The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation
An Episcopal Parish in the Heart of Jersey City
Victoria Omoghene
Good morning, friends of St. Paul’s and Incarnation.
For those I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Victoria Omo, and I’ve been attending St. Paul’s and Incarnation since we needed air conditioning. In that time, I have felt the comforting presence of the Lord and truly enjoyed worshipping and praying with you all each Sunday.
I’d like to begin with a prayer:
Heavenly Father, we are thankful for the blessings and grace you give us day by day. You bless the righteous and surround them with your favor. I pray for all your people here today—both in church and online—that the right people find them, and that they walk through every door you open with faith. Amen.
During this Advent season, we’ve heard a lot about angels—from the poem Instructions for Angels that Father Martin shared a few Sundays ago, to the heartwarming story many of us received in the mail last week. Those moments stayed with me, and they led me to reflect more deeply on angels. So today, I’d like to share a personal story about a time someone I know encountered an angel.
Would you like to hear it? {3}
When I was a child, one of my favorite moments was when my mother would sit my sister and me down for “storytime.” Growing up in a Nigerian household, storytime could mean anything—from old proverbs warning us about the importance of good behavior to funny folktales about tortoises making deals with hares. Either way, I was always ready to listen.
But one day, my mum told a different kind of story—a story about the time she met an angel.
“Oh, this will be good,” I thought. Did he have wings? Was he dressed in white? Was his hair long and silver? Was he Nigerian? {2}
I had so many questions.
She told me that when she was a young girl, she would go to church on Saturdays before Mass to help set up the altar flowers. And every Saturday, she would secretly place a handwritten letter to God underneath the communion table. No one ever knew. On Sundays, when the priest lifted his hands, broke the host, and placed the communion back on the table, she would smile, believing it was a sign that her letter had reached God.
Week after week, she kept up this quiet ritual: a letter, the altar table, the Eucharist, and her faith that God heard her.
One Sunday, however, she wrote a sad letter. Her parents couldn’t afford the fees she needed to sit for her exams, and her heart was broken at the thought of not being able to go to school the following year. Still, she poured her worries, her hope, and her fear into the letter and placed it beneath the altar table, expecting God to answer.
But by the following week, nothing had changed. On Friday, her teacher reminded her it was the final deadline and gently asked, “Are you sure there’s no one else you can ask for help?”
With tears in her eyes, my mother said no. Her teacher urged her, “Try asking your parents one more time.”
So she walked home—crying, discouraged, and according to my mother’s retelling, walking a very, very long distance.
When she arrived, she was surprised to find her grandmother there. Her grandmother lived in a completely different town, and no one had told her she would be visiting. It was a total surprise.
Her grandmother asked why she wasn’t in school, and my mother explained the situation. After listening, her grandmother reached into her purse, pulled out the exact amount she needed, and said, “Here. Go quickly so you don’t miss the deadline.”
It was already well past school hours. My mother was sure her teacher would be gone, but her grandmother insisted she run.
Fueled by excitement and relief, she ran all the way back to school.
When she arrived, her teacher—who had no idea she’d return—was still there, sitting patiently. When my mother handed her the money, the teacher looked up and said, “I was waiting for you. I knew you would come back.” {3}
When my mother finished this story, I was confused.
“Are you saying your grandmother was an angel?” I asked.
My mother shook her head and said, “I’m saying dear,… You never know who might be.”
As we go back into the world today, remembering that we are called to be angels to others, I also want us to remember that sometimes we are the ones who need an angel. It might be a friend asking, “How can I pray for you?” A stranger showing kindness. A family member calling at just the right time.
I pray that the Lord always allows angels to find you—and that He gives you the grace to receive their help. Amen.
The Good Reminder
Leo K. Min
Writers don't usually explain the title of their sermon, which I named "The Good Reminder", however I was encouraged to do so. What I would say is this; art and morals are often distinct from one another, and a work of art is less about delivering a message, particularly a moral one, and more about inducing a feeling. As writers and artists, we hope to bridge this gap between art and morality, feeling and unfeeling, through confession. A reminder that we are the children of God and our belief in God endows us with the ability to speak the truth can be integrated into the way we live our lives, to quote Isaiah 56, to "do justice", and so here is the good reminder.
A friend of mine moved from Nairobi to downtown Jersey City, and she was remarking on the things she missed from back home: 1. the taste of an authentic African cuisine, like homemade Ugali, a thick, doughy dish with a subtle taste, and 2. the simplicity of getting around on foot and by car. Americans had signs for how to turn, to slow down, to yield, to stop, and to go. In East Africa, the basic logic was if you saw a bridge, then you could see the river, and by instinct, you knew to not go in the water, because it'd be filled with alligators.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, Antifragile, detailed an experiment in Dutch and German towns to rid the signs and traffic lights, and as a result, the incidents of car and pedestrian accidents went down. If you've spent any time in Jersey City, where traffic enforcement was not a priority, would removing the signs actually make things safer because it would force drivers to be alert, and pay more attention to what's going on in front of them? What's the point of a sign if no one abides by them?
Now I don't usually do this, but a few years ago, I wished every individual member in my group chat a happy New Years. I haven't done this before or since, which will be evident. Everyone knows it's New Years. You don't actually need me to remind you. So I sent the messages without much thought and I went to bed. In the middle of the night, I get a call from Rick. We're mutual acquaintances. I don't pick up at first, but he's so insistent, I relented. He's been drinking. He was clutching a knife to his neck, and told me he was going to hurt himself. He didn't have a single person in his life: not friends, nor family, to wish him a happy anything. I was the only one in his life. I didn't know what to do. What do you do? I'm not a psychotherapist, or a clinician, or a mental health specialist. I'm just a writer. All I could do was listen.
The more I heard, the more I knew Rick was gripped by that horrible disease of the mind which was clouding his judgment, and driving him down a path of existential pain and agony. Rick hated working for his father, and wanted to run off and join a band of partisan fighters in Syria. He saw this as a masculine endeavor to prove himself as a man, and to free himself up for a greater cause. There was nothing more terrifying to me than the prospect of being away from home, and potentially dying in a foreign country surrounded by strangers. We spent the whole night talking and eventually I managed to calm him down. I tried my best to make Rick laugh, because if he was laughing, then he wouldn't be crying.
Every now and then, I think about that harrowing experience. The fact there was a real possibility Rick would not be here if I said the wrong thing scares me. I replay the night in my head, and in those twilight hours, we never discussed God. Rick implied he was lapsed in his Christian beliefs, so I didn't bring it up, but if I relived that night again, I would. Neither of us fully appreciated how the lack of faithfulness in our daily lives had created an unbearable, unfulfillable longing in our souls which could not be solved through therapy. The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote, "No cathedral can be built if no community desires one."
The sign of the cross reminds us of the eternal, the source of all which can conceivably be called good and right. The eternal is evident in the architecture here, at St. Paul and Incarnation; from the majesty of the high flung arches and eaves down to the humble, stately pews and hymnal books, which quietly speaks to us and urges us on. We are all invited to the church; to partake in the living, breathing body of Christ. The communion we receive fills us with the presence and reminds us all we are not alone. Through the grace and peace freely given to us by our Savior fills us with love, and inspires us to work toward that love. There is so much pain, enmity, and suffering in our lives; the burden intolerable, the remembrance grievous; yet still we entrust our faith in Jesus.
I dedicate this collect from the Book of Common Prayer for Rick. This is for you. "O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord." Amen.