A Lasting Glory

When I was planning my move to Philadelphia almost seven years ago, I received widely varying and always interesting feedback about my choice of apartments. I live at the Marine Club at Broad and Washington, a location that inspired comments ranging from the nostalgic (“Oh, I used to work there back when it was the quartermaster depot for the United States Marines,”) to the disbelieving (“You do know that that’s south of South Street, right?”) I’ll let you guess which of these comments was made by the rector. But the comment I heard more than any other was this one: “Oh, wow! You’ll be in a good spot for the next Phillies parade.”

Now remember, this was 2011, when the Phillies’ victory in the 2008 World Series was still fresh on people’s minds. By the time I got to town, the players were a little older, their bats a little slower, and the chances of my seeing a championship parade during my time of living on Broad Street rather slim. So you can imagine my joy when the Eagles pulled off their upset at last weekend’s Super Bowl. At last! I thought – a championship parade that I can watch from the steps of my building. Which is exactly what I did. No waiting in the cold for me; I just popped outside for 15 minutes of cheering and confetti and then popped right back inside to my comfy couch.

Thursday in Philly was, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, a celebration for the ages. It was a kind of impromptu holiday, a day when all other concerns took a back seat to the deeply rooted impulse not only to toast the victors, but to toast them together. There was no school, no work, no diet, no deadline; there was only the desire to be happy together, to celebrate together, to cheer and chant all together. For one day here in Philadelphia, there were no worries; there was only this shared sense of glory. It should be said that this isn’t entirely accurate, of course. The people who were celebrating on Thursday were people who had the luxury of escaping for a day. It’s hard to chant and cheer and forget your worries when you’re living on the street, say, or fighting a heroin addiction. But for those of us who are privileged enough to be able to, as adults, spend an entire day at a parade, Thursday’s celebration in the winter sun helped us to set aside our troubles and revel in this glory, if only for only one moment.

The moment didn’t last. It never does. On Friday people went back to work, and while I’m sure there were plenty of tales told that morning of who got to Eakins Oval the earliest and who got what amazing video, by lunchtime all the stories had been shared, and once again the world – the real, non-midnight green world – started to come back into focus. There were decisions to be made and bills to be paid. There were appointments to be kept and obligations to be met. There was life, real life, and while the memories of this glory moment carried with them significant joy, they were not powerful enough. The glory faded, and there was life, again.

There was a decided lack of confetti on the Mount of Transfiguration. There wasn’t much of a crowd there, either, just Peter and James and John, and Jesus and Moses and Elijah. But Jesus’ transfiguration was a moment of incredible glory, a witnessing beyond the disciples’ wildest dreams. It was a moment for the ages, an unanticipated flash of such dazzling brilliance that I imagine the disciples must have felt their everyday anxieties falling away. No more frustration with the Pharisees, no more uneasiness about Jesus’ predictions of suffering and death, no more worrying of any kind. This glory moment was suddenly all that mattered. Peter was so convinced of this that he suggested they all pull up lawn chairs and sit on the curb a little longer. Why leave this place? Why go back to the real world if they could stay and stretch this moment into infinity?

But this moment wasn’t meant to last, and Peter is missing the point. The truth is that he just doesn’t know what to say; he is transported, but terrified, the Gospel says. But while Peter may not know what to say, God does. God’s voice rolls in from the heavens like thunder and tells Peter, simply, stop talking. “This is my Son, the Beloved;” the voice calls out, “listen to him!” And just like that, the moment is over. The disciples look up and see Jesus alone.

On the way back down the mountain, back down to real life, the disciples must have been wondering what this moment was meant for. Why had Jesus brought them here? Why had Jesus showed them this? Was this moment meant as a gift for them, an impromptu holiday from the challenges of bearing their cross? Was it meant to strengthen them? To inspire them? Was Jesus telling them everything would be all right, or was he just trying to give them one moment of light before the coming darkness of which he spoke so often? As they are walking and wondering, Jesus opens his mouth and begins to speak. And the disciples, as they had just been instructed, listen to him. “As they were coming down the mountain,” Saint Mark tells us, “he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

With these words, the disciples look down and see their feet firmly planted back in the real world. For here, once again, is their master’s sorrowful prediction of death and his incomprehensible assertion of rising again from that death. Here, once again, is the hard life of discipleship with all of its unknowns; here, once again, is the cross. Except that in this moment, at the base of this mount of glorious transfiguration, the disciples feel something shift. They notice something miraculous and new. For while the glory moment has passed, Christ’s glory hasn’t faded at all. True, Jesus’ robes have changed back to their normal hue and Moses and Elijah have vanished, but still the disciples can feel the glory. They can still see it; the holy light that was so bright they had to shade their eyes has left a corona around the edges of their vision, and they can see the sparks and flashes of glory everywhere. The moment of revelation may be gone, but Christ’s glory has lingered on.  

On this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, when we are about to enter into the season of Lent with its real world call to repentance and self-denial, Christ invites us to witness this same, lasting glory. True, we will leave this holy place, the incense will swirl into nothingness and the final notes of the hymn will fade away. When we step outside this place, real life may come roaring back at us with all of its worries, but Christ’s glory will not fade. The moments of transcendence that we find here in these walls, the moments of holiness that we find in our own prayer, these moments are not glimpses of a glory that ebbs and flows in this world. They are moments that bind together all of the ebbs and flows of our own lives, revealing the glory that never fades away. Christ’s glory lasts, it lingers, it runs the length and breadth of our reality, bearing our burdens and transforming them and us from glory into glory.

When we are faithful and proclaim the Gospel, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are terrified and have no idea what we are saying, Christ’s glory lasts. When we recognize it, Christ’s glory lasts. When we ignore it, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are generous and beautiful, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are vile and reprehensible, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are brave, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are cowards, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are highly favored, Christ’s glory lasts. When we are underdogs, Christ’s glory lasts. When we celebrate, Christ’s glory lasts. When we mourn, Christ’s glory lasts. When we respond to our neighbor’s needs, Christ’s glory lasts. When we condemn those in need to their suffering, Christ’s glory lasts. When we protect the vulnerable, Christ’s glory lasts. When we blame the victim, Christ’s glory lasts. When we speak truth, when we lie, when we love one another, when we hate our enemies, when we are willing to climb a mountain to follow him, when we are willing to follow only if it means stepping outside of our comfort zone for 15 minutes or less, Christ’s glory still lasts.    

There is nothing we can do to diminish this glory, just as there is nothing we can do to bring it into being. Our task is to live as if we expect to see it. Our task is to live with eyes wide open, searching for this glory in the world, trusting that today, each day, is a day for the ages, when Christ’s victory continues to draw us in to share in his glory together. Our task is to live with ears open to hear God’s holy imperative – Here is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him – and to respond with happy and humbled hearts, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So look and listen, you loyal followers of Christ. Today is a festival day. The veil is lifted, and the glory of the Lord is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. Look and listen, you holy disciples. For this moment of glory will last. It always does. Hallelujah.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

11 February 2018

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Living in a World Without Monsters

For a short time in my adolescence I was sometimes afraid to go to sleep.  The specific object of my fear was, as I recall, rather hard to pin down, but it was very clearly in my head, the product of my imagination.   As I think back on it now, it looks more like a time of tenderness rather than crisis, though I suspect that for that short time I must have been a worry to my parents.

I am led to believe that the experience of bedtime anxiety or fear is somewhat common in adolescent children.  I am quite sure that it was the somewhat fuzzy nature of the fear that partly worried me.  I was afraid of something, but I wasn’t quite sure what.  Something about the vulnerability of going to sleep was at the core of the fear, for in my sleep, I must have thought, I would be subject to attack by forces against which I was fortified if I remained awake.

Children can imagine a realm of excitement and danger that they will encounter in their sleep that adult imaginations outgrow, out of necessity I suppose.  It is, after all, important to decide that there really aren’t monsters under your bed, and that the ones in your dreams can’t really hurt you.  And so I am sure that I must have been thus counseled by my parents, and by the psychologist to whom I was trundled off to see for a session or two, and by my teachers in whom I might have confided, that whatever I was afraid of did not exist in the real world, only in my head.  And if it existed only in my head, it could be vanquished in my head.  I don’t think I ever won a decisive victory over whatever it was that I was afraid of - and I don’t think I ever knew precisely what it was.  Eventually it just went away, as I outgrew that somewhat awkward moment of my childhood, in what was probably an important stage of emotional and psychological development.

Living, as we do, in a world without monsters, it is hard for modern adults to take seriously the biblical accounts of Jesus casting out demons, as we are told he did in the Gospel this morning.  Frankly, it is also hard for us to believe that Jesus cured Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever, too, but perhaps we are willing to let that slide by.  The most plausible part of this story actually seems to be that once the mother-in-law was healed she got up to wait on the men.  In any case, we are extremely likely, when we encounter a passage like this one, to clinicalize the many “demons” that Mark then tells us Jesus cast out of people.  Saint Mark may have called them demons, but we know that what he is really talking about are people who suffer with schizophrenia, or epilepsy, or bi-polar disorder, or some other diagnosable condition about which we know more than did our biblical counterparts.  

And I suppose that this modern worldview does have a ring of plausibility about it.  Plus, it has the great benefit of putting us in control.  There is no real worry to be had about demons, since they were only ever in the heads of those biblical writers, a product of their uninformed imaginations.  So when we read about them now, we know that the demons may have been clinical realities for those who suffered with them, but to us they amount to so many monsters under the bed - nothing really to worry about, especially since we have outgrown them.

After all, we live in a world that has produced a large supply of real fears to be harbored over the last century: catastrophes that haunt our imaginations, even though they did not originate there. We hardly need to foster additional categories of worry.  Our worries are founded in the real world, since there is no other realm of reality where some murky and darker power threatens our happiness and well being.  

Of course one of the implications of the absence of a darker power that lies somewhat beyond our normal comprehension, is the rational correlation that there is no power of greater goodness that lies outside our normal comprehension either.  And this point of view makes it difficult for us to know what to make of Jesus.

If there are no monsters under your bed, what are the chances that there is a Savior for you sitting at the right hand of God on his throne in heaven?  Aren’t these both fantasies cooked up in some more primitive imagination, and perpetuated only in immature minds of today?  And isn’t this thinking the way that Jesus becomes to the world little more than a glorified Sunday School teacher whose lesson plan extends not far beyond impressing on our children the need to be nice to one another and to share?  Lessons, which we probably expect them to outgrow almost as quickly as their fear of going to sleep.

It was about the same time in my boyhood that I was outgrowing my fear of whatever could threaten me in my sleep that I was also intensely involved in the worship of God, since a chunk of my childhood was spent at a school the purpose of which was to train boys to sing God’s praises with artistry and skill.  This we did on a more or less daily basis, one way or another; and it turns out to be an enterprise that is remarkably good for the imagination, allowing for the possibility that there is a realm of goodness to be encountered that lies somewhere beyond our ordinary daily experience.  For although I was taught as a child all the usual lessons about the Golden Rule, it was in the experience of worshiping God that I became familiar with this realm of great goodness, quite apparent to me in my waking hours.  How, I ask myself, did this happen?  For while it took place in a context of rehearsals and instruction, of learning and growing up, of worship and prayer and music and preaching... and I am sure all these elements contributed to the dawning lesson that there is a power of goodness at work in the world...  these are the structures that supported the lesson, not the substance of it.

Somewhat surprisingly, I find the clues of an explanation in the detail of the story of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law’s fever.  Saint Mark provides this description of Jesus’ ministry to the woman.  He says that Jesus “came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.”

And when I think about it, I believe that this is precisely what Jesus has done for me all my life, whenever I am low, frightened, worried, beaten, unsure of myself, empty, or fevered by all kinds of things that may cause me to overheat: Jesus has always come to me, taken me by the hand and lifted me up.  I am not saying that I knew it at the time.  But I am saying that I can explain my confidence in a power of goodness that lies quite beyond the ordinary powers of this world in no other way.  Jesus has come to me, taken me by the hand and lifted me up.

This statement is, of course, not a literal claim, since no supernatural hand from heaven ever grabbed mine, and the lifting that it did was of an inner kind, not physical.  It is a claim of faith, a claim of confidence.  But it is born of experience, and the result is no less meaningful for being figurative rather than literal: Jesus came and took me by the hand and lifted me up.

I speak to you, therefore, as a man who has never quite learned the lesson that I was supposed to learn as a child: that there is no power of darkness that lies beyond our ken.  And although I am tempted, I am not ready to dismiss the demons that Jesus casts out as the mistaken interpretation of a clinical condition, since I see in my waking hours ample cause to believe that there remains in the world a murky power of darkness that does its work all too effectively, all too often, and without much intervention from us, much of the time.

Perhaps my refusal to internalize this lesson is because I have also learned that there is a far greater power of goodness at work through the might of God’s right hand.  It is the power that brings healing to the sick, relief to the poor, comfort to those who suffer, freedom to the imprisoned, light where there is darkness, hope where there is despair, and life where death would have its say.  And this power of goodness does not exist only in my head; for when my head has been at a complete and utter loss, it is this power that has come to me, taken me by the hand, and lifted me up.

Have you met this power too?  And did you know, as I know now, that it was Jesus?

More and more the lessons of the world we live in teach us that we should outgrow a thing like faith, in much the same way I had to outgrow my fear of going to sleep, since whatever monsters I was afraid of were not real.  I thank God that I learned not to be afraid to go to sleep; otherwise, where would I be now?

But I also thank God that I have never outgrown faith; and that time and time again God has sent his Son to me, and he has come, and taken me by the hand, and lifted me up.

He will do the same for you, and has probably done it already many times.  It is not just in your head.  And my advice to you is that you must not outgrow the suspicion that there is a force of goodness more powerful than any other force that exists in the world.  That is exactly what the murky darkness wants you to do: to outgrow your confidence in the goodness of God and the power of his Son.  Thus do demons seize their opportunity in wiley, subtle, and crafty ways.

But Jesus comes to us, he takes us by the hand, when we extend our hands to receive him, and he lifts us up.  As it is written:

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, 
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
   his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
 and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
   and the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,  
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint.

And he will come to you, and take you by the hand, and lift you up.

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 February 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

I Know Who You Are

The first big public act of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is to enter a synagogue to teach.  And what a debut it is.  When Jesus teaches, a man who is possessed by a demon cries out “I know who you are.  I think you have come to destroy me.” Really, it sounds like the demon is crying out from within him.

It sounds like a scene out of a horror film, but this story is actually just telling us the most basic truth about how God acts in our lives.  This awful exorcism is a blueprint for us.  It’s a set of instructions for daily living. It’s very good news.  Very solemn, painful, abundantly good, news.

In our daily living, we do our best to keep our world intact.  We do our best to imagine that we are doing fine.  We tell ourselves that we know how our world works and how to function in it.  We are happy enough.  There is enough order around us, most of the time, so that we can imagine that we are a-ok.  

And when that illusion of control starts to slip away, we need a lot of help from God to face the truth.  That’s what this story is.  It’s help from God for times when our illusions crumble around us.  When the evil in the world seeps through the cracks in our individual and collective façade.

So let me just come out and ask you: is disillusionment lurking somewhere in your worldview these days?  Are you getting a little numb?  Did you hear one hundred and fifty women in a courtroom this week, testifying to the most horrifying abuse?  Wasn’t that more than you could take?  Did you even think such a nightmare was possible in the perfect, clean, elite world of Olympic gymnastics?  

Do you remember that hundreds of thousands of women and their allies took to the streets again last weekend out of an awareness that our national political life is a global disgrace?  Sometimes the truth is too much to hold back, too much to silence.  Neither the march nor the courtroom could be the perfect expression of God’s truth, but both were vivid scenes of something welling up and making itself plain.  A solemn, painful truth.

In Mark’s story the arrival of Jesus and the authority of his teachings are the reason the painful truth speaks up.  It’s ironic; the demon is the one who knows exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth is.  It’s the demon who has the language.  It’s the demon who calls Jesus the “Holy One of God.”  And if we are willing to pay attention and use this story as our own blueprint we may gain tremendous courage.  We may gain a willingness to confront the most painful truths in our world and in our own hearts.  We may come to recognize these moments of welling up as a powerful sign that God has come close to us and is ready to set us free.  We may be given the grace to understand shock and disillusionment as the last gasp of something that is being cast out.

We can think about it this way: the deepest hopes, the most powerful healings, may be the hardest ones for us to talk about.  Jesus may work in us at times when we are completely dominated by what oppresses us.  We may have no language for the sins and the fears and the addictions that matter the most.  And the only way to measure their impact may be in the act of healing itself.  Maybe it’s what happens when, for the first time in years, you can go for a day or an hour without a drink.  When you finally understand, and are willing to say, that your idea of being loved is what others would call abuse.  When it’s finally clear that nothing you have accomplished in life has ever made your deepest shame go away.  Those moments of honesty are possible only as something deathly is losing its hold over you.  Sometimes as the demon is leaving it finally, painfully, makes you tell the truth.

The powers that want to possess you know exactly who Jesus is in your life.  They can measure his authority precisely, in a way you are normally too timid to do, at least if you are anything like me.  I would even go so far as to say that sometimes, out of kindness, Jesus shields us from having to speak his name fully until we are ready.   Until the healing has already begun and we can bear to know what salvation really means for us.  That’s what happened to the man in the synagogue.  In the presence of Jesus his most horrifying forms of bondage began to speak up and tell the truth.

Perhaps in light of this story and its revelations, you can retrace your own steps here to Saint Mark’s this morning.  Maybe you came here on autopilot or in a bad mood, or with a sense of dread.  Maybe you wake up with fear in the pit of your stomach every day, and today is no different.  Or maybe you just imagine a thousand ways to spend your time that promise to be more rewarding or more useful or more restorative. You could be forgiven for imagining that the world’s troubles make faith seem like a childish fantasy.  But you came here.  Something broke its hold over you this morning and you came here.  There was a small deliverance, barely worth remarking, but it was real, and you came here.

Now take that sense of deliverance, and consider the world in which we live.  Certainly there are forms of depravity speaking their names loudly all around us.  There is an awful lot of pain and injury seeping through the cracks of our collective façade.  We seem to have woken up with a bad feeling.  

Do we have the courage and the grace to recognize this moment as a moment of healing?  When the news is very bad, can we see it as the last gasp of something that is leaving us?  Can we allow the name of Jesus to be spoken by our fear?

This moment in history may feel like a scene out of a bad disaster film, but we have the Gospel for our blueprint.  We know a basic truth about how God acts in our lives.  God sets us free in Jesus, and we are taught in faith to expect that as the demons leave they will make the truth painfully manifest.  Exorcism is a blueprint for us.  The same forces that bind us are the ones that will speak the name of Jesus if we are willing to listen. When the worst in us comes out, deliverance is near at hand.  And our deliverance will tell us who Jesus is. This grim and frightening story is our set of instructions for daily living. It’s very good news.  Very solemn, painful, abundantly good, news.

Let’s not linger too long over the pain and fear.  Let’s not be disheartened when we become disillusioned.  The loss of our habitual illusions is a sign of healing.  Let’s tell the world, as this gospel passage does, let’s tell the world through our actions and our courage and our strength, that Jesus is close to us and that deliverance is real.  

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

28 January 2018

Saint Mark's Church Philadelphia