Cheese steak: A local review

The Cheese steak…

Living between New York and Philadelphia, I am a fan of all the foods that are so bad for me.  I love Philly Cheese Steak and New York Pizza!  Another love is for the Burger, an American sandwich that defies geography.  No, it doesn’t defy geography, it embraces it!

The naysayers will look at the Great State of New Jersey, tucked in between two great centers of culinary excess, and scoff that we are the outskirts, the suburbs of good eating.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The best of the best exist in the Garden State as surely as they do in these centers of good eatin’.

I am a Presbyterian, which means two things for absolute sure.  One is that I am Predestined.  The other is that I like my food.  And I will be obvious, when I see my profile in the mirror, I see that there is a definite over-love of food.  What’s the mood of the day in matters of self-improvement?  Mindfulness.  My apologies if I sound a little skeptical, but spiritual healing is one of the skills of my trade as a pastor.

In an effort to take mindfulness seriously, I turn it to something of great personal satisfaction.  Eating.  Specifically, in eating the things that I love to consume but do not always provide the healthiest return. 

So, the Cheese steak.  I have had amazing Cheese steak and I have had excellent Steak Sandwiches with cheese on them.  The menu’s label for most of the steak sandwiches has been ‘cheese steak’, which is something of an unfortunate misnomer.  These sandwiches are good in their own right, but… 

I was expecting to find such a misnamed ‘cheese steak’ at Jersey Mike’s.  I like their subs, I wanted something warm, something of beef, I did not see a burger on the menu, so I ordered a cheese steak.  I was prepared for a steak sandwich with cheese, good, but not of my Philly expectations.  I was delightfully surprised!  It was a cheese steak sandwich!

What makes a steak sandwich with cheese is that it is usually a different cut of steak than the cheese steak.  Often it is a sliced steak that, while very tasty, is a different varietal then what I expect on a cheese steak.  Jersey Mike’s aced that.  The roll was well matched, the onions well cooked.  The only thing that was a little odd to my palate was a little too much sweet from the green peppers.  Not sure if they were somewhat under-cooked or there were more in general proportion than I am used to (because I do like peppers on my cheese steak).

Jersey Mike’s makes a darned good cheese steak.  It comes in all their regular sizes.  I would recommend it for someone looking for a cheese steak and may be distant from their regular sources.  Thank you Jersey Mike’s and a shout out to the crew in the Metuchen store for a good sandwich!

From Our Stained Glass

The stained glass windows in First Church Perth Amboy are magnificent.  There is no other way that I can describe them.  Part of the power of preaching there each Sunday is that I get to see them.  It is in a way that the congregation does not, as they are tilted in the direction of the pulpit and the preacher.

This detail is especially powerful.  "I Give Thee My Heart Lord Eagerly and Sincerely."  This phrase answers a question that I have been struggling to answer for a number of weeks.  What does it mean to worship?  I have been stuck in trying to find an abstract, academic answer for what is an intimate, personal act. 

The image at the center, a burning heart being offered up, coupled with this motto, is the personal seal of John Calvin, whose theology, missions, and church structure are central to the structure and mission of the Presbyterian Church.  According to an article in Christianity Today, searchable by title "John Calvin: Did You Know?", this is "to signify his willingness to sacrifice all to the service of the Lord."

Wrapping around the image of the burning heart offered up is are the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, drawn from the book of Revelation where Jesus said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End."

I had no idea what this was until I began to look into it.  It is so much more than simply John Calvin, founder of the Theological movement known as Calvinism.  It is the centerpiece of one man's devotion to his Lord.  May it be our inspiration as well.

The Lord's Prayer and the Padre Nuestro...addressing a problem

This past Sunday, we had a joyful celebration in worship.  We shared both Communion and Baptism, a message on generosity and giving in this politically charged season, and a big turn out.  The one piece that cast a shadow on the day was the sharing of the Lord’s Prayer.  Sharing the Lord’s Prayer and the Padre Nuestro, English and Spanish, has been integral to worship in my whole tenure at this church.

The shadow came in the expressions on some of the faces in the congregation as we began this most beloved prayer in Spanish.  I cannot read minds, only expressions, so I cannot say if the prayer was unwelcome, unwanted, or even offensive to the worshipping experience of some.  What I can measure is my own reaction, one of righteous indignation, anger, and a deserve to lash out.

This blog post comes from my process of reflection at my reaction.  What was that?  It is rare that I feel such a visceral desire to lash out, especially during the worship of our Living God, most especially when the service was one of great joy otherwise (despite being something of a ‘kitchen sink’ service).  It was a moment of selfish indulgence.

Why is there one splash of Spanish in our otherwise English service?  Is it a glaring example of tokenism?  No, it is something more fundamental to who we are and where we are.

We are in Perth Amboy, NJ, an immigrant city for 400+ years.  A boatload of Scottish Presbyterian immigrants came to these shores in the 1680’s and worshipped the Lord for delivering them to a new land.

The generations of immigrants now include growing numbers of Mexicans, Dominicans, and Peruvians-to name but a few.  The language of the community has shifted from a Gaelicized English through many others, to the varieties of Spanish spoken in these different lands.  One thing I have learned is that Spanish, like English, is not monolithic.  While not rising to the level of dialects, there are certainly regionalisms in the Spanish spoken in these various places.

Where are we?  In the midst of that diverse community.  What do we share?  This most joyous prayer that all hold in common.

Who we are is more fundamental.  We are a church of Jesus Christ, worshippers of God Almighty, indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  We have the wonder of being a Pentecost church, located in the midst of many languages.  And who we are is a welcoming neighborhood in God’s Kingdom.  And while we may not have the blessings of the number of languages represented in Jerusalem for that Pentecost celebration, we are indeed richly blessed here in Perth Amboy.

And we invite everyone to the Lord’s house, inviting them to pray the prayer that our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, first in Spanish-for the community and the guests around us, and then in English-for the hosts who would welcome them in.

My prayer is that if people know who we are, they will enjoy the moment of welcome, and join us in reaching out.

Rev. Peter Hofstra 

A ‘kitchen sink’ service is one where we seem to throw in everything but…the kitchen sink…

Putting the Bible On Trial: Case #1

                If we were to treat the Bible to judicial scrutiny, as evidence in a courtroom, Mark 16 might be a very troubling passage for us.  Mark is the shortest and generally accepted as the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, both Matthew and Luke had it as a resource as they recorded their gospel accounts.  So, if the bible were to be ‘put on the stand’, Mark’s testimony, as the oldest, the ‘closest’ to Jesus, would carry particular weight. 

                The problem is that the Gospel seems to end at different spots, according to which of the oldest manuscripts are used.  The earliest end at a particular damning location, at the conclusion of verse 8.  It reads:

16When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (italics added)

The problem is…no body, dead or alive.  The figure in white says Jesus is alive.  Jesus said he was going to rise, but the tomb is empty, and the women who came to embalm the body fled, saying nothing out of fear.  So, no body and no testimony ever given.

                This is the “Jesus Christ Superstar” ending.  If you watch the movie adaptation, it ends with the empty cross and the actors climbing onto a bus.  Jesus is crucified.  He said he would rise…but did he?  Did he arise?  Because there is an alternate ending.  The leadership who condemned him leaked the story that the disciples stole the body to create "false news" that Jesus was risen.  Those who wrote the play, as near as I can tell, are seeking to have the audience “decide for themselves”.

                Do you remember learning about the scientific method in school?  It begins with a hypothesis-a way to explain why something happens-that is then experimented upon to see if it holds up.  One of the tenets of the scientific method is that any hypothesis must have stated what will falsify it, what will prove it wrong.  It serves as a guide to the experimental data, to prove the hypothesis one way or the other. 

                And while believing in Jesus is a matter of faith, not of proof, the resurrection is the very measure by which our religion would be proven wrong.  Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15: 13-14:

¹²Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; ¹⁴and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.

It looks there were already challenges to the resurrection of Christ in the earliest church.  But Paul puts it bluntly.  If Christ is not raised, his proclamation is in vain and the faith of his readers is a lie.

                So when circumstances are created in which people are asked to ‘decide for themselves’ as to whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead, that is not a 'value neutral' inquiry.  They have a term for this in politics, the ‘push poll’.  The push poll is when someone calls up a voter under the pretense of asking a neutral question about the upcoming election, like “who will you vote for?”  But it is a pretense as the caller will couch the question in terms that favor one particular answer.  “Would you vote for candidate A, who has served his country in the military and in public service for the last 45 years or would you vote for candidate B, despite his never having served a day in uniform, and who has been alleged to have done….”

                Now, the verses that follow do speak of Jesus being alive, of coming to the women, and to the disciples.  But the “evidence” suggests these were added later, and they parallel the testimony given in the other gospels.  In a courtroom, this evidence could easily be discredited by a sharp lawyer, making fancy arguments about the primacy and the veracity of the most ancient witness.  And if the remainder of Mark is discredited, the implication is that the testimony of the other gospels is also suspect.

                This whole process begins with a reasonable premise, that we look at the bible with a discerning eye.  After all, it is the Holy Book of the Christian Faith, its authority derives from the divine.  But when someone or something is put on trial, it is NOT about discernment.  It is about reasonable doubt.  If a jury finds reasonable doubt, they should not convict.  If we read the bible and find reasonable doubt, we should not believe.  Apply that pattern of inquiry to the bible, wrap it up in the lie that this is simply looking at the bible with a ‘discerning eye’ and we are three quarters of the way to undercutting the most basic truth of our faith.

                How then should we look at this passage?  That is an EXCELLENT question, and one that we will take up in the next installment.

How Far Will the President Go To "Prove" that Muslims are Violent?

So draw a line through the following events:

First. the President puts up three videos on Twitter, all produced by an extremist group in England.  All purport to demonstrate Muslim violence against others.  One has been debunked as non-Muslim violence and the other two are of questionable provenance (we don’t know where they came from). 

Then, the President gets it from all sides, including from the British PM, who is owning the extremist group.  

Third, it is declared from the White House that the evidence does not matter.  Because these videos are meant to be evidence, are they not?  They are meant to prove the hypothesis of Muslim violence, are they not?  Isn’t that why they were posted by the President of the United States in the first place?  Sorry, getting off track…  The Evidence does not matter because it is axiomatic that Muslims are violent.  It is a ‘truth’ that Muslims are violent.  It is a presupposition, a stereotype, a cultural cliché, a biased assumption, a racist conclusion…

Fourth, the plain meaning of this statement generates even more controversy and reaction.  It is not going away just because the White House has essentially said it should.  It's in danger of becoming a legitimate 'thing'.

Fifth, the President declares an American recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and that the US will move the embassy there, pending a feasibility study. 

Now, the President could have potentially jammed the biggest lever under the unmovable stone of Middle Eastern Peace with this declaration.  President Trump could have offered this as the tremendous carrot that it is for Israel contingent to moving the Peace Talks forward.  It could have been a carrot for the Palestinians if a legitimacy of their claim to Jerusalem as Capital was on the table.  This could have been a catalyst for the greatest breakthrough in the Middle East since President Carter got the Israelis and Egyptians to sign a peace deal.

But it seems, to these eyes, that this declaration was made at this moment because our President is hellbent and determined to prove that Muslims are violent-by this very provocative action.  If feels like there is a presupposition, a stereotype, an axiom that our President cannot be wrong.  Even if we have to walk the edge of a sharp sword to prove it.

So when something happens, and I am not alone in assuming that SOMETHING is going to happen, the narrative will not be that the President is paying for a provocative action, but that Muslims are, in fact, violent.

My prayer is that this is the moment when an Islamic leader of the stature of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. will rise up in the midst of the maelstrom that is Middle Eastern politics to lead a movement of nonviolence in response to our President.  Then perhaps we can get to the real presupposition to be made about people of the Muslim faith.  Muslims, like us, are HUMANS.

“More Than Food”

^{Matthew 6: 25-34               Sermon: Sept. 24, 2017}

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

“More Than Food”

          If you have not had the chance to read the articles in the Herald as yet, let me share with you the gist of the situation.  For the last quarter of the church’s calendar, there have not been enough funds to pay the bills.  We put a temporary fix on that with a large transfer of cash from whatever reserves we have left.  So today, we are probably okay.  But we also have holes in the roof in at least four different places, we have water coming in under the floor in the Auditorium, we have at least a dozen other maintenance projects that need to happen, and I do not know what I am missing from that list.  On top of that, summer attendance plunged, like it usually does, but this time that plunge happened shortly after Easter.  What am I forgetting?  It has been a nightmare to seek to recruit people for leadership roles or any other roles in the church, and the current Session is operating at less than half capacity. 

          So, a lot of you are probably asking, “What happened?”  Some might be asking, “How did you screw up pastor?”  or “How did Session screw up?” or “Whose fault is this?”

          Let me tell you what happened.  A disaster happened to this church.  It is strangely fitting how this is happening right now, in the aftermath of Harvey and Irma and Maria.  Images of disaster and the recovery are fresh for the looking, if we so choose.  So what disaster hit us?  Affluence hit us. 

          I think the first real experience I had with the disaster of affluence in a church was a number of years before I was ordained.  I was still a member at my home church, Metuchen Pres., and I was on a choir trip with my yet to be wife Lynn and the rest of their choir up to Montreal and Quebec City.  They are both French-speaking cities, Quebec even more so than the more cosmopolitan Montreal.  But we sang in Quebec City at an English-speaking Protestant Church, it may have been Presbyterian.  And we outnumbered the congregation about two to one as I recall.

          I had the opportunity to talk briefly to the pastor and I know a little bit about church life up there, being born and raised in Quebec.  They suffered from affluence.  There were enough investments on the books to allow them to pay for a minister on a full-time basis and to maintain their beautiful facilities.  And open their doors to groups like us.  It might have been that they had enough investment income that nobody would ever have to give to that church again.  And they would never have to do ministry except to be the Anglo church in a French city.

          Now you might argue that I am describing what could be considered ideal conditions for a church.  Imagine, never having to worry about money.  The downside of that is never having to worry about God providing for the needs of the congregation.  We were in exactly that place.  Fifteen years ago, a very generous bequest was made to the church that made it easy to do church with no real consideration to the fact that God provides in lockstep with our faith.  And here, now, we are at the disaster point because there is no money to match even the daily needs of the church, much less the repairs to this gorgeous building dedicated to God’s work, much less the work of ministry in the world around us. 

          Before somebody begins the question “Why didn’t we…”, let me answer it at once.  Because we didn’t have to.  Again, fingers can be pointed, me, the Session at the time, our benefactor.  Then there will be plenty of people who will continue the conversation with “You should have…”  I am a Rutgers graduate and people have been offering hindsight wisdom to their football team since way before I attended there.  It’s never helped their football team, it isn’t going to help us.

          Our position is far more simply defined, something like this, “Lord, it has hit the fan, what are we going to do?”  His answer is our text for today.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 

          I suspect the reaction to this response is going to be something along the lines of “not very funny pastor”.  Do not worry?  If now is not the time to worry, when is it? 

          And I tell you that the time to worry is LONG past.  We do not have time to worry about the storm, it has hit and it has kicked the stuffing out of this church.  If there is a very form for “to disaster”, we have hit it as surely as a rock thrown off a cliff will hit bottom.  And the promise we have from God is that we will not founder under the weight of the disaster.  He goes on to say,

³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 

       For someone who has been involved in a disaster, it becomes a VERY personal thing.  My disaster is Hurricane Sandy.  I thought for a long time it was 9/11, but it wasn’t.  Because the “superstorm” was where I got up close and personal with people who’d lost everything.  And Middlesex County got off lucky compared to what happened further south.  Although I can say with absolute certainty that there is still at least one household in this city that has not recovered from that storm.

          But at that time, these very questions began the agenda, what are we going to eat, to drink, to wear, to live?  What are we going to do to get our lives back?  And they did.  It was done exactly the way Jesus describes it:

³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

          The kicker was that most of the people working for that recovery did not have the joy that I had of the ideal of the Kingdom of God, of God’s righteousness.  They did not have what I had, the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for every person.  Most of them did not have the image of a perfected world to work for, not directly.  They certainly do not know, not in a personal sense, that which Jesus did to accomplish this shot at perfection.  But somewhere in their hearts, in their minds, in their created beings, that nugget of divinity existed nonetheless and they carried on that work to help people recover, sometimes, I hate to say it, to the detriment of those who know Jesus, who live the command to strive for the Kingdom of God.

          That is a huge reason why, how many years later, I make it a part of my ministry, and the ministry of this church in our community, to be a chaplain to those who will respond first, cops and firefighters, Emergency Management and similar agencies.  Because when it hits the fan, they are going to be the ones leading the striving after God’s righteousness to make things better.

          Which is why it is so tremendously lucky that the Lord has finally made it very clear exactly where this church stands, to recover from this disaster.  Because in this moment, resources and abilities and possibilities are open to us.  This is the time for every Christian in the place to stand up and stand together and make this recovery our own.  It is the time that we lean into the resurrection faith granted by our Lord Jesus Christ and make that the model for what this church shall be as it rises up from the disaster around us.

          Because the other option is unthinkable.  The other option is to let the ship sink, to allow the last two members standing on the Session to shut off the lights as they close the doors for the last time.  That option is to let the disaster win. 

          Not on our watch.  Not if we truly believe and allow Jesus to lead us to recover from even this.

Amen

What About Them?

Lorraine and Henry Ambrose in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania; Steven Robinson Jr. in Lexington, Kentucky; unnamed in Houston, Texas; Antwan Rutherford in Macon, Georgia; Jonathan Sandoval-Aleman in Long Beach, California; Unnamed in Baltimore, Maryland; Blair C. Ranneberger in Willards, Maryland; Timothy and Susan Adams in Flomaton, Alabama; Unnamed in Phoenix, Arizona; Jeffrey Allen Ramsey Jr. in Salisbury, North Carolina; Callum Braxton Boggs in Afton, Virginia; Unnamed in Springfield, Illinois; Unnamed in Indianapolis, Indiana; Unnamed in Indianapolis, Indiana; Jonathan Cheers in Nashville, Tennessee; Jason Youngblood in Hazlehurst, Mississippi; David Paul Pedan in Jackson, Mississippi; Samuel Julius Nave in Sterrett, Alabama; Christopher Mullen in Charleston, South Carolina; Ladarius Cardwell in Opelika, Alabama; Unnamed in Gretna, Louisiana; Unnamed in Tolleson, Arizona; Unnamed in Puyallup, Washington; Unnamed in Boulder, Colorado; Unnamed in Festus, Missouri; Unnamed in St. Louis, Missouri; Christon Chaisson in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Why is it that one person’s death can trigger such a huge response when so many others are simply ignored?  The death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia was a great tragedy, and it shines a light into the racist underbelly of America.

But what about them?

These names are drawn from www.gunviolencearchive.org, from a survey of people killed by gun violence in the United States on Saturday, August 12, 2017.  This does not include those who were wounded, those who are going to die from their wounds, and those incidents unreported where gun violence was involved.

What about them?

Somewhere between 161 and 178 people died from drug overdoses on August 12, 2017.  That number is probably low because 1) it is based on statistics from 2016, and overdose deaths have continued to rise and 2) it was a Saturday and weekend deaths tend to run at higher rates that during the week.

What about them?

What about first responders?  What about police officers and fire fighters and others who put their lives on the line, and those who will make the ultimate sacrifice, like the two troopers in Charlottesvilles?

What about them?

How many more will die for how many reasons that we will not protest, that we will not consider, that we will not even know about?  How many homeless?  How many poor?  How many with inadequate healthcare?  How many by their own hand?

What about them?

What if we started to look beyond our own borders?  What goes on in the rest of the world?

What about them?

In a few days, if the past is any indication, things will settle back into the daily routines.  People will move on, forget, no longer care.  Remembering one life is a worthy beginning so long as we remember them all.