A couple of years ago, almost to the week, the bird-watching community throughout this country was in an absolute tizzy over sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker – thought to have been extinct since 1944. But several supposed sightings in 2004 and 2005 led to such excitement that even I (who has never once had the slightest urge to watch a bird) had learned about the possibility that this elusive species might still be among us.
I did not know that scientists (if not bird-watchers) have specific terminology for classes or species of animals that disappear for a time only to reappear again later. Such creatures are referred to in paleontology as “Lazarus taxon.” Considering our context this evening I’ll spare you an explanation of the biblical reference in that term.
At the time, two years ago, I took it as a hopeful sign that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (which carries the nickname, the “Lord God bird”) might have re-emerged, since one writer had asserted that “the most common explanation given for the bird’s disappearance was that it ‘could not stand the presence of mankind or association with advancing civilization.’” The possibility that the woodpecker might have found a way to co-exist with us, despite the odds, seemed, as I say, quite hopeful.
From time to time over the last two years, it has occurred to me that I might check in on the woodpecker that captured the imagination of so many – even those of us who never think to watch a bird unless it flies directly into sight. And I am aware that in the months that have passed no definitive proof has come out that can be said to establish the bird’s existence beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Teams have been dispatched to the swamps of Florida and Arkansas. A $10,000 reward was offered for any information leading to the discovery of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker nest, roost or feeding site. Films and videotapes have been scrutinized and analyzed frame by frame. You can find people who will tell you that they are absolutely certain the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is out there somewhere. But you can also find people who will tell you, sadly, that it is gone and seems to be gone for ever.
Tonight we are not here to discuss the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. And we are not here to discuss the raising of Lazarus, who, presumably, eventually died a natural death and went, finally, to his grave. Tonight we are here remembering the stories that tell us that forty days after his miraculous resurrection from the dead, Jesus of Nazareth was lifted up on a cloud and carried into the heavens while his followers looked on.
This kind of story is hardly unique. The prophet Elijah is said to have been carried to heaven in a chariot of fire in the midst of a whirlwind. Tradition has it that the prophet Muhammad was taken up to heaven and then returned to Mecca. And our own tradition suggests that Mary’s assumption into heaven may have been a somewhat spectacular departure from this earth.
So let’s just say we take the story of Jesus’ ascension at face value. Let’s just say we believe that the apostles who gathered there that day looked up at the soles of Jesus’ feet as they got smaller and smaller, disappearing into the skies. Let’s just say it happened – what does it cost us to believe this, after all? It still leaves us with a difficult question: What now?
After all, we know that there are those who consider us Christians as nothing more than glorified bird-watchers, waiting for the return of a very odd bird who was last seen riding a cloud to heaven.
And we know that there have been expeditions launched, holy sites analyzed, and even rewards offered for some kind of evidence – any evidence would do – to prove or disprove the claims that this Jesus, who was taken up into heaven, is the Son of God and that in him lies the hope and salvation of the whole world.
And you can find people who will tell you that they are absolutely certain that Jesus is reigning from his throne in heaven and at work in the world by the power of his spirit. And you can find those who will tell you, gladly, that he is gone for ever. (And don’t think that they buy this story about him being taken to heaven on a cloud. See Elijah, Muhammad, and Mary as a rationale for their skepticism.)
If you are going to believe what we say about Jesus tonight; if you are going to believe that he was killed on the Cross and rose from the dead; if you are going to believe that he walked and talked and ate with his disciples during the forty days that followed; if you are going to believe that he was carried on a cloud up into heaven where now he sits at the right hand of God… if you are going to believe any of this, you are going to believe it by faith.
And faith is a gift. Faith is not proof positive. Faith is not a videotape. Faith often looks as though it does not hold up under scrutiny and analysis. You would not want to believe in the continuing existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker just on faith.
But we are not talking about a woodpecker here. We are not talking about some species of creature that might have dropped out of sight for a couple of thousand years.
Tonight we are talking about the Lord of Life, the Prince of Peace, the Son of God.
Where has he gone? What are we to do? What now?
The Eleven – those crucial disciples who were left standing there – must have asked the same questions among themselves. And what did they do? They remembered his instructions: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” And they did the oddest thing: they did what Jesus had told them to do. Saint Mark, the patron saint of this parish, tells us that “they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.”
They preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them!
The answer to their questions came as they did what Jesus had instructed – and what so few of us Christians can bring ourselves to do anymore. “Go!” he said to them. “Get out of here! Keep it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving! Go!”
And so we hear of Saint Paul’s journeys and Saint Peter’s. We hear that James went to Spain and Thomas to the subcontinent. They went and they preached… while the Lord worked with them!
And they did it by faith – that gift that had been given to them. They did it, I suspect, because what else were they going to do? Sit around a talk about it? You can’t even find a woodpecker by just sitting around and talking about it.
They preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them.
Now you may be sitting there telling yourself that this passage has nothing to do with you since you have no intention of preaching to anyone – in fact you probably find the whole idea distasteful. But I want to suggest that the most important word of Jesus’ instructions is the first word: Go!
You may not think you are called to preach the gospel: not in your church, not on a street corner, and not to the whole creation. You may not think you have much to say. You may not think you know much about the Bible or about Jesus. You may not think you are a preacher. And you may be right. But no matter who you are, you can do what Jesus says if you can get up and GO!
In giving this simple command, Jesus created a missionary church. He did not say, Wait here until people find you. He did not say, Hang a sign outside that lets people know they can come in. He said, Go!
And his apostles – who had trouble knowing how to answer their questions (Where has he gone? What are we to do? What now?) could at least do that: they could go!
And you and I can too! And even if we don’t think we are preachers, we can always do as St. Francis, that wise saint, suggested: Preach the gospel everyewhere; use words if you must.
Which means that your life and mine can be a witness to the world of the way the Lord works with us even now. Our prayers and our praise to God, our care for one another, our generosity to those in need, our commitment to the poor, our readiness to visit the sick and those in prison, our willingness to struggle for justice – especially with those to whom it is denied, our responsible stewardship of the good earth that we have been given, our openness to those who disagree with us, our readiness to welcome the stranger in our midst, our conviction that decent medical care ought not to be a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthy, our readiness to sit by the dying as witnesses to holy death and then to be patient and supportive of those who grieve... all of these can be eloquent sermons declaring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. And we can preach most of them without ever opening our mouths.
And these are the signs that the Lord is working with us even now!
My friends, none of this is proof. Capture every moment of it on film and watch it frame by frame and you will never see the mystical image of Jesus flash in front of you like some exposed subliminal advertising.
All we have is faith – that gift that compels us to go, and to keep on going, confident that as we go the Lord is working with us. For many, faith is not enough – not even enough to convince them of a woodpecker’s existence.
But, of course, we are not looking for a woodpecker – Ivory-billed or otherwise. We are looking for the kingdom of heaven, where the ascended Jesus already sits at the right hand of God. And we know that there is nothing to be proved, and only one way to find that kingdom: it is to go and preach everywhere (using words if we must), while the Lord works with us to do what ever he will.
It is my honor and privilege and my joy to have been called here to work with you in the building up of God’s kingdom. And it is my sincere prayer that God will always make us ready to go wherever he calls us, as compelling witnesses not only of his love, but of the plain truth that it is the Lord who works with us day by day, and who makes all things possible!
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is nicknamed the Lord God bird because it is a bird of such distinctive beauty and grace that on seeing it, people are said to have exclaimed that tiny creed: Lord God!
Although I doubt that the mere sight of a woodpecker could make a believer out of anyone, I know that if we will go wherever God calls us, with the Lord working with us, people will see in us the evidence of god’s beauty and God’s grace. And if they do there is no telling what will happen in people’s lives when they get a look, and see what the Lord God has done with us!
Preached by Fr. Sean E. Mullen
The Feast of the Ascension: 17 May 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia
Posts filed under Rev. Sean Mullen
The Gift of Peace
For 72 years, from 1682 till 1754, at the insistence of the Quakers, the colony of Pennsylvania maintained no militia. Despite repeated calls to establish some armed body, the Quaker pacifists held to the principle. By 1747 this unrelenting pacifism, in the face of war between Britain, France and Spain, had driven Ben Franklin to publish a call to arms: the pamphlet, “Plain Truth.” That same year he established the League for the Defense of the City and Province, with some 10,000 men responding to his plea.
In 1755, after repeated failed legislative attempts to fund a militia, Franklin persuaded the Pennsylvania Assembly to borrow the money required for militia supplies. Dogged insistence on peace did not jibe with Franklin’s famous pragmatism. There is, however, something somehow ennobling about being a part of a society that once tried a serious experiment in peaceful living – no matter how many times removed we are from the distant cousins who tried (however vainly) to enforce the peace.
Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”
Franklin, I think, might have understood part of what we hear Jesus saying today: “not as the world gives do I give to you.” The world does not give us peace; Franklin knew that well. And in the absence of evidence of peace in the world, it is not entirely clear what became of the gift of peace that Jesus said he was giving to his disciples.
Biblical scholars tell us that we are prone to over-simplify what Jesus was talking about. His gift of peace is not, some say, meant to imply the end of warfare, not the banishment of gunshots from our streets or our schools, not the quelling of domestic violence in our homes. No, his peace, we are told, passes all understanding. It is more than an end to our foolish destruction of one another. It is the peace of salvation, the peace of communion with God. It is the establishment of his kingdom: the vision of the city that we hear about in the Revelation to Saint John: the new Jerusalem that needs no sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its lamp; where the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God, through the middle of the street of the city. And anyone who wishes may take the water as a gift.
In the face of this vision of peace, the mere cessation of warfare, we are told, is an entirely inadequate understanding of God’s peace – a lesser peace, to be sure, but we have settled for it. And on reflection it does seem cheap to think we have achieved peace when we manage to bring a war to its conclusion. This is a bit like thinking that all is well in the house when Mom and Dad have stopped fighting – but even a child knows that this is not true, and chances are the shouting will begin again soon.
So then, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, is more than a moment of relative calm, more than a treaty signed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, more than the assurance that our kids are safe in school. But would it be so wrong to try to establish this lesser peace in Christ’s name – to claim a beachhead for Christ, planting his peaceful flag over the landscape here and there where we decide we are not willing to tear one another apart?
The gift of peace that Jesus bequeaths to his disciples is a gift that they never asked for. And like them, we often have a hard time dealing with gifts we never asked for. I know someone who keeps such gifts in a closet, waiting for an opportunity to re-gift them. We all know what it is like to receive a tie that we will never tie, socks that will never see our feet, tchotchkes that will never be displayed, etc., etc. What do we do with gifts we never asked for?
We have a hard enough time dealing with the one commandment Jesus gave: to love one another as he loved his disciples. Somehow the Ten Commandments seemed like enough – at least they were enforceable – we didn’t ask for one more! And now we are faced with this un-asked-for gift of peace. Which sounds like a gift that belongs in the it’s-the-thought-that-counts category.
Jesus offers us the gift of his peace. And like any gift we never asked for, we are not sure we want it. He offers us the gift of peace: inviting us to be partners in building the city of God as we build up his kingdom. He offers us a vision of a city of peace when all we wanted was a bigger house or at least a condo. He offers us the gift of peace, and we would have settled for central air conditioning. He offers us the gift of peace when all we wanted was to have our nails done. He offers the gift of peace and we are not sure we want it. And if we, his latter-day disciples, are the inheritors of the gift of peace (which in many ways we never asked for either) what are we to do with this gift that we can hardly even define?
Like Ben Franklin, we have generally esteemed the gift of peace to be impractical – even the lesser peace that only brings an end to fighting. We have, after all, the means to wage astonishing warfare – means that are sometimes effective, it must be said, at maintaining a certain kind of peace. But do we – even those of us who claim to be Jesus’ disciples – do we really think a peace that passes all understanding is something we would enjoy? Is the gift of peace something we could even hope for?
The Quakers held fast to the hope for peace, and they had the will for it – still do - even if they lacked the means for it – which is perhaps as close to receiving the gift as we can get. Was their refusal to arm themselves a kind of sacramental act: an outward and visible sign of some inward corporate grace? A symbol of the city they knew God has already built in his divine mind and which they believe God means for us all, finally, to dwell in?
And although as a society (and a city) we have much for which to be grateful to Franklin, perhaps as a parish community of Christian disciples we should be less grateful for this one aspect of his pragmatic legacy: that his quite practical point of view prevailed. Perhaps we should be more eager than he was to learn how the desire for peace – even a lesser peace than that peace which passes all understanding – can be stronger than our feeble means to achieve it.
Can we hear Jesus when he tells us, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”? He knows that the gift of peace is one for which we are not prepared and that we are not sure we want it. He knows that we are unpracticed even at keeping a lesser peace. Be not afraid. He will supply the means for peace. He alone can establish peace within the walls of the new Jerusalem.
The royal charter that William Penn received in 1681 from Charles II granted to him the powers of “Captain General” of whatever army he might raise, and authorized him to "levy, muster and traine all sorts of men, of any condition soever, . . . to make Warre." This gift of the king’s was entirely practical, and almost certainly necessary.
But for 72 years the desire for a certain kind of peace prevailed in Penn’s colony, in what seemed, even at the time, an unlikely zeal for another kind of gift: the gift of peace, quite superior to that gift which had been given to Penn by Charles II.
And maybe that is the crucial thing to learn about the gift of peace that Jesus gave - that peace which passes our understanding, that we have not fully known, cannot even describe – to want this impractical gift more than to not want it. Maybe the challenge is not to understand it but just to want it, so that our feeble capacity for peace might surpass our stunning ability to “make Warre,” as it did here, for a season, in William Penn’s colony, where again today, the gift of peace is ours, if we want it.
Preached by the Rev. Sean E. Mullen
13 May 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
Living the New Commandment
Camp Wapiti - some 600 beautiful acres on the banks of the Elk River in Maryland - is the fledgling diocesan camp and conference center and a lightning rod for disagreement and conflict in this diocese. Many people believe that our bishop has channeled funds - either inappropriately or unwisely - to the camp at the expense of other vital programs, like the support of poor, inner-city parishes.
Not long ago I heard the director of the camp address those concerns with the appeal that although mistakes may have been made, the fact remains that we own it, we are there are on the ground at Wapiti, and shouldn't we give it a chance?
What struck me about this plea was that it is practically a verbatim repetition of an argument we hear about the war in Iraq: mistakes may have been made, but the fact remains that we are there, on the ground in Iraq, and shouldn't we give it a chance, do our best to make it work?
I don't intend to use time in the pulpit this morning as a critique of either Camp Wapiti or the Iraq war - although I believe there is much to critique in both cases. But it is remarkable how often and well we in the church have learned to mimic strategies, outlooks, and postures that we first observe on the evening news.
Elections for bishops have borrowed campaign strategies from secular political campaigns. Our special interest groups use the same tactics of polarization and fear-mongering as political special interest groups. Our leaders jostle for power with the same mixture of intensity and false humility. We regularly look to big business for organizational models and methods of leadership and real estate development. We have learned our lessons well from the secular world: why shouldn't we borrow rationales for staying the course at Wapiti, because, after all, we are already there?
All communities have politics. The Twelve apostles were playing at politics when they argued about who among them would be greatest. The church is not, nor could it be, immune from politics.
Still, as a community we claim to be striving for something else, we say that we have gathered ourselves around the story of the One who came not to be served but to serve. We hold on so tightly to the memory of the night he showed what he meant by that that we re-enact the drama of his love once a year when we wash one another's feet.
And on that night, after supper, Jesus, who had spent many hours teaching his disciples about the Jewish law, gave them another teaching to follow:
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
His own disciples showed little evidence from that point on that they understood this teaching - except that they must have repeated it to others, passing it on enough times for it to be written down and handed on to us.
And through the ages, as we look back, we might wonder if others have shown much evidence of learning this lesson: love one another as he loved them - love one another enough to wash each other's feet, enough to die for those you love. Love one another so that all may know that we are his disciples.
Is it unfair to suggest that more often than not we Christians have lived the mirror-image of this teaching: that by our failure to love one another, we have caused many to wonder if we are following anyone, or if Jesus could possibly be worth following? And would it be fair to say that we have so often been following somebody else's script, somebody else's model, somebody else's business plan that there has been precious little time or space to worry about this one, little commandment: love one another?
Would it be fair to say that much of the time we have no earthly idea what love is?
This past week, in a very disturbing story, the New York Times shed some light on the preparations and attitudes of young suicide bombers who are on their way to Iraq. They seem to me to be filled with righteous indignation, moral certitude, and religious zeal. Never mind that they have little idea of what exactly they are being righteously indignant about, that their moral compasses are drastically off-course, and their zeal only serves to warp their religion. They are also, to my reading, full of anger and hatred.
A 24 year old man featured in the article was stopped at the Iraqi border and sent back to Jordan. He is disappointed that he was not able to blow himself up and he is envious of those who have. "I am happy for them but I cry for myself because I couldn't do it yet. I want to spread the roots of God on this earth and free the land of occupiers. I don't love anything in this world. What I care about is fighting."
I don't know much about Islam, to tell you the truth. But I do know that if, as I believe, there is only one God, then the God to which Muslims pray is the same God to whom I pray and you pray. It is the God who sent his Son to give us a new commandment: to love one another.
And can Christians - whose history includes the Crusades and the Inquisition, the Reformation and the English Civil War, who colluded with Nazis, and slave owners, and conquistadors - can Christians claim a much better record of following this one, simple commandment: to love one another?
We want, quite desperately I think, to contrast ourselves to that bleak and hopeless way of thinking. We - like many Muslims - want to live the exact reverse image of that young man's short credo: we don't want to fight anything in this world; what we care about is loving. We want to have an answer to that nihilism: that they'll know we are Christians by our love. We want to shape our lives by this new commandment.
But when we stop to think about this condition we are in - as a church, or as individuals in it - and we hear ourselves repeating the same political slogans that once we heard on the evening news: well, yes, mistakes have been made, but we are where we are, here on the ground, and shouldn't we just stick with it and give life like this a chance? Then are we really providing a witness to that simple, new commandment?
Jesus' command to love one another is a challenge to that kind of thinking and to the status quo - because he knows that mutual love, respect and affection is not our fall-back position. Staying the course is our fall-back position; especially if that course includes holding a grudge, nursing a hatred, plotting revenge or settling a score.
Sure, mistakes have been made - that's how we got in this mess - but why not give it a shot? Why change gears now, with all this gentle talk of love?
Jesus' command to love one another is a rebuke to our self-indulgence and pride.
And when we begin to appropriate the ways and means of this world - the tactics of secular politics, the cynicism of polarization, and mechanics of power struggles, and the inclination to "spin" things so they show us at our best - then Jesus' command to love one another as he loved his disciples is an intervention aimed at preventing the long slide down that slippery slope.
When we begin to accept the state of affairs as they are, although mistakes may have happened, but here we are and shouldn't we just go with it - then Jesus' simple commandment calls us to account. Is this how we love one another?
Here at Saint Mark's, we could heed Jesus' command in a thousand new ways - building on the many ways it has been lived out here for decades, and in the church for centuries. But a few general guidelines in choosing those ways of heeding the command to love one another seem useful.
First we can practice radical hospitality - looking for every opportunity to welcome the newcomer, the stranger, and the lost into our midst. To call hospitality radical is to say that the habit of welcoming others is something that would be so ingrained in us that it is part of our very core of being as a community, and not something that we seek to delegate to the ushers, or a committee, or to someone, anyone else. This can involve everything from paying attention to who is standing alone at coffee hour to helping to run a program of Christian formation to introduce people to faith and strengthen the faith of others.
Second, we can recommit ourselves to take up the work of caring for the poor and those in need - not just a few of us on Saturday mornings or another few on weekdays in the Food Cupboard. Not only can we do a better job of being attentive to those in need in our own community, we can adopt a more expansive definition of "one another" by actively look for ways to bring relief to the poor, the elderly, the sick and lonely, those who are in prison.
Third, we can devote ourselves more and more to the daily practice of prayer in which God invites us to be in conversation with him, to reflect on the choices we make, to seek forgiveness when we make bad ones, and to learn, again and again, that the call to repentance is never a call to stay the course a little longer, because although mistakes have been made, this is where we are, and shouldn't we give it a chance.
The call to repent is a call to be better followers of the new commandment; to be willing to stop doing what we are doing, to turn and go another way - especially when the way we are going engenders nothing but conflict, discord, and the disposition to choose to fight rather than find a way to love.
Christians are called to witness this new commandment to the world. We are called to be men and women whose hearts are so set on loving our neighbor as ourselves - loving one another as Jesus loves us - that we cannot be deterred from this mission. Love one another with righteous indignation that there are those in this world who love nothing. Love one another with the moral certitude that this is the only commandment worth dying for. Love one another with a religious zeal that exposes all other religious fervor as cheap.
Jesus gave us this simple little new commandment - which, of course, is anything but simple to follow.
And the question is, will we try to follow it? Or will we defend ourselves with a script we learned somewhere else - acknowledging that yes, mistakes have been made, but couldn't we, shouldn't we try living this way a little longer? Stay the course, give it a chance see how it goes?
His hands still wet from washing our feet, Jesus challenges us to choose to live a different way: to fight over nothing in this world, but only to love.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
6 May 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia