Beautiful-Feet-People

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'"

A pilgrim making his way to Canterbury on foot (the way that Chaucer's pilgrims did) from London or Winchester or anywhere in Britain, would have a hard time finding a place to spend a night. In the 1530s, as part of his program of opposition to Rome, King Henry the VIIIth ordered the dissolution of more than 800 monastic communities, many of which would have provided shelter for pilgrims.

Henry was interested in consolidating power and acquiring wealth - both of which the monks often held in good supply. And one way he ensured that monastic communities would not spring back up after his henchmen had seized their riches and dissipated their power, was to have them take one last thing: the lead sheets that formed the roofs of their buildings. This last theft benefited the king in two ways: it gave him a ready supply of a valuable (if heavy) commodity, and it ensured that the monastic buildings wouldn't last too long, since a building without a roof is neither useful nor likely stay standing.

A roof is an important thing. And many of you know that we have recently begun some rather expensive work on our roof - still in the early stages, but there is much more to come. And if you know this, you may be admiring the way I have so deftly introduced the topic of our roof (and its expensive repair) into the liturgical proceedings of the celebration of our patronal feast. Perhaps you are already reaching for your checkbook…. (God bless you!)

Yes, a roof is an important thing. A pilgrim traveling, even today, in Spain knows this, since many ancient monastic communities there still provide lodging for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. On the pilgrim's way in Spain you will come across towns that attest to their ancient monastic roots with the word "hospital" in their names, like Hospital de Orbigo.

Now, I know you thought you knew what a hospital was. But if you are snooty enough to look up your words in the Oxford English Dictionary (and you know that I am snooty enough to do so), you may be surprised to learn, as I was, that the very first definition of "hospital" is this: a "house… for the reception and entertainment of pilgrims, travelers, and strangers." I can assure you that there is at least one more sermon in that definition than the one you are getting tonight. But for the moment, I hope you will stay with me on my meandering musings about pilgrims, hospitals and roofs.

Just yesterday I was in a local hospital where I had a good look at my left foot which has been encased in fiberglass for the past five weeks and is now wrapped up in Velcro. And I can tell you, having thought a lot about that foot, and having walked to Santiago, that pilgrims are feet people. They think about their feet a lot. They think carefully about the shoes they are going to put on their feet for the journey. They think about resting their feet when they are weary. They think about caring for their feet when they are blistered or sore. They think about what they are going to do if their feet give out. They think about applying tape and moleskin to their feet. They look for someone to massage their feet or to lance the blisters that they cannot easily reach themselves. They worry about keeping their feet dry and warm and clean. Pilgrims are feet people! You walk for 500 miles and you will become a foot person too!

And while a pilgrim is grateful every single night to have a roof over her head, while pilgrims have benefited for centuries from the hospitals that have provided them shelter, pilgrims are not roof people. They will never be more distracted, more preoccupied, more obsessed with the care and maintenance of the roof over their heads - or the lack thereof - than they will be with the care and maintenance of their feet.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

Tonight as we gather here to celebrate the Feast of our patron, Saint Mark, one thing we might do is to reflect on what it means to be in a community that has identified itself with the name of an evangelist: one who brings good news.

If you read the recent newsletter with its information about our roof, or if you have looked up at the moisture-driven stains of efflourescence on the upper reaches of the walls and thought to yourself, "That can't be good…" or if you have heard some other way that we have roof problems, and maybe some stone problems, and actually a big problem when it comes to accessibility in our buildings, and if you've been next door and seen the plaster problems, or the plumbing problems, and then you look up again and think about the roof problems…

… you might begin to think that we are going to have to become roof people: fixated on caring for that slate, upgrading that copper flashing, cleaning out those gutters. You might have heard about the price tag. And you might be guessing, rightly, that it is only likely to go up. And you might be starting to get the idea that life at Saint Mark's is going to be all about the roof for the next little while, or all about the stone, or the plaster, or whatever. It would not be unreasonable to begin to conclude that we will have to be roof people.

But how will people ever hear about good tidings, how will people ever hear about peace, how will people ever hear about salvation, how will people ever hear about the God who reigns in Zion, if we, his people, are all about the roof?

We have got to be feet people!

We have got to be beautiful-feet-people!

And perhaps this is what it means to be a part of a community that has identified itself with the name of an evangelist, of one who brings good news, as Mark did - the first of the four evangelists to write the story of Jesus. Perhaps it means that we have got be obsessed with feet. We have got to care passionately about where our feet carry us and what the do when they get us there.

We have got to use our feet to bring good tidings to people who have heard precious little good news. We have to use our feet to bring prayers and comfort and healing to those who are sick. We have to use our feet to bring consolation and care to the dying and to those who grieve. We have to use our feet to bring food to the poor and the hungry. We have to use our feet to visit those who languish in prison. We have to use our feet to help teach kids who this city's schools will fail. We have to use our feet to bring freedom to the oppressed. We have to use our feet to bring justice to those from whom it has been denied. We have to use our feet to bring to hope to those who thought they had none. We have to use our feet to bring light to those who live in darkness. We have to use our feet to bring the story of salvation who have never heard anything but a story that left them damned.

You know that if we use our feet like this, we are going to have some tired, blistered, worn out, nasty feet! But they will be beautiful!

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings… who says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

My brothers and sisters, we have got a roof to fix, it's true. But we are not roof people! Our lives have been linked by the name of Saint Mark to a bringer-of-good-news, whose beautiful feet have led countless souls to hear the Word of salvation. And like his legacy, the only legacy worth leaving in this world is the legacy of beautiful-feet-people who publish peace and salvation and who dare to proclaim to the world: Your God reigns!

Yes, we have a roof to fix, and we will fix it. But by God's grace we are not and never will be roof people - though we will always care that there is a roof on this place. We will fix that roof precisely because we are beautiful-feet-people who care yet more deeply for every pilgrim whose feet carry them here than we could ever care about a roof!

And we pray that every time we leave this place, we do so with beautiful feet, bringing good tidings of peace and salvation, of hope and light and love, and whose feet proclaim with every step we take, even if our voices should fail to say it to the world: Your God reigns!

Preached by the Reverend Sean E. Mullen
Saint Mark's Day, 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Scroll

Last week was a bad week.

Back when the Twin Towers fell, I was glued to the TV - it was almost impossible not to be. When Saddam Hussein went to the gallows, I gave in to curiosity and watched - once - the disgusting on-line footage of the prelude to his execution. I could go no further.

All during this past week I have been aware that the Internet is full of images that portray both the melee of confusion at Virginia Tech this week as well as the so-called manifesto of the killer of 32 people. But I am unable to bring myself to watch either the footage from Blacksburg or the killer's homemade videos. It is too much for me, to tell you the truth. And I am not sure I am yet blasé enough to watch again the evidence of such evil cruelty, as though it were just another day of the evening news. There are times when the reality of dark forces in this world is just too plain to be ignored. And how will we ever make sense of the killings in Virginia this week?

It is, of course, the scale of the tragedy that makes it too hard to watch - as well as the odor of evil that must surely linger around all the yellow emergency tape strung up by the Police, and in the envelope that arrived at NBC containing the gunman's deranged testimony.

But even if I do not watch these images up close, I cannot escape the dark power of their awful consequences. And even if I never switched on the TV or the computer or read the paper, I would surely encounter the darkness more locally. There is the idiot who mowed down two pedestrians just a block from here on Friday as he tried to evade responsibility for a traffic accident he had caused - and sent one bystander to the hospital in critical condition. There are the diagnoses of illness that bring life-changing (and life-threatening) news to people's lives every day. There are the statistics of poverty that place our own city at the top of some lists in America, since up to a quarter of the people in this city live in serious want. I could go on, and so could you; we each know the smaller-scale (but no less painful) tragedies that touch our lives deeply, and make us cringe at the power of darkness, even though there is no footage of them to watch on the Internet or TV.

And so, I cannot watch the gun-waving rants of a young man whose life was somehow - inexplicably to me - lost to darkness. I cannot even read anymore the endless and immediate analyses of his personal history, his state of mind, or his writings. I do not want to get any closer to that darkness - that evil - than I have to. Darkness will find its ways to get close enough to me, and to you.

There are those who call religion little more than a collective emotional salve to be applied to the frightening power of that darkness. Is our proclamation of good news just a pretty garden of denial that makes us feel better, since we have no ready answer for the painful question of why bad things happen to good people?

In the face of that question we come today to a reading from the Book of Revelation, which is the type of thing we would normally pay little attention to, because, after all, who can make any sense of this stuff? Saint John the Divine writes about his vision in which he sees a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God. (I'm already starting to get confused.) And there are the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders, each with a golden harp and a golden bowl of incense (which means this is already a nightmare for some people). And there is the song they are singing - Worthy is the Lamb - which is perfectly nice when sung to Handel's music, but is it really anything more than good material for an oratorio? What is going on here?

What the twenty-four elders are singing about; what the Lamb is worthy for; the occasion for all the incense and the harps and the bowing, etc…. What it's all about is this scroll that the Lamb has taken from the one who is seated on the throne. The scroll has writing on both sides, and it is sealed with seven seals. And a couple of chapters earlier in John's Revelation a mighty angel had asked the pregnant question: Who is worthy to open the scroll and break the seals? And the episode we read today is the answer to that question. And if you are still with me here, you may be asking, "Who cares?"

Because if you are familiar with the vision of Saint John the Divine, you know that things do not get any simpler or any easy any time soon. The Lamb will begin to open the seven seals of the scroll. And four horsemen will bring conquering power and, slaughter, and justice, and death. And then the souls of the righteous will be robed in white and told to rest a little longer. And when the Lamb gets to the sixth seal there is an earthquake, and the sun turns black, and the moon becomes like blood, and the stars fall to earth, and the sky vanishes like a scroll rolling itself up, and so frightening is all this that even the kings of the earth shout out to the mountains, "Fall on us!"

And do I want to watch this? Can I possibly want to learn about what's going to happen when the seventh seal is opened? Do I want to read on and hear any more of this? It seems like too much for me. Is this really any better than the TV news or the Internet - which at least, mostly, doesn't claim to be a vision of God?

Sure enough, when we get to the seventh seal and the angels start to blow their horns, it sounds more like all hell has broken loose than all of heaven. If this is the journey God is calling us to go one, I feel perfectly happy to be left behind!

More often than not we have stopped paying attention to the rantings of Saint John the Divine long before the Lamb gets to the seventh seal, anyway. In fact, many of us would give more time to the rantings of the Virginia Tech gunman than we would to the seer of Patmos. We get it so typically backwards: absorbed by the musings of madness that illustrate nothing but evil, but almost completely inoculated to the vision that points to a heavenly intent.

All week long, as the heaviness of the sadness of what happened at Virginia Tech has been weighted down in my life even further by the sadness of other deaths closer to home, and the question of why bad things happen to good people has been ringing in my ears, I have been thinking about that scroll: the scroll that the Lamb has taken and is worthy to un-seal. Saint John is very clear in his vision that the scroll has writing on it. But nowhere are its contents read. It is the opening of the seals that unleashes apocalyptic events, not the reading of the scroll. But it seems to me that the scroll - the opening of which sets in motion events that both horrify and confuse me - the scroll itself may be more than what it appears to be. And maybe I am just indulging in the soothing balm of religion when I try to convince myself that written somewhere in the heavens (maybe on that scroll) is an answer to this awful question of why bad things happen to good people.

It seems hopeful to me, you see, that John sees that the scroll has writing on both sides - because I feel certain that the answer to this awful question cannot be simple. And since the opening of the seals on the scroll begins an avalanche of conquering might, slaughter, justice and death; since it clothes the righteous in white and then un-hooks the stars from the sky; since it shakes the earth with the force of every natural disaster ever known… it seems not unreasonable that the text of the scroll - which John never gets to read - may provide some answer about why these things happen. It may provide some end point for all the unanswered "Whys?" uttered in countless, grasping prayers.

Because we give up so easily on John's Revelation, we often forget that it does not end with opening of the seventh seal and the angels blowing their trumpets. We forget that all this drama, this calamity is leading somewhere. We forget that the vision John is given to watch is finally a vision not of tragedy but of hope: a new heaven and a new earth, without sorrow or sighing.

When we give up on the vision too soon, it is often because we read it too much like a set of directions from Mapquest, as though they were a literal description of the route we must follow. And why go there since it sounds so unpleasant as one seal after another is opened? We forget that there is writing on the scroll that might be worth reading - should we ever get to see it. We forget that while John sees much, he is not shown everything.

And we forget that at the end of John's vision there is a new Jerusalem (frankly, something that it is almost impossible for us to imagine, since in my lifetime the real Jerusalem has never stood for anything more than conflict, and violence, and discord, and warfare, and terror). But John sees a vision of a new Jerusalem: a city of peace and hope, where a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows through the middle of the street of the city. And that anyone who wishes may take the water of life as a gift.

Last week was a bad week, so bad that I found myself averting my eyes from the evidence of it. It was a week that will have filled many hearts with anguished, one-word prayers: Why?

… to which I have many words of consolation but no real answer.

But there is a scroll, somewhere in the heavens, whose opened seals might unlock the power of every anguished "Why?" ever uttered, and which may, for all I know, hold the answer to those cries.

And since there is hardly an apocalyptic moment described in the vision of Saint John that we have not seen in our lifetimes - conquering power, slaughter, justice, and death:at the very least, the work of the four horsemen - then I am not ready to give up on the final destination of John's vision. I am not ready to stop watching because it seems too much for me. Because if the havoc unleashed by the opening of those seven seals - which is havoc very much like the havoc taking place all around us - if all this havoc is worth paying attention to, then maybe there is also something written on that scroll to be read - maybe there is more to be revealed.

And there is a Lamb who was slain and who is worthy to open the seals of that scroll.

And there is a holy city. There is a new Jerusalem, thank God!

And there is an answer to all our anguished "Whys?"

There is a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city.

And that is a vision of God's promise and our hope that I am willing to watch and to wait for!

Preached by the Reverend Sean E. Mullen
22 April 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Conscious Sedation

"For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

Three weeks ago this morning, at about this hour, I lay on a hospital bed at the Pennsylvania Hospital on my way into surgery to have my broken ankle repaired with a metal plate and seven screws, six of which will remain in there long after I have tossed my crutches away.

As I lay in the pre-operative area, an anesthesiologist told me that they would not have to use a general anesthetic, rather she would administer drugs that would cause me to be in a state of "conscious sedation." Then I'd be given a regional anesthetic, from the waist down, which would actually block the pain of the operation. The point of conscious sedation, it seemed, was to relax me and keep me unaware of what was going on as the hardware was attached to my bones.

It was the second time in several hours I had been put in a state of conscious sedation: the first was in the Emergency Room when a Resident set my broken fibula back into its proper configuration. Apparently, conscious sedation is an induced state in which you are technically awake, but quite relaxed… very relaxed… extremely relaxed… so relaxed that you are basically unaware of what's going on around you. And you are assured that you won't remember anything that happens while you are consciously sedated.

I can tell you that I don't recall one moment of what happened when an ER Resident managed to get the two pieces of my broken bone back into alignment. And I certainly have no recollection of the screws being drilled in during surgery. As a result I am a big fan of conscious sedation - a big fan!

It was an early critique of Christian faith that maybe Jesus wasn't really dead: hadn't actually died on the Cross. The stories of his resurrection could be explained away this way. Without having the terminology for it, perhaps these early critics suspected that Jesus had been in a state of conscious sedation after his ordeal on the Cross. He wasn't dead, just sleeping. There were stories about women coming to the tomb, and strange men already there. Perhaps his followers revived him, dressed his wounds, and spirited him away to some secret place to nurse him back to health and plot his "miraculous" appearances.

The story we heard this morning does not provide definitive proof one way or the other. The women, bearing burial spices, surely thought they were burying a dead man. But what about those strange men in dazzling clothes? They seem to know something the women don't know, something we don't know. They know what's happened to Jesus, they know. And yet at the end of our story this morning we have still not yet seen Jesus.

Most of us would not be satisfied if the story ended here. And we are here this morning, because, in fact, it does go on: the risen Jesus appears, he spends time with his disciples, eats with them, teaches them, prays with them and gives them instructions. And most of us, I expect, have come here convinced that Jesus' resurrection was something more than an awakening from a conscious sedation. And so James Cameron's "discovery" of the tomb, even the very bones of some man named Jesus has not kept us away. We do not believe we have been duped, lied to or deceived.

But when I look around at the world we live in, and I reflect on my experience in the hospital, I wonder if perhaps the real deception we encounter is a self-deception. How do we survive in this world without a measure of conscious sedation - collectively induced?

Here we are smiling and singing as war rages in Iraq, as the Taliban regroups its dangerous forces in Afghanistan. We breathe sighs of relief because 15 British sailors were released from Tehran, but 15 more will die before long. It sometimes feels as thought it takes a deliberate act of conscious sedation to walk the streets of this city - even in this neighborhood where the homeless live side-by-side with the wealthy, but even more so if you were to go south or west or north of here. Just thinking about dreadful statistics of poverty, violence, abuse and death across the river in Camden is enough to make me wish for a dose of conscious sedation! Following the presidential campaign seems to be a program designed to induce conscious sedation. The City of New Orleans remains at least a partial ruins, but it does not keep us up at night because we remain consciously sedate to its woes. Add to these things our own worries: our bills, our ailing parents or sick children, the neuroses that give us worry about our friends, our desire for more money, or more house, or more land, or more time, or more freedom.

How do we survive in this world without adopting - at least from time to time - an air of conscious sedation, in which we know we are awake, but we sincerely hope (and expect) that we will not remember anything?

Wouldn't it be nice to just relax, really relax, really really relax and just be basically unaware of what's happening around us sometimes? And maybe it would even be nice not to remember. Not to remember New Orleans, or Baghdad, or the credit card bills, or the diagnosis you have told no one about yet, or the way your mother will not know you when you go to see her next?

It would be easy to become a big fan of conscious sedation - ask the people who come here to AA meetings: they know. They know how seductive it is to try to live in a state of conscious sedation - where nothing can harm you, nothing overwhelm you, with no pain, no tears, nothing.

When I awoke from my surgery, I didn't remember anything. I hadn't even laid eyes on the surgeon - didn't know what he looked like and couldn't remember his name. And they told me it would take a while for the feeling to return to my feet and legs, and then I would feel some pain. But of course, I was back in one piece.

Don't we come to his tomb year after year, somewhat numb from the pains and debts and indignities and injustices, from the wars and the wounds, from the lies and the addictions, from betrayals and lost love and dashed hopes? And are we hoping that God will wake us up, give us the feeling back in our toes, even send us some pain - anything to remind us that we can feel, that we can hope, that we can love?

And here we find two men, dressed in dazzling apparel. And they are surprised that we, like the women who came there that first Easter, expect so little. All we want is to be awakened from our conscious sedation, to get the feeling back, perhaps to learn the name of our surgeon, have a look at him, maybe meet him for a few minutes.

But the reason for our singing this morning, the reason for our joy is that we have been wrong all along, and now we know it. We were not consciously sedate - in need only of a gradual awakening, waiting for the feeling to return to our toes - no more than Jesus was only consciously sedate. In truth we have been dead - brought right down into the grave by all those things that we thought only made us numb. And so Jesus met us where we are - all the way dead, not just consciously sedate.

And today, when we had hoped for nothing more than the feeling back in our toes, had expected little more, perhaps, than some hardware to get us back on our feet, when would have settled for an awakening. Today we stand at an empty tomb that is every bit as much ours as it was Jesus'. And like the women, we are perplexed, maybe even afraid. Were we sleeping? Can we remember? Is it over? Am I whole again?

And we hear the truth:

We were not just sleeping; we had died. But if Christ is risen to new life, then it is the assurance that we are, too. And when the truth of this great blessing dawns on us, then it brings a tingling to our toes, so to speak, that is more than the feeling coming back; it is the strength to rise with the one who first rose from death, and to walk with him, and finally, to live!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by the Reverend Sean E. Mullen
Easter Day, 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia