Column by Mary Lee Talbot
“We didn’t start the fire,” said the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis. “We didn’t start the fire, but what is it like for us as faithful people to be first responders in a broken world?” Lewis preached at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “When Weeping Turns to Laughter,” and the scripture reading was Luke 6:17–23.
The sermon began with a video of the reopening of Middle Collegiate Church on Easter Sunday 2025, five years after a devastating fire. “We didn’t start the fire; it started next door in an apartment building where someone was trying to remove asbestos on the cheap,” Lewis said. The church had also suffered through the fire of COVID-19, and a real estate deal that went bad and wiped out the church’s endowment.
The church building had been built in 1892 and looked like an upside-down Dutch ship, but conditions were set for the fire because the church had no sprinklers. “I can’t help but weep when I see these stories from this space. We didn’t start this fire, but the church burned down anyway,” she said.
On Father’s Day in 2025, the congregation held a celebration for first responders. The fire had been a six-alarm fire, with six fire companies answering the call. The church invited the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department to come and asked him to invite others.
When church started, there were a few first responders in the congregation. But as the doors opened to the new space, at least 48 firefighters lined the balcony. “These were the people who put the fire out. They saved the remnants of our worship materials, they saved the scrolls of the Jewish community that worshiped with us, they saved our livelihood,” Lewis said.
In the text from Luke, Lewis told the congregation, the disciples learned that they were first responders.
“This is Luke’s take on the Beatitudes, the promise of the reign of God to come, that there will be a cosmic reversal so that those who are on the outside will be on the inside of a kin-dom of shalom and belonging,” Lewis said. “There will be enough peace, food, shelter and clothing for all.”
“The Gospel calls us to be the first responders in the reversal of empire,” Lewis said. “Jesus’ people were Jews — they didn’t have power in the (Roman) system. They were taxed but had no vote.”
She continued, “If we are following Jesus in the way, there is space for all to belong, to see the world upside down, or as the movie says, inside out. There are those outside (the seat of power) who have teachings, and we need to have a level playing field to decide who counts enough to have knowledge. We need a place where all experience joy, where all tears are turned to laughter.”
Lewis told the congregation that they needed to be ready to run into the ecosystems that don’t work. She noted that her husband gets “hangry” (hungry and angry) when his blood sugar drops. “Imagine a family system where the parents are hangry, trying to scrape together a meal in this country,” she said.
“I don’t see anywhere in the scripture, Hebrew or Christian, where God wants some of us to have everything and some of us to have nothing,” she said. “How will we get joy? The only way is with love, the agape love of God that pours into our hearts and souls.”
Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez said that God had a preferential love for the poor because the poor are living in a human situation that is contrary to God’s will.
“I think Jesus was being pretty snarky when he said, ‘The poor you will always have with you,’ because you won’t do anything to end poverty,” Lewis said. “This prophetic calling is not just a New Testament phenomenon. Jesus was trying to expand the Jewish people’s understanding (of God’s will).”
She continued, “They did not start the fire of the empire, but they were corrupted by it. We have to be first responders.”
Lewis recalled a conversation between Martin Luther King Jr. and Harry Belafonte. King said that he feared he had integrated his people into a house of fire, a country on fire with bigotry and economic abuse. Belafonte asked, “What shall we do?” King said, “We must become firefighters and put on our best firefighting outfit, which is fierce love.”
King believed that love needed power, and power needed love, Lewis said. “Power without love is reckless, and love without power is sentimentalism. Love corrects everything that stands against justice.”
Love, she said, “is what causes us to be first responders in a system that does not work for poor people.”
Her sermon ended with a video of the Middle Collegiate congregation singing a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” written by actor and singer Tituss Burgess, who attends Middle Collegiate. Lewis got the Chautauqua congregation on its feet, clapping and singing along with the chorus, “We shall overcome, some day.”
The Rev. George Wirth, longtime Department of Religion associate, presided. Nancy Ackley, a member of the Motet and Chautauqua Choirs, read the scripture. Members of the Motet Consort, Barbara Hois, flute; Rebecca Scarnati, oboe; and Joseph Musser, piano, played “Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano, In Memoriam of Debbie Grohman,” composed by Musser. The Motet Choir, under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Orgainist, and accompanied by Owen Reyda on the Massey Memorial Organ, sang “I Come with Joy to Meet my Lord,” music by Robert W. Lehman and text by Brian Wren. Reyda performed “Voluntary,” by Thomas Mee Patterson, on the Massey Organ for the postlude. Support for this week’s services and chaplaincy is provided by the Edmond E. Robb-Walter C. Shaw Fund.
