Category: Sermons

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, October 24, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Compassion III:
Easy to Love, Hard to Love

“God,…increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love.”

 (Collect, Proper 25)

“With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble.” (Jeremiah 31: 7-9))

“Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” (Psalm 126:2)

We call on God in today’s opening prayer to increase our love. Goodness knows, we need it, and goodness knows, we know that this is what we need and what we desire. In fact, as I have argued, and I have heard none of you contradict me, love is the only thing we need and the only thing we desire. Of course, I’ll argue for you, we need food, shelter, clothing, a respectable living and many other quite desirable things. Sure, but all of these are predicated on a foundation of love and care.

          “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of….Not just for some, but for everyone.” Remember that delightful ditty from the mid-sixties, sung by Jackie DeShannon.

          And has it ever struck you as odd that this glorious commodity, which brings so much harmony, understanding, peace, and joy, can seem at times to be in such short supply? Why is that, I wonder? For there is plenty of it—love, that is. It’s like a bar advertising free drinks for life and nobody bothers to sidle up to it.

          I can suggest a couple of reasons. Perhaps you can add to my list. First of all, it seems to be that everybody wants to be loved, but few of us want to do the loving. Even this reluctance to love (we could call it selfishness, the human condition), can stem from our own lousy feelings about ourselves. You know when you’re not feeling good, your motivation to be nice, even to family members, can reduce dramatically. We can, in other words, turn into bears. And many of us carry the marks of abuse and trauma and we just aren’t emotionally very healthy and so can’t be very loving towards others—since we aren’t very loving towards ourselves.

          In other words, I have said that everybody wants to be loved, but the longer we nurse deep hurt and sorrow, even abandonment, the harder it may be even to want love, since we really believe that we don’t deserve love. Can there be anything sadder than this? But unfortunately, this seems to be the fate of many of us.

          A second reason many of us may stay away from the fountain of love, that bar that serves free drinks for as long as we wish, is that we are stuck on stupid. That is, we have a pinched, judgmental view of our lives and those around us. I was in graduate school with a very bright man, whose father, in fact, was one of the inventors of television, and he said to me solemnly one day, “Steve, we are born, we live and we die…and that is that!” He said it with such conviction and vehemence that I have never forgotten it.

Sure, in one sense he was right. Looked at it coldly and clinically, we are born, we live and we die. But “Where’s the beef?” as the TV commercial used to wonder. Where’s the music, the color of our lives? As Auntie Mame says in that famous play, “Life’s a banquet and most sons of bitches are starving to death!”

          People who fail to join in the general dance are missing out. Sure, I’m not saying that many of us do not have terrible burdens to bear; wounds too deep for words; and we are not being so cruel or unfeeling not to have heavy hearts for them, especially if they are unable to rally from their pain. I get it. Love’s deepest expression is compassion, our ability to identify with those who are the most unhappy.

          For we saw last week that we cannot generate compassion until we can show some for ourselves, and we really cannot love until we know that we are loved. It’s sort of like a relay race. We must be given the baton of love in order to run with it to others.

          Now that we have acknowledged that most of us want to be loved but are not so crazy about loving others, we ask ourselves the next big question? Why is that? Why do we find it hard sometimes to love? First, let’s be honest. Some people are just easier to love than others. Am I alone in thinking this? One of my favorite Cole Porter songs says it so beautifully:

For you’d be so easy to love
So easy to idolize all others above
So sweet to waken with
So nice to sit down to eggs and bacon with

We’d be so grand at the game
So carefree together that it does seem a shame
That you can’t see
Your future with me
‘Cause you’d be, oh, so easy to love

It’s easy to love those who are easy to love. But this song, a romantic song, sugarcoats the reality that the first blush of love is delightful. Check in on this same couple a short time later, and they have separated. Divorce is the name of hundreds of thousands of relationships. Forming a true partnership with another human being, putting two fallible, sinning human beings next to each other is, to put it mildly, a challenge.

          You’d be so easy to love. Ok. But we all know that you’d be so hard to love as well. Very hard. Heartbreakingly hard. We can easily fall into the deep hole of self-recrimination if we are too hard on ourselves. After all, in whatever relational conflict we have had, it takes two to tango. There are two sides to most misunderstandings. It takes mutual commitment for both parties to understand each other fully, and a breakup is almost in part due to not having sufficient understanding to fully understand the other.

And there is a certain defiance and pride that keeps us from the very reconciliation and love that is our birthright.

          I suppose the most reassuring insight I have been given when I am beating myself up for the thousand and one ways I am not loving enough is to realize that I am not creating more love, for love is always there, flowing in the universe with or without my participation. My only question is whether I am swimming in the ocean of love or remaining dry from my fears and hesitations.

For that ocean of love is the love of God.

O love, how deep, how broad, how high!
It fills the heart with ecstasy.

As Jonathan Edwards said, God’s love is an ocean without shores of bottom.

As John Paul Young, the Scottish-Australian pop singer sings:
Love is in the air, everywhere I look around

Love is in the air, every sight and every sound

Love is in the air, in the whisper of the tree

Love is in the air, in the thunder of the sea

Love is in the air, in the rising of the sun

Love is in the air, when the day is nearly done

          How do we miss it? It is everywhere.

For God is love, and God is everywhere.

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, October 17, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Compassion II:
Please Understand Me!

“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases….And by his bruises we are healed.”

 (Isaiah 53:4-12)

“[His angels] shall bear you in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone….Because he is bound to me in love…I will protect him” (Psalm 91:12,14)

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” (Mark 10:45)

          From one of my favorite movie musicals, Damn Yankees, they sing,

You’ve gotta have heart/
all you really need is heart./
When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win/
That’s when the grin should start./

All you really need is heart!”   

And it is in the heart where love is born and resides. It is the mixing bowl out of which comes the most important thing. In fact, to pick up and repeat last week’s theme, there is one need and one wish that every human being has, and that is the need and the wish to be loved and to love. And I further claim that this love is all we need. All you need is love, lots and lots and lots of love. Is there ever enough love? Only if you place a limit on it. It flows like the sun shines. There is no stopping it and no way of stopping it.

          Compassion is another word for love. And compassion is the subject of this series of meditations. As the Dalai Lama sings, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

          Compassion is perhaps the richest, deepest and most challenging of those other-directed emotional words, including the words “sympathy” and “empathy.”

          Let’s look briefly at those words. “Sympathy” is the socially acceptable, Kindergarten-level way of expressing care and concern. “I sympathize with you.” “I am simpatico with what you are feeling.” “I get where you’re at!” Empathy takes it further. It enters into understanding of another’s pain or predicament. It is free of judgment, perhaps the hardest quality to cultivate seeing how most of us love to judge people for where they are in their lives. How often have we thought that someone “complains too much,” “must be a hypochondriac” (as if we were qualified physicians), “should be over their grieving by now,” (as if we were in charge of someone’s emotional timeline). Empathy simply stands alongside someone else, free of judgment, hopefully short on advice, and, if we want to do our friend a big favor, keeping our mouth shut…tight! Empathy is like when someone is stuck inside a dark hole and we might shout down, “Hey, I know what it’s like down there.” Empathy: feeling with someone.

          Compassion is a kind of post-graduate caring, for it not only identifies with someone’s predicament, it shares its love with that person through its own suffering. “Passion,” as we saw last week, comes from the Latin for suffering. I link with your suffering through my suffering. We are brothers in our shared humanity. That is compassion.

          And the reason compassion is such a beautiful reality in the Christian life is because we look to the one Jesus who not just stands with us in our suffering, but who takes on our suffering. He is that close to us. A parent, a sibling, a close, close friend can feel intensely our pain as they sit with us in compassion. But our Lord Jesus takes our suffering into himself. This is the meaning of incarnation, and this is the meaning of salvation. Salvation means healing.

          I want to focus for a brief time on a key ingredient of this wonderful action of compassion. Compassion is not just a feeling. It is also an action. It involves our words, our attitudes, and our actions toward another. And in order for this compassion to take flight, to have real meat on its bones, it must involve understanding. Without understanding, we are flying blind and are apt to come to wrong conclusions about a person’s situation…and, yes, judge it!

          Most people, let’s face it, are facing their own struggles. They may not show it and for sure they may not want you to know that they struggle. For some reason struggle seems to be a sign of weakness. We can assume pretty accurately that almost everybody is shy and hiding to some degree behind unspoken sorrow, pain and fear. Making this assumption is halfway home to understanding and opens the love valve and makes genuine compassion possible.

          In addition to most people facing their own inner struggles and demons, those same people are doing about the best they can to cope with what is in front of them. We can in our arrogance claim that they are lazy. We may ask ourselves, just why are they not doing what I know would help them; just why don’t they stop their drinking and creating such chaos in their families. Good questions, but useless, uncaring questions. Because people are doing what they are doing. And that is the end of the story. We can cajole, wring our hands and judge all we want. As they will do it their way…until the cows come home. Moo.

They’re home. Now what? Moo, moo, moo.

          Where’s the love?

          I know there are examples in your lives when things changed radically when you began to understand more fully exactly where someone was coming from. We stopped being a psychic and filling in the blanks about a person’s life and saw the truth. Love starts the minute we step down from the judge’s bench.

          My favorite story about this is of two children who seemed to be accompanied by a priest were on a subway one busy morning. The kids were running wild throughout the subway car, chasing one another, bumping into the standing passengers. There were glaring eyes and hushed curses as the children continued to squeal and run. Finally, one of the passengers came over to the seated priest and demanded, “Can’t you do something about these children?”

          “I suppose so,” the priest replied, “but we’ve just come from their mother’s funeral, and I thought I would cut them some slack. I’m sorry for their behavior.”

          You see how this simple explanation, which leads to understanding, can change everything. Judgment turns to compassion. I believe if we understood everything as fully as Christ did, we would shed tears, we would wail so loudly, that the heavens would hear our cries.

          Someone said the other day, “Change only comes about with love.” Yes, and I would add understanding is the icing on the cake of love, for now we know more fully.”

          Compassion is entering into the suffering of the world. This entryway leads to a love that brings peace and joy, and yes, laughter through the tears.

          I read this week that we are “hard-wired for compassion.” This may be true. I’m not sure. There is the condition known as sociopathy. And society does teach us to fear and separate ourselves from others.

          But one thing we can do is to remember—re-member!—those times when we were understood. Those recollections can trigger or retrigger an outgoing of our love.

          What do you think about this? A friend put it this way: “When I love, it’s always in response to being loved.” Wow, what a great way of putting it. “When I love, it’s always in response to being loved.” We are loved. We Christians know it, or at least we had better know it. That is what all the angels shouting the good news was about. This is what our Eucharist meal is about: a love so great it envelops, surrounds, precedes and follows us every moment of our lives.

          A Hindu saying is this: “Extend your awareness into the bodies of other living beings. Feel what those others are feeling. Leave aside your body and its needs. Abandon being so local. Day by day, constrictions will loosen as you become attuned to the current of life flowing through us all.”

          All we need is love. Love is the divine emotion. Love is the emotion of God. Love is the being of God. And it is ours for the taking.

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, October 11, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

God’s Call to Compassion

“For I know how many are your transgressions,
and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and push aside the needy in the courts.”
(Amos 5:12)
“Surprise us with love at daybreak; * then we’ll skip and dance all the day
long.”
(Psalm 90:14, The Message Bible)
I believe that there is one need and one wish that every human
being has, and that is the need and the wish to be loved and to love.
And I further believe that this is all we need. And this sentence,
which is the thesis sentence of a series I am beginning this morning,
is the frame in which I wish to speak with you about compassion.
Compassion: the love of and the love for ourselves and one another.
The constant harping on sin that we find in the Bible, and
especially in the Old Testament, as we find in the Book of Amos, is not
so much to chide and shame us but to call us out of what we are
missing—that our lack of concern, of deep concern, for ourselves and
one another kills our spirit. When we hide love from one another, when
we pursue our own selfish ends (this is what all the fuss about rich
people having trouble getting into heaven is all about), then it is
ourselves who will suffer. That is, we bring judgment on ourselves. I
believe that anger, if you want to call it that, is our frustration as to what

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we are missing. Every moment we fail to love is us digging our own
graves of sorrow and alienation. Amos says as much: “Seek good and
not evil, that you may live.” Virtue is its own reward. We simply feel
better. We reflect the light and the love of God itself. This is why the
psalmist has the boldness to declare, “Surprise us with love at daybreak;
* then we’ll skip and dance all the day long!”
Did you hear about the husband who said that his wife said that he
lacked empathy? He replied, “I don’t understand how she could feel that
way!”
Haven’t we all noticed a lack of empathy in the land? What’s
going on with all this nastiness we show toward one another? Can we
even put our minds around the number of people who have died from
this dread COVID? Our own pastor, Father Shearer, fell prey to this
virus. Our failure to fully face our grief is part of what lies behind the
fear and the anger so rampant in our land. We are in an empathy
epidemic. Fear shuts down empathy. And our anger is partly our anger at
ourselves that this empathy is being stunted.
Compassion mean having feeling towards another. Having passion
with someone else. We won’t take time distinguishing sympathy,
empathy and compassion. Love is love and we want and need plenty of
it, both to receive and to give! But, of course, we need for this
compassion to begin with ourselves. Most of us are much too hard on
ourselves. When we are hard on ourselves, it follows that we lack the

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ability to look up and out on our brothers and sisters standing right next
to us.
The Latin word passion means suffering, and we look to Jesus
whose compassion confronts us every Sunday when we look at the Cross
on which Jesus hung. Can we even believe someone’s empathy going
the length of suffering right alongside us, with us? Our pain is his pain.
Boy, that should wake us up! As long as we keep the focus on ourselves,
compassion will be limited.
And yet, and yet, we have to come to be comfortable with who we
are, accept our shortcomings, know that we are not the manager of the
universe. Letting go of the control stick can help us relax into the
wonderful people that we really are, and then we can look outwards and
forget ourselves and join in the dance with others.
The funny thing is this: we cannot really forget ourselves until we
love ourselves and have a clue as to exactly who we are! And, to take
this even further, coming to love ourselves depends on trusting and
knowing that we are loved. We receive the love of parents, friends,
clerks in the grocery store; this strengthens our sense of who we are;
then we can throw this love we have found away on others.
Love, love, love. All you really need is love. The Beatles were
dead right. This love is not all kum-ba-yah. It is not all about feeling
good and rosy. I close with this poem by folk singer David Wilcox:
It is love who mixed the mortar

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And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love that made the stage here
Though it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
In this darkness
Love can show the way
—David Wilcox, “Show the Way”

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, September 26, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Everything Is Grist for the Mill

“You have made us but little lower than the angels; * you adorn us with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:6)

“What we do see is Jesus, made “not quite as high as angels,” and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place.”
(Hebrews 2:5-13, Message Bible)
 

One of the great mysteries, as far as I can determine, is why there is not much more shouting and laughing and weeping with joy in this life of ours. What is with us human beings that we allow ourselves so much sorrow, or why life visits on us such hardship and suffering?

It may not be such a good idea to point fingers here. Certainly God gets a good deal of the blame for our misery, such as it is, for God is, after all, the power that brought us into existence.

Our attitude to hardship has a lot to do our responses to pain and trouble, and we seem, or we are told anyway, that we are pretty much in charge of our reactions. I’m not so sure. Sometimes I do talk myself out of a funk, or I do shift my perspective, which keeps me from thinking dark thoughts. But more often I seem to have little control over my thoughts, moods and attitudes And I sure as the devil had better not judge someone caught in the rut of depression or chronic sorrow. First of all, nobody walks in anybody else’s shoes, and we can identify only to a limited extent with someone else’s situation. And even if we are thoroughly familiar with other people’s circumstance, how dare us think we have the right to judge their attitude or that we have the power to do much more than to be present with those in trouble?

          But the disturbing reality is that, as Thoreau mused, “the mass of [us] live lives of quiet desperation.” It is not just when life hits the fan and we are thrown into a slough of despond. This extremity is sometimes only temporay. Others of us carry wounds with us for decades and never reveal the source of our anguish or dare to speak of it from shame or fear.

A lot of this charade of the spirit is cultural. Certain national cultures teach us to avoid expressing our feelings. And in the South, where I grew up, we were taught that grown men don’t cry. My parents, as lovely as they were, were not particularly expressive or effusive in their feelings towards one another. It just wasn’t done, so to speak. And there are so many hidden stories, toxic secrets that shield us from the sunlight of the spirit and prevent us from living the free life that we somehow suspect is ours by birthright.

The psalm this morning says that God made us only a little lower than the angels and has adorned us with glory and honor. “Doesn’t feel that way to me,” we might argue. And unfortunately many of us betray this despair in our demeanor and behavior.

I suppose one thing to notice about whatever life presents, pitches, or slings at us, is that those things are grist for our mill, are opportunities for growth. We can use them to grow or postpone. Like the things we toss on the compost heap in our backyards. Even seemingly useless things can serve to create something healthy and beautiful. As a friend puts it, everything is either a blessing or a lesson, and every lesson can become a blessing.

And our scripture, the seedbed that nurtures our lived faith, provides so much solace. We needn’t listen to all the scolding and judging we find there (these are but projections from our confused and complex human experiences), but we can listen instead to the overwhelming affirmation from the God who created and abides with us.

“Out of the depths have I cried to thee, O Lord,” the Psalmist writes. (Psalm 130) We cry for the voice of the Lord. Are we quiet enough, patient enough, humble enough to expect an answer? For testimony has it from thousands of us that God does answer—often in ways that we do not expect. I’ll bet each of you can point to situations in your life that turned out in a way you did not expect but in time you saw to have been better, sometimes much better, than what you had dreamed.

“God himself is with us.” I love this line from the hymn. God himself—not an emissary, not an idea drummed up by some preacher, but God itself. Imagine that. Can there be a more wonderful visitor? God himself is with us!

And in the Epistle this morning, the Message translation sheds light on one of my least favorite letters, the Letter to the Hebrews. It literally opens a portal to a glorious understanding of Jesus. It reads “What we do see is Jesus, made not quite as high as angels [this marks the great humility of a God who comes into all the places of our lives, however dark and sad and lonely], and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory ‘bright with Eden’s dawn light.’ In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place.”

He fully experienced death in our place. Think of this. God enters our death. Now, each of us can be an angel to our neighbor. We can be present in times of fear or grief, but we can never enter as intimately or as closely into anyone’s life as the one who experiences death. God himself is with us and fully experiences each of our deaths. This is the message of the angels at Christmas: “Fear not, for I bring you glad tidings of great joy.” This is the message of the risen Christ: “Fear not, for I am with you always.”

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul…

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

          Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, September 26, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Amazing Grace!

“Grant us the fullness of your grace…that we may be partakers of your heavenly treasure.” (Collect, Proper 21)

The prayer this morning asks for the fullness of God’s grace. This request may seem at first blush presumptuous. Do we dare ask, or even hope, for the fullness of God’s grace? Assuming we even know what this is, are we worthy of receiving so much bounty? Many, if not most of us, think less highly of ourselves than we ought and certainly believe that God does not view us as worthy of great honor or praise. Receiving God’s grace is what opens the door to partake of God’s heavenly treasure. Again, we may not even be sure of what such treasure consists, but we are pretty darned sure that we don’t deserve it. But the writer of this collect evidently thinks to.

There is a candy store in the Lower East Side of Manhattan called Economy Candy; and when you go inside, you’re sure you’ve died and gone to heaven. Candy aisles stretch from the front to the back of the store, with shelves that reach to the ceiling. Every kind of commercial candy you’ve ever heard of is there, plus candies from around the world as well as the store’s own brands. It isn’t healthy to spend more than ten or fifteen minutes in such a place, for there is the danger of a diabetes attack or hyperglycemia—from just looking and thinking about all those delectable sweets.

Now, imagine our life like this. Is it an exaggeration to view your life as so dripping with the love and beauty of God? The only thing that keeps us from this realization is that our eyes are clouded from the dazzlement being so every-day and ordinary. Our ears do not hear the sweet music of God’s presence in every beat of our heart and every sound in the spaces we walk in.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a nineteenth-century English poet and Jesuit priest, and I love the opening lines of one of his famous poems:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed….

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lies the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghose over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

          Everything is holy; all things shine with God’s presence and love, and all is here just for you and me. How do we know this? Open your eyes and look around. Who else is looking? It is you who are looking, and it is you who is receiving, this flood of images, sounds and smells. Let it all in. It is the heavenly treasure flooding your senses, filling your experience.

          Last Sunday for our gradual hymn we sang a hymn that really dazzled me. Did it you?

          It reads:

1 God is Love: let heav’n adore him;
God is Love: let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him,
and exalt him with one voice.
He who laid the earth’s foundation,
he who spread the heav’ns above,
he who breathes through all creation,
he is Love, eternal Love.

2 God is Love: and he enfoldeth
all the world in one embrace;
with unfailing grasp he holdeth
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then they find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.

3 God is Love: and though with blindness
sin afflicts the souls of all,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
holds and guides us when we fall.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.

          What is so charming—and challenging—about these lovely words is that it affirms with no hesitation that God’s love enfoldeth the world in one embrace. If we consider this picture, and I urge you to do so now, then there is no person, no place and no time when this embrace is absent. It is here now but for our reluctance in seeing it. As the poet Kabir writes, “The Lord is in me, and the Lord is in you, as life is hidden in every seed. So, quash your pride, my friend, and look for him within you.”

          This is no gleefully pleasant Mary Poppins affirmation. The hymn sings, “And when human hearts are breaking under sorrow’s iron rod, then they find that selfsame aching deep within the heart of God.”

          God’s embrace never releases us. When we ache, God aches. The deepest sorrows are known and felt and experienced by God, because he holds us during such times, perhaps closer than ever.

          The Christian story is about presence. The treasure lies at our feet in just being alive. It can be so intoxicating that we might question if we are in a dream or if life may not be a mirage. You know and have experienced how wonderful it is when a friend is just sitting with you in times of celebration or heartache. We experience this presence in worship as we celebrate together as a family, drink coffee together as a family. These are hints, foretastes, images that express the presence of God with us, beside us, in us at all times and in all places. This, then, is the fullness of grace we were at the beginning reluctant to recognize or accept, feeling perhaps that we were not worthy. But we must be worthy, because (guess what?) these riches are right here at our feet.

          So, what do we do in order to unveil and intensify this presence I speak of? My guess is that the less we ponder what to do the better. Just be present! Being present is our natural state. If you have to think about it, you are shifting away, however slightly, from this presence.

          Quiz question: what’s the best gift we can give one another? The answer: presence!

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven
No ear may hear His coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him still
The dear Christ enters in

O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

          Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, September 19, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Hell, No!

“Grant us not to be anxious about earthly thing but to love heavenly…and to hold fast those things that will endure.” (Collect, Proper 20)

“The ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death.” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:16)

“Render evil to those who spy on me; in your faithfulness, destroy them.” (Psalm 54:5)

“He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.” (Mark 9:36-37, Message Bible)

How many of us, I wonder, even at our mature age, still believe, either deeply or superficially that there is such a place or condition as hell? Here we are, sitting in a house of the Lord, seemingly fairly comfortable, while at the same time perhaps believing that God consigns a goodly portion of his children to a life of eternal pain and that we, even we don’t live sufficiently righteous lives, may be joining them. Now I ask you, is this something that you can honestly say is consistent with the God of love whom we worship?

          Let’s face it, we have a lot of history and tradition behind us on this most monstrous idea. Theologians have written about it for centuries. The poets Dante and Milton created a whole architecture of hell in their Inferno and Paradise Lost. And Scripture, while it is a little less explicit about the details, does lay out a system of justice where the good are rewarded and the bad punished, and quite severely. We unfortunately see this Sunday after Sunday in our readings of the Psalms. Today’s reading, for instance, warns, “Render evil to those who spy on me; in your faithfulness, destroy them.” (Psalm 54:5) Even the beautiful Old Testament reading from the Book of Wisdom intones, “The ungodly by their words and deeds summoned death.” Destruction and death may not imply being thrown into hell, but the passages do indicate that God’s wrath for our wrongdoing will mean at the very least our death. The rest is left to our morbid imagination!

          And did you hear about the guy who was thinking about taking a vacation in hell.

“Why do you want to go there?” they asked him.

“All my friends keep telling me to go there!” was his reply

          Of course, hell is a tricky idea, to say nothing of being a morally repugnant one. For justice, if it is to be rendered now or at some future time, requires a sense of punishment. Rewards imply punishments, like up requires down. Similarly, God’s anger would seem to be at the very least a reflection of our own outrage at those who have wronged us. But perhaps judgment and rage as attributed to God are projections of our own anger and do not represent any characteristic of the God we claim to worship.

          Who was this Jesus whom we read about? He loved to be in the company of the lost. He had no problem going right up to the leper, the moral outcasts, those who weren’t orthodox Jews. He was more than casually acquainted with women, poor families and those lacking in social or economic status. For whatever reasons Jesus was executed, he challenged the social norms of his day to the point of total unacceptability.

          Does this sound like someone who was in the business of condemning those who didn’t live right or think right or behave and think as the religious authorities dictated? Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Is this consistent with a God who punishes and punishes someone eternally? Jesus was in the business of loving, and his message of love so challenged all negativities that he is remains an affront to our sense of justice, even today.

          We may need a hell to create a sense of justice and final reward, but it seems that God does not. For what is our image of God? And doesn’t our image of God shape us, create us? Seeing God as a cruel tyrant (for that is what he is if he punishes people so extremely) surely cuts off the channel of grace in our lives. If we were raised in an atmosphere of fearing punishment, it can traumatize us. Do we really think or want God to traumatize us?

          How can we be encouraged to believe and trust in the goodness of God and that God loves all of God’s creatures and at the same time have any patience whatever with the notion of a hell? To hell with hell! Most human beings are more loving and forgiving than any God in the business of sending people to hell. Nobody or nothing can be more loving than God. It’s not possible. Such a punishing God is way too small. We must move from a moralistic God into the life of love. As the Inidan poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “The human soul travels from the law to love, from discipline to freedom, from the moral plane to the spiritual plane.”

          And what do we think it means in our creed when we say that Christ “descended into hell”? Was he there to heap further coals of reproach on our heads? Or was he there to shut down the place, to evict its landlord and to send all its miscreants to a fairer place, into the arms of their loving creator and father/mother?

          In conclusion, “Heaven” is essentially where God is. And since the reality some of us call God is absolutely everywhere, the kingdom of heaven is not pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. The kingdom of heaven is within you here and now. Heaven is always right where we are!

          Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, September 12, 2021, at 8:00 & 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Things That Matter(ed)!

“Grant that your Holy Spirit may direct and rule our hearts in all things.” (Collect, Proper 19 )

“For wisdom is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness….In every generation she passes into holy souls.” (Wisdom 7:26 passim)

It is indeed a pleasure to be with you good people again, and I look forward to being with you during these fall Sundays into early winter and through the Christmas celebration. These days are so fraught with tragedy, controversy and worry that it’s good to be together to celebrate our lives and to reflect on the events that have the greatest meanings for us.

This is to suggest this morning that we consider for a few minutes that event or those events that we can point to that have had the greatest impact on our lives. What happened to you, who happened to you, that you can say right now has had the most lasting value for you. It may be a fairly minor-sounding thing, like a kind word of solace or advice given you—by a parent, teacher or friend. Or it may be an event you participated in that changed your thinking about things or even over the course your life was set on. Or it may be as simple as something you observed. A painting in a museum, a piece played at a concert or a jazz club, a scene from a movie. Something that, if I were to call on you, you would quite readily share because it is something that is the easiest for you to recall.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how things on paper, things told us by someone else, do not really register in our hearts until we experience them in some way.

Our lives are shaped by every single event that unfolds before us and that we live through. This truth may be hard to absorb, but not the clearer truth that some events register so profoundly that nothing can ever shake them from our memory.

What this something is I am asking you to consider needn’t be some wise or deep spiritual insight. If it affected you as profoundly as I suggest, then, of course, it is wise and deep for you. It is not like these four monks searching for enlightenment.
Four monks were meditating in a temple when, all of a sudden, the prayer flag on the roof started flapping.

The youngest monk came out of his meditation and said, “Flag is flapping.”

The second, more experienced monk said, “Wind is flapping.”

The third monk, who had been there for more than 20 years, said, “Mind is flapping.”

The fourth monk, who was the eldest, said, “Mouths are flapping!”

So much of our religious talk is like this. Mouths moving, tongues flapping.

Two events in my own life that I’d like to share have been very formative on my character and my gratitude for the people whom God has placed in my life.

For wisdom is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness….In every generation she passes into holy souls.

Aren’t those beautiful words from the Book of Wisdom read earlier?

The first event occurred when I was in prep school in Virginia. Lonely, homesick, writing letters home threatening to run away. You can imagine how upset my parents were. After months of my cri de coeur, a fifth-grade teacher from a public school in Richmond made the 70-mile trip to Orange, Virginia, just to see me. I’ll never forget it. She walked me around campus. It was a winter day and she spoke of how concerned my parents were about my situation, and she told to me that they (my parents) would take me out of the school and enroll me in public school in Richmond. The teacher pointed out how disruptive that would be for me in the middle of the school year. She also conveyed the message that if I stuck it out, they would not make me return to boarding school the following year. So, I stayed. And I have stayed grateful to this teacher for making that long journey to and from my school. Talk about love. This was love in action.

For wisdom is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness….In every generation she passes into holy souls.

         The second event is similar in showing what love has meant to me. I was in Episcopal seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, and went out to run an errand late one afternoon. I was driving a Volkswagen Beatle, given me by my father to use while studying abroad for a post-graduate degree. Anyway, I turned left and was obviously unaware of an oncoming car. The car crashed into me, knocking me out briefly. Needless to say, the VW as demolished.

Back in the Seminary dormitory, I called my father to tell him about the accident. I was full of remorse and was apologetic. My father interrupted me and said, “Forget the car, son; I want to know how you are. Are you ok?” This was a man who had underwritten my entire academic life. He had every right, I suppose, to chide me and use those hideous words, “After everything I’ve done for you…” No, his words were, “How are you, son?”

For wisdom is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness….In every generation she passes into holy souls.

        This is what love is, and I believe this episode, perhaps not so dramatic as you might at first think, has gone a long way in shaping my understanding of a God who loves me unconditionally.

        You know, I was discussing the beautiful poetry of the wisdom literature like we read today with a couple of fellow retired clergy this past week, and I asked one of my friends, “How does the love that exists between your lovely wife and you relate to the love of God?” And he replied, “It points to God’s love.” “No,” I rejoined—and I have thought long about what he said. Human love does not point to God’s love, as a road sign points to the center of town. It is God’s love, right here, in our face. The visit from my fifth-grade teacher those many years ago; the words from my father after my auto accident. This was the love of God. Not pointers. The thing itself. A friend used a water analogy. He said his daughter and son-in-law have a summer place on a small bay in Virginia. That bay opens out onto a wider way, and that bay in turn opens into the Chesapeake Bay. Isn’t that a wonderful image about our loves, from the smallest to the largest?

For wisdom/love is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness….In every generation she passes into holy souls.

So, these events are just two that I cite that have played a role in my development. I am tempted to say “spiritual development.” But isn’t all growth in wisdom “spiritual development”?

        A wonderful little poem that points to the impact a single event in our lives can have was written by Edward Field, a 97-year-old American poet living in Brooklyn:

A Journey
By Edward Field

When he got up that morning everything was different:

He enjoyed the bright spring day

But he did not realize it exactly, he just enjoyed it.

And walking down the street to the railroad station

Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks

It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.

Tears filled his eyes and it felt good

But he held them back

Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.

Waiting on the platform at the station

The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:

The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.

And in its time it came screeching in

And as it went on making its usual stops,

People coming and going, telephone poles passing,

He hid his head behind a newspaper

No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes

To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabric.

He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.

He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down

A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,

And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:

And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on

He walked, himself at last, a man among men,

With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.

        I would love to hear what you are thinking. Perhaps one or two of you will share your stories of moving events like these with me.

        Amen.

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.