Saint Mark's Church

How seldom do we think of the lost tribes of Israel!  We forget that the history of God’s chosen people is a history of a fractured people: the ten Northern tribes of Israel declared their independence from the Southern tribes of Judah after the reign of King Solomon.  These ten tribes were eventually driven out of their lands by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC, never to be heard of again.  The fate of these lost tribes has been fodder for wild speculation in our own modern times.

But in Jesus’ day the fate of the Northern kingdom was not a matter of speculation: the divided kingdom had lost its Northern half to a godless imperial power.  This is not to say that all differences had been forgotten or forgiven; not to say that there was a nostalgic longing for those ten lost tribes.  It is simply to state the fact that the surviving Southern kingdom of Judah knew themselves to be a remnant of the larger family born of Abraham’s hope.

That hope had seemed to swell during the reign of David.  The people had wanted a king – begged for a king – and finally God relented and gave them David, who turned out to be a difficult character to say the least.  Still, after David came Solomon – the paragon of wisdom and virtue, who built the first temple in Jerusalem.  The temple would stand for more than 300 years, but the kingdom would split after the death of the great king.  

And so the history of God’s people continued in parallel motion, on two tracks: north and south.  Then, late in the eighth century came the Assyrian hoarde to drive the northern tribes from their lands.  No king could now recover the long-lost tribes.  The prophets might sing of them but they were gone.  And the region of Galilee, which once had been home to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali (two of the ten) remained a symbol (at least to the prophet Isaiah) of the broken state of the family of God.

The Southern kingdom would know its own troubles.  In the sixth century the Babylonians would destroy Solomon’s temple and send the remnant kingdom into exile for forty or fifty years.  And although they would eventually return and the temple would be rebuilt, things were different, as they would have to be, for this devastated people.

What had become of Israel?    
What had become of the promise?
What had become of the covenant?
What had become of Galilee?

It was to Galilee, to a town called Capernaum , that Jesus went to make his home after hearing that his cousin John the Baptist had been put in jail.  And now, Jesus becomes the hope of Galilee, although no one yet knows it.  The lost tribes will not be restored.  But the king who renews the promise of God has now arrived on the scene to little fanfare.

‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles – the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and the shadow of death light has dawned’

The evangelist remembers the prophet’s words.  The prophet remembers the lost tribes.  Galilee is more than a place on the map.  It is a region of loss, a district of waiting, an area of silent hope.  And it is now no longer a hope confined to the children who sprung from Abraham’s loins and Sarah’s womb.  It is Galilee of the Gentiles – of the nations – a hope for all people.

To those of us for whom land has become little more than a commodity it is hard to imagine that some piece of land could stand for so much.  Can it be sold to developers? – we ask ourselves.  If not, what is the great fuss about.  Our inability to understand how closely the land itself is tied to the story of Israel and its fractious history is part of what makes even current conflicts there so incomprehensible to us.  But the land has always been more to Abraham’s offspring than a place to build a house or a city.  It is the landscape of God’s promise, of his deliverance, and of his hope.

And what of Galilee, once the home of Zebulun and Naphtali?  Is hope ever to return to Galilee?

Can we allow our imaginations to consider our own lost tribes?  Can we map out in our mind’s eye the contours and features and boundaries of regions where once we had hope and now we have little or none?  Do we remember the dreams we once had?

Plot out on this map the sibling taken from you too early in life, or the one you haven’t spoken to for years.  Locate the fever of love that once kept you awake for someone.  Identify the coordinates of innocence and joy you knew as a child.  See the place where your mother nursed you and your father still cared to rest you on his knee.  Are some of these lost places in your life?

In my own family’s story there is a farm on this map, and a house in Brooklyn, and another in Queens.  There are churches on the map and priests, there are schools and teachers.  There are times before injury or illness.  There are grandparents and old friends and even pets on this map.

And if we can see all this in the personal map of our imaginations, are there not also landmarks that we share?  A church not torn by strife and constantly out of breath for trying to keep up with the world around it.  A city or a town that once was so much easier to live in.  The smoldering shadow of the Twin Towers mark an important memorial on this map.  For some of us there are places of great danger on this map – in Vietnam, or now in Iraq, or maybe right here in our own country.

See on this map all the places that God might have come to us and we have wondered if he ever would.  See the deserts spreading out for miles on this map – places we never wanted to go but found ourselves there anyway, quite against our will.  See the vistas of places we dreamed we’d travel to but that now seem well beyond our means to get there.  See all these regions of loss, these districts of waiting, these areas of silent hope.

These are all the Galilees of our lives – Galilees of the Gentiles.  These are lands across the Jordan that have seemed lost to us as we take stock of our own fractured lives and histories and find a lot of places on the maps of our imaginations that now seem foreboding, unhappy, or just plain lost to us.

Into these lost regions of our lives Jesus is moving, making his home, somewhere by the water.

Have we longed for someone to put back together the fractured picture of our lives?  And do we tell ourselves, during this political season, that a new president will do it?  A bit of change and it will all come together?  We know better than that.  And because we know better, we may have given up on ever restoring hope to the Galilees of our lives – where once there was hope but now it is gone.

But Jesus is always moving in to such places, quite un-noticed by us most of the time.  It is with little fanfare that Jesus begins to walk by the Sea of Galilee and calls out to fishermen, “Follow me.”  

Did they hear in that simple invitation the power of an almighty hand to re-draw all the maps of their lives (imaginary and otherwise)?  Could they tell that here was the one who could fulfill promises long forgotten, hopes long given up on, and dreams left for dead?  Did they see in him a great light?  Did they even know that they sat in darkness?  Do we?

‘The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’

Where have we been living all these years?  How did our eyes become so accustomed to the dark?  When did we give up on hope in these Galilees of ours?

And when will we realize that Jesus has made his home in Galilee precisely for this reason: to be a light to lighten the Galilee of the Gentiles.  To live next door to us and to encounter us daily with his gentle and simple invitation: “Follow me.”

And we don’t really need to ask where we are going.  For we have already drawn the maps in our heads.  We are going to every region of loss, every district of waiting, every area of silent hope – into every dark Galilee of our lives, Jesus invites us to go when he says, “Follow me.”  And behold, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
27 January 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Behold, the former things have come to pass,
  and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
  I tell you of them.  (Is. 42:9)

A cartoon published in the New Yorker magazine last October depicts a fish who has sprouted little hind legs emerging from a body of water onto dry land.  With his front fins the fish carries a sign that reads: “The beginning is near.”  The artist, Robert Leighton, deftly teases us about both the origins and the ends of the universe, while taking a clever swipe at the stock in trade of cartoonists. What can we do in the face of this cartoon but laugh?

As a biblical commentary, Leighton’s image is not so bad.  The second verse of the Book of Genesis tells us that ‘the earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”   As the creation story unfolds, there is a sense in Genesis that everything God calls forth rises up out of those dark waters as the Spirit blows his breath and beats his great wings, uncovering continents and islands, the planets and the stars, fields and forests, birds and cattle and even fish, and finally that last, wondrous creation made in God’s own image: the human person.  All rising up out of the dark waters of creation.

What God began in the water he also continued in the water.  Noah would be delivered from the flood and brought to a rainbow of hope.  The children of Israel would be led out of captivity across the Red Sea.  And today we heard that it was as Jesus was coming up from the waters of the Jordan River that the heavens opened and that same Spirit spread his wings and blew his breath to carry the voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The beginning is near.

Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan and the promise of the Star of Bethlehem is uncovered.  The hope of Israel is revealed.  The light to lighten the Gentiles breaks forth.  Behold, the former things had all come to pass, and a new thing God now declares in the person of his beloved Son.  The beginning is near.

Christians are born in water.  We are brought up out of water by the great power of God’s Holy Spirit, breathing his holy breath into our lives, our lungs.  We are reborn into the world God made long ago, when God leads us through the fresh springs of a baptismal font, whether it’s three meters deep or three inches deep.  In water are Christians born by the power of God’s breath.  In water does God declare new things, new hope, new life.

Much has come to pass since the beginning: the creation of God’s majestic hand has been defaced by any means we can imagine.  As a people made in God’s image, we have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep.  As inheritors of light we have so often preferred the dark.  So much has come to pass.  But at the waters of baptism – so still and unassuming (not even a ripple) – the beginning is near.  The awesome power of God’s hand to make a new thing, to bring life, to bless, to anoint, to hallow, and to heal is right here at the edge of the water, where the beginning is near.

In baptism God calls us, his children, back to the beginning.  God buries us for a moment beneath the face of the deep, submerging us in those primeval waters so that we can be positioned beneath the wings of the Holy Spirit to uncover us and breathe his holy breath into us.  God, who has led us through the ages of human history, allows each of his children to begin at the beginning, unburdened by the baggage of what has been an admittedly checkered past.  So he leads each one of us to a place where the beginning is near in order to soak us in the gift of his blessing, his grace, his mercy, his love.

What God began in the water he also continues in the water.  For this reason you will find water somewhere near every door of this church, so that whether coming or going we can remind ourselves of who we are and what God has done for us.  He has brought us, by baptism, to a holy place in our lives where the beginning is near, so that we can be whomever it is he calls us to be.  Washed and reborn by baptism we emerge from the water onto dry ground so that we might evolve, day by day, into the creatures God made us to be: bearers of his own image and likeness, and members of the Body of his beloved Son.

Long ago there was a man named John who came to bear witness to that Son.  He baptized people with water, and his call to repentance was demanding, urgent, with not a little fury.  Even listening to him all these centuries later, we could be forgiven for thinking that his message finally, was that the end is near and if you don’t want to get left behind you’d better listen up!

But then came Jesus, to fulfill all righteousness.  And in the waters of the Jordan, John’s message was transposed: the fear of the end of time transformed into the hope of the beginning of time.  And a new world was born, full of promise and hope.  And the wings of a dove stirred the air with the power of the Spirit’s wings.  And a wind blew in with a voice from heaven.  And the Son of God was made known.  And the beginning was near.

Behold, the former things have come to pass,
  and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
  I tell you of them.

And that same Spirit hovers over us, always leading us to the water, beckoning us to be washed or to remember that once we were washed there in the water where God began his work of love and where he continues it day by day.  And where, day by day, the beginning is near.  Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
13 January 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia