Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

Again, from Fr. Kevin, our resident…resident:

My native place is an old city, Albany N.Y., where in grade school and through subsequent civic efforts we learned our local history through symbols, horticulture, and artifacts.  Albany took off as a settlement of Dutchmen who were seeking the wealth of the new world. Their coveted sources of wealth were the hides of native beaver.

I have never seen a living beaver in or around Albany though their memory is preserved. The city seal has long included a beaver felling a tree and one of the city’s former names, Beverwyck, calls the rodent to mind.  At the height of hunting in the mid-seventeenth century tens of thousands of beaver pelts were sent annually from Albany to the Netherlands for the production of hats and coats. Far from the days of trapping, my grandmother once gave my sister a synthetically furred Bucky Beaver stuffed animal, a reward from a local bank’s Christmas Club.

Along with beaver, the Dutch of seventeenth century Netherlands were going crazy over another export of Turkish origin, the tulip. Rare bulbs were being purchased for small fortunes amidst fierce competition by the Dutch. Albany sponsors an annual Tulip Festival complete with a Tulip Queen. Beaver hats and tulips, beauties known to a season, are reminders too of fashion and the pursuit of wealth.

There were two artifacts of note drawn to our attention. Both artifacts belong to the Dutch Reformed Church in downtown Albany. First there is the preacher’s pulpit, the oldest pulpit in all of North America. Second, the oldest weathervane in the United States, dating to 1656, stood atop the original church and was damaged by a bullet in the French and Indian War. This weathervane was imported from the Netherlands and paid for in beaver pelts.

For most of my life I had not thought much about that weathervane, which is in the form of a rooster, thus its more precise name– weathercock.  I thought only of the bird that greets the day and so there he was, on a high perch, always ready to see and call. The rooster, in another setting, e.g. a Good Friday procession, would remind me of St. Peter and the Passion, but on top of an old protestant church it seemed simply agrarian. The fullness of this artifact and its placement above the tulips and beavers has a longer history, perhaps unknown to the Dutch of 1656.

My little bit of weathervane rooster research began unintentionally with my reading, probably in a doctor’s office, of a June 2012 Smithsonian magazine article: How the Chicken Conquered the World.  In the ninth century, Pope St. Leo IV had a rooster image placed atop the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The rooster was a symbol of St. Peter, of the preacher, of vigilance but also of the Christian in general. Later, Pope St. Nicholas the Great, who had been ordained deacon by Leo IV, decreed that a rooster emblem should be placed atop every church in recognition of its universal application to the Christian life. The eleventh century Bayeux Tapestry includes depiction of a church with a mounted rooster decoration.

Like St. Peter, all Christians are called back to the Lord consistently; to the renewal of the Day that began in baptism. The voice of the rooster crowing reminded Peter of the Lord’s providential voice–the voice that knows and loves that cares and recalls, pursues while going ahead, beyond our denial and anticipating our repentance. As the rooster’s distinct voice pierces darkness and awakens hope in the approaching dawn, so Peter recognized again the voice of the Lord as that which speaks efficaciously to our darkness  “the words of eternal life” and so… “To whom shall we go?” The dawn from on high has broken upon us.

One of the ministries that I exercise as a parish priests is to preside and preach at funeralsnever an easy task.  The deep truths of our faith which can be so consoling at other times often don’t when death is still raw.  The pain is too all-absorbing for the words of faith to break through and do much in the way of real consolation.  Their full effect will take place in a way and time that respects the rhythm of human grief that each one of us will endure; within each one of you who are trying now to endure.

For you who have lost a dear loved one during these past twelve months, I invite you tonight to consider the very gentle and very safe embrace of God that we have so deeply prayed for since the death of your love.  Nothing can be more consoling than to believe that our loved one is now in far safer and gentler hands than our own.

But is this mere wishful thinking?  Is it whistling in the dark to keep up our courage?  Is it somehow fudging God’s justice to console ourselves?

Not if Jesus can be believed!  Everything that Jesus reveals about God assures us that God’s hands are much gentler and safer than our own.  God is the Father of the prodigal son and, as we see in that parable, God is more understanding and more compassionate to us than we are to ourselves.

We see in that parable how God does not wait for us to return and apologize when we stray and betray.  No, God runs out to meet us and doesn’t demand an apology.  We see in the stories just preceding the prodigal son’s how God does not leave us on our own after we sin, to come to our own senses and return, repentant, to Him.  Rather, He leaves the 99 others and comes looking for usanxious, longing, and ready to carry us home, in spite of our sin.

Jesus gives us the assurance that God does not give us just one chance, but “77 times seven” chances.  We don’t ruin our lives forever by making a mistake, or even by making that mistake inexcusably again and again.

Yes, we are, in this life and the next, in hands far safer and gentler than our own.

• God is not a God of punishment, but a God of forgiveness.

• God is not a God who records our sins, but a God who washes them away.

• God is not a God who demands perfection from us, but a God who asks for a contrite heart when we can’t measure up.

• God is not a God who gives us only one chance, but a God who gives us infinite chances.

• God is not a God who is calculating, who parses out His gifts, but a prodigal God who sows seeds everywhere without regard for waste or worthiness.

• God is not a God who is powerless before evil and death, but a God who can raise dead bodies to life and redeem what is evil and hopeless.

• God is not a God who is arbitrary and fickle, but a God who is utterly reliable in His promise and goodness.

• God is not a God who is dumb and unable to deal with our complexity, but a God who fashioned the depth of the universe and the deepest recesses of the human soul.

 

• Ultimately, God is not a God who cannot protect us, but rather, God is a God in whose hands and in whose promise we are far safer than when we rely upon ourselves.