Several years ago in Kansas City, Missouri, a woman walked into a Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop and stood in line at the counter.  After a few moments, she turned around.  There, standing in line behind her, was Paul Newman.  He was in Kansas City to film the movie, “Mr. and Mrs. Bridges”, and that afternoon he’d slipped away from the filming to get some ice cream.

Paul Newman smiled at the woman and said hello.  She looked deep into those unbelievably blue eyes, her knees buckled, her heart was in her throat, and when she tried to speak a croaking sound came out of her throat.  She was so mortified that she quickly paid for her ice cream and ran outside.

As the woman tried to calm down, she realized that she didn’t have her ice cream cone.  She was debating whether to go back to get it when Paul Newman walked out of the store, came right up to her and said, “Are you looking for your ice cream cone?”  She was speechless.  She just nodded her head dumbly.  Paul Newman said, “You put the cone in your purse with your change.”

Now, how to make that story fit the Bible passages for this coming Sunday…

For the past two Sundays, we’ve had the privilege of reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  This coming Sunday, the last reading from Romans will be the magnificent final thirteen verses of chapter 8.  And within these powerful verses, Paul makes this claim:

“We know that all things work together for good 

for those who love God, 

who are called according to God’s purposes.”

So I have to ask you - is this your experience?  Is everything coming together for you?  Or might your honest response be - and especially in the midst of a pandemic and racial conflict and skyrocketing unemployment and political infighting - “Hey, St. Paul, give me a break”?

It’s so clear, from the headlines in the paper to the headlines in our hearts, that the world does not see life as everything working together for good.

But, thank God, St. Paul doesn’t stop.  He’s so excited that he can’t stop.  He wants us to know how all things work together for good.  So he tells us first of all that this is his own experience.  But he knows God’s promise to be true most of all not because of his own experience, but because of the experience of God’s own son.

And that is what we’re going to be hearing about and rejoicing in this coming Sunday.  Bring your “Give me a break” questions with you.  The Lord Jesus Christ has an answer.

Oh yeah, about that woman.  It didn’t look like all things were working together for good for her - buckled knees, heart in her throat, croaking sounds coming out of her mouth, ice cream cone in her purse.  But here’s the thing.  That woman now tells that story on herself with great gusto.  It’s the coolest, funniest, sweetest thing that ever happened to her.  

Haagen Dazs melting in your purse - good news.

See you Sunday.

Blessings,

Jim

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What’s New?

Your CALSTG-TEAM is sharing ways for you all to stay connected and reminded of God’s presence through the summer. Here is the new line up coming your way…

Prayer Zooms | MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY | 6 PM

Noonday Prayer Service | THURSDAYS | 12:10 PM

Sunday Morning Prayer Service | SUNDAYS | 11 AM

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Youth and Family

Connecting with your kids during this season has never been made easier. Chelsy Haynes has created weekly Sunday School videos for your family to enjoy at your pace. Each video is less than 10 minutes and is a simple way to share stories of the Bible.

Staying in Touch…

During this time, you can tune into our livestream events via calvarystgeorges.org. If you need pastoral care, please call the church office at 646-723-4178 or email us at info@calstg.org. Your clergy are here for you.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

 - Romans 8:1

The first verse of the eighth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is one of the most outlandish, magnificent, shocking, overwhelming, breathtaking, over-the-top-incredible declarations of all time.

St. Paul is talking about forgiveness.  He’s talking about Jesus taking my condemnation onto his own shoulders on the cross, so that I may know myself as forgiven and loved and free.

What do you think the freedom of “no condemnation” looks like?  Here’s one example.

On July 16, 1990, the Detroit Tigers were playing the Chicago White Sox at Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan.  Steve Lyons, a player for the White Sox, was at bat.  He bunted the ball and raced toward first base.  The pitcher grabbed the bunt and fired it toward first.  Steve threw himself into the air and dove at the bag, head first and arms stretched out.  He was safe.

Steve Lyons accidentally drops his pants to brush away the dirt inside his uniform after sliding in to first base, July 16, 1990.

The pitcher for the Tigers begged to differ, and he started a shouting match with the umpire.  Meanwhile, over on first base, Steve Lyons stood up and dusted off his pants.  Then he felt some dirt trickling down the inside of his pants.  He was so absorbed in the game, and he was so focused on having reached first base, that without any consciousness of what he was doing, he loosened his belt…

 … and dropped his pants, to wipe away the dirt.

Twenty thousand jaws hit the stadium floor.  And you can imagine all the jokes.  One columnist wrote, “No one has ever dropped his drawers on the field.  Not Wally Moon.  Not Blue Moon Odom.  Not even Heinie Manush.”  Every time Steve went out on the field for weeks afterward, women behind the White Sox dugout would wave dollar bills.

I don’t know Steve Lyons.  And normally, I would not condone the manner in which he got rid of that dirt.  But the image of that man tearing down the base line and soaring through the air, the image of him so intent on the task at hand that he completely blanks on how he looks, is a picture of a kind of freedom - a kind of “no condemnation” - that is wonderful.

The freedom of “no condemnation” is a freedom from enslaving guilt, a freedom from the fear of not being loved, a freedom from self interest - and a freedom to take risks.  It’s a freedom I crave - for you, for me, for Calvary/St. George’s.  It’s a freedom that will be offered to us by the Lord Jesus Christ as we worship together this Sunday.

I’ll come as I am.  You come as you are.  We’ll receive the gift of Romans 8:1 together - that outlandish, magnificent, shocking, overwhelming, breathtaking, over-the-top-incredible gift.

Faithfully, Jim

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What’s New?

Your CALSTG-TEAM is sharing ways for you all to stay connected and reminded of God’s presence through the summer. Here is the new line up coming your way…

Prayer Zooms | MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY | 6 PM

Noonday Prayer Service | THURSDAYS | 12:10 PM

Sunday Morning Prayer Service | SUNDAYS | 11 AM

---

Youth and Family

Connecting with your kids during this season has never been made easier. Chelsy Haynes has created weekly Sunday School videos for your family to enjoy at your pace. Each video is less than 10 minutes and is a simple way to share stories of the Bible.

Staying in Touch…

During this time, you can tune into our livestream events via calvarystgeorges.org. If you need pastoral care, please call the church office at 646-723-4178 or email us at info@calstg.org. Your clergy are here for you.

Dear Friends,

My Pastoral Theology professor was a sage: proverbial sayings, experience, the “look” — he had it all. The only Anglo-Catholic priest at my evangelical Episcopal seminary, he was the least likely source of radical grace.

Surrounded by young seminarians eager to change the world, he would drop adages like “people can’t hear you until they’re moving towards you.” Not exactly words of encouragement for fresh activists looking for immediate results, but maybe everything we need to hear in what will undoubtedly need to be “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Another of his sayings that seems appropriate for impatient New Yorkers was “dormant faith is not awakened by telling people to have more faith.” In this long overdue season of truth-telling, I think the truth of my professor’s adage will save us from a lot of disillusionment. Yes, we preach about the need for personal and corporate repentance, but if this were the only word to say, well, we’d be giving a whole lot of unheeded ultimatums.

All of this demonstrates that people don’t change just because you tell them to. They have to come to the solution on their own. At least, they have to feel like they’ve come to it on their own. What these adages show is that the people we are trying to change need to be loved. Constant criticism and lectures alone — the very tools we think will change the ignorant — don’t have the power to bring about their desired ends. In fact, these tools, at times, make things worse. So, more than merely calling people out, my professor would say that we need to be patient, speak the truth in love, and we need the power of the one who “raises the dead, and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Rom. 4:17)

Grace and Peace,

Ben

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.

Sounds pretty cynical, huh?  But hang on.

This quote comes from a poem by Robert Frost titled, “The Death of the Hired Hand”.   Warren and Mary, husband and wife, are sitting on the back porch in the evening.  An old man named Silas has arrived while Warren was out.  He’s in bad shape.  Mary has helped him to a chair in the kitchen.

Warren is not pleased.  He’s hired Silas in the past, and the old man has never been reliable.  Warren says, “I’ll not have the fellow back.”  And when Mary says, “He has come home to die”, Warren utters the quote at the top of the page.

In contrast, I think of the opening and closing scenes in the movie, “Love Actually”.  In the opening scene, the narrator says, “Whenever I get gloomy about the state of the world, I think about the arrival gate at Heathrow Airport”.  On the screen, a young woman with a backpack comes through the gate and is greeted with a hug and kiss by a young man.  Then comes several scenes of greetings - of being welcomed home - between two old men, between a mom and two young girls, between two teenage girls, between a father and son.

In the closing scene, we’re back at Heathrow.  There’s a big hug between a woman and a child.  Then the screen splits, and there are two scenes of smiles, hugs, tears and kisses.  The screen splits again and again, until there are hundreds of scenes of people welcoming each other home.

When we get there, that is what heaven is going to be like.

But - in the midst of the current coronavirus and in the midst of the ongoing racial injustice, the experience of aching for a real home where we’re welcomed with open arms - and the experience of identifying with Silas as being not very reliable, not really deserving, not having earned a welcome by our actions - are real.  We get off the plane, and no one’s waiting at the gate.

Jesus has that arrival gate in mind in this Sunday’s gospel.  So join us at 11 AM in the Calvary/St. George’s live-stream service, and bring your aches for a welcome home.  There is a hint at what Jesus has to say to us when Mary responds to Warren’s quote in the line at the top of the page with these words:

I should have called it

Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.

See you on Sunday!

Blessings, Jim

Dear Friends,

This Sunday’s Epistle reading is all about hope, which is that ‘peace that passes human understanding.’ St. Paul writes, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). He means that you and I have been made right with God not by our own merit or through our own efforts but by the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is the good news of the Gospel. 

What is especially remarkable about this announcement is unpacked in Paul’s clarifying statements. God’s love and acceptance is extended not to ‘good people getting better,’ nor to the allegedly ‘neutral,’ but rather to the plainly bad, and even the more subtly complicit: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6) .

Most of us do not like to think of ourselves as complicit in wrongdoing, but for Paul the reality that God revealed his love for us while we were still undeserving is how we can be assured that God will love us no matter what. God does not wait for us to take the first step toward him or even to get to a ‘neutral’ position: “God proves his love for us in this, while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (5:8).

And just as this good news begins to sink in and wash over us, Paul expounds “grace upon grace.” He writes, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more surely having been reconciled will we be saved by his life” (5:10). Here Paul takes the justification of the ungodly to its logical conclusion. If God has already made right what has gone wrong, much more surely will he ensure salvation to those who have already been made right. If he’s already done the hard part, how much more likely is he to complete the job by doing the easy part?!

This is why we have hope. We are no longer worried about measuring up to an unaccommodating moral standard. We are loved and accepted by God no matter what. 

Internalizing this reality is liberating. We are unconditionally loved, so we are free to take inventory of ourselves and our deeds and not get defensive. God will never let us go, and we are released from our obsession with personal performance. “There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” so we can live, and principally serve our neighbor, without fear of judgment (8:1).

Grace and Peace,

Ben