Author: churchgoodshepherd823

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 27, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Three Causes of Suffering
IIIa: Low Self-Esteem’s Partner: Trauma

“God does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them.” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15)

“You have turned my wailing into dancing; *

you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”

Therefore, my heart sings to you without ceasing; *

O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.” (Psalm 30)

I have been suggesting for the past three weeks that there are three fundamental causes or conditions that lie behind most of our woes. By woes, I mean stresses, strains, pains, disappointments, heartache, loss, quarrels, resentments…the list is long. I wish to lump all these woes under the category of suffering.

Suffering. Suffering, we have suggested, comes from three main things:

1. From our disinclination, refusal, or inability to accept things as they come and as they are. Life presents us with thousands of things that are not so agreeable to us, many outside our sphere of control, some of our own making, some of our partial making. I call all this non-acceptance. The first cause of suffering.
2. From our constant temptation to wish or want to be in somebody else’s shoes, to have what someone else has, to take what someone else has. And our sadness, even sometimes resentment over someone giving more attention or devotion to someone other than ourselves. This second cause of suffering I call envy (sometimes it takes the form of ravenous jealousy).
3. And all of these forms of non-acceptance can stem from a low view we hold of ourselves. So many of us harbor strong, medium or sometimes (mercifully) mild self-criticisms that get in the way of our enjoyment of life. In a word, low self-esteem can lead us into unhappiness and sometimes keep us there!

This morning I want to unfold this low self-esteem a little more; in other words, dig a little deeper and see what lies behind or under so much of our self-criticism. In a word, I want to reflect with you on the phenomenon of trauma. I submit that trauma is the most avoided, ignored, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering.

        Trauma. I bet you think that trauma is something you haven’t really experienced. We tend to hold much too narrow a view of trauma. What do you think?

        We are clear that trauma can be caused by:

• Childhood sexual or physical abuse;
• Childhood abandonment
• Wartime injuries or other physical traumas (known broadly as PTSD)
• A major catastrophe or natural disaster

But cannot trauma also be a way of looking at:

• Death of a parent, especially before becoming an adult
• Divorce of our parents when we were children
• Sexual identity issues
• Underachievement, even failure, in school (many professionals are studying links between trauma and ADD and ADHD)
• Loss of a job, especially when fired
• Loss of a vital relationship
• Divorce

The important point about broadening trauma to include this latter list is that few of us can have escaped trauma at some point in our lives. (I am not talking about stress. Traumas are first-cousins of stress; but surely not all stress is traumatic or stems from trauma.)

        And sometimes we don’t know how to respond to other people’s trauma. Did you hear about the guy who said, “Whenever I encountered one of life’s little traumas, my dad would take me to one side and say, ‘It could be worse; you could be thrown into water twenty feet down a dark shaft.’ Bless him. He meant well!”

        So, the question becomes, how have we handled our trauma? Because trauma is serious, all right. Trauma is a kind of separation from ourselves; we are ripped apart from the contented, happy people we were created to be.

Have we grown through the grief and pain or our traumas or have we buried them, tucking them away for whatever reason? We may have been told that we just don’t talk about such things. Or we may have been ashamed to look at them. So, we repress the pain.

        These hidden away pains have been called a little black bag we drag behind us. What a great image. They can sit, unexamined, and as out of sight as we can stand. But are they really hidden? Don’t they really play a larger part in our lives than we might think?

        Karl Jung called these items in our little black bag our shadow side, or our shadow self—that part of us we are reluctant to face and deal with. That’s really too bad for us, because a) this shadow self tends to come out one way or another—in being angry and resentment at more things that are rational to be angry over; b) in being sad and anxious over we really don’t know what; and, c) in general, of not enjoying life in the full way that we deserve to.

        I wonder, too, if alcoholism and drug addiction don’t lie behind our failure to open that little black bag so many carry behind. Let’s face it, pain is something we naturally try and avoid, especially emotional and psychic pain. And a convenient way of avoiding pain is through medication, if not with reasonable medication, then through excessive drinking and the use of illegal drugs.

        I used to think that prisons were full largely of people who were alcoholics and drug addicts. I still feel this way, but I have come to believe that most of those drug addicts and alcoholics are also victims of one form of trauma or another; and I wonder just where is our compassion to see the pain from such a vast number of people? Perhaps it starts with acknowledging our own pain, often deeply hidden and unacknowledged?

        I believe the story of Jesus is of someone who had no fear of being with folks in their deepest pain. His presence with them—the sick, the lame, lepers, adulterers, outcasts, the forgotten—brought the message of presence, God’s presence. Perhaps it takes the grace of seeing that God is right there with us in our darkest corners, those corners that we can be too afraid to go to. If God can go there and love us there, comfort us there, then we can open our eyes, and cry there.

        There is no pain too deep for God to be with. His tears have preceded us. This is what the cross is about. God sits astride us on our cross and assures us that we are with him in paradise. He endures our tragedy and assures us of our ecstasy. It’s a strange paradox, that we have to open our wounds and release the pain in order to come into the full presence of the God who has not and will not let us go. In entering into our deepest wounds, we learn the meaning of compassion and can thus share it outwards towards our fellow human beings. Compassion at home begs to be shared abroad into the world.

        I was in a situation some years ago when I was required to attend a trauma workshop. I fought attending it. I had no childhood traumas that I could think of. But my excuse went unacknowledged, and I found myself with a group of about ten guys in a rec room in the bottom of a men’s dormitory.

I was the first guinea pig and so was told to try and locate any pain in my body and to lie flat on my back while the other participants held me down with their hands firmly placed on my shoulder, arms, torso and legs. I told them of a mass of sadness in my chest that I had carried for years. It felt as if this mass had a molecular reality to it. In other words, as if it were a material thing inside my body.

The leader asked some of the guys to push that mass up from my chest towards my throat and told them that on the count of three they were to raise me to a sitting position and I was to be prepared to let this mass out in the most forceful way I could.

When I was raised up, I let out a scream so loud that the people on the third floor of the building thought someone was dying. I yelled so loud that the guys holding me reared back and dropped their jaws in astonishment. I yelled like a struck banshee, and I proceeded to cry with deep, deep sobs. I do not recall ever crying so profoundly. It must have continued for at least three minutes.

I can say this. This mass of sadness left me, and it has never returned.

Trauma, sadness, deep, deep pain. God does not want us to make our home there. God wants us in the light of day, where our true selves are to be found. Embracing our own pain, whatever its origin, opens us to new and brighter levels of love. Love is like the sun that burns through the fog, dissolving it, until only vast openness, clarity and joy remain. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”

Trauma and its overcoming as a road to compassion and our mission as Christians. I can think of no more pertinent conclusion than a statement by Crazy Horse, a warrior from the Lakota tribe, a statement made in 1877:

“I salute the light within your eyes

where the whole Universe dwells.

For when you are that center in you

and I am at the place within me,

we shall be one.”

Amen

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 20, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Three Causes of Suffering
III: Low Self-Esteem

“Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!  (II Corinthians 6:11-13)

“I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The astonishing Light
Of your own Being!” (Hafiz)

        [Our hearts are heavy and our minds are distracted by the news of the death of our dear friend, Fr. Bob Shearer, our priest in charge, who served us so admirably, with such verve, creativity (I’d say panache, look at all the beautification in our church) and faithfulness. His long, uphill battle with this dread COVID has come to an end, and we pray that having opened to him the gates of larger life, God will (we know) receive him into his everlasting arms.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me]

Suffering, unhappiness, and grief, we should know by now, especially as we age, come to all of us. To be human is to know the ups and downs of daily, monthly, indeed, lifelong existence. There are the external circumstances of our lives, things over which we largely have no control. And then there are the internal reckonings, our attitudes, emotional responses and spiritual condition—in other words, how we deal with these circumstances. We hear it put like this. We may not have much to do with the cards we are dealt. It’s all about how we play those cards.

We have been looking at three of the root causes of our internal distresses. The first root cause is our reluctance, sometimes refusal, to accept life as it presents itself. This nonacceptance is in part a fool’s game: because we can rail and scream about events and circumstances, but they will play themselves out whether we want them to or not. So, acceptance in one sense is not much of an option. The burden is on us. What are we going to do? Moan and complain and hang our heads or see everything that happens to us as happening for us? In other words, hold our heads up and move from rejection to full acceptance.

A second cause of suffering is envy, a niggling form of unacceptance that can twart our happiness, erode our sense of joy, diminish our love. But envy can also be a burden we can shed by simply turning our heads toward gratitude and even deeper acceptance.

This morning I’d like us to consider a third and perhaps even more pernicious form of non-acceptance, the cause of unfathomably tragic suffering. I refer to the low self-esteem that so many millions of us feel about ourselves. Isn’t it amazing that we are all we have (right?) and yet we can develop such a low opinion of ourselves that we may wind up fruitlessly wishing to pull ourselves out of our dark place, feel like a stranger in our own skin, perhaps wish to become someone else entirely—or worse case scenario, just remove ourselves from this beautiful, if seemingly empty, life?

Perhaps we find the good humor of some of our friends a bit annoying. After all, it seems unrealistic to be happy all the time. “Come off it,” we may argue. “Life is not always a bowl of cherries.”

And how about the person who, when we ask them to help us do something, replies, “I’d be ‘more than happy’ to help you!” More than happy? That sounds like a dangerous mental condition. “We had to put Dave in a mental home. He was ‘more than happy’!”

Whatever the many and complex causes of our low self-esteem, such profound, sometimes lifelong, suffering comes out of, basically, messages we give ourselves. Talk about being our own worst enemy. It’s astounding:

• “I’ve just never been much of a success at anything.”
• “If I could just feel more comfortable being around other people.”
• “The things I’ve done with my life are too shameful even to face.”
• “If people really got to know me, I know they would despise me.”

Where do such messages come from? Isn’t it strange that when we realize that they come almost without effort from our brains, like ducks that come out on the water in a shooting gallery—that we tend to actually believe these messages! We are more apt to believe our own nonsense than even cruel criticisms from other people.

        And I will say two things. I submit that 1) every single one of us tends to be harder on ourselves than we deserve and 2) that our self-criticism causes us more unhappiness than we realize.

This beating up on ourselves can be an onrush of unhappiness or a slow drip that grinds us down and keeps us in misery and out of the sunshine to which we are so richly entitled. And this detraction from our love of ourselves is bound to be projected out onto others. Love of others has to be in concert with the love of self. How could it be otherwise?

        But do we want to live out the sunshine of life and of God? You tell me! Does whatever brought us here (I choose to call it a divine Father) ever want anything less than joy from us? Enjoyment, joy of life, happiness—call it what you will. The universe has better intentions for us that living a life as if it were a vale of tears. And it sure as shootin’ wants us to love others, and this is forever thwarted if we remain stuck in the bog of our self-criticism.

        Did any of you ever watch a Billy Graham revival on television? Perhaps you actually saw him in person. I remember seeing his appearances as a child and watching as people from the large auditoriums filed down to his altar calls as they sang, “Just as I am.”

This hymn still sounds in my ears. Just as I am without one plea.

Just as I am. Thou wilt receive

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve

Because Thy promise I believe

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

There is no way the God we worship wants us shamed, wants us to wallow in the bog of what we think is so wrong about us. God loves us, loves us absolutely and without condition. Take the greatest human love we know that has ever been directed to us, from a parent, a lover, a friend. That love is a pale comparison to the shimmering, eternal beneficence, care and tenderness shown by the one who brought us here.

Therefore, to continue beating ourselves with the club of our self-criticism is a sadness, a thumbing our nose at God. Instead of beating ourselves with a cudgel, I heard someone suggest just using a wet noodle. And we might follow up this gentler lashing with a hearty laugh.

Turning around the bad habits of self-criticism may not come quickly or easily. It may require therapy. Learning to embrace ourselves (sometimes called “inner-child work”) can take time. All this certainly requires grace. And this grace is available all the time, in fact, at every moment.

As a wise man once said, “The whole journey of our lives is to break the boundaries we have drawn for ourselves and experience the immensity that we are.” This immensity is as broad as the sky and as deep as the ocean. In fact, if we didn’t know better, we would take it as extreme pride to liken ourselves to the divine, but this is the message of our baptism, that we have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection and are in sync, I dare say union, with God.

“Everywhere narrow shafts of divine light pierce the veil that separates heaven from earth.” (Pelagius)

I close with this poem by John O’Donohue:

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come, to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

 Amen

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 13, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Three Causes of Suffering
II: Envy

God, today help me set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, and everything I think I know about how life works so I may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things. We ask these things in Christ’s name. Amen.

“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the soul” (Proverbs 14:30)

“It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord, *

and to sing praises to your Name, O Most High;

To tell of your loving-kindness early in the morning *

and of your faithfulness in the night season.” (Psalm 92:1-2)

        Everybody wants to be happy. I take this as a given. And yet the puzzle is that many of us claim that we are not happy, even perhaps that we have never been truly happy, or at most only fleetingly. Is happiness something we have to search for and acquire, sometimes as a result of hard work? Is it something out of our sight and out of our grasp? And if so, where in heaven’s name do we find it; and if we are lucky enough to find it, how do we keep it?

        A lot of questions, that’s for sure. I would love to hear from you on this topic, because I think you agree with me, that happiness is a prize possession. But we can get quite confused as to how to get it and how to keep it.

        Last week we started a series of meditations on the causes of suffering. I started our exploration by suggesting that the first, and perhaps foremost cause of suffering is our difficulty or refusal to accept life exactly as it is. Our non-acceptance of what happens in our world and what happens to us is the chief impediment to contentment. Keeping an open palm and loosening our clenched fist can be difficult, but I think we might agree that it is the pathway to peace and contentment. Happiness and acceptance are inextricably linked.

        Today, I want to look into a second cause of suffering, perhaps little more than an example of non-acceptance. Like pride, pride heads the list of human failings and all the other six deadly sins are examples of pride. The other causes of suffering I want us to consider could be viewed as variations of our difficulty in accepting.

        I am referring to the phenomenon of envy. The second cause of suffering is envy.

What exactly is envy? It seems to me that envy is a lot broader, deeper and more pernicious that we might suspect. It is the desire to capture something outside our situation? We want something from someone or from the universe that we just do not have.

• I wish I had so-and-so’s good looks.
• Boy, if I had half of so-and-so’s income!
• Look at all those gorgeous homes in Upper Saddle River. What I wouldn’t give to have one of those.
• So-and-so gets all the breaks!

Of course, there is a huge difference between admiring someone for their gifts and feeling a resentment for what they have and consequently feeling lesser than because of what we lack. It is one thing to admire what someone has. We need our heroes and our moral and spiritual examples to live up to. It is quite another to resent someone for those very gifts.

Envy has a way of putting us in places we are not, living lives of people we are not, of wanting things we do not have simply because we want them.

Envy has one hilarious and fatal flaw. It is a total waste of time. Because what we envy is by definition forever out of our reach. We will never look like the Hollywood heart throbs. We will never be as rich as Jeff Bezos. We will never live on the Riviera in a mansion overlooking the Mediterranean. Sure, if we enjoy an occasional pipe dream, fine. But the problem is not just the futility of such dreams: they sully the places where we are now; they can sour us and make us ungrateful and bitter.

These trips to nowhere through envy are creations of our minds. Today I’m upset because I don’t have money to travel to exotic spots abroad. Tomorrow I will have forgotten about that and long for that lover that slipped through my hands oh so many years ago. One thing after another. We can get lost in regrets, memories, envies like this and come, alas, even to enjoy these numbing mental roadtrips. Might we liken the trap of envy to a mental illness? We wouldn’t be far off, would we?

Did you hear about the two neighbours, one is rich and the other is poor.

The poor had a magic lamp. Every morning, he wiped the lamp and a genie came out and said, “Ask what you want,” and the poor man asks for a cup of tea.

The rich neighbor, envious of the magic lamp, said to the poor man, “I’ll give you my car and my house in exchange for your lamp.” The poor accepted the deal.

The rich man wipes the lamp and a genie comes out and says, “Ask what you want.”  The rich man asked for a very big house and a better car.

The genie replied, “Sorry, sir, I only serve coffee and tea.

One little aside about perhaps the darkest form of envy, namely, jealousy. Jealousy can take envy to near murderous levels. We hear about it acted out on a daily basis with crimes of passion. I can’t have you; you have betrayed me and run off with someone else. So I decide to eliminate you and your new lover. This is the stuff of operas and crime dramas. Too bad that those in the grip of jealousy (and I’d wager that most of us have fallen into that trap at one time or another) can’t settle down a moment and consider this: if the one I am so obsessed with doesn’t want to be with me any longer, does it make sense to rail against this rejection by harming or killing him or her? Sure, we are hurt; it takes time to heal this wound. But does it make sense to take vengeance against what is? As your therapist might be so bold and tell you: “Get over it; get on with your life!” This may be bad therapy, but it  might keep us out of prison!

Envy can lead to a loss of gratitude and the creation of bitterness. For instead of being happy and grateful for what we have now, where we are now, what we are doing now, our minds project someplace else and dwell there. This is a major recipe for suffering.

We all seek happiness, but I believe that we are already surrounded by happiness. Everything sits exactly where it does, inviting us to stop and appreciate it is just as it is. Sure, there are beautiful things at our finger tips. It’s nice to surround ourselves with things we think beautiful. Some like classical music, some like rap. What gives happiness to one person may not to another. Whatever it is, wherever we are, yes, that is where happiness lies. Of course, there are ugly, sad and troubling things all around us as well. Some are just a nuisance; others impinge on our well-being and health.

All things are exactly where they are and are, in that sense, neutral. They invite us to accept them just as they are, wrinkles and all, warts and all, glories and all. They invite us to accept them and they invite us to love them. Isn’t it better to love what is in front of us than to pine and fantasize about loving something that is not in front of us. The land of envy is the land of make-believe.

And God must want us here, must love us right here. Why? Because we are not anywhere else! This is it. This is my life, right here, right now. No other place, no other time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put the love of living now perfectly:

“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time for them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. . .. But we tend to postpone or remember; we do not live in the present, but with reverted eye lament the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround us, stand on tiptoe to foresee the future. We cannot be happy and strong until we too live with nature in the present, above time.”

A recipe for happiness. Loving where we are, right here, right now.

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 6, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Three Causes of Suffering
I: Non-Acceptance

“Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!” (II Cor. 4:15)

“[God] puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.”

(II Cor. 5:5)

        It’s time that we looked into why we can stay stuck in our discontents. For the three Sundays in June when I will be with you, I want us to look at some of the things that create our discontent, our unhappiness, even, yes, sometimes our misery. Because I think you may agree that we would prefer to remain consistently happy and not to be tempted to fall into sorrow, self-pity, even misery. In other words, how do we cheer up and stay cheered up?

        I hasten to warn that I am not advocating that we all become cockeyed optimists or deny those times when we are sad, forlorn, disenchanted. Happiness is not about having a perpetual smile on our face. It is much too precious for this cheap imitation called perennial cheerfulness.

We are here to celebrate our humanity, not to repress it. On the other hand, there are insights we can gather and strategies we can adopt to avoid the gloomy traps of pessimism and despair.

        So, the title of these three meditations is “The Three Causes of Suffering.”

        And the title of this first meditation, the first cause of suffering, is our reluctance to accept reality just as it is. Non-acceptance is what lies behind many of our woes.

        I know, I know. Pain is real, suffering is real. Many of us suffer from chronic pain. There is just nothing worse. Thank goodness for medications that can ease pain. But so much pain has suffering behind it, that is, is exacerbated by what we tell ourselves about it. For it is in the mind where most suffering originates. It originates with thoughts like these:

• “Why is this happening to me?”
• “I don’t like this!” “I never wanted this!”
• “It’s all his fault” or “She made me do it!”

I submit that almost every thought like this has behind it a form of unacceptance. In fact, how often do we use the term “unacceptable,” as when we say, “Well, that is just unacceptable!”

        But what a silly thing to say. All it means is “I don’t like this,” for everything is acceptable once it happens. You know why? Because it happened!

        There is the Peanuts cartoon when Charlie Brown complains, “I hear it said that life is full of ups and downs. But my question is why can’t life be all ups?”

        We just don’t always get what we want? Are we not children to complain about this?

        Resistance to change is a very human thing, for change can be fearful. And acceptance can seem unrealistic. Like the joke about the man who falls over a cliff and is hanging on to a branch over a river with alligators ready to devour him. He looks up and says, “Is there anybody up there?”

And God replies, “I am here!”

“God, help me!” he implores.

And God replies, “Let go!”

And the man hanging on says, “Is there anybody else up there?”

        And, to make you feel even worse, have we considered how many times a day we engage in this fruitless exercise of not accepting something? I daresay we underestimate the times by a huge number. If we were to log the number of times we didn’t accept something during the day (from the slightest inconvenience (the weather, the slowpoke in traffic, etc., etc.) to justifiably upsetting things, like bad news about our health), I think we would be quite surprised.

        Of course, as I’ve said, not accepting something isn’t what we actually do, for what is happening is what is happening. We are accepting it, all right: we are just not happy about it; we don’t like it.

        Is this, you think, what God wants from us? For not accepting something is a form of suffering. Acceptance equals happiness; non-acceptance equals suffering, whether an irritation, a swear word, or clenched fists and sobbing. Non-acceptance cuts us off from other people and from our deeper selves. It is very hard to focus on other people when we are complaining and moaning. In fact, focusing on how much we don’t like what is happening cuts us off from love—love of self and love of others.

        So, what is the turnaround? How do we go from a clenched fist reaction to an open palm?

        Resistance to reality is a refusal to see things are they truly are. And if God is reality, even a reality we aren’t happy with, then to cease resistance is a form of faith. There is a writer who proclaims, “My God is reality.” In fact, she wrote a book entitled Loving What Is.

         There is nothing worse when it comes to looking into how we move from resistance to acceptance than to listen to such cheap advice as “Cheer up! Things could be worse!” This may be true, but you know the joke, “So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!”

        No, I’m not sure advice of any sort will relieve us, at least any more than temporarily, perhaps just to get the advice giver to stop giving his or her silly advice.

        So instead of giving advice (sermons should never be about this), I ask you to look into your own lives and your own experiences. Have there not been times when you first are ready to spit nails over what is happening, but then you step back, take a breath, and let the truth of what’s happening sink in? This is when acceptance naturally has its way with you. These are the times when you are resting in the divine lap of God, in the lap of grace and care.

        These moments—and I am confident that all of us have had them—are templates—are they not?—of the readiness of God to comfort us in all circumstances.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

These words, from the great Irish hymn “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” are the great affirmation of God’s presence and the acceptance of life as it unfolds for all of us. Strange, that we go very, very deep when we move towards reality and acceptance and turn away from our denial and our disenchantments. This is the miracle of grace. I’ve noticed how much smoother my day goes and how much more at peace with myself and the world I am when I give up managing everything and let life be.

The closer we draw to reality, that is the more we stare at it with open eyes and open heart, the closer we draw to God, for as hard as it is to say it, as much as we touch on great mystery, reality is kind and even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us. This is the promise of the God who birthed us and the God who made the promise of his eternal presence in the resurrection of Christ. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 30, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Breaking of an Abstraction!

“[We] acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity.”

(Collect, Trinity Sunday)

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

                                                                                                                                                        (Isaiah 6:1-8)

        The word “glory” is sprinkled throughout the readings this morning; and at first glance there is perhaps nothing in heaven or on earth less likely to evoke our devotion and awe, much less our admiration of its beauty, than the Trinity.

        Because the problem is that the Trinity often comes across as just about the most abstract term in our Christian vocabulary! And abstractions might be good for nuclear physicists and mathematicians; but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on one or even pick up one hitchhiking at night on a local highway. I don’t have migraine headaches. When I have a headache, the term the doctors use communicates something but it isn’t the concrete, particular pain I feel when having such an episode.

        At the morning breakfast table, I’m not really eating oatmeal; I’m eating something that looks gray and gooey and has a little fruit mixed in. Words, in fact, are abstractions. When it comes to religion, words like incarnation, redemption, even resurrection can be ideas perhaps better left to the theologians. They don’t move us; we can have trouble living by them.

        When I was studying homiletics in seminary, homiletics being a fancy abstract word for preaching, my professor said that we must constantly move down the levels of abstraction till we deal with the most particular and concrete meaning of scripture. Otherwise we will leave our listeners in the dust, or, a better way of putting it, sleeping in their pews.

        I get it, and it is always before me to ask: just what the devil does this term mean for me and my life? What experience can I relate it to?

        The Trinity is perhaps not the insuperable challenge we can make it. Remember the little child who didn’t have the foggiest idea what the Trinity meant out in her back yard solemnly burying her old, tattered Teddy bear? She intoned, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and into the hole he goes!” This child is humorous and we are tempted to join her in her ignorance.

        But let’s reverse gears on this word. We can come to see the Trinity from another point of view. After all, I was asking myself, why in the world does Trinity Sunday come right now in the church year? Is it not perhaps because it is the climax of the Lent and Easter seasons, a kind of summation and pinnacle of everything that has been unfolding in the Christian story, even from Advent and Christian, right up ’til now?

        What the Trinity summarizes is this: our creator God, whom we meet surely in moments of awe and gratitude (we’ll return to our experiences of the Trinity in a moment), who plays out life in the form of human beings—and supremely in the person of Jesus bar Joseph—is everywhere, in everything, at every time. Father—awe, gratitude; Son—met in human beings; Holy Spirit—confirmed by the life of love.

        So, I’ve gotten over the hard part, the part that preachers all over Christendom fear for every year on this Sunday. Aye, aye, aye: here we go again [hitting forehead], having to think of something deep about the three in one, one in three.

Well, I don’t know about you, but let’s give up deep. Because I am suggesting that this thing that at first blush may appear so abstract, even abstruse, is anything but! I am suggesting that the Trinity is the most concrete, in-your-face thing there is. It is our life right here and now.

Please join me in experiencing this thing called the Trinity.

Right here, right now, if we ask ourselves what is this miracle thing called the life we are living now, are we not dumbstruck? Do we not in this stillness wonder what the devil is this thing called my life? And is this wonderment God the Father? Just words, I know, but we are aghast at the sheer fact of our existence. This is what is behind the child’s question where did God come from? Or what is behind the philosopher’s question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Sheer existence. We never leave it. It is always here. God the Father.

And then I have you to deal with. I mean each of you. And you have me to deal with. There is more than one of us. In fact, at last count there are 7.8 billion people walking the earth. That’s a thousand million times 7, almost times 8. That’s a lot of people to love, since we are charged to love our neighbor. And every single one of those people (including each of us) bears the stamp, the mark, the character of this wonderment, this God, who is our Father. This God calls each of us and each of them sons and daughters; and we should therefore call them beloved friends. Each of these 7.8 billion people carries the twinkle of God’s love, just as Christ did. That was what was so beautiful about Christ: he kept saying this, pointing to this, saying that but for our blindness, this is who each of us star: starlight. God the Son.

Finally, nothing could be more concrete and particular than this simple fact of our existence now and that we are sitting side by side with over 7 billion other people just like us. And finally, we have but one task, namely, to show our kindness and love towards them. Of course, this is a tall order. It involves treating them justly; doing unto them exactly as we would have them do unto us. The history of humankind is the history of just how hard an undertaking this is. But don’t we know it to be the tall order? We sense it; we know it. Love our neighbors as ourselves. God the incarnated sons and daughters.

The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the playing out of this majesty, wonder and awe in the everyday course of our lives. The wind blows where it will. Some days this picture seem occluded. We wonder if God has perhaps abandoned the creation. But no, wonderment has a way of not going anywhere. Kindness, love, mercy, joy, they cannot be extinguished, despite some pretty ugly evidence otherwise.

This permanence (this steadiness) of love is what our Easter and Pentecost seasons are about. “Fear not, for I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.” I dare say if we sit quietly in the lap of the Trinity, we know this. Right here, right now, all is well and all shall be well. I invite you to look deeply into your lives, and see if I’m not right, that all is well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

One night during my stay at Virginia Seminary, training to become a priest, I took my Volkswagen Beatle out to run some errands. In the course of my trip, I turned left not seeing an oncoming car. I was briefly knocked out. The car was demolished. Later that evening I called my father to tell him of the accident. My father had bought the car for me to use during my studies in Europe. I was ashamed, embarrassed and scared to tell him the news about the car.

His reaction was immediate. “Never mind the car,” he said. “How are you, son? Are you all right?”

I have never forgotten this. In fact, this little experience has shaped my understanding of grace. A love that comes unmerited, that cares despite evidence that might justify another response. I was given a template of the Trinity. My God, coming to care for me, incarnated in the person of my father, expressing like a mighty wind the overwhelming embrace and permanence of a God of love.

I experienced the Trinity that night. There is no escaping it. It is not an idea. It is a radiant reality. Turn here, it is here, turn there, it is here.

I daresay each of us experiences the Trinity—and a lot more often than we have any idea!

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 23, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Day of Pentecost Is Come!

“When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.”

(Acts 2: 1-21)

 “[God] on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation.”

(Collect, Day of Pentecost)

        The appearances of the risen Christ are completed. Christ has taken his place in heaven, at the right hand of God. His earthly pilgrimage, we are told in the story, is over. But something quite cataclysmic happened, in fact, is happening. This story won’t go away. This drama has more unfolding to do. Has the Christ, in fact, gone anywhere?

        Let’s suppose that you have been invited to the most wonderful party in your life. Perhaps you have already gone to such a party. Perhaps you only dream of such an ecstatic event. But you go and you have the time of your life. If you’re having that much fun, then it stands to reason that you don’t really want the party to end, right? “Let the party continue!” you yell. And, guess what? It does continue.

        This, in a word, is Pentecost. It is one of those events that you simply never forget. The promise of this event, the Pentecost event, is that it need not mark one event in your life, but can be a prescription for a life of continual joy.

        Well, we demur, let’s not be so fast. Every good thing comes to an end, we argue. Ok, if we want to be sourpusses, but is this what the risen Christ said? He said, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”

        That may be, but remember at that party, there was a lot of babbling. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and we couldn’t understand a word—or at least, so it seemed. We’ve been to parties like this. We look for a quiet corner or an empty room—or even better, we just leave.

        Indeed, if we look at the various standoffs in our lives, there is a lot of babbling, people talk at and past one another with no one really being heard. Husbands and wives, parents and children: lots of talking, lots of scolding, lots of unpleasant sounds. Is it any wonder that there is more talking than listening?

        And what about what is taking place between the political parties in our country? Isn’t it remarkable that hearings are held, interviews conducted and yet one side talks and talks and the other side seems not to hear much of what is said. What gives? How can there be conversation, much less harmony, when both sides are blocking hearing what the other side is saying? I know in my own observation of the political scene, that one side seems unreasonable, obstinate, even obtuse—and, yes, a danger to the future of our democracy. But the sad irony is that this is precisely what that side thinks of the side I am on! A lot of babbling but not enough listening.

        And then there is the international scene, fraught with tension, bombings, outright war. Do you think that Jews and the Palestinians will ever make peace with one another? I feel very strongly about this issue, and I’m sure both sides in that decades-long conflict feel that their case is the just one, in fact, perhaps the only right one. Goodness, think of the bloodshed over thinking we are right! A lot of babbling, a lot of screaming, but very little listening.

        What does it take to stop the babbling and start listening, start attending to what is being said.

        I am not sure that tensions in conflict, whether in the family, in our national politics, or among peoples and nations, can cease until we start listening in a new way. You know and I know that the important things that have happened to you in your lives took place above or around or in spite of the words communicated.

        The Pentecost event took place when people from many tribes and nations started understanding one another, even as they spoke their own language. How did this happen? What was going on? What was going on was that their hearts were opening? The silence below the words was breaking forth in song.

        This can happen in the home. One of my favorite stories is that of the couple who were on the brink of separating. Tension had been building for months. One morning, the husband came down the steps in his usual sour and defensive mood and he found his wife sitting at the breakfast table scribbling frantically on a piece of paper.

        “What are you doing?” he inquired.

        “I’m writing down all the things about you that drive me crazy!” she replied.

        “Oh, you have a list too?” he blurted out.

        This was all that was needed to break the tension. They looked at each other and began to laugh. Perhaps the healing could then begin. Something deeper than words was communicated. They listened in that moment and understood one another.

        In East Jerusalem this week, a lot of protests were broken up by Israeli soldiers. And you know who was participating in those demonstrations? Jews and Palestinians together. Jews and Palestinians shoulder to shoulder, sick and tired of age-old differences leading to mayhem and death. That is precisely what was going on at Pentecost.

        What have been your Pentecost experiences? Have you had one? I would bet you have. And I wager that you have had more than one, when something broke through that transcended words.

        Do you realize that music transcends words? Sure, our songs and hymns most often have lyrics, beautiful, inspiring lyrics. But the music itself has no lyrics. It speaks for itself, or rather it sings for itself.

        Songs without words. That is Pentecost.

        There was a medieval mystic named Mechthild of Magedburg. I had never heard of her until recently. She lived in the early 13^th Century in present-day Germany. She was the first mystic, in fact, to write in German.

        She writes:

Lie down in the Fire
See and taste the Flowing
Godhead through your being;
Feel the Holy Spirit
Moving and compelling
You within the Flowing
Fire and Light of God.

        This is Pentecost. It is about a fire that does not go out. It is about a joy that never leaves us. It is about the promise of Christ that love is permanent. It does not ever go anywhere.

        On a YouTube interview with Gene Wilder, the Hollywood actor and comedian, the interviewer noted that in Gene Wilder’s book, he seemed to be quite happy after living through a lot of ups and downs and tragedies. Gene Wilder replied, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life.”

        How many of us can say, honestly, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life!” Is this not the theme and the promise of Pentecost?

Amen

By Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit….Amen

Here is the setting for today’s Gospel. It is the night before Maundy Thursday right before Jesus is arrested and he has been trying to say good-bye to his disciples. While everyone is still around the table and listening, he starts to pray. Last week’s gospel Jesus confesses his love for his disciples and commands that we abide in his love and love one another as he loves us.

Today he is not only praying for his disciples, he is praying to them so that they might also hear some final words of guidance before being sent back out into the world.

“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.”

Jesus final message says that God gave you to me, which makes you a gift from God. And I may no longer be in the world, but you are. Not only are you in the world, but I have sent you to be here. And now my works are in your hands. Jesus is praying also for the protection of his disciples Through this prayer, “Jesus is counting on us to be his presence in his absence. As the disciples carry the word of God around the world, we believers spread that word and love to people also seeking God’s presence.

Jesus prays that we will remain awake to his reality. People will travel around the world seeking God not realizing that we are the world. The world God loves so much and that in seeing that and knowing that, we would then be the very presence of Jesus in the world.. You already are the presence of Jesus in the world.

In the chapters that came before this, Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit and how the holy Spirit is involved in the ongoing work of God in the church. So Jesus here highlights the way that the triune God of the bible is at work, the God who is one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Over and over in this text Jesus speaks of the interaction between him and his Father in which he speaks of how they work together, he speaks of the things they share together and he speaks in a variety of ways of their relationship. In the second half of the text Jesus prays for his people which we know from the previous chapters is a prayer about the work of the holy spirit.

So, the Christian doctrine of the trinity is woven through out this text and revealed in it. God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are active in the salvation of God’s people, in the mission of life of God’s people and in the identity of God’s people.

Basically, he calls us to embrace a salvation by grace in his mercy, embrace his mission to go into the disbelieving world that will hate us, just as he was hated out of sacrificial love just as he did. He calls us to with the proclamation of the gospel in word and deed so that other will come to believe as we have done.

Let us take comfort in his care for us. Let us seek the same thing for ourselves: let us cling to his salvation, let us rejoice that we belong to him and then let us live our lives according to his mission.

Finally, he calls us to delight in the reality that we are not our own, but we belong to him. He has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

When working on my sermon last week, as I read this gospel passage, I had flashbacks of my mother and her last days of life. We were called to the hospital to say our last good-byes because she was losing her 10 year battle with cancer and would be gone shortly. I summarized some of what she said to us. For years she would say I am not going to live forever and you all have to learn to live in this crazy world without me. I pray for God to bless you,keep you safe and watch over you all day every day. There are people that hate you and don’t know you. The color of your skin is a neon sign for hate. I have constantly told you that you are all beautiful and smart and you have to succeed in life. You can’t do it without a good education, make God first in your life and rise above the ignorant people that judge you by the color of your skin. Be good to yourselves and others. Save your money.

I will always be with you in spirit. If you feel a pinch in the middle of the night when you are not doing the right thing, that will be me. I can die in peace knowing that I raised you all the right way. You are good people. You were raised believing in God and the love of life. Don’t cry for me smile knowing you are loved, continue to always believe in God.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day and we remembered what she had told us and laughed about how many times we felt that pinch at night. Reflecting on my mother’s words helped me to appreciate what was going through Jesus’s mind in this gospel.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Thursday, May 2, 2021, at 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Fear Not!

“[The Jews]…were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.” (Acts 10: 44-48)

“Pour into our hearts such love towards you that we will love you in all things.”
(Collect, Easter VI)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you….I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (John 15:9-17)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

        The appearances of the risen Christ, at least how the Gospels report them to us, are intended to communicate one thing. That this risen Lord is with us always. This means now, in our present life. Eternity is now and we are in it. Startling, isn’t it? Eternal life is not something we await. It is something we possess. Our baptism affirms it. Christ’s resurrection reaffirms it.

        And along with this assurance of God’s continuous presence with us throughout our earthly journey (and, for good measure, always) there are two other things that the risen Christ announces in practically all his appearances. The first is, “Peace be with you. My peace I give you.” And the second is, “Fear not.” These are about the two most wonderful gifts that we human beings can receive. In fact, the gift of peace and the gift of release from fear are closely related. When we are free of fear, we are at peace, are we not? A peaceful heart is a heart that is unafraid.

        Let’s look at fear a little more closely, for I know of no human being who has not been visited by fear. It is part and parcel of our humanity. From fear of heights, spiders and snakes to fear of losing something we treasure or of getting something we do not want.

Some of my favorite silly fear jokes:

I have a fear of speed bumps. I’m slowly getting over it.

What do you call the fear of being trapped in a chimney? Claus-trophobia.

How do you get over a fear of elevators? Take some steps to avoid them.

What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shakes a lot? A nervous wreck!

        Wild, isn’t it? Fear is an embrace of, or rather a revulsion toward something that is not here, that has not happened! I fear going to the dentist, but I am not yet in the dentist’s chair. I fear the death of my sick loved one, but my loved one is not yet dead. I’m scared of dying, but, to put it bluntly, I ain’t dead yet.

        Several quick questions to ask about fear?

        1) How many things that you have feared have not come to fruition, have not happened? How about the things you fear now? Do you think they will actually happen, or that they will happen in precisely the way you fear? Remember last week how I spoke of the silver lining that often awaits the bad things we thought were to come to pass? Things that we dreaded often turned out to be not so bad after all, even sometimes as blessings.

2) How often have you been mistaken about what you were fearing? Isn’t fear behind so much of our tribal politics today? We tend to think that someone else or some other group of people will take away something dear to us? Racism has this fear built into it. Perhaps one of the reasons that Congress can readily pass an Asian anti-discrimination bill is that our Asian brothers and sisters do not pose any discernible threat to our (I might as well say it, “white”) way of life as African Americans and Hispanics can…and seem to be doing. And isn’t it interesting that so many of the attacks on our Asian friends come from African-Americans?

And why else are a good number of Americans falling into a kind of psychosis, refusing to accept the reality that is before them? Is it not fear of the challenge that our black and brown brothers and sisters pose to the white, male dominating class?

How tragic is it to see such class and economic divisions create such hatred in our land today! Where is the love for goodness sakes! Just as the Jews were appalled that non-Jews were accepting Christ and being baptized, so certain of our citizens think that they and only they should benefit from the riches and benefits of our country? They fear losing something that they think should be only theirs or of being brought into a way of life that they simply do not want!

It’s all about fear. Fear blocks love. Fear diminishes love. Where there is no fear, love can blossom and flourish. And who does not want love, lots and lots of it in fact? That is why Christ gives us this gift. “Fear not.” This is what he says over and over again. Why do we not listen? Fear must be the answer.

Fear is awfully, awfully strong. In fact, I suggest it may be behind every withholding of love. It may require some sacrifice on my part. I have to give up something I just do not want to give up. Trust me, in my case, I have a lot left to give up. Fear. Love casts it out!

Think what a sigh of relief we could release if we stopped fearing one another. I can hear the wind being released from our lungs. And that beautiful sense of peace that would fill our hearts. Yes, that peace is with us always, but we paper it over with the fretfulness we live with and with which fills our public channels.

Remember. When Jesus uttered those words to his disciples, the Romans still held power and authority over Israel. Crucifixions and stonings still took place outside Jerusalem. We’d like to think that strife and war somehow took a holiday. But, no, the world rolled on. As it has for two and more millennia. Discord, mayhem, war.

My goodness, only God knows why God remains patient with God’s creation.

But then just as now. I suppose if God is so patient, perhaps this is what we must be as well. The gift of the resurrection is the gift of faith. Are we going to receive it, or postpone it? Don’t you love the hymn: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Let us look… and this time really see. Let us enjoy the life we have rather than the one we wish it be. For when this peace is in our hearts, it is already changing the world. Think about this.

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let There Be Peace on Earth
The peace that was meant to be

With God with us
Friends all are we
Let me walk with these friends
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me
Let this moment be now.

With ev’ry step I take
Let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live
Each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me

Amen.