City Called Heaven

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;... Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the LORD... Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah Psalm 24 (NRSV) This had better be a psalm of hope. Who shall stand in God’s holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts. That may add up to a large number - but is definitely a small proportion. Even on my best days, that is aspirational more than actual. The religion of ancient Israel understood that in the course of life and through our very nature, we will not always be right and righteous before God. We do and say and sometimes simply encounter things whi...

LORD, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for she will speak peace to her people, to her faithful, to those who turn to her in their hearts. Surely God’s salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield...

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise God in his mighty firmament! Praise God for her mighty deeds; praise God according to her surpassing greatness!... Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Psalm 150 We do not always know why our ancestors in faith organized the books and chapters of the Bible the way they did, but it seems fitting to end the prayerbook and hymnbook of Psalms with praise. This psalm does not break any new ground, referring to things we have heard before: God is in the heavens and in the sanctuary, God is mighty, and worthy to be praised with all we've got. The psalm was clearly was intended for singing. Take note: praise songs were not invented yesterday! It's usually a good idea to end on a high note. We like to leave worship or prayer filled with the goodness of God and overflowing with praise. While the Psalms make plenty of space for other dimensions of human experience, the Psalter concludes with a praise-heavy section (...

To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud. Very often it takes us time to get to our real issue. This tiny four-verse psalm starts by looking repeatedly to the Lord, and then asks three times for mercy. Only then do we confess our problem. Contempt seems to be one of the spirits of this age. We hear it from, and directed against, our highest elected leaders. We hear it directed against, individuals, groups, nations. We all know people who spout venom seemingly without thinking, often without even knowing the people or things they're maligning. The psalm says that our our soul h...

1 Corinthians 5:1, 6-17 Fourth Sunday of Pentecost - June 17, 2018 First Reformed Church, Secaucus, NJ If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. See! Everything has become new. Sometimes the proclamation rushes on ahead of us. For those of us getting deeper into the aging process, we may not be so eager to see everything old pass away. And we know in our bones that not everything has become new. In fact, we look around us and see some of the same old, same old. Politics in Hudson County and the nation have not been transformed. Most of us have not made dramatic changes for the good in the past days and months. Perhaps you have been as shocked and distressed, and saddened and angered as I have been at the news of recent weeks, Perhaps you have seen the picture of the two year old girl at the border, and know that thousands of children and their parents have been separated as both children and adults are placed into detention. It...

Mark 5:21-43 Sixth Sunday of Pentecost - July 1, 2018 St. John Lutheran Church, Union City, NJ Normally I would just jump right in to talking about this text and the message for the day, but a few years back my home congregation had a pastoral vacancy. We had one supply pastor that would come every few months or so, and each time he would say a word to introduce himself, so he wouldn’t be quite a stranger just hopping into the pulpit. I liked that, I found it extended respect to me and to our congregation. So I’m going to emulate him and say just a brief word about me. I want to thank you and Pastor Paterson for inviting me to share worship and the Word with you this morning. This very warm morning. I’m Paul Bellan-Boyer, from Jersey City, and I have been a Lutheran almost all my life, certainly since my parents adopted me way back in June 1958 – you do the math! I’m a member at St. Matthew’s in Jersey City, and have been involved in the Lutheran church and the wider church here ...

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! The people of this land named America have always been able to agree on its natural beauty. The poem, written in 1893 by a 33 year old English professor, Katharine Lee Bates, has long-evoked this love of our native (or adopted) land. The poem came to her on Pike's Peak, and when later joined to music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, has become part of our national library of sacred texts, which we use to define our nation's spirit. The images speak of more than the natural beauty of the landscape. The amber waves of grain and fruited plains point to our transformation of the land into productive agriculture. The purple mountains have their visual majesty and are also natural resources for extraction of mineral wealth. Three years earlier, the U.S. Census had declared that the frontier n...