Sermon Archive

As Art Linkletter used to say, “Children say the darnedest things!”

And children at prayer offer us quite a window into the human soul.

One young lad, age 10, prayed thus:

“Dear God, Do you have a favorite religion? I’ll give you three to choose from—
1. Catholic
2. Lutheran
3. Episcapalin
Best wishes, Charles
P. S. I’m Episcapalin." (David Heller, Dear God: Children’s Letters to God. New York: Bantam, 1989, p. 3)

And a 12-year-old girl prayed, “Dear God, Who was Mohammed? Was he a friend of yours like Jesus? Also, were Moses + Joshua friends or just business partners? … (signed) Fanny." (Heller, p. 25)

A third child’s prayer was even simpler and more direct: “Dear God, Count me in. Your friend, Herbie.” (Children’s Letters to God, compiled by Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample. New York: Essandess, 1967, p. [4])

“Count me in, God!” Count me among those who stand with You—inside…not outside.

When getting dressed, few things disturb us more than winding up with the inside on the outside or the outside on the inside.

Spare us from dangling tags and wrong-sided seams!

And in society and human relationships, we want to know who’s part of the “inside” group—on our side, “one of us”—and who’s part of the “outside” group—on “their” side, “not one of us.” We certainly want to know that in politics. And many consider that we should want to know that also in religion, as the concerned prayers of these three children indicate.

In this morning’s First Lesson, set in the days of Moses, we find Joshua seeking jealously to guard the prerogatives of the inside group, the 70 elders to whom God has granted a portion of the spirit that fills Moses. Two other men who are outside this group, Eldad and Medad, show signs of having received from God this same gift of spirit, and Joshua, when told of this, blurts out, “My Lord Moses, stop them.” But Moses is one who wants to extend the boundaries of the inside as far out over the outside as possible, so, instead of stopping Eldad and Medad, Moses proclaims that his own preference would be that all the people should receive God’s gift of spirit, that nobody should be excluded and left on the outside.

Now, in this morning’s Second Lesson, set in the time of Jesus, we find the disciple John espousing the narrow view of things that Joshua had expressed more than a millennium before. John does not come to Jesus saying, “Hallelujah! Thanks to a man from outside our group whom we’ve just met, the lame can walk, the blind can see, and the possessed can think straight again!” (see Gary W. Charles, in Brian K. Blount and Gary W. Charles, Preaching Mark in Two Voices. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002, p. 183) No, John comes to Jesus instead complaining that this man from outside, this man who’s “not one of us” (NIV), has had the temerity, the gall, to heal people in Jesus’s name. And John reports, “We’ve tried to stop him.” But Jesus replies sternly, “Do not stop him.”

You see, what John and the other disciples are trying to do is to erect boundaries and barriers around who it is that can exercise compassion, but Jesus will have nothing to do with that kind of exclusivity. Indeed, in this passage Jesus goes on to proclaim (vs. 41) that he welcomes all who perform works of mercy and justice, whether they do so in his name or not. And Jesus thereby keeps the definition of “who belongs to the people of God” open and inclusive. Being “one of us” is not an exclusive criterion for who belongs to God. For inside of that circle there is room for everyone who acts with compassion and is not explicitly opposed to Jesus.

It’s this truth that underlies the observation made by the early Christian thinker Augustine, when he said expansively: “Those who are filled with love are filled with God.”

Well, today is Invite-a-Friend Sunday here at Rutgers Church, and how appropriate it is that our lectionary of prescribed scripture lessons just happens to have set these two passages for our use and consideration today, when we are welcoming guests. For these texts make it clear that we are not welcoming you as “outsiders” who need somehow to come “inside.” No, that's not it at all. Rather it is we who are seeking to burst out beyond our walls, walls that are here, as that wonderful sign in our elevator says, merely to hold up our roof and not to keep anyone out. Our desire is to open ourselves outward so that we may embrace all who want to fill their lives with the spirit of God’s love and compassion.

There is such an awesome amount of mercy and justice that needs to be brought into our world by people of good will! And whether or not you who are visiting with us here today choose in the future to join us regularly in this particular space on Sunday mornings and whether or not you choose in the future to join us in our congregation’s particular programs of outreach—whether or not you choose that, it is our fervent hope that you will continue to work alongside us, out of the regular spaces of your own lives, in the task that we share in common, a task that knows no borders or boundaries, the task of fostering love and justice throughout our world.

Various news articles just this past week identify some of the needs for love and justice that we are called mutually to address.

A headline on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times announced that the percentage of Americans living below the poverty level increased in 2002 for the second year in a row and that the number of American poor now stands at 34,600,000.

And the headline in Wednesday’s Daily News proclaimed, “More and More Homeless Haunt the City’s Streets.” The article related to that headline went on to state that the number of families in the city’s shelter system increased last July to 9,268, up 13% over July, 2002, and up 100% over 1998. The article also reported that: “From the Bronx to the Bowery, the lines at soup kitchens have never been longer—and the faces of the newcomers have never been younger.” Yes, God’s spirit is calling upon all people of good will to offer relief to such as these and, ultimately, to take the steps necessary to put an end to poverty and homelessness.

Then there was the article in Tuesday’s New York Times (p. A10) that reported the break up of the ancient 150-square-mile Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest in the Arctic. This startling event offers additional evidence of the global warming that is posing such a great ecological danger to our planet. All of us are called to work mutually to preserve God’s Creation from harm.

And these articles depict just the tip of the world’s iceberg of need. There is so much to be done, and that work can be so exhausting.

We here at Rutgers Church acknowledge that one doesn’t have to be a Presbyterian, or a Protestant, or even a Christian to do the work of compassion that is needed in our world. We celebrate and rejoice in the accomplishments of all people of good will.

Yet many people far wiser than we have recognized how important it is for people engaged in such efforts to have access to the networks of love and support that a community of faith has to offer.

The highly regarded author Anne Lamott, who just happens to be a Presbyterian, writes as follows in her best-selling autobiographical book Traveling Mercies (p. 100): “Most of the people I know who have what I want—which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy—are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community, who pray, or practice their faith; they are Buddhists, Jews, Christians—people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle; they are part of something beautiful.… Our…little church is filled with people who are working for peace + freedom, who are out there on the streets + inside praying, and they are home writing letters, and they are at the shelters with giant platters of food. When I was at the end of my rope, the people at St. Andrew tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on.… My relatives all live [here] in the Bay Area + I adore them, but they are all as skittishly self-obsessed as I am, which I certainly mean in the nicest possible way. Let’s just say that I do not leave family gatherings with the feeling that I have just received some kind of spiritual chemotherapy. But I do when I leave St. Andrew.”

Well, like Anne Lamott’s beloved St. Andrew Church, we here at Rutgers welcome any and all persons, and we seek to offer to all the kind of strength and resources and inspiration that can sustain and galvanize a person’s work for love and justice.

We are a small and activist congregation. You’ve heard earlier of our Thursday night meal program, our version of a soup kitchen.

Among our other outreach programs are the 365-day-a-year shelter for ten homeless men that we provide in conjunction with volunteer hosts from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and from Christ and St. Stephen Episcopal Church.

And we are members of Upper Manhattan Together, a community development coalition working on projects that seek to better the quality of life for everyone in this part of New York City.

Next Sunday, we will be joining with millions of others across the country to raise funds for the work of peacemaking + reconciliation that is so desperately needed throughout our world, and we, right here, will be raising thousands of dollars. If you will not be here next Sunday, please make your contribution today by placing a large bill or check in the Peacemaking envelope included in your order of service.

Also, this year we at Rutgers have begun contributing 1% of our annual church budget to the struggle against the pandemic of AIDS that is sweeping through Africa. As for the struggle against HIV/AIDS right here in New York City, we have been providing, for many years now, a weekly spiritual support group for persons living with that virus.

Dear friends and guests, we rejoice with you if you are one of those who join with young Herbie in saying to God, “Count me in,” count me in on Your worldwide work of bringing compassion and justice to those in need.

And if any of you are looking for a network of love and support that can offer you spiritual therapy for the journey of your life’s work, we invite you to consider joining us in this community of faith, where we seek to integrate fully the inside with the outside.

Let us pray: