Saint Mark's Church

The story of Martha and Mary has always seemed to me like something of a homiletic minefield. I am made uncomfortable, first, by the gender roles in the passage, by the fact that the men are being waited on by the women; and then I am made uncomfortable by the men, who are eating or about to eat, telling the woman who has just produced a meal, that her sister, who sits listening “has chosen the better part.” It seems to me to be that most Anglican of sins, impoliteness.

There are other reasons that I am uncomfortable with the story of Martha and Mary. The story seems to me to be on one level a story about different personalities, different ways of being in the world. And those personality differences can be seen in Christian theology and spirituality: the divide between action and contemplation, between deep involvement with the world, and deep silence within the cell. There are examples of these differences: St. Francis within the world, and desert monasticism, far removed from it. St. Theresa of Avila planting monasteries and scolding kings, and Dame Julian of Norwich, walled into her cell, with her prayer holding the world upon its axis. Indeed, some people of faith struggle deeply with both the Martha and the Mary within them: torn between activity and silence.

So doubtless, there are personality differences at play in the Gospel this morning and who am I to decide which personality is better, which way of being in the world closer?

And of course, through time the story of Martha and Mary has been used to justify all sorts of nonsense: prelates and monastics lazying about, while growing fat and wealthy on the backs of the poor, active people, who haven't chosen the better part but are required to sustain those who have.

But I think the main reason that I am uncomfortable with this story is that it is a story that is massively colored by gender.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a mother and she said whenever she read this story, especially around the holidays, she always feels the story with a special intensity. Because she would go to church, and hear again the message, told to her by men, to keep one's priorities straight during the holiday season, like Mary, and so she would spend large amounts of time feeling guilty if she was being Martha-like, and worrying about food making it to the table, etc. On the other hand, she felt guilty because the societal expectation was that she make everything perfect for her family, the perfect turkey and stuffing, the perfect presents, that she give them a perfect holiday experience, and so she felt damned if she did, and damned if she didn't. She was either failing religiously or failing her family.

And she was telling me this story, it struck me suddenly that part of the energy of this story of Martha and Mary has to do specifically with being a woman. I would never have imagined being caught in that kind of catch-22 that my friend was. And I thought, what if you tried to translate this story into maleness? It just doesn't really translate. If you were to retell this story about two brothers, one sitting at the feet of Jesus and one not, one who is active and one who is contemplative, it isn't the same story, it doesn't have the same emotional charge that it does when you tell the story about women and service.

And so I am uncomfortable with the passage because the role of gender seems quite significant. This is a passage that has a great deal to do with being a woman, with negotiating one's role as a woman in the world, with coming to grips with patriarchy and societal expectations. And I am loathe to attempt to interpret a passage that is so linked to being a woman, lest I fall into that perennial error of the clergy: speaking with authority about things that one has neither experienced nor understood.

This is most certainly a loaded story. It is a complex story, and in reading and understanding it as loaded and complex, I am not alone. This story has a lively history of interpretation throughout the life of the Church.

The standard interpretation of this story would suggest that Mary has chosen the important thing, listening to Jesus, whereas Martha has mistaken service as a substitute for sitting at the feet of the master. Of course, the history of the Church is in part a history of the failure to understand this story, because for most of its history, the Church has told women to be Marthas and not Marys.

But the fact that this story is colored massively with gender does not mean that it is a story only for women. There is, I think, a great deal to be gained from this story whoever you are, because we all live to some extent under the kind of societal and cultural expectations that both Martha and Mary do.

When I read this complex story, I always like to read it with one of the slightly sharp stories of the desert fathers next to it. Here's one of the sayings of the desert monastics about this story:

A brother came to visit Abba Silvanus at Mount Sinai. When he saw the brothers working hard, he said to the old man: Do not work for the food that perishes. For Mary has chosen the good part. Then the old man called his disciple: Zachary, give this brother a book and put him in an empty cell. Now, when it was three o'clock, the brother kept looking out the door, to see whether someone would come to call him for the meal. But nobody called him, so he got up, went to see the old man, and asked: Abba, didn't the brothers eat today? The old man said: Of course we did. Then he said: Why didn't you call me? The old man replied: You are a spiritual person and do not need that kind of food, but since we are earthly, we want to eat, and that's why we work. Indeed, you have chosen the good part, reading all day long, and not wanting to eat earthly food. When the brother heard this, he repented and said: Forgive me, Abba. Then the old man said to him: Mary certainly needed Martha, and it is really by Martha's help that Mary is praised.

And I wonder if that doesn't give us a better way into the passage, rather then simply saying it is more important to learn then to help. The saying speaks to the interrelatedness of Martha and Mary, and despite their tension, the way that Martha allows Mary to be herself, and the way that Mary gives meaning to Martha.

The implication, I think, is that Martha and Mary need each other desperately. Martha needs Mary to keep reminding her that there are contemplative things out there. Because of course, for the Marthas, for the helpers, the easiest thing in the world is to get too involved in helping, too focused on the helping, and not the reason one is helping.

The temptation of Mary, I always like to think of as the “surfer” temptation. Mary just wants to hang loose, to ride the wave of this “like totally amazing teaching”. She just wants to be in this moment, with her rabbi sharing his amazing new teaching, and Mary seems relatively devoid of the sense that the table doesn't lay itself, the food doesn't cook itself, and that even surfers must eat, and learners, and contemplatives.

The aspect of the gloss by the desert fathers that I love so much is the humility that comes through it. Mary indeed may have chosen the better part, but here for us “goats”, those of us who aren't lucky to be sheep, we need to worry about the lesser parts, the things like food and clothing. Mary may have chosen the better part, but we are all of us Marthas.

And so, instead of finding this passage to be only for women, or a source of guilt, of wondering if I've got my priorities straight, when I read about Martha and Mary, I always think: “Maybe Mary has chosen the greater part, but here below, I need to worry about things like food and clothing. Someday, maybe, I'll get my priorities together enough to be Mary-like, but until then, I'm in good company with Abba Silvanus and his brothers, with all the Marthas throughout the ages who have thought about food and clothing, who have lived under societal or cultural or familial expectations. Someday, I may get myself together enough to sit at the feet of my rabbi, and listen to his teaching. But for now, I'm going to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, and trust that even if is isn't the better part, my work will still serve my God.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

18 July 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

     Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem…..we know what Luke means to say – Jesus will not be deterred from his mission, but first, a stopover with very dear friends at that sheltered place called Bethany; we know its name from John’s Gospel.

     Bethany is a small town, perhaps a dozen rectangular shaped,white-washed dwellings, built onto the Eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, only 1 and 5/8^th miles from Jerusalem, the same distance from here to Washington Square.

     Jesus and his disciples could see the homes of Bethany as they approached the town, because those homes stood out in contrast to the dry, rocky soil of the hillside and the few cedar trees among the homes, standing tall against the cloudless sky. Orchards of fig, olive and almond trees were arranged in tiers on the slope of the hill, with tidy stone walls separating the levels to aid in irrigation when the rainy season arrives. . .

     No wonder Bethany was a favorite place for Jesus: familiar, quiet, restful, lovely to behold and hospitable.

     Jesus made this journey to Bethany on many, many occasions and always stopped at the home of Martha, Mary and their brother, Lazarus. Martha’s generous hospitality was well known.

     Martha, Mary and Lazarus were three of Jesus’ closest and dearest friends. He had probably known them from his childhood; his family had most likely stayed over in Bethany and then went up with them to the High Holydays in Jerusalem.     

     On this particular day, the day we hear of in our Gospel, Martha stood at the front door of her home and beheld Jesus coming along the road, up the hill, with his disciples, raising a dust cloud as he slowly made his way to her home. Martha set to work, immediately, filling the water jugs to wash his feet and towels to dry them – this was Mary’s task in their household and she performed this act of hospitality with great care and love and respect for the Teacher.    

     But, on this day, something very extraordinary occurred: Jesus invited Mary to sit at his feet and listen to his teaching – this invitation was quite contrary to custom – a woman sitting at the feet of The Teacher? A woman welcomed and encouraged as a Disciple? Equal to the male disciples!? . . . . And, Mary, being the introvert, the contemplative type, was pleased, although somewhat shy, to sit in that front room with Jesus, that front room cooled in the shade of the cedars, yet, so full of light. What deep joy!

     Lazarus was most likely there, also, because as soon as he was told that Jesus had arrived, he came in from their carefully tended orchard, where for generations, his family kept fig, olive and almond trees. . .

     So, there they were, Jesus, with Mary and Lazarus, in a very intimate teaching time, while the other disciples sat out of doors, in circles, in the shade of the orchard trees, and . . . .      

     All this time, Martha labored in the rear room, the place for the cooking fire. Martha was preparing a very special meal for her very special guest: grain pilaf, with special additions of lamb and succulent vegetables. Martha enjoyed making these welcoming meals for Jesus; Martha relished the moments with Jesus in her home. But……

     Many of us here, today, can imagine how Martha may have felt, having no company in the kitchen to assist her in the meal preparation. Not only was she overwhelmed, perhaps, with the details of the meal preparation, but, perhaps, she was also feeling left out – surely, she could hear the low voice of The Teacher as he explained the wonderful truth of the Creator’s love. And, she was not there in that select group!

     Like many high energy, ‘management oriented’ people, she could not put her complicated meal preparation aside and just go into the front room and sit with Mary, listen at The Teacher’s feet. Who but herself was going to prepare the meal? And prepare it to her high expectations? Only Mary was capable of working with Martha in their kitchen, only Mary knew Martha’s ways and only Mary could be the ‘second woman’ in that kitchen!

     Finally, after much head shaking and heightening resentment, we hear of Martha’s next movement. She places her mixing bowl down on the low table in the cooking room, probably with some agitation, and enters the front room in a bit of a huff.

     “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”  . . . . .

     Silence in the room, all eyes on Martha. Then, Jesus softly chides Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things: there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”   . . . . .

      Was Jesus suggesting that Martha prepare a less elaborate pilaf? That he would be very content with a simpler meal? Yes, most probably, but there is something more to this.

     Jesus invites Martha (and here, today, invites us also) into a more balanced spirituality, a more complete holiness, a more intimate relationship with God. Jesus invites Martha, and us, also, to notice our need to be well nourished with the Word of God.

     Martha and everyone in that room (and everyone in this sacred space) has the words of Deuteronomy 8 written on the wall of our hearts: “(Neither men nor women nor children) can live on bread, alone, but from every Word that comes from the mouth of God.” Moreover, Jesus knows Martha’s heart (and, Jesus knows our hearts!), and invites Martha (and each of us) to desire Jesus’ indwelling and to make room, each day, for a ‘resting time with the Lord’.

     Truth is, in Martha’s life, and in each of our lives, our servant-hood issues from our love for God, our intimacy with Holy Spirit and our oneness with Jesus. This is a most important truth, hear this again: our servant-hood issues from our love for God, our intimacy with Holy Spirit and our oneness with Jesus.   . . . . 

     In one of his most recent books, Marcus Borg, a noteworthy and highly respected Scripture scholar of our own day, makes this observation about our lives as Christians: “…The goal of the Christian life is participating in the passion of God, as disclosed in the Bible and Jesus. God’s passion is that we center more deeply in God (‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength’) and (that we center more deeply in) the world – a world of justice and peace. These are the inner and outer dimensions of the Christian life – union with God’s passion.” (Putting Away Childish Things, page 133.)

    Dear People of God, Jesus is our ‘Spiritual Director’ this morning, like Mary (and, eventually, Martha) we sit at Jesus’ feet and listen most intently for his wisdom to take root in our hearts. After all, Jesus is Way, Truth and Life.

     On a practical note: I imagine that if we were to ask any of the generous people who prepare the soup for our Saturday Soup Bowl, each would note that a part of each day is spent in quiet listening to Jesus, who speaks of his love in their hearts and that the soup preparation happens in a prayerful manner – and, perhaps, with a sip of the fruit of the vine and holy company?

    Friends, let us be full of joy and gratitude that Jesus invites each of us here, today, to sit at his feet, to know and experience, first hand, his deep, profoundly deep and complete love for each of us, his longing to be with us, always, in his word and sacrament and in each other. In the words of a favorite hymn: I come with joy to meet our Lord……

     Let us do that now……

Preached by Mother Marie Swayze

18 July 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You reap whatever you sow.  Or, from an older translation: As you sow, so shall you reap.  (Gal 6:7)

This simple teaching from Saint Paul used to be a familiar aphorism in American culture; a statement whose meaning is so clear and so concise that it became a cliché, the type of thing you’d see cross-stitched into a sampler.  But then who cross-stitches samplers anymore?  And who worries about reaping what he or she sows any more?

Fifteen years ago, the great chef, Alice Waters, may or may not have been motivated by this rule of life – that as you sow, so shall you reap – when she helped turn an acre of asphalt-covered land into a vegetable garden at a middle school in Berkeley, California.  That garden and the movement it began is called the Edible Schoolyard.  “When children are encouraged to grow and cook and enjoy wholesome, delicious food all together, from the seed to the table and back again, in an atmosphere of caring and beauty, they fall in love with its lessons,” she wrote.  “It’s a way of making sure that children grow up feeling the soil with their own fingers, harvesting its bounty in the American sunshine, and watching their own hands make the kind of beautiful, inexpensive food that can nourish the body and the spirit.”

Waters tells the story of a small boy who one day came into the kitchen classroom connected to the garden.    “[He] was hungry – truly hungry, as in badly needing food.  So when class was over, [Esther, the teacher,] asked him very quietly what he’d had for breakfast that day.  He hadn’t eaten breakfast; he never ate breakfast.  Esther taught him right then and there to take eggs from the refrigerator and cook them for himself.  She told him to do this every single day before school, without ever asking.  Just come and do it.”  As you sow, so shall you reap.

All last week middle school children, and kids a little older and a little younger, ran around our mission parish during City Camp.  Many of you were there to help them and their high-school counselors.  For the second year of City Camp, once again Saint Mark’s volunteers were a major force in bringing this urban camp to life for kids who often do not have enough.  Bible stories were taught each day, songs were sung, prayers were said, meals were served, games were played, scrapes were bandaged, noses were blown, a few tears were shed, and a garden was even planted out back, behind the Rectory, where, before the church was abandoned the rector’s wife had tended vegetables and flowers.  I saw basil and some other herbs, some squash, and maybe even zucchini getting a late start, and lettuce of some variety.  It is late in the summer to be planting a garden, but better late than never.  As you sow, so shall you reap.

Here at Saint Mark’s, it is a blessing that our founders had the sense to leave green space around this urban church.  Thousands of commuters pass by here every day, and I know from chatting with enough of them that the beauty of our gardens is a gift to them and to this city.  I think of the roses silently singing the Gospel to all those people on their way to work.  And the garden here thrives because of Libby and Todd and Bob and Claire and Ed and Aaron and Isabelle and Aileen, and a few others who care to sow in it.  As you sow, so shall you reap.

In the church at large, you have to wonder whether or not we have remembered this lesson.  We are obsessed with squabbles over property and sexuality, and the place of women in the church.  As we battle for power amongst Anglicans, we see the pathetic slow-motion drama of our Roman brothers trying to come to terms with a history of sin that is glaringly obvious to the rest of the world, not least to other churches who have our own fair share of sins to own up to.  We see churches emptying and struggling to stay open, at least in part for failure, I contend, to teach and to learn this basic calculus: as you sow, so shall you reap.

On our national birthday we might do well to reclaim this cliché, this little aphorism of Saint Paul’s.

What are we sowing, as a nation, in the vast monoculture fields of industrialized agriculture?  And if it is so good for us, why is it making us fat, sick, and unhappy?

What are we sowing in the too-big, under-funded public schools of our cities where children are falling behind rather than catching up?

What are we sowing for the lives of immigrants who came to this country, like our own ancestors, in search of a better life, and who sustain our way of life by doing the work no one with a green card or better would deign to do in America?

What are we sowing in the villages of Afghanistan, and the cities of Iraq as our still ill-defined mission there drags on an on?

What are we sowing in the lives of our service men and women who suffer the consequences of those wars on our behalf, at the expense of their lives, their limbs, and their happiness?

What are we sowing behind the barbed wire of Guantanamo Bay?

What are we sowing when we allow our justice system to take an eye for an eye, as it were, in the execution chambers of our states?

What are we sowing in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the oil-stained shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida?

What are we sowing as the argument about abortion enters a new decade of shouting and posturing, and we remain so ineffective at helping prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

What are we sowing with the gun violence that takes so many lives in this city and across our nation?

As you sow, so shall you reap.

And still Jesus reminds us that the harvest is plentiful.

As Americans, even in tough years, like this one, we do well to remember that the harvest is plentiful.  But it cannot be taken for granted, and the laborers are few.

As you sow, so shall you reap.  It is a double-sided truth that allows for either bounty or famine, strength or starvation.  And it lays out for us choices to make every day.

The Fourth of July would be a good day for making resolutions.  And this Fourth of July would be a good day for resolving to remember that as we sow, so shall we reap.

If we cross-stitched that motto onto our hearts what would we sow in our lives, in the church, and in the world?

In our own lives, would we pray more fervently and carefully and frequently?  Would we practice forgiveness more and better?  Would we learn how to offer hospitality at the drop of a hat even when it is inconvenient?  My life would be improved by those choices, I know.

In the church, would we learn from the edible schoolyard that a diversified farm is healthier than a monoculture.  The one is self-sustaining precisely because of its diversity, and the other requires scads of artificial chemical fertilizer just to revive the depleted soil every year?  And one resembles the kind of garden God first planted far more than the other, anyway.

In the world, would we learn that peace is not accomplished when the Nobel committee hands out an award, but by sowing the seeds of peace; and that very few people in uniform seem to have been adept at that task since General Marshall; and perhaps we should be looking for other avenues to peace, particularly in areas of the world that have proven themselves resistant to the armed intervention of supposedly superior powers?

As you sow, so shall you reap.

I dearly hope and pray that as a community, we at Saint Mark’s will hold fast to this little motto, that as we sow, so shall we reap.  I hope we learn as individuals and as a community to make choices on the basis of this small cliché,

And on this Fourth of July, I hope it might be helpful to us to reflect on words written by one of the sixth-graders who learned in the Edible Schoolyard garden in California; words that seem to show the results of reaping what you sow: “The bees, the spiders, the ants, the rolly-pollies, the bugs, the sound, the sky, the birds, the clouds, the yellow leaves… the leaves rustle with hidden secrets that even the laziest man would be dying to know.  And the bees gracefully floating from flower to flower, sing of flowers and gnomes and fairies who never seem to show themselves to anything but the bees, the birds, and the trees.  I smell fresh air… I see beautiful white flowers… and figs.  I wonder, when are the figs ready to eat?”*

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 July 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

* All quotations from Alice Waters, Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2008

For the four years of my college career I lived and went to school within a few steps of Colonial Williamsburg, which is a lovely, if somewhat unusual place.  It is unusual because although it strives to be a living museum, with a very high level of authenticity, it is still not the real thing.  Everything has been rebuilt on the foundations of a colonial town.  Yes, there was a blacksmith’s forge over there, a candle-maker down the street, a tavern around the corner, but everything you see today is a re-construction, more or less a fairy tale version of the real thing.  Even the oldest college buildings, which have been in use for 315 years have been repeatedly rebuilt after fires; and the same goes for Bruton Parish Church down the street.

Another odd aspect of Williamsburg is that it is a place sort of frozen in an uncertain time, one result being that no one is in charge.  Yes there is a Governor’s mansion, with its impressive displays of colonial arms hung on its walls, but there is no governor. Yes, the House of Burgesses met down the street in the colonial capitol building, but there is no legislature to meet there now.  Yes, the church once wielded some power, but it certainly doesn’t any longer.  There is a courthouse, but no judge to mete out justice.  There are stocks in the public square, and a gaol (spelled with a “g”) but no prisoners to lock up.  There is mock musket fire, but there are no red-coats.  There is no enemy, no villain, no foe, not even a King George III across the Atlantic.

I sometimes wonder if the church has taken on some of the characteristics of Colonial Williamsburg; if, perhaps, we are re-enacting an old story on a true foundation but in a reconstructed and somewhat artificial version of it.  We use a Prayer Book that remembers older versions, but is not the original.  We wear old vestments that link us to ancient times, but of course are highly stylized.  We worship in a building that is meant to evoke the 14^th century even though it was built in the 19^th.  Are we just indulging in a fairy tale version of some ancient thing, like the new Harry Potter theme park at Disney Land?  Have we chosen to freeze ourselves in a moment of beauty that allows us to escape from the realities of a less-beautiful world?

If we go to the heart of this question, I think it has to do with that same troubling aspect of Colonial Williamsburg: is anyone actually in charge?  I do not pose this question in terms of the church hierarchy.  And unlike some Anglicans these days, I do not yearn for a centralized authority within the church that would simplify and clarify power relationships.  I mean to say that there is something about our life of faith that could leave you wondering where God is; whether he hasn’t left the scene quite some time ago; what happened to the Jesus who walked and talked and healed, but who rose to heaven long ago; where is the power of the Holy Spirit that once set the church and the world on fire with possibility, but who seems remote and perhaps unavailable to us nowadays.  Who’s in charge?

If we struggle with this sense that we might be inhabiting the Colonial Williamsburg of faith – a re-enactment built on old foundations, but not quite the real thing, it might be partly because we are sophisticated 21^st century Americans.    For instance, we read the story of the man with demons, and we already know that we are in the midst of a fairy tale, because, of course, we know that demons don’t exist.  We know that the man was probably schizophrenic.  We can diagnose him from our pews, and some of us could probably even fill his prescriptions from our own medicine cabinets.

Saint Luke tells us that the people who came out to see what had happened to the man with the demons were afraid, but there is nothing in this story that scares us, except of course for the loss of a herd of pigs, which spells financial disaster for the herdsmen at the very least (and nothing scares us these days like the loss of income-producing property).  To us this story might as well be played out by actors in period costumes in Colonial Galilee, or whatever.  It is a fairy tale being played out on a re-constructed version of some old religious stage.  And there is no real enemy, no villain, no foe, and therefore, no real trouble that there is no one in charge.

And because it is almost inevitable that we encounter the story this way, it is very hard for us to learn anything from it.  Because this story is not told in order to teach us about the dangers of demons, or to show how handy it can be to have a herd of swine around even if you keep kosher.  This story has a singular and unavoidable point, which is to teach us who is in charge. 

Jesus encounters this man who lives, we are told, not in a house but among the tombs, he is alive, but already doomed, living among the dead.  In his frequent rages he is restrained by the authorities, and chained up for the protection of others, and maybe for his own protection.  He is stark naked, a raving lunatic, and mad-possessed with many demons.  You can imagine that when he emerged from the tombs in his schizophrenic rages the townspeople believed quite strongly that there was an enemy that possessed him, a foe that needed to be vanquished, a villain who had taken his life from him.  They were not so ready to diagnose his problems away, and they had access to fewer pharmaceuticals, anyway.  And when he is around no one can control him, he cannot be restrained, no one is in charge.

Until now.

The demons know this before anyone else does.  They pull the man to the ground, and he cries out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”  And the rest of the story unfolds so that everyone else may come to know what the demons saw first: that Jesus is in charge, that he has power to overcome demons, to cast out the enemy, vanquish the foe, deliver justice to the villain.

I do not think that this story begs us to disregard modern psycho-therapeutic ideas and the medical treatment of mental illness.  It does not insist on a suspension of disbelief that allows for the possibility of demons that are waiting to possess you and me.  We psychologized demons decades ago, anyway, but that has not really robbed them of their power; and indeed, it has made it easier for many of us to acknowledge our own “demons” without fearing that we shall be sent to live among the tombs, or locked up in chains.  But what we have not remembered so well is who is in charge.  And so in the spiritual landscape of our lives we inhabit a place where we can see the foundations of an old faith, but we suspect that no one has occupied the governor’s mansion for a long time, that no law has been passed in the House of Burgesses for decades, and that the church remains a pretty place with nice music, but not seat of power any more.

Sitting here with our own, more silent demons – our fears, our neuroses, our obsessions, our deep failings, our hatreds, our bad habits, etc.; you don’t need me to try to catalog them for you, lest I bore you with my rather mundane expectations of your more exotic demons – sitting here, being honest about those things, what we could use is a herd of swine, some unclean vermin onto which we could project all that plagues us, and offer them up and wait and see if Jesus will cast them over a cliff and into the sea, or at least drown them in the Schuylkill.  A demonstration would be nice; a sign that left no doubt as to who is in charge would be helpful.

Not far from Colonial Williamsburg, just a few miles down the road, there is an amusement park with roller coasters and games and rides and all kinds of entertainment.  I suppose it makes the idea of a vacation to Williamsburg palatable to kids who are skeptical of being subjected to the living classroom of the reconstructed colonial town, where the possibility, indeed the expectation of learning something is conspicuous.

And despite its unusual, reconstructed character, despite the gnawing reality that all this has been rebuilt, and now only represents a frozen timelessness where nothing is actually at stake today, the town of Williamsburg finds its identity primarily I think in this: that there is something to be learned there about an old enmity, about the foes that were to be vanquished, and about justice that looks to assert itself over villainy, even if it is not clear anymore who is in charge.

We are surrounded by the forces of a society that would dearly like to entertain us; knowing that nothing gets us to spend money like entertainment.  In the midst of all that entertainment, there is a story to be told of a man who was possessed of demons.  And a question, “What have you to do with me Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

In a world that too often makes us wonder who is really in charge, this story has been told for generation after generation, not to convince us of the existence of demons, but to help us learn the answer to that vexing question.  For each of us has our own demons.  And in each of our lives there will be enemies to fight, foes that need vanquishing, villains who need to be brought to justice – many, maybe even most of these, will be of our own making.  And we will wonder, some of us already have spent years wondering, if anyone is in charge, if there is any power in the world that can prevail, if there is any god who will come to our aid as we stand in what we have built on the ancient foundations of faith.

Who could have guessed that the question of the demons would be the question that would lead us to what we are meant to learn: What have you to do with me Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  And that the answer is so simple:  Everything, my beloved.  Everything.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

20 June 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Attempts continue, down in the Gulf of Mexico, to contain the oil spill and to stop the flow of oil from the ocean floor. Attempts are also being continued by BP to cover their corporate behinds. It is not a pretty picture, all around. Images of dead or dying birds, fish and other animals are interspersed with images of weary-looking PR wonks attempting somehow to spin the worse ecological disaster in this nation's history, a disaster brought about by corporate neglect if not malfeasance.

And the real question, as it always is in matters like this, is economic. Who will pay what, to clean up, to make restitution, to pay for what has happened?

Already swimming in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are the legal sharks who smell the blood in the water, and BP is, I am certain, already planning to mount a massive legal defense to limit as fully as possible their liability for the accident and its ecological implications.

The news stories are constant, about the effects of the spill on tourism and the local economy. The oil spill, in short, is almost entirely viewed in terms of money.

Which is generally when I admit my inherent skepticism of the ability of economic transactions or economic language to deal with the complexity of the Gulf Oil spill, the ethical problems of a corporation like BP or indeed the problems of a society that allows for the rape and pillage of the earth for economic reasons. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a ringing indictment of the inability of our society to think or speak correctly. Our language and rhetoric is not sufficient unto the day, or the past nearly sixty days. And it is a disaster of our own making.

Which is why it is interesting that in the Hebrew Scriptures this morning we have a story that is both economic and ecological. It is a story about land and about a conspiracy to take that land from an individual. Naboth refuses to sell his land because he understands it to be his “ancestral inheritance.” He belongs somehow to this specific piece of land, that his ancestors owned and farmed, and there is not a price that can be put on it, per se. Which puts King Ahab, who desires the land, into a bit of a funk. The powerful and the wealthy for time immemorial have always wanted what they cannot obtain easily or buy, and Ahab is no different. His wife Jezebel colludes with the powerful in Naboth's city to falsely accuse him, and execute him to obtain what he will not sell. And, so Elijah the prophet is sent to Ahab with this message “Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you.”

Which seems like a strange passage to couple in the lectionary with a Gospel passage about forgiveness. There seems to be little forgiveness in the words of the prophet Elijah. And yet, I'm interested not by the contrast of the stories, but by the fact that they both use economic terms. Because you have “sold yourself” says Elijah, and Jesus speaks about debts.

Debt is the metaphor that Jesus uses in the Gospel this morning to deal with forgiveness. The greater the debt forgiven, the larger the gratefulness. Which makes perfect sense in a common-sensical way. And I have no problem applying this to my own life: the greater someone sins against me, or more likely, the greater that I sin against them, the more gratefulness is entailed when forgiveness is given. It is when one starts to talk about systems and corporations and governments that things get a little more complicated. Is there, in fact, the possibility of forgiveness for BP or for Goldman Sachs for causing world-wide economic chaos or for economic systems that destroy people and the earth?

I wonder if that condemnation of Elijah isn't somehow prescient in our own day? It is not a far stretch for me, to read this sentence as a condemnation not just of Ahab, Jezebel and the powerful who enter into a conspiracy with them, but as a kind of condemnation which rings down throughout time: because you have sold yourself to do evil, I will bring disaster.

It would be easy, I suppose, to go the Pat Robertson route and point to the oil spill as a punishment from God, but that's not really how I roll, and I doubt you'd find it very convincing. Or it would be tempting to use that sentence to ring the changes on BP as an evil corporation. But the reality is that BP is only symptomatic, BP is only the current whipping boy, and tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now, there will be a new whipping boy for us to point the finger towards (and away from us) and say “You've sold yourself to evil.”

The reality is that we live in a culture, in a world where debt is the fundamental way of life. Debt, but not gratefulness or forgiveness. I was amused recently to read that Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has warned that “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path,” which is, I think, a dour economist's way of saying “this is a mad house, sell and move to China.” Don't however, move to Greece or Japan, both of which face the kind of debt that as an economic layperson, I find quite unfathomable. How does an entire economic area like the European Union simply implode seemingly overnight? And we've all heard the statistics on individual debt and interest only mortgages in this country, and felt the pinch which has resulted.

Our debt is not simply the “lack of money” kind of debt, it is the debt of borrowing against the future, against the planet. BP is symptomatic not simply of the kind of economic greed which is our own, writ large into a corporation, but of a willingness to refuse to think about the costs beyond our own day, to make a quick buck despite the unsustainability of a system or process, symptomatic of a kind of alienation from creation that allows us to mortgage the future not simply of the human race, but of the whole creation, for money.

The oil spill is an indicator of how deeply sinful, we are as a society, how deep the roots of that sin reach, into the whole structure of our lives and culture, and into our language and speech and thought; and all the ways that we are complicit with BP and Goldman Sachs and all those robber barons in the rape of the earth, and in an economic system that is simply madness. The spill in the Gulf is an indicator of how desperately we need to have our overwhelming and massive debts forgiven.

The wonder of the passage from the Gospels this morning is that it doesn't matter what the woman has done. It doesn't matter how she's sinned. It doesn't matter that the culture she lives in is certainly to blame for some of that sin. It doesn't matter. What matters is that she is contrite, she is sad. She can't possibly pay her debts, which are many, and so she is forgiven without regard to the magnitude of her sins.

I asked earlier if there was forgiveness for BP, and I think that is somehow a pressing question. Not because I think BP is laboring under a heavy load of guilt, but because if BP is somehow symptomatic, then the ability of BP to obtain forgiveness is somehow about my ability to be forgiven. And this unnamed woman, who washed Jesus with tears and anointed him with ointment tells us that there is somehow, somewhere, forgiveness for us, for our complicity in our society, for our final responsibility for a world in which a corporation like BP can exist, for the inability of our language to speak or think correctly, and for our own individual and collective sins and brokenness.

But the message of that forgiveness comes with a warning. The forgiveness that Jesus gives this woman is because she is aware of her sin, and contrite. The Pharisees on the other hand are not aware of their sin, just hers. They are looking for sin in other people, not in themselves.

The oil spill is not a chance for us to point out BP and say “You are evil,” but for us to realize our sinfulness, and to weep maybe a little, and ask that our debts be forgiven, many or few, individual or communal, by the only One who is able to forgive with such munificence and graciousness, God living and true. In the name of that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia