1. What do you think heaven is going to be like?

That’s a good question as we approach the final Sunday in the Church Year, a Sunday filled with themes of the end of time and the final judgment and Jesus coming back.

Do you remember Fred Astaire singing to Ginger Rogers while he’s dancing with her in the 1935 show,“Top Hat”? The song is “Dancing Cheek to Cheek”. And the opening words are: “Heaven, I’m in heaven…” Pretty cool description of heaven - being able to sing like Fred Astaire and getting to dance with Ginger Rogers.

As usual, C.S. Lewis is a great help in thinking about what heaven is going to be like. He writes in his classic book, “Mere Christianity”:

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible… People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

Here’s another question for the last Sunday in the Church Year:

2. Of all the people in the Bible, which one (not including Jesus) would you most want to hang out with when you get to heaven?

That question is a teaser for the sermon this Sunday. I’ll refer to a famous person in the history of the Christian Church, and I’ll tell you his surprising answer to that question.

Here’s one last question - and maybe it’s been lingering in the back of your mind as you’ve been reading this blog:

3. Do you think you’re going to heaven?

Now, the theological answer to that question is that the decisive factor in determining whether you’re going to heaven is not your behavior. If that were the case, heaven would be, well, empty. The theological answer is that when you are baptized, you are “sealed as Christ’s own forever.” The theological answer is that Jesus has taken the initiative to swing wide open the gates of heaven by his death on the cross, where he became “the propitiation for our sins”.

But here’s another way to answer that question. A CPA died and went to heaven. St. Peter welcomed him at the pearly gates and entered his name in the book of life. The CPA, being a CPA, examined the book with some care. Then he did a survey of the population in heaven and reported to St. Peter that there was a discrepancy. Apparently, the number of names in the book didn’t match up with the number of people in heaven.

St. Peter sent some angels to investigate. After a bit, they came back with a report. They said, “We’ve found the problem. Jesus is out back, lifting people in over the fence.”

See you on Sunday!

Jim

If in life you are ever feeling totally swamped or overwhelmed, the average condition of most New Yorkers, might I encourage you to pray “An Order For Compline” found beginning on page 127 of the Book of Common Prayer. One of the Psalms appointed for that office is Psalm 4, traditionally known as the Evening Psalm. I was praying the office with two members of the vestry and we are all amazed at how the song of King David just washed over us and became a real source of comfort.  

In this particular Psalm, David is dealing particularly with slander and injustices he is enduring as King of Israel. Now maybe you are not facing the pressures of being the King of Israel and dealing with a son who is trying to usurp your throne, however you are dealing with pressures that come from living in this city and you are feeling overwhelmed, Psalm 4 is for you.

As we see David make his plea to God, we see him transformed in the prayer from an anxious mess, because of his accusers, into an anxious mess who, for a moment, has a quite trust in God. As David states:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.“

So often, we are trying to buck against the trend that we are not in control and, in the process, we make ourselves even more anxious.

Psalm 4 reminds us that, in the midst of life, which is so often out of our control, prayer is really, really good.

Prayer refocuses on what is actually real: we need saving and we have a God who has saved us. Prayer in this way becomes almost a form of therapy. It does the Psalmist and all of us good. As James Boice commenting on this Psalm wrote, “There are days in the lives of all human beings which require a psalm like this at their end.”  

So pray and enjoy your forgiveness. We’ll see you this Sunday.

Pax,

Jacob

Dear Friends,

Happy Halloween and tomorrow is All Saints’ Day, which we will transfer to this upcoming Sunday. All Saints’ Day is one of the oldest feast days in the Christian year. The roots of this feast day go back to the Diocletian persecution of the church in the fourth-century. So many Christians were being martyred for the faith in certain parts of the Roman Empire that it seemed right and good to combine everyone together. It became official across Western Christendom in the seventh century when the Roman Parthenon was consecrated and dedicated to All the Saints in 609 AD.

It is an important feast day because it reminds us that, for Christians, death does not have the final say and that we (the church militant) join our voices with the church triumphant and all the company of heaven in our unending hymn praising God and his salvific work on our behalf.

James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). Saint Thaddeus or Saint Jude (Saint Thadée ou Saint Jude), 1886-1894. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

One interesting saint who was commemorated on Monday is the apostle St. Jude. He is an interesting saint because Jude is short for Judas. It must be tough sharing a name with one of the most vilified men in history; the man who betrayed our Lord. Nobody lights a candle for Judas Iscariot and no church has a feast dedicated to him. It was for this reason that many believe St. Jude—the good Judas—became the patron saint of lost causes. St. Jude was petitioned when the rest of the company of heaven seemed to be silent.  

Now, today is also Reformation Day, and as a Protestant the idea of petitioning saints sort of weirds me out. However, the point of a saint day is to read the Gospel and learn about Jesus through the lens of the life of that particular saint. St. Jude reminds us that it is only through the Gospel that lost causes are transformed into divine causes, that lost causes in Christ are always given hope.

Whatever your lost cause maybe, take heart: Christ knows and in him you are always found. For Jesus is working out all things for your good and his glory.

This Sunday, we will celebrate All the Saints, including you and those saints yet to come. We will also wrap up the formal aspect of our stewardship campaign. I want to thank everyone who has turned in their pledge. For those who have not gotten their pledge in, I ask that you would do it by Sunday.

This helps us shape our budget so we can get the Gospel out and through preaching and teaching, love and care, letting New York City know that by virtue of the cross of Christ, no one is a lost cause.

In an age where it seems like there are a lot of lost causes, Calvary-St. George’s and her mission is tremendously important to help fund.  

We will see you Sunday,

The Reverend Jacob Smith

This month, we’re focusing on our financial commitment to the ministry of Calvary-St. George’s Church in the year ahead. And as a means of making this focus, Jacob and Ben and I are preaching a sermon series on “Mission: Immeasurable.” This Sunday, we’re delving deep into “Immeasurable Joy because of the Gospel.”

However, this coming Sunday, it looks at first as though it’s a bit of a stretch to see much joy or thanksgiving to make a pledge. 

Here’s why. If I were to ask you to make a list of the things you have prayed about that have not come to pass, how long would your list be?

That’s why, at first glance, the lessons for this coming Sunday are a problem. It seems as though Scripture is telling us that if we pray hard enough, and long enough, and in the right way, we’ll get what we pray for. It seems as though we are being told that the key to answered prayer is our own ability to pray hard and long and right.

So what about my wonderful Christian friend who had leukemia and who had hundreds of people praying for her and who died at the age of 35, leaving behind a devoted husband and three young children?

Right here, of course, you can add all sorts of examples of your own, as well as stories of feeling like dropping out of this whole Christian business when our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears.  

That’s why you and I really need to be in church together this Sunday, along with all of our unanswered prayers. Because waiting for us at Calvary-St. George’s will be:

• One who prayed harder and longer and better than you and I ever have.

• One who had his own (temporarily) unanswered prayer - “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

• One who utterly identifies stands beside us with our own (temporarily) unanswered prayers.

• One whose grace is the deepest answer to our deepest prayers, prayers that finally are always answered.

Because, as the writer Anne Lamott puts it, “God’s grace bats last.”

See you Sunday morning!  

- Jim

P.S. Here are two other writers who will help us see God’s grace this Sunday: Watty Piper and Francis Thompson. I’ll have a prize for whoever can tell me the books by these fellows that I’ll reference.

P.P.S. If you won’t want to make a pledge by the end of our worship this Sunday in thanksgiving for God’s Amazing Grace, I’ll eat my socks.

There’s no direct evidence that Jesus was into funk, soul, rock, and psychedelic music.

But his words in this Sunday’s gospel surely set the stage for the musical genius of Sly and the Family Stone. In 1968, Sly sang, “Are you ready?”

“Don’t hate the black

Don’t hate the white

If you get bit

Just hate the bite

Make sure your heart is beating right

Get ready!”

Other musical greats have sung the message of this Sunday’s gospel as well:

“Get ready, ‘cause here I come” - The Temptations, 1966

“Ready or not, here I come” - Delfonics, 1969

“Are you ready for love” - Elton John, 1979

And how do you get ready?

Well, there’s also no direct evidence that Jesus was a Boy Scout. But he would have approved of the Boy Scouts founder, Robert Baden-Powell, articulating the essential foundation for being a Boy Scout - “Be prepared” - as a response to the issue of how you get ready.

How do you get ready?

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus says - by being prepared. And my goodness, examples of the wisdom of this advice are all over the place right now.

• Folks in the Bahamas got ready for Hurricane Dorian this past week by preparing with plywood window covers, extra water and batteries, and access to emergency shelters.

• Thousands of runners are getting ready for the NYC Marathon in November by preparing with daily workouts. (When I got ready for the NYC Marathon many, many years ago, I prepared by cutting back from two packs a day to one…)

• The staff members of Calvary-St. George’s are getting ready for the fall season by preparing all sorts of amazing programs.

• I have a friend who is getting ready for his death by preparing his will. (He also prepares by calling me once a week to change the names of the participants in his funeral…)

• I have another friend who was not ready for getting a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s this past week - pretty hard to prepare for that.

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus tells us to get ready for the work of following him. And the truth of the matter is that not one of us can fully handle the preparation needed for that work.

• People still died in the Bahamas.

• Runners still get cramps and drop out of marathons.

• Our programs this fall will not make headlines in the Times.

• My friend will never get his funeral program just right.

• My other friend’s husband shares with me how unprepared he is for his wife’s Alzheimer’s.

Here’s the invitation:

Bring your failed preparations with you to church this Sunday. Because here’s the news: Jesus has already gotten ready for us by bearing the consequences of our failed preparations on his own shoulders on the cross.

And here are two teasers for this Sunday’s sermon:

1. If you smoke a cigar, you are especially welcome.

2. Refrain from saying the phrase, “Count the cost” - for the rest of your life.

See you Sunday!

- Jim