In her sermon at the 151st Diocesan Convention, Bishop Hughes reminds us that Jesus calls us to follow him out into the world – especially when there is disruption, as there is now. Referencing the Gospel lesson, Luke 5:27-32, she urges us to see ourselves as Levi, called by Christ and sent out to carry God’s life-changing love into a hurting world. (Time: 32:48.)
Video Transcript
In the name of the God who loves us. Amen.
Good morning, Levi. And Levi. And Levi. All of us, in some way, are Levi, following Jesus.
I have a sermon to preach, and I’m gonna get to it, but before I get to the sermon, I want to spend a little bit of time in gratitude. I find I’m just so grateful for the ministries of people in our church and for the things that have happened in this place in the last five years in particular. I sat in the house of Bishops meeting recently, and someone said to me, “Well, that 18 months of pandemic,” [laughter] and I’m like, “What planet were YOU on? Eighteen months???” I’m calling that five years before we fully rolled out of that thing. Five years. And in that time, so many things happened. We have officially done a service in the diocese to remember people that we lost, and also to say thank you to people who served. I’m going to do the unconscionable. I’m going to thank some people, and I’m not going to be able to thank everyone, because I’ve been given a 20 minute time limit. You know, I preach for 30 minutes [laughter] and I’m not even starting a sermon yet. [Laughter.] You won’t be laughing at 4:30. [Loud laughter.] That’s just the way that’s going to go.
But I put it like this. We know this – the clergy hear me say it all the time, everybody hears me saying on a Sunday. The average American spends seven hours a day on a device. You spend another three hours a day watching television. Ten hours a day people get to load stuff into your head, and then I’m supposed to come in here and have 30 minutes? [Laughter.] Seventy hours – anybody that wants to talk into your spirit gets to. And I gotta time myself. I think I should have a couple of hours, quite frankly [laughter] but I’m an Episcopalian, not a Baptist, and I know I’m pushing the edge of the envelope, [laughter] as it is.
But I want to start with some gratitude, and I’m going to name these things, and at the end, we’re going to act like we’re at an NFL game, and we are going to say thank you to the things and people that I name.
First of all, I’m so grateful to God that we’re here, that we’re here and that we’re healthy. We lost some good people, some really good people. They did nothing wrong, and I want their families and your congregations to know that I still mourn their loss. The ones I knew and the ones I only knew of. And I’m grateful that we are here and that we are healthy because we did nothing to deserve it. God gave us that gift. I’m grateful for that.
I’m grateful for the Journey Forward team. Vicki McGrath, who is sitting right here. Pat McKinsey, who kind of got tired of us, like co-led all of that, and she needed a break from the church. I’ve been seeing her come back recently, which is really nice, being involved in things more for the whole diocese. But those two led a team of people that did not want to be telling the rest of the church how to do things. That was a fun position to be in, and they did it anyway. We thought they’d be doing it for a year, and they kept going as long as we needed them to go. I cannot tell you how many priests and senior wardens from across the church, who have said, we look to your website because you were clear and concise in Newark and we were not in my diocese. So that was a help, not only to us, but a help to others.
I want to thank the folks who started running the Zoom, the Facebook, all the digital stuff, and kind of never stopped. They’ve been going all of that while. For the people who got us online.
I want to thank Washington National Cathedral – we’ve been gathering funds to send them as a gift and a thank you, and we’ll send a resolution with that, that goes out to them because they were there when we could not be there ourselves. And many of us will go watch our own service and then watch theirs afterwards, participate in theirs, for the gift that they were to the whole church.
I’m grateful for our congregations who learned how to care for their clergy in that time. Making sure that clergy actually took days off and went on vacation, that they took a break, that they stayed well. That there were people who made the decision, telling their priests, “We are going to say this goodbye over FaceTime with my loved one, because we don’t want to risk your health.” We just dealt – early on we didn’t know how things spread. Remember all that wiping that we did of counters at the beginning.
I want to thank Mark Collins and Janelle Grant – I know one is here, I haven’t seen the other yet but I think she is – who as we were coming to about that third year in all of this, agreed to lead the strategic visioning and planning process, which meant that they sat with about 70, 77 – not about, exactly 77 – parishes that wanted to have a say in what the diocese was going to do next, but many of whom also wanted to have a say about how mad they were at the Bishop. And they took all that flack, which was not what they signed on for, but they also helped us to dream a dream of who we wanted to be as a diocese.
I want to thank and I’m grateful for the ministries of Jerry Racioppi and Nerissa Boccino, who two years ago, took on the planning for the 150th anniversary. And I have to say, two years ago, we were at a point where we were just trying to figure out, is anybody ever going to come to church again? And they were busy trying to figure out a year-long celebration, which they did. They dreamed it up and they delivered it. It started about a year ago in September and came to an end this past June in Alabama. What an effort and a blessing that was to all of us. I especially am so grateful for the ministries of Michele Simon and Bill Cruz, who I don’t believe either of whom are here today. [Exclamations from the congregation, laughter.] As soon as it came out of my mouth! I’m like, girl, you are so wrong. You are so wrong. You should just…. Michele Simon and Bill Cruz, who dreamed up and delivered the Pilgrimage to the American South, which was a watershed time of people learning what we didn’t know and experiencing what we had never experienced. That has stayed with that group of people who continue to meet, asking the question, what is God calling me to now, now that I have this information, now that I watch what 13-year-olds did to bring about change, how do I bring about change?
I want to thank the one-woman newsletter that is Diane Riley – Deacon, Deacon Diane, who puts out a newsletter every single week answering that question for people, I can’t tell you how many people ask me, “What am I supposed to do? How do I make a stance in this particular time?” She puts out a list every single week. This is who you can call. This is where you can go. This is who you can write. You just have to read it and pick something. There are things that we can do every single week to stand in the gap for those whose voices are being diminished.
I especially also in this time, and especially in New Jersey, we have a very transactional view of how we give in New Jersey. We are better at running a capital campaign – because we know what we’re going to get – than we are at giving proportionally or giving generously without knowing what it’s going to get. Just giving to our church. I’m not saying we don’t give, I’m just saying we like, like to know what we’re going to get. We’re transactional. If I’m going to give you this, I want to know what I’m getting. I actually had someone say to me, “As long as we’re not giving Communion, I don’t think people should pledge.” I’ve also had someone say to me, “I don’t pledge at this church, so I know you won’t say a prayer for me.” That’s transactional thinking about money. But our churches pledge to us based on what people are giving to them. So they pledge to the whole diocese. They pledge so that the Bishop’s office can do its work for the whole diocese, and it can support the whole diocese, and that is a level of generosity, and in some cases, sacrificial giving, which I thank God for. You see that report that’s in there. You can see the places that are giving as much as they can, the places that are really trying, the places are committed. And I have to give a very public thank you to the clergy and leadership at St. Bart’s, Ho-Ho-Kus, who receiving a significant request this year, gave 10% to the diocesan budget, which was a game changer for us this year. We weren’t expecting that income, and we were looking at a potential shortfall, and that took care of it.
All of these things are things that I do not take for granted, and I think they’re also signs of something.
I’m so grateful for the way God has taken care of us. I’m so grateful for the way God is growing our spirits, and I’m so grateful for the way that God has grown us together. Because all those things I named – and there’s so many more. That’s why I said this is a foolish enterprise, because I don’t want – if you’re sitting there saying, “She didn’t name me,” [laughter, unintelligible] I see you, I see you, and I love you, and I will find another time and place.
There are so many people who have done a work of ministry, an act of care, given their compassion beyond the doors of their own church. And with all of these things, God has drawn us together in such a way that we truly are one. We are one diocese – 91 congregations, a camp, and a convent – but one diocese. We are all laboring together.
The disruption that was around us – and there were many disruptions. We had all that we had to deal with COVID, and in the midst of COVID, we watched all those racial killings go on, and had to figure out, how do we live with that happening in our world? We’ve got the current disruptions that we’re seeing from long-seated white supremacy and white Christian nationalism, and I specifically say it those ways, because they have been around forever. Neither of those two things are new. It’s past time, but if you haven’t started studying you need to study these things, because they do have an impact on us. Part of the separation that we’re seeing, setting one side against another side, those are hallmarks of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism. It’s important in both of those ideologies to set people against each other, to pick one as “The One,” and have everybody else diminished. But even better yet, have them hate each other.
And then you look around a room like this. I mean, seriously, turn your neck and look around the room! [Laughter.] This is the direct opposite that we live in, and yet it has – all of it – has an impact on us. And those disruptions, those disruptions have made us a different church.
I’ve been saying for years to you that God is calling us out of one time into another time, out of one church into another church. Ooh, this hurts the hearts of Episcopalians because they’re like, “Tradition!” [Laughter.] “Order! Prayer book! There will be no change.” [Laughter.] It’s just change enough that you’re sitting here, but everything else stays exactly the same. But God is calling us out of one church into another church.
One of the things I hear every Sunday, every church – you know, all 91 of our congregations, is unique and special and different. But when I sit with the vestry, there is one question. Guess what the question is that every vestry has. It – actually money isn’t the first one. It’s tied to money. But that’s not it. What – did you come here to close us? Oh, gosh, that might be [laughter] can you imagine a Sunday morning, no one would ever want the Bishop to come. No. The question is – see, if this sounds familiar to you. The question is, how do we get more young families here? It doesn’t matter how many young people are already in the congregation. The question always is, how do we get more families here? And I can’t help but think, well, you could go to the young family store [loud laughter] and place an order. It’s an old church question. It’s the question of where we used to be. It is not the question of where we are now, and the question of where we’re heading.
That Gospel passage that starts with Jesus going out – it’s so interesting that it says we’re in the fifth chapter of Luke, and it says Jesus is going out. Jesus has been going out for every single verse and chapter before then. Went out, healed somebody. Went out to teach somebody. Went out, cast out a demon. Went out, healed Peter’s mom. Went out to the disciples and said, “Fish on that side.” They brought more fish in than they ever had before. He was going out all the time, all the time, and he goes out and he is always irresistible. People can’t resist him. He says, “Follow me.” And what do they do? They get up and go! They get up and go. How’s it working for you? When you say, come to my church. Nobody coming!
That invitation is a good thing to invite people, especially invite them at the special times a year, Advent, Lent, Easter, Christmas, those kinds of things. Do you have a special thing happening at your church? Absolutely you need to invite people. The vast majority of people, though, are saying, “How do I do life right now? How am I supposed to get along with my family, when half of them think I shouldn’t exist? Or have no problem that the Bishop of Newark walks around with identity papers in case she’s pulled over?” And I’ve told all of our clergy of color that they must do the same. “How do I make my peace with that?” Those are the kinds of questions that people are asking. I sit with the youth group and a child starts to cry and says, “I don’t know how much longer we can live in the United States – my sibling is trans. We probably have to go, I’m gonna lose all my friends, I’m not gonna get to go to prom.” Put yourself in a teenager’s shoes. People are wanting to know how we deal with that. Now unless you can say, “Sunday morning at 10 o’clock, we have got a service that takes all of this on, and we’re going to pray for you, and we are going to walk with you,” that’s a whole different conversation than, “Come to my church, that, the music program, the preaching, the youth program, all of that is just perfection. You’re going to love it.” That does work for some people who are church shopping, who are ready for that, but the vast majority of people out there are trying to figure out how to do life. And here’s where we have a gift, because those people are also being pitted against each other.
Last week, I had the chance to talk with Michael Battle – he’s an Episcopal theologian – and one of the things that’s really interesting about him is in his early years of his ministry he spent two years living with Desmond Tutu. He wanted to understand his theology. He wanted to understand what made him tick. And he wrote a book about the Ubuntu theology of Desmond Tutu. A lot of churches read it. Your church probably read it when it came out. When it – say late 80s, early 90s, somewhere around then. But he was saying, you know, people tend to think of that theology is “Kumbaya.” And he said it actually isn’t. It is an opportunity for people to realize that we are not binary.
It is not us and them, or we and them. It is not black and white. It is not straight and gay. It is not red and blue. It is not Democrat and Republican. It is not believer and non-believer. It is not rich and poor. That most of us swim around in all of these things, and we are whole people. And what keeps us whole people is this theology that comes from Africa, that basically, the best way for me to translate it is to say, “I am who I am, because you are who you are. I learned how to be human from you.” And I can say that as your bishop, I really am who I am, because you are who you are, and all of us are in the midst of experiencing that in some way.
And I think that’s what’s so hard about hearing the voice of Christianity used, or the word Christianity used, in such a derisive, divisive way. Jesus was always going, he was always going to people who were in need, who were in trouble, who were outcasts. Levi, and I would say, every single one of us, at some point, we’ve been on the wrong side of something, and Jesus went out to go get us. That is what he always did, and that is what God has used, the way that that God has changed us by using the disruption that has been around us. I can genuinely say to you that pre-March 2020 we were separate congregations, operating independently, aware that each other existed, kind of glad to see some of us at Convention, but others really just didn’t know. We were a separate camp. You know, it always felt kind of Lutheran anyway [laughter]. And the convent was a holy place. That’s what nuns do – they pray and be holy – and they were off on their own. But all of this disruption moved us back and forth with each other, and we became who we are because of everybody else being who they are.
There’s this piece and there’s this other piece. There’s a Swiss theologian from the late 1900s, Hans Urs von Balthasar. That’s a whole lot of name. But his strongest belief is, we know love because we see love. And these two things intersect, knowing who we are as a person because of somebody else, and knowing how to love because we have seen Jesus’s love, usually by someone else loving us. That these things have changed who we are. It’s given us a common vision. It’s given us a common mission, that there are things that we’re working for.
Now, listen, I am no fool. I know we have put out extraordinary amounts of communications about the strategic plan, and probably the people working closely on it know all about it, and most are like, “Is there a strategic plan?” You want to watch my head go around at a 360? Ask me that on a Sunday morning. Yeah, people have worked really hard at this, but it’s time for us to have an understanding about what it is we’re trying to do. We have a very simple vision of the world: That it is transformed, and then all Creation knows God’s life-changing love. Think about that for a minute. That’s how we see the world – transformed in every person, every animal, every piece of land, every plant, everything we care about, in the people that we don’t know and don’t want to know – that every bit of it is transformed by God’s life-changing love.
You are giving 70 hours a week to somebody else. I am asking that you give 10 minutes a day to thinking about how God is using you to transform the world. What is God calling you to – ask first thing in the morning, “God, how am I meant to transform the world?” At the end of the day, look back. “God, how, in what way did I help transform the world? How did I bring your life-changing love to the world?”
And that we have specific things that we’re doing as a diocese. That we want to follow Jesus with bold acts of justice, peace and love. We’re clear about what we want to do, and we’re clear that there are four areas that we want to spend our time in. And I am asking you to take those four areas back to your parishes, because I gotta say, folks, there are too many people working too hard at this, and making progress, to have anyone sit around and say, “I don’t know what the First Third of Life is.” That is one of our key areas. When you hear me say First Third of Life – if you’ve never heard it before, this may be your first Convention, you may have never been in the room with me before – but when you hear that phrase, First Third of Life, what do you think it involves? Young people! Specifically 35 and under, a place that is underserved in our parishes, all those people that want young families and young children, etc., one of the first things I say is, “What’s in your budget?” That’s how I know you’re serious about young families, is if there’s a budget line item devoted to that.
There is in the diocesan budget – that we take this seriously. There are people in – some of them are here and if you’re here, I’m going to ask you to stand up. If you’re involved with the First Third of Life, would you stand up? I know some of you are here. So they have divided themselves into three areas. One is young children and ministries to younger children, one is youth, and one is young adults in college. They are already doing this work. They are already gaining some traction. You saw who they were when they stood up. If you can’t remember who their names are, go on the diocesan website. They’re sitting there. Google “Diocese of Newark First Third of Life” – it’ll take you straight to their page. We’re doing this not because we just want young families, but Jesus is sending us out as a diocese. Jesus is sending us out as churches, and saying the most vulnerable people right now, other than those who are being detained because of their being undocumented or their skin is the wrong color. Other than that, the most vulnerable people in our lives right now are people under 35, and our ministry to them needs to grow. We’ve got, got to take ourselves out to where they are so that they can experience that transformation.
The – I said that there are four areas. So that’s the first area, the second area is care of people and planet. What do you think that is, take care of the earth and take care of what else? The people! Most, and certainly the vulnerable people, the people who are really troubled, all of the – we are good at certain things. We are so good at food ministries. We’re going to take up a collection today for food ministries, and I am certain it is going to be large. You have already been meeting the need of people without food. We are also standing at Delaney Hall and providing pastoral support to people’s families who are trying to see their family members who are detained, and the way that they are handled is not a way that is respectful or careful. But that is who we are. We are people who respect the dignity of every single person. If a person has to go to immigration court in the Diocese of Newark, there are clergy who are going with them. They are not going by themselves. We’re going to know who to call if they are detained. We’re going to know how to follow up with their families. We are not leaving people on our own.
Taking care of this planet that we live on, taking care of the people who are with us. I should also add to that great list of thank yous to John Simonelli and Asa Coulson who took up that call last year. Remember when we did the quick groups to come up with the immediate response teams, and who got us back on our feet again, with active ministry with LGBTQ folks. That people knew we were here, we care, that we have the ability to gather and we have a voice together.
The next two are collaboration and communication. I’ll say it simply in terms of collaboration is the way we work together, not just enjoying doing joint ministry, but you know about some of the churches that are collaborating together, saying, “How do we do church now? How do we do this going forward?” There is no one blueprint, but we are doing different things. Lay pastoral leaders – training lay people to take on the role of helping to lead congregations – assisting clergy, or being the sole person helping to lead a congregation. We’re training people as consultants and as coaches to be able to help support congregations as they think through what is next.
And the communication piece – I think that’s the piece where Nina and I put our heads together and we scratch them sometimes going, “How many ways have we said this, and how many times have we communicated and we can’t get people to read?” I can’t make a person read. I can’t make you open your email. I can ask that you make sure your parish is communicating beyond your doors, so that people know that you’re there, and they know that they are cared for.
Our charge is to do those things that will take us out.
You know, it’s interesting. Once Levi was called and he followed, the first thing he did was threw a big dinner – that’s right up the Episcopalian alley [laughter]. I’ve never met people that love to gather to eat the way we love to gather to eat. I mean, we are legendary when it comes to gathering and eating. And we’re at a time where people need to gather to eat, gather to be together, gather to pray with each other. We can’t sit and wait for them to come. It was not the model that Jesus showed us. I want you, I ask you to go back and read the chapters leading up to this verse. It’s short. It’s just four and a half chapters leading up to this verse. Where once in that do you find Jesus sitting in his room waiting for people to come. He went out – and friends, that is what we are doing. We’re going out to the broken-hearted. We’re going out to the hard-hearted. We’re going out to the people who need to hear. We’re going out to the people who don’t know how to hear. We’re going out to the people with hope. We’re going to out to the people who don’t have hope. We’re going to the people who have not enough food, and we’re going to the people who have more than enough food. We’re going out to the lonely. We’re going out to the cast out. We’re going out to the ones who’ve been told, “You no longer belong here.” We are going out because we are Levi and we are following Jesus. That is our role as diocese – one diocese. [Applause.]
Recommended reading and viewing
In her Convention sermon, Bishop Hughes highlighted several resources that she encourages people to read, study, and reflect on as they engage the issues of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism.
Books
Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu and Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me by the Very Rev. Michael Battle, Ph.D., Theologian-In-Community at Trinity Church Boston. Battle is widely known for his work on reconciliation, spirituality, and the theology of Ubuntu.
Love Alone by Fr. Hans Urs van Balthasar, 20th century Swiss Roman Catholic theologian. This book is a great entry into his theology and helps us grow our understanding and appreciation of God’s love in our lives, churches, and diocese.
Video
Lecture in the 2025 Speaker Series by the Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, Canon Theologian at Washington National Cathedral, which places the issues of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism within historical and social context.
