What are you waiting for?

You may listen to Father Mullen's Sermon here.

The Mount of Olives stands just east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley, affording the visitor to that holy place a wonderful view of the Old City, where the shining, golden Dome of the Rock (whence the Prophet Mohammad is said to have ascended into heaven) dominates the vista.  The slopes of the Mount of Olives have become, over the centuries, a burial site for Jews, Christians and Muslims, all of whom are welcome to believe (in some measure) that this spot, looking toward a sealed gate in the eastern-facing wall of the Old City of Jerusalem, may be the place where the Messiah will come to bring about, or to complete the salvation of mankind.  And it would seem that with salvation, as in real estate, location is everything.

When our group of 22 pilgrims from Saint Mark’s walked from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem last month, we could see black-clad men with their side-locks, tassels, and broad-brimmed black hats visiting graves.  I know there are Christian and Muslim graves there somewhere, but most of what you can see are burial places for Jews, who place a stone on a grave as memorial gesture when visiting.

Something put it into my head to visit the graves of the dead while we were in Jerusalem – I had a question I wanted to ask - but it was not a part of the itinerary, so I knew I would have to make a secret mission of it.  The wee hours of the morning seemed like a good time to be walking among the hopeful dead anyway, so I stole out of the hotel one morning well before sunrise to go to visit the dead on the Mount of Olives.

I found a chink in a fence I was able to squeeze through and in no time I was ambling among the flat, table-top graves that are spread out on the hillside like a giant keyboard of some kind.  No grass grows between the graves, there is only dirt and stones.  The moon was bright, so I was able to navigate easily among the tombs.  I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, I just wanted to find someone there who’d be willing to talk to me – a goy from Philadelphia – someone who might be willing to entertain my question.  I picked my way among the graves, trying to make enough noise to be heard by the dead if they wanted to talk, but no so much noise as to wake the dead if they preferred to remain sleeping.

Eventually I paused, and I sat on the edge of a gravestone, looking back to the old city as the moonlight glistened on the Dome of the Rock, and in the still darkness before dawn I heard the sound of old, gravelly throat being cleared somewhere behind me.

“What brings you here at this hour?” the voice asked.

Dispensing with small talk, I got right to the point, “Sir, I have a question to ask.”

“American?” asked the man.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Oy vey,” said the old voice, “another American tourist.”

“I’m not a tourist, I’m a pilgrim!” I began to protest, before realizing that the dead old Jew really didn’t care about my semantic distinctions, so I repeated the purpose of my visit, “Sir, I have a question to ask, if I may?”

“So, ask,” said the man.

“You were buried here in order to wait,” I ventured, “but what, may I ask, are you waiting for?” giving voice to the question I had come here to ask of the dead.

“What am I waiting for?” the old voice repeated.

“What are you waiting for?”

Taking a slow, deep breath, (which was only for effect, since he was already dead) the man replied, “In the last chapter of the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, we read this:

“ ‘A day is coming for the Lord… On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east…  Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.’ ”  And he let out a breath of ghostly air.

“So you are waiting for the coming of Messiah?” I asked.

“Yes,” sighed the tired voice, “I am waiting for Messiah.”

“Why?” I asked, hoping this was not pushing my luck.

“ ‘On that day,’ the prophet says, ‘there shall not be either cold nor frost.  And there shall be continuous day… not day and night, for at evening time there shall be light.

“ ‘On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem… it shall continue in summer as in winter.

“ ‘And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.’

“For this,” said the man from his grave, “for this, I am waiting.”

“So, you are waiting for endless day, for living water, and for the time when the Lord will be one and his name will be one?”  I asked.

“Just as the prophet said,” the voice allowed.

“May I ask, sir, if it’s no trouble, what does this mean?” I pressed on.

“It’s no trouble,” came the answer, “what else have I got to do?

“You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve had time to think about it, lying here on this hillside.  There’s more to consider than just these few lines, of course, but my memory isn’t what it used to be, so I find myself going back to what I know, what little I can remember, and to me it seems like enough, at least for now.

“On that day there shall not be either cold or frost: this is good news to a cadaver, because it’s the cold the kills; it’s the slow seeping away of life’s heat, the gradual slipping into deeper, colder water – it’s like every burial is a burial at sea, and you just get colder and colder till the chill has emptied your veins and penetrated your bones. 

“Here, on the Mount of Olives, cold and frost won’t do: it spoils the olives and kills the trees.  So this promise that there shall not be either cold or frost is a sign of life.

“And there shall be continuous day.  This, my child, is a promise of justice, because cruelty and wrongdoing cavort in the night hours, but justice thrives in the daylight.

“Remember that murder, robbery and warfare are all planned in the night, or underground, or in dark places.  Greed despises the light where it can be seen eating more than it should, taking more than it needs, while Hunger moans close at hand.

“Lies are best perpetrated in the night; secrets that erode trust are mostly nocturnal.

“Do you think the lights burned brightly in Auschwitz?  No more than they do along the wall I can almost see from here, or in any place where injustice is cloaked with the confidence that my destiny trumps your rights.

“If you want to keep a child stupid, don’t give him any light.  You know this,” the man said, “you can see this from where you live. 

“Why do you think they called the Dark Ages dark?  Wickedness swaggered with the conviction that might made right, while Justice was locked somewhere in a dungeon.

“But where there is continuous day, there will be justice, for even at evening, when cruelty and wrongdoing are ready to go about their work that requires the cover of darkness, there shall be light.”

“And what about the living water flowing out from Jerusalem?” I asked.

“Have you seen the desert just beyond these hills?” he cried.  “Do you know what water means in this place?

“Do you remember what Isaiah said?

“ ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

and rejoice with joy and singing…

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water;

the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,

the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

‘A highway shall be there,

and it shall be call the Holy Way…

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’

“Need I say more about the living waters that God promises will one day flow from Jerusalem?” the old man asked.

“Your memory is not so bad after all,” I joked.  And the man let out a sigh of contentment.

Then I repeated the last part of the prophecy of Zechariah he had quoted to me:

“ ‘And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.’ ”

And the dead man took up his discourse:

“ You have seen how we fight here?  You have seen the land mines and the guns and the tanks, no?  And our arsenal is puny compared to yours, is it not? 

“You know how men abuse one another in the name of God – it has ever been thus.  You know how God has been used as a justification for slavery, warfare, and oppression of all kinds – always because my version of God is different from your version; my text reads differently from yours, even if they are identical.  And this is done from one corner of the globe to the other.

“We cannot fool ourselves for ever.  We cannot pretend for eternity that this way of treating one another pleases God.  In time he will make himself known; in time he will establish his rule.

“How I yearn for the day that the Lord will at last be king over all the earth, to put all that to and end; when all people will see and know that the Lord is one, and his Name is one.  Is this not worth waiting for?” asked my aged, departed friend.

Knowing it would be unwise to turn around and look for the body of my long-dead companion, for it was still enclosed in its tomb, I gazed at the old city across the valley from where I sat among the graves.

“That’s a lot to wait for,” I said.

“Oy,” said the man, “a lot to wait for, indeed”

“Why is it so important to be right here, on the Mount of Olives?” I asked.

“When the Lord comes,” said the old voice, “I suppose it may be that he will save all creation at once, that there will be no waiting, that you won’t need to take a number, as though you were standing in line at a delicatessen.  I suppose it may be that God can manage the machinery of salvation with greater efficiency than I can imagine. 

“I suppose it may be that an American goy will be as likely to be saved as me, a faithful Jew, who did his best to observe the commandments.

“But my burial here on this hillside, my desire to wait here, just across from the Eastern Gate, with the words of the prophet ringing in my post-mortem ears, is not intended to say anything at all about God.  God will do what God will do, and there is nothing at all I can do about that except to be faithful.

“But to wait here is a choice I make, so that even in death I can declare my faith, so that my body may rest in hope, not only repose. 

“To wait here is to continue to pray, even with the cold, decaying dust of my bones, that Life triumphs over Death; that God will bring Justice; that a living stream will some day flow from the streets of this holy city on the edge of a desert; and that the Lord our God is indeed one, and will be king over all the earth.

“To wait here is to be a witness to my children of this faith, and to hope that perhaps they will live the faith better than I did: more truly, more peaceably, more honorably.

“To wait here is to declare at the end of my life what I could only say inadequately while I was alive: that even though we all go down to the dust there is something to wait for.

“To wait here is to stand as a testimony to the One by whom all things were created, and for whom all life is lived.

“Don’t you see how few are willing to live their lives for him anymore?  Even if they claim to believe in him, they are not willing to change their lives!

“Don’t you see how few are willing to wait for God, to keep watch for him?

“Me, I made the last choice I could make in life, to set myself as near as I could to the place where his glory will pass by, when he comes with a sound of many waters, and when the earth will shine with his glory.

“What am I waiting for?  Why do I wait here?  What else could I do? 

“I am waiting because I believe God is faithful. 

“I am waiting because I believe God will restore paradise. 

“I am waiting because I believe God will establish justice at last. 

“I am waiting because I have faith that God will show his mercy on my soul and on all souls.

“I am waiting because I am thirsty, as I have been all my life, and I long for the living waters to flow from the streets of Jerusalem.

“I am waiting because I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!

“I am waiting because God is coming.  What better is there to wait for?”

I sat in silence for a moment to let his anthem sink in and to hear its faint echoes in the valley below and the soft harmonies that seemed to be coming silently from the graves around us.

Then I said to the man, “I don’t know what I expected to hear from you, but it wasn’t this.  You know that I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that he has come, and that he will come again.  I expected something, crazier from you, I guess, something angrier, and more selfish.  I expected more politics, more vengeance.  I expected at least to have to argue with you.”

“There is enough of conflict in life,” he said, “too much, in fact, to drag it all into the grave with you.

“In death, it is enough to hope in God.

And then he looked at me, I know, although I did not turn to look back at him, for there was nothing to see.  But I could feel his eyes looking deeply into mine, as he gazed at me from his grave.  And he said to me, “He’s coming, you know.  God is coming.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “I know.  He’s coming soon.” 

And I heard a long and ghostly sigh as I picked up a stone from the ground, and turned around to place it on the old man’s grave.  And as the sun rose over Jerusalem, I made my way home to join the other pilgrims for prayers, and for breakfast.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 November 2011

Saint Mark's Chruch, Philadelphia

Gathered In

You may listen to this sermon here.

There once was a man who was in a line. He was not a dot; he was part of a line. But his line was not a line of hope, nor was it a line of fear – it was just a line. A queue, actually, in a grey, empty town “by the side of a long, mean street.” The man was the narrator of C.S. Lewis’s little book The Great Divorce, and he had queued up, like any good Brit would do, in a long line to wait for a bus. When the bus arrived, he got on and, like any good Anglican would do, took a seat near the very back. After a moment, the bus started out… and rose up off of the ground, carrying its passengers up and away into the sky. For you see, the man was dead, the bus stop had been in hell, and the bus was taking him to heaven.

As they flew, the man looked out the window and saw nothing but more and more grey, empty town. He asked the person sitting next to him why there were so few people down there. He was told that in fact, there were many people living in the city; it’s just that they all lived on the very outskirts of town, as far away from one another as they could. You see, in hell, you simply had to think up a new house, a few more blocks down the road, and it would appear. So if you had an argument with your neighbor, you just imagined a house a little further away, and – voila! – there it was. And of course people kept arguing, and the town kept getting bigger and bigger. The oldest residents of hell, Genghis Khan and Napoleon and the like, lived millions of miles away from the bus stop – so far away that the man on the bus would never be able to see their homes, even from high up in the sky. Hell, the man discovers, is a place of infinite separation; to be in hell is to be divided, one from another, again and again and again.

C.S. Lewis’s vision of hell is an utterly modern depiction – not a kingdom of fire and brimstone, not Dante’s world of frozen stillness, but a place of emptiness and of complete and utter disconnection. It’s brilliant, actually, because I think this exactly the hell that we fear – being out of the loop, separated and scattered. Why else would we spend so much time and money getting “connected” with new smartphones and easier wireless access? Why else do we feel the need to check philly.com five times a day, to constantly update our twitter feed, to text while walking? Because we are scared, terrified, shaking in our Uggs, that we might someday find ourselves alone on a grey, empty street, with no one and nothing in sight.

But of course, these means of being “connected” are simply surrogates for the real thing. And we know this. We know that we cannot satisfy our need for communion simply by owning the right equipment. We know deep in our being that an email is not the same as a handwritten note, that writing “Happy birthday, buddy!” on someone’s Facebook page is not the same as sending a card, that texting is not the same as a phone call, and that none of these is the same as actually standing face to face, watching someone’s face as she talks, looking into her eyes, breathing the same air. We know this, and yet we still allow ourselves to be led astray by the false promises of the world with all of its stuff. We fall in line behind those who tell us that true connection can be easy and effortless and as fast as 4G. But the longer we follow this path, the more we realize that we are, in fact, moving further and further away from our neighbors, and soon we’re living on the outskirts of our own life, divided from all meaning and all connection by the sin of separation. Because it’s hard to love God, neighbor, or yourself when you feel millions of miles away from everything.

This is where God’s people find themselves in the book of Ezekiel. They are scattered all over the place, utterly disconnected from each other and from God. They had been counting on their leaders to hold them together, but their leaders, these shepherds of Israel, have made a real wreck of things. They haven’t done a thing to care for their sheep; they haven’t fed them or healed them or kept them safe. And the sheep, broken and hungry and suffering, have wandered off and abandoned the flock. They are fighting among themselves. Some are lean and some are fat, and they are all separated and lonely and anxious. They are, in a word, in hell. Finally, God looks down on this mess and says, enough. The false shepherds are finished. “I myself will search for my sheep,” God says; I myself “will seek them out.” No longer will God use a surrogate shepherd. God Himself will go and get the people; God himself will find the lost and bring them to good pasture, bind up the wounded, feed the hungry. God has taken over; God will personally restore His kingdom, where all people are gathered in and cared for, where all people feed and rest together on one mountain, breathing the same air, and following one shepherd.

And that gathering is still going on. Here, in our worship, week after week, God seeks us out and draw us in, takes scattered sheep and makes them a flock, takes individual dots and makes them a line. Where else on earth are people gathered and fed, assembled and cared for, called together and offered rest like they are in church on Sunday morning? Where else in the world do all kinds of people – youth and old, rich and poor, the weak and the hungry and the sinners and the broken – sit together in the same pasture, look into each other’s eyes, breathe the same air and know themselves to be connected in the way that we are here? This, right here, is God’s gathering, God’s holy kingdom. Our worship creates the connection that God desires for us, the connection that we are all so desperate to find. It is not quick, and it is not effortless, but it is real. There is no need for surrogate shepherds or cell phones, only the single shepherd, Christ the King, who gathers us in, and connects us to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to our God.

And so I ask you: why in the world would we ever miss this? Why in the world would we ever choose not to come to worship on Sunday morning? And I do mean “we,” because I’ve been as guilty as anyone of hitting the snooze button and making the executive decision to attend the church of the Holy Comforter by the Springs. (Get it?) And we’re not alone. Churches everywhere – including Saint Mark’s – are seeing decreased attendance on Sunday mornings. Generally, fewer people are going to church, and, specifically, fewer churchgoers are going every week. More and more people are choosing brunch, or the Sunday New York Times, or family time or a field hockey game over weekly worship. I don’t think this means that we’ve stopped seeking deep connections; I just think it means that we’ve forgotten where to find them. We forget how wondrous and miraculous this gathering is; we forget that this is where our deepest connections are made, where our deepest hungers are satisfied by the richest food. We forget what a gift of gathering this worship is. Why in the world would we ever miss this?

And we also know, of course, that this – our worship – is not the end of the story. Today’s Gospel makes it very clear that after being gathered in, we are to go out from this place and to keep watch for the Christ that we have met here – to look for him in the faces of the poor and in the prisoner and in the hungry. To quote that great old sermon Our Present Duty by the Anglo-Catholic Bishop Frank Weston, “You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.” But we must not forget that in order to pity Jesus in the slum we must also worship Him in the Tabernacle. Because it is here that we study his face so that we can see it in the least of these. It is here that we learn true connection again and again, that we learn what true love really feels like, so that we can recognize the real thing when we see it and fight to keep it, no matter what. It is in this place, on this very day, that God has gathered us in, connected us deeply one to another in the bread and the wine. It is in this worship that God help us to find our neighbors, and it is from this font that God will grow our flock today with the baptism of Nico and Claire. Why would we ever miss that? I mean, it’s just like…heaven.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

20 November 2011 - Christ the King

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Situation Ethics

                     …….Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or

                                      sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?......

Once upon a time in the long-ago 1970’s one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues was

an ethical system called Situation Ethics,  the premise of which was that if love was to be best served,

sometimes other moral principles and codes could be put aside. This ethical system was grounded in 

unconditional agape love,  the absolute law of love.  Situation  Ethics argued that if

other laws needed to be broken in order for universal agape love to be fully realized, the very love  

that Jesus taught in the two great commandments of the Gospels,  then so be it. In Situation

Ethics, the ends can justify the means, assuming, of course, that the “situation” is not intrinsically bad

or evil. Situation Ethics is among the purest systems of moral ambiguity but when we consider the

horrors of the sexual abuse of children and the silence of those institutions in which it occurs, moral

ambiguity is useless as a denominator.

On this last Sunday of the Church Year, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Church reveals its wisdom in

maintaining the rhythm of the Christian life of worship and preserving joyful anticipation and

expectations, very much in stark contrast to Situation Ethics. There is certainty and clarity,  all part

of the Good News, as are today’s readings in which, once again, we are shown  how to see ourselves and

our world in a deliberate and mindful way.  Matthew’s Gospel lets us ask the Lord, “when did

we see you?  “If we missed you, we didn’t mean to and if we encountered you and responded

accordingly, we are blessed.”  How remarkable it is that God allows those of us who are mindful as well

as those of us not mindful  to ask the same question.  And because the Gospel is a living conversation ,

we can chose the Grace that comes with our affirmation of Christ in those we welcome, feed,  clothe,

take care of, heal, protect  and cherish, or we can remain unaware that we have done anything wrong

and in our pretend ignorance hope for God’s mercy.    

The Gospel with its challenges was with us in the time of Situation Ethics just as it is

with us now. But oh, how different the times are: what was “situational” and morally ambiguous

in the 1970’s is not “situational” or morally ambiguous now. This is not to say that in our time we are

free from the hubris that comes from spiritual aridity or that we are not living in what Jean Vanier calls

a “mixture of light and darkness, of love and hate, of trust and of fear.” It is, though, to say that we are

clear and unambiguous about one thing--the perversity of the sexual abuse of children, especially when

it occurs in the protected confines of a religious or academic institution. We are quick to condemn the

unconscionable acts perpetrated by people who have every reason to know the evil of these acts, just as

we are quick to judge the corporate institutions as hypocritical, cruel, profoundly dishonest and

deceitful, arrogant, and even dysfunctional and toxic. If you’ve been reading the papers and listening to

the commentators about the human tragedy that has come to our Penn State University, the words I’ve

used to describe the circumstances and conditions of what has transpired there will seem familiar.  We

know that the adults involved in the sexual abuse of children, directly or indirectly, are moral cowards

who seek to protect themselves in the safe confines of their respective institution instead of asking

whether what they have done is right and just and not morally reprehensible. They are neither clever

nor wise, nor do they often practice what they say they believe.

So here we are standing firm in our righteous anger, knowing that we are justified in the integrity of our

judgment because we know the gravity of the evils committed.  This is a good, clean objective, no

moral-ambiguity, non situation-ethics position, right?  Wrong.  There are, in fact, some serious 

problems with which we have to wrestle.  First of all, the scripture readings today make very clear that

God’s judgment belongs to God, not to us. We have the right and the responsibility to render judgment 

but it is our own, not God’s.  Secondly, there is  the problem of what we believe is our righteous anger.

Maybe it is righteous, but maybe it isn’t. Either way, anger is always something of a risk, especially when

we remember that anger is one of the “seven deadly sins.”  Frederick Buechner reminds us of this risk when he says:  Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways [anger]is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Thirdly comes the most difficult challenge and that is what we do about forgiveness

without apparent repentance on the part of those involved with the crimes.  We are fortunate in that

WE do not have to see to it that these heinous  crimes carry punishment. They do and they will. This is

the human side. We are Christians and our path is different in that we have the law and spirit of the

Gospel  to guide us toward forgiveness.  But forgiveness is neither  simple nor easy, especially when

we see little or no repentance.  And while letting go of our anger is part of forgiveness, we have to

be mindful that in letting go of our righteous anger we don’t grant amnesty to the unrepentant. Again,

this is God’s work.

Matthew’s Gospel today shows us that we have the choice of doing or not doing, the choice of how to

lead our Christian lives, knowing full well the consequences of one choice or the other.  Not to forgive is

a choice but a costly one, like anger. Modern theologians and spiritual directors tell us that to hang on to

the wrongs is to feed a tumor in our inner lives, and thus feed on ourselves as our own prisoners.

So finally comes the act of true forgiveness. As Christians we know that forgiveness is the way of

the Gospel, a way of acknowledging how deeply flawed we are as human beings who can harm and hurt

one another and live in untruths and deceptions.  But because we are who we are we remember that

God began by forgiving us and giving us Christ, His son, in ransom. The Good News is that God invites us

to forgive as we are forgiven and to set ourselves free. This is the gift of our Faith and we experience it

again in its richness and fullness on this Sunday of Christ the King.

……for I was hungry and you gave me food , I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you took care of me …and I was a child and you protected me.

Amen.

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

20 November 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

What Color is My Talent?

You may listen to this sermon here.

Here beginneth the first sentence of the second chapter of a book you may have read, or at least you have very probably heard of before:

“Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.”  Here endeth the reading.

The job market being what it is, the well-known book, What Color is My Parachute? is still going strong, with a new edition out every year, more than 40 years after the first edition.  This job-hunting book charts an unusual course, because it doesn’t just give advice about how to tailor your resumé for this job or that one, and it doesn’t just give you strategies for putting in a strong interview; it gives advice about you, and about your life.  For instance, the very first section of the book is called “How To Find Hope.”  And the last section of the book is all about trusting God.

In between, there are lots of lists of questions and exercises meant to help you take stock of yourself.  At the center of the book is what the author, Richard Bolles, calls “The Flower Exercise” in which you conduct an extensive self-inventory, so you can know yourself better, not only so you can present yourself more effectively to a prospective employer, but so that you can find a job for which you are actually well suited, and in which you might actually be happy.  A little later in the book, there is an exercise that asks you to take ten blank sheets of paper and spread them before you, and write at the top of each page, “Who Am I?” so that you can fill in the space on all ten pages.

As it happens, the situations that Bolles imagines in the first sentences of the second chapter of his good book are the very types of situations that trouble most of us – even people who consider themselves Christians, even people who come to church.  Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

What do you do if you are in one of those situations (or some other one that I have not imagined out loud) and you land in church on Commitment Sunday – that Sunday when I am supposed to talk to you about money, when I am supposed to encourage you to give, when I am likely to try to persuade you to give more money to the church than you were prepared to give?  You are in trouble, aren’t you?  You are wondering How To Find Hope, but I am wondering How To Find Money.  Maybe I am wondering How To Find Money In Your Checkbook.  Perhaps you should come back another day.  Perhaps you are just unlucky.

I have the Gospel on my side, after all.  You heard the parable of the talents entrusted by a man to his slaves: five to one of them; two to another; and to another, one talent.  You know where the story goes: everyone is expected to make more with what’s been given.  At the very least, earn a little interest; better yet, make a shrewd investment; whatever you do, do not bury your talent in the dirt.  And I am absolutely certain that it would be A-OK to use this story to talk to you about money and about how much of it you give; that may very well be why Jesus told it so long ago, so that you and I could have a conversation about why you don’t give enough money to the church, as I’m pretty sure you don’t (neither do I, for that matter).

But what if we didn’t use this story this morning to talk about How To Find Money?  What if we used it instead to talk about How To Find Hope?  What if the hidden question in today’s Gospel is really this:  What Color Is Your Talent?

Because, like Richard Bolles, who wants to help you in your job search, but thinks you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well; I want to help you in your search for God, but I worry that you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well.  I suspect strongly that you do not know what color is your talent; you have not realized all the gifts that God has given you; and you certainly have not found all the ways to use those gifts for your own happiness and for God’s glory.  I suspect this about you, because I also suspect it about myself.  And I can assure you that every word I ever preach to you, I am really preaching to myself.

And I also suspect it because I know enough of you well enough to see that you are selling yourselves short as children of God.  I perceive that you have taken your talents, at least some of them, and buried them in the dirt.  And I know that this is a shame.

Allow me to borrow a little more from What Color Is My Parachute.  In the section on How To Find Hope, we learn that “Hope requires that, in every situation, we have at least two alternatives.”  This makes sense, since having only one choice in life, often leaves us feeling boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless.  And if it is easy to feel this way in a job search, it is also easy to feel this way in your search for God; it’s easy to feel this way about your spiritual life; it’s easy to feel this way about being in church: boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless. 

How many of you have children or siblings or close friends who have felt precisely this way about their search for God in church, and have opted instead of continuing, to simply give up?  You mean I have to stand here and sing these hymns?  I have to believe this creed?  I have to show up at this hour and fall to my knees at these appointed moments?  I have to admit I’m a sinner?  I have to put money in that silver plate as it passes by?  This is my only option for finding God and staying with him?  No thank you!

The people I know who are furthest along on their journeys with God know full well that the journey doesn’t begin and end in the pew, because sometimes faith from the pew isn’t enough, leaves them feeling empty, unchallenged, unmoved, doesn’t provide enough spiritual calories, or provoke enough transformation.  So these people find alternative ways to engage their desire to be with God, while still keeping the Pew Option open, probably even showing up week by week, or day by day to keep the Pew Option on the table.

But they are also volunteering at St. James School to tutor a kid who needs help; or volunteering in the office to help us keep this parish running like the well-oiled machine we are; or making soup to feed to hungry people on Saturdays; or digging in the garden; or packing groceries for our Food Cupboard clients; or studying the Bible on Wednesday nights; or keeping a discipline of prayer at home; or going to yoga class to find strength and space for contemplation; or visiting a monastery for a day or two of silent retreat; or travelling to a far-off place to help people in need.

People who are really advancing in their relationship with God are very often doing so because they have found ways outside of the pew to make those advances.  And they discover that when they are in church the prayers and hymns, the Bread and the Wine, the kneeling and standing, the creeds and the scriptures, all have more meaning, all point to a bit more hope, because this Pew Option is now only one of the ways that God is being revealed in their lives.

Borrowing again from Parachute, I see there is a chapter entitled, “Attitudes Necessary for Survival.”  This seems like a good idea.  Let’s see what they are:

1)    Find something that it is within your power to change.

2)    Assume that nothing that worked before will work now, because the world is a different place than it used to be.

3)    Believe that nothing is meaningless.

Again, what works in job hunting would appear also to apply to God hunting.

Remember that the search for God is always about growth and change.  God wants you to grow, which requires you to change.  He wants you and me to move beyond our limitations, to turn from the things we do to trip ourselves up, to learn to be stronger, more loving, more wise.  Most of this change will come from God – he expects to do most of the work – but some of it must come from you.  God seeks our partnership in the process of transformation, because otherwise it is just magic, and magic transformations don’t last very long.  Real, life-changing transformations require a bit of effort on our part, so we have to look for something that it is within our power to change.

Many people learn more about religion in their childhood than at any other time of their lives, and then are surprised when their Sunday School religion is not robust enough to sustain them in their adult lives, as though you and the world you live in have not changed at all.  Assume for a moment that what worked for you as a child is not enough religion to sustain you.  Assume that you require more and different input, that you need to know more than that Jesus Loves Me.  This means that you may need to go about the practice of religion more often and differently: seeking new, more intense outlets for religious expression; discovering more than one alternative.  I promise you that you do not need to find another church in order to do that.  Whether Saint Mark’s is your home or some other church is, you will find, in most decent churches, avenues to explore your faith that you have never tried before, all under the same roof.  Maybe you should try one of them?

Can you believe in your search for God that nothing is meaningless?  Can you believe that the gifts God gave you – no matter how varied or limited you regard them to be – are all important to God and useful for the building up of his kingdom?  Do you realize that it takes no skill more advanced than ladling out a bowl of soup, or filling a basket with bread, or stuffing envelopes in the office, or greeting a person at the church door to make a difference in this world?  Do you realize that in fact, the kingdom of God depends on these apparently meaningless acts?

Listen, it is as if a man went on a journey, and has entrusted you with some of his talents, as he has entrusted some to the person next to you.  What are you to do? 

You could begin by taking ten sheets of blank paper and writing at the top of them, “Who Am I?” and then filling in all the blank space on those ten sheets of paper.  At the very least you should ask yourself why God has given you the things God has given you?  What are you supposed to do with all that God has given you?  Who are you?

If you think that Christian stewardship is all about money, that is like concluding that a job search, is all about your resumé.  Well… money may be a crucial, required ingredient to building up God’s kingdom, but it’s not the whole story.

And what I know about the Christian life is that those who live it most deeply, most thoroughly, most fully, are the ones who share their talents and their money most freely.  Look around you, and you will realize this too.

And I also know that you could all empty your bank accounts into Saint Mark’s coffers this very morning, leaving nothing for yourselves, in acts of radical offering, and we would still be no closer to the kingdom of God.  Because if the only talents you give are your green ones, then you might as well have buried them in the dirt.

Who are you?  What color is your talent?

Is it blue as the sky, because your mind is always at work dreaming up good ideas that need a community in which to be realized?

Is it silver as a fine table setting, because you have a gift for hospitality?

Is it black and white because you have a way with words?

Is it four-color because you have a way with images?

Is it brown as the soil because you love to be in the garden?

Is it waxen as a candle because you are ready to serve God at the altar in the beauty of holiness?

Is it white as a chorister’s surplice because you are ready to lift your voice in song?

Is it pink as…  well, of course there are some people here who talents are pink – thanks be to God!

Is it red as blood because you are a healer who is ready to bind up wounds?

Is it black as a chalkboard because you are a teacher who loves to help others grow?

Is it golden as a doubloon because you know that money is actually one of the easiest things to give away?

What color is your talent?  And are your prepared to turn it into something more?  Are you ready to Find Hope?

Christian stewardship is about How To Find Hope, because it encourages us to see new alternatives, especially to the old, tired ways we have been doing things, wasting our energy, forgetting to use our gifts, and throwing our money at things that amount to nothing.

Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, bored, puzzled.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job, or you have a new handicap, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

And maybe you are wondering How To Find Hope.

Maybe you need to make a pledge to dig up the talents you have buried in the dirt and make them grow into something new.

Maybe you need to discover what color is your talent.

Maybe you need to answer this question: Who am I?

Because the truth is that you yourself are the talent that Jesus is begging you not to bury in the dirt.  Your gifts and skills and charms, your weaknesses and quirks, your strengths and abilities, your history and your future, and yes, even your money, which you have gained by using all your talents. 

Everything about you is what Jesus is asking you to offer him, to see the amazing choices you can make in building up his kingdom.  So you can measure every ounce of your value, your worth; you can assess fully the complicated tincture of the color of your talent; so that finally you will know How To Find Hope!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

13 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Consider the Occupation

You may listen to this sermon here:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord.... 

It is darkness, not light;

  as if someone fled from a lion,

  and was met by a bear.  (Amos 5:18-19)

The yard around St. Paul’s Cathedral in London has been occupied for the past several weeks by an encampment of protesters, similar to the camp that has sprung up around City Hall, here in Philadelphia.  The occupiers, who are a grubby group, by and large, have posted signs in London declaring that “Capitalism is crisis,” warning, “Rich beware, your days are numbered,” and of course, proclaiming that “We are the 99%.”  The legitimacy of the protest has been questioned by some because, late at night, thermal imaging suggests that many of the tents are unoccupied, leading some to suspect that the protesters prefer to go home to their warm, comfy beds, than to actually occupy – 24/7 – a segment of the City of London.  I’m sure I don’t know.

I do know that the leadership of Saint Paul’s, working hand-in-glove with the leadership of the City, deemed the protesters to be the greatest threat to the cathedral since the German bombs of World War II, prompting them to close the cathedral for nearly a week, before the embarrassment of such prissy precaution forced the resignation of the Dean and the re-opening of Christopher Wren’s famous landmark, whose neo-classical design I have always thought more suitable for banks than churches, anyway.  (But I digress.)

I have walked among the pitched tents at City Hall, a few blocks from here, and I must say I found the whole thing underwhelming.  There is almost nothing attractive to be found there; it does not lend the appearance of youthful idealism to the city, or even resurgent hippie-ness.  The only person I ran into whom I knew was a homeless woman who has never been on the winning side of her ongoing struggle with drug addiction, sad to say.  There was not much to inspire the heart as I walked through the encampment, but for just that reason, you had to be impressed that people were continuing to stick it out in what is anything but a utopian environment.

I have a theory that may be crazy.  My theory is this: most people want to be rich.  In America we are supposed to take this for granted, but as Christians we seldom talk about it; this is problematic.  In my Bible I keep stumbling upon this question on the lips of Jesus: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?"  This rhetorical question is in line with Jesus' teaching that if you want to gain your life you have to lose it; if you want to be first you need to put yourself last; that you should let someone else take the more prominent seat at a dinner; that to be his disciple you must take up your cross (which is almost never pleasant) and follow him. Although we read this stuff in church, none of this really sounds like a good idea to most of us who profess to be Christians.  To the question, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his life?" Our implied answer is, "I'm not sure, but I'd be very interested in finding out." That is to say, I would rather be rich than follow your teachings, O Lord of the Universe.

So my theory is that most people want to be rich, or at least they think they want to be rich.  In America you can get fabulously, stinking, obscenely rich, and, what's more, you can make sure everyone knows how rich you are, which is part of the benefit of being rich.

I sometimes find myself wondering about the kind of wealth that has been amassed by certain people in this country.  I mean, after a few billion, what's the point, I'd say, in my warped way.   Until I remember that people have a thirst for power as well as money, and in our world money = power.  So even though you can't really do much more with, say, $10 billion than you could with, say, $5 billion, if you have $10 billion you are de facto twice as powerful as some schlub with only $5 billion, which, if you are in Russia, or China, or maybe even America, is important, because, well, it's better to be powerful than weak.

(I will not introduce here St. Paul's astounding revelation from the voice of Christ that his (ie Christ's) power is made perfect in weakness, because most Christians prefer to ignore this mysterious and counter-intuitive teaching, so why shouldn't I?)

Back when we had stunted imaginations, so many Americans thought the best they could do in the way of riches was to, say, own a house with a dishwasher, and a second car, and not be embarrassed by the way your kid looked in the clothes you dressed him or her in to go to school. Let's put this in shorthand - most people's imagination of richness extended only so far as being better off than their (very-likely immigrant) parents, and maybe not getting killed in a war (that would be good too, a sort of bonus, but that’s another sermon).

But time marches on and does its amazing thing. Here are some of the things time did in America.  Time watched the quality of public education (which had been a key to accomplishing the aforementioned goals of prosperity) decline dramatically, especially in urban areas; time watched manufacturing in America disappear; time watched saving in America turn into borrowing in America.

And time watched the so-called wisdom of the so-called markets decide that it was wise to create markets in which you didn't have to do anything but come up with new and convoluted ideas of how to get money to make money on its own, on paper, without the hassle of actually, like, making or doing or producing and selling something. This seemed like an especially good idea to people's whose bonuses (on which they got taxed at a lower rate than their much smaller salary) would be, shall we say, astronomically big at the end of the year, as long as paper kept making money, on paper. Yippee!

Now, what could be better than sitting back and getting rich because some of my money, on paper, made me some more money, on paper?  If compensation tells you anything, almost nothing could be better than this - not healing the sick, not teaching your kids how to read, not even defending you in court. The huge rise in financiers' compensation is a direct reflection of how much we, as a society, value this alchemy - the ability to make money with money on paper - more than we value nearly any other skill.

Remember, after all, most people want to be rich, want to "gain the whole world."  And we have created this society in which we put on display anyone who is able to get rich - we call this celebrity, which is no longer confined to movie stars, now it's also ballplayers (even if they don't win) and talk show hosts, and, lottery winners, and their counterparts: reality show stars, which is really just winning another kind of lottery.  The ne plus ultra, of this cultural lottery is, of course, winning American Idol, which allows you to become rich and famous in the span of one short TV season - yippee!  This is what we want to be: American Idols: rich and famous - fast!

Now, we know that some people work hard to get pretty rich, but we also know that some people just get lucky (sorry Winkelvoss twins, some people don’t). This is why I know what an IPO is - because implanted in my mind is the distant notion that I (who have no business ever getting involved in an IPO) could get rich if only I was in early on the right Initial Public Offering of stock.

All this is to say that we have decided that not only is there nothing wrong with being fabulously rich (sorry, French revolutionaries, you can keep your liberté, egalité and fraternité), we have decided that democracy rightly leads to the possibility that anyone at all has the right to do what they want in the pursuit of wealth; that, in fact, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are only second-rate stand-ins for money.

Put it another way, we actually believe that money does buy happiness, and we are looking for some serious happiness therapy.

Put it another way: most of us would very much like to know what it would profit us to gain the whole world, please, but with as little effort and in as little time as possible.

Now, because of this not-so-latent desire to be rich, and the expectation that it is somehow reasonable to think that I could be fabulously rich without being born to money, working especially hard, or selling all my organs, I have taken my pitchfork out of the garage and buried it deep in the backyard somewhere.  It's true that once my forebears would have grabbed their pitchforks and stormed a castle, (or a gated community, or an Upper East Side town house, or Bryn Mawr) to demand, say, a honest day's pay for an honest day's work, to see to it that a sick child got decent medical treatment, or to defend the small plot of land they had to till in order to harvest enough tubers to get through the winter.  But no one wants an American Idol with a menacing pitchfork in his hand, so many of us have buried those implements of outrage in the backyard.

Meanwhile, we are distracted by the shiny things we can easily afford at Wal-Mart despite that fact that our wages have not increased meaningfully in 30 years.  We don't care, we’re waiting for the IPO, or the lottery, or American Idol!  And while we wait we have a big-screen TVs!  And the most wonderful processed foods!  Life may not be perfect but our needs are met almost as quickly as we are told what they are!

By now you surely think I am crazy, that I have lost it.  But we are living in a nation in which I hear people vociferously arguing against their best interests all the time, in which people foolishly think that corporations, in the end, will represent the best interests of the people, but the government, in the end, can't possibly be interested in the best interests of the people.  And this, in the city where the entire bold and beautiful idea of American democratic government was hatched!  But somehow we have been convinced by the narrative that the marketplace cares about our well-being.  Maybe because of how much I love my iPhone, which seems to be meeting my needs so beautifully, as long as my needs are not, say, nutrition or healthcare or education.

And so, although every indication around us shows that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle is a lot further away from the top than it used to be, but not so far away from the bottom, we live in a society where people who hope to be rich deride the grubby people who may or may not be sleeping in their tents as they wage a protest against this widening gap between those have and those who have not.

But I still wonder if there is wisdom in the ancient question that Jesus asked: "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but forfeit his life?"  It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I suspect there are a whole lot of people trying to discover the answer, or at the very least wishing they could.

Which is why the prophet Amos warned that the day of Lord might not be so pleasant, as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear, which is, I suspect, how the leaders of St. Paul’s Cathedral felt when they realized what they’d done by closing their doors, and seeking ways to evict the protesters.  It has been deeply gratifying to read in the papers, how the tide has shifted at St. Paul’s in London; to see the church remember that power and wealth have no currency in the kingdom of God, where justice will some day roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.  And to recognize that dis-organized, inarticulate, grubby, sometimes misguided, and perhaps even inclined-to-sleep-in-their-own-beds-at-home as the Occupy protesters may be, they are a reminder that our secret longings to be rich will not prevail against God’s desire for justice and righteousness – which have most often been at enmity with the amassing of great wealth.

And the real question for the church is this: when we encounter the possibility that justice is beginning to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream, are we willing to get wet?  Or will we head for higher ground so we can keep our money dry?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

It Gets Better

In September of 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, made a short film and posted it on the internet. The video isn’t particularly beautiful or well-produced; it’s just a head-on, somewhat grainy shot of the couple sitting in a booth in a noisy restaurant. But this little home movie started a revolution. In the video, Dan and Terry talk about growing up as gay men, about how excruciating it was to be bullied, and beat up by their school peers, about how difficult it was to be rejected by their families. Then they talk about their lives now –about how they found each other, how they found acceptance from each other’s families, how they found a beautiful son to adopt as their own, how they found themselves living lives that were and are full of love. It is a heartening story. But the truly revolutionary thing about all this is not what they were talking about, but who they were talking to. Dan and Terry made this video specifically for people they had never met – young people in the GLBT community, so many of whom find themselves depressed or even suicidal because of constant and merciless ridicule and abuse. Dan and Terry made their video to offer hope to these teens; they wanted to tell these young people – indeed, all people – that life will not always be so hard, that they can and will find support and love, that it gets better. And their simple video was so powerful that other people wanted to reach out and make their own, and soon Dan and Terry had so many videos that they had to start hosting them on their own website – and a movement was born.

If you haven’t been to the “It Gets Better” website, I invite you (grown-ups) to check it out. There are thousands of videos there from people all over the world, each with the same message – that no matter what you are suffering right now, no matter why you’re being excluded or teased or tormented, it gets better. Some of the people in the videos are gay, some straight, some are celebrities, politicians, or religious leaders. President Obama made a video, as did Bishop Gene Robinson, as did General Motors and the Phillies and even Kermit the Frog, who describes with detailed vulnerability the moment he finally realized that he was green. 

But the most powerful videos, I think, are the ones created by ordinary folks. These are people who just set up a video camera at home and talked about their lives – moments of struggle, moments of grace, moments when they thought they could no longer go on, and then the moments that made them grateful that they had decided to live. There is rarely anything particularly new or earthshattering in these videos. The people in them do not tell you how things are going to get better, and they certainly don’t say that things won’t sometimes get worse. They are just people, sitting down and telling their stories, painting a picture of the world as it can be, sharing a vision of the world as it should be. They smile, they laugh, and they offer hope and reassurance that the current moment is not the end of the story. Again and again they say, it gets better.

In the 5^th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus sits down in front of his disciples and tells a story. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. With these powerfully comforting words, Jesus paints a picture of the world as it will be, a vision of the kingdom of God as it truly is. He offers hope and reassurance to all of his followers that no matter what they might be suffering right now, no matter how difficult things may be, it will not always be thus. Follow him; it gets better. The kingdom of heaven awaits them, where they will be richly rewarded.

But notice that Jesus does not tell his followers that they will be blessed. You will be blessed when you’re hungry because you will be filled. You will – eventually – be blessed when you show mercy or make peace. No, for Jesus and his followers, the blessing happens now. Jesus’ disciples are blessed now, in the present, why? Because they know what the future looks like. They have seen Christ’s vision of the kingdom of heaven, where all are comforted and fed and called children of God, and just seeing this vision, just hearing this story, blesses them now. They see what is to come and so they know that the present moment is not the end of the story. Jesus’ mountaintop proclamations change the disciples’ lives now; they are already blessed, because they know that it gets better.

Telling the story of the future matters. Bearing witness to the promise that it gets better is one of the greatest gifts that we human beings can give one another. And this is not only because that witness reassures us that our lives will be better in that far-off, great gettin’-up mornin’, not only because the hope of future happiness helps us to suffer through our lives in a grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it kind of way, but because the gift of that promise blesses us now. Dan Savage knows that. He knows that hearing stories of hope can change lives now. And Jesus, of course, knows that too. The great difference is, of course, that Jesus can tell us how things are going to get better. Through his own incarnation, death, and resurrection, Jesus shows us the way. All we need do is look. Jesus makes things better, no matter who we are, no matter how we’ve suffered, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how dark the world might seem. It all gets better, because Christ makes it so.

This is what we celebrate here on this All Saints’ Day – that there is more to this life than simply the here and now. This great Feast of the Church reminds us again of what our future looks like in the kingdom of God. In this feast, we recollect all of the Saints who have come before, all of those holy women and men who have been through the great gift and ordeal of life. We recall their stories of rejoicing and suffering and loving and enduring. And we reaffirm that all of those Saints still are, that they now sit before the throne of God, worshipping him day and night, that they hunger no more and thirst no more, and that God has wiped away every tear from their eyes. And in this remembering, in this recollection, in this recalling and reaffirmation, we recognize that we are all made one, past, present, and future, Saints in heaven and on earth, “knit together into the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.” Thank God for the gift of this story, for the hopeful witness of the Saints. Thank God that we know their stories and that in those stories we hear the Saints saying to us again and again, It gets better.        

But thanking God is not enough. Being grateful is not enough. Because you and I also have a story to tell. We have a picture to paint, a vision to share that the world desperately needs to hear. Our story is the greatest gift that we can offer to another human being. For we know what glories the future holds – the hungry will be fed, the dead will be raised, the meek will inherit the earth, and there will be peace like a river. We lift up our voices to heaven and sing that lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia. What better gift could we offer to the world than the chance to know the wonders of the kingdom of heaven, to sing as one with those who shine in glory, to see this great vision glorious. So celebrate with us – sing these hymns and come to the altar and embrace this hope and be changed…now. And then sit down and share this story with someone else. Tell them of your life, tell them of your hope, tell them how tonight we sing with joy because we know that not only will it get better, it already is.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

1 November 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Under the Mask

You may listen to this sermon here:

When I was a very little girl, my parents bought me a Cinderella costume for Halloween. I loved Cinderella; she was (and still is) my favorite Disney princess. I remember sitting and staring at the picture on the box – Cinderella on the night of the ball, standing in a shimmering silvery-blue gown with satin opera gloves, her hair swept up in an elegant twist and held in place with a wide black ribbon. I couldn’t wait to slide those long gloves up over my elbows and to feel the swing of that wondrously full, silky-smooth skirt. I can remember wondering how this box was going to help my hair to look like that, but I was sure that once it was opened, all would be made clear.

But this was the 1970’s, and if you were around in the 70’s, you know what’s coming next. When I opened the box, I found not a beautiful ball gown with reams of luxurious fabric – I found a plastic sheath with a picture of Cinderella printed on the front. And there was no stylish Cinderella up-do – there was a plastic mask with a black band and yellow hair painted on the top. You know those masks – the ones with the elastic band that always snapped and popped you in the ear, the masks that made it hard to breathe and made your face so hot you had to take them off halfway through your trick-or-treating. So, sadly, I was not the picture of elegance I had hoped to be that year; I just walked around in my plastic tube, my face red and sweaty behind that smiling Cinderella mask.

This, of course, is the time of year for masks of all kinds. Some of them are bejeweled and beautiful, some of them are gritty and realistic, but most of them are just frightening. My silly plastic Cinderella face notwithstanding, most Halloween masks are intended to scare the pants off of our friends and neighbors. Certainly the most famous Halloween masks are the most terrifying ones – the melting spectre masks from the movie Scream, the ghostly white guise of Michael Myers, Jason’s hockey mask, even the sinister smile of Guy Fawkes in V for Vendetta. And then, of course, there is the most disturbing of all mask scenes, from the latest Batman movie, when the late Heath Ledger as the Joker takes off his creepy clown mask to reveal…his own creepy clown face. In his case, the mask didn’t conceal anything, except for the fact that the dark mask and the dark face were exactly the same.

I wonder if you noticed the dark masks in today’s Gospel reading.  They aren’t the masks of monsters or villains, but they are menacing all the same. They are easier to spot in the verses that immediately follow today’s reading, where Jesus proclaims woe to the Pharisees, woe to those who do not do as they say, woe to the hypocrites. Here are the dark masks, the masks of the hypocrites. The Greek word hypocrite that Jesus speaks here was a term used primarily to describe masked stage actors; it comes from two Greek roots that together mean, essentially, under-distinguished or less-than-sorted. A hypocrite was one whose identity was difficult to distinguish because of intentional deception. In the case of these ancient Greek actors, of course, the deception was harmless, a part of the evening’s entertainment, and the more complete the deception, the better.

But the Pharisees’ deception is different; the Pharisees’ masks are real trickery, hidden and harmful. Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites because while they say the right things, they do not do the right things. They do not act as they teach; they do not practice what they preach. They may preach the good news of binding up the brokenhearted and proclaiming liberty to the captives, but then they “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear” and lay the bruising weight of an over-scrupulous legalism upon the shoulders of their followers. They may teach that the law of the Lord is one that is written in the heart, but then they make the fringes of their prayer shawls long and their prayer ostentatious. And the Pharisees may say, “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God,” but then they walk right up to the head of the table, to the seats of honor in the synagogue, trying to draw as many admiring looks as possible along the way. They say one thing and do another; they are hypocrites. They wear the mask of piety, the mask of humility, the mask of faithful, God-loving, commandment-following Jews, but under that mask their faces are red and sweating with the effort of trying to inhale as much stuff, as many accolades, as they possibly can. They wear masks as they preach the word of God, which is truly terrifying.

What is even more terrifying is the thought that we might do the same thing. There is, as I’m sure you know, ample evidence that the world out there thinks that this is exactly what we Christians do. For example, in 2007, the Barna group conducted a survey of young people, aged 16–29, about their perceptions of Christianity in America. The results were staggering. Within the portion of the survey group who self-identified as non-Christian, 85% stated that they perceived Christians as being fundamentally hypocritical. 85%. Well, but those are non-Christians, we say, the number must be different among believers. It is, it’s lower – only 50%. So 85% of young people who aren’t Christian think we’re hypocrites, and fully half of young people who are Christian still think we’re hypocrites…and I know that this survey is four years old, and I know that survey data can be manipulated, but look around you. There are thousands of 16-29 year-olds in Philadelphia. Where are they? Some of you are here, and I thank God for you as I do for all of you Gen-Xers and Boomers and others. But there is space in our pews, there is room in our budget for more Christians here; we need people from all of these generations at St. Mark’s as much as they need the Gospel that we proclaim. But if this survey is even close in showing us the depth of the world’s spiritual malaise and cynicism about Christianity, how do we convince that world that we’re for real? If those who are not here yet see us as hypocrites, if all that they see are masks, how do we show them who we really are?

I think that there is only really one way to do this, and it isn’t to try to convince them – or, frankly, to convince ourselves – that we don’t have masks on at all. I don’t think it does much good to say to those who are not here yet, “Hey, come on in, we look exactly like you!” Because we don’t. I mean, look at us. We wear instruments of Roman torture around our necks, we kneel and bow and genuflect and sing in a culture that sees none of that as particularly normal, we appear to the world as a community shaped not by what we know or how much we have but by who we love. Some of us even wear long fringes. We do not look like the world. We do wear a kind of mask, we do put on a Christian identity here in our liturgy, in our prayers, when we recite the creeds, when we renew our baptismal vows, when we take, eat and drink this all of you. But these are not the dark masks of the hypocrite. They are not masks intended to deceive or to conceal.  Because unlike the Pharisees, we not only look different, we are different. What we have to do, what we must do, is show the world that our masks and our faces look exactly the same.

So then here is the question for Saint Mark’s today – if we were to take off our masks, what would we look like underneath? For example, if we were to take off the bejeweled, beautiful mask of our liturgy, would we still look the same? When we leave this sacred space, do we carry with us a deep honor and reverence for the stuff of the world around us, do we still bow our heads before the holy in our ordinary and genuflect before Christ in each other? Or if we were to take off the gritty, realistic mask of our service in this place and around the world, would we still look the same? When we leave the soup bowl or the food cupboard or St. James the Less, do we still live generously in the rest of our lives, giving of our time, our money, our prayers – are we still dedicated to the kind of concern and advocacy for those who carry heavy burdens in this world? Beneath the masks of our liturgy, our service, our prayer, our adoration, our giving, our learning, do we look the same? Do we let these faces of Christianity shape what we look like on the inside?

This is our labor and toil, brothers and sisters – this is our ministry – to let the masks of our faith so shape who we are within that we can live a life worthy of God, and represent Christ to the world. This is what will bring those who are searching for God through our doors; this is what Christ passionately desires of us – that we go and do as we say here, that we go and practice what we preach here, that our faces shine with the same light of truth that is engraved upon our hearts.  It is, of course, only by the gift of God that we can do this, and so we pray in the words of our last hymn that Christ will “make thy Church, dear Savior, a lamp of purest gold, to bear before the nations thy true light as of old; O teach thy wandering pilgrims by this their path to trace, till, clouds and darkness ended, they see thee face to face.”

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

30 October 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

…Show me the coin used for the tax….

I own a copy of a big book entitled  The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,173 Thoughts on the Business of Life.  Its headings run from A-Ability to Z-Zeal, and include under G- God and under T-Taxes. There are, in fact, 94 quotations about God and 70 quotations about taxes. The numerical superiority of the headings under God is reassuring and we can rest easy knowing that in the book God is ahead of taxes.  

The Forbes Book is meant to be Chamber of Commerce staple so  there is a lot of humor and light heartedness in the quotations.  For example, here’s one of the quotations on taxes, from G.K. Chesterton: “A citizen can hardly distinguish  between a tax and a fine, except that a fine is generally much lighter.” And here’s a quotation on God from Anonymous: “ God will provide the victuals, but He will not cook the dinner.  There are other equally light-hearted  and delightful quotations . For the most part, this massive collection of “business quotations” is an easy going book for an easy going audience. It is not a book with much hint of “gloom and doom” nor does it offer much of a reality check on every-day life as it really is.

The Forbes Book is not the kind of book Jesus and his disciples would pick up, much less read through, but we can imagine the Pharisees and Herodians might take some delight in it.  This may be because our book has nothing to offer by way of explanation and understanding of hard facts, for example, that our city, Philadelphia, “the birthplace of American democracy,” is the poorest big city in the United States  with 27% of its population including more than a third of its children, living below the poverty line. [46.2 million nationally] Nor will our treasury of delightful sayings help us explain and understand the appalling disparity between the rich and the poor in our country and the fact that, year- by-year, proportionally fewer people control  more and more of the country’s  wealth. 

So we come to this morning’s Gospel, and the tension between giving to God what is God’s and giving to the emperor what is the emperor’s.  We know the story here:  the Pharisees and Herodians are determined to trick Jesus, who is proving to be quite a nuisance, into incriminating himself so that they can get him arrested and out of the way . After their two-faced flattery of Him, the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. For us, this is a silly question: of course it is lawful—and required and right—to support the emperor—our government—because this is a legitimate way to care for each other and to support the welfare and social good of the entire community.  But for people under Mosaic Law, the question was a serious—and tricky—one.  

Jesus responds by acknowledging the trickery at hand and calls the Pharisees and Herodians hypocrites. To be called hypocrites by Jesus is not something anyone would wish for because, for Jesus, hypocrisy may be one of the worst transgressions. Hypocrisy is distortion and denial and dishonesty, all of which the Pharisees and Herodians are guilty of, as are we if we are not mindful of our Christian covenant.  The difference between us and the Pharisees and Herodians is that we truly know Jesus and that is why we are Christians and why we practice the Faith.  To be who and what we say we are means that we practice obedience as much as we practice generosity, compassion, justice, and fairness in everything that we do. Unlike those people trying to trick Jesus in order to destroy Him, we proclaim Jesus and practice His ways. Thus, we have chosen to resist poverty, hunger, and  injustice in the inequitable distribution of wealth. As mixed-up as some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters all over the country might seem, they could be seen as  expressing some of our own Christian sensibilities.

As Christians, we know there is something terribly wrong in our country, as the facts about Philadelphia as the poorest big city in America affirm.   We all have our own stories of adversity and crisis, yes. But we know from the Gospel, Jesus’s own story, that this is what is means to be alive and human.  Yet, as Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel , we ARE in fact responsible for one another through what we give to the Emperor and that not to pay the emperor can be to turn our backs on what we give to God.  

Unlike the Pharisees and Herodians, we don’t need to say how amazed we are at Jesus’s presence, justice,  compassion, wisdom  and goodness. We know all this and it is the Good News of the Gospel. But what is the Good News is often the Hard News of the Gospel. How do we manage this tension? Let’s try this:  what if each of us wanted  to add a new quotation to The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, one that included God, taxes, generosity, compassion, justice, and Faith?  Here’s my suggestion and it comes from a “comedian,” of all people, Stephen Colbert. It’s a zinger so get ready:  

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Amen.   

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

For 9:00am High Mass

Sunday, October 16, 2011 – Pentecost  18/Proper 24

What's in your wallet?

Imagine, just for a moment, that you’re a Pharisee. You probably don’t want to imagine that you’re a Pharisee; you’d probably rather imagine that you’re St. Peter or the Centurion or Spartacus – but humor me for a moment.  You’re a Pharisee.  You are a lay leader in your religious community. You love the Torah and the beautiful logic of the law that it lays down for you.  You live a simple life; you tithe, faithfully observe the Sabbath, try to keep your body and soul pure and holy.  You hold yourself apart from the temple priests and the Sadducees, partially because you disagree with them on practices and doctrine, but mostly because you like to hold yourself apart.  You see it as your task, your calling, to lead your community into a new understanding of themselves as faithful, practicing, holy Jews. You teach and preach and live a life of righteousness under the law.

Into your life comes a man named Jesus. You first heard about him from John the Baptist, that desert zealot who kept calling you and your friends a brood of vipers. At first, you liked Jesus a lot – certainly more than his hairy, locust-eating cousin. Jesus said some good things, and he at least he wasn’t calling you names. He spoke about fulfilling the law, about ushering in the kingdom of God; he taught and healed and preached just like you wanted to. But then you began to notice that he didn’t always act just like you wanted to. He and his disciples didn’t follow every single letter of the law, especially about Sabbath practices. He liked to hang out with a rather unseemly crowd and let scandalous women weep all over his feet. You yourself asked Jesus for a sign, and he refused you.  And just this past week, after he rode into Jerusalem with fanatics screaming Hosanna and strewing palm fronds at his feet, he stormed into the temple and made a royal mess of the money changing tables and told parable after parable about how you and your Pharisee friends – fellow reformers, mind you – are about to have the kingdom taken away from you because he thinks you wear the false masks of hypocrites. He’s even started calling you – guess what? – a brood of vipers.

And so one day you look at your own reflection in the waters of the mikvah and you say enough is enough; no more following him around asking stupid questions and hoping that he’ll say what you want him to. It’s time to take action, time to out this Jesus as the heretic he is, to show the people that he is not their Messiah. It’s time to get him in some serious trouble. But you can’t really do this on your own. After all, you’ve a righteous, law-abiding guy; you need help from some tougher players. So you look over your shoulder, cross the tracks, and knock on the door of the local Herodian gang. Now the Herodians are not fans of yours – they’re establishment guys, fans of Rome, power players in the political scene. They may not particularly like you, but they really don’t like Jesus, and they’re happy to help you set him up.

And so you all put your heads together and whip up the perfect impossible situation. You’re going to ask Jesus whether or not you should pay the census tax, a tax mercilessly imposed by Rome, a tax that the Israelites absolutely hate. If he says yes, the Israelites will hate him too; if he says no, he sets himself up directly as a dangerous enemy of the Roman state. Either way, you win. And just to add to the pressure, you’re going to ask him this question together – you, the Pharisee, who despises the census tax, and your new allies, the Herodians, who want nothing more than to continue to placate the Roman authorities who are the primary source of their power. And you’re going to pose this question right in the temple, right in front of God and everybody. Your plan is to flatter him a bit, soften him up, and then spring the trap and watch him squirm.

And so imagine that you, the Pharisee, meet up with Jesus on the temple mount. “O great and powerful Rabbi, answer a simple question for us – do you think we should pay this tax to Caesar, or not?” And you sit back and wait for the squirming to begin. You wait for Jesus to start shuffling his feet and writing in the dirt and avoiding your eye like a bad student who didn’t memorize his Torah portion for the day. You begin to imagine his disgrace, his downfall, you can almost see his disciples turning and walking away, his followers turning to you, giving themselves over to following the law as you see it, worshipping God as you think they should, listening to you.

But here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t squirm at all. He looks you right in the eye and calls you out. “Why are you trying to set me up? I see that mask you have on, you know. Show me the coin, and I’ll tell you what to do with it.” And without thinking you reach deep into your pocket, and pull out a small silver denarius – and you look at this coin, with its image of Caesar’s arrogant, self-righteous head, with its inscription that celebrates his power and even his divinity – and you suddenly realize where you are. You’re standing on the temple mount, holding an idolatrous, sacrilegious piece of mammon in your sweaty hands. You hear Jesus’ voice like it’s coming from very far away, “Let Caesar have his own stupid coin; but give God, whose most holy place you are standing in right now, all of the things that are His.” And you, the righteous Pharisee, can’t quite believe what it is that you’re doing. You’re standing there aligned with people you don’t like, hearing words that you already know are true, words that you should be telling the people yourself. And you’re stuck holding this stupid coin, trapped and squirming.

And the moral of the story is…? It could be: don’t try to set up Jesus. This is never a particularly good idea. But it could also be this: you can tell a lot about a person by what she carries around in her pockets. These Pharisees had gotten themselves so tied up in knots by their own fear and condemnation, so disconnected from the holiness of their calling, that they were walking around with the desolating sacrilege in their pockets without even realizing it. They were carrying around an image of worldly concerns, of mortal power, the very power that they were seeking for themselves even as they condemned it with their words and overly-scrupulous actions. They had somehow bought Rome’s argument – that you needed this coin to be safe and successful in the world – and so they had actually answered their own question. Should we pay taxes to Rome? I guess so, if you can’t even leave the house without Rome right there in your pocket.

A wise man once said that you can tell what kind of discipleship a person is living by looking at his checkbook. But since no one uses checks anymore, I think we could update that saying to this: you can tell a lot about a person by what he carries around in his wallet.  And yes, I do mean literally. What you have in your pocket right now says something about you. Your keys – how many, and to what? Your smartphone, your wallet, with how many credit cards? Membership cards, pictures of your family. Cash. Bus tokens. A clip of your beloved’s hair. A hand-written prayer. A cross. An icon. A pledge card. A mint. Some of the stuff in our pockets might be just fine – good and meet and right so to have. But some of it might be like that damning denarius. Some of the things that we carry around with us in our pockets – literal or metaphorical – might just cause us to shuffle around a bit if we had to pull them out here in this holiest of houses, in front of God and everybody.

Now as squirmy as all of this might make us, there is some good news here.  We aren’t alone in all of this. It seems to be a part of the human condition to collect junk in our pockets like so many bad apps on our iPhones. And Jesus doesn’t condemn us for it – he didn’t condemn the Pharisee for it, and he doesn’t condemn us. He just asks us to figure out what to do with all of it. He asks us to take it out, look at it, evaluate it, and decide if it’s something that belongs to the world or something that belongs to God.  Is it something we offer as a grateful gift to God, or is it something that we just need to get out of our pockets because it probably isn’t very good for us anyway? The trouble is that Jesus didn’t really say how to do that, how to categorize these things, our stuff. And whether you are a part of the richest of the rich 1% or the rest of us 99%, figuring this out is a real challenge. Which things are Caesar’s? Which things are God’s? The truth is that Jesus isn’t willing to give us a hard and fast rule about how we decide which is which. He is, after all, not a Pharisee. He is Jesus, the Christ, the fulfillment of the living law, and he is not willing to be trapped by our own anxieties and insecurities. But he is willing to stand with us, to look at each and every thing that we pull out of our pocket, to help us decide where it belongs – what we are to do with it, how it fits into our lives as disciples. So go ahead, take a look. What’s in your wallet? And what does that say about you? And, more importantly, what are you going to say about it?

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

16 October 2011

St. Mark's, Philadelphia

Within the Ribbons

How refreshing it is to peruse Emily Post’s 1922 guide to proper Etiquette.  Here we learn that:

‘Invitations to a private ball, no matter whether the ball is to be given in a private house, or whether the hostess has engaged an entire floor of the biggest hotel in the world, announce merely that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody will be “At Home,” and the word “dancing” is added almost as though it were an afterthought in the lower left corner, the words “At Home” being slightly larger than those of the rest of the invitation.’

Oh, how delicious!

In the section on wedding invitations, this marvelous guide also provides instructions for what is called “The Train Card,” which, we are instructed, is to be used “if the wedding is in the country.”  It reads:

“A special train will leave Grand Central Station at 12:45 pm, arriving at Ridgefield at 2:45, pm,” etc.

Oh, how scrumptious!

Not only does Mrs. Post provide the proper form for wedding invitations of many variants, she also informs her readers of the proper form of acceptance and regret, with the interesting note that “an invitation to the church only requires no answer whatever.”  After all, who cares if you come to the church, when it’s the reception that costs all the money!

Long ago I fell afoul of Emily Post’s guidelines for wedding invitations and all manner of other things.  And I have recently earned a reputation for the serial committal of a new kind of faux pas: when in receipt of an e-vite invitation, I have more than once clicked the response that says, “Maybe,” and I have been mocked and derided by my friends for this weak and uncomplimentary response to invitations.

It turns out that the whole notion of allowing a “Maybe” response to an e-vite invitation is under attack by the Internet mavens.  Here’s what one blogger wrote:

‘As data, “maybe” is… useless…

‘Maybe is a magnet for neuroses. It salves guilt complexes and incites passive-aggressive avoidance behaviors.

‘“Maybe” sometimes means maybe, but it can also mean, “I’m not coming but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.” Or even, “I plan to come but I reserve the right to change my mind at the last minute if something better comes along.” Some people even use maybe to mean, “I won’t make dinner but I’ll come for dessert.”

‘When you invite twelve people to a restaurant dinner via a web service, at least four will say maybe. Do you reserve a table for twelve? When eight show up and range themselves at opposite ends of the table (“because other people might be joining us”) you have an awkward table filled with gaps. The empty seats haunt the meal, suggesting social failure.

‘But if you call the restaurant at the last minute to change the reservation to eight, two of the maybes will show up, like ants at a picnic. They’ll have nowhere to sit, and they’ll blame you. (“I told you I might come.”)

‘How can you know what “maybe” means?  … you can’t. All you can do is phone people and ask whether they’re leaning toward coming or not….  If they’re the passive-aggressive type, they will continue to evade the snare of commitment. “I’m probably coming,” they’ll say.’·

It is this failure to commit that makes the “Maybe” response so infuriating.  And if it’s infuriating to respond “Maybe” to an invitation to a friend’s dinner, what does it say to God if our response to his invitation to be a part of the kingdom of heaven is a tepid “Maybe”?

If Jesus had had a blog he might have posted on it today’s parable of the king who gave a wedding banquet that none of those invited decided to come to.  He might even have linked to the blogger I just mentioned, finding resonance with his rant against the “Maybe.”

“I have swung open the gates of the kingdom of heaven to you,” Jesus might say, “and your answer to me is that you plan to come but you reserve the right to change your mind at the last minute if something better comes along?!?!

“I have paved the way of righteousness for you and you want me to know that you can’t make it to dinner, but you might be there for dessert?!?!”

“I have prepared a table for you, I have anointed your heads with oil, your cups overflow, and still you are not coming, but you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

Imagine what it would have been like if Jesus had given his disciples instructions to prepare an upper room for the Passover and reminded them to be there well before sundown, and they’d said to him, “Maybe we’ll come.”

Imagine that later in this Mass, after we have prepared the sacred vessels, chanted the sacred chants, we have invoked the Holy Spirit to come down, repeated Jesus’ own holy words, offered the Bread and the Wine… imagine that I hold up the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood for all to see.   “Behold,” I say, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.  Happy are we who are called to his supper.”

And you look lazily up from you pews, and reply, “Maybe.”

The sad truth is that the world and the church are full of Maybes and probably always have been.

Maybes hear the invitation to God’s kingdom and do not take it seriously.

Maybes hear the call to work in God’s vineyard, and look for something else to do.

Maybes hear the promise of God’s love and suspect that there is something better to be had in the world.

Maybes see the shadow of Christ’s cross and think that it doesn’t mean very much.

Maybes can recognize a hymn tune but can’t, or simply won’t, sing the words.

Maybes tread the ground near God’s Sacraments but never look up to see them.

Imagine that I asked the parents and godparents of the child who is to be baptized today the questions I will ask them in just a few minutes:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Maybe.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

Maybe.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

Maybe.

Do you turn to Christ and accept him as your Savior?

Maybe.

Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t; it’s hard to say.  It’s hard to put my whole trust in God’s grace and love.  It’s hard to follow and obey him as my Lord.  So maybe I will, but maybe I won’t.

And what about the rest of us?  At every baptism, we are asked to give a clear answer to some important questions:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you sin, repent and return to the Lord?

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Now, it may be that “Maybe” is, in fact, an honest answer to these questions.  But it is not the right answer.  And so the church gives us a better option, since merely saying “Yes, I will” is hard to believe.

“I will, with God’s help” is a lot more plausible.  It allows for the frank honesty that following through with these promises is hard to do, but that with God’s help it’s worth a try!

If you listened carefully to the Gospel this morning, you might be struggling with the details.  What is going on here?  A king gives a wedding banquet but no one comes?  And some of the invitees kill the slaves who bring the invitations?  So the king sends troops to avenge their deaths?  Then people are gathered up from the streets to come to the party, except that one guy, who can’t possibly have been planning on being at a ball, isn’t dressed properly and so is bound hand and foot and thrown into outer darkness?  What is going on here?!?!?

What we are seeing is the collision of two worlds.  It is as though the invitation to the wedding banquet was prepared with all the old world consideration of Emily Post.  The wording was just so, asking for the “honor of your presence,” not merely the “pleasure of your company,” and  “honour” was spelled the old-fashioned way, with a ‘u,’ as Mrs. Post instructs it must be.  The size of the invitation is 5 1/8 inches wide by 7 3/8 inches deep, precisely.  The invitations have been engraved.  Maybe even a special train has been arranged to leave 30^th Street Station.

And it is as though in the face of all this precision, all this effort, we have replied with an email that says with a shrug, “Maybe.”

Jesus is trying to convey the inadequacy of such a response to an invitation of this sort.  Jesus is trying to get past the maybes of our lives and to get us to Yes!  He is trying to show us how sad and boring it is to meet his invitation with a maybe, how much it misses the point to be constantly on the lookout for a better party.  And in his parable, he is asking us what he needs to do to convince us that the kingdom of heaven is worth it.  “Do I have to bind you hand and foot and threaten to toss you into outer darkness?!?”

Maybe….

Returning to Emily Post’s Etiquette; one of the more charming and antiquated bits of guidance in the weddings section of the book is the instruction about reserved seats in church.  The mothers of bride and groom are instructed how to write out cards if specific pews are reserved for specific people.  But, we are told, “a card for the reserved enclosure but no especial pew is often inscribed “Within the Ribbons.”

I think this is a marvelous turn of phrase: Within the Ribbons.  Who wouldn’t want to be within the ribbons, whatever that might mean.  It sounds lovely without being restrictive, special without being snooty, set apart without being inaccessible.  Within the Ribbons.

As I hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as I experience the call of Christ in my own life, and as I try to help you hear it in your lives, I believe that Jesus wants each and every one of his children – every breathing soul and every beating heart – to be “Within the Ribbons.”  He wants us all to be at the banquet of the kingdom of heaven.

And his teaching is the way he tries to get us there, past the maybes into the “Yes” that brings us within the ribbons.

It is as if a king had engaged an entire floor of the biggest hotel in the world, but the invitation, in that old-fashioned, maybe even snobby, way, simply reads “At Home”.

If I received such an invitation, it would be as if two worlds were colliding.  I’d have to look up Emily Post just to know I was being invited to a ball!

But God willing, I would finally understand the importance of the invitation, and I’d be eager to reply.

And of course, I’d be a fool to send a email reply that just said “Maybe.”  I’d be better advised to make sure my formal shoes are comfortable for dancing, which I see the invitation has included, almost as if it is an afterthought.  But dancing there will be, till late into the night.  And that, I trust, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

 9 October 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

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• · www.zeldman.com, 20 June 2007

Brothers

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but he did not go….”  (Matt 21:28-30)

Two brothers always cause a problem in the Bible.  Whenever a story starts with two brothers you can brace yourself for a bumpy ride.  Think of Cain and Abel.  Think of Esau and Jacob.  How about Moses and Aaron – they run into some trouble with each other.  Think of Joseph and all his brothers.  Think of the Prodigal son and his angry brother.  Two brothers are going to cause trouble.

The Bible is like a dollhouse in which two brothers always dwell and can be called upon to act out whatever lesson God has to teach, for which brothers will provide the best illustration.  But the Bible writers knew a secret about dollhouses and brothers: they knew that there is a dollhouse in each of our imaginations, too, where two brothers dwell, who can be called upon at any time.  It doesn’t matter if you had a brother of your own, or not; you don’t even need to have had a sister.

The two brothers in the dollhouse of our imaginations are identical twins, who always dress alike and comb their hair alike, and who deliberately try to confuse their friends, their parents, even you and me.  One of them was born a minute or two earlier than the other, and so is the older brother – a fact he never tires of reminding his identical younger sibling.  Of course the brothers in the dollhouse of our imaginations are rivals for their father’s affection.  One constantly seeks his father’s approval, the other, overcompensating, constantly challenges his father’s authority.  But both want nothing more than their father’s love.  (Sometimes the dollhouse of our imaginations seems like a single-parent household; sometimes Mother is nowhere in sight.)

Of course this biblical, imaginary dollhouse is located on a farm – or to be more precise, by a vineyard.  And of course, as soon as the brothers are old enough they are awakened early in the morning by their father and told to get up and work in the vineyard.  Now the brothers of our imaginations are not stupid.  They know that working in the vineyard is a metaphor with all kinds of possibilities.  But this does not make the hour any less early when their father comes knocking at their door; this does not make them any less sleepy; this does not prevent them from yawning deep yawns and rubbing their eyes in the dark of the bedroom they share in the dollhouse of our imaginations.

As they lie there in the dark, they talk to one another.

“What is this all about,” says one brother to the other, “what kind of metaphor is this?  Is this about the virtue of hard work”

“No,” says the other brother, “I don’t think so.”

“Is it about the harvest being plentiful but the laborers being few?”

“No,” says the other brother, “I don’t think so.”

“Is it about wearing the appropriate attire to a wedding?”

“No,” says the other brother, “it’s too early for a wedding.”

“Is one of us supposed to get up, ask Dad for our share of inheritance, go off and spend it on women and wine and come crawling back months later to test Dad’s love for us?”

“Different story,” says the other brother.

“Is there a wounded man lying beside the road outside that we are supposed to take care of?”

“We’re not Samaritans,” says the other brother.

“So, what gives?”

“I don’t know,” says the other brother, the older brother, “but I’m not getting up.”

A knock comes again at the door, and it opens, letting light in from the dollhouse hallway.  “Let’s go, you two,” says the father, “Up and at ‘em.”

“OK,” says the younger brother, “I’m going.”

“Aww, Dad,” says the older brother, “It’s too early, I’m not getting up, and I’m not working in the vineyard; just try to make me!”

“You realize this is a metaphor, son?” asks the Dad.

The response to which is a couple of groans from beneath a couple of sets of covers, in the sons’ room in the dollhouse of our imaginations.

Lying there in the dark, the younger brother, who generally tried to please his father, and so had assured him that he would go to work in the field, had not meant it when he’d said he’d wake up.  He was feeling self-righteous.  He had recently read the entire Bible from start to finish.  Had his brother done that?  No, he had not!  He had been going to Youth Group meetings every week, when his older brother often chose to stay home.  And he had recently been on a mission trip to some hot and sweaty place where for four whole days he had done good works rather than hang out at the beach, which he’d rather have done.  He could get away with skipping a day’s work in the vineyard, his father would never know.

But the older brother (only a few minutes older, mind you) feeling, I suppose, the weight of responsibility that comes with birth-order, was already regretting his defiance of his father’s direction to get up and work in the vineyard.  And he was musing on the possibilities of the metaphor.  Because he was a twin, he knew, without even asking, that his brother was feeling self-righteous.  His brother had this tendency, after all.  In fact, the older brother had often covered for his younger twin, to keep peace in the dollhouse.  It sometimes irked him that his younger brother got away with so much, but he was his brother, his twin, and he loved him; what could he do?

And besides, the brothers had recently been allowed to start drinking a little wine with dinner – wine that came from the grapes that grew in the vineyard – and both brothers discovered the pleasure of drinking wine (in moderation, of course).  Already they were both developing a palate not only for the depth of flavor from the fruit that grew on their vines, but for the secondary characteristics that came with careful blending of varieties and with aging in the barrels, and then in the bottles.  The younger brother was satisfied with a straightforward merlot, but the older twin was discovering a taste for the subtleties of pinot noir, although it was a much more difficult grape to grow.  It would be good, he began to think, to get out of bed and work in the vineyard, because the fruit of my labor is, quite literally, worth it.

His younger brother, lying there in his dollhouse bed, and being a twin, after all, knew that his slightly older sibling was thinking this way.  He knew how seriously his brother took the responsibility of being first-born.  And he knew how his brother was developing a fondness for the slim rewards (in his opinion) of the difficult-to-tend pinot noir grapes, (whereas merlot vines were so much easier to tend, and their grapes produced a wine that, if less complex of flavor, could nevertheless pack a decent wallop of alcohol).  He also knew that his slightly older twin would eventually get up out of bed and head to work in the vineyard, as their father had asked.  He knew that his older twin would rebel for a moment, but eventually he would take responsibility and do what was asked of him.  The work would get done.  If there was hell to pay later that day, for choosing to sleep in, the younger brother would start to quote the scriptures, drawing on his recent reading of the entire Bible, displaying his impressive ability to cite chapter and verse, particularly choosing those passages that point out that we are saved by grace alone, and not by our works.  He felt smug, as the verses ran through his mind and he rolled over in bed and pulled the covers over his head and heard his brother get out of bed and get dressed.

Now, this being a metaphor, as the brothers well know, the time has more or less come to figure out who is who; to separate the sheep from the goats (just to mix the metaphor), the men from the boys, Republicans from Democrats, the good from the bad and the ugly.  It would be a good time to name names, to assign blame, to point fingers.  The joy about standing in the pulpit is that one gets to feel self-righteous about this, as one pulls the covers back from the metaphor and reveals who is who; matches an identity to the lying and lazy younger brother, and another to the cranky but virtuous older brother.

Except, of course, that this metaphor is actually about being self-righteous.  It is about the gap between what you say and what you do; the faith you declare and the life you live.  This story is a story of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and of the tendency of the overtly religious to these two faults.  It is story of people who seem to say in church that they will get up and work in the vineyard, but instead just end up quoting the Bible as if that justified them.

And it is a story about people who never go to church but who somehow seem to live out the Gospel of love and compassion without ever being able to tell you where in the Bible it says this is important, just as they cannot name names of those who the Bible says are going to burn in hell, since they believe that if the Bible ever seems to say such a thing, then clearly we who read it are misunderstanding some aspect of revelation of the God of love.

And if names must be named; if sheep must be separated from goats; if brothers must be shown to be who they really are in the dollhouses of our imaginations, then the truth is that both brothers live inside a dollhouse in each of us.  Both of these twins inhabit each of our lives.  There is a tax collector and a prostitute in each of us, and there is a chief priest and an elder in each of us.  There is one brother and the other in each of us.

Every morning God wakes us up with the sun, or with a knock, or an alarm, or the dog licking your face.  And every morning brings a call – not just to go to work (which we all have to do) but to work in the metaphorical vineyard of God’s kingdom.  Many people these days are so deaf to the metaphor that they don’t even know it is in play.  But if you are listening to me talk, you know, or at least you suspect that God is calling you to build up his kingdom, to work in his vineyard somehow, and if this has never occurred to you before, then I am here to tell you, he is calling you!

God is calling every one of us to work in his vineyard, which is not always easy.  It requires our time, our energy, our money, our commitment, our bodies, our souls, our relatives, and our friends.  And every morning the story of the two brothers could play out in the dollhouse of your hearts.  Every morning you might hear one or the other of the brothers answer:

“OK, Dad, I’m going,” on the one hand.

Or, “Aww Dad, it’s too early.  I’m not getting up, and I’m not working in the vineyard; just try to make me!”

Sitting here in church, of course we know what the right answer is; we know which brother we are supposed to be.  But, that, of course, is the point of the story.  We know the right answer; we can give the right answer!  But we are complicated people, with many ways of evading the call to work in God’s kingdom, and we are prone to not always do what we say we will do.  Furthermore, we are prone to feel self-righteous, especially if we have been going to church regularly, reading the Scriptures, and if we have given a little bit of our time, a little bit of our energy, a little bit of our money already to the work of God’s kingdom.

Enough is enough, already, we tend to think.  And we also tend to think that the work will get done; that someone else’s inner older brother will get out of bed and work in the vineyard, while our younger twin rolls over and goes back to sleep.

And then a knock comes again at the door, and it opens, letting light in from the dollhouse hallway of our hearts.  “Let’s go, you two,” says the father, “Up and at ‘em.”

And it only remains to be seen which brother will rule our hearts today.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

25 September 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

It Isn't Fair

Three little words.  They are spoken in moments when our emotions run high, when our hearts race and our stomachs clench tight and our cheeks are flushed pink.  Three little words.  They often sort of spill out of our mouths in a rush, popping out when we least expect them.  Sometimes we whisper them; sometimes we mumble them.  They often sound breathy, or overly loud or…whiny.  That’s right: whiny.  Because I’m not talking about those three little words – not “I love you” – I’m talking about the other favorite three word combination in the English language: it’s not fair.

I don’t know why we humans always seem to look for the world to be fair.  I don’t know if this is something we learn in childhood, or if we actually come out of the womb looking for the tallies to be even on either side of life’s ledger.  I don’t know if the alarm that goes off in our minds when we see the scales tilted towards one side or the other (an alarm that goes off with the most enthusiasm whenever those scales seems to be tilted away from us) – I don’t know if that alarm is genetic or simply handed down by our parents.  Maybe the eternal quest to find fair is simply an American thing.  I just don’t know.  What I do know is that the search for fair – and the crying and whining when we discover something that is not fair – begins at a very early age, and it lurks around the edges of our personalities through all of the stages of our lives.  It’s not fair: Billy got two blue m-n-m’s, and I only got one.  It’s not fair: Anjel got first seat in the trumpet section and he doesn’t practice nearly as much as I do.  It’s not fair: Julia’s mom says that she can stay out until 1:00 instead of 12:30.  It’s not fair: I’ve worked really hard in school but my parents can’t afford to send me to college.  It’s not fair: all of my friends are married by now.  It’s not fair: my sister can’t get pregnant when I have five children.  It’s not fair: I’ve been loyal to this company through all of the takeover transition and I’m the one who’s losing my job. It’s not fair: I’ve never smoked a day in my life, and I’m the one who ends up with lung cancer.  It’s not fair: you don’t love me the way that I love you.  It’s not fair: I’ve lived a good life, loved long and hard, and now I end up alone and unvisited in a nursing home where no one seems to know my name.

Now sometimes when we say, “It’s not fair,” it means that there’s something in the world that needs to be changed.  And so we go about trying to change it: we write “when in the course of human events” and “[bring] forth upon this continent a new nation,” we publish abolitionist newspapers and shepherd slaves on the Underground Railroad, we protest about women’s abolition outside the White House until we are thrown in prison, we board a bus with both white and black students and ride to Mississippi.  Sometimes we see the scales of justice tipped so badly to one side or the other that we have to – we simply must – stand up and start pushing them back into place.  We cook soup and feed it to all takers on Saturday morning; we travel to Honduras with approximately 8 tons of medication and even more love and care; we unlock the gate on a school in West Allegheny. 

But most of the time, most of the time, when we say, “It’s not fair,” it doesn’t have to do with questions of true justice; we simply mean that it’s not going our way, that our life isn’t the way we envisioned it, that our expectations of the universe aren’t being met.  It’s not fair.  And what is it that our moms and our best friends and our work colleagues always say back to us?  What is that phrase?  Oh, yes.  Life isn’t fair.  That’s right.  Life isn’t fair.  Don’t expect things always to go your way.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  Sometimes you get the short end of the stick.  Because mostly, life doesn’t turn out like you expect it to; it isn’t fair, and it’s often not nearly as good as you’d hoped.  These aren’t exactly comfortable words, but they’re intended to help us toughen up, adjust our hopes and dreams, and live in the real world.

Well, we have got two classic cases of “It’s not fair” whining in our readings this morning.  First we have Jonah, this unlikely and unwilling prophet, who has finally spoken his word of warning to the people of Nineveh.  And – lo and behold – they actually listened.  They changed their evil ways, dressed themselves (and their animals) in ash and sackcloth and repented and returned to the Lord.  And so – lo and behold – the Lord actually pardons them.  And that’s when Jonah starts up with the whining.  I knew this is what was going to happen; I never really liked these Ninevites anyway and then you made me come preach to them and because of me they decide to try to be good Jews for a second and a half…and you go and forgive them.  It’s not fair!  I’ve been living the hard life of the Torah for ever, and they put some soot on their goats’ heads and you decide to pardon the whole lot.  I’m just going to go sit by myself in the corner and sulk, because you are so not fair!!  

Compare that classic whining to the whining of the early workers in today’s parable from Matthew.  These are the people who were recruited by the landowner to come work in his vineyard very first thing in the morning.  The landowner promised to pay them a good day’s wage, and so they’ve worked hard, all day, sweating in the sun, pushing through the after-lunch drowsies, hour after hour until all the work is done.  When evening comes, they go to the landowner’s manager to get their pay.  But then, wait a minute – they’re told to get at the back of the line.  They have to wait while all of the people who worked less than they did (some a lot less than they did) get their pay.  Well, that’s not fair, they should have been paid first!  But then they see that the people who worked only an hour or so got paid a full day’s wage; so they start to think that they must be getting some kind of special vineyard-laborer-of-the-week bonus.  But when they get to the head of the line, they are paid exactly what the landowner said he was going to pay them, exactly the same as the slackers who didn’t start work until 5 pm.  One day’s wage.  It’s not fair, the early workers say, those guys over there got paid the same as we did, when they spent most of the day loitering in the Wawa parking lot and we’re going home with farmer’s tans and palms full of calluses.  Not fair!

Now what’s really interesting is how the Jonah’s Lord God and Matthew’s Lord Landowner respond to these whiners.  They say essentially the same thing – the same thing that our parents and friends have been telling us for years.  You think I’m not being fair?  Guess what.  Life’s not fair.  Don’t always expect life to go the way you’re expecting it to go.  Life isn’t balanced; life isn’t fair.  Sometimes you win and sometimes I help other people to win too.  Sometimes you get the prize and sometimes I give the prize to a whole lot of other people too.  Life isn’t always what you expect it to be: sometimes it’s a whole lot better than you’d hoped. 

Life isn’t fair.  And in the sinful, human world that we live in, this usually means that hearts will be broken.  In this world, “life isn’t fair” usually means that there isn’t enough for everyone and that we need to compete for everything we have – jobs, love, security, peace, family.  But Jonah and Matthew remind us that we don’t live in just this world.  We also live in the kingdom of God, here and now.  And if we are able to see into that kingdom, and, as today’s collect says, to hold fast those things that shall endure even as we sit here among things that are passing away, how much easier we can be.  If we plant our expectation and hope in those things heavenly, how much less anxious we can be about earthly things, for in the kingdom of God, all of their brutal power fades away.  Because in that heavenly kingdom, life, true life, the life given to us by God and redeemed by His only Son, is absolutely not fair.  In that kingdom, we all get far better than we deserve.  We get the gifts of God’s love even when we don’t love Him back.  We get God’s forgiveness even when we sin repeatedly and terrifically.  We get the inspiration of the Holy Spirit even when we aren’t really looking for it; we get the gifts of bread and wine even when we have little faith. 

And all we have to do to receive these radical, life-changing, unfair gifts is to accept that God gives them to everyone else too – to admit that we are all made equal by God’s infinite blessings.  And so if we want to receive God’s forgiveness, we have to accept that God is also forgiving corporate CEO’s who are living high on the hog while their companies lay off more and more people.  If we want to receive God’s inspiration, we have to accept that God is helping other people’s creativity too.  If we want to receive God’s love and healing, we have to accept that God is loving and healing those people we most dislike too.  All we have to do is to accept that God will do with God’s Grace and God’s Love and God’s Mercy and God’s Patience whatever God wants to do, which is always to give generously.  To you.  And to me.  And to everybody else.  And that just isn’t fair.  Thanks be to God. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

18 September 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia         

Because you are so small

'Because you are so small you cannot imagine how it looked from where I see, so far above.

You imagine either that it was as horrifying to me as it was for you, or that I barely noticed it at all.

You think either that I was there in the midst of it, or that I was nowhere to be found.

You believe that I can be either here or there, but not in more than one place at a time.

You have used the awful events of that day as a reason to abuse me or to dismiss me.  And some of you have re-shaped me in your own image.

Some of you have run to shelter beneath the shadow of my wings; others have vowed never again to speak my Name.

---

Once, long ago, from a whirlwind I asked a man, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth!?”

And what could he say, because he was so small?

And now, you, from your own whirlwinds, throw the question back at me: “Where were you?”  Demanding to know, as though it was your right to ask.  “Where were you?” you want to know.  As though you are not small.

You forget that I created mastodon and mammoth, leviathan and pachyderm.  You forget that with my finger I rippled the rocky ranges into majestic peaks; that to stir the oceans I dip my pinkie into depths of sea too dark and cold for you to bear.

You forget that from my mind came forth honeybees and hummingbirds, mosquitoes and amoebas; you do not realize that I know the shapes and colors of sub-atomic particles and can count them all from my bed.

You are, in your own way, smaller than the hummingbird or honeybee: more fragile, less stable, oddly enough: more flighty.  At least the honeybees ask no questions of me.  At least the hummingbirds wage no wars 

---

I can see that day, that is to you ten years ago, unfolding before me now.  The sky is clear and bright, you remember.

I can see the jets taking off.  I can hear the radio communications.  I can see the villainy and the heroism already in the hearts of men.  I know who is who.

I can feel the pounding hearts as the plan unfolds.  I can smell the cool slivers of steel as tiny blades are unfolded.

I hear my Name taken in vain.  I have heard this before.

I have dispatched my angels before you even know what is happening.  They are ministering to the dead in the cockpits before you even know the door is locked.

I know this is unfair.  I know you would prefer it if a legion of those angels would have carried the planes on their shoulders.  I would have preferred it, too, for that is my way. 

But this is going your way: the way of men, the way of wars, the way of pain, the way of death.  So long ago you chose this way, and really, you have never stopped choosing it.  And so it goes, as a writer once said 

---

I feel the explosive heat in Arlington.  I see the field in Shanksville that I know is being readied to become a quickly dug, and shallow grave.

And I see those two proud, slender towers, reaching up to me, as they have these thirty years or so.  Extended like a child’s fingers, waiting for me to grasp them and hold on tight, as though if I held on tight enough I could protect you from everything, as children imagine.

I hear the music of the breeze between the towers.  I do not wish to see this end; I have no desire to hear this music cease 

---

Angry men are only angry men – the shape or the name or the color of their anger makes no difference.  Rage sounds the same in almost any language.  The urge to destroy fits beneath almost any uniform.  The accents of hateful slogans are lost in the shouting – they sound more or less the same to me 

---

And I can hear every cry on every flight that day.  And I can hear every gasp for air on every floor of those towers.  I know the sound of every voice.  Do you think I didn’t hear?  Do you think I didn’t listen?

I hear every prayer, and I am answering every one – though I know how hard it is for you, in your time, to recognize this.

I see the bursts of flame, like violent incisions in those long, elegant fingers: fiery blood rushing out, and with it so much life.

I know what happens when the air is thick with smoke.  I know when the elevators stopped running, and I can see the chaos in the stairways.

I can count the firemen making their way up – and they have angels, too.  I can feel their valor climbing every step, and I know, as they do by now, that black bunting was made for days like this.

I see men and women peering out of vertiginous windows and making calculations of mortality.  They will jump, but not without my consort.

I hear the struggle of resistance over land the Quaker’s once claimed for peace.  And I know there are real martyrs on that plane – though not the ones who sought to claim the title for themselves.

Because you are so small, I know, I know how much this hurts.  I know how hard it is for you to bear 

---

I remember how long ago all the brothers of Joseph dreamt of murdering him for jealousy and spite.  Do you remember this, too?

I see them toss him into a pit, reluctantly letting him live.  And I hear them haggling with the slave traders, as they settle on a price – 20 pieces of silver is his life’s worth.  He is small, too.

I watch the brothers return to their father without the youngest, his favorite.  I remember his worry.  I see the cruel brothers take the boy’s coat and dip it in goat’s blood to convince the old man that the apple of his eye is dead, so they can be rid of him at last.

Where do you think Joseph’s dreams came from?  Who do you think guided him, like a boat downwind, through the highest corridors of Pharaoh’s court?  Who do you think blessed him, although he was so small?

I watched, years later, as his brothers made their journey toward Egypt, looking for grain, in the days of famine.  I saw the gleam of recognition in Joseph’s eye when they arrived.  I listened as he sent them back for his youngest brother.  I saw Benjamin return to Joseph.  I heard Joseph wail in mourning for the family that had been lost to him but was at last restored.  I saw Jacob rise from his sickbed to be reunited with his son.

And after their father was dead, I saw the crafty brothers stand beside their long-lost brother and beg for Joseph’s forgiveness.

And this is what I heard him say:  “Do not be afraid…  even though you intended to do harm to me; God intended it for good….” 

You intended evil; but God intended it for good.  Which sounds absurd –that God can bring good out of evil – which sounds like grasping at straws; which sounds like the worst kind of kitschy, feel-good theology you can imagine…

…Until you remember that it was only Joseph’s way of saying, “I forgive you." 

---

I remember all this as I watch men thinking evil against one another, and acting on their thinking.  I remember Joseph’s simple calculus, and his faith in my good intentions.

I remember how small he was; how small you are.

I remember it as I see again the flames, as I hear again the screams, as I feel again the horror that you felt that day.

And I remember it as I hear you demanding of me: “Where were you?!?  What were you doing when the planes were hijacked, when the Pentagon was on fire, when the fuselage dug out a grave in Shanksville, when the towers burned and fell?!?

“Where were you?!?  What were you doing?”

They intended it for evil; how can I intend it for good? 

---

And I fear you cannot comprehend or even hear this answer.  Maybe it is because you are so small.  For I know how much you have suffered.  I know how you now live with grief.  I know how satisfying vengeance would be.  I know how impossible justice is.

I know you need me to hold you in the palm of my hand, because you are so small.  I know you are fragile and beautiful.  I see my own image every time I look at you.  I know you are the most wonderful and most difficult thing I have ever made.

And I promise that because you are so small, I have never left you on your own – not even when flames engulfed you.  I have never removed my hand from you.  I have never let you out from beneath the shadow of my wings – especially when you could not fly and you needed to 

---

I know you want answers from me.  I know you want to know where I was, what I have been doing.

I will tell you, although I fear you will not believe me, and even if you do, I suspect you will not be satisfied with the answer.  I expect you will want more.

Where was I?  What was I doing?

I was forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving.

When Cain took his brother’s life, I was forgiving.

When Moses killed an Egyptian, I was forgiving.

When Joseph was reunited with his brothers, I was forgiving.

When my own children prayed to a golden calf, I was forgiving.

When they were driven into exile, I was forgiving.

When my Son was denied a clean room in which to be born, I was forgiving.

When he was betrayed, mocked, and hung on a Cross, I was forgiving.

When my children were persecuted, I was forgiving.

When my church splintered into fragments, I was forgiving.

When my beloved were sent into gas chambers, I was forgiving.

When murderers stole my holy Name from the lips of the muezzin, I was forgiving.

Wherever men with evil intentions plot in their hearts and act out those plots, I intend it for good.  But there is only one way to do it: to forgive, and forgive, and forgive. 

Until then you are just brothers who have betrayed each other; who have thrown each other into a pit and are haggling over the price of a life’s worth.  Until then, all the evil intended cannot be intended for good.

For you men – who bear my image, the imprint of my thumb, the hallmark of my making – you continue to intend evil against one another; you continue to dig pits for one another; you continue to think that a life can be haggled over as though it was yours to give or take… because you are so small.

---

 You intend so much evil; but I intend it for good…

 …which is to say that I forgive, and I forgive, and I forgive.'

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 September 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Excuses

Having recently spent a week with my twin six-year-old nephews, I find myself wondering when in childhood we learn to make excuses.   Neither of them seems adept at it yet.  When confronted with a scold, a correction, or a withering look, it seemed to me that the boys, at this age, tend either to be sorry or not.  They don’t equivocate; they are not yet reaching for excuses; not even blaming each other yet.  I chalk this behavior up to developmental progress not the disposition of their own characters, but who knows?

I do know how easy it is to look for excuses – I do it all the time.  When I have left something undone  - a phone call I should have made, a letter I should have written, work I put off till later, etc – I find myself fabricating excuses in my mind, for I am a fairly reliable accuser of myself; it’s good to beat others to the punch!  And I’m sure if ever I had done something I ought not to have done I might be tempted to look for an excuse too.

The most common excuse we hear in politics these days is that so-and-so “mis-spoke” – which is a euphemism for “lied,” or “had no idea what he was talking about,” or “made it up completely.”  These are never admissions of wrong-doing, these are excuses.

In the newspaper the other day, I read of how leaders of another denomination, much accused, are relying on the excuse that “I didn’t know I was supposed to tell anyone.”  Or, “it was better to keep it out of the press.”  Or, “I had very little training in dealing with these matters.”  These, too, are only excuses.

One of the great ecclesiastical excuses is often mined from today’s Gospel reading: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”  I know it doesn’t sound like am excuse, so let me try to explain.  During the past fifty years or so, we have learned to fashion this short sentence of our Lord’s into a first-rate excuse for failing to build up either his church or his kingdom.  And clerics have learned to be indignant at the crass suggestion that their work might be measured by the number of people they can count in their congregations.  Why focus, like accountants, they challenge, on such numbers, when all that’s needed are two or three?!?  After all, that’s what Jesus said!

There are certainly reasons that it is harder to get people into church these days.  There are reasons it can be an uphill climb to build God’s kingdom.  But there are also a lot of excuses that find smug satisfaction in Jesus’ promise that he would be in the midst of his people wherever only two or three are gathered together in his Name.

I don’t think Jesus intended this remark as an excuse.  I think he intended it as a brand of empowerment.  I think he was opening up possibilities that his disciples might have imagined were beyond them.  He told them only two of them had to agree on something and ask for it, and God could make it possible.  He knew there would be arguments, disagreements, and division – but these would not impede his kingdom.  Just bring two or three of you together, and there I will be, with power to change the world! 

+ + +

Some time in the morning of Wednesday, August 24, three children must have set out along a dusty road in the hills of northwestern Honduras.  They were unaccompanied by any parent – I don’t know why.  The eldest, was, I think, in his early teens, the others, each a couple of years younger.  They must have heard about the Gran Brigada Medicina – as our free medical clinic was advertised – from one of the flyers that were distributed, or by word of mouth.  Like many of the families we saw walking the rutted roads of the steep hillsides, their feet were the only mode of transportation available to them.

I first learned of the children when I reached for a slip of paper that was handed over to our makeshift pharmacy for every family of patients.  I did not notice the children’s names, I am embarrassed to say, or even their ages, at the time.  I saw that no medications were prescribed, except the anti-parasitic that we gave to everyone, and children’s multi-vitamins.  This was odd.  I turned the sheet of paper over to read the diagnosis.  There was a list of complaints – aches and pains of various kinds – but no diagnosis, and no treatment.  Maybe this was a mistake?  I identified the doctor’s handwriting and went into the adjacent building where the clinic was operating, and he was already seeing another patient.

“Is there some mistake here?” I interrupted.  “Is there something we should be doing, something we can give these children?”

He looked at me with sincere eyes.  “There is nothing to diagnose,” he said to me.  “Their condition is a result of poor hygiene and malnutrition, because they are poor.  They walked for two hours on their own to get here.  They need food, if we have any.”

If I’d been thinking, I’d have rummaged through everyone’s bags and collected various granola bars and scraps of food that we might have been carrying.  But I wasn’t thinking.  I didn’t do it, and I didn’t even find the children.  I went back to the pharmacy and I grabbed a big bundle of vitamins and a few children’s Tylenol, and I handed them over to be distributed when the three children’s turn came.  And I cannot tell you any more of what became of those three kids who walked so far to get so little. 

+ + +

While I was in Honduras, one of my dogs had to go to the vet, for a not especially expensive visit that cost about five times what it cost us to see one patient in Honduras.  I feel as though I need to make an excuse here, but I can’t even define what exactly it is for.  Except that what else can I do in the face of three children who walk for two hours to a free medical clinic that cannot treat them because their illness is poverty and their hunger I had not the wherewithal to feed.

+ + +

The Christian Church these days is something of a mess.  It is marked by scandal, hypocrisy, abuse, name-calling, foolishness, hatreds, self-absorption, and a too-often anemic enthusiasm for the Good News of God in Christ.  She consoles herself with excuses, and with the regular reminder that where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there he is in the midst of them.

But every morning there are children who wake up with no one to care for them, no way to feed themselves, no access to clean water, and no way to find a doctor of the kind found by the dozen across the river at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  Unless we decide to go to them, as the doctors and nurses, and non-medical folks who went to Honduras in the name of this parish did two weeks ago.

It would be misleading to be self-congratulatory and tell you what a marvelous job we did – although we did a marvelous job.  It would be a mistake to believe, even for a moment, that all is well because of our week’s work in Concepcion del Norte.

But it would be wrong to miss the importance and the power of two or three or fifteen people agreeing on a mission of love and care and healing.  It would be blindness to miss the clear evidence of Christ’s presence among the men and women who you sent to do that work in Honduras.  And it would be tragic to fail to recognize the power of God to transform lives and even the whole world when we gather together by our twos and threes, our fifteens and fifties, our hundreds and our thousands.

This is precisely why three years ago this parish adopted an empty church in North Philadelphia as our mission.  And why we have founded there a school that is to open in two days at Saint James the Less, which seeks to serve children like those who walked to the Gran Brigada Medicina – children who have not enough to survive in this world.

This is why we cannot console ourselves with excuses, and why we must not be satisfied with two or three gathered together, when Christ has given us so much power, by calling his people together here on Locust Street for more than 160 years.

And Christ has given each and every one of us power when we were baptized with his Holy Spirit.

Christ gave you power to build up his kingdom.  Christ gave you power to reach out in love.  Christ gave you power to change your own life and the lives of those you touch.  Christ gave you power to bear with grace the image of your creator.  Christ gave you power to conquer darkness and despair.  Christ gave you power to heal brokenness and to forgive those who vex you.  Christ gave you power to live beyond the grave.  Christ gave you power to do whatever you ask in his Name. 

Christ has not given you or me an excuse… to be less than he calls us to be, smaller than we should be, timid of hope, puny in our dreaming, stagnant in our work, tight-fisted in our giving, reluctant in our hospitality, reserved in our loving.

Every day there are homes in this city where two or three children wake up hungry, without all they need, and no good parent to guide them in this difficult world.  But Christ is in their midst too – those beautiful children of his!  And they are walking towards us every day. 

What, I pray, do we intend to do?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 September 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The One Who Is

In 1979, the National Hurricane Center developed a system of naming hurricanes that continues to this day.  The Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Name List, now managed by the World Meteorological Organization, is a series of six cycles of alternating men’s and women’s names, listed in alphabetical order from A–W (skipping the letter Q, thankfully).  If a storm is particularly destructive, its name is retired from the list, and another name replaces it.  Otherwise, the names continue to cycle in and out every six years.  I’m not sure what it means that, in a cycle of only 126 names – some of which are quite unusual, like Joaquin, Sebastien with an “e,” and Cristobal – that both Sean and Erika (yes, spelled with a “k”) are included in the current six-year cycle.  Sean is the “s” hurricane name for this year, actually, and Erika will cycle around again in 2015.  Nice to know that the St. Mark’s clergy are well represented in the world of hurricane nomenclature. 

Hurricanes had names before 1979, too, but the systems for creating those names varied.  Before then, North American hurricanes were given only women’s names.  (So glad they adjusted that!)  And prior to 1953, hurricanes were given names based on the phonetic alphabet or even by the saints’ day that fell closest to the storm.  But no matter the system, people have always made an effort to identify these storms by name rather than just by coordinates on a map.  Part of this, of course, is that names are a lot easier to communicate than longitude and latitude, particularly if there is more than one storm at a time, but I imagine that there is another reason for this practice as well.  Naming storms makes them seem a little more human and therefore just a bit more understandable.  If we call a storm by a human name – Irene, say – then suddenly “she” can have feelings, she can “rage” and “unleash her fury,” and as terrifying as this rage and fury might be, at least it’s something we’ve seen before, something we’ve had some practice responding to.  But imagine that this was Storm 9 blowing around outside; then suddenly we are surrounded by a powerful atmospheric disturbance – something impersonal, other, soulless, and that is terrifying in a completely different way.  As strange as it may seem, these names can help us to get a handle on things, to fit these storms into our understanding of the world, perhaps even to imagine that we can somehow control them, or at least control our response to them.  

“Then Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the People of Israel and I tell them, “The God of your fathers sent me to you”; and they ask me, “What is his name?”  What do I tell them?’”  Here we have Moses – he has come to the backside of the wilderness, followed the beacon of the burning bush to the Holy Ground where God abides, heard the voice of God calling his name, and been told that he is in the presence of “the God of [his] father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  He seems to have been thoroughly introduced.  He knows who it is that he is talking with – knows it so acutely that he hides his face in terror.

And yet when God charges Moses to go into Egypt to collect His people from Pharaoh, Moses feels the need to ask for further clarification, further identification.  Who am I, he asks again, who am I that you want me to go into Egypt?  You are the one who goes with me, God responds.  And what if the Hebrews want to know who you are? Moses asks.  I know that we just met, but could you tell me your name again?  What is it that Moses is up to here?  Why does he need more than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the God of the entire arc of Israel’s history?  What is the name that he is looking for? 

The honest answer is that we’ll never really know.  All that we can really know is that Moses is clearly trying to get out of his assignment.  Perhaps he is just trying to prolong the conversation, put off the inevitable journey ahead of him.  Perhaps he asks for God’s name because he’s afraid the Hebrew people will laugh at him when he arrives in Egypt.  Perhaps he secretly hopes that God will refuse to give him His name, thus creating the perfect excuse for Moses to bow out of God’s plans.  Or perhaps Moses is seeking God’s name because he hopes that knowing the proper name of Almighty God will afford him some control over the situation, give him some power that he clearly does not already have.  After all, in ancient mythology, knowing someone’s proper name often means that you can claim a kind of authority over them.  If you know the true name of a god or of a supernatural being, you can influence them, call upon them to act on your behalf, exert your control over their powers.  Perhaps Moses really was that scared – and looking to name God in an attempt to get a handle on the situation, to gain some kind of control.

Whatever his reasons for asking for God’s name, Moses could have never anticipated the answer he would get.  For God spoke to Moses this name, these holy, mysterious sounds, syllables that are so enigmatic that even today we aren’t entirely sure how to translate them.  I AM WHO I AM, we sometimes say, or I will be what I will be, I am He-Who-Is, or I am being-there.  The mysterious, powerful name of God whispers of the very depths of being itself; it refuses to be controlled or defined; even when shared it has such immense reality, such immense true-ness, that it cannot be diminished or mishandled.  This name is very like the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters we sometimes speak as Yahweh, a name that is so revered, so holy, so other that even though it appears over 6500 times in the Hebrew Bible, it was traditionally said aloud only once a year, held on the lips of a high priest in the holy of holies on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.  The One Who Is is a name that defies description and limitation; it is not a label but a verb.  It is a powerful, terrible, mighty verb, one that reminds Moses – and us – that the one who calls is the very one who called all of heaven and earth into being, the one who continues to breathe life into the cosmos, that continues, always, to be. 

And yet it is The One Who Is who promises to go with Moses to the land of Egypt.  It is The One Who Is who promises to stand with Moses when he tells Pharaoh, Let my people go.  It is The One Who Is who reminds Moses and the Israelites again and again that He is their God – the God of their ancestors, the God of their history, their present, and their future.  This great, mysterious, terrifying Being of Beings is one who chooses to be with His people, for His people, even chooses to be one of His people, to save them and make their state of being holy in his own. 

Like Moses, we are about to embark upon a long, challenging journey.  Like Moses, we have been called by name by God, by The One Who Is, and sent into the world to bring God’s people home.  We sit here at the backside of summer, looking ahead to the program year, at all of the ministries that we are about to undertake in earnest.  And that view, let’s be honest, can be frightening – there is so much need in the world that it swirls about us like the winds of a storm – it can make us want to hide our faces, and ask, Who am I?  Who am I to take on the poverty of Philadelphia?  Who am I to feed the hungry here in Center City, to teach the students in Allegheny West?  Who am I to try to free people from addiction, to care for the dying, to visit the prisoner?  Who am I to travel to the halls of power and speak words of truth there – to say let my people, all of God’s people, be fully free, fully blessed, and fully known?  Who am I?  You are the one, God says, who goes with me.  Say to those people who come here looking for food, rest, forgiveness, and joy, that you are the one who walks with The One Who Is.  You carry with you the power of God’s own Name, because God’s name is a promise – a promise to be with us and for us, in fair and stormy weather, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.  World without end.  Amen.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

28 August 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Humble and Unafraid

The book The Help is the story of a group of white women and their black maids in 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi.  The world of The Help is one of rigid roles:  the white women play bridge and organize fundraisers, while their black maids cook their food, clean their houses, and raise their children.  The white women expect the black maids to keep their children clean and well-fed, and above all, out of their hair as they engage with their busy social lives. 

Aibileen is a maid in the house of Elizabeth Leefolt, a woman who finds motherhood completely exasperating.  Her two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, exhausts her, bothers her, and so again and again, she passes her off to Aibileen’s care.  It is Aibileen who dresses Mae Mobley, Aibileen who plays with her and answers her questions about the world.  And it is Aibileen who first notices that Mae Mobley is starting to see herself as her mother sees her – as a pest, as something irksome and irritating.  Mae Mobley can only see herself as a “bad girl,” and this, of course, absolutely breaks Aibileen’s heart.  So Aibileen decides to fight back in her own way – by offering Mae Mobley a kind of daily positive affirmation.  Day after day she repeats these words – “You are a pretty girl, a good girl, a kind girl,” willing them to work their way into Mae Mobley’s heart, hoping that she will learn to see herself as beautiful and lovable, no matter what names her mother might call her.

Now this is just one side storyline in the book – and it may not appear in the movie at all, I haven’t seen it yet – but I remember it distinctly because I think it really rings true.  For which one of us hasn’t seen a loved one beaten down and wanted to build them back up?   We all have known people who believe all of the negative things the world tells them about themselves.  We all have known people who have a difficult time seeing themselves as good, as beautiful, as worthy, who far more easily accept the cruel names that others call them.  I would guess that most of us have felt this way ourselves from time to time.  We know what it feels like to believe the worst about ourselves, and we know what it feels like to love people who cannot see all of the beauty that we see in them.  We know what it feels like to have this kind of broken heart. 

I think this must be part of the reason why listening to today’s Gospel is so difficult.  Yes, I would imagine I’m not the only one who squirmed a little while listening to the story of this Canaanite woman.  This story is hard to hear – first of all because this Jesus is difficult to look at.  Not only does he completely ignore the cries of this Gentile woman, but when his disciples finally ask Jesus to do something about her, he tells them, essentially, that he’s off today.  I’m not working up here – this isn’t my district, and these aren’t my people; my only clients are the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  And then, when the woman quite literally throws herself at his feet and begs for his help, he throws a kind of racial slur in her face, the word that Jews sometimes used to describe a lowly Gentile – he calls her a dog. 

Jesus calls her a dog.  Ugh.  That is certainly hard to hear, but it’s also hard to hear about how this woman seems to just sit there and take it.  She just kneels there in the dirt and says Okay, I’m a dog, I’m a bad girl, and it breaks my heart to hear her say this.  Now to be fair, she does use her wits to turn that slur back against Jesus, and we would be right to give her credit for her cleverness.  Right, I’m a dog, she says, but even a lowly, miserable cur like me gets to eat the food that falls to the floor.  Very smart…and effective, because when Jesus hears his own words handed back to him in this slightly different package – the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like a measure of yeast, like a tiny crumb – it changes him.  He changes his mind, commends her “great faith,” and heals her daughter. 

But to be honest there is a part of me that is less than satisfied with her response, clever as it is.  Part of me wants her to jump to her feet and come right back at him. “Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?” I want her to ask.  “Yes,” Jesus would reply.  “Who is the dog?”  “You are.”  “I am.  I am the dog.  I am the dog.”  (If you can name that movie to me later, you win a free cookie at coffee hour.)  But seriously, there’s a part of me that wants her to fight back.  I want her to say, “I may be a Gentile, but I’m not a dog.  I am not a bad girl; I am good and kind, I am a beautiful woman who desperately loves her desperately sick daughter, and I am worthy of your love and of your care and of your respect.”  Hah!  I can see her in my mind, standing in Jesus’ face, hands on her hips, eyes flashing like fire.        

But the Canaanite woman does not do this; instead she chooses to sit in the dust at Jesus’ feet and in her role as a less-than, as an other, as a dog.  How can we understand her actions?  Are they only a ploy to manipulate Jesus or does she really feel this way about herself?   And if she is just being clever, then where is the “great faith” in that?  No – the key to her great faith is found earlier in the reading, all the way back at the beginning of the story, in these words: “A Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.’”  The woman calls him Lord, Son of David.  She knows who Jesus is.  She truly sees him, recognizes him as the Messiah.  And so when she sits at his feet and accepts her role, she is not sitting at the feet of a mere man and allowing herself to be humiliated by him; she is sitting at the feet of God, and she allows herself to be humbled before him.  She sits at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and says to him, I am not a bad girl, but compared to you, I am, actually utterly unworthy.  Compared to your glory, I am a dog, a flea on a dog’s back.  Compared to you, I am nothing…and yet I still hope for your mercy.  I still am, sitting here, asking you to help me. 

So it is not just her cleverness that helps to change Jesus’ mind; it is also her posture, her humility.  For when Jesus looks down upon her, he sees his own self.  He sees himself, who has “humbled himself and [become] obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”  Yes, Christ knows humility; he knows what it is to know the dust, the humus of our being.  And when he sees this humility mirrored back to him in the great faith of this unlikely woman, it opens his heart in ways even he never could have anticipated.  He starts to see the edges of his mission field expanding; he begins to see this woman as sister and not other.  And the next time he sends out his disciples, he will send them not just to the lost sheep of Israel, but to make disciples of all nations.  And all because this one woman was unafraid to be utterly humble. 

Humility is rather undervalued these days.  In times of fear and unrest, it can be a scary thing to be humble – to admit that we might be wrong, that we don’t have all of the answers, that we might need some help, even from God.  Too often, we wrongly equate being humble with being a doormat – with being weak or unsure of ourselves.  In the wider Church, we have downplayed humility for years.  We see so many broken people in our pews and in the world, all of the Mae Mobley’s out there and in here who feel unlovable, who have been called every name in the book because of their race or class or their sexual orientation or how they dress, and it breaks our hearts.  And so sometimes we hesitate to ask ourselves or anyone else to humble themselves before God because we are afraid that it might take away our already fragile sense of dignity.  We try to offer affirmations of our worth without falling on our knees, because to be that humble is just too scary. 

But we at St. Mark’s know – and this Gospel reminds us – that to deny ourselves the experience of humbling ourselves before God is to deny ourselves a great gift.  It is to deny ourselves the chance to discover who we really are and where our dignity really comes from; we are the daughters and sons of God, who are made worthy and made beautiful by an Almighty, All-Loving God.  What a gift this holy, divine affirmation is – that God sees us as we truly are – as imperfect human beings – and chooses to love us anyway.  What grace this is – that God knows us, knows that we are eternally incapable of earning God’s favor, and then pours that favor upon us anyway.  It is only when we find the right role, when we place ourselves in the correct posture, humbly kneeling at the feet of the living Christ, that we can know and honor and love ourselves as beautiful, good, kind, imperfect, wonderfully beloved children of God.  So be not afraid – come, kneel at this table, humble yourself before Him, and be healed. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

14 August 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Response

Some of you may remember that I am not, as we say, a “cradle Episcopalian.”  I was raised a Christian Scientist.  One of the hallmarks of Christian Science is that members read daily not only from the Bible, but also from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health.  Now, Science and Health was first written in 1875 by the religion’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and although it went through hundreds of revisions by the time of her death, it always maintained its rather gilded Victorian literary style, with long, complicated sentences and an ornate, advanced vocabulary.  Some of my earliest memories are of struggling to read aloud from this book, stumbling over phrases like “animal magnetism” and “infinite manifestation.” But it certainly helped my reading comprehension!  As a little child, I could have easily told you the meaning of words like “omniscient” and “efficacious.” And it was because of this book that I first learned the meaning of the word “impetuous,” because it was used to describe your favorite disciple and mine, Peter. 

Peter, the "impetuous disciple," he was called.  I learned what impetuous meant not by looking it up in the dictionary, but by looking at what Peter did.  Impetuous, I discovered, meant to act without thinking – to run off the edge of a boat with all of your clothes on, to lash out at your leader when he says something you don’t want to hear, and, of course, to step out onto the surface of the sea in the middle of a furious storm.  To be impetuous is to be like Peter – impulsive, reactive, perhaps even a bit foolhardy.

At first glance, it would appear that today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew is the most extreme example of Peter and his impetuous nature.  The disciples are asea in the middle of a storm, bashed and beaten by the waves and the winds, struggling to steer their boat to shore but making little headway against the violent weather.  Suddenly, they see a figure walking towards them on the water.  They are, understandably, terrified, and reach for the first explanation that comes to mind – this must be a ghost, a specter, something extra-ordinary.  But then Jesus speaks, “Cheer up!  It is I.  I am – fear not!”  And here is where the impetuous Peter shows up.  He looks out across the water, sees Jesus standing on the surface of the waves, and decides, Hey – I want to try that too!  So he jumps out of the boat and tries to walk to Jesus.  But when he feels the water splashing against the hem of his robe and the rain slapping him across the face, his brain finally catches up with the rest of his body.  What am I doing, he asks?  He looks around, wild eyed in fear, and almost immediately begins to sink.  And so he cries out for help, Jesus reaches out and catches him, and they both get into the boat as the wind stills and the waves calm. 

As I said, at first glance, this story looks like just another tale of Peter leaping before he looks, another example of that hapless impulsivity that can make him such a charmingly irresistible figure.  But take a second glance, look carefully at these verses, because there is one sentence here, one moment, that completely changes the tenor of this story.  “Peter answered him, ‘Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’”  Look what happens here in this one moment.  Peter pauses.  Command me to come to you, he says, say the word, and then I will step out.  Peter seems unable to move without this word; he is stuck in the bow of the boat like in some nautical version of Simon Says.  If we look carefully, we can see that here, in this moment, Peter actually does look before he leaps; he does think before acting.  He waits for Jesus’ command, for that one word: come.  This is not just another example of impetuous Peter.  Here, in this moment, Jesus is the impetus, and Peter’s action the response.

Now why does this matter?  Is it really so important to see Peter’s water-walking as a step of faithful response instead of just another impetuous leap?  It is really so important, because it completely changes the way we see Peter.  Suddenly, we see not just another knee-jerk reaction from an overly-excited disciple; we see brave, bold action from a disciple who is unafraid to risk his life, his all, to follow as his Lord commands.  We see Peter as a man – a real man, instead of a mere caricature of himself – a man who desperately wants to follow in Jesus’ footsteps even when they take him into the middle of the wild, wild sea.  It is only when we see that first step over the side of the boat as a faithful response to the call of Christ that we are able to let ourselves feel the very real terror that must have been raging inside of Peter’s heart, that we are able to recognize in this often impetuous disciple the mark of true courage, of faith in the face of real fear.

And if this change of perspective helps us to see Peter differently, then it also changes the way that we see ourselves.  Because if this is a picture of faithful discipleship, and not just of an overly-zealous disciple, then this is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.  We, too, are supposed to be stepping out of the boat.  We, too, are required to be brave, to have true courage, to act out in faith despite our fears.  We, too, are invited to step out of the comfort of our own lives right smack into the middle of the storm that is raging out there – a storm of fear, prejudice, hatred, judgment, blame, divisiveness, apathy, cynicism, and greed.  There is scary stuff out there.  We could so easily be swamped by any number of headlines – Climate of Fear!  Wall Street Volatile!  Brace for the Pain!  Brutal Crackdowns in the Middle East!  Flash mobs, church abuse, famine, starvation, climate change…wave after wave of truly terrifying stuff crashes against us every day, again and again, until we feel truly battered and bruised. 

But the simple fact is that even in the midst of this mess, Christ calls.  Jesus stands in the middle of the storm and speaks, a long list of imperatives, commands to which we are invited to be the response.  Come.  And pray and fast, yes, but also forgive, offer, visit, love.  Feed the hungry.  Heal the sick.  Cast out demons.  Step out of the boat.  Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.  Step out of the boat.  You give them something to eat.  Step out of the boat.  Repent, follow me, keep my commandments.  Eat, drink, do this for the remembrance of me.  Step out of the boat.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Go and do likewise.  Make disciples.  Step out of the boat.      

If you’re thinking that none of this is likely to be very easy, I think you’re probably right.  Like Peter, we will have to screw our courage to the sticking point before offering the response that God requires.  Because it’s one thing to say that your response is to invite your friends and like-minded neighbors to pray with you in a stadium in Houston, that’s fine, perhaps, but it is quite another thing to say that your response is to truly love one another as Christ has loved us.  It’s another thing entirely to really love your neighbor as yourself, even when that neighbor thinks exactly the opposite of everything that you think and isn’t afraid to tell you about it.  It’s another thing to make disciples of all people.  To preach the Gospel…at work, or in the grocery store, or to our own families.  To feed the hungry…in Philadelphia and in Somalia.  To heal the sick who are dying from diseases caused by their poverty, to heal this sick world from the ravages of our consumerism.  Sometimes it’s quite another thing just to love yourself. 

So yes, you’re right – none of this is likely to be very easy.  And we’ll probably start to sink.  Peter did.  And that is okay, because we are never, ever asked to offer this response alone.  Christ is always present, standing in the center of the storm, speaking at surprising times and in extra-ordinary ways, calling us, beckoning, willing us to keep him in the center of our vision at all times.  Christ is here, front and center each week as we cry together, “Lord, have mercy!”  Christ is here each week reaching out his hand, ready to catch us in the cradle of this altar and lift us up into the stillness of heaven.  Our Lord Jesus Christ knows that the storm is scary.  He knows our fear, our weakness; he knows how much easier it is to just sit in the boat with the rest of the world and wait for the storm to blow over.  But he calls us anyway and waits for the response.  Come.  Step out of the boat. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

7 August 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Raising the Bread Limit

The little-known back-story to the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 includes some eerily contemporary details.  You see, while Jesus was teaching and healing the crowd throughout the day, the disciples had been meeting behind some bushes.  They’d noticed time rolling by and the dinner hour approaching – they knew something was going to have to be done about food: stomachs would begin to rumble, bellies would demand to be fed.

As the discussion progressed, the disciples took stock of what food they could find.  On the one hand there were five loaves of bread, and on the other there were two fish; and for some reason the group seemed to be dividing along the lines of the bread-guys and the fish-guys.  The bread-guys thought that perhaps they could order out for delivery and divide the bill among everyone gathered (including tip, of course).  But the fish-guys thought that it would boost the local economy (which was clearly in need of a boost, being a desert place) if they sent everyone out to local restaurants in the village to eat.

There was no meaningful discussion of the five loaves and the two fish because, well, they amounted to five loaves and two fish, and what they had on their hands was a group of about five thousand men, besides women and children.  And what can you do with five loaves and two fish if you have 5,000–plus people to feed?  You see, you have a limit – what you might call a ceiling – with what you can do with five loaves and two fish in the company of 5,000 men, besides women and children.  And that ceiling feels pretty low as the dinner hour is approaching and tummies are grumbling and you know that soon things are going to get ugly.

So there they were, huddled behind a mustard shrub (which, if they had taken notice of it, they would have recalled began its life as a tiny seed, maybe even the tiniest of all seeds, but here it was, full-grown, concealing their deliberations from the crowd, and from Jesus), there they were, arguing about what to do about the bread limit, so to speak.  Of course, they could not agree – order delivery; or send the crowd to the local cafes – etc, etc.  They talked about the pros and cons of each.  The restaurant guys started to call the order-out guys socialists, and the order-out guys accused the restaurant guys of owning corporate jets (both of which accusations were fanciful to say the least).

The restaurant guys pointed out that when you split the bill that way, you never get everyone to put in what he actually owes, and Peter and Andrew and James and John had repeatedly been called on to make up the difference, and the coffers were getting low, they couldn’t keep deficit spending like this.

But the order-out guys made the argument that if you want to encourage ministry you have to prime the pump a little, you have to at least give people something to eat, and in a desert place you can’t rely on market forces to do everything, since the market is not actually functioning at what you might call meaningful capacity, etc. etc.  And that a bit of deficit spending now would have a big effect down the line in the ministry it stimulated, provided you didn’t try to do it on the cheap, and provided that you didn’t just give all your stimulus funds to the bankers and trust that they would do the right thing.

But, that bit about the bankers was, of course, a digression.

On one thing only could the two sides agree – five loaves and two fishes were meaningless, insufficient, a recipe for disaster.  There was not enough on hand to do anything, except maybe to have a little nosh themselves, later on.

As the day wore on, the implications of doing nothing began to dawn on them.  They could see, from behind the mustard bush, that Jesus was looking around for them, as he wrapped up his sermon.  It was becoming apparent that they were needed, but, of course, they were hesitant to come out from behind the mustard bush, because they had no solution to the problem.  They could hear the crowd becoming restless.  They saw the women sending their children out to look for food vendors, a Mr. Softee truck, a Halvah guy, a knish lady, something, anything; but there was nothing to be had, and the children were returning to their mothers with empty, upturned palms and hungry eyes.  And the men were beginning to shift restlessly in their places, and to stretch and yawn and glare demandingly at their wives and their children.

And still the disciples debated.  And as they did they noticed how similar was their debate to the dynamics of parliamentary procedure in a bicameral legislature. 

Think, said the order-out guys, of the high quality of debate in the Senate, where the rights of a minority can be preserved. 

Think, said the restaurant guys, of the will of the people represented in their own House by men and women in whose wisdom and care the people place their trust.

Think, said one of them more slyly, of the coming election next year, as he dreamed about how much commercial time you could buy with thirty pieces of silver.  And although none of the others would admit it, they all did think of this very thing, but kept it to themselves.

All the while the clock was ticking, and dinner-time was approaching.

The take-out places in the village had heard about the gathering and were hoping for a big order, their delivery guys at the ready.  The restaurants, too, were on alert and had ordered extra supplies, and were eager for a brisk business, since things had been slow for a few years, what with the wars, and all.  The proprietors of both sorts of establishments looked down the road, but no one seemed to be coming.  They began to get nervous, and to suspect that this crowd would amount to nothing – little business, no money in the coffers, and a lot of left-over food in the walk-ins to dispose of when all was said and done.  And they began to down-grade their expectations.

Jesus had stopped teaching by now and was tending to a long line of people coming up to him to be healed of various illnesses and injuries, one by one, which he accomplished as he laid his coarse hands on their heads and prayed softly to the Father, as a light breeze rustled around him.

Making an excuse, and leaving Mary and Martha to tend to the needy, he slipped over behind the mustard bush to find his disciples engaged in protracted discussion, having staked out opposing positions.  If he had troubled himself he might have discovered a willingness to negotiate on one side, and a complete refusal to compromise on the other, but frankly, this made no difference to him.

What, he demanded to know, is the meaning of all this?!?!

And so the accusations began to fly.  Socialists!  Corporate lap-dogs!  Etc., etc.  Some people just can’t seem to say yes to anything, said one side.  That’s right, said the other, some people just can’t seem to say yes to anything!

Jesus looked at them and had compassion on them, because they were pathetic, and although few people would, in fact, have compassion on a group of men having a childish debate over a problem of their own making that is not really that difficult to solve, Jesus always finds room to have compassion, even for those who only barely deserve it.  Looking into their eyes, he could see the fear deep in their souls that seemed to whimper, “We don’t have enough!”

My friends, he said, do you not remember those days long ago when our ancestors were hungry in the desert, and there was no food and no water, and the your great-great-great grandfathers went to Moses with their eyes full of the fear that is in your eyes now?  Do you not remember how long ago Joseph supplied grain to his father and his brothers (who had left him for dead) when famine was all around?  Can you not recall the flavor of manna, or the sound of quails in great abundance where no quail had ever been before?  Can you not hear the sound of water flowing down the face of a rock, just from the place where Moses struck it?  Did God not lead our forebears long ago to a land flowing with milk and honey, as he promised he would?  Have you really been so deprived?  Has God not always given you what you need and, in fact, so much more?

One of the disciples interrupted:

But this is a deserted place, and the hour is now late, send the crowds away, Rabbi, so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.

Jesus could see that this was a teaching moment.  He said to them, They need not go away; you give them something to eat.

And he could see the hearts of the disciples – on both sides of the issue – sink when he said that.  He saw eyes shift nervously to the basket that held five loaves and two fish.  But the eyes did not linger long on the baskets.  He could see worry cross their brows – how could they have quit their jobs to work with this man who could not even see that you can’t feed 5,000 men, besides women and children, with five loaves and two fish?  What had they gotten themselves into?  And how would they get themselves out?

Looking at them with his compassionate eyes, he could see that all their lives they had assumed they had not enough, even though they had never gone hungry.  They had heard the stories of Moses and the manna and the quail and the water from the rock, but they believed they were fairy tales – nice stories for children, but essentially without meaning in the grown-up world.  He could see that they had allowed fear to control them for so long, calling it prudence or caution to disguise it.  And he could see that they had only a little faith, which was pretty sad considering all they had seen and done with him, but he was not surprised; thus had it ever been.

And he knew that a little faith is enough.  Men and women had done extraordinary things with only a little faith – it was enough to move mountains, so to speak.  Yes, a little faith would do.  And although they were frightened, they still had a little faith.

My brothers, he said, how will you ever form a church when I am gone, if you act like this?  How will you ever build up my kingdom?  How will you ever draw others to yourselves if you imitate the bickering and the bargaining and the faithlessness of the world?  How will people know that you are about something completely different from those who seek only power?  How will those who have only a little realize how much they can accomplish if you don’t show them?  How will the hungry know where is their hope if you do not feed them; if you gather in your groups, behind your shrubbery, engrossed in your own arguments, while tummies grumble, and the would-be saints wander away to look for food elsewhere?  How will the church thrive if you operate from a posture of fear and a presumption of scarcity?  How will you change the world if you cannot change the way you do business?  How will you do great things if you master only petty politics?

Feeling chastened, they looked at him with still un-comprehending eyes, with little hope, and the still strong yearning to simply put forth their arguments one more time.

Anticipating their objection, he said to them again, You give them something to eat.

But, they said, We have nothing; nothing but these five loaves and two fish.

Yes, he thought to himself, How will you ever become who you were made to be if you never consider the loaves and the fishes; if you never account for what God has already given you. To them he said, Bring them to me.  And he told the crowd to sit down on the grass.

And he took the loaves and the fish, he blessed them, broke the bread, and gave it all to the disciples to distribute.  And the rest, as they say, is more or less history.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

31 July 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Owen Meany Faith

One Christmas, Owen Meany, the remarkable title character in John Irving’s terrific novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, plays the role of the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come in a local production of A Christmas Carol.  At the climactic scene when he shows Scrooge the empty grave that is waiting for him, with its carved tombstone, Owen, too, looks at the grave and the stone, and promptly faints.  The reason he fainted, Owen explains later, is that, in a kind of mystical vision, he had seen his own name on the tombstone. But, he reports to his best friend, there were no dates carved on the stone. 

It transpires in the novel that Owen Meany did see dates on the stone.  And since he was the son of a stone-carver, it also transpires that Owen Meany then carves his own tombstone and correctly inscribes on it the dates of his birth and his own death, on the basis of his vision during the childhood performance of the play.

Owen Meany believed in God, though he was surrounded by people who struggled with their belief, if they believed at all.  He’d have had no trouble with Saint Paul’s well-known assertion that all things work together for good for those who love God.  But most of us struggle with this idea, much as we struggle with the ideas of pre-destination, justification, and glorification that Paul writes about.  But it might be enough for us today to ask ourselves if it’s true that all things work together for good for those that love God?

Let us admit that there is ample evidence to the contrary.  There was certainly ample evidence to the contrary for Owen Meany.  He was a freakishly small boy with a strange voice that didn’t seem to change at puberty, and he was regarded by nearly one and all as an oddity.  Nothing in the plot of the novel hinges on Owen’s faith – it is simply a given.  The crucial moment of the novel, like the crucial moment of Owen’s life, actually hinges on a trick basketball shot that Owen and his best friend have practiced their entire life.

To recount the details of this rather intricate story would take more time than we have, since it involves, at the end of the story, a deranged psychopath, a gaggle of nuns, and a bunch of Vietnamese orphans, these latter two groups endangered by the psychopath, who encounters them with a hand grenade.  Owen and his best friend manage to save the day by using their trick basketball shot to dispense with the grenade through a small window, but their valor comes at the cost of Owen’s life.

It is typical of John Irving novels that a myriad of seemingly unrelated details come together in the end to be stitched together into a climax that shows you the meaning of all these things.  But the question we face is whether or not this is also true in real life – whether the myriad details of our lives are eventually stitched together with meaning: whether or not all things really do work together for good for those who love God.

We find this hard to believe – even in a novel, certainly in real life.  It would be hard to convey this message today, for instance, to the people of Oslo, after the massacre there that’s taken the lives of 92 innocent people there.  And it is a cruel and painful disappointment that the Scriptures contain no answer to the question of why such things happen in the world.

Christians, sharing in the Jewish heritage, have often searched for but never found the answer to why bad things happen to good people.  The entire Book of Job is concerned with this question, and never provides an answer.  Jesus himself did not offer much teaching on the subject.  It is a chronic mystery of our relationship with God and an equally chronic reality of our daily lives that terrible things happen to all kinds of people – the good and the bad. 

So the statement that all things work together for good for those who love God is not a report on the current condition of our lives or of the world.  It is, rather, an encouragement to begin to see the world differently.  Because sometimes faith is a matter of vision – of seeing things differently than we once saw them.

Whenever I hear this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans, I remember a bishop I once heard preach on this very line: all things work together for those who love God.  He was a retired bishop who’d had a happy ministry and a long and happy marriage.  He told us from the pulpit how retirement had seemed to be a fulfillment of the promise in Paul’s letter.  He had landed a post as a chaplain on the QE-II and he and his wife had begun regular journeys on that great ship, always returning to their comfortable home in Newport, Rhode Island.  I’m sure there were other details, but these are enough to give you the picture that all things seemed to be working together for good for these two who had loved God so well and so long.

But, the bishop said, this dreamy existence did not last long.  Not long after retirement he was diagnosed with cancer – what form, I can’t recall, suffice it to say that treatment was only mildly effective at best - and it seemed that the number of his days was beginning to come into view.  The cruises on board the ocean liner came to an end.  The happy existence in Newport was disrupted for regular trips to New York for chemotherapy, or radiation, or whatever.  The ease of life was replaced by a battle with pain.  Walking now required a cane.  How could all things be working together for good for this man and his wife, who had loved God?

Now, let me tell you that this sermon impressed me greatly.  It was moving and hopeful and forceful in its proclamation of faith.  It must have been nearly twenty years ago that I heard it, and I have remembered these details of the story as far as it goes – I remember the bad things that happened to these good people.  But for years, though I have tried to recall it, I have been unable to remember what came next.  I have been unable to remember his answer to the question – why did this happen to you?  Why was your happiness cut off?  How is it that anything at all was working for good in your life as you gave up the things you thought you’d worked to enjoy, and as you endured the pain of your illness, and saw your own end move more clearly into sight?  How is it that all these things were working together for good?

And for years I have been unable to recall the answer to that question that the bishop might have supplied.  Did he tell us some secret of faith that I have foolishly forgotten?  Did he turn the key of wisdom and understanding in the lock of mystery and show us how it all made sense?  Did he reveal some insight that turned the cloud of his illness in-side-out so that it became all silver lining?  How could I be so silly as to forget this most important part of the sermon, which, frankly would come in handy right about now!?

The truth is that it is easy to end the sermon right where I started forgetting, just after the going got tough, and the gentle suasions of Saint Paul began to seem unlikely.  Isn’t that what most of us do?  We find it nearly impossible to believe that all things work together for good.  We are offended at the suggestion that if it were so, it might only be so for those who love God.  And we are affronted this week by havoc-wreaking gunfire, cloaking itself in the name of Christianity, that took the lives of 92 people in Norway.  And tomorrow there will be another atrocity somewhere else.

No wonder I have forgotten the good part of the bishop’s sermon!  Where is the good part for those 92 families now grieving their loved ones?  Where is the good part for the people whose lives have been ruined in spate of natural disasters recently?  Where is the good part for those who live in extreme poverty, as many millions in the world still do?  Where is the good part for the unemployed of this country?

As I say, it’s easy to end the sermon before you get to the good part – that’s how life often seems to be for so many people.

I have concluded that I have forgotten the good part of that sermon because it contained no answer to the question, “Why?” – which is what would have amounted to the good part under the circumstances.  And an answer never existed.  I do not think for one minute that that bishop could explain why his life took such a turn.  I do not think he believed he should be able to explain it.  What I remember is this – that that bishop, standing in the pulpit with his cane, talking about the cancer that would not too long thereafter take his life, said that he believed more than ever that all things work together for good for those who love God?

And I believe that the only thing that could account for this assertion is a change of vision, a way of seeing God’s mercy at work especially in the painful moments of life, of discovering that the love of a husband and wife, for instance, could endure not just the good life, but a hard sickness, too.

And Saint Paul was not trying teach about some secret that brings good out of bad, he was trying to teach a new way of seeing.  He was trying to talk about the God who knows the number of hairs on your head, and who accounts for you as of greater value than many sparrows.  He was reminding us that the greatest love ever known has been the love of God made know in the death of his Son on the Cross.  He was showing us that pain can be hallowed, that suffering is not punishment.

Paul knew, as God knows, that we would encounter hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword.  He knew that death lay ahead of him, as it lies ahead for each of us, as it is written, “we are being killed all day long.”  But Paul saw what God wants all of his children to see.  He saw the goodness in simply knowing you are a child of God and that God regards you as the apple of his eye, and holds you in his hand.

At the end of A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen, having absorbed the blast of the grenade to save the children, lies dying as his oldest and best friend stands over him, unable to help.  Owen looks at his friend and says, “YOU’RE GETTING SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!”

“Then,” the narrator, his friend, writes, “he left us; he was gone.  I could tell by his almost cheerful expression that he was at least as high as the palm trees.”  And the date on which he died was the date he had carved onto his own tombstone.

It’s so easy to end the sermon before you get to the good part.  Because it’s hard to see with the eyes of faith that show us that all things working together for good, does not mean just the good parts; it also, and especially means that the bad parts are somehow, by God’s providence, working together for good for those who love God.

I thank God that at least once in my life I heard a man who happened to be a bishop, tell the story of how the bad parts didn’t deter him from believing that all things work together for good for those who love God.  Because having heard that sermon to the end, I at least know where to look – and looking, seeing, having a different kind of vision, is the thing.

It is the vision that assures us that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  And the vision that convinces us that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 July 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Clear the Mechanism

Please allow me to set the record straight: I accepted the call to serve as the associate rector of St. Mark’s, Philadelphia, because I believe that God has invited me to worship and work in this place, for my own benefit, and yours, and for the sake of the whole Church.  I did not accept this call so that I could get back into the land of the Philadelphia Phillies.  Now my propensity to talk all things baseball may belie this assertion.  And my decision to rent an apartment right on South Broad St. may cause some of you to doubt my sincerity, but believe me when I say that the fact that I can now watch the Phils every night on my television is only a side benefit – a beautiful, perfect, gem of a side benefit – of my call to serve among you.  God works in mysterious and wondrous ways.

I do love baseball: the strategy and the statistics; the stars who light up the field and the day-to-day workhorses…the nostalgia, the sounds, the smells…I even love the movies.  My all-time favorite baseball movie is Field of Dreams, but I’m also a fan of another Kevin Costner film, For Love of the Game.  In this film, Costner plays Billy Chapel, an aging pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.  Chapel was once a number one starter, an ace who pitched the Tigers into a World Series win.  But now he is an aching old-timer on a losing team, pitching what is likely to be his last game against everyone’s most-hated rival, the New York Yankees.  The game means nothing to the Tigers, but the Yankees need a win in order to go on to the playoffs, and so the stadium is filled to capacity and as loud as game 7 of a championship series.  But Chapel is an old pro, an expert at tuning out the distractions of frenzied fans.  When he takes the mound and leans in to get the catcher’s sign, he speaks a simple phrase to himself: Clear the mechanism.  And in an instant, the crowd blurs into the background, their roar dampered to a kind of muffled, distant hum.  Clear the mechanism, and all Chapel sees is the path between him and the plate – the catcher’s mitt, the strike zone.  All he hears is his own breath, his own thoughts, his own heart.  Only then can he stand up, ready to begin his delivery, ready to pitch. 

Now I cannot imagine that the crowd on the Sea of Galilee was as unruly as a crowd of screaming Yankees fans, but Matthew does call them a “great crowd.”  They are a mob of people, pushing and jostling to get to the front, pushing and jostling so much that Jesus is forced to get into a boat and shove out a little bit from shore so that everyone can see…and hear him.  Listen!  He says.  Listen!  Clear the mechanism.  A sower goes out to do what sowers do.  The sower sows seeds all over his patch of ground – some fall on the path, some on rocky soil, some fall among thorns and some on good soil.  Only the seeds that fall on the good soil take deep root and bear fruit; the others are snatched away by birds or scorched by the sun or strangled by weeds.  But the seeds that landed in good soil – what a harvest they produce, what a yield!  A hundred times their worth – or even just sixty or thirty – but still an overabundance, a ridiculous bounty.  You, crowd!  You who have ears, let them do what ears do – let them listen! 

Later, when his disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to the crowd in parables, his answer is simple – because parables help the people listen.  The people of God aren’t very good listeners; they have a hard time hearing.  They either can’t hear at all, or they are easily distracted from what they’ve heard by their own fears, worries, and misplaced longings.  But stories help them to listen.  Stories help them keep the mechanism clear.  And keeping the mechanism clear is what discipleship is all about – being able to hear “the word of the kingdom” through the noise all around you, being able to hear that word above the undertones of your fear, being able to hear that word when your ears are caught by the whisperings of temptations, possessions, or worries.  To be a disciple of Christ is to listen, and to keep listening even amidst the din of the world’s distractions.  To be a disciple is to be the one who will clear the mechanism again and again and again, who will hear the word and understand it and then share it with the world. 

That is the kind of discipleship that you and I are called to this day, by virtue of our baptisms, by virtue of our worshiping in this place together, by virtue of the very breath in our lungs.  And that kind of discipleship – that kind of listening, attentive discipleship – is hard work.  Because there is more noise now than ever.  There is noise of all kinds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We are surrounded by the racket of texts and tweets and status updates.  We carry our noise in the palm of our hand, take it to bed with us, wake up with it in our ears.  And when we pile that constant clamor of information on top of the noise of everyday life – the siren songs of new things to be purchased and wealth to be gained, the throbbing drumbeat of anxiety and worry – our lives become layer upon layer upon layer of noise.  So how do we hear the word of God through all of that hubbub?  How do we clear the mechanism?

Well, honestly, it’s a lot like baseball.  It takes practice; the listening that our discipleship requires means that we have to be a kind of day-to-day workhorse, throwing the ball into the mitt thirty, sixty, a hundred times, sculpting the muscles of our attention so that we can hear God’s word to us.  And, like any good ballplayer will tell you, equipment matters.  We might need a phrase or a mantra to help us to listen, a holy word or a simple sentence, like the Jesus prayer.  We might need to hear a story, like the stories of God’s people from scripture, the great story of our salvation that we tell each week at the altar.  We might be helped by having something to hold in our hands, a holy touchstone like a cross or a rosary.  Or we might need a special place where we can more easily hear the word of the kingdom – a prayer corner, or a sacred spot out in God’s creation, or a place like this, where the bustle of the world outside is hushed the moment you step inside. 

And we should remember, too, that while this kind of discipleship can be hard work, it also requires a light touch and a sense of humor.  Because we won’t be able to listen all the time.  At times, we will certainly find ourselves lying exposed on the path or rootless in the shallow soil or tied and tangled in the weeds.  Clear the mechanism doesn’t work all the time, even in the movie.  At the end of the film, when Billy Chapel has pitched so well that he’s looking at the possibility of pitching a perfect game, his practice fails him.  He leans in, takes a breath, says: Clear the mechanism.  And it clears – for about an 8^th of a second.  Then the noise comes rushing back in like a tidal wave.  He pops up, startled, leans in again and says, Clear the mechanism.  And nothing happens.  So he shakes his head, chuckles to himself, and pitches anyway.  We will not always be able to hear God’s word in the midst of the noise of our lives.  And when this happens, we must be gentle with ourselves, pray, laugh, and then stand up and pitch anyway.  Because we know that even when we have a hard time hearing, even when our own soil is not particularly fertile, God’s word will accomplish its purpose, God’s word will ultimately succeed and grow and bloom, so that there will be a bumper crop of grace like no one has ever seen.

So listen, all you disciples of God.  Take a breath and lean in.  Clear the mechanism.  Look until you can see only the path between you and the kingdom of heaven, only Christ, the way and the truth, and the life.  Listen until you can hear only the breath of the Holy Spirit, the word of God very near you, the beat of the heart that God has created in you.  Listen and keep listening for the Word who came down from heaven for love of you.  For only then can you stand up, ready to deliver a message of hope right into the heart of a world that desperately needs it, ready to preach the Gospel in word and deed.  Let anyone with ears listen! 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

10 July 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia