How To Trust God

When you start looking for questions in the pages of scripture, it’s almost a bit surprising how many you find.  Too many people skip over the questions and try to find nothing but the answers in scripture.  I think this has proven to be an unhelpful approach that has probably done a fair bit of damage.  It’s very hard to get good answers if you haven’t carefully considered what questions you are asking.

The Psalmist is probably a good source for questions.  Why haven’t I looked to him before?  There’s one question that’s been staring me in the face - we use it over and over again in our prayers in the Sacristy before Mass.  Perhaps I have encountered it so often that I assumed it must be a rhetorical question.  But it’s not.  “Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me.?”

The question is repeated in Psalm 43 from the previous psalm.  Twice in Psalm 42 the Psalmist poses it: Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul?  Why art thou so full of heaviness?  And why art thou so disquieted within me?

I am an optimist and an extrovert, and I am unfamiliar with depression, but even for me, this question of heaviness and disquiet resonates.  For I am not unfamiliar with heaviness that weighs on the soul.  And no matter your disposition, considering the world we live in, I am willing to bet that you are not unfamiliar with such heaviness and disquiet, either.

I’m not sure that it would be useful for me to try to sketch out the headings of a catalog of the causes of the heaviness and disquiet of the soul.  Doing so, I might hit on something that gets close to source of the heaviness and disquiet of your soul.  But I might also never get close to the source for you.  And I don’t want to leave you out.  And the heaviness and disquiet of our souls is not, per se, only a function of the particular facts of this particular moment in time: the warfare, the wildfires, the gunshots, the animus, the racism, the diagnoses, the poverty, the relationships, the debt, the pandemic, the cruelty of our own moment in history.

The reason the Psalmist’s question resonates today is because it always resonates, no matter when it’s recited.  The human soul knows heaviness and disquiet; there has never been a time when it did not.  Why art thou so heavy, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me?

I am guessing that this question resonates with most of you, too, or, if it doesn’t now, it has at some point in your life.  Why, O why art thou so heavy, O my soul?  And why, O why, art thou so disquieted within me?

The tricky thing about this question is that it is not asking what it appears to be asking.  The soul more than likely already knows what’s caused it such heaviness and disquiet.  This question is not one for the therapist to use to probe the unexplored possible sources of the weighty disquiet of the soul.  The answer it requires will not include much information.  Rather, what the question really asks, I think, is whether there is something to be done about all that weighs so heavily on our souls and causes such disquiet.

Furthermore, it’s a question that on its surface seems deeply personal and individualized, as though it could only be asked in private, only encountered in deepest secret.  But the Psalmist puts the question on our lips in church when we are gathered together.  The Psalms are the hymnal of Israel.  And Israel has always known that, private as this question may be, personal as our own disquiet may be, this question is a question that we ask together, we sing together, in the same way that we sing “Just as I am” together.  And when we do, we are reminded that we are not alone in what weighs on us, and we never have been.

I have deliberately stayed stuck on the question, because we are stuck with this question.  As I say, the Psalmist gives voice to the question three times in fairly quick succession in these two Psalms: 42 and 43.  He knows how much the heaviness presses on our souls.  He knows the extent of our disquiet.

But the wisdom of the Psalmist is not contained strictly within the question.  For each of the three times it is posed, the question is also paired with an answer.  Why art thou so heavy, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me?  O put thy trust in God; for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance and my God.  O put thy trust in God.

It is so much easier for us to be in touch with the things that weigh heavily on our souls, and that cause disquiet within our very beings than it is to put our trust in God.  Other translations render the answer slightly differently: “Hope in God,” they say.  But the older translation rings in my ears, and I think the struggle is essentially the same.  It’s as challenging to hope in God as it is to put our trust in him.

I find that I keep wanting to reassure you (and to convince others, too) that there are good reasons to come to church.  I suppose I am dubious that you would be convinced if I started with the answers.  I don’t think I’d have been convinced if I’d started with the answers.

I suspect that one of the criticisms Jesus is making of the scribes and the Pharisees is that they start with the answers.  That is to say, they are always ready to tell others what to do.  But when you are so ready to tell others what to do, it can be easy to forget to heed the answers yourself.  Maybe this is because you have forgotten how central the questions are to your own life.

I want to encourage you to find, and to live with the questions, especially the questions that can be found in the scriptures.  Because I believe we were given those questions for a reason - they are real questions.  And the answers the scriptures provide will only be convincing if we take the questions seriously.

Why should you put your trust in God?  There is a heaviness in the soul, the cause of which is to be found in many different places, and which results in real and unmistakeable disquiet within us.  You can’t just snap out of that heaviness and disquiet of the soul.  You can’t just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  The heaviness is bigger than you are, and the disquiet is louder (or perhaps more deadly silent) than any other voice in your head or your heart.  And this is true whether it’s your heaviness and disquiet, alone, by yourself; or if it’s our shared heaviness and disquiet, as a community, a society, a people who can sing about it together.  It’s bigger than we are: the heaviness and disquiet.

But there is something bigger than the heaviness that weighs us down.  There is a voice more powerful than the voice of disquiet that disrupts our thoughts and our prayers.  O put thy trust in God!  O put thy trust in God; for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.

I don’t feel the need (do you?) to define too clearly what the “help of my countenance” might be.  I know what it is to walk through my days with my head bowed, my face to the ground because of the heaviness in my soul.  Isn’t it enough to imagine that whatever the Psalmist means  by “the help of my countenance,” it has something to do with the power, the force, the will to lift up my head, lift up my heart, lift up my eyes?

But how do we learn to lift up our eyes, to raise our heads, to reach out for the thing that is bigger than the heaviness that weighs down our souls and causes such disquietude within us?  We come together to worship God, and in worshiping God - which everyone keeps telling us is out-moded and old-fashioned - worshiping God proves to be the one activity that has the capacity to lift us up above the weight that presses down on our souls.

I’ve quoted the late American writer David Foster Wallace on this matter before, who asserted that “everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.”  And he goes on to say that the reason to worship the divine is “that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive,” starting with money.

We learn to trust God by worshiping God.  And we desperately need to learn to trust God because trusting God is the only real answer to the heaviness of our souls, the disquietude within us.  God is the only bigger thing that’s big enough to be trustworthy in all instances of heaviness and disquiet.

Pour your hearts out to God.  Lift up your voices to God.  Give some of your time to God.  Yes, even give some of your money to God’s purposes, such as we perceive them to be.  O put your trust in God!  Putting your trust in God is enacting your faith.  And where does faith come from?  It’s a gift from God.  O put your trust in God!

Although the MIBS has not yet become well-known (the Mullen Interrogative Biblical Scale), the more we accept the importance of dealing with the questions before we get to answers, the more likely it is that the MIBS will be recognized for what it is.

We need not avoid this question, or think of it is a rhetorical, for it is too central to our lives: Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me?  Mostly we should not avoid the question because the Psalmist always links it to the answer:

O put thy trust in God!  For I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance and my God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
5 November 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Deficit Saints

One of the apparent problems with the Beatitudes is how regularly Jesus resorts in them to deficit based language.  He starts right in with the “poor in spirit,” which is kind of a classic example of this kind of thinking.  Next, he moves on to “those who mourn,” which is still pretty deficit-based in its outlook.  From there, Jesus turns to the meek, and if you have to ask (here in the home of the free and the brave), yes, “meek” counts as a deficit in this case, for sure.  There’s no doubt that those who “hunger and thirst” for anything (let alone righteousness) are stuck in a deficit situation.  By the time we get to “merciful,” you could begin to think that maybe this characterization is a bit more promising, but, come on, think about it.  Every American knows that mercy is what you ask for when you have given up and you know you are going to lose.  I’m going to give Jesus a pass on the “pure in heart,” although, frankly, I think it could go either way.  “Peacemakers” might as well be filed along with the “merciful.”  Give me a break!  And his last few categories of people are clearly in the deficit category: “those who are persecuted,” and those who are reviled,and have “all kinds of evil” uttered about them.  Deficit.  Deficit.

Jesus might as well have called his followers his “los deficitos.”  Hasn’t anyone ever told Jesus that nice guys finish last?

It’s not entirely clear to me why the Beatitudes are so beloved as lines of scripture - except perhaps that they are beloved because we haven’t really considered them carefully, but they sure do sound nice!

It’s also not entirely clear to me why this little passage from the Sermon on the Mount is assigned to be read on All Saints’ Day, except of course for the obvious possibility that these deficit-based attributes are supposed to be characteristic of the saints.  Maybe?  The saints, however, are supposed to be paragons of virtue, are they not?  They are the lions of the church, whose strength and rectitude we are to admire and imitate.  The saints have trod where we ordinary folk, and maybe even angels, fear to tread.  Saints are on the plus side of every column- in this world and the next world.  So why tar All Saints’ Day with the dark brush of deficit-based language.  Poor, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting, merciful, pure, peacemakers, who are persecuted and reviled.  Who are these people!?!

There are lots of ways to think of the saints.  Most commonly, we think of the catalog of those exemplars of sanctity whose names we can sing in a long litany.  We can write little book reports about them, and adopt them as our patrons.  Or there’s the thought that the early church considered all the followers of the Way of Christ to be saints, and called them such.

What we don’t often do, is organize our thinking about the saints along the lines of their deficits, since it’s their virtues that have drawn them to our attention in the first place, isn’t it?  So, why does the church focus our attention on this deficit-based thinking on All Saints’ Day?  And why does Jesus lavish such rhetorical gold on the sad idea that the deficit-based among us are the most to be blessed?  I have to assume that Jesus does this because it is true.

Look, this is what happens in the making of saints.  If you led a saintly life of goodness, helping others, and glorifying God, there’s a chance that stories about the good things you did will be told for a very long time, and maybe even set to music!  In other circumstances, it’s possible that the stories of your life did not survive, or were never really very good stories anyway, in which case, no problem: we can make stories up for you!  (I know a wolf in Gubbio who would be just perfect for you!)  But the thing that will almost certainly never happen, unless you keep a long written record of it yourself, is that the stories of the real you, the less-than-saintly-you are liable to fade into oblivion.  By these stories about you, I suppose what I really mean is, that it’s the stories about the poor, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting, merciful, pure, peacemaker you, who was persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways that may or may not get told; probably not.

The only problem being, that almost inevitably the saints really are the poor, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting, merciful, pure, peacemakers, who are persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways.  And on All Saints’ Day, despite her propensity and desire to weave a golden fabric of saintliness with the legends of the saintliest saints, and set it to the best possible hymn tune, the church has not completely lost the plot.  And she has considered two things.

First, she has remembered that the saints of yore, of days gone by, were, by and large people who could be counted among the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, who were persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways.  And that this truth is a truth worth celebrating!  Mostly this is a truth worth celebrating because the church has also considered that the saints to come, the saints who are still in the making, the saints who haven’t even become Episcopalians yet, are also most likely to be counted among the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, the pure, peacemakers, who are persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways.

From up here, I get to look out at the church, such as she is, gathered here on Locust Street, at this time in history when the church is not at her best, not at her strongest, probably not anywhere near her saintliest.  I’m called to remember with the rest of the church those saints of yesteryear: the truth about them, the legends about them, and all that we don’t really know, or have forgotten about them.  And I’m called to look out at you, and for a few or more who have not yet made it in through those doors.  And do you know what I see in the church these days?

I see a church that is full of the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, pure, peacemakers, who are persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways.  You don’t look very saintly to me.  At least, I don’t think I am ready to write a book report about you and your life.  Though there are a few of you about whom I have some legends I am willing to embellish.

But we listen to the Beatitudes on All Saints’ Day, to remind ourselves that indeed you do look like saints to Jesus.  He looks at the poor, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting, merciful, pure, peacemaking, persecuted and reviled lot of you, and do you know what he sees?

Of course you do!  He sees the kingdom of heaven, inhabited by a population of saints who will be comforted, and will inherit the earth, who will be filled with righteousness, and will receive mercy, who will see God face to face, and who will be called forevermore children of God.  Yes, Jesus looks at you in all your deficits, and he sees the assets of the kingdom of heaven, just as he saw them in the deficits of the saints who have gone before us!

Jesus looks at you in all your deficit-based glory, knowing your deficits better than you do, and not caring one bit about them, as long as they are not impediments to getting closer to him, and assuring you that they need not be!  Blessed are the poor, and the mournful, and the meek, and the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways!  For yours is the kingdom of heaven!  And you will be will be comforted, and will inherit the earth, who will be filled with righteousness, and will receive mercy, who will see God face to face, and who will be called forevermore children of God.  Yes, yours is the kingdom of heaven.  And I don’t know if it will be because you will be an exemplar of sanctity whose name will some day be sung in a long litany of the saints.   Or if it will be just because you are one of the many saints who follow the Way of Christ, and will be remembered along with everybody else.

We are tonight, weaving a golden fabric of saintliness with the legends of the saintliest saints, and setting it to the best possible hymn tune.  And we are remembering that that golden fabric makes a garment to clothe the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, who are persecuted and reviled in all kinds of ways.  Thus clothed, the saints are ready for the kingdom of heaven, which has been meant for them… for you… for us… from the very beginning, all our deficits, notwithstanding.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
All Saints’ Day, 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

How To Be Human

We often think that it’s our capacity to reflect on our humanity that distinguishes us from other creatures, from other species.  That is to say, that we suppose that what makes us special in the created order is that we know something about who and what we are as human beings; we are able to reflect on our human-ness, and we do so at a deep level.  But it’s possible that actually what distinguishes us as a species is our confusion about who and what we are.  And it may be that it’s our capacity for reflection that shows us how  deeply confused we are about what it means to be a human being.

No other animal struggles with its own identity and purpose the way we do.  My dogs are blissfully un-confused about what it means to be a dog, as they eat, and run, and play, and fetch, and eat, and swim, and eat.  Horses know well what it means to be a horse, and if we humans choose to ride them, we can either deal with their horsiness or not, but they are going to be horses, no matter what.  And cats, well, we all know that cats are not confused about their identities, and that we can take them or leave them as they are; it’s all the same to them.  But to be human is to occupy a space in the created order in which we can easily be confused about who and what we are, and why we are here on this planet.

I think there is ample evidence around us about how confused we are about all this.  Warfare.  Racism and social discrimination.  Political divisiveness.  All of these conflicts lead to violence;  and we are deeply confused.  And the violence that comes of all these conflicts is a sign that we don’t know what it means to be a human being. We don’t actually know how to be, as a species.  And since we don’t know how we should be, we don’t really know how to thrive as a species, either.  And because we are at the top of the food chain and every other chain, pyramid, or chart we can imagine, our confusion, our failure to thrive affects every other species, and every other  dimension of the created order.

In the old days in the church, for a while, we used to begin every Mass with a recitation of the Summary of the Law that we heard that Jesus provided to the Pharisees and the Sadducees: Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith, “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’  This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  We borrowed the practice of repetitive recitation of these words from the Jews who had long engraved these two commandments on their hearts, as the start of daily prayer, and as guiding principles of what it means to be a child of God.

There’s nothing unique in the Christian religion, in placing the Golden Rule so near the center of everything, or so near the top of any list.  But the need to do so - to place so simple and so basic a rule at the heart of religion - is a sign of our confusion about what it means to be a human being.  It is surely not a sign of clarity about who we are and how we should be.  It’s a sign that we have reckoned that we need religious systems just to learn how to be good to one another.  (Although these systems have a very mixed record of success in that regard.)  We need commandments from on high just to learn how to function with each other.  And even when we have such systems and such commandments, we fail miserably at them, resorting to violence, and demonstrating that we don’t know how to be human.

Exhibit A among the evidence for this argument is one of the great questions of the Bible that I have not yet spent much time on, when “the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’  Good question!  Cain did not know how to be human without resorting to violence.  He could not find a way just to be good to his brother Abel.  There’s a reason this story comes so close to the beginning of the scriptures.

We don’t know how to be good to one another; we don’t know how to thrive.  For some reason or other, it’s not instinctive, is it?  But violence comes easily to us.  How could any society that uses guns the way do, claim that we know instinctively or otherwise how to be human, and how to thrive as human beings?  Shall we ask that question in Ukraine?  Or in Gaza?  Or in Lewiston, Maine?

There’s a telling detail in St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ summary of the law, which comes about in a debate/discussion with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  St. Matthew tells us that “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask [Jesus] any more questions.”  Let’s acknowledge that Matthew is exaggerating, and that it wasn’t the case that no one ever asked Jesus any more questions.  But perhaps it was the case that the Pharisees and the Sadducees asked him no more questions; and there is a reason they asked him no more questions.  They did not want to hear his answers.

Near the heart of the mystery of the Incarnation is the wisdom that Jesus is not confused about what it means to be human.  Jesus has answers to the questions we raise when reflect on our confusion about what it means to be human, and when we realize that we cannot trust our instincts when it comes to thriving as human beings.  Mostly, his answers are not complicated.   Jesus seems happy to allow the same old answers that Jews had known for a long time to form the basis of his insight.  There’s nothing unique about the command to love God, or about the Golden Rule.

More and more these days, people are unconvinced that there are many good reasons to go to church.  Here’s one: we go to church to be reminded by Jesus of what it means to be human, and how to thrive as a human.  At its best, religion is meant to be a corrective to our lack of good instincts about being human.  But, sadly, religion is seldom at its best.  We have to work very hard to try.

The problem, of course, is that the churches are full of Pharisees and Sadducees, like me and others, who will tell you what we think, and who may have long ago stopped asking Jesus any questions, because we don’t want to hear his answers.  And this is why it’s so good that you don’t have to rely on me to interpret for you Jesus’ reflection on what it means to be human.  Although I hope you will allow me to point out some features of that reflection.

To be human, Jesus tells us, is to respond to God and to one another, and to do so with the unique human capacity to love.  Love God and love your neighbor.  That’s what you need to know.

But we are actively forgetting, as a society, how to respond to the presence of God in our lives, which is to worship.  And we have perfected the ability to respond to one another, armed to the teeth.

No one has ever, in the history of the world, needed a semi-automatic weapon to follow these commandments.  And the fact of the necessity of our armies, in this day and age, is an indication that although the kingdom of heaven may have drawn nigh, it’s not nigh enough.  If we are actively forgetting as a society, how to respond to God, and if we are responding to one another, over and over again with violence, then we are a long way away from knowing how to be human, and how to thrive as a species.

There was a short time in American history when one of the most important things we thought we could do, many thought could only be achieved by non-violence.  Non-violent resistance to violence was a hallmark of the Civil Rights movement, promoted by people of faith.  It was a moment, I think, when the goal of getting better at being humans was advanced by actually trying to be better as humans.  The power of non-violence comes precisely from what an obvious fulfillment it is, of the commandment to love one another.

Many people look at the church and they see an institution governed and controlled by people (mostly men) who dare not ask any more questions, because we are afraid of what the answers will be.  Who can blame them for seeing things this way?  But still, Jesus is not confused about what it means to be human.  And Jesus wants us humans to thrive.  He wants us asking questions that lead to different answers than the ones we have been reaching so often.  Jesus, we are told, disappointed many who might have followed him, because he was completely and utterly non-violent.  This was not the answer to the question that they were looking for.

We only dare to ask the questions when we are ready to hear answers that are not necessarily the ones we are looking for.  What does it mean to be human?  What distinguishes us from the rest of the created order?  The answer to those questions may be nothing more than the summary of the law: the commandment to love the living God with all our heart, and soul, and mind.  And the second is like unto it, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Oh, we have made a complicated mess out of it, prone as we are to violence.  But it’s not as complicated as we have made it.  And it is essentially all that God requires of us.

If we are still confused, maybe we should be asking more questions.  We can sure that Jesus will have answers.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

29 October 2023

Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia