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We are celebrating our patronal feast day today, the feast of St Michael and All
Angels. All the angels are with us – in our windows up there, in our procession
today, in our online community and in the communion of saints all around us, we
have lots and lots of angels hovering round. St Michael isn’t all by himself on this
glorious day or in the heavenly battle we heard about from Revelation. So even
our gospel reading had several angels bringing it to us, several voices offering the
good news.
Today we’re celebrating our feast even further by inviting the whole
neighborhood. When we finish our worship here, we’ll all dash outside so we can
welcome and celebrate with all who come to our block party. Instead of coffee
and cake inside, you’re all invited outside, to help serve and greet and feed our
neighbors.
We are living out our capital campaign logo of ‘Doors Wide Open’ literally. We
had some help in envisioning how we could do this. At the beginning of the
summer we had a community event called an asset mapping, where we invited
other community members – leaders of other churches, of other nonprofit
organizations, our elected officials – to come and see our new renovated spaces
and imagine with us about how we could use our assets for the good of all. It was
eye-opening. For one thing, most of the people we invited came, on a warm
weekday afternoon, and happily wandered around our space, commenting on
how beautiful it was and the possibilities they saw. We got scores of notes on
everyone’s ideas: how we can share our space with local artists, how we can
better link and cross-pollinate the different groups who already use our buildings,
how we can offer more ways to nourish body and soul for migrants, children, and
families around us. It was inspiring to hear all the good being generated in the
conversations that day.
So we’re starting to implement some of these ideas. Today’s block party is a
chance to welcome our neighbors, feed them, and thank them for their
longsuffering as we have gone through the noise and dust and chaos of
construction. But instead of just presenting ourselves and our ministries, we
invited our tenants to join us too. So today we’ll have teachers from our Russian
school doing a children’s science table, performers from the Gilbert & Sullivan
group singing a few numbers, flyers from our Spanish-language and Chinese
schools, and more – alongside information on our own ministries, and music by
our own wonderful musicians. All of these groups are also a part of our
community here at St Michael’s.
And there’s more coming up. We’re exploring a partnership with a theater group.
We already host concerts here from time to time; now we will host some theater.
Look for performances of the play ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by the Greenhouse Ensemble
later in the fall, upstairs in our beautiful recital hall – which they will help
upgrade, something we’ve been wanting to do for years.
And Mary Ellen is coordinating a ‘date night’ this fall – a chance for parents to
drop off kids for free babysitting one evening so they can take some needed
downtime together. That idea came directly out of the asset mapping event.
All of this is to deliberately further enmesh ourselves with the lives of the
community around us. There are so many people in New York doing so many
things that our temptation can be to find our club, go in, and shut the door on the
rest of them. This is the temptation most of our world is struggling with too, the
urge to wall ourselves in and others out. It’s probably human nature, it’s as old as
the hills, but it isn’t gospel living. As we’ve seen, this kind of tribalism makes it so
easy to despise those others – to disparage them, to disrespect them, and
eventually, to strike out against them with violence. It’s a cancer in our world, this
tendency of ours. The church is no place for continuing it.
Jesus teaches this so clearly in the gospel we heard today, offered with
commentary by our great teens – thank you, Deacon Marcia, for your forbearance
in letting them take over! The disciples come to Jesus, tattling and complaining
about someone else throwing out demons in Jesus’ name – someone else who is
NOT part of their club. Jesus’ response is immediate: Do not stop him! Whoever is
not against us is for us. Expand your idea of the ‘club,’ guys. Expand your
understanding to see that all these others who seek to do good are also part of
this same movement. More good is good! More good is of God.
And then he offers some stern words about how hard we ourselves need to keep
striving to do good – if you fail, gouge out your eye, cut off your hand, etc., I
notice the teens skipped over that part so I will too – and then winds up with the
pithy words, Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. (Notice
it’s have salt, not be salty with one other. We’ve got too much of that happening
already.) Have salt – or as we hear in Matthew’s version of this exchange, be salt,
the salt of the earth.
But salt isn’t useful if it stays in its salt cellar – it can’t preserve the meat, it can’t
flavor the food, unless it’s mixed into the whole. If it stays in its jar it’s just there
being salty all by itself. If it is sprinkled in and stirred, it makes everything else
taste better. Isn’t that a great image for what we’re talking about here – to mix
ourselves in, to be what brings out the flavor, to help preserve what is good in our
community.
So we have a call to open our doors, to liberally sprinkle ourselves around our
neighborhood, to be seasoned in return by the good possibilities of the
community around us. We can make a difference. We can each give of ourselves
and our resources and our time to make positive change; we can also each bring
our faith, our groundedness, our peace, to people who need all of that
desperately. Does our world need people of peace and reconciliation right now?
People who don’t raise the anxiety quotient but instead seek to lower it? People
who speak the truth in a clear and loving way rather than shouting over each
other? I think the answer is obvious.
But as Jesus says, we need to keep our saltiness in order to be of use in this way.
We need to do our own work of saying our prayers and reading scripture and
finding our quiet time, the work of deepening our roots in God. We need to align
our own living with God’s desires, seeking out integrity in our actions and
decisions. The world doesn’t need more people being salty – quick to react and
slow to think, or ready to jump on the next bandwagon of outrage. The world
needs more people who are working to nourish the good within them, to bring
that good to the world around them – in the workplace, in school, on the streets,
right here at our block party. Good work, and plenty of it, being salt.
Today on St Michael’s Day we celebrate the good news of the angels’ victory in
heaven: ‘The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and
there was no longer any place for them.’ That victory has happened – that work
has been done, God’s work of ultimate grace for us and all the world. It’s ours to
live it out, to extend the good news, to be part of the good news. And to be ready
to receive the good news, wherever we go. May today’s celebration start us again
on this road, with all the angels.
