A Change You Can Believe In

There is hardly a more tantalizing figure in the whole of the Bible than that of Salome. The alluring young woman who dances for her stepfather the king and tricks him into giving her the head of John the Baptist on a platter has captivated the minds of painters and poets for centuries. Artists have drawn her again and again: dancing with long, flowing hair dressed in long, flowing veils; or smoldering with wily, wicked eyes; or gazing down at her gruesome prize with a strange, vacant smile. Authors and composers have written her either as a hapless innocent trapped by her scheming mother or as furious woman scorned, who lashes out at John the Baptist because he will not love her. Choreographers have fashioned their own versions of her infamous dance, usually with hearty helping of sensual looks from beneath lowered lashes and sultry poses in true Walk-Like-An-Egyptian fashion. Recently, she has even shown up as a character in the HBO series True Blood, where she is imagined as a centuries-old, supernatural creature of darkness. But whether portrayed as a victim or a viper…or a vampire…Salome has always been a siren, drawing our attention again and again, taking center stage and refusing to let us look anywhere else.

Salome is such an enticing figure that it is easy to forget that she is not the central character of this Gospel story. She really has only a supporting role; she is so unimportant, in fact, that Mark the Evangelist doesn’t even bother to get her name right, mistakenly calling her Herodias, which is actually her mother’s name. We know her real name, Salome, not from the Bible, but from the writings of the secular historian Josephus. Of course, we should cut Mark a little slack on the name issue, because the first-century Herodians have one of the most twisted and tangled family trees in history. Herodias is Herod the Great’s granddaughter, who first marries Herod the Great’s son, Herod Philip (who is, that’s right, her own uncle), and, then, upon Herod Philip’s death, remarries his brother, named Herod Antipas, who is also her uncle. Thank God Herodias herself thought a little outside the box when it came to baby names.

But her baby, her daughter, no matter her name and no matter how tantalizing her character might be, is not the central figure in this story. The main character here is not Salome, or her mother Herodias; it is not really even John the Baptist, despite the fact that part of the point of story is to explain John’s death. No, the lead character of this story is, somewhat surprisingly, Herod himself. The entire story centers on Herod – his perspective, his actions, his feelings. We hear that Herod is worried about this Jesus he’s been hearing so much about, guessing – wrongly – that he is some strangely recent reincarnation of John the Baptist, whom Herod himself has just had killed. We learn that Herod had actually liked listening to John the Baptist while he was alive, even if his words had confused and frightened him. We see that when John had denounced Herod’s pretzel of a family tree, Herod had tried to protect him from his own vengeful wife by throwing him in the relative safety of prison. We sense Herod’s insane desire for his stepdaughter and his intense frustration when he realized how he had been duped. Throughout this entire passage, it is Herod we come to know best, Herod’s perspective, Herod’s feelings, Herod’s actions. Herod is far, far from heroic, but he is the hero – the deeply flawed, deeply confused, deeply sinful hero – of this story.

But why in the world is this story so much about Herod? Why does Mark present this story from his point of view? Why not use John’s point of view – after all, he’s a character that we actually care about. Why not describe John’s long wait in the dark dampness of the prison, his prayers, his consolation, his courage in continuing to proclaim God’s truth to Herod’s power? Why tell us so much about Herod if he is such an anti-hero? The answer to this question, I believe, lies in the verses of Mark’s Gospel that bookend this story. Just before this passage, Mark describes Jesus’ calling of the twelve and sending them out in pairs to proclaim the message of repentance and to offer healing in his name. We learn that the disciples have gone out and preached the word of God, and that that word has been heard and has changed lives. And the verses that immediately follow the passage we heard today pick up this same thread, describing the disciples joyfully sharing the good news of all that they had done, telling their Lord Jesus how the word they had preached had changed the world.

But sandwiched right in the middle of these stories of powerful, effective discipleship, is the story of Herod, a man who hears the word and has absolutely no idea what to do with it, a man who perhaps could have been a disciple if he had just had the courage to open his heart and let the word in. Herod is a foil for faith, a negative image of all of the people who heard the word and actually listened. It isn’t as if Herod doesn’t know that John the Baptist is speaking the word of God. He knows that John is a holy man rightly dividing the word of truth, and yet he cannot – or will not – allow that word to break in to his own soul. He cannot – or will not – allow that word to change him. And so he does the only thing he can do – he takes that word and hides it away, locking it out of sight, where there is no risk that it might actually do something, might actually change him or his family or his world. Herod tries to force that word into a form of his own choosing, shaping it in his own image. He stuffs it into the darkness of a dungeon in the hopes that when it comes back into the light it might look more like he wants it to look and sound more like he wants it to sound. No matter how much his soul is drawn to this wild and wooly wilderness prophet, Herod can never really hear what John has to say. He never lets the word in; he never allows himself to be open enough to actually listen. And so his story ends in tragedy, with neighbor manipulating neighbor, with a beautiful, God-created body transmuted into an object of destruction, with deception, and death, and a body laid in a tomb with no hope of an Easter morning.

Imagine what it would have been like if the Herod’s story had been different. Imagine what it would have taken for Herod to hear the word and to risk real change. Imagine how he might have found the courage to say to John, “I hear you, but your words frighten me. Help me to live without fear; help me to repent, to change, to mold my life in the shape of your proclamation. Give me a word, and give me the power to let that word create in me a new life of repentance and forgiveness, of listening and of love, of power in weakness, of brothers and sisters in Christ, of a family shaped by the tree of the cross – a life where there is no more making an idol out of human flesh, no more trickery, confusion, and fear. Speak, John. Speak, prophet, for the servant of the living God is listening.”

Imagine what it would have taken for Herod to change, to let the Word change him. And now imagine what it might take for you to do the same thing. Imagine what it might take for you to let yourself be truly and forever changed. For you have heard the word this morning – you have heard it spoken and sung, proclaimed in your midst, and you will meet the Word made flesh at this altar. What would it be like to let that Word in and be changed?

We all know how easy it is to live like Herod, to hear the word and have no idea what to do with it because of our own stubbornness and fear. We all know how easy it is to try to stuff the word of God down into some private prison in our hearts and to bring it into the light only on Sundays, or when we are in pain, or when we already feel safe, or when we need something, or when we are surrounded by people who already agree with us. But this morning, God is inviting us into a still more excellent way – to let that word go free, to let that word truly reign in our hearts, to let that word shape every word we speak, every action we take, every emotion we feel – to let that word truly change us.

This is a bold thing to contemplate, to truly let the word of God in. It takes courage to listen, courage to let ourselves be molded to the shape of that word. It takes courage to change. But here is something that just might help: we are, in fact, already changed. We are already changed. This is the hope that we find in Christ – we are already changed; Christ’s death and resurrection have changed everything, God’s adopting us as heirs of Christ has changed everything, the Holy Spirit’s movement in the Church and in our own baptisms has already changed everything. We are already changed from now into everlasting life, and this is a change that we can believe in. So why not live like it? Why not let ourselves live in harmony with that truth? Why not fearlessly fling open the doors of our hearts and let the word of God really, truly, beautifully, wonderfully, miraculously change us? Why not give that word center stage and refuse to look anywhere else, and let that word dance?

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

15 July 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Superhero Faith

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The story is old of a boy, whose parents are killed in a plane crash.  The boy is taken in by his father’s elder brother and his wife, who love him as though he is their own son.  As an adolescent, the boy became bookish and nerdy, self-conscious about his limitations: his eyeglasses, his fear of heights, his clumsiness, and his lack of athletic ability.  The death of his parents haunted him, and the reticence of his aunt and uncle on the topic of the boy’s natural parents left him feeling guilty for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.  In a tragic twist of fate, the boy’s uncle is murdered in a robbery, making him a sort of orphan twice-over, and compounding his gnawing sense of guilt and inadequacy. 

Not far away, another boy’s life is similarly shaped by the death of his parents at gunpoint in a robbery.  This boy – a child of privilege - is raised by a trusted family friend.  As he grows up, he transforms the deep resentment he harbors about his parents’ murder into a conviction to avenge their death, and dreams of ways to turn his yearning for justice into action.  Despite his inherited wealth, he shares with the first boy, the deep sense of loss that is accompanied by a kind of survivor’s guilt, a child’s longing for his parents, and an inner wound that can never really be healed.

The boys’ stories are tragic and unique.  Their suffering and loss are not commonplace.  And yet their stories have been told and retold for decades, because they tap into a sense of loss, injustice, guilt, and despair that is shared by many others.  Their stories are also told because of how the boys channel that loss, injustice, guilt, and despair as they grow up; how they harness it to shape their adult lives, to become men of power with a mission to do good in the world.

We could imagine such children being ruined by their loss, by their fate.  We could imagine them wallowing in their grief and never learning to grow beyond it.  Or, we could imagine that their grief would shape them in other, twisted ways, and we would forgive them for it because of their suffering.

The boys’ stories are told because they are fundamentally stories of weakness – the unfair weakness of cruel loss, loneliness, and irrational guilt – and because almost everyone knows these feelings at some point in their lives.  The boys are archetypes of hopelessness transformed, of strength forged out of weakness, and of justice struggling to prevail in a world that seethes with corruption.

And you know who these boys grew up to become, because their stories became famous about fifty years or so ago, when they first were told.  And lately their stories have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, being re-told over and over again in new and ever-more dramatic ways so that new generations can tap into their message of weakness, guilt, and despair overcome by strength, resourcefulness and hope.

Do you recognize the stories of these two boys, whose names you know?  Do you know who they grew up to become?  The first boy’s name was Peter, the second was Bruce.  They grew up to become, respectively, Spiderman and Batman.  And this summer their stories are being re-told again with new cinematic sophistication, bringing new audiences in touch with these archetypes of weakness transformed.

There is a much older story of such weakness told in the New Testament, part of which we heard this morning when St. Paul tells us that a “messenger of Satan” was sent to torment him, to “keep [him] from being too elated.”  We don’t know how exactly the messenger of doom manifested itself to Paul – he only calls it a “thorn” in his flesh. But we know that it leaves him praying desperately for God’s help.  He wasn’t a boy at the time – he was already an adult – but I think he had something in common with those two other boys who must have lain in their childhood beds and prayed for their own thorns to be taken from their flesh, who must have begged God to give them their parents back, who must have stained their pillows with tears at the persistent thought of their own helplessness to save their parents, to protect them, and at the permanence and finality of their deaths.

The boys’ stories are so powerful because we all fear such tears, such weakness, such powerlessness, and we are all subject to them.  We all harbor a secret dread of the messenger of Satan who can ruin everything in our lives.  The death of a parent – the murder of a parent (or of a child) – is surely brought by such an awful messenger.

Superheroes like Spiderman and Batman represent one kind of hope – that something magnificent can be wrought from such loss.  Even if you are bookish, nerdy, clumsy, and afraid of heights, you could end up swinging from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of justice and all that’s right in the world, if only you are lucky enough to be bitten by the right spider!

But most of us are not so lucky.

Most of us are stuck with our normal, human limitations.  Most of us are not given super powers, and most of us are not as well funded as Bruce Wayne, most of us don’t even have an Alfred waiting to assist us as required!  Most of us are stuck with the limitations of our fears, our inadequacies, our guilts, and our losses.  Most of us are more like Saint Paul than we are like Batman or Spiderman.  Most of us pray for the thorn in our flesh to be taken away, and most of us know what it feels like when that prayer seems to go un-answered.

But here, Paul has something to say to us – a secret that neither Batman nor Spiderman knows.  For while he is clear that the thorn in his flesh – whatever it is – is never removed, he tells us that a very clear answer to his prayer was given to him.  He hears the voice of Jesus speak to him:  “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Now, you might say that St. Paul is one of the superheroes of the New Testament.  His story is perfectly suited to a comic book or graphic novel format.  He starts out with a career as a persecutor of the church, then he has a dramatic conversion complete with amazing visuals, he is taken in by a mysterious mentor to instruct and prepare him for his work, then his ministry carries him to the ends of the known world - with shipwrecks, prison breaks, heavenly visions, and all manner of excitement.  But, importantly, Paul is given no superpowers. In fact, he doesn’t even get a uniform or a cape.  Indeed, while he is earning his title of Apostleship, he is the recipient of the visits from the messenger of Satan.  His blessings are confounded by his own limitations.  The right spider does not bite him.  He has no inheritance to fund his work, and no Alfred to support him in it.

Paul has only his appeals to his Lord, only his prayers.  He yearns for strength where he finds only weakness, which he cannot overcome.  Perhaps he still harbors guilt about his persecutions.   He knows he is inadequate to the task at had.  So he prays and he prays and he prays.

And an answer, at last, is given to his prayer: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

And here, in a sense, is the Christian spider-bite.  Here is the secret that transforms our weakness into an unstoppable, super power: the amazing gift of grace that knows its perfection in weakness and that proved itself in the weakness of the death on the Cross, by which God proved that love conquers death, because it is willing to die for the sake of others and able to rise from the grave.

No one thought that Jesus was a superhero for very long.  His miracles seemed to run out when he was forced to carry his own Cross.  And even the good news of his resurrection was slow to spread.  He was supposed to be the Messiah but he did not conquer the Roman emperor, he didn’t even own a sword, he couldn’t muster an army, and was followed by sinners, tax-collectors, and women of questionable repute.

If Jesus is archetypal of anything, he is an archetype of weakness.  The persistent image of his collapsed, drained, and lifeless body still affixed to the instrument of its torture and death is put ever before our eyes, as if to say, “You think you suffer?  You think you have a thorn in your flesh?  You think you feel weak and helpless?  How do you think I feel?”

But this is not what he says to us when we feel weak – although he would be justified in saying it.  Instead he says, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

You are lonely and you feel unloved – my grace is sufficient for you.

You are sick and frightened about the future – my grace is sufficient for you.

You have lost your job and don’t know how you will survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

Your child is hurt and may not survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

War is raging all around you – my grace is sufficient for you.

What kind of an answer is that?!?!? you want to ask.  What is grace in the face of murder, in the face of a messenger from Satan!?!?!?  What is grace when I am still left feeling weak and helpless, and not so much as a spider web to swing from to lift me from my despair?

“My child,” the voice says, “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Here is the spider that bit tax collectors and sinners, that made Mary Magdalene a household name, and that transformed the vision of prisoners and slaves, who delighted to sing about it from the depth of their weakness, their powerlessness, their desperation.

You want to see power at work?  Look at the weakness of the Cross?  Has it not changed the world?

This is the marvelous message being touted at the moment by American nuns – who have deliberately chosen lives defined by the weakness of poverty, but who will not, cannot be silenced by bishops who live in palaces.  Christ’s grace is sufficient for them.  The power of their defiance – in the name of those who are too powerless to speak up for themselves – is as though they were rolling back their sleeves to show us the spider-bite of grace that makes them strong.

This, too, is the work being done at the only Episcopal school in the City of Philadelphia – a school whose only entrance requirement is that students be sufficiently poor.  We started this school because Christ’s grace is sufficient.

If you want to see heroes transformed by grace, come to the Saturday Soup Bowl where volunteers feed hungry people every Saturday morning in the Parish House.  There you will see that Christ’s grace is sufficient, because of the people who have been bitten, and delight to see God’s power in them perfected in weakness.

Go to the Welcome Center – a ministry for homeless people that we helped establish – and see how Christ’s grace is sufficient in the ministry of care and love there.

If you want to see Christ at work, look for weakness and you will find his power being perfected there – wherever people are willing to rely on his grace.  As St. Paul says, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Chances are, you and I are not going to be bitten by a spider that gives us super powers.  Chances are that if we put on a spider suit, people will only laugh at us, and if we try to swing from rooftops, we will probably fall.  Chances are that you and I are not superheroes… even though we suffer the same sadnesses, doubts, griefs, injuries, injustices, indignities, sorrows, and weaknesses that everyone suffers.

I hope you never feel that you suffer something so horrible that it feels like it was brought to you by a messenger of Satan, but I know that life brings such sufferings to those who don’t deserve them.  And should that day come that you wish you could be a superhero, but discover that you are stuck being your same, old, limited, human self.  I hope you will look up at a Cross and see the Man of Sorrows hanging there, and take note of how weak and pathetic and lifeless he looks hanging there…

…and then remember how he changed the world when he came to save it.  Remember that his life could not be buried by the grave…

… and remember the sound of his voice reassuring you in your moment of pain and sorrow: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

8 July 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia

Job's Grandchildren

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

Remember that Job, who was a blameless and upright man, had lost everything: his seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants to marauders.  And then his seven sons and three daughters were killed when, while they were eating and drinking together as a family at their eldest brothers’ home, the house collapsed and killed them all, leaving Job bereft.  Robbed of his wealth and his family, a storm at sea would have been a welcome distraction to Job.  The violent hailstorm that tore through Philadelphia the other night would have seemed like a bright moment beneath the dark skies of Job’s life.

Job, of course, is a stand-in for anyone who suffers – and especially for those whose afflictions are inexplicable and unfair.  His life is the embodiment of the ancient question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  And his story, as it is told in the Bible, resolutely refuses to provide an answer to that question.

Its climax comes when after sitting through the lengthy diatribes of his friends, Job hears the voice of God speak to him from the whirlwind, of God’s own awesome power, and knowledge, and wisdom.

“Where were you, little man,” God sneers,

“when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

and caused the dawn to know it place?

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?

Who has cleft a channel for the rain,

and a way for the thunderbolt?

Can you bind the chains of Pleiades,

of loose the cords of Orion?

Do you give the horse his might?

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,

and spreads his wings toward the south?

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up,

and makes his nest on high?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? 

He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

This is a response, of course, to the question of why bad things happen to good people, but it is no answer.

The story does tell us that Job was given seven new sons and three new daughters, and that he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.  The story does not tell us anything at all about the latter generations of Job, but I think we actually know a great deal about them.

I think we have been hearing about the children of the latter generations of Job in the news these past weeks.  I think some of them have been testifying in court, as they choke back tears, about their suffering at the hands of an abuser.

In another courtroom, we have been hearing about how the church failed to protect children in her care, and how her priests used them for their pleasure.

Elsewhere, there is a four year old child, who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, and whose parents are now numbering his days.

There is a man who is burying his father this weekend long before it was time to do so.

There are girls who are being sold into sexual slavery somewhere in the world today without any idea of the misery that awaits them.

There are mothers who cannot scrape together another enough food in the refugee camp to keep their children healthy and alive for another week.

There are families who are trying to plan right now for what it will be like when Dad is gone, and wondering if he will make it through the summer.

There are children who are being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, whose parents are trying to figure out how their lives have now been changed for ever.

There are families who have been counting the weeks of unemployment as they go by, and wondering what will happen when the checks stop coming but still there is no work.

There is a road in Virginia that a couple will not drive down, since it passes the tree that marks the spot where the ambulance took their son’s body away, when the tree would not yield to his car late one night.

There is an altar over there, vested with a quilt that reminds us of those taken from this parish before doctors knew how to treat AIDS.

There are bodies, or pieces of bodies, still being shipped in flag-draped boxes to an Air Force base not too far from here, from a war no one is very interested in anymore.

These are the latter generations of Job.  These are families who, not long ago, were just eating and drinking together, and whose lives collapsed around them, crushing them, robbing them of whatever joys they had.  It’s true that the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, but he gave no guarantees to his descendants.  And we are all the latter generations of Job: all contending with the same question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

What is a storm on the Sea of Galilee to Job or to his latter generations?   How can the disciples who are with Jesus sound like anything but pathetic whingers to those who have experienced the sufferings of the latter generations of Job?  A strong swimmer could probably make it to shore from almost anywhere in the midst of that lake.

It is telling that nowhere in the Bible – not even in the one book of it that spends pages and pages and pages exploring the question – is the answer given to that old question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  There is only the whirlwind, and the voice that speaks from it: “Gird up your loins like a man: I will speak to you, and you shall answer me!”

I cannot tell if the winds that stir up the waters of Galilee come from that same whirlwind, but I suspect they do.  Even the breezes that fill the sails of the boats on the lake, I suppose, come from the same source – from the same Spirit who once brooded over the face of the waters that would eventually reveal the lake we often call a sea.  I know that a voice does not often speak from the whirlwind.  It’s own lingering winds speak in mostly softer tones now, even when the weather is rough, leaving so much more open to interpretation.  And leaving the big question still unanswered.  Responded to, but fundamentally unanswered.  God is unwilling to make his ways known to us in so many things, and certainly in this – one of the deepest and most confounding mysteries of life.

But something did change when the disciples found themselves frightened in the boat that day, when the windstorm arose, and still the Lord was dozing in the bow, and they shook him and accused him: “Don’t you care that the wind and waves are beating us, that we are soaked and taking on water?  Don’t you see how frightened we are, and don’t you care?

The wind was right there, and it was the perfect opportunity for him to use it as his own megaphone; to speak through it so that they could be sure not to miss a word he said.  He could have taught them a lesson that day and put them back in their places.  He surely knew the lines:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Can you send forth lightnings,

that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?

Is the wild ox willing to serve you? 

Will he spend the night at your crib?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?”

Oh, he knew the lines, and could have recited them with authority from the prow of the boat.  What right had they to call on him, to accuse him of not caring?  Had they not yet guessed at his fate?  Had they no hint of his mission?  Did it never dawn on them that this would not end well for him?  Had they no faith?

But he did not use the wind for his voice, though it was his breath that gave the wind its life, its force, its power.  He did not rebuke them much at all.  He only challenged their fear.  And instead of speaking through the might wind, he spake to it:  “Peace.  Be still.”

These words still provided only a response to their fear; it was no answer to it.

We latter children of the latter generations of Job, know our fair share of fear and misery.  God has not yet put a stop to it.  God has not yet given us an answer as to why it happens thus.  But he has given us something new.  He has spoken differently with the wind, and his word brings new promise:  Peace.  Be still.

Bad things still happen to good people: this is as true as it has ever been.  The latter generations of Job, like our own, have known suffering and sadness and misery and pain.  But the wind no longer scolds us to keep us in our place.  Instead there is a new command given to the wind that so frightens us: Peace.  Be still.

And it has been so long since we knew stillness or peace, that this seems like a very odd response to our fears, and certainly no answer about all the bad things that happen to good people.

But we find that as prayers go, this one – built on his command to the wind and the waves – serves us well.  Peace.  Be still.  And we think that in the calm we find faith… which is exactly what we need, and is our rightful inheritance, as the latter generations of Job, who was a blameless and upright man, and whose fortunes were restored by the God who made him, and who never stopped loving him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 June 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Growth Happens

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

Several years ago, the BBC released an epic documentary series entitled “Planet Earth.” This production was the culmination of five years of extraordinarily intense work. Film crews traveled to the ends of the earth with high definition camera equipment in hand to record some of the rarest and most beautiful sights on the planet. They sat in blinds for months to capture the mating dance of a shy jungle bird, they weathered storms and ice to get just a few moments of footage of the rare snow leopard, they dangled out of helicopters to film enormous flocks of birds as they flashed and wheeled across the sky. The series is truly stunning stuff. Like everything that the BBC does, it is, in a word, brilliant.

One of the most memorable scenes for me was of a dark, lush South American rainforest. A giant tree has just crashed to the ground, ripping open a bright hole of sunlight in the thick canopy of the jungle, and what happens next is breathtaking. In seamless, fluid, time-lapse photography, the film shows us what the narrator calls the “race to the light.” Suddenly awakened by this shocking stream of sunlight, plants of all shapes and sizes start growing as fast as they possibly can, pushing up slender stems from the rich black earth, stretching and reaching as far as they can, wrapping long tendrils around tree trunks and pushing their fat leaves in the faces of other plants that are trying to grow just as fast as they are. It is an explosion of green, of plants yearning for the sun above their heads, longing to be the first green and growing thing to expand into that lone hole of light that beckons from above. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the growth stops. The hole is filled, the sun blocked out by all of the new growth, and the forest resumes its natural cycle of birth and death, of breathing out and breathing in.

It is a remarkable, stimulating, moving scene of Creation at work, a reminder that even with only the tiniest window of hope, even in a fierce plant-eat-plant world, growth happens. The conditions may be harsh, the moment of opportunity may be brief, but growth happens. We see this all the time in the city. Grass winds its way into the tiniest crack in the sidewalk and shoots up into the sun; flowers planted right on the sidewalk’s edge turn bright faces to the sky and hold on for dear life as they are whipped about by each passing truck; whole forests of majestic weeds tower in impossibly tight alleyways. With the smallest of opportunities, the narrowest of constraints, growth happens. And this, Jesus says, is just like the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is like a man who does only one little thing and then reaps a bumper crop of wheat. He scatters seed on the ground and then basically does nothing. He doesn’t hoe, he doesn’t water, he doesn’t fertilize or clear weeds or prune or pinch or run to Home Depot to get Turf Builder or Miracle Grow or some other Scott’s brand concoction. He just scatters the seed and waits. He sleeps, he rises, the sun goes up, the sun goes down, he breathes in, he breathes out…and growth happens. The seed becomes a sprout, and then the sprout becomes a stalk, and then the stalk begins to bear fruit until there is a full head of grain bursting and ready to be harvested. The man has no idea how. He has done just one small thing, and growth happens anyway. And this, we are told, is like the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is like the tiniest of seeds that grows into the heartiest of bushes. The mustard seed is so small that when it is cast into the ground it looks less planted and more swallowed up by the earth. The mustard seed is so small that Mark tells us it is the smallest of all seeds even though it really isn’t – but that’s his point. It’s so small it should be the smallest seed on the earth; it’s so fragile, so seemingly insignificant, and yet when it grows it becomes a full, vibrant, life-giving bush, where birds find home and safety and a place to sing their songs. This sanctuary begins with just one small thing, and growth happens anyway. And this, Jesus says, is just like the kingdom of God. 

The kingdom of God was ushered into this world as one, tiny, vulnerable, seemingly insignificant thing – an infant boy child born of a poor virgin in the backwater of Bethlehem. But this child sprouted and grew into a man, and began scattering seeds all over Judea – “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” “Your sins are forgiven you; rise up and walk.” “Do this in remembrance of me.” His disciples planted their own seeds in the offering of their teaching and their preaching and their very lives. Then Paul planted, Apollos watered, and Timothy and Barnabas and Lois and Phoebe strew their own seeds and by all of the saints through all of the years, God gave the growth. And so from this one God-made-man, this one moment, the kingdom of God has grown into a forest of mercy and love and truth. It towers around us now, with growth as majestic and as immovable as a mountain. The kingdom spreads out beneath us thick as a jungle, with green growing things of all shapes and smells, each succulent and bearing fruit. It runs to the very ends of the earth, so that each shrub and bush has room to fan out roots in rich earth, room to find a window of light open to the sun, room for birds to nest in its branches. The kingdom breathes in and breathes out all around us, night after night, day after day. The earth is filled with glory of God as the trees cover the forest and as the waters cover the sea.

And the kingdom is not finished growing. The final harvest has not yet come. You and I stand in a long line of saints and sowers, each of us charged to plant whatever seeds we have, no matter their size. There is room yet in the kingdom for what we have to give, for our own seeds of Gospel proclamation – what we do and what we don’t do; what we say and how we say it; who we choose to embrace and how; how we give of our time, how we spend our money, how we treat our bodies, how we care for Creation, how we  pray, how we reach out to one another, how we look to the poor and the lonely and the sick and the prisoner and the persecuted and the voiceless, how we “proclaim God’s truth with boldness and minister his justice with compassion.” These are the kinds of seeds that you and I can plant, and tiny or not, God will use them to grow a bush, a tree, a forest, a kingdom.

So it turns out, somewhat surprisingly, that today’s parables are not just about planting and growing. They are not just about size and production and harvest. They are also, most profoundly, about fear, about how you and I need have no fear for the kingdom of God or for our place in it. The kingdom will grow, because when God is involved, growth happens. We need not fear that our words are too silly, too insignificant, too small. We just need to plant them anyway, and let God grow them how he will. We need not fear that our ideas aren’t thriving and will never come to anything. We just need to wait and watch as the sower did, paying attention to them as they germinate in the darkness, noticing what they look like when they begin to sprout, and keeping a close eye on them when they begin to bear fruit. And we need not fear even when we see some part of the kingdom topple over, because each such fall leaves behind it a hole where the Son can pour through, an open space for new growth that sprouts and dances and bends into the light. We need not fear. Growth happens, for God gives the growth.

What would you do if you had no fear? What seeds would you plant if you had no fear that they would take root and grow? How would you live if you wholly trusted God to grow good things? Imagine what you would do, what you would say, who you would feed, what good news you would share if you had no fear – and then ask yourself why not? Why not grab your seeds and go? Go out into the city and plant your seeds with boldness. Keep watch for them to grow and bear fruit. And while you’re out there, take a good look at the kingdom of God that is already green and lush and growing all around you. And give thanks. Because it’s a wonderful, beautiful, grace-filled and glorious jungle out there. 

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 June 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Corpus Christi

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

A few years before he took his own life, the American author, David Foster Wallace delivered a college commencement address that has since become rather famous.  In it he said this 

…in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.  There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough….  It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.  And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.[i]

Wallace went on to make an interesting claim:

…the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

Now, we could debate whether or not the question of sin is only semantics, here, but that’s a discussion for another day.  If you agree with Wallace, as I do, that “everybody worships,” then the only question is: What are you going to worship?  And the next question is: Are you going to worship the things that eat you alive: power, money, beauty, youth?  Or are you going to worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

Earlier in his speech, the writer had deployed a little parable-like story in service to his discussion:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace would go on to say that we are prone to miss the whole world around us, to fail to notice that we are swimming in water, or even to regard the most elemental realities of our lives and the world around us.  He said that it is easy for us to get trapped inside the “tiny skull-sized kingdoms” of our own heads.  And he foreshadowed his own death as he talked about the challenge of “making it to 30, or maybe even 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.”  The latter being a milestone he prevented himself from reaching, albeit, without the use of a firearm.

In the church, we are as prone as everyone else in the world to fall back on our default settings, to take things for granted, and to fail to understand something even as basic as the environment in which we live, the air we breath, the water through which we swim, the food we eat.

In the church we are as prone as everyone else to the temptation to worship the things that will eat us alive.  You have only to pick up the papers, or pay attention to the kinds of things that are happening in other denominations and our own at this very time to see that this is true.

In the church, we say that we are born in the water when we are baptized, but we then go quickly about the business of losing the memory and the meaning of that water.  Having once been dipped in pools of the stuff at our baptisms, that we say gave us new life and that promises us entry in to the life of the world to come, we can just as easily as the next fish turn to our neighbor in the pew and ask, “What the hell is water?”

No one will ever know why that hugely talented and thoughtful writer took his own life.  He was fighting severe depression.  And what can we do but surmise that he could find nothing worth worshiping in the world, and the water, so to speak, overwhelmed him.  In any case, I trust that God now cares for him and has shown him new light and new life.

Thank God, the water does not overwhelm most of us.  But it laps at our thighs and our buttocks; it creeps up to our armpits, and sometimes we find that we have to spit it out, as we fight to keep our heads above it.

So much in life gets ruined.  I found this to be true in the most mundane way not long ago when I wanted to make shortcakes for strawberry shortcake.  I reached up into my cupboard for the box of Bisquick – which is a blessing of untold measure in this world.  I opened the box and peeked inside, because I had a hunch that I was in for trouble – the box had been there, opened, for quite some time, since I last made shortbread or pancakes or anything else you make with Bisquick.

Sure enough, on examination, I could see that the Bisquick mix was speckled with the tiny black polka-dots of what are sometimes called flour beetles or weevils.  So the box had to be thrown out (which is a waste).  And it was a busy day; people were coming over to dinner, and I was running late, as usual.  The strawberries hadn’t even been washed and trimmed yet, but now I had to go out and get a new box of Bisquick.  And even though this was a mundane thing, it just made me think of how easily everything is ruined: all our plans, our schedules, and the cakes we mean to bake, so to speak.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the Bisquick.  The same thing has happened with rice, and with sugar at various points.  And, I have finally begun keeping the flour in an air-tight container, but who knows if that will actually work; the flour has gotten ruined before: it could happen again.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the things in the cupboard.  It’s how easily everything else in life gets ruined.  I have my list; you have yours – lists of things that have gotten ruined in our lives.  Let’s not argue over whose list is longer.

Things fall apart, remember. 

And as long as things are falling apart and everything gets ruined, I am likely to rely on the default settings of the way I respond to the world around me.  Which means that I am likely to mistakenly believe that the Bisquick was important, and that my powerlessness to keep it bug-free, or to produce strawberry shortcake, apparently effortlessly at the end of the meal – that these were important too.  What am I worshiping here?  Betty Crocker?  Who knows?

But the truth remains that things pile up in life – things far more important than the Bisquick.  And as they do, they seem to press against your chest – or if you want to stick with the fish metaphor, against your gills, making it hard to breathe, hard to swim through the day to day waters of life.  And you could be forgiven for beginning to think the way the Israelites thought when they were wandering in the desert – Why has God put us here, if only to kill us slowly?  If only to starve us to death in the desert?

And if you happen to go to church, as everything gets ruined in the world, and as everything falls apart around you, and as you feel the pressure mounting against your chest, against your gills.  And it’s harder and harder to swim, and you are not sure why you have been put into the world, just to swim meaninglessly amongst all the other fish…

… if you happen to go to church you might find that you are in an antique building surrounded by antique people singing antique music to an antique God.  And should you be unlucky enough to be there for the sermon, you could be congratulated, in many cases, for choosing to snooze rather than walking out in protest or boredom.

But by God’s grace, maybe, just maybe, you would stay long enough to toddle up to the altar rail with all the other fish, and to open your puckered lips for the morsel of food that is distributed there.  And although the little wafer resembles fish food at least as much as it resembles bread, maybe, just maybe, you will hear the words that the priest says as he or she presses it into your hands or onto your tongue: “The Body of Christ.”  And maybe, by God’s grace, at that moment, everything else would fall away from your consciousness, and you would just hear those words echoing in your ears as your saliva and the wine begin to dissolve the dry wafer in your mouth.  And maybe it will occur to you that everybody worships.  And you will ask yourself what you have been worshiping.  And you will ask yourself whether or not you have been worshiping things that eat you alive.

And it’s not much in the way of mental gymnastics for you to begin to see that here you have found an object of worship who prefers to feed you than to eat you alive.  And to feed you with his own self – his own Body, his own Blood, which, though mysterious, strikes you as intimate, as loving, as somehow able to save you and at least some of the things that have been ruined, some of what’s fallen apart in the world.

And it might be the case that when you get up from your knees, and turn to make your way back to your pew, and the unremarkable taste and texture of the bread you just swallowed, the wine you just sipped is already disappearing… it might be that you begin to see the world ever so slightly differently.  It might be that you begin to think to yourself, “This is water, this is water,” as you become aware of the world around you in a new way, rejoicing to think that it is all somehow the work of God’s fingers – just as you are.  And it occurs to you how marvelous it is that there is something to worship – someone to worship – who will not eat you alive, but who prefers to feed you with his Body and Blood.

Because you know what it is like to be eaten alive in this world by all that invites you to chase after money and power and looks and youth.  But here, in this somewhat antique setting, you find a God who wants to feed you, and who wants to do it more or less for free.

He wants to nourish you: body and soul.  He wants to heal everything that is broken, bind up everything that has splintered, restore everything that is ruined, and fix everything that has fallen apart in your life.  For he knows what it is like to swim in this water.  He knows how easily everything is ruined.  And he knows that this is not how it was meant to be.  He wants to feed you with a food that cannot spoil, and to give you a life that cannot be taken away from you, even when your life on this earth comes to an end.

All of which sounds foolish if you are still determined to worship the things that will eat you alive, and go on living your life oblivious even to the water through which you swim.

Or, you could worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”  All of which is pretty good description of a life fed by the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood.

This is water, this life you and I are living.  This is water.  This is water.  It can kill you, or it can give you life.  It can drown you, or it can quench your thirst.  Deciding what you worship plays a big role in determining which it’s going to be.

And you can decide to worship the things that will eat you alive.  People have been worshiping such gods for a long, long time.  Or you can decide to worship the God who feeds you with his own Body, as he makes all things new.

And you may begin to discover that the water is fine.  And then, you may begin to live.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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[i] David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water”, A Commencement Speech give at Kenyon College, 2005, published by Little Brown & Co., New York, 2009

I Saw the Lord

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

As you approach what used to be called the Wailing Wall, at what was the base of the great Temple of Jerusalem, you encounter signs that address you thus:  “Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site of the Western Wall, where the Divine Presence always rests.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the worshipers.”

It’s easy to glean the wrong meaning from such a carefully worded injunction.  As with so much else in life, it’s easy to miss the point.  It’s easy to be put off by the enforced piety that doesn’t sit well with Americans.  It’s easy to ignore the sign altogether.  It’s easy to fixate on the demand for modesty, and to disregard the outrageous and daring claim contained in the white letters printed in a sans-serif font on a brown metal sign that bears the imprimatur of the un-named Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites.  It’s easy to overlook the possibility that you are about to tread very near the place where, in the words of the Rabbi, “the Divine Presence always rests.”   It’s easy to be distracted by the Orthodox men and boys with their long coats, their curls, their fringes, and their hats, and the gear they’ve brought with them to pray packed into a plastic kit, tucked under their arms as they make their way to the Wall.

How does one approach such a Wall; that marks the boundary of the place where the Divine Presence is said to have always dwelt?  How close does one get?  Is it safe to go right up to it?  Is it respectful to do so?  Does one touch the Wall?  Or kiss it? Or fall down on one’s face in front of it?   Have you brought a prayer scribbled onto a folded scrap of paper to nestle in its cracks?  Do you have a prayer ready in your heart?

You are nowhere near as well prepared to pray as the young IDF soldier who has produced Tefillin from somewhere, and has strapped one leather box to his head like a miner’s lamp, and is winding the other around his left arm seven times before beginning his prayers.

I walked up to the Wall, and I was very aware of my breathing.  It seemed wise to be cautious in one’s breathing in such precincts.  I stretched out my hand.  I reached for the Rock, and as my fingertips came into contact with it I closed my eyes, and checked my breathing, to slow it down a little.  I don’t remember what I prayed for – I suppose I prayed for peace.  I don’t know how long I stood there; it wasn’t very long.  The earth did not shake beneath my feet.  I opened my eyes, and in front of me I saw the Wall.  Just the Wall. Nothing else.

Why would anyone believe the Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites?  If the Divine Presence rests there, as it has for ever, why is that Presence not more evident?  Why is there only that Wall left standing, with its fanatic Orthodox believers davening before it?  Why must soldiers protect the resting place of God Almighty?  Why has peace not settled alongside the Divine Presence?  Why is there so little to see?

 I would have liked to see a vision like Isaiah’s.  I’d have liked to close my eyes, reach out my hand and discover that the rock has become supple in my fingertips: has taken on the texture of the hem of the robe of the Lord of hosts.  I’d have like to smell the scent of incense, and felt the wreaths of smoke winding past my face.  I’d have liked to have heard the suggestion, at least, of the sound of the beating of seraphic wings, and to have caught a hint of the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d have liked to have heard the voice of the Lord speaking to me as Isaiah did.  I’d have liked to have seen something as a I stood near the Divine Presence.  I’d have liked to have seen the Lord.  But I opened my eyes, and I saw the Wall.

Why is it so hard to see God?  Why was it that even Moses was only allowed to catch a glimpse of his sacred backside?  Why is it that in a world where faith is faltering, God delegates the announcement of his Divine Presence to whomever it is who happens to be the Rabbi of the Western Wall.  Why does he leave us to struggle with mysterious and complicated teachings about three persons in one God, as though we had to reconcile the identity issues of a pretty serious personality disorder?

In 1897, the African American artist Henry O. Tanner made his first trip to the Holy Land, financed by Rodman Wanamaker.  When he returned, he painted the scene that we heard described in the Gospel reading assigned for Trinity Sunday – the story of Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus by night.  Nearly thirty years later, Tanner would paint the scene again in a palate of more spectral blues as the influence of impressionism takes hold of his work.

In both versions of the scene, the meeting takes place on a rooftop terrace, and Tanner includes an important detail: the stairway to the roof is carefully located, and in both cases, the artist indicates that light is shining on the stairs.

Nothing about the paintings suggests that the importance of the stairway is as a point of egress for Nicodemus or for Jesus.  The feeling is given that the stairs are lit for the viewer: for you and for me.  This is to be our way up to the rooftop, whence we may eavesdrop on the sacred instruction taking place.

It is as though any of us could simply slip up the stairs to the rooftop and see the Lord.

Not long ago, I saw both paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Tanner had been a student.  As I think of them, I find myself fixated on the stairs in both paintings.  I allow myself to imagine that at the bottom of the stairs there might be a sign posted that would read something like this:

Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site where Nicodemus is visiting with Jesus; they have been talking here for a long time, and the Divine Presence does not seem prepared to leave any time soon.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the other visitors who are also spying from the top of the stairs.

How does one approach such a stairway?  How close to the top does one get?  Can you walk right out onto the terrace and join in the conversation with Nicodemus and Jesus?  Do you reach out to touch the Lord?  Do you fall on your face and kiss his feet?  Is your head covered?  Does it need to be 

I want to stare at Tanner’s paintings long enough to close my eyes and allow myself to creep up the lighted staircase and look and listen.  I want to feel the evening breeze in Jerusalem blow across my face.  I want to hear the words it carries reach my ears: “I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above….

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

I want to see what Tanner seems to have seen without ever having seen it.   I want to bring all the prayers I can remember with me up that staircase, and all the prayers I cannot remember.  I want to press a stack of them, scrawled on scraps of paper, into Jesus’ hand, and I want to implore him to answer them, or at least to answer the prayer for peace.  I want to feel the earth shift under my feet as I draw closer to him.  I want to hear the beat of seraphic wings, and the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d like to smell the certain odor of incense that hangs in the air in his nearer presence.  I want to be able to open my eyes and see the Lord, right there in front of me, in spectral but alive brushstrokes of blues.

But when I open my eyes, I find instead that I am in front of a brownstone wall.  And all I have in common with Tanner’s vision is Philadelphia.

And the cracks in the brownstone walls are not spaces to place prayers, but obvious signs of deferred maintenance.  And I am not on a rooftop in Jerusalem; I am right here with you in Saint Mark’s.

And I am stymied again by the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and wondering what in the world they can be saying about it in church over on the other side of the Square.

And I catch hint of the scent of incense in the air.  And I look up at you, who I see gathered here faithfully to pray.  And I think of the light burning on the staircase in the painting.  And of the sign: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence always rests.

And I look down at the small disk of bread in my hands.

And I look again at you, and these stone walls around us.

And I think that perhaps that when I opened my eyes I saw the Lord too.

I think we are on a lighted staircase.

I think the Divine Presence has always rested here too.

And I know these are mysteries too deep to fathom.

But I am becoming more and more certain that I saw the Lord in this place.  And I feel like I want to post a sign outside that begins something like this: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence dwells…

But I suspect I should let the light speak for itself, and I should simply guard the stairs to make sure anyone who wishes may climb them.

And if you want to do so, I shall hold the door to the stairway open for you.  And as you walk by, you might ask me, “What’s up there?  What did you see?”

And I’ll smile, with Nicodemus and with Isaiah, and I’ll tell you: “I saw the Lord.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Trinity Sunday 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Sound of Pentecost

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

It is a tradition, in some Episcopal churches, to offer this morning’s lesson from Acts in a slightly unusual way. Because the reading tells of the disciples being inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak in many different tongues, some churches try to recreate this experience by having not just one reader for this lesson, but a whole string of readers, each of whom reads a verse or two in a language in which they are fluent. The effect, I’m sure, is to create a sense of the sound of that Pentecost morning in Palestine, to paint the aural landscape from a rich palate of sounds and inflections, to sound something like this:

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. Und es geschah schnell ein Brausen vom Himmel wie eines gewaltigen Windes und erfüllte das ganze Haus, da sie saßen. Au même moment, ils virent apparaître des sortes de langues qui ressemblaient à des flammèches. Cosí furono tutti ripieni di Spirito Santo e cominciarono a parlare in altre lingue, secondo che lo Spirito dava loro di esprimersi.

While I appreciate the intent behind these kinds of readings, there are two problems with this approach that are immediately apparent. The first is that most of the time, because of the people who read them, these verses are read in a smattering of European languages – French, Italian, German – languages whose aural colors are different than English, to be sure, but not from quite the same palate as the languages of the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. The sounds are not quite right. The greater problem, though, is that this experience is not quite right. The whole point of the disciples being gifted by the Holy Spirit to speak in different languages was so that all of the people, all of the visitors “from every nation under heaven” who were in town for the festival of Pentecost, could understand what was being said. The miracle was that everyone could understand everything, not that random people in the crowd could understand two verses in twenty. The upshot of all of this is that unless you’re someone who speaks every language known to man, as some of you undoubtedly do, the experience of these kinds of Pentecost readings is likely to be more confusing than clarifying.

In response to this concern, I’ve heard of a few churches who try a different approach. Instead of dividing up the reading into separate verses, one for each represented language, they have different people read the entire lesson in different languages – all at the same time. The lesson is read simultaneously by a whole gaggle of lectors, lined up at the front of the church and belting out these verses in their best Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese or Russian. This approach, while eliminating the problem of understanding only two verses in twenty, obviously comes with its own significant challenges, which are best summed up by a former parishioner of mine who, honestly confused by a church experience she had had while on vacation, asked me why this church had acted out the story of the Tower of Babel on Pentecost instead of the regular lections.

Now I don’t mean to make these approaches to this Pentecost reading seem overly silly, because they certainly aren’t intended that way. I do see what these churches are getting at. The day of Pentecost as we hear it described in Acts was, first and foremost, an experience – a banquet for the senses, something to be seen and felt and heard and touched. The rumble of rushing wind, the heat and light of those tongues of fire, the pure music of all of those lovely languages as they danced around the dazzled crowd. Pentecost is a day to be felt, known and understood not only with our minds but with our bodies. Pentecost is a big, larger-than-life festival day, a scene that we can easily imagine in epic, Cecil B. DeMille style, with apostles standing on majestic sets, booming forth their proclamation in hearty voices well-trained for the stage, with thousands of extras running to and fro with looks of bewildered joy on their faces and happy exclamations on their lips, with fanfares and flourishes and noise, noise, noise, noise. Pentecost is a celebration on a large scale, a loud, busy, grand and wonderful day.

But Pentecost is not just about the pomp of the circumstance. Pentecost is not just about the noise. Because the devout Jews who heard the disciples speaking in many tongues not only heard words in their own language; they actually heard the word of God. They heard what the disciples were saying, not just how they were saying it. They were able to listen past the wonder of the words themselves deep into the heart of their meaning, to hear the stories of God’s deeds of power in and by and through Jesus Christ. They not only heard; they understood. And if they understood, then they couldn’t have been just standing in place, straining to hear someone screaming at them in Mesopotamian from a far parapet; they must have followed the sound of familiarity, found the disciples who spoke their language, and gathered in tight to hear what he had to say. They must have huddled together, drawn up close, face to face, breath to breath, to hear and feel this Gospel message as near to them as it had ever been.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus promises his disciples that he will send them the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth. He says he will send them the Paraclete, a word sometimes translated as the Advocate or the Comforter. But the Greek word parakletos literally means “the one who is called alongside.” The Paraclete is the one pulled next to, the one drawn near, the one who comes up close. It is this particular gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offers us in his physical absence – not just the majesty and might of the swirling winds and fiery breath, but the intimacy of a companion, one who comes near, walks beside, and shares with.   

This has always been God’s way. For all of the smoke and fire with Moses on Mount Sinai, the flames that shot out of heaven and licked up the watery sacrifice on Elijah’s altar, the burning chariots that showed Elisha that he, too, would be a prophet, God has always also been a God of great intimacy – a personal God who speaks not only to His people but speaks to them one at a time, in their own language, who calls Moses’ own name out of a burning bush, who startles Balaam by speaking through the very donkey he is riding on, who offers Elijah the small voice of sheer silence. God has always drawn near to His people, pulled close, spoken to them persons to person.

And when the Son of God became flesh to redeem the world, he, too, spent his ministry drawing close. He spoke to the crowds, to be sure, but he also spoke to persons – to Zacchaeus and Matthias, to the Magdalene, to Nicodemus – one on one, drawing near, sharing space and breath, close and personal and intimate.

One of my professors at seminary once joked about how much easier it would have been if God had just waited until now to be made manifest. If God had just waited, he teased, he could have put Jesus Christ on CNN – the Sermon on the Mount could have been streamed live all over all the continents in every language known to woman, his healings could have been broadcast live and in HD. But then, my professor said seriously, this never actually could have happened. Because this is just not how the Son of God works. Even if he had walked the earth in our own age of lightning-fast communications, Christ still would have worked slowly, quietly, one on one, drawing close, coming alongside, and being near. 

This is how God works today, on this Pentecost. Yes, there is a feast, and yes we are celebrating, and yes we sing mighty hymns and think about the height and depth and breadth of the Holy Spirit’s life-giving and energizing work in the Church. But we also remember that aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who comes alongside you and speaks the Gospel – not just to all the multitudes where we might have to strain to hear the Good News – but right to you, in your ear, in the language that is easiest for you to hear – the language of Stravinsky, perhaps, or the language of shared prayer. The language of bended knee, the language of another’s face, the language of bread and wine. This is God’s promised gift – that he comes alongside us, wherever we are, whatever language we speak, and says, Lean in and listen. I am here, I am with you. When you are in church, at work, at school, on the streets, I am beside you. When you are kneeling in repentance, lying in weakness, standing in strength, dancing in joy, I am beside you. When you are comforting, exhorting, dreaming, prophesying, proclaiming, I am beside you. When you go into all the world, to the ends of the earth, to share and live and sing the Gospel message, I am always right beside you. So lean in close and listen, to the still, small voice – to that sound of Pentecost.       

Sermo tuus veritas est

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

The war still drags on in Afghanistan, no matter how many new restaurants open in Philadelphia, no matter how glorious the spring weather has been here, no matter how lovely each mass offered at Saint Mark’s may be.  For ten years, we have sent soldiers in our names to fight a grisly war in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, whence vicious armies have previously been sent home licking their wounds.

A few weeks ago, along a road that leads through an Afghan village where children were to be seen along the side of the road going about their day happily with their parents, a suicide bomber attacked a small American convoy of pickup trucks, after which waiting gunmen fired on the Marines who had been thrown or had jumped from their trucks. 

Except that one soldier, Master Sergeant Scott Pruitt, never left his truck: his injuries left him bleeding so much and so fast he did not survive the attack.

As it happens, in one of the trucks there was a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who wrote pointedly about the attack and who documented it with a series of photos.  In an interview about what happened, the reporter, Michael Phillips, talked about the difficulty of recording what actually took place:

“The world explodes,” he said.  “Some things I saw in my pictures, I don’t remember having seen.”  He goes on to say that “the pictures themselves are more solid than my memories of what happened.”[i]

In particular, Phillips tells of a photo that you can find in the slideshow that goes with his story.  In it, a Marine, Jewelie Hartshorne is seen taking aim at an enemy position; she kneels beside the mangled green pickup truck that has been hit by the bomber; and the body of Master Sergeant Pruitt, slumped forward as he bleeds to death, is clearly visible through the blasted-out, front, passenger-side window.[ii]

The reporter says that he cannot remember taking this photo, which I think is another way of saying he cannot remember seeing this happen.  He assumes he must have seen it, since, after all, it was his camera and he took all the photos.  But with only his own memory to resort to, it seems that Phillips would be unable to remember at least this one aspect of what happened, this one scene.  Without the photo, who’s to say that it did happen?  Who’s to say what else has been forgotten that was not captured by his camera?  And who’s to say that the images he did collect are what they appear to be?

Who is to say what really happens in the chaos of war?  Would the Afghanis whose children were on the street that day report it differently?  Where is the truth to be found?

Or as the question is found in the Gospel, on the lips of Pontius Pilate: What is truth?

As I ponder the mysterious nature of truth, I find myself fantasizing that I could somehow hack into the reporter’s camera, or his computer where I’m sure the images are stored.  And before he looked at all of them, before he’d published them and shared them with the world, I find myself imagining that I could go to work on the images with PhotoShop.  I think of the picture with Master Sergeant Pruitt slumped forward in the truck’s cab.  And I know that I could easily change this image.  I could push the Marine back in his seat so he could draw breath into his lungs.  I could replace the passenger seat window.  I could restore the mangled truck.  I could open its door and find the pool of blood at Pruitt’s feet, and I could erase it with a few clicks of the mouse.  I could mend the torn shreds of his uniform, and, so doing, mend the ruptured flesh beneath it.  I feel as though in doing so, I could place my cursor over his heart, and click and click and click and start his heart beating again.

I don’t feel the need to return everything to normal in the photo – this seems unrealistic to me.  But I do like the idea of going this far – far enough to save this one Marine.  And I imagine that I could do it without the reporter knowing it, so that when he turns on his computer and looks for the files, he will open this image up and see that Pruitt is not dead after all, and that he will soon be reunited with his two daughters.  And I feel as though I could make it so, since truth is hard to grasp, since even the man who took the photo cannot say for sure that he actually saw it happen.

Why should the photo get to decide what the truth is?  Why should the photo get to decide who lives and dies?  If the reporter who witnessed it cannot remember taking this photo, and relies on it to know what happened, why can’t we just change the image and thereby change the truth?

What is truth, after all?

As he was preparing to go to his own death, Jesus prayed a long prayer.  And in it we heard him say this morning a few things that stick out in my mind:

“While I was with them I guarded them….  I protected them….  I ask you to protect them from the evil one….  Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Your word is truth.  What does this mean?  And why should it matter?

It matters, because, as the reporter Michael Phillips said, “The world explodes.”

The world explodes all the time, all around us.  Sometimes the explosions are obvious – as in the roadside battlefields of Afghanistan.  But sometimes the explosions are a lot less obvious.  Sometimes only you know that the world is exploding.  Sometimes it is only your world that is exploding, but the explosion is no less disastrous for it.  The world explodes.

In the interview, Michael Phillips said this, “Your notebook or your camera is a filter between you and reality.  It allows you to do your job even as you should be running for cover.”  But actually, his notebook and his camera proved to be more than that.  They were also means by which he would try to know the truth of what happened that Saturday, April 28, in a small village in the Nimroz province of Afghanistan.  His photos would show him parts of the truth he would never have remembered on his own: things he had seen but not really witnessed without some other way to claim the vision as his own.  And the truth that those images impart is painful and heart-racing, and terrifying, and final.  I can let my imagination run wild, but it will not bring Scott Pruitt back to life; it will not give his daughters back their father.

We like to pretend that the truth is whatever is empirically verifiable in the world, whatever is replicable in the lab, whatever can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.  But actually we know that even these standards bring no guarantee of establishing the truth.  Clever as we are, we are notoriously inept at truth.

If I were to say that faith is something like a filter between you and the world that allows you to live your life even as you should be running for cover, you might say that by such a definition of faith I am admitting it is just a form of denial of the reality around me.  But if a reporter uses the very same phrases in reference to his notebook and his camera, then we’d say that they are tools in service of the truth.

But why should a camera get to decide who lives and who dies?  Why should that sad image be the final arbiter of life and death?  Why should its pixilated images get to spell out the truth?

I’d rather trust God to do these things.  I’d rather let his word speak the truth.

And God’s word has truth to speak into that image that the photographer cannot recall taking, just as it has truth to speak to you and me, and to two young girls who lost their father on April 28^th, and of course to their father as well.

It might sound something like this:

I formed you, my child, with my own hands; I made you out of clay and dust.  I shaped not only your limbs, but the intricate works that make you who you are: that send the blood running through your veins, the air running through your lungs, and the ideas running through your head. 

I made you in my own image.  And when you were made, then I leaned over my workbench and blew my own breath into your nostrils so that you would have life – a gift that only I can give.

I gave you talents, and looks, and limits, too.  I gave you being.  And I looked at you and saw that you were marvelously made, and that it was good.

I have loved you since before you were born, while I was creating you in the inward parts of your mother’s womb.  I have desired for you only joy; but I know the realities of the world into which I set you.  I know that you are a sheep in the midst of wolves.  This is the nature of my creation – it is complicated, too complicated for you to understand, but it does not mean I love you any less – knowing this is the beginning of wisdom.

I have sought to protect you always with my whole being.  I have been your Father; I sent you my Son; you have been given my Holy Spirit.  Like the creation I made, I am complicated too.  Does it surprise you that the Mind from which all things sprang is complicated?  That the Life from which all life comes is complicated?

Let me try to simplify it for you.  You cannot see what I see.  You look at death and you see an end.  I look at it and see a new beginning.  Which of us do you suppose is right?  Which of us can see on both sides of death?

Do you think you know the truth?  Do you think you have captured it in photographs of dead people?  What does this prove?  You cannot even remember taking the photos.  How could you know the truth on your own?

But I have sanctified you in the truth; my word is truth.

This means that I see what you cannot, but that I have given you the lens of faith to help you see the truth.

Mostly this means that I have helped you see beyond the veil of death, though the world explodes.

You hear people tell you that they can show you the truth all the time.  The truth, they say, in that silly, rhyming slogan, is that might makes right.  They don’t use the slogan any more but they live by it.

They tell you that this war is truly necessary.  They have told you that wars can truly be won.  They have told you that they would rather not do it this way, but they must for the sake of the truth.

These are lies.  But the picture has been so altered that they appear to be true.  And since you cannot remember that far back, you cannot see how drastically the picture has been changed.  You cannot remember what joy and peace and mercy were supposed to look like.  You believe them, but you doubt my word.  And the world explodes.

But I have sanctified you in the truth; my word is truth.

This means that what I see is true, not what you see.  This means that Scott Pruitt is dead to you, which makes sense, since you killed him.

But I have sanctified him, and thousands upon thousands of others like him; I have sanctified them in the truth; my word is truth.

And this is the truth from above: that he is dead to you, but alive to me; that he could not survive in the world that you have made of my creation, but he breathes new life in the world beyond the grave.

You search all the evidence you can for proof, and you can only prove that he is dead.  Which is exactly the wrong conclusion to reach, even though you killed him.

Because you thought your might was true, you can repeat the results over and over again, they have been reviewed by your peers, who approve, more or less of your ways, your experts will testify that the life had left his body, which was just too full of holes to go on living.  And this looks true to you.  Because the world explodes.

But I have sanctified him in the truth; my word is truth.  When you were done with him, I took him again into my hands, I breathed again into his bloody nostrils, I filled him again with the spirit of life that I intended for him from the moment of creation.

And he lives today with me, where he will be forever.  He is not dead; he is alive.  Even while the world hurtles ever more furiously toward death.

You think you know the truth, but I am telling you, you are only looking at the pictures.  You can only see what you think you can see.  But there is more.

And my word is truth.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

20 May 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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[i] “Here and Now” on NPR, 18 May 2012, reported by Alex Ashlock,  

[ii] Phillips, Michael M, “Under Attack” in The Wall Street Journal, 12 May 2012

Commencement Exercises

Father Mullen, Mr. Glandorf, Mr. Sheehan, Mr. Marshall, acolytes, choir, esteemed guests, friends, family, congregation, and especially the class of post-resurrection disciples, welcome to the 2012 Ascension Day Exercises. It is such a joy to be here with you, such a privilege to have been asked to offer a few words of wisdom and counsel and congratulations as these eleven fresh-faced apostles and their companions graduate and begin to make their own way in the world. What a day this is! A day to look back over the past three years, to remember and celebrate the long, hard journey that has brought you to this place. And it is a day to look forward to the future, to gaze into the coming days with hope and courage, knowing that you have been prepared well for the challenges that lie ahead and that the friends you have made here, in this city of Jerusalem, will continue to shape your life powerfully for years to come. Indeed, what a day this is! It is the first day of the rest of your life. Today is truly your commencement.

It is always a challenge to know what to say on such an auspicious occasion, or even to whom I should say it. Should I speak to just the graduating class, reminding them of how far they’ve come? Should I tease them a little about how hard it was for them to learn their parables, or about that dark and stormy night on the Sea of Galilee when they nearly capsized their boat in panic? Should I recall the time they were all fighting over who was Jesus’ favorite until he put a child in their midst and invited them to be child-like but not child-ish?* Should I speak with gravity of the events of the past few days, remind them of how all of their Holy Week frailty was redeemed by Easter morning? Or should I just try to offer them words of wisdom, nuggets of truth that they can carry around in their pockets? Should I remind them to listen to their hearts, to go out into the world and make a difference, to live each day to the fullest, to love their neighbors as themselves, to follow their Passion?

Or should I speak to the whole crowd? Should I remind all of you who are sitting here of the important part you’ve played in the lives of these disciples? Should I thank you, encourage the graduating class to stand and applaud you, you with your open hearts and doors, with your wounds that needed healing, your sins that needed forgiving, your food that needed blessing and breaking? Or should I speak to a crowd that isn’t even here – should I rail against Roman tyranny or lambast the Pharisees because of their hard hearts that not even the Son of God could melt? Should I be political? Entertaining? Inspiring? Philosophical? Or should I just make sure that my speech is short, so that you all can get along to your graduation parties and brunches and family gatherings in the temple?

My job, of course, is not made any easier by the fact that Jesus has already said so much. In his remarks earlier, he has already offered an entire survey course on the history of the people of God. He has reviewed all of that which was said about him in the Law of Moses and in the prophets, even in the psalms. He has opened the minds of these faithful disciples to understand what was written in the scriptures, reminding them that he was always meant to be crucified, killed, and raised on the third day, that he was always meant to proclaim forgiveness to all people, that this shul in Jerusalem was always meant to be just the beginning. And he has charged the graduates with their future work and ministry, assuring them that after this day – and after a few weeks set aside for worship and blessing and celebration – they will be clothed with power from on high, sent out from this city to the ends of the earth as workers and witnesses. Jesus has already said so much. In this final speech of his earthly life, he has, in a way, already covered it all – looking back and looking forward, offering Wisdom and counsel and a sending forth. What more is there really to say?

Well, not much, except that I believe it falls to me to point out that while these may seem like your typical commencement exercises, they most certainly are not. At a normal graduation, after the speeches and the diplomas and throwing your mantles in the air, everyone goes their separate ways. The graduates go out into the world on their own, to live their life and make their mark; the teachers climb back up into their towers of learning, decreasing, as it were, to let their former students increase, hoping that what they’ve said and taught will endure in their absence; and the friends and family simply go back to living their regular, ordinary lives.  And what is so different about this commencement?, you may ask. Isn’t that what’s happening here? The disciples are being sent forth into the world to live independent lives that are full of grace, Jesus is ascending on high, going away, drawing back to let the disciples go out and bear fruit on their own, and you and I are just watching. There is something happily predictable about this pattern, something organic and familiar – the little chicks leave the nest, the students become the teachers, “the seasons go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down.”**

But the circle game is not what is going on here today. Yes, the disciples are being sent out into the world with a new sense of authority, mission, and purpose, but they are never – never – left on their own. Yes, Jesus is ascending into heaven, but he does this not to leave the disciples alone, but because it is only by ascending that he is able to be as close as he needs to be, to draw near as he wants to be. It is only by climbing into the very heights of heaven that he is able to fill all things, to see as far as the furthest corners of Jerusalem, to Corinth and Antioch and Rome, to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south, across the mountains, over the seas, over the years, to this little church in this little town with all of our worship and celebration and blessing and joy and sorrow and healing and pain. Jesus ascends, not to help us learn to fend for ourselves, but because it is only by ascending that he can be as present to is all as he needs to be.

And yes, you are here to witness these exercises, but you are not here just to watch, and you are not expected to simply go back to living your regular, ordinary lives. You are charged, too, you are sent, too. Because in the course of this ceremony, you have been grafted into the body of this graduating class. In this liturgy, you, too, have heard Jesus the teacher reminding you of all of the lessons he taught the disciples here on earth. In this commencement exercise, you, too, have been invited to look back over your life to remember the times that Christ has taught you, to remember the mistakes you’ve made, the forgiveness you’ve received, the infinite tiny graces that have been showered upon you like confetti. And you, too, have been encouraged to look forward; you’ve been offered nuggets of truth, words of Wisdom and vision, and presented with the gift of an eternal hope to which Christ has called you. In this commencement exercise, which we sometimes call the Mass, you have been shed your role as supportive bystander and put on the robes of a graduate, who is charged and called and sent. You have been changed here, transformed by the powerful presence of the resurrected and ascended Christ, who fills all things and fulfills all things, whose presence will never withdraw, never pull away, never leave you alone with just the lessons he taught. He has ascended to fill all things, even you, and you are hereby sent out in his powerful company. You are not here just to watch. You are now an apostle. You are a graduate. This is your commencement. And so I say to you, Congratulations.  

*These phrases taken from a recent talk given by Bill Gordh.

**Joni Mitchell, “The Circle Game.”

 Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 May 2012, The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Can't We Just Be Friends?

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Most of us at one point or another in our lives have had to deal with the cruel reality of unrequited love.  Perhaps there was a date or two.  Or, more likely, there was a dinner that you thought was a date, but she didn’t.  Drinks that you hoped counted as a first date, but he clearly did not.  Maybe you managed to continue the fantasy for a week or two.  Maybe you went to the movies together.  Maybe there was a second dinner.  Maybe you both took a stab at romance for a week or two  – trying it on to see if it fit.  Maybe there were kisses good night that did not last long enough to suit you.  Maybe there was a third dinner, or more likely it was drinks this time, because, although you tried to convince yourself it was not true, the object of your affection had an agenda tonight.  The agenda was not to crush all the happiness out of your life; the agenda was not to stop the stars from shining in the night sky, or to quiet the songs of birds in their throats, but it had all those effects and more.  It was time for truth-telling, lest things go too far.  The news had to be broken to you: romance was not in the cards; he just wasn’t feeling it; she likes you very much, but not that way.  And in an effort to cushion your fall, looking warmly into your eyes, and holding your heart in his hands, he crushes it as he says to you, “Can’t we just be friends?”

Well, of course, we could just be friends.  But, NOOOOOOOO!  That is not the point! you want to scream, as you dig your fingernails into your flesh to prevent the tears from flowing.  And although you will try for a while, you will discover that you can’t just be friends.  You never wanted her to be your friend!  You wanted to give yourself to him body and soul!  Friendship seems a poor consolation prize, when true love is what you seek.

We often talk about the love of God.  Last week in church, one of the readings reminded us of that great simple truth: that God is love.  And I often feel that my job is to proclaim to you the unswerving love of God for you and all mankind: the height and depth and breadth of God’s love, and to convince you of the power and intensity of God’s love for you, and to urge you (as I am also urged) to requite God’s love with fervor and zeal akin to a romance – to be willing to give yourself to God, body and soul.

This is a tall order for most of us.  It is certainly a tall order for me.  Most of us are willing to give a part of ourselves to God – the church-going part, for an hour or two, here and there.  But many of us (and Episcopalians are famous for this) prefer to be restrained in our love of God, and to save plenty of room for the love of other things in our lives.  Romancing God is something best left to nuns and monks, who, we seem to remember, used to wear wedding rings with their habits.  When you and I hear the impassioned plea to give our lives to God, body and soul (even if I’m the one making the plea), I suspect we receive it with a certain steely resolve to keep things in perspective, to leave room for other things.  And we could, perhaps, sum up our response to the plea to fall in love with God with these words: Can’t we just be friends?

Can’t we just be friends with God?

Can’t we just be friends with Jesus?

Since this question almost always signals disappointment, and a relationship that is more than likely going nowhere at all, and will not, in fact, end in friendship, it would seem an unhelpful question in approaching our relationship to Jesus.  And yet, this morning, almost as if the tables have been turned, we seem to hear Jesus asking us that very thing, if we suppose that what he said to his disciples all those years ago, he is also saying to us today.  “I do not call you servants,” we hear Jesus say, “but I have called you friends.”  And then Jesus says a most astonishing thing to his friends: “You did not choose me but I chose you.”  Again, transpose the conversation to our present time: Jesus has chosen you to be his friend.

So much Christian religion these days has forgotten this little revelation: that we did not choose Jesus, but he chose us.  So often we feel we are being pressured or cajoled or duped into buying more religion than we wanted.  We are told by some that faith is all about that moment we finally break down and accept Jesus as our personal Savior – which he undoubtedly is.  There is a fervor in some modern religion that demands to know when it was that you accepted Jesus into your life – which might be alright for some.  You can watch this on TV as people are called to the altar, and every footstep on the way there is a step closer to choosing Jesus – a choice that may be accompanied by swooning into the arms of nearby attendants as you are overcome by the magnitude of your choice.

But wait a minute!  “You did not choose me,” Jesus says, “I chose you.”  And, he might well add, can’t we just be friends?  Jesus wants to be your friend; he has chosen you to be his friend, if you will have him.  Choosing Jesus, is surely a good thing to do, but perhaps it is not the beginning of faith.  Perhaps faith begins with Jesus, when he chose you to be his friend.

One of the most wonderful aspects of abiding friendship is this: the strength to endure long periods of silence, separation, and even neglect.  I hope you have, as I do, those long friendships with people you see maybe once a year, maybe less than that.  But it hardly matters.  You pick up right where you left off, as though it was only yesterday that you were swapping sandwiches from your lunch boxes.

Now, this is an odd virtue for a preacher to hold up in the pulpit.  Do I really mean to tell you that Jesus is inviting you to a friendship in which it’s perfectly OK if you ignore him, and visit with him once or twice a year (say, Christmas and Easter)?  Am I advocating a relationship with Jesus that is characterized by long periods of silence, separation, and neglect?  No, this is not my point.  But I have been around long enough to know that many of us have neglected our relationships with Jesus – and sometimes this includes those of us who go the church all the time.  Many of us have been separated from Jesus for a long time.  Many of us have maintained silence with Jesus for years, and we note that we haven’t heard from him much either, as far as we can tell.  And the demand for a fervent love affair with Jesus looks like a bridge too far for some, who shrug in the face of such a demand, and say, “Can’t we just be friends?”

And although the implied answer to that question is almost always “No, we can’t really just be friends,” in this case, Jesus has a ready reply.  “Of course we can be friends.  I chose you as a friend long ago.  I have longed to be your friend, when you thought I only ever wanted to be your Master.”

This little moment in the Gospel is one of the oft-neglected highlights of the story of Jesus: a turning point of great significance, when Jesus, who is teaching his disciples what it means to love one another, defines that love in terms of friendship.  Friendship is no consolation prize for Jesus: it is the goal. 

Every time we come to the altar, Jesus is there.  It doesn’t much resemble a date, but there is this one similarity, even if we don’t know it: Jesus holds our heart in his hands.  And every single time we kneel at the rail, it is as though we were looking into his eyes and wondering what will happen next.

Who is the hopeful lover here?  Is it me or Jesus?

Whose love seems to be unrequited? 

Whose longing is it that is unfulfilled?

Which of us is it who breaks the awkward silence with that telling question – Can’t we just be friends?

It’s a question that almost always leads to heartache – and as you realize that you also notice that Jesus still holds your heart in his hands.  And you wait for him to crush it, as you suppose he can, since he is the Son of the Most High God, Lord of all.  And since you know that this is the moment when hearts are crushed, the stars are dimmed, and the birds cease their singing.

There you are, face to face with Jesus, who always calls you to his altar.  And your heart is beating faster now; it is still in his hands.  But he does not crush it; he will not.

And the question hangs silently but palpably in the air between you: Can’t we just be friends?

“My dear,” he says to you: “I have called you my friend.  You did not choose me but I chose you.”

And he still holds your heart in his hands and he does not let go of it; he will not.  But now you know it’s safe, that he will never break your heart.   And you begin to see what a friend you have in Jesus.

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

13 May 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Easter 5 - The Very Rev. Dr. John Hall, Dean of Westminster

You may listen to Dean Hall's sermon here.

Preached by the Very Rev. Dr. John Hall, Dean of Westminster

6 May 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Good Shepherd Sunday - Bishop Bennison's Visit

You may listen to Bishop Bennison's sermon here.

Preached by the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr.

29 April 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Kingdom of God

“The kingdom of God has come near.”  (Mark 1:15)

The first thing they want you to know upon entering Jordan is that it is a kingdom.

The second thing they want you to know is that when you are in Jordan you are in the Holy Land, which does not know modern international boundaries.

The third thing they want you to know is that an officer of the tourism police will soon be entering the coach to make sure you have your passports; please have your passport ready to show the officer.

The fourth thing they want you to know is that the bus will be advancing through the first gate, after a period of waiting for no apparent reason.  When the bus stops you are to exit it and retrieve your baggage from beneath it.  You are to carry the baggage into the building you see on your left, entering through the small door.  Place your baggage on the conveyor belt inside to be screened.  Your baggage may be searched by hand.

The fifth thing they want you to know is that you may then carry your baggage out to a waiting area, beneath a shelter.  They do not tell you that you will be profoundly glad for the shelter because even though it is October, the sun is high and hot, and you will find yourself seeking the shade.  They don’t need to tell you this; you figure it out for yourself.

The sixth thing they want you to know is that you must leave your baggage beneath the shelter while you go inside to the immigration and customs office.  There you will stand on line waiting for no apparent reason.  Do not allow yourself to become visibly annoyed; this may not bode well for you.  Wait patiently.  You will have figured out that your baggage will be unattended if you leave it beneath the shelter to enter the immigration and customs office.  This makes no sense – for anyone.  Never mind.  Arrange for a member of your group to stay with the baggage until the first person to clear immigration and customs exits the building.  He or she can now watch the baggage as the first watcher goes to the end of the line, still waiting.

The seventh thing they want you to know is that when you have cleared customs and immigration you may put your baggage back beneath the bus.  But you may not yet board the bus.  And you may no longer stand beneath the shelter; it is nowhere near the bus’s new location.  In fact, you discover that there is a new bus.  The old bus that came from Israel could be trusted this far, but only this far. 

In time, after waiting for no apparent reason, you are allowed to board a Jordanian bus, which comes complete with the benign presence of an officer of the Jordanian tourism police, lest….  well, lest anything should require such a benign presence.

You are pleased to discover that there are bottles of cold water on the bus, available for only a dollar.  And you open one and sip the cool water, as the diesel engine roars a little bit, and the gate tilts up and open, and you begin to make your way into the kingdom.

In various airport lounges, and baggage claim areas the discussion could be heard about whether it took longer to get into or out of Israel; about whether it was better going into or out of Jordan; about which border crossing was the most efficient, which most difficult. And guesses were made as to how long it would take to accomplish the border crossing each way.  It was, frankly neither a nightmare, nor a breeze for an American tourist to go either way.  It was simply a chore to get into and out of the kingdom of Jordan.

It would have been worth it under any circumstances, if only to make our way to Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have been led by God to see the Promised Land that God would not permit him to enter.  If Moses could manage wandering for forty years in the desert with a troublesome people to see that sight, then we could endure an hour or two of being shuffled along from one waiting area to the next, with or without our baggage.

The view from Mount Nebo is not especially impressive, although you can certainly see a long way.  But you do begin to get the idea that God could be leading you someplace.  You do begin to get the feeling that God has done this before: led people on tiresome journeys.  You do begin to let go of the tiresomeness of the journey.  And you do begin to think about where God might be leading you.  You do begin to remember that the scriptures talk about a land flowing with milk and honey.  You do begin to think about the Promise – about the covenant between God and his people.

Mount Nebo is not even high enough for the air to become thin – only 2700 feet or so – but you do begin to see so much more than you could see before.  You can see the green stripe that follows the banks of the Jordan River.  You already know that the River is a border, because you have crossed it before and you know you are going to cross it again.  But now you can see where you will be going when you return.  You can look behind you and see the Desert, and look ahead of you and find the River snaking its way south to the Dead Sea.  And you can look off to the west, toward Jerusalem, and imagine that God is calling you there, too.  You may dread for a moment the few hours of inconvenience that you already know await you at the border crossing.  But that will not stop you from going.

From Mount Nebo you get back onto your bus, and as you listen to the Arabic-tinged lilt of the tour guide’s accent, you hear that you are returning to the capital city of the kingdom: Amman.  And he reminds you that in the biblical era, Amman was one of the cities of the so-called Decapolis, and in those days the city was known by a familiar-sounding name; the city was known as Philadelphia.  And you may think to yourself that the capital of this kingdom you are now in was once Philadelphia, although you realize you are mixing up time and languages and cultures.

Philadelphia was the southernmost city of the Decapolis, and the one closest to Jerusalem.  And for some irrational reason this thought brings a momentary warmth to your heart.  And you think that if you can look west from that ancient Philadelphia and almost see Jerusalem, then maybe it is not so silly to face east from this new Philadelphia and dream about the distant view to Jerusalem.  And even though it’s the wrong kingdom, it is helpful somehow, to be reminded of the idea of a kingdom.

The first thing on the lips of Jesus in the first Gospel, written by our patron, St. Mark, is this:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”  Every year on this day we hear those words of Jesus as we give thanks for our life together as a community of faith.  But do we remember the kingdom of God?  Do we believe in the kingdom of God?  De we trust that the kingdom of God has come near?

The first thing I want you to know tonight is that you are in a kingdom, for tonight the kingdom of God has come near, once again.

The second thing I want you to know is that from where I stand, this new Philadelphia is a holy land in which God’s power has been revealed before and where God’s power is at work even now.

The third thing I want you to know is that the gift of the saints is a benign and loving presence that links one generation of believers to another, and although we might never need to call on them, it is good to know of that benign and loving presence of the saints, which includes Saint Mark as well as other saints that maybe only you know, maybe only ever were sainted by you.

The fourth thing I want you to know is that as we make our way on our spiritual journey in life, not infrequently there are periods of waiting around for no apparent reason.  This waiting will make it seem as though you are not actually going anywhere, as though you are stuck where you are.  It will make it seem as though there is not actually anyplace for you to go.  But do not be fooled by the waiting, and do not be put off by it.  Do not expect to learn why you must wait, just get used to the idea that on this journey, from time to time, you will have to wait for no apparent reason.  But remember, God actually has someplace for you to go.

The fifth thing I want you to know is that sometimes the journey of faith is a lot more like a border crossing into and out of Jordan than it is like a tour through the Holy Land.  Some of the stops will make no sense, and you will be grateful for nothing but the shade – if there is any.  At least be grateful for the shade – if there is any.

The sixth think I want you to know is that most people do better on their journey with God when they make it with other people.  This is why we gather into communities.  Sometimes someone has to watch the baggage while others go to get their passports stamped.  Sometimes we need to switch places.  Sometimes you need to lean on someone as you walk uphill.  Sometimes you need to borrow money.  Sometimes you have food you want to share.  Sometimes it’s gin.  The journey to the kingdom is better in community.

The seventh thing I want you to know is that although the kingdom of God has come near, it is sometimes still far distant.  This is a mystery. The bus is ready to go, but you may not board it; and when you are at last allowed to board the bus, they may not let it depart for reasons unknown to you and me.  This feels nothing like the kingdom of God; how can the kingdom have come near.  You have travelled all this way and you feel nothing, you see nothing, you have learned nothing, except to sit and wait on this bus.

And then the microphone comes on, and an Arabic-tinged lilting accent whispers into it, as the Desert begins to roll past the windows: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

So many of us have forgotten where we are going.  It is so easy to forget there is a kingdom, and that God is calling us to it, that God is constantly bringing us near to it, or bringing it near to us – whatever it is precisely that God does; I don’t know which. 

Why are you here?  What are you doing?  What do you believe?  How much have you forgotten?  Does any of this make sense?  Does God hear your prayers?  Does he ever answer them?  The way you want them to be answered?  What are you afraid of?  Will the fear ever go away? Why won’t the pain go away?  Why isn’t life fair?  Are you worthy of the love of God?  Do you care?  Why are you here?  What are you doing?

The first thing I want you to know is that you are in a kingdom.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

Now, where were we?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Easter Lingering

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

In case you haven’t noticed, in the Episcopal Church, we have a real thing for nicknaming Sundays. Last week, the second Sunday of Easter, we often call “Low Sunday,” and next week is “Good Shepherd Sunday.” We have Laetare Sunday in Lent and Gaudete Sunday in Advent. And then there’s Septuagesima Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday – even the lesser well-known Quasimodo Sunday. (Ask me about that one after the Mass if you’re curious).

This week we celebrate Déjà vu Sunday. Déjà vu is taken from the French phrase that means “already seen.” It was coined by a 19^th century psychic researcher named Émile Boirac to describe the phenomenon of experiencing something that seems eerily familiar, something that you remember, but you can’t possibly remember, something that…okay. You’re right. I cannot tell a lie; there is no Déjà vu Sunday. (There is a Quasimodo Sunday, though, I promise you.) But if there were ever going to be a Déjà vu Sunday, this would be it. Because as you stood there a minute ago listening to the proclamation of the Gospel, wasn’t there a little voice in your head saying, “Something like this has happened before…this Gospel seems weirdly familiar…”? Something like this has happened before, like, last week, when we heard John’s Gospel telling almost the exact same story. The disciples are shut up in a room, hiding, or regrouping, or something, and Jesus appears among them and says, “Peace be with you.” They are astounded and amazed, and so Jesus shows them his wounds to prove that he is, in fact, their Lord – the same Jesus Christ who was crucified, dead, and buried. Same Jesus Christ; same story. There are some differences, of course. Thomas is noticeably, noisily absent from the group in John’s telling of the story, but in Luke, everyone seems to be present and accounted for. And Jesus is hungrier in the Gospel of Luke, taking time to eat a piece of fish, reminding the disciples of other times they have watched him enjoy his food – sitting by the sea of Galilee, breaking the loaves and the fishes, offering his body and his blood.

But for the most part, these two Gospel stories are remarkably similar. So similar, in fact, that it’s a little surprising that the Church asks that we hear them two weeks in a row. Could you imagine doing that at other times of the year? Coming into church in July and hearing the story of Jesus’ calming of the stormy sea from the Gospel of Matthew, and then the next week hearing the same story from Mark, the next week from Luke? That could be quite interesting, actually, but the Church lectionary doesn’t usually behave that way – except for these weeks in Eastertide when the readings repeat themselves a bit. And so two full weeks after Easter Day, we find ourselves back at Easter evening with the disciples who are just hearing the remarkable, ridiculous news of the resurrection.

Now, there may be a little part of us that feels ready to move on. Where does the story go from here – what happens next? When do we get to hear about the breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, when will Jesus ascend into heaven, when does that great Holy Spirit dive down on the disciples? What’s next? But the very purposeful repetitiveness of today’s Gospel reminds us, invites us, encourages us to linger a moment. Today’s Gospel asks you – and me – if we would be willing to linger in Easter one moment longer – not just in the stories and celebrations of Easter Day, but in the very presence of the risen Christ.

This is such a timely invitation. Because this concept of lingering doesn’t always come easily for us, and at this is a time of year, lingering can be a particular challenge. In the past couple of weeks, I have heard countless people say to me, “If I can just make it until….” Sometimes this is about being hassled and worn out and tired. If I can just make it through these exams, if I can just get this project finished at work, if we can just finish painting the house, if I can just get to the end of the fiscal year. But sometimes this feeling is about being in a particularly difficult and stressful season of our lives. If I can just get my mother safely settled in a home, if I can just get this second opinion, if he can just find a job, if we can just hang on until summer…. We in the church are not exempt from this way of thinking, of course. If I can just get through Corpus Christi, if we can just make it through this current budget cycle…. If we can just make it past fill-in-the-blank, then…what? Then, we imagine, we’ll have time, and peace, then we can breathe in and linger all we want. But now? Right now we don’t have the time or space to be still and know that God is God.

Of course, we know that this is a kind of magical thinking. We know that there will almost always be something else over the horizon, some other task or tension that will run up on us all in a rush and consume as much time as anything we’re involved with now. There is a natural up and down and back and forth to these cycles, of course, but we know that the ebb quickly turns into a flow, and we’ll find ourselves once again flooded out and wishing for that still, small isle of peace that we can see just out there, if we could only get to it.

But look again at the Gospel for this week – and last week, for that matter. Look at how and when Jesus chooses to show up. He doesn’t wait until the disciples have waded through all of their fears and doubts and panic to make an appearance. No, he shows up right in the middle of the storm of their anxiety, when they’re all whipped up like a sea squall about the rumors of the resurrection. Right in the midst of that foaming tempest – wham! – Jesus appears, breathes “Peace be with you” and the waves are still. He invites the disciples to take a breath, to linger with him as he shows them his wounds, picks the bones from the flaky flesh of a freshly-broiled fish, and opens the scriptures for them page by page, like petals.

And that Jesus, who was the same Jesus who was crucified, dead, and buried, is the same Jesus who is present here in Word and Sacrament and in this people gathered together. Jesus is the same now as he was then; he steps right in the middle of your whirlwind and whispers “Peace be with you.” He invites you to take a breath, to linger with him, to take real time to sit and be still, to chew over the scriptures with him until they taste sweet as honey in your mouth, to savor the taste of his meat and drink. He invites you to linger in Easter each and every Sunday at the weekly celebration of his resurrection, to sit and to sing and to pray and to take eat and to proceed in peace. But Christ also invites you to do this every day, every moment. Right in the middle of your life – ebbing or flowing, stormy or still – he invites you to take a breath, to see, to notice, and to linger a moment with the love that is all around you.

This takes practice, of course. Even if you aren’t feeling particularly overworked or overly stressed right now, the truth is that this lingering always takes effort and attention and commitment. But don’t worry – Christ is happy to stay with you as you figure out what this lingering will look like for you. Maybe it will be silent, contemplative prayer. Maybe it will be the slow, prayerful study of scripture. Or maybe it will be taking time to really listen to what your co-worker is telling you about her child’s report card. Maybe it will be really looking at the person who sits outside the steps of this church asking for money. Maybe it will be paying attention to the earth, stopping and smelling the flowers, noticing the beauty of spring that reminds us that, in the words of Joan Chittister, “hope rages, hope rages, hope rages in this world.”

This kind of practice, this cultivation of a still heart, is what Easter Christians are asked to do every day – to linger long enough that we can open our eyes to see all of Christ’s redeeming work. How else can we possibly be a witness to the good news if we haven’t really seen it ourselves?  Of course this isn’t always easy – sometimes the waves crash against us and we feel as if we’ll never reach the shore. But these waters cannot quench the love of Christ, neither can the floods drown out his speaking, Peace, peace, peace. 

So right now, take a breath. Practice some Easter lingering.  Practice resisting the temptation to rush along to the next part of your story, to look only over the horizon at the oasis of calm that you imagine there. Practice opening the eyes of your heart. Look here. Taste this. “This flower,” writes Thomas Merton, “this light, this moment, this silence – the Lord is here. Best because the flower is itself, and the silence is itself, and I am myself.” Peace be with you. Here. Now.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

22 April 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Doubting Thomas

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

A long time ago back in Palestine land,

was the death of a man on a Cross.

And they buried the chap in the dirt and the sand,

‘neath a stone that was covered in moss.

The disciples dismayed; they were scared to their wits,

and they hid behind doors out of fear.

There they huddled together like a gaggle of twits,

not suspecting their Savior was near.

There was one of them who you’ll remember by name,

“Doubting Thomas” he’s called by us all.

He’s been branded for ever with that odd kind of fame,

That reminds us his faith was too small.

For he was not there at that magical hour

when although all the doors, they were locked,

Jesus rose from the grave, and to show them his power,

came to visit, which left them all shocked.

“Peace be with you,” he said, and he breathed on them then,

thereby sharing the great Holy Ghost.

“Give the gift of forgiveness to women and men”

said their Savior, their Lord, and their Host.

How they murmured and wondered, how their sleep was disturbed,

They were ten, minus Judas and Tom.

And their thoughts were confused, and their whole lives perturbed;

this new peace had not brought them much calm.

The would meet all together, they would talk and they’d pray,

hid away in a dark, secret room,

they went over and over details of that day,

which had ended in tears at the tomb.

And they marveled together, they wondered in awe,

how he’d risen from death, as he’d said,

and almost they couldn’t believe what they saw,

for they truly had thought he was dead.

Eventually Tom was together with them,

and the news was just too good to keep:

that God, in his wisdom, had not condemned

to death the Great Shepherd of sheep:

“We have seen the Lord Jesus!” his friends told him that day,

though to Tom this was hard to believe.

“It can’t be,” said the man in his own doubting way,

prepared only and ever to grieve.

“Let me see the deep prints where they drove the nails in,

let me thrust my own hand in his side.

Don’t you know that I loved him as though he were kin,

don’t you know that for three days I cried

out of sadness for all that we seem to have lost,

out of fear that it never was true,

out of horror to know that his life was the cost

of the lessons he taught me and you.”

“Get a grip,” said his friends, Peter and Paul,

“Get a grip,” said James and said John.

“Don’t you know that he’s come to appear to us all?

Wait and see, for he’ll be here anon.”

It was not long thereafter, when they gathered, those ten,

That the Lord came to be with his friends.

And Thomas was there, to make eleven of them,

and so this was his chance for amends.

“Peace be with you,” said Jesus as he entered inside

by the door that he never unlatched.

“Stretch out your hand, feel my hands and my side,

you’ll see that the wounds are un-patched.”

Then famously Thomas did fall to his knees,

with a gasp, and a shout to exclaim,

“My Lord and my God!  Great Jehovah!  Big Cheese!”

or something a tad less profane.

“Doubting Thomas,” said Jesus, “you’ve seen and believe,

let me say, I don’t want to be mean,

but blest is he who the truth can perceive

though my hands and my side have not seen.”

When we hear this old story the way it’s been told,

and the words that to Thomas were said,

the lesson, we think, is to hear Jesus scold

him for failing to get through his head

the good news that his Lord and his Master had ris’n

from the grave, ‘neath the dust and the stone;

that Death, though he tried, could not fashion a prison

that would keep Christ from claiming his throne.

But perhaps there’s a lesson that’s still yet more pressing

in this story for Christians to glean.

Perhaps it’s the message of Jesus’s blessing

for believers who never have seen

the prints of the nails, or the wound in his side:

the evidence of our Lord’s death.

As though proof was the best thing that he could provide,

and not the Spirit he gave with his breath.

But that Spirit has carried the message of love

to all the four corners of earth:

from Jerusalem, winging its way like a dove,

as far as both Philly and Perth…

I can tell you, I’ve seen with my very own eyes

the power of our risen Lord.

How it lifts human hearts as high as the skies,

how it vanquishes even the sword.

It’s a power that’s given from way up on high,

it’s a force that can’t be disguised;

and it signals that Jesus, the Master, is nigh,

and it’s given to all the baptized.

Which is why we bring children, with fathers and moms,

with godparents, uncles, and aunts,

after reading the lessons and singing the psalms

to the water that’s poured into fonts,

where the Spirit, who to those first ten men was given,

is shared with our own children here:

a sign and a symbol that all is forgiven,

and a promise to chase away fear

of everything evil that makes our faith falter,

with grace and with power divine,

that same grace that leads us all to the altar

to share holy Bread, holy Wine.

And when in our faith we have been through the waters

of Baptism, and of new life,

we give thanks for the gift to our sons and our daughters

that promises fin’ly the strife

is o’er, the great battle won, and the Lord,

in his glory has rose

from the dead for all people, the great human horde:

we are all of us, those he has chose.

And sometimes it may be that you start to think

that your faith is too tiny, too small.

And you’ll fear that your heart is beginning to shrink,

and you’ll doubt that God loves you at all.

You’ll think back on Thomas, and remember the scolding;

in the midst of your doubt you might dare

to fall on your knees, and right there start folding

your fingers together in prayer.

And the answer you’ll hear to your prayer that hour

won’t be one that is mean or unkind,

“Blest are you, my dear child,” says the voice full of pow’r,

“Blest in heart, and in soul, and in mind.

“Oh I know that you think that your faith is minute,

Oh I know you think it’s not enough;

But even small faith can bear you much fruit,

and I’d say you’ve got the right stuff.”

The lesson today is of blessing, not curses,

and if I had bells I would chime it;

but since all I have is these words and these verses,

the best I could do was to rhyme it.

So when you feel low, you’ve got nothing but doubt

and you’re certain that you have been messing

life up, and you think that you just want to pout,

then remember this little blessing:

Blest are you, my belovéd, my child, my friend,

blest are you, my dear jelly bean,

for you have had faith, and on God you depend,

even though with your eyes you’ve not seen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

15 April, 2012

Saint Mark’s Church

On the occasion of the baptism of

Charles Frederick Reinhardt, Jr.

Easter Planning

They had planned it all so carefully. How could they not have planned it all so carefully – the women didn’t have anything else to do on that grim, gray Sabbath. And going over in their minds exactly what they had to do as soon as the sun went down prevented them from going over anything else in their minds. Thoughts of spices – Which to buy? How many pounds? And which oils would they need? – crowded out the sounds and the smells of the betrayal and the beatings and the blood. Thoughts of which vendors might be open when the Sabbath had passed helped to push out the memories of those Roman soldiers playing a pavement game for Jesus’ robe while Jesus himself hung painfully exposed and drowning in his own weight. Thoughts and plans gave them a sense of purpose, gave them enough rhythm to keep their broken hearts beating, kept them just busy enough that there was hardly any chance that they would remember the stillness – that horrifying stillness – just after Jesus breathed his last…and just before his mother cried out as if a sword had pierced her own soul too. They had planned so carefully. It was just what they did as women, as disciples. It was just what they did to keep the tears away.

And so when the sun set they were off, walking quickly to the market, faces wrapped in their shawls to avoid pestering questions and pity-filled glances. They bought what they needed, not even needing to haggle over the price, as the man who sold them the spices was doubly generous, charging them very little and also never, not once, meeting their eyes, or asking how they were, or saying that he was sorry. Thank God. They had no time for sorry, no time to think about how they were. They had a plan, the Marys and Salome. They had a plan and nowhere in that plan did it say, “Now the women who loved Jesus, who gave up everything to follow him, who knew the ring of his laugh and the power of his presence, now these women fall to pieces.” No, there was no time, no room for that. They had work to do.            

They didn’t sleep that night. How could they, with all of their plans whipping around in their minds. When the solid blackness outside their windows finally began to soften to gray, they arose, dressed, and, without a word, hoisted all of their purchases onto their shoulders and began to walk, step by step, to the tomb. Along the way, they worried with each other about the one part of the plan that they had not been able to work out: the stone. There was that giant disc of a stone rolled into a slot to cover the open doorway. It was mammoth, heavy enough to keep out animals…and, they feared, three slight women. But there was nothing to be done about it; they would just have to figure it out when they got there.

By the time they arrived at the tomb, the sun had just begun to kiss the tips of the grass with silver light. The place looked so different than it had on Friday afternoon. The hot, dry dust had stilled, the air felt cool and damp, and the world was entirely hushed. And the stone, the giant stumbling block of the stone, had been rolled back already, the entrance to the tomb stood open, quiet and inviting. Without a word, they set down their packs and stepped into the cool chamber, so new and clean...and so empty. No body. No blood. No plan. Just a young man, sitting in a white robe and speaking to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus. But he has risen. Look at the floor, you see that he is no longer here. He is already gone, gone ahead to the Galilee. Women, go, and tell his disciples what you have seen and heard here.”

They look at the young man, dazzling in his white cloth and white smile. They look at the floor, bare except for a linen shroud tossed aside into the corner, and look at each other with wide eyes. Then they look at their carefully planned purchases sitting in packs outside the door, and they realize their mistake. For all of their thinking, all of their organizing yesterday in the darkness of the Sabbath, they had forgotten something critical. They forgot that Jesus had told them that this would happen – that he would be killed, and that he would be raised on the third day. In all of their planning, they had never once imagined that he might actually have been speaking the truth. They had never planned that they might not find him here, and so they have brought entirely the wrong thing. They have brought only their sorrow when they should have brought their hope. They have brought spices to anoint the dead when they should have brought walking shoes to follow the living, to run after the risen Jesus wherever he would lead them.

I wonder if this is part of why they ran away. Maybe it was not so much because the young man scared them; after all, in this story there is no appearance like lightning, no rumble of earthquake. No, there was just this – just a man telling them that Jesus had risen, and the simple truth that they were utterly unprepared for that. They had had no idea what had been coming. Jesus had actually been raised from the dead. He was actually the Messiah, the anointed one of God. The world had actually changed. He was risen; the resurrection was true! And trembling and astonishment came upon the women, and they fled, and they said not a thing to anyone, because this truth was simply terrifying.

Now we know that the women must have said something eventually – the Gospel of Mark was written down, after all, by a community of disciples whose whole lives had changed because of the resurrection. Mark even provides us with some alternate endings to his book, sort of the director’s cut of the Gospel, where Jesus appears to the disciples and tells them how to live their faith in this post-resurrection world. But the oldest ending of Mark is this one, where the women are shaken to their core and run away. Which means that the oldest editions of Mark’s Gospel thought that this ending had something to teach us, something to show us that could help us to live out our own lives more fully and more faithfully.

Here is the question that I think this shorter ending of Mark asks: what are you and I planning for? Are we planning for a world in which Christ is palpable and present, or are we planning for a world where he feels mostly absent? Do we expect to find Christ risen and thriving and moving ahead of us, or do we imagine that actually, he might be dead? When we leave this church building tonight, do we expect to find traces of his presence everywhere, shining imprints of where he has been, blessings he has bestowed, healings he has offered? Or do we imagine that at some point the glory of this night will wear off, that when the incense has washed out of our clothes and the traces of wax have been peeled off of our fingertips, we will once again find ourselves looking at an empty world where Christ has little to do with our day-to-day living?       

You can see why it makes so much sense that the women ran away afraid. Because the idea that something real happened in that tomb, the idea that something that true, that powerful, that generous had happened was – at first, at least – a little more than they could handle, just as the idea that something that true, that real, and that generous is present in our own lives can also be more than we can handle. Sometimes it’s just easier to plan as if Christ won’t be there. You know what this feels like. We’ve all done it. We wake up, stretch, breathe in, and imagine our day as if our own power and planning can make the whole thing happen. We work hard to accept that there are just some things we have to handle on our own. We pray, of course, and invite God to abide in our busy minds, but when he doesn’t always show up at the time or in the way that we want him too, we aren’t entirely surprised. We accept; we sit in the darkness of our own lives and fill up our minds and hearts with thoughts and plans that help us to feel like we can actually be in control, that our thoughts and plans are actually the most important thing that we do.

But these holy women remind you and me not to sell ourselves – or our God – so short. There is grace to be had in this world. We reaffirm this every time we take communion, every time we welcome a new sister in Christ like we welcomed little Stephanie this evening. This is the truth – the tomb is empty, and the world is full. So let’s be ready. Let’s bring our walking shoes, bring our hopes and our expectations; let’s plan on finding Christ when we are in this place and when we leave this place, let’s look for where he might lead us, where he might have gone before us, the ways he has invited us to follow him. Let’s plan to find Christ in our lives and in our society, and then let’s be sure to bring the right stuff with us to follow him – our hearts and souls and minds, our love, our hope, our new life in him.  

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Great Vigil of Easter, April 7, 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Doing Good Friday

It had been a long Lent. By the time the people gathered together in the church on Good Friday, they were ready. They had been made ready by weeks of prayer and fasting, by weeks of self-examination and denial, by weeks of scripture and sermons that had finally, finally, led them to this place – to the tiny garden on the side of a hill where Jesus sat in the darkness among an ominous tangle of olive trees. It was here, in this garden, that the people finally were able to pick up the Passion, to hear the story that was the culmination of their long Lenten journey.

But it was more than just the mere telling of the Passion that these people hungered for. Because these were not just any people, and this was not just any Lent. This was Lent in Leipzig in 1724, and these people had gathered for Vespers in the Lutheran Church of St. Nicholas to hear the new St. John Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. They hadn’t heard any instrumental music in church since the season of Lent had begun, and for these people, who were used to a weekly diet of carefully crafted cantatas, the time when they were forced to abstain from these orchestral delights always felt terribly bleak and barren. 1724 was Bach’s very first Lenten season in Leipzig, so there must have been more than a little curiosity about what this feisty and brilliant composer might offer the congregation this year. Had they gotten their money’s worth? Would this new Passion work? – and by that I mean, would Bach’s setting of the St. John Passion help them to truly join Jesus in that garden, to enter fully – mind, body, and soul – into this story that they had waited so long to hear?

It is clear from listening to the St. John Passion that Bach knew exactly what the people expected of him and of this particular piece. The Bach scholar Michael Marissen has written that Bach’s role in Leipzig is best described as a kind of “musical preacher,” and it is this preaching, this active and very personal engagement with the Passion, that is so compelling in the St. John. Bach not only set the entire Passion according to St. John (in German, of course), he also carefully placed other poetic texts within the narrative to help connect the listener to the action. Bach’s goal, clearly, was not just for you to hear the story but for you to get inside it, to live it – to imagine what it was like in the garden or at Gabbatha or on Golgotha, and to experience an emotional and a spiritual response to what happened there. The whole point of the Passion was to feel something – to feel the cries of Crucifixion from the crowd, to feel the tenderness as Jesus gave Mary and the disciple John into each other’s care, and – most importantly – to feel how our own wretched brokenness made this sacrifice necessary in the first place.

Let me give you an example. At the beginning of the Passion, when Jesus is being questioned by the high priests, one of the servants strikes Jesus with his hand after an answer that he deems to be disrespectful. Here Bach pauses the action and interjects a chorale, a hymn. At the beginning of this chorale, the choir is indignant, singing, “Who was it who hit you this way, Lord? Who treated you so badly – you haven’t done anything wrong!” But then the singers realize the painful answer: they are to blame – “It is I, I and my many, many sins, who have caused this misery for you.” The singers, and, by proxy, the congregation, can no longer simply stand outside the story looking in. With this one masterful stroke, Bach has placed the people on the inside. They are now a part of the action, they are a part of the cause; they are truly viewing the story from the inside out. And so faced with their facts of their own complicity in the suffering of Jesus, how can they not feel something?

Even if you didn’t hear the Bach St. John Passion performed here last weekend or study it with us over the past five weeks in our Sunday forums, even if you’ve never heard of this piece in your life, I’m guessing that you can imagine what this deep emotional connection to the Passion text feels like. Because this is exactly what we experience here on Good Friday, in this liturgy. We enter into this bleak and barren space, stripped of anything that sets it apart as holy, we watch the sacred ministers prostrate themselves before the altar, we hear ancient texts set to ancient tunes – all of which is intended to position us squarely within the events of this day, to help us find our place here, and tie us to that first Good Friday thousands of years ago. We have just knelt in silence as we reached back through the centuries to that horrible empty moment when Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, breathed out all of the air in his battered lungs and was still. In a few moments we will take the last few steps of our Lenten journey as we walk to the very foot of the cross, bend ourselves before the holy weight that hangs upon it, and kiss the feet of the figure who took it up for all of humankind.

More than almost any other service of the church year, the liturgies of Good Friday are intended to make us not just think about something but feel something. When we look at the wounds and the bruises that this suffering servant has borne for us, we are invited to feel something. When we cry out with the psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” we are invited to feel something. When we live the long, dusty walk to the cross; when we hear the mocking, the scourging, the shame; when we wonder if there is any sorrow like our sorrow; we should feel something.

But if we go out of this church on this day satisfied with the fact that we have felt something, we leave this liturgy unfulfilled. If this day is for us just about feeling sad, or empty, or overwhelmed and humbled, then we have left something out. Good Friday cannot just be about the way we feel; it cannot be just for us, because our Lord’s sacrifice was not just for you and me and for the faithful few who remained at the foot of the Cross, but for the whole world. Today must also, then, be about those who are out there and how we connect with them. Good Friday cannot be just about what we feel; it must also be about what we do.

What will we do? What will we do in response to this Good Friday? As we hear about the prisoner Jesus, mocked and tortured by his captors, what will we do for prisoners here in our country, or for prisoners of conscience around the globe? As we hear about a religious community divided against itself, what will we do for the Church here and in the world? As we hear about a Roman government corrupted by cruelty and unchecked power, what will we do for our own government to help it maintain an open heart to the world and to its own people? As we hear about an angry mob of powerless and manipulated people, what we will do for the oppressed around the world? What will we do for those who are persecuted for their faith? What will we do for those who have no faith, who are betrayers or who are betrayed, who suffer loss and mourn? What does Good Friday encourage us to do in response to how it makes us feel?

This question, and our response to this question, is at the heart of this holy day. Good Friday, of course, does offer us a powerful emotional experience, but the power of this is day is not just that it allows you and me to imagine what it was like on Golgotha in the first century on the first day of Passover but that, in the words of the author of Hebrews, this day “provokes us to love and good deeds.” Our emotional response to the story of Christ’s Passion can actually strengthen our ministry if the way we feel on this day breaks our hearts open to love more freely and more fully – to love God and our neighbors as ourselves, and to love one another as Christ has loved us – by doing acts of service and mercy in his name.

This may feel like a tall order. There is so much that can be done – where do we start? Well, starting where Bach did is always a good idea. Bach began each new composition by writing “Jesu juva” at the top of the score – Jesus help me. Jesus, help us to feel something in this liturgy today, and help us to imagine how you might use that feeling to accomplish something in us. On this Good Friday, help us to be moved, not just emotionally, but moved out into the world to strengthen the Church, to feed the hungry, to heal the brokenhearted. From your cross, from the tomb, Jesus, help us. And to God alone be the glory.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Good Friday, April 6, 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Garden Tomb

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The food at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem is adequate, but not more than adequate.  And if I am going to travel all the way to the Holy Land – as 22 of us from Saint Mark’s did about six months ago – I am going to find food that is better than adequate.  On our journey we maintained a pretty full itinerary, so there was not a lot of time to search out good food, but I did my best; poking my way through the winding alleys of the Old City, taking the train to the Mehane Yehuda Market and consulting online reviews to find the best places to eat.  I’m happy to report that I found some memorable meals in Jerusalem, as well as some good Israeli wines!

The Ambassador Hotel sits uphill from the Old City of Jerusalem along the Nablus Road.  And on my fast and furious expeditions to find food, and the nearest liquor store, I regularly made my way down this road, past the far swankier American Colony Hotel, the British cathedral, and then past a little sign on a street that turned off to the left as I walked downhill: a street named after Conrad Shick, and a sign pointing to The Garden Tomb.  This tomb is the alternative site to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher – the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, where pilgrims line up for hours (as we did) to get a chance to stoop low and visit the strange supposed burial place of Jesus – which really hardly resembles a tomb at all, and which requires more than a little imagination to connect with the image of Jesus’ death and burial, which were supposed to take place on a hill outside the city wall, since, there is no evidence that you are on a hill, and you are well inside the current walls of the city.  Nevertheless, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher has been recognized as the likely place of Jesus’ burial at least since the 4^th century, and if it marks the place of his burial, then it is also the kind of Ground Zero of his resurrection: the site of the original Easter

The Garden Tomb, by contrast, has been identified as a possible site only since the 19^th century.  And it tends to have a certain currency with people from Protestant churches, who may feel a bit put off by the chanting monks, the flickering candles, and the burning incense over at the Holy Sepulcher.

A curious pilgrim, open to possibilities, with no ax to grind, with only two competing sites to compare, could easily visit both the Holy Sepulcher and the Garden Tomb on a visit to Jerusalem, especially if his hotel was just up the road from them both, and he had to pass one on his way to get to the other.  But I had meals to scope out, and restaurant menus to inspect; my sorties down the Nablus Road led me right past the turn-off to the Garden Tomb for five days in a row.  But I never even flinched as I went in search of olives and cheeses, and Halvah, and other delicious things – and wine.  And, of course, we’d already been to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher – if you’ve seen one Messiah’s tomb, I figured, you’ve seen ‘em all.  As I say, a clearer head might have decided that if you have traveled half way around the world to visit holy sites, and two different places contend to be the holiest of them all, what’s the harm in visiting both of them?  But I had pistachios, and pomegranates to track down and taste.   I’d already cast my lot with the ancients at the Holy Sepulcher – why muddy the waters?

To many people, the mere fact that there is more than one potential spot where Jesus may have been buried, more than one possible Ground Zero of the Resurrection, provides ample evidence of the foolishness of the faith that so many others have placed in Jesus, lo these many centuries.  If we cannot even locate with any measure of certainty the very places where his Cross stood, where his Body lay, and where disciples discovered an empty tomb on that first Easter morning, does that not cast some significant doubt on the stories themselves?  Here was a man who claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of the living God, whose life was given, the scriptures tell us, for the salvation of the whole world.  Could it have been so impossible to mark the spot of his burial, to remember where it was that the empty tomb was located?  Wouldn’t someone have placed a pile of rocks there?  Or planted tree?  Or drawn a map?

The suspicion is that these things did not happen as the scriptures report them; that if a man named Jesus of Nazareth was crucified outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, and if his body was placed in a tomb, then the dusty remains of his flesh and bones are lying there now; that the reason we cannot say for certain where the empty tomb of the risen Christ is to be found, is because there is no such thing: no such thing as the empty tomb, no such thing as the Christ, the anointed of God, and no such thing as the Resurrection.

But there is plenty of delicious food to be found in Jerusalem.  And I highly recommend the fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice from street vendors, and I can give you a recommendation for a really good restaurant just outside the Jaffa Gate of the Old City.  But I digress.

Maybe there is another reason that the precise location of the empty tomb of Jesus is in some doubt.  Maybe this question of where exactly Jesus rose from the dead need not undermine faith, but could strengthen it.  Maybe God has not unfolded his plans in such a way as to be successfully litigated with forensic evidence, but has, instead, been at work in subtler, more personal ways.  Maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t know with absolute certainty where the empty tomb of Jesus is, since knowing, or thinking you know, seems to provide Christians with something to fight over, as much as anything else.  And maybe it’s somewhat unimportant to know which of the two contending sites in Jerusalem is the real empty tomb of Jesus.

Because the truth is that there are empty tombs in churches and in homes and in the hearts of God’s people all over the world this morning.  These are the places where Jesus’ rising matters this morning, and every morning.

It’s in our lives, our homes, our church families, after all that death and his accomplices have been at work.

It’s your child who was rushed to the hospital, whose bed you stood by and prayed by and waited by, hoping the doctors were skilled enough that a miracle wouldn’t be needed.

It’s your mother who cannot remember who you are anymore, and who looks at you with a vacant stare.

It’s your sister, your brother who received the diagnosis last week, and who now must decide whether to undergo the misery of a treatment that may or may not provide a cure.

It’s your friend who was in a freak accident and will never walk again.

It’s your beloved whose body has been wracked by the chemo and the radiation, and yet who still doesn’t know if the cancer is gone.

It’s your daughter who lost the pregnancy.

It’s your brother who has been languishing in prison.

It’s your son who refuses to admit he has a problem, refuses to go to AA, refuses to let go of his addiction.

It’s your father who finally died, and whose death and memory has left a hole in your life bigger than any you ever knew he could fill.

Death, disaster, sickness and despair are at work in your life and mine, right here, right now.  We do not need to travel to Jerusalem to find them.  And if we had to bring all that threatens and frightens and condemns us to the empty tomb in a far away place, we could never afford the additional baggage fees.

The Resurrection has not been fixed by God to a tomb in Jerusalem because you and I don’t need a Resurrection that happened once, long ago, in a faraway place.  We need a Resurrection here and now, in our lives, in the things that are killing us even now.  We don’t need to go in search of hope through the winding streets of an ancient city.  We need hope in Philadelphia this morning!

There is a tradition, reported in the scriptures, that says that when Jesus died, the tombs of the dead were opened, and the bodies of the dead were raised, and they walked around and visited their friends and families.  Far-fetched though this tradition may sound, I think it makes sense if we don’t insist on a finding a single empty tomb for Jesus.  I think the dead were making way for Jesus, who was claiming every tomb he could find as his own, and he pushed the bodies of the dead up, out of his way as he came up from their tombs, sharing a measure of his new life with them as he went.

Perhaps you think there is a tomb already prepared for you or for someone you love. Even if you don’t, the time will come when you do, when you realize that the coldness of a tomb lies as close at hand as the next sunrise, and you can’t be sure which will greet you the next morning.  This is the human experience, the reality of our lives.  Which means that the most important tomb this Easter is not either of the ones in Jerusalem that claim to be the tomb of the Savior of the world.  The most important tomb this Easter is the one you have imagined in your mind, that grabs you by the throat and leaves you struggling to catch your breath.

It may not be your own tomb.  It may be the tomb of your spouse, your partner, your parent, or your child.  It is the tomb whose chill you cannot shake, the tomb you never fail to visit in your imagination.  This tomb contains the remains of more than just a body: it holds your hope, your dream, your life in its unforgiving darkness, and although you may try to avoid it with forays into various distractions, this tomb owns your imagination like nothing else, for you are always ready for something to die in it, and to be buried for ever.

I might never see the sign that points to that tomb, the most important tomb of your imagination, the tomb that holds the end of the thing you love.  I might ignore it just as easily as I ignored the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, and so might everyone else in this church, and everywhere in the world today.  But Jesus will not ignore that tomb.  He will claim it as his own.  He moved into it three days ago, and he has been renovating.

Jesus has pushed everything that could ever die in the tomb of your imagination out of his way, and in the process he has loaned new life to the previous inhabitants of this tomb.  For nothing can die in the presence of this great life.  No tomb can be a final resting place after the Resurrection.  We don’t need to decide which tomb was Jesus’ burial place, because his burial hardly matters – only his rising matters.  And he is risen from every tomb, in every corner of the world, on every Easter, and every day till he claims all creation for himself again.

After this mass is over, like you, I will start thinking about food.  Well, I might start thinking about food before you do, but you take the point.  After church this morning, we will go our ways in search of our Easter brunches, our Easter dinners.  I already have a schedule written down: the ham goes in the oven at 2:30, I put my parents to work at 4. etc, etc.  Just as I was distracted by many things in Jerusalem, and never visited the Garden Tomb, you will be distracted soon enough, and Easter will begin to recede for another year.

But Christ is not through rising from the dead – though he has already accomplished it.  He is rising from every tomb that fills your heart and mine with dread.  Jesus is rising from the dead, indeed he is risen, and it hardly matters which tomb was his before; he has no need of it now, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Impossible Objects

At least two locations in Jerusalem claim to be the Upper Room: the place where Jesus shared his last supper with his disciples, and where the gift of the Eucharist was first shared.  One of those locations is called the Cenacle.  It is the better known of the two, outside the ancient city wall, on Mount Zion.  The other is to be found in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City, where one of the winding, walled streets makes a dogleg of a turn, not too far from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  A sign announces that you are approaching Saint Mark’s Convent.  Passing through the entrance and the outer courtyard, you go through another set of doors into a small, ornate church, at the back of which is a narrow staircase that leads to the Upper Room.

Except the stairs here don’t lead up; they go down.  Everything in Jerusalem is built on the ruins of something older.  The old Syriac church of Saint Mark is built on the ruins of an older church, an older structure that was destroyed at least once, about 70 AD in the Roman sack of Jerusalem.  Older versions of Jerusalem lie buried beneath the current version – which looks plenty old to me – and so a faithful visitor must now go down a set of stairs to enter the Upper Room.

There is a certain cognitive dissonance to this experience that is hard to escape.  It’s not just that there is almost nothing about the windowless, plain room that suggests it is a holy place; that there are almost no signs and little feeling of sanctity to the place; that the modern electric lights  - Home Depot-style, faux-crystal fixtures that are wired to the ceiling - rob the space of any ambiance.  There is something wrong with the idea of walking downstairs to get to the Upper Room.  You simply feel that you cannot be going to the same place that Jesus and his disciples went.  It feels more like you are entering a kind of M.C.Escher drawing, in which stairs that seem to lead down actually lead up.  But this cannot be.

Indeed, it cannot be.  And the very name for the kind of structures that Escher drew – for instance, stairs that appear to lead down but also go up– the name for this is an “impossible object.”

An impossible object is a 2-dimensional representation that the viewer perceives instantly as a projection of a 3-dimenstional object, although it is not actually geometrically possible for such an object to exist in real space.  Imagine, if you can, those images Escher drew of staircases that seem to lead a person in any and every conceivable direction: up, down, over, and under.  In isolation, any one section of the drawing seems to make sense, but at the connecting points, somehow things go awry, even though it’s hard to say why.  Look at the whole, picture, though, and you can see that there is no up, down, or sideways to it; no clear orientation to ground the viewer; no way to say what’s up and what is down.  An explanation of impossible objects tells us that “in most cases the impossibility becomes apparent after viewing the figure for a few seconds.  However, the initial impression [of possibility] remains even after it has been contradicted.”

All of which leads me to wonder about the Upper Room of tonight’s gospel.  Not just about the precise location of it in Jerusalem, but about what took place there, about the gift that we are told was given, the commandment that was delivered, the example that was made, the lesson we are meant to learn from tonight’s gospel.  Having once walked down a set of stairs to reach the Upper Room, I find myself wondering if the Upper Room is an impossible object?  Are the lessons this gospel seeks to teach us impossible objects?  And if they are, would that mean that the bread and the wine – those crucial gifts of tonight’s celebration – are also impossible objects? 

Or more precisely: the Body and Blood of Jesus that Christians have believed for two millennia are hidden beneath the forms of bread and wine – are these impossible objects that we have allowed ourselves to perceive in such a way that they could not actually exist?  And do we cling to the initial impression of what these elements are, even after that impression has been contradicted by a vast array of evidence in the world?

To put it another way: Is the church’s teaching about tonight – that Jesus gave us the gift of his Real Presence in the bread and the wine of the Last Supper, and that when we pray the prayers, and say the words, and believe with our hearts the things we must pray and say and believe, then he is really, truly among us – is all this just a staircase leading downstairs into a supposedly Upper Room?  A story, whose cognitive dissonance can only be resolved with a willful ignorance, sometimes called faith?

To much of the world, this is how what we do tonight, and every day of the year here at Saint Mark’, looks: like a bunch of people who have been duped into believing that you can walk downstairs to get to the Upper Room; that an Impossible Object is actually the Real Thing.  But what we must remember about tonight is this: that tonight’s Eucharist has been built on the ruins of older Eucharists.  One Mass is built on the bricks of many masses that came before it, even if those bricks were left only for rubble before.

How do we determine whether or not the bread we take and bless and break and share tonight is really Jesus’ Body?  How do we determine if the wine is really his Blood?  We may have to excavate this Eucharist, to dig down to the layers deep below: the older Eucharists this one was built on – which is exactly what the church is inviting us to do tonight.  We dig down past 163 years’ worth of masses right here on this spot, celebrated by my thirteen predecessors, and the men and women who worked with them.  Then we dig down past the colonial Holy Communions, that were probably kept on Christmases and Easters in this city, but not much more than that.

Because this is a holy archaeology, we don’t have to sail the seas to find the fossil record of the masses that prayed for the ends of wars and the well-being of the men and women who fought them.  If we are lucky we will discover the evidence of the masses (though not enough of them) that prayed for the safety of Jews who were being slaughtered in Poland; of masses that beatified Nicholas and Alexandra, that were terrified by the tricoleur, that gave thanks for Columbus’ return, that damned the onslaught of the Moors, that rejoiced at Fra Angelico’s painting, that set the Inquisitor’s imagination aflame, that prompted Francis to stand naked in the square, that crowned Charlemagne, that rang out in the chants of monastic chapels, that fled persecutions, that huddled nervously behind closed doors or in catacombs, that strained to remember what it was exactly Jesus had said, before it was written down.  And, of course, deep beneath the stratified, sometimes ossified layers of all these masses, we get to the wide, wooden boards of a floor in an Upper Room, where the Twelve are reclining around a table with the Rabbi.

It is dim here, so many layers beneath the Mass we began tonight, but there is enough light to see by, and enough quiet to hear by, and to remember what this first Communion was all about: when the Son of the living God, who had been since the world began, came down to this Upper Room, and although he had the power of God, took on himself instead the girdle of service and washed the feet of those he’d called to serve him and his mission.  Down here we can still hear the echo of his ancient words, “This is my Body.  This is my Blood.”  We have had to dig down deep to get to this Upper Room, but we can feel the power of his question reverberating in the dirt and stone around us: “Do you know what I have done to you?”  Do you know?

What he has done is given us these Impossible Objects of his Body and his Blood.  They appear to us with so many dimensions: they remind us of the way he cradled his disciples’ feet in his hands as he washed the dust and the dirt from them.  They bear to us the words of his only commandment: that we love one another just as he loved his disciples.

This scant half-ounce of dry wafer and less than a half-ounce of wine transmit the truth of God’s love: the force that called light from darkness; the covenant that freed a people from their captivity and led them to a promised land; the wisdom and the strength of Solomon; the power that healed the sick, made the lame to walk and the blind to see; the voice of the prophets; the mercy that comforted the imprisoned and those who mourn; the hope that seemed to be buried with Lazarus; the beauty that glowed beneath Magdalene’s curls; the patience and strength of a Cyrenean’s shoulder; the faith of an impetuous fisherman; and the life that seemed to die on the Cross, but that was really gathering strength.  All this in a speck of bread and a drop of wine!

These are Impossible Objects!  They appear to be barely more than 2-dimensional, and we quickly realize that they cannot possibly exist in the way we say they do in real time and real space.  The bread and the wine have not changed; I have no power to turn them into something they are not.  Quickly our minds perceive the contradiction here, and yet somehow the initial impression remains.

Tonight, we are gathered together to remember that an older version of this sacred meal lies beneath the current version (which looks plenty old to so many people).  And that these days, yes, you must go down a set of stairs to reach the Upper Room.

Tonight, we rejoice in that little staircase that leads downstairs to Upper Room.  We delight in the impossibility of such an object as a staircase that could ever lead us to that holy place, that holy time, that holy company, that holy communion. And, more specifically, tonight we rejoice in the Impossible Objects of Christ’s Body and Blood – barely more that 2-dimensional on the altar, it seems; practically less than 2-dimensional to so much of the world that has given up on them. 

These are Impossible Objects: this Body, this Blood.  They cannot possibly be what we say that they are, and when we look closely at them, we see the contradiction, for indeed, they appear to all the world to be nothing more than bread, nothing more than wine.  And yet… the initial impression remains even it after it has been contradicted.  And it does so because of the complicated and beautiful sedimentary layers of all the Eucharists this present one is built upon.  Because since that first Eucharist all those centuries ago, men and women have held out their hands, opened their mouths, and been fed.

Tonight we have walked toward this ancient staircase that we are told leads to an Upper Room, even though any idiot can see that it leads down, where it can only get dark, and where we are sure to encounter no one but the dead. 

But we go downstairs in faith; we taste, and see: we arise, and we live!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Maundy Thursday 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Hunger Game

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Allow me to set the scene: An omnipotent, virtually omniscient power is in charge; long ago the inhabitants of the ruler’s land rebelled against the ruler’s authority and asserted their own will, only to be punished, condemned to a lifetime of hard labor.  What’s more, the omnipotent ruler now demands payment in return for the original offence: a ransom to satisfy the ruler’s own sense of justice, and which requires the spilling of blood.  These details are the basic exposition of the fantastically popular young-readers’ novel, The Hunger Games.  And if you’ve read the book or seen the movie you know what ensues.  The ransom is to be paid in the form of tributes: a boy and a girl from every district in the land, chosen by lottery to travel to the Capital for a sort of gladiatorial contest to the death in which only one of the 24 young combatants will be left standing.  It is a perverse and cruel arrangement designed to keep the people of the districts in their place by dint of fear, and by the constant reinforcement of the idea that the rulers hold the lives of the people in their hands, and those lives can be taken from them at almost any time.

The ‘Hunger Games’ refers to the actual contest in which the 24 young boys and girls are pitted against each other to fight to the death.  The lone survivor will be rewarded with enough wealth to banish the hunger that would normally be his or her lot in life, living in poverty in a district outside the Capital, working to produce whatever the privileged members of the ruling class require for their comfort.

One of the most perverse aspects of the Hunger Games is the way the contestants – the tributes, who have been torn from the bosom of their families and the safety of their communities to face a nearly certain death – they way they are encouraged to become willing participants in their own demise; coached to play along on the off-chance it might help them win; tutored to embrace their momentary celebrity; molded into at least apparently eager players of a game designed to kill them.

What you may not realize is that the expository outline of The Hunger Games also follows the basic contours of one of the classic and most enduring articulations of Christian theology:  An omnipotent and omniscient God holds all creation in his hand.  Long ago, the first inhabitants of creation rebelled against God’s authority and asserted their own wills, only to be punished, exiled from Paradise, and condemned to a lifetime of hard labor.  What’s more, God decides that he requires payment in return for the original offence, the original sin: a ransom to satisfy his own sense of justice, which will require the spilling of blood.

This is the short-handed version of a much longer answer often provided to the ancient question: Why did God become Man?  It’s a question that was led by a star to Bethlehem, settled for a while in a stable there, grew up in Nazareth, taught throughout the Galilee, and eventually ended up in Jerusalem, or more precisely on a green hill, outside the city wall, where a man hung on a cross between two thieves… which is where the story has brought us today.  What are we to make of this story with all its strange twists and turns, like the frenzy of palm-waving procession that only days later is transposed into shouts demanding that the man all those palms were waved for should now be crucified?

We sometimes look at the Cross and assume its message is self-evident.  But is the message of the cross any more self-evident that the wisdom of the Hunger Games, the demand for tribute in order to right ancient wrongs, and to do so with the spilling of blood?

That story opens when a young 12-year old girl is chosen to be a tribute from her district: to be sent the to the Hunger Games where she will surely die.  But her older sister, in a Christ-like act of self-sacrifice volunteers to go instead, not because she believes she can win, but because she will do anything to save her little sister.  Her act of selflessness is Christ-like not only because of the generosity of self-offering, but because it will almost surely cost the girl her life.  She is choosing death out of love so that another may live.  But seeing this parallel doesn’t make the story of the Hunger Games less perverse, and it may suggest to us that the story of the Crucifixion is more so.

As fate would have it, the girl’s counterpart – the boy who is chosen as tribute from the same district – is as guileless as she is.  He, too, believes he is doomed, sure that he will be slaughtered by those more cunning and powerful than he is.  He says that his only hope is to “die as myself….  I don’t want them to change me in there.  Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”  But he knows that the Hunger Games are designed to do just that.

It transpires that the boy and the girl  - only one of whom is allowed to live and win the Hunger Games – fall in love with each other, more or less.  As the Games begin and then unfold, not only are they unable to murder each other, they find ways to help each other survive.  This turn of events is not much appreciated by the organizers of the games, the People in Charge.  And in the film, a telling bit of dialogue is added between the President of the Capital, and the chief organizer of the Games.

“Why do you think we have a winner?” the president asks, and then provides his own answer.  “Hope.  It is the only thing stronger than fear.  A little hope is effective.  A lot of hope is dangerous.  A spark is fine, as long as it is contained.  So, contain it.”

In the Christian version of this story, we, too, have become willing participants of our own demise, who must grovel before a devious God and play his games if we hope to be rewarded, if we hope to even survive.  And many’s the person who has seen the Christian story this way.  In this telling of it, we humans have been messing around in God’s games and spoiled the fun for him, and so he introduces a new character: his Son, as a sort of trump card in the game of life to ensure that his will prevails, that God wins in the end.

This version of salvation reminds me of the ironic slogan of the Hunger Games: “May the odds be ever in your favor,” which is ironic because the odds never could be in your favor, and in fact the game is rigged so that the rulers can always get what they want: the sacrifice of the tributes.  So, too, in the perverse telling of the story of salvation in which God demands a tribute for the ancient memory of original sin.  The game is rigged.  Jesus can only ever go to the Cross, and you and I can only ever be guilty for it, more or less the same way we bear the stain of guilt for Adam’s sin.  This is a desolate arena in which to live our lives, and a picture of a God I don’t much want to worship.

It would be better if we could imagine ourselves as 12 year old children this morning.  And it might be helpful if we could acknowledge that the games we play – much to our own detriment – are games of our own making.

It’s us who allow our neighbors to starve, or to sleep in the cold, not God, who has given us everything we need to clothe and feed and shelter the world. 

It’s us who have so perfected the art of war that we simply can’t resist doing a better job of it, looking for places to practice it, and people to practice it on.

It’s us who remember we once heard the phrase “an eye for an eye,” but forget that we heard it when the Teacher was telling us what a stupid way to live that is, so we cling to vengeance all the same.

It’s us who pretend that the poor are poor because of their own fault, and that we are rich because of our virtues, even though we know this is not true.

It’s us who would rather go to brunch on Sunday than to spend an hour in the worship of the Almighty.

It’s us who have exchanged a golden calf for the cash that it would cost to buy one, and who kneel before the altar of our money day in and day out, obsessing about it, dreaming about it, hoarding it if we can, like nothing else.

These are our games, not God’s.  We made up these rules, and we have perfected the ways we live by them – and we have been doing it for thousands of years.  God hasn’t placed us in a cruel arena to fight to the death – we have chosen to live this way.  Even when Paradise was no longer an option, God sent us out into this amazing, beautiful, and sacred globe, where everything we need can be found, and then some, even if we do have to work for it.

We have devised the games that upset our lives.  Cain raised his arm against Abel without any prompting whatsoever from God, and the games began.  If the odds were not in our favor, it’s because we devised games with very bad odds – people still play roulette every day in Las Vegas, after all.  And so as we live our lives, it remains to be seen what these games we play will do to us.  Will we be changed into some kind of monsters that we were not made to be?  Or will we be the people God made us to be?  Will we play along in the Hunger Games, or will we search for a different way?

When we are tempted to see God as the perverse and awful power that demands the sacrifice of blood in exchange for our sins, then we are projecting an ugly image of ourselves onto God.  And the truth is that he sent his Son into the world to show us a different way.  Even at his most triumphal, at the height of his popularity – on Palm Sunday – Jesus could do no better than to ride into town on the back of a donkey, to be greeted by a meager crowd that had only palm branches to wave, and their own clothes to spread on the path before his way.  This is not the entrance of a majestic lord of the universe; it is the humble beginning of a sad procession to the Cross.  Jesus bears no sword and wields no power.  His crown is not yet woven, but when it is, its thorns will be the first instruments to draw blood from him.  The entry into Jerusalem had been a sign of hope – a spark.  But that spark has been contained.  Victory seems unlikely for him now.

How many ways has your hope been contained in this life?  How many times have the odds been stacked against you?  How often does it seem that you have been sent to an arena to fight for the death – but for what?  For what reason or purpose or cause?  Just because the Powers That Be require it of you?

The powers of this world prefer fear to hope.  Hope is only useful insofar as it can be contained.  Life is like the Mega-Millions jackpot: you have to be in it to win it.  But the odds are profoundly not in your favor, you are virtually certain to lose.  But were you a willing participant anyway?

Into these Hunger Games of life – which you and I cannot ever win, we are sure to die – steps One who can only ever die as himself, who cannot be turned into some kind of monster that he is not, because he is love incarnate.  He is our brother, our sister, our friend.  He heard your name called, and mine, at the hour that a ransom of death was being called for, and he stepped in to volunteer: to take our place in the Games that death would like to play with us: games whose rules he knows better than we do, even though we made them up as we went along.

For reasons too mysterious for me to understand, the Hunger Games have not ended, even though he has come into the world and offered himself as a sacrifice for the whole world.  Perhaps the Games have not ended because he still has a lesson to teach us while we live: he still calls us to learn to love one another, to see how futile is the fight to the death, and how holy is the life of love.

Why do you think we tell this story of a man who dies on a Cross, bearing pain the way we do, every bit as human as you and me, but who we know to be the Son of God?  Why do we tell it year after year, and remember the details, and sing about it the way we do?  Why do you think we have carved the image of this scene in every conceivable way: hoisting it high above our heads like some gruesome symbol of some awful, bloody games?

Hope.  Hope is the reason.  Because hope is the only thing stronger than fear.

A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous.

And this hope, that hangs from a Cross, that proclaims with every drop of blood that spills from it, “I love you;” this hope is dangerous because it casts out fear and makes room for love.

And do you know that though many have tried to suppress it, this hope cannot be contained; it cannot be stopped, it cannot be killed, it cannot be turned into some kind of monster that it is not.

This hope volunteers to save your life and mine.  This hope promises that the Games we seem to play, in which the odds are stacked against us, will not end the way it seems they must.

This hope knows our hunger, and fills us with love.