Saint Mark's Church

Most couples who come to me to talk about getting married are not looking for advice.  They want to talk about the ceremony – at least the brides do; the grooms are often not sure they want to talk to a priest at all.  But the church requires me to spend some time with every couple I marry, and I would want to do so even if it wasn’t required.  In addition to talking about the ceremony, I always ask couples a series of questions that fall under the heading “Questions Couples Should Ask Before They Marry – Or Wish They Had”.  These questions include asking if they have discussed children, whether their ideas of saving and spending money are in sync, and whether or not they will have a TV in the bedroom.

But there is a topic not covered in the questions that I feel it is important to discuss, and which compels me to give to the couple the only piece of advice that I give about marriage.  The topic is forgiveness.

I know couples whose basic position about forgiveness is this: that they can forgive the other almost anything, except….  The “except” is big: a line in the sand that must not be crossed.  And if a couple has thought about this (although I suspect that many don’t really think about it until after the wedding day) that exception is one thing and one thing only: infidelity.

As I said, most couples don’t come to me looking for advice, and I am not inclined to give it about marriage.  But on the topic of forgiveness, I am not inclined to keep silent.

And although love-besotted brides and grooms probably pay me little mind when they hear me say it, my advice to them is to begin their married life with no line in the sand; no exception established in either’s mind from the outset for which forgiveness could not be sought and offered in return.  Not even if there is infidelity.  No exceptions at all.  This is not to say that I believe there are never circumstances in which a marriage could and should rightly end in divorce, sad though that would be.  I am only saying that couples should not begin their married lives knowing that there is something the marriage could not survive, for lack of forgiveness.

My rationale for this piece of advice is found in what I believe and know about God: that there is no exception to God’s forgiveness.  And that even in the simple prayer Jesus taught us to pray we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and I think husbands and wives and partners ought to mean that when they say it – or at least try.

Brides and grooms-to-be have to sit and listen to my only piece of advice, which is premised on a lesson about God.  But almost no one else has to hear it – except of course a captive congregation who finds themselves sitting through a sermon!  And you may or may not need to hear advice about forgiving your spouse, your partner, your friend, or perhaps your enemy.  But if you are anything like me, you do need to be reminded the lesson about God.  Because many of us have somehow absorbed the idea that ours is a God who has drawn lines in the sand.  Our shorthand for this is to remember that we once heard it said that God is an angry and a jealous God.

To us, this sounds like a God who has all kinds of boundaries that may not, must not, cannot be crossed, or else….  And indeed we have lots of images of such an angry and jealous God who fills the skies with thunder clouds and lightning bolts as he prepares to wreak his vengeance on those who cross him.

But today Jesus has advice for those of us who believe this about God.

"A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.  So he said to the gardener, 'See here!  For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.  Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'  He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"

If I could only take one parable of the Scriptures with me to a desert island this would be it.  Because the fig tree, of course, is me (or you, if you care to put yourself in the story).  It requires no real stretch of my imagination to see that I have not been the person I could be; that I have not done all that I could with the gifts God’s given me; that in so many ways I have failed to bear the fruit of good works and kindness and love that God has made me for and calls me to.

Maybe you could say this about yourself as well.  The season of Lent is in some measure given to us to reflect on the ways we resemble the fig tree in this parable.  Notice that we do not even have to get to the things we have done wrong (although I believe we are free to remember those) it is enough to think about what we have failed to do – those things we have left undone, as we say.  Have I been faithful to God in prayer?  Have I been merciful to those who need my help?  Generous to those who deserve my largesse?  Kind to those who seek my fellowship?  Have I been available to those who need me and can rightly lay claim to that need?  Have I been gracious to those who just happen to find themselves in my sphere? 

Sometimes we have such low expectations of ourselves that we do pretty well by these measures, until we begin to expand our focus and see more of the world around us, the people we normally ignore, or have already shut out, those beyond the immediate company of our family and friends.  But God’s expectations of us are not low at all.  He has always called his people to be welcoming to strangers; to care for those who are needy not because we know them, but just because they are in need; to love not only those whom it’s easy for us to like, but even to love our enemies.  If this is the kind of fruit we are to bear in our lives, how are we doing?

Now, in the cartoon version of life that has become the common picture for many these days, I am supposed to rail at you from the pulpit about your many failings in these ways.  I am supposed to encourage your shame, identify you as sinners, affix a scarlet letter to your clothes, condemn you to a life of guilt, and threaten you with the fires of hell.  In this cartoon world, dour nuns wield stiff rulers to whack children’s hands; hypocritical priests hurl accusations at the innocent, suffering poor; and a greedy church takes from you what you can ill afford to give in order to fill her hallways with extravagance.  And no doubt the church has been guilty of all these cartoon crimes at one time or another.

But there is still the matter of the fig tree, which has failed to bear fruit year after year.  No one has guilted the fig tree about anything.  No one berated it in Catholic school when it was young.  No one took from it what was rightfully the tree’s and deprived it the chance to produce figs.  The tree was just planted and left to grow and do what fig trees do: to grow figs, which are sweet and wonderful and delicious.

But year after year the tree gives no figs.

The owner of the tree remembers that he heard once that ours is an angry and a jealous God; and he remembers too that he is made in God’s image (his is a selective memory).  A fig tree ought to produce figs; its owner has every right to expect them, he thinks.  What is the point of a fig-less fig tree, after all?  So cut that tree down and teach it a lesson – a lesson that will no doubt be noticed by all the other fig trees too!  Where is that ax?

But there is also a gardener – or at least someone who we think is the gardener, though he looks a little familiar to me, come to think of it.  This gardener is not the type to draw lines in the sand.  Is he disappointed by a fig tree that bears no figs?  Perhaps.  Is prepared to give up on it and cut it down?  No, he is not.  Does he believe a good strong dose of guilt or haranguing, or the threat of eternal damnation will induce the tree to grow figs?  It would appear not.

But the gardener has a pile of manure – which is neither expensive or exotic.  And he has time.  And he has a way with the owner of the tree.  “Sir,” he says, “let it alone one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not…” well, you know….

In my cartoon world, on my desert island, where this is the only parable I have to tell, it is told over and over, year after year.  The exasperated owner remembers that this is the third, no fourth, no fifth, no twentieth year in a row he has had this conversation with the gardener.  But always he relents, neither as angry or as jealous as he had at first seemed.

And in my cartoon world, there is an endless supply of manure to be heaped on this fig tree by the gardener, to help it grow, help it thrive, help it bear much fruit.

And of course in my cartoon world, I am the fig tree, peering out from beneath my leafy, but so far fig-less branches.  And I have heard the demands of the owner year after year, I have remembered that he sounds so much like a jealous and an angry God, but I notice that he always heeds the gardener.  And I am grateful that there is a pile of manure for me, because it is so hard to draw a line in a pile of manure, to define the limits of what the gardener will tolerate, what he will put up with, what he will forgive.  Indeed, to me, he seems to have no limit, no line that cannot be crossed.  He seems to me to have nothing but patience and plenty of manure to try to keep me humble, and to coax my limbs to finally bring forth fruit, and offer the first figs to him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

7 March 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

All the snow that’s fallen on the east coast lately has clearly affected people’s thinking.  For instance, I read in the New York Times recently a piece about dog sledding that would normally seem somewhat esoteric.  But all the recent snowfall, and my pack of two dogs, has got me wondering.

In the Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote about the wonder of being pulled on a sled by a team of dogs: “They don’t run for a reward or toward a goal — the greyhound’s mechanical rabbit. They get yelled at when they chew on the gangline and petted when the run is over. They don’t catch or flee anything. They would keep running if the musher fell off his sled.”[i] 

And he wonders, “Why do sled dogs run?” which they do with such un-restrained zeal.  He can only think of one-word answers: “love, joy, duty, obedience.”

I have friends in suburban Philadelphia with a Husky who corroborate this assessment of a sled dog: he lives to run.  They are very cautious not to let him run in unconfined areas or off the leash, they tell me, because once he starts running it is hard to get him to stop.

Most of us do not approach Lent with the zeal of a sled dog straining at his harness to begin a race.  We have devised Lent as a dreary time, when we tell ourselves that we are restrained, harnessed as it were to some unfortunate discipline.  Certainly we devise the rituals of our worship to underscore this idea.  The old fashioned prayers we sometimes say here, go on and on about our bodily fasting.

But, while I grew up in a house where we were very likely to be given Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks on a Friday in Lent, I doubt my parents are as scrupulous about the observance of meatless Fridays these days as they used to be, and I know that I am often careless in the observance.  I am guessing that perhaps your Lenten disciplines do not cramp your style too much.  And I know there is a city out there, and beyond, that would merely giggle at such thoughts.

The Gospel today invites us to consider temptations, but we are mostly so accustomed to yielding to our desires – because we can – that we hardly even know what temptation is any more, other than the occasional wish to consume more chocolate or more ice cream than we should.  Besides, Jesus’ temptation by Satan is of such a particular and scripted variety that it can seem to have little to do with us.

So I could enjoin you to be strict on your fasting, or whatever it is you have given up for Lent (if anything); and I could warn you against the power of Satan to tempt you.  But I doubt I would be getting very far or sound very compelling.  And since I normally preach to myself, I can tell you that I know I wouldn’t be making much headway with myself!

Which brings me back to the sled dogs, and that interesting comment: “They would keep running if the musher fell off his sled.”  This is not how I thought of a team of animals pulling a heavy sled.  I rather imagined that there was a whip involved, and a great deal of demanding, ordering, coercing, maybe even some denial of food – to keep the dogs hungry.  It’s hard for me to imagine the dogs enjoying being harnessed, longing for the run, the cold, the ice, the snow, the panting.  Very hard for me to imagine them simply wanting to run when it is not even required of them – for what?  The love, the joy, the duty, the obedience of it?  Can it be that there are creatures like this?  I confess I am not at all sure I see these traits in my own dogs.  But then, they were not made for it.

And what of you and me?  What were we made for?  This is a question so many of us struggle with, and many feel doomed to spend their whole lives wandering, not knowing the answer, since we are certain that it must have something to do with what we used to call our occupation, but now we imagine must be our passion.

During Lent, the Church suggests that whatever your occupation, you try living like a sled dog.  Which is to say, try living in the harness; listening for the call to go where you are instructed, rather than wherever you please; running hard, part of a team that is also harnessed; doing it not for the benefit of a reward, nor because of a whip that threatens you, but for the love of it, the joy of it, the duty of it, even the obedience of it.

This might mean taking something on during Lent, or giving something up.  It might mean doing something you have been avoiding, but that you know will be good for you or for those you love.  It clearly means testing a life that is different than the one we have been living.  Unlike a sled dog, it depends on each of us taking the time to think about what should or could be different, better in our lives, how we could become the better selves that we suspect lurk somewhere under the more selfish selves we see most often.

Would that involve a diet?  Fewer cigarettes?  A decision to go to an AA meeting for the first time?  Would it mean treating your partner or your spouse differently?  Calling your mother for the first time since who knows when?  Could it mean coming to church more often, or saying your prayers at home every day?  Might you decide to give some of your time to a cause or another person who needs you?  Is it possible it will cost you money as you learn to be more generous with others?  Only you will know, if you take the time to be honest with yourself.

And if you do, you may consider the possibility of changing your life with a certain dread, a wistfulness for giving up whatever ease, or indulgence, or habit, or wastefulness you are loathe to let go of.  It may seem to you that life could only be darker, smaller, less delightful if you are strapped into a harness and called on to run.

But it may be that you discover how wonderful it is to feel the cold air in your lungs, and your heart beating fast and strong, and the scenery whizzing by, and your team mates around you running hard and happily too.  Not because we are forced too, or because we are late, or because we are trying to catch or flee anything... but just for the love, joy, duty, and, yes, the obedience of living life more nearly to the way God made us to live it – with a bit less of us and a bit more of him.

And wouldn’t it be something if people saw the way you and I live our lives – with less of ourselves, and more of God – and wondered why; why do they run like that?  Would they suspect that it is because we have submitted to the whippings of an angry, demanding, and coercive God?

And wouldn’t it be wonderful to show that we could choose to live this way – making better choices, being our better selves – even when Lent is over?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover that we could run just for the love, joy, duty, and obedience of it; that we would run even if the musher fell off his sled?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

21 February 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Klinkenborg, Verlyn.  “Why Do Sled Dogs Run?”  In The New York Times. 13 February 2010

These days many of us have learned to worry about becoming the victims of what is called “identity theft.”  The term is something of a misnomer, because the perpetrators of identity theft are not primarily interested in your identity; they are interested in your money, and your credit.  They could care less who you are; what they really want is what you have.

Of course, very little frightens us as much as someone who has access to our stuff, our bank accounts, our credit cards, our treasures.  It is no coincidence that we have all gotten good at remembering various passwords, or that many of us probably have our own document shredders at home.  We don’t want people rifling through our trash, or hacking through our computers to gain access to our money and our credit.  Oh, it’s easy for people to find out our identities – we don’t so much mind that: just look me up on Face Book!  But we don’t want people getting the stuff that really matters: our financial information and assets.

But tonight we have come to get a smudge of ash on our foreheads and be told, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  And this custom is something of an affront to our identities.  Is it true that all we are is dust in the wind?  Do our identities mean nothing more than that, not even to God?

Interestingly, many people come to church on Ash Wednesday who don’t normally make it a habit to be in church.  There is something like a homing instinct on this day that leads us to this old ritual, to these ashes, and to this strange declaration that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  And that instinct is not activated because our souls fear that in God’s eyes all we are is dust in the wind.  Quite the contrary; our homing instinct kicks in because we suspect that most of the time we have not been living the lives God means for us to live, we have not grown into the selves we hoped to grow into, and our identities have somehow become confused, lost, or stolen among all the demands of our daily lives: from raising the kids, to paying the bills, to caring for the house, and everything else.

Somewhere deep inside us lurks the suspicion that even though our financial records are in order, we have been the victims of identity theft, and it doesn’t have anything at all to do with our credit or our money.  Somehow we suspect that our identities have become overly entwined with our things, our stuff, our bank accounts, our credit cards, or our social status.  And we may begin to wonder if anybody cares about us not for what we have, but for who we are.

So we home in on church on Ash Wednesday.  We may come for a lot of reasons, or no reason at all, but when we get here, we are going to be confronted with the truth of our identities.  Because most of us have been victims of identity theft: somehow the person we meant to be, tried to be, were raised to be, always knew we could be, is nowhere to be found.  The ideals, and hopes, and talents, and brains, and principles and even the looks we once held onto have slipped away.  Hope has been crowded out by depression.  What’s more, we have developed bad habits, forgotten what it was like to exercise self-discipline, and gotten too accustomed to being selfish.  Look in a mirror, and what do you see?  Is it someone you recognize and like?  Or is it a victim of identity theft?

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Like so much else in religion, these words are not as easy to understand as at first they seem.  All we are is not dust in the wind.  It is true that our bodies and all we have (even our credit cards) will return to the ground: dust to dust, ashes to ashes, as the saying goes.  Most of what we guard so carefully in life cannot be saved.  And the church is compelled to remind us of this because we have tended to store up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.  We have tended to value all those things that are inevitably perishing (including our bodies), and paid no mind at all to our souls.

But we were made to be more than bodies passing through this world for a while; more than the accumulation of our wealth; more than the sum of our credit.  We were made to be citizens of another kingdom: the kingdom of heaven - to which God calls all people.

In the kingdom of heaven our lives take on new meaning; we work for the benefit of others; the poor are not disenfranchised; the rich do not have special privileges.  Justice is accomplished in the kingdom of heaven; the sick are made well without a thought of health insurance.  Peace is the watchword there.  In the kingdom of heaven you are worth more than your credit score!  And in the kingdom of heaven no one can steal your identity, because you are most perfectly and beautifully yourself, your own true identity.

Jesus talked about the moth nibbling away at what does not belong to it and ruining it; about that little trickle of water that causes so much rust over the years and ruins what should rightfully have been yours.  Do we have to name the moths?  Do we have to prove that there is rust?  Isn’t it true?  Is some of it your own fault?  Probably.  Was some of it beyond your control?  Probably, too.

There is a secret about Ash Wednesday that is not at first apparent.  The secret is a white lie in those words: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  For, the truth about Ash Wednesday is that God wants you to have your real self back: the lovely, true, and holy identity that could only ever be yours alone.

Have you strayed like lost sheep?  Have thieves broken in and stolen?  Have moth and rust consumed what was not theirs to take?  Have you let them do it?  Have you let your life turn to so many ashes? 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  But remember this too: you are more than you seem to be.  Saint Paul saw how easily our true identities are taken from us.  And he reminded his fellow Christians in Corinth about the truth: “we are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything!”

Like everyone else who has ever languished in prison, Paul knew what it was like to face losing everything – even your own identity.  And he knew the marvelous truth that when your identity is rooted in Christ, no one can ever take it from you!

Because the kingdom of heaven is not a faraway place or in the distant future.  The kingdom of heaven is at hand – this, Jesus came to teach us.  And you and I were made for that kingdom.  There are treasures of unimaginable bliss to be found there that no one can ever take from you.  And you begin by coming here and believing for a moment that little white lie – that you are dust.  And then you begin to ask God to lead you in a new way, and to give you your identity back.  Which it is his joy and glory to do, since he made you in the first place, and rejoices to see you returned to your rightful, beautiful self.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Ash Wednesday 2010
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia


I was reading recently a history of how people in different times and places have interacted and reacted to space, which may sound rather abstract but is actually quite fascinating. Throughout history, people have generally seemed to find a similar awe and amazement in different spaces. The magnificence of Chartres Cathedral has been experienced by people for 800 years without much reservation, but there are some notable exceptions. One of the most interesting examples of people responding very differently in a time and place was the response of people during the 18^th century to the Alps. There was, apparently, no awe or astonishment at the beauty of the Matterhorn; instead people found the Alps rather terrifying, and the practice if one was forced to undergo the trial of crossing the Alps was to travel in a closed carriage so that one would not have to experience the terror of the Alps.

Which I would find incomprehensible except that I think those two emotions, awe and terror are not too far removed from each other, and perhaps go very much hand in hand.

Awe is one of the glories of human emotion – to feel astonished and overwhelmed by wonder at a glorious sunset over the ocean, or the space of a cathedral, or the silence of an old growth forest.

Beyond the awe that we feel at the natural world is the awe that we feel when we encounter the transcendent, indeed sometimes it is the glory of nature that leads us to that encounter with God. Encountering the mystery of the Divine is always awe inspiring, often unexpected, and it is not unusual to have a feeling of unworthiness, of smallness, even of terror in the face of the God who is wholly powerful and other. Like the Alps, we may encounter the majesty of God with terror, with a wish to withdraw and block out the vastness and majesty of that sight.

We have that sense of awe and of unworthiness expressed both in the reading from Isaiah and in the Gospel this morning. The prophet has a vision of the Lord glorious and enthroned and it is the kind of experience that leaves him blind and groping, deeply aware of his own unworthiness in the face of the heavenly court crying “Holy,” shaking the hinges of the Temple with their voices. “Woe is me!” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Simon Peter has a similar experience in the Gospel. After a night of fruitless fishing, as he is washing his nets, Jesus gets into his boat to teach, and once he's finished teaching, he tells Peter to let down his nets on the other side of the boat. Despite how ridiculous the request is, Peter tries it, and ends up swamping both the boats with a massive catch of fish. And like the prophet, Peter is brought up short by an awareness of his own limitation and sinfulness. Falling to his knees he says “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

However we encounter the Divine, it can be a sobering experience that brings home to us our finitude and our own very real lack of perfection, before a God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple.

And that is not an inappropriate emotion – however much we encounter God in the small things of life, in quiet moments and kind words, or however much we encounter God in the person of Jesus, speaking to us through the Scriptures, God is both encountered in small things, and in the moments of glorious holiness and terror: worth of the adoration of seraphs, glorious and majestic.

It is, I suppose, out of fashion to speak about the overwhelming side of God. Generally we are told that this God is experienced by people as unapproachable, as too reminiscent of the sometimes difficult and judgmental images of God that some of us learned in childhood. Moreover, we are told that God enthroned as King is a difficult image, for most of us have no experience of kings and how can we possibly related to God as an extra-large monarch, with all the trappings of royalty?

Which I suppose is all true in a way, but is also somewhat sad, because if the God of glory and terror is downplayed, or fails to make it into our teaching, preaching and thinking about God, the awe tends to go away as well.

As, of course, does the framework for interacting with God's majesty and power. If you look at both passages that we hear read today, the goal of the vision of God's majesty or the power expressed by the God who is enfleshed is not to make us feel guilty or unworthy, although that might be an unintended effect, but because God simply IS. Powerful and infinite. I am that I am. Glorious, magnificent. Worthy of eye covering worship. Worthy of having the Temple filled with smoke, whether the choir likes it or not. Worthy of that perpetual chant of “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

And rather than our finitude and unworthiness being the occasion for God's wrath or judgment, in both these passages they are instead the beginning of our healing and calling.

The prophet finds himself cleansed and purified, and then when the God of terrible majesty asks for volunteers, the prophet finds himself offering to go “Here I am; send me!”

And rather than Jesus agreeing with Simon Peter that he is unworthy, Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid. We may encounter God's holiness with terror, but we do encounter it, and it changes us forever.

The majesty and wonder of the God of glory is not the terror of judgment. It is the awe that the God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple, the hem of whose majestic robe fills the Temple, that same God also is available to us in quiet, is present with us in bread and wine, can compact the vastness of that robe down into the frame of a tiny child, and comes to us despite our sinfulness and foolishness, asking “Who shall I send?”

To encounter the God of majesty and power is to come to terms with our smallness before his glory, and our vocation to speak to the peoples, to fish for people, to work as God wills, despite our smallness and sinfulness. Not because we are cowed by his majesty or frightened at his glory, but because the vision of the God of glory brings up in us the deepest awe and wonder, and the will to worship God ceaselessly. “Holy, holy, holy.”

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

7 February 2010