ISAIAH 42:1-9

PSALM 89:20-29

ACTS 10:34-38

LUKE 3:15-16,21-22

Sermon – January 7, 2007

Twenty-five years ago this Spring I was ordained a priest in my hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Now, being a priest in Boston, at least in those days, was quite an experience. I’ll share two anecdotes to explain what I mean. One day, I was in my black suit, black clerical shirt and white collar and was hurrying into a subway station in Boston when my subway token jammed in the turnstile and I was stuck half-way through. Usually, people in that situation try to muscle the turnstile to get the token to drop, or give up and try another token in another turnstile. Usually also, transit employees ignore people in such situations. Not this time. Two Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority employees ran out of their booths crying, “O, Father, let me help you,” and waved me through.

Another time, I went shopping for new wallpaper for the rectory, also dressed in my clerical “uniform”, in a store in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston. I walked in the store and four store employees ran over and said, “O, Father, how can we help you?” Some of them left other customers they were waiting on to compete to wait on me.

Of course, in both cases they very likely thought I was Roman Catholic. (I don’t know who the wallpaper salespeople thought my wife and sister-in-law were, who were with me and actually picked out the wallpaper.)

The ultra-attention I got in both cases was a little embarrassing, but I confess I liked it. In fact, I liked it a little too much. It was seductive, and it occurred to me that after 25 years of that kind of treatment I would be changed, and not for the better. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he warned not to covet the best seats at banquets and getting saluted by title in the marketplace and not to expect privileges. They are seductive.

I am happy to report that New Jerseyans are not nearly as over-the-top in their behavior towards clergy as Bostonians a generation ago. People are generally very polite to me when I wear my clergy outfit – as polite, in reality, as everyone ought to be to everyone, but isn’t. So one can still be treated as a privileged person by wearing a clerical collar – which when added to the privileges American society already had given me because I am white, male, born here, from a prosperous family, and grew up speaking English as my first language, adds up to a lot of privilege especially when contrasted to those who can be described in none of those ways.

Or even when contrasted with the lives of those with only some of those advantages.

Back in 1972, I was a volunteer in an insurgent’s Congressional campaign in Brooklyn, New York. Part of that Congressional district included Fort Greene, a then poor, majority black neighborhood dominated by the Fort Greene housing projects: 54 six to twelve story public housing projects into which the City of New York had seen fit to concentrate as many poor people with as few public safety personnel and basic public services as the city could get away with. The predictable result was that the many decent, law-abiding citizens were terrorized by gangs and drug dealers, and life was very difficult on good days.

That summer, New York experienced a major heat wave which strained the ability of the electric grid to provide power to everyone. So, consolidated Edison decided to cut power consumption by 5% city-wide – a “brown-out”, as it was called. To help achieve that goal, Con Ed shut down all the electricity to the Fort Green Housing Projects.

No lights in apartments or stairways or hallways. No fans or air conditioners. No elevators. No refrigeration.

And then Con Ed forgot about the projects and left them without power for a week.

That is truly called being powerless. That is the antithesis of privilege. That is injustice. But that was the way it was. Human rights exist only on paper, if at all, for many people in this world. Basic services, basic safety, basic respect, which people like me are used to enjoying as “normal” and our “due”, are in fact rare commodities. Had I been born poor in Haiti, or the slums of Rio or of Lagos, or even in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, my life would have been unimaginably different that it has been, and in fact it’s very likely I would not have lived nearly this long. Nor would many of us here, either, if we had been born in such circumstances.

And there are human beings who are just as decent, devout and hard-working in those places (and many others) as those in all the other places I have ever lived. But in our fallen, sin-infested world there are many people who suffer as a result of injustice, while others have addictive privileges heaped upon them which they are tempted to come to believe are their due, or even are ordained by God.

Things weren’t much different 2,000 years ago when Jesus was baptized. There were oceans of injustice and islands of privilege. Today, the islands of privilege are bigger, but the oceans of injustice are still there.

And into this situation came the carpenter of Nazareth to live out in his own person the mission of the “servant” described in four so-called “Servant Songs” in the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah, one of which we just heard read. These inspiring passages, written by a remote disciple of the prophet Isaiah in the late 6^th Century B.C. during and after the return of some of the Jewish exiles from Babylon back to Jerusalem, describes one in whom is the Spirit of the Lord, and his mission.

The most famous of the Servant Songs is the description of “the suffering servant” in Isaiah 52 and 53, which we read on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, which reads like a description of Christ’s crucifixion. Today’s Old Testament reading concentrates on the Servant’s mission to “bring for the justice to the nations” – i.e. to the world beyond the people of Israel.

The servant is described as mild-mannered (“He will not cry or lift up his voice”) but strong, determined and able to persevere regardless of opposition (“He will not faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.”) All this, too, sounds very much like the mission and ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

When Christ made himself known publicly as an adult for the first time at his baptism, it is notable that he did not do so in Jerusalem among the privileged – or among the priests anywhere.

Jesus first made himself known in the countryside, among the humble and devout of every neighborhood and economic level, including the people who were powerless. And part of Jesus’ peaceful resolution was to treat all people with respect, regardless of what “rank” first century Palestinian society had assigned them. Rich and poor, men and women, Jews, Samaritans and foreigners, healthy and diseased or disabled, “righteous” and “sinners”, all alike were invited to receive God’s mercy, healing love, guidance for their lives, and invitation to be part of a new kind of community in which all members would experience and share with each other and newcomers mercy, love, guidance and collegiality made possible by God, all the while making a stand for justice and peace.

That new kind of community is still open for business even while it struggles with its human imperfections. It is that new kind of community, the Body of Christ in the world, into which we will welcome Olaedo Anyanwu this morning, even as all of us are invited to reaffirm our baptismal covenants with God.

For the job which Christ started and continues to work on is not yet finished. “Bringing forth justice to the nations” requires a vast team of dedicated followers of Christ, people from, as St. Peter recognized, “every nation.”

It’s not an “optional extra” for Christians. In our baptismal vows we are asked, “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself?” and “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

Let us think of our commitments to Jesus, the Light of the World, of the light he has shown into our hearts and the light that we can lift in his name, and think about those who are oppressed and powerless and sometimes literally in the dark like those people were in the Fort Greene projects that summer. Let us think how we individually and as a community can also be servants of the Lord. It’s as simple and local as each of us treating others with respect regardless of “rank” in any organization, and it’s as complex and global as helping to prepare the way for the Kingdom of God.

When we hear the call to commitment or re-commitment, let us all say, “I will with God’s help.”

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church