The Cyclical Disturbance

Life is cyclical.  At least it is in  many ways.  Generation begets generation.  Seasons change.  The moon waxes and wanes.  The planets spin.  Sound and light both travel in waves, which are cycles of their own specific kind.  Economists tell us that markets are cyclical.  Engines run in cycles.  Wheels rotate cyclically.  Weather is cyclical.  Our brain-waves run in cycles.  Harmony is expressed in terms of cycles.  The electromagnetic spectrum is a spectrum of cycles.  Life, in many ways, is cyclical.  We begin in the womb (which has its own cycles), then after birth we go through identifiable cycles of infancy, toddler-ship, adolescence, adulthood, middle-age, old-age, and death.

Life is cyclical.  And cycles are reassuring because they allow for some predictability.  “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near,” Jesus said.  Life is cyclical.

Curiously, the symbol for infinity, sometimes called the lemniscate, the sort-of figure-eight on its side, looks a lot like the curve of a wave to me, which expresses a cycle, although I think this is a misleading expression of eternity, which I don’t think is an endlessly repeating cycle, forever folding back on itself, and leading nowhere but back to its own beginning point.

Advent is the beginning of a cycle.  And because it is an annual cycle, it can feel a bit like that small, and self-repeating symbol, turning back on itself again and again.  Every year, the church returns to the same spot, to take up the same patterns, go through the same motions, tell the same story, act out the same drama, reiterate the same promises, express the same fears, correct the same failings, and turn her head and her heart toward the same hope.  Again.  And again.  And again.  And since the church purports to inhabit the domain of eternity, it could be easy to conclude that one of the church’s dirty little secrets is that this is it: that we are destined to repeat this loop for ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, as Handel might put it.

The church has been doing this for a long time.  I have been doing this for a long time.  Some of you have been doing it for even longer.  Again and again.  Over and over.  Life is cyclical.  And except for the exciting shift from violet to blue vestments, once every 175 years or so, we can expect to keep doing the same thing for a long, long time.

Strangely, this cycle that begins with Advent is one that both leads us somewhere, and inevitably returns us back here to the same place, again.  In fact, Jesus’ message to his disciples here is contradictory.  First, he tells them to learn from the predictability of the cycles of the fig tree.  Then he immediately tells them that “about that day or hour no one knows…. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

These lessons seem incompatible with one another.  My guess about the reason for this contradiction is that, there in Jerusalem, not far from his own Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus was extraordinarily aware of the nearness of eternity, and unusually attuned to the thinness of the membranes that separate time and space, when these dimensions fold in on themselves, and he could sense with exceptional sensitivity, that everything is always happening everywhere.  And his proximity to that profound and singular moment of self-offering allowed him to speak in and through and about both the specific reality of that moment, which happened once and for all, but which is always happening everywhere.  That’s a bit of a mouthful, but I am trying to speak about things about which I cannot know.  We can only grope.

Life is cyclical, like a wave that you can graph, as it goes up and down with speed, amplitude, and frequency.  Interestingly, the thing that moves in a mechanical cycle is called the disturbance.  If you shake a string to get it to move up and down in a cycle that goes from left to right, say.  It’s not the string, so much, that is moving from left to right, as it is the disturbance that’s moving, and that causes the cycle to happen.

A duck floating on the water moves up and down with a wave, but not forward or backwards, because it’s not the water that’s moving laterally, it’s the disturbance moving through the water.

If Advent is the beginning of a cycle, it’s the disturbance that sets this cycle in motion.  So, what is the disturbance?  Of course, Jesus is the disturbance of this cycle to which we keep returning.

Most of the definitions of “disturbance” carry negative connotations.  An “interruption,” “disruption,” “breakdown,” “interference.”  One dictionary definition uses non-judgmental terms for a disruption in the weather, saying it’s “a local variation from normal or average… conditions.”  I think Jesus might be comfortable with that, depending on how you define “local.”

I suppose that Advent could be all of these things. It could be just a variation from normal or average conditions, as we adjust our perspectives to try to be awake and aware of what God is doing in the world.  But, come to think of it, if what is God is doing in the world we live in  - a world that seems to cycle through calamity and war with terrific regularity and ease - if what God is doing happens to be an interruption, disruption, breakdown, and interference of all that, wouldn’t such disturbance be rather welcome?

As we begin this cycle of our life, and perhaps of God’s life, again.  Perhaps we are being called to be attentive to the disturbance.  Many people believe that one of the great reasons to come to church is for calm and reassurance, but I think one of the most important reasons we come to church is for disturbance.  Jesus comes to us to be a new disturbance, and to disrupt, interrupt, break down, and interfere with all the other cycles of our lives.

And because it is so easy for all those other cycles to the ones that govern our lives - the seasons, the marketplace, our own own lifecycle - it is a good thing that the church returns to this cycle that begins with Advent, year after year, to introduce again that disturbance to every other aspect of our lives; to introduce us to Jesus again and again, in a cycle that is completely predictable, and yet, which always, we pray, leads us closer to something we have never been so close to before, which is the heart of God, and his kingdom.

It is one of the paradoxes of faith that we know this cycle, and yet, we don’t know for sure where it will lead us this year, or next.  But here we sit, like so many ducks, bobbing in the waves, not because these waves will carry us anywhere, but because from here we can feel the disturbance as it moves beneath us, and over us, and through us, and we brace ourselves, knowing that we have been here before, and wondering what will happen next!

Preached by Fr. Sean E. Mullen
3 December 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Of Sheep & Goats

The scriptures and I are at the risk of repeating ourselves - here in one of the most beautiful and beloved passages of the Gospel.  For we are both in danger today of suggesting that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  And that means that we are in danger of concluding today that Jesus is teaching that there are only two kinds of people in the world: sheep and goats; or that there will be, on Judgement Day: those on the king’s right, and those on his left hand.

Oh, I hear you say, we already know how this sermon goes; get over it already, and come up with a new idea.  But I can’t get over it.

Use the internet and discover for yourself the commonly advanced theory that Jews and Arabs are two kinds of people: both descendants of Abraham.  Jews, the theory goes, are descendants of Isaac, who was the son born to Abraham by his wife Sarah in her old age.  But Arabs, by this reckoning, are descendants of Ishmael, who was the bastard son of Abraham, born by Hagar, the Egyptian slave-girl of Sarah.  Irony sometimes comes in layers.  By this popular reckoning, Jews and Arabs have a common ancestry in Abraham.  And the story of the rejection of Ishmael, and his exile, along with his mother, into the wilderness, provides a ready-to-wear conflict between Arabs and Jews, deep-seated in the mists of religious memory, that can easily lead to a biblical view that, where the children of Abraham are concerned, there are only two kinds of people: the descendants of Isaac, who were God’s chosen people, and the descendants of Ishmael, who, in the end, were not.  Neither the historical nor the Biblical record actually support this dichotomy, but it sure does make for a good story.  And it sure does make for a good grudge!

Of course, we know how our own Christian tradition has excelled in false dichotomies: suggesting that there are only two kinds of people, no matter where you look.  Christians or non-Christians, whether they be Jews, Muslims, or anybody else.  The righteous or the unrighteousness.  The right kind of Christians, or the wrong kind.  The saved and those who will be left behind.  The chosen or those who are not chosen.  The elect or those who are un-elected.  The pre-destined, and everybody else.  The baptized, and the un-baptized.  We have gotten very, very good at suggesting that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  We are so good at it that maybe it’s going to take more than one sermon to undermine this easy categorization.  Hence, the repetition.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory… all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.”   What could be clearer?  There are two kinds of people in the world: sheep and goats.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  These are the sheep.

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”  These are the goats.

Two kinds of people.

I don’t really know how genetically similar goats and sheep are to one another.  Pretty close, I imagine.  Sheep are grazers: eat grass.  Goats are browsers: eat leaves.  Both have horns.  And both sheep and goats will butt one another with their horns.  I’m informed by a farmer, however, that “a goat will often stand on its hind legs, posture, and then come down on its opponent.  A sheep simply runs straight at its opponent and ‘rams’ him or her.  In a fight with a goat, a sheep can easily win while the goat is busy posturing.”*. I feel like that information constitutes a parable, but I’ll leave it to you to figure it out.

“Oh, Sean,” I hear you say, “enough with the two kinds of people in the world.  We get it!  It’s not like people are hurting each other over this stuff!  It’s not like they’re killing each other.”

No, no one, anywhere, is fighting with anyone else on the basis of the premise that you can divide the world, or significant parts of it, into two kinds of people - sheep and goats - and that maybe God already has made such distinctions.  And certainly, no one in this country is using that kind of short-circuited logic - that you are either with the sheep or the goats - to interpret the world.  No one would do that.  Irony sometimes comes in layers.

Here’s something I notice in this beautiful passage of Matthew’s Gospel: before the people of all the nations stand before the king on Judgment Day (which is when I am assuming this event takes place): no one has suspected that the king would sort people this way: some people on his right hand and some on his left.  Before the day of judgment no one knew precisely how the king’s judgment would be rendered.  And even after they have been sorted, thusly, neither the sheep nor the goats understands exactly why they have been so classified.  You can tell this by the questions they ask.

“When was it,” the righteous ask, “that we saw you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or in prison, and we cared for you?”  Even after being sorted, neither the sheep nor the goats can see clearly why they have been so identified.  They can’t account for their own classification.  It still isn’t obvious to them that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  “When was it,” ask those who are accursed, “that we neglected you, Lord?”

The issue is not that they had failed to know whether they were properly classified as sheep or goats while they lived.  The real issue is that they didn’t know how to serve the Lord, or even where to find him, while they lived.  And the real issue wasn’t whether you lived as a browser or a grazer, whether you ate leaves or grass, or how you used your horns, whether you postured or rammed.

No, it turns out that in the presence of the king, there is only really one variable that matters in sorting you and me out on judgment day.  And that variable has to do with the sufferings of others went unaddressed, and what you or I did about it.

It’s almost like, if Jesus is suggesting there are only two kinds of people in the world, that the two kinds of people are you (or me), and everyone else.  And guess where God says you will find him, in order to serve him?  It is not in the mirror.

I don’t actually believe for one minute that Jesus wants us to conclude that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  I do believe that Jesus knows how easily we reach such conclusions, and that he wants us to consider carefully that we are mistaken.

I think you have to read this passage hard not to conclude that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  It’s like you have to read this passage when you arrive at a narrow rope bridge that crosses a ravine.  You are left with the possibility that there are only two kinds of people in the world - those who cross the bridge and those who don’t.  But what if Jesus is determined to get every single person across that bridge?

I think Jesus knows how good we are at binary thinking.  And I think he is willing and able to use our propensity for binary thinking to try to teach us something.  And I think we are awfully good at taking whatever God gives us and using it the wrong way.  And I think that Jesus might be inclined to say, “OK, if you want to insist that there are only two kinds of people in the world, let’s consider what that would look like.”

So, there’s Jesus, at the entrance to the bridge that crosses the ravine that will separate the sheep from the goats.  He’s reminding us of our propensity for binary thinking.  He knows how easy it is for us to believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  And I think he wants to get every singe one of us across that bridge.

I don’t know where the entrance to the bridge is.  I don’t know if it’s over there at the Font, or if it’s over in the Jordan River.  I don’t know if it exists in our own dimensions of time and space.  I only know that when the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will come like a shepherd.  And I suppose he is capable of separating us all into two kinds of people - sheep and goats.  But I strongly suspect that he wants to get every single one of us across the bridge, and to the other side of the ravine; that he wants to lose nothing of all that has been given to him.

Having crossed the bridge with him, won’t it be something if Jesus can say to us, “You always suspected that there are only two kinds of people in the world, and you might have been correct.  But here we are, all of us together on the far side of the bridge, every single one of you made it, because on the other side of the bridge, you decided that the only two kinds of people in the world were you and everybody else.  And you decided to care about the concerns of somebody else, which is exactly how everybody manages to get across this bridge!”

And the divisions and distinctions between sheep and goats are left behind on the other side of the bridge.  And all of us can move on together to inherit the kingdom, where there are not two kinds of people, there is only one shepherd, and one flock.

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

*Shanna Duck on quora.com

Beyond Common Sense

“Common sense,” said Benjamin Franklin, “is something that everyone needs, few have, and none think they lack.”  Franklin’s view of religion is more nuanced than I could possibly outline here.  But will it suffice to say that he was in favor of a reasonable Christian faith - that is to say, a Christian faith that was not at odds with common sense?  A reasonable faith, a reasonable religion would eschew superstition, and would promote morality, good health, and good citizenship, I assume.  To the best of my knowledge, Franklin was in favor of all that, even if he was not in favor of much of the standard theological fare of the Presbyterians with whom he associated.  (I know: Presbyterians!)  Franklin, shaped by the Enlightenment, thought that faith is just fine, religion is OK, as long as they lead to some happy piece of common sense, like, to the Golden Rule.

“Common sense without education is better than education without common sense,” Franklin said.  I suppose he’d have said that common sense without religion is better than religion without common sense, too.

It can be tempting to frame religion as a kind of expression of common sense.  I remember hearing an explanation once about how the rules of Orthodox Jews for keeping kosher have roots in good sanitary practice that modern refrigeration has now rendered mostly obsolete.  This explanation is ridiculous nonsense.  But if you are trying to defend religious practice that others perceive as ridiculous nonsense, then you can find the strength in such an appeal to common sense.

I think we sometimes have to fight the urge to try to see Jesus as a dispenser of common sense.  And the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (which was what these bridesmaids started out as, in earlier versions of the Gospel) is a case in point.  I mean, I suppose you could say that at the heart of the parable there is a message of common sense: if you are unprepared and without supplies, you will be caught wanting when you least expect it.  This message is only half a step away from the Boy Scouts’ motto.  But why come to church to hear the Boy Scouts’ motto?  If the Gospel provides us with nothing but such practical common sense, why don’t we all just go to brunch?

“The problem with common sense is, it isn’t,” said Benjamin Franklin.

Well, the Gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t common sense either.  If anything, we have to keep repeating the Gospel to one another over and over in order to override the temptation to just use common sense, instead.

“Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  This is the moral of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  Common sense would suggest that such a message has, perhaps, outlived its usefulness after two thousand years.  How can we keep awake after all this time?  What are we waiting for and why?  Common sense dictates, I think, that after a few hundred years you’d reevaluate how long you are willing to wait.

Sound Christian faith, real Christian religion try to counteract such common sense in order to keep us vigilant and willing to wait, no matter how long that wait may be.  A thousand ages in God’s sight are like an evening gone, to borrow a nice turn of phrase.  Real religion sometimes bolsters real faith by pushing back against the common sense that might undermine that faith.  I know I’m not supposed to admit that sort of thing out loud, but I am afraid it’s true.  Common sense will not keep us believing in Jesus Christ.  Common sense would not have kept us waiting all this time.  Common sense would have dictated that we move on to something else.  And many people have.

Faith is not about common sense.  And religion is seldom about common sense.  Common sense provided no insight to Moses as he stood before the burning bush.  And taking off his shoes was not an act of common sense.  And the difference between the wise and foolish virgins was not that the wise virgins had common sense and the foolish virgins didn’t.  It was that the wise virgins were prepared for something big to happen when they did not expect it, and the foolish virgins were prepared for no such thing.

Whose idea was it to assign this Gospel reading for Commitment Sunday?  Not mine!  But faced with the challenge, I’ll take it.

You know what else doesn’t fall under the category of common sense?  Giving your money away to the church.  Ask almost anyone: you’ll see.  But you have come here, and most of you, I think, are ready to make a promise to do just that: to give some of your hard-earned money to the church for her work and ministry… which is what we do while we are waiting for the bridegroom.

If you are prepared to do that this morning - to promise to give some of your money to the church - is it too cheeky of me to suggest that you are like wise virgins?  (I said, you are like wise virgins.)  How are you like wise virgins?  Somewhere in your heart, you believe that something big is going to happen, and you believe that God is going to do it.  By this, I do not mean that the rapture is going to happen.  As a matter of fact, I don’t believe that there is any such thing as the rapture, which has never been a part of traditional Christian theology.  I do not believe that we are called to be holy preppers, and that oil for our lamps is but one item among many that we need to start stockpiling.

To focus on the specific preparation of the wise virgins is to miss the point of the parable.  And the oil for their lamps was not what the wise virgins were focused on, anyway.  Their minds and their hearts were focused not on their lamps, but on the bridegroom.  It was “to meet the bridegroom” that all ten virgins had bothered to go out in the first place.  And it was joining the bridegroom at the wedding banquet that the five wise virgins were able to do.  The lamps were a tool, a necessary amenity to serve the purpose of meeting the bridegroom, and to light the way to the banquet!  It was never about the lamps or the oil; it was always about the bridegroom, always about the banquet!

Something big is going to happen, and God is going to do it.  And when it happens, it is going to feel as though the thing we have been waiting for has finally arrived.  That something big might only be big to you.  It might be that you fall in love.  Or it might be that you are healed or made well from an illness.  It might be that you are forgiven for something that has weighed heavily on your heart.  It might be that you are sober another day, or another week, or another year.  It might be a reunion that you feared would never occur.  Or it might, frankly, be death: that the angel of death finally comes to one who had waited too long, and in too much pain.

Or it might be that that something big will be big across the globe.  It might be that peace comes at last to every place and every people who are waiting and working and fighting for it.  Oh how I pray it will be peace!  It might be that some day soon, God’s kingdom will come, that the new Jerusalem, with peace within her walls, comes down from heaven to replace every other expectation we have.  And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.  God could do this, you know.  God could fulfill his promises at any moment.  In another dimension, God has already fulfilled his promises, and the big thing that God is going to do has already been done.  Peace has already been established.  Such is eternity.

Something big is going to happen and God is going to do it.  There is a bridegroom coming!  And there is a banquet that he wants to take us to!

I know it can feel kind of kooky to wait, after all this time, for whatever big thing it is that God is going to do.  I know it seems like a weak argument to say that the big thing God is going to do could be global, cosmic, or it could be highly specific and personal.  It defies common sense.  But, you see, there’s so much I don’t know.  I only know the promise that the bridegroom is coming.  I’m not privy to the details.

But hope is not built on common sense.  Hope is built on the promises of God.  And the church is where we come to remind ourselves of those promises, and to reassure ourselves of the potency of those promises.

The church is where we come to refresh the supply of oil for our lamps.  We do it by enacting small occasions of hope in song and in service.  And we do it by coming into the living Presence of the One who made the promise of un-common sense that he would be with us always, until he comes again.  Those promises do not make common sense!  And the willingness to wait for the bridegroom is not a function of common sense; it is a function of hope.

“The problem with common sense is, it isn’t.”

There are many things that common sense is not.  Faith is not common sense; and religion isn’t either.  Faith and religion seek to establish in us hope, and hope is not built on common sense.  Hope is built on promises that defy common sense, that are better than common sense, that look far beyond common sense, because, to start with, common sense isn’t.  And because peace and love and mercy are not the fruits of common sense, but they are thee fruits of faith; they are what hope looks forward to.  Hope is built on promises that are worth waiting for!

God is going to do something big, he is doing it now, and it’s already been done!

The bridegroom is coming; let’s not settle for common sense!  Let’s be awake, and ready for the bridegroom, so that we can rejoice with him when he comes!

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