itself, and at the same time containing all other goods.) But, for me the greatest good is the greatest expression of the goodness of God. Christianity proclaims that the goal of our lives is to reflect the glory of God. Culture can often times stand in the way or even seek to replace it with its own effigies.

My friends,  today’s scripture seems to be leading into something deeper that just David becoming king but the role of those who ministered to him to help him out of his state of deep depression. David was overwhelmed by life’s disappointments. The gory bloodshed, betrayal and the settling of old scores, a scenario easily visible in our urban communities can be extremely depressing. Jesus himself came face to face with rejection. Paul was facing many serious challenges to the legitimacy of his call as an apostle. They could have collectively accepted the cultural rejection that they encountered and believed it was the last word. The early church was struggling to survive in a world motivated by greed and power.

Many victims and care givers of patients struggling with mental illness speak of struggling to breathe in a dark oppressive tunnel with suicide seeming to be the only way out. Many folks sitting in our pews struggle through the oppressive weight of mounting bills. Black churches struggle to keep their doors open as a sanctuary to the broken spirited.

Within our urban communities many seem to surrender to the oppressive pressure of living with the twin evils of corporate greed and racism. Each day we witness those who use religion, law, and economic greed as the manual for keeping David depressed, St Paul fettered and Jesus rejected. Each day we allow the noise of the world to tell us of our incompleteness, our incompetence, our laziness and all the other negatives that stand in the way of our ability to let God shine through us. We seem to be struggling against a cultural manual that seeks to imprison our very souls.

Yet the readings resonate loudly with defiance against the odds. All the biblical characters found themselves surrounded by a community who was not willing accept the world’s manual for their lives. The role of the church is to guide us into looking beyond self and culture and seek that which God has in store for those who are willing to discover their true worth and value. The growing desire to build a mental health support group within our church family is built upon the same power of the disciples accepting the fullness of their call. The call of the church bell on a Sunday is a reminder of the need to teach our souls using a different manual. In this manual we highlight things that matter in life, death and eternity. At the heart of the manual one can discover this truth: “For God so love the world that he refuses to give up or surrender.

He sent His son Jesus as an act of love.” David was surrounded by a community who saw his worth not just as a replacement for Saul but one who would build a foundation for an everlasting kingdom. Paul was able to speak of someone who was made so free by God that he was lifted up to the highest of heights. This was not to proclaim himself but to be able to say to the world that in spite all my handicaps I am worthy to be an apostle of Christ. This all finds it strength when Jesus, facing all the weight of a culture unwilling to accept their own frailty and need for God, unleashed his power on His disciples. To those sitting in dark tunnels we offer the light of Christ “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5.  This is the light that was able to piece through the very darkness which surrounded David, Paul and the disciples freeing them from the mental pain and anguish that kept them imprisoned.

My friends in Christ, at the very heart of the message of Jesus is an invitation to view our lives beyond all the cultural boundaries of the world. It is about being able to hear above the cultural noise the voice of God saying “I love you so deeply.” He invites us to become so God centered that we like the bleeding woman can declare our identity is greater than our illness. I am called to reflect God’s love and power in the world.

Many of our children are preparing to go off to college where they will be bombarded by new teachings, practices and influences which may threaten to overwhelm all they knew and understood about life. Our young men are maturing and must learn how to survive in a world where black bodies, minds and lips are still viewed as threats. We dwell in a culture where the black man is still expected to be silent or learn to whisper in conspiratorial tones. The brilliance of our black daughter is yet to be valued on the same level as her body. Many have cracked under the pressure of living in this racist cauldron.

Today we offer them a faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus calls us to live out our true nature of being the agent through which God reveals his glory in the world. This may often times lead us to live in new settings and build different family structures and worship God in new ways. That was what he attempted to teach when he declared “whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven are now his mother and father and brother and sister.”(Mathew 12:50)

For us Christ Jesus is the very key which unlocks the door to what he called the kingdom of heaven. This is about living a life filled with value and purpose sustained by God’s love. That is the gift that Christianity offers to us, having the ability to live as God desires. It is that understanding of faith in God which allowed David while deep in depression to first believe in his capability for kingship. It is that faith which gave Paul the ability to say I have all kinds of stuff that I wrestle with yet I am able to be an apostle of Jesus. It is that faith that motivated the disciples to launch independently into the world. It is that Jesus power which empowered the bleeding woman to find healing. It is that Jesus power which was able to reach Jairus’ daughter who was in the grip of death. It is that power which we use to encounter those caught in the grip of mental illness. It is the same power which Jesus offers to each of us today.

The power of love!

If you wish to make a donation to our Ministry, please visit the contact tab. 

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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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Sunday: 8:00am, 10:00am
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