Saint Mark's Church

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky tells this story:

“Once upon a time there was a wicked-wicked woman, who dies.  And she left behind her not one single good deed.  The devils seized her and threw her into the fiery lake.  But her guardian angel stood, and thought, ‘What good deed of hers might I remember, in order to tell God?’ He remembered, and told God: ‘She pulled up an onion in the kitchen garden,’ he said, ‘and gave it to a beggarwoman.’  

“And God replied to him: ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘take that very same onion and offer it to her in the lake, let her reach for it and hold on to it, and if you can pull her out of the lake, then let her go to heaven, but if the onion breaks then let the woman remain where she is now.’  The angel ran over to the woman and offered her the onion: ‘Here you are, woman,’ he said, ‘reach out for it and hold on!’  And then he carefully began to pull her, and soon she was nearly right out; but then the other sinners in the lake, when they saw that she was being pulled out, all began to catch hold of her, so they should be pulled out together with her.

“But the woman was a wicked-wicked woman, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘I’m the one who’s being pulled out, not you.  The onion’s mine, not yours.’  And no sooner had she said that than the onion broke.  And the woman fell back into the lake and burns there to this very day.  As for the angel, he began to weep and left the spot.”

Thanksgiving Day seems like it ought to be simple: we give thanks for all we have – piles and piles of onions, and everything else besides!  And there is something simple about that, to be sure.  But the Gospel cautions us against stopping there.  “Do not be anxious about what you shall eat or what you shall drink…  Your heavenly Father knows [what] you need…  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

Here in America, we live in a virtual horn of plenty, where, admittedly, some hoard their onions, and others too often go without.  Still, there are onions enough to go around, and everything else besides.  So it seems a little too easy to take a long weekend, to gorge ourselves, and as we do, to look momentarily up to heaven as we say “Thanks” through our stuffed mouths.  Especially if we happen to be ignoring what’s happening underneath the tablecloth… which is to say that within this horn of plenty that are hungry hands reaching up to catch hold of us, who for one reason or another never had so much as an onion held out to them.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God.  

Dostoyevsky saw that even in the fiery lake of hell, with nothing but an onion to grab onto, a person could seek the kingdom of God – and all she had to do was stop kicking the others away.  Even in the fiery lake of hell, with nothing but an onion to grab onto, a person could seek the kingdom of God.  Just imagine, how close to the kingdom of God we might come, even in this life, with all that has been given us for the seeking, with all these onions, and everything else besides.  Just imagine!

Is it enough for us to come to the table on Thanksgiving Day, and say with sated satisfaction, “God provides; thanks be to God!”?  Or does the kingdom of God beckon us?  Do our guardian angels hold out platters of onions to us (and everything else besides), and wait to see whether or not we start to kick?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Thanksgiving Day, 22 November 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave neither root nor branch.  But as for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.  (Malachi 4:1-2)


The book of the prophet Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament.  The fourth chapter (the last chapter) has only six verses, most of which we read this morning.  And the last line – which means the last line of the Old Testament, as it's arranged in our Bibles – is a threat: “he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.”

The prophet has already told of the coming of the messenger of God (“he is like a refiner’s fire”), and fine-tuned the image – the day that comes shall burn them up!  And he leaves his listeners with a cliff-hanger.  Will the hearts of fathers be turned?  Will the hearts of their children be turned?  Or will God smite the land with a curse?  Coming, as this does, at the very end of the Old Testament, it’s enough to make you ask: Is this how it’s all going to end?  It might even be enough to make you want to turn the page and read on!

Generally speaking, I don’t like the passages we read from Scripture today – and I’m guessing you don’t either.  They tend toward fire and brimstone, which is not really my stock in trade.  I prefer the warm and fuzzy gospel of the Good Shepherd who goes after the lost sheep to the Jesus who warns that wars, insurrections, earthquake, famine, and plague are part of the story of salvation.  I prefer the prophetic vision of the great feast of fat things on the holy mountain of God to the vision of the day that comes, burning like an oven.

And since I am an Episcopalian, it is often assumed that I can choose the parts of Scripture I like and ignore the parts I don’t.  But that is a characterization made by people who don’t go to church every Sunday – which is to say, other Episcopalians.

Today we heard it – “Behold the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up.”  And I don’t want to hear it.  I don’t want to think about a God who stokes the fires of an oven for anyone – the allusion is too cruel.  I don’t want to think about sheep being separated from goats, about doors being locked, about weeping and gnashing of teeth, about betrayal and persecution.  This is not the message of love that has won my heart!

Is it true that I am prone to pick and choose those parts of the Christian message that I want to hear?  Do I live in a kind of bubble of privilege that gives me the freedom to do so?  If I’m honest, I suppose that both of these things are true in some measure.  And I know that it is unrealistic.  Because I know, of course, that in this city there are kids being pressured to get involved with gangs who don’t feel they have much choice.  I know there are families ruined by drugs who can’t imagine they have much choice.  I know there are children whose lives are shaped by violence who can’t even find a safe corner, let alone a protective bubble.  I know there are schools in this city where a child can’t even learn to read let alone explore the meaning of justice, truth, or beauty.  I know that there is some cruel power here in Philadelphia that has recruited gun-toting goons to take close to 350 lives so far this year.

And it would be easy for many of us to want to retreat into safety.  But the Scriptures – certainly the prophet Malachi – compel us to read on, as it were, to turn the page, rather than close the book and reach for something else.

Whether we like it or not, there seem to be what the prophet called  “evildoers” in the world around us.  Some of them are packing explosives into vests; some are industriously at work in crystal meth labs; some wreak havoc in their homes and others do so across entire nations; some sit at government desks; and some stand waiting on streetcorners; some open fire in a Dunkin Donuts in the city of brotherly love.

And the question that the Scriptures pose again and again is this: is this how it’s all going to end: a marketplace of injustice and a cruel imbalance of power?  Has God smitten the world with a curse?  Is there hope?

In the Bible, as in life, it is important to remember to turn the page.  And the clever editors who once decided to put Malachi’s threat at the end of the Old Testament did so for a reason – to get you to turn the page and begin the story of Jesus.

If we turn the page we find that as Malachi predicts, God’s messenger (in the person of John the Baptist) does come.  And if he is not quite a refiner’s fire, he has at least a measure of urgency in his call to repent.  And his urgency does not point to an impending storm of fire and brimstone, but, it turns out, to the birth of a child.  It’s enough to make you glad you turned the page.

And isn’t this how the story so often goes?  The threat of God’s awful righteousness tempered by his mercy?  The destruction of the flood tempered by the promise of the rainbow.  The offensive sacrifice of Isaac stayed by the hand of an angel and the provision of a ram.  Hunger in the desert assuaged by bread from heaven.  An angry God shown to be more godly in his mercy.  It’s important to turn the page.

We live in an age when it seems entirely plausible to me that God has fires to stoke.  There are people – let’s call them evildoers – who are inflicting great harm on other people in our neighborhoods, our city, our nation, our world.  Where are the refining fires of God?  Will he not smite those who have presume to usurp his power – the power of life and death – into their own hands?  “Evildoers not only prosper but when they put God to the test they escape!”

Will God ever turn this page?

In answer to this question, the prophet is given a vision that is so confusing to him that the best he can do to express it is a lyrical melee of mixed metaphors:  For you who fear my name, God says, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.

Amidst the fear that the world slips ever more deeply into darkness, we are told that the sun will rise!

Amidst our fears that justice has been perverted, equity is a dream, truth doesn’t exist, and holiness is a vapor, we are told of righteousness!

Amidst a disease-ridden world that cannot summon the will to battle malaria, tuberculosis, or AIDS with all its might, we are told that healing comes!

Amidst the hobbling ballast of self-indulgent consumerism in which the marketplace reduces all things to their lowest common denominator, we are promised wings!

This is what comes of turning the page.  And even Malachi, for all his dark foreboding, cannot fail to proclaim it.  Does he see what’s coming?  Has he any inkling of the truth?  Does he know that he is close but not quite right?  Did he think that the burning fires were really the stoked flames of an angry God?  Turn the page and see!  

The crucible of God’s justice is a manger.  The furnace of God’s love is a mother’s womb.  This is how God turns the page!

My brothers and sisters, we live in dangerous times.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  It is easy to find a story of gloom written in the pages of our newspapers and in the book of history that we are writing for ourselves.  It is easy to see the end of all things and the judgment of an angry God handed down from the bench.  And who could blame him!?

But turn the page and see.  See that babe in the lowly manger.  He is the sun of righteousness, risen with healing in his wings.  He has, it would seem, more pages still to turn before he draws the world more tightly to himself, before the whole story is told.  But thanks be to God that he has already written the ending.  He alone knows it.  But he urges us to keep turning the pages, and looking for the sun of righteousness to rise and to rise and to rise, with healing in his wings!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
18 November 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

You could probably pick up a major newspaper from any city today and be shielded from any characters wading interminably through the grey areas of life. You don’t look at the morning’s headlines and discover that there are people in a surprising variety of stages of moral development, some with confusing difficulties preventing them from crossing the final hurdle to goodness. You don’t open the paper and read that there are all sorts of people in between really good and really bad, you usually don’t see that there are people with room for improvement on one hand but a set of sometimes tenuous virtues on the other. Instead, although our national newspapers have gotten subtler since the days years ago when they were unabashedly racist and bigoted, still one gets the vague sense that people still come in only a few shades. Let me read off a list of headlines from the last couple weeks, and see if you notice what I’m talking about.

A 25-year police veteran is known for devotion to his family and his job ; The “First of the Fort Dix Six pleads guilty” to his part in an a plot to kill American soldiers. ; John Kanzius invents a new cancer treatment procedure which has had dramatic, initial success ; The masked man who shot three people in center city was a convicted murderer only recently released from prison before he killed again. ; Bill Smith is “Doggedly Devoted to Saving Animals.” ; Two sons of Eagles coach Andy Reid are in trouble with the law again for different reasons ; A quiet, 14 year old student was thanked by the President for alerting authorities about danger in his high school ; A Gang member from the Bronx is arrested under a law designed for international terrorists. ; A family has donated 35 million dollars to cancer research. A young man with matches started one of the largest recent wildfires in California.

Try it sometime: take a look at the local section of the newspaper for the last few days, focus on the headlines that pertain to just one or a couple central characters, and see if those characters are portrayed as simply good, or bad. That seems to be it. We look at the newspaper and see apparently very good and apparently very mistaken or sometimes very weird people, but we have to go to good literature, music, art, the Bible, the Prayer Book, and especially our own lives to discover that these good, problematic, bad or weird people contain all of those qualities at the same time. We’re never just good, or just bad. And that fact brings to bear an important point in our thinking about sainthood: because we are never just good or just bad, we’re also never just saints or just sinners. Ambrose Bierce cynically defined a saint as a dead sinner revised. In fact, as it has been said much more realistically, saints are sinners who just kept trying. Saints are sinners who keep trying.

Just as the newspaper conditions us to think about people as only good, bad, or weird, sometimes we mislead ourselves into building such a class system into the Body of Christ. We get conditioned to thinking that there’s a group of people now and far back in history called saints, and then there are the rest: sinners. Let’s look to one of the most famous saints for evidence to the contrary: I paraphrase St Paul about his struggle with sin:“ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the moral law is good. But in fact it is no longer I,” exactly” that breaks from the moral law, but it’s more like the evil act I want to do is done by something that dwells in me; it’s" sin that dwells within me. "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I don’t want is [exactly, in fact]
what I do." So, Paul says, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand.” How true and how confusing, and how destructive of our cookie-cutter image of sainthood. Evil is very near at hand even when we’re most conscious of the good. And it’s the same with the entire church, the entire body of people given new vitality as the mystical body of Christ.

There are saints, and there are sinners, but the saints are really just a set of famous sinners who recognized the difficulty of doing good, and sometimes failed miserably at it, but kept trying, and tried as hard as they possibly could. In New Testament language, of course, all the baptized faithful were called saints, but over time, the term, which just means ‘holy one’, began to be reserved for those who the tradition deemed to be the holiest of the holy. But Paul, who that early tradition would certainly have deemed to be one of the holiest of the holy, breaks down the wall that would separate the ordinary person from some distant, unapproachable reserve of holiness. The sacred and profane are mingled, and saints have always been sinners who just keep trying.

We often hear of the early Saints beginning their missionary journeys because they were exiled by some tyrant to a foreign land, like Patrick who was sold into slavery to Ireland which would become his mission field. But there are also saints who essentially exiled themselves because they were irrepressibly awful, and it wasn’t until late in their exile that they begin to try to create something new and good in the wake of their own mess. St Columba had an easy, privileged life, coming from a royal family in Ireland, and during his youth he became enraged in an argument with a friend over a book, a psalter like the kind embedded in every book of common prayer. The fight escalated into being about more than just a book, and the animosity spread, and pretty soon Columba’s area was embroiled in all-out clan warfare claiming thousands of lives. Here’s the point at which Columba’s newspaper headline would have appeared; you could guess what it would be like.

St Paul took frustrating pains to illustrate that we can know sinning is wrong even as we do it, and Columba lived with the same struggle. He began to change himself, and accepted the Church's verdict that should do missionary work in a barren part of Scotland, as penance. Among other things, he established the community of Iona, one of the most famous Celtic monasteries. Here again would be the place that a certain newspaper headline of a different tone would appear. You can imagine what that would be. But the Columba who started a war because he couldn’t control his rage, and the Columba who helped initiate what would become 1,500 years of Christianity in Scotland, those two people are the same; the saint is also the sinner, and Paul’s writing suggests that even as a saint, Columba must still have struggled with his anger. Because a saint is a sinner who keeps trying.

I use Columba as one of many possible examples of people we’re tempted to blanket with holiness when in fact their lives all too often contained very confusing moral struggles. Hildegaard of Bingen spoke the truth to power and provided leadership to popes and kings which male monastics, despite their often superior education, were not keen enough to provide. She wrote such strange, haunting choral music that it was only centuries later, not unlike the reappreciation of Emily Dickinson’s work, that her eccentric vision really came into view. Her visions, brought on by migraines or not, portrayed apparent realities which did not always hold to tradition; it’s no wonder that she worried a bit over whether to be open about them. But our tradition at its best celebrates openness, even openness to failure, and whatever inner turmoil confronted Hildegaard, she commit herself to working through it, and kept working through it her whole life. // To take another example, St Francis and so many other saints grew up in luxury and security, and the legends of the saints often portray their shift from wealth to Gospel poverty as being a quick, once-for-all operation. I’m not so sure. I would imagine it took years, if not a lifetime, to really own the sense that the poor, the mourning, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness really are the ones who are blessed. I imagine it must have stung over and over for the most famous saints when they were persecuted for righteousness sake, when they were reviled and lied about and murdered. I bet some saints even thought rather sinful thoughts about their revilers; I wouldn’t have put it past Columba. But a saint is not exactly someone who never sins; a saint is a sinner who keeps trying. And today, we honor, praise and thank God for those women and men who kept trying; sinners of God’s own redeeming who tried, failed, and tried again, over and over, so by grace that the kingdom could gain and keep a foothold on Earth.

I want to finish by adding a question, and that is: what are these same saints thinking about us, now? I mean the obvious questions like, what do those pacifistic saints who gave their lives for peace, what do they think of the wars going on right now? But I also mean that we should ask, what do the saints think about the good things you and I done recently? What did St Francis think when you, in some minor way, cast off the weight of privilege that would have allowed you to sleep in, and instead got up and served the poor and the needy that St Francis knew so well? The female saints who have struggled against sexism in various ways: what have they thought about your struggles at the workplace, in your home, in your education? One thing we know is that, although they rejoice with God in our best moments, they’re not scandalized by the fact that there are bad moments, too. They’ve shared both the good and the bad in their own ways, too. They do deserve our thanks because they kept trying and trying, until (as Richard Strutt wrote,) “in the morning of life, and at noon, and at even, God called the saints away from their worship below; but not till his love, at the font and the altar, had girt them with grace for the way they should go. These stones that have echoed their praises are holy, and dear is the ground where their feet have once trod, yet here they confessed they were strangers and pilgrims” – right here – “and still they were seeking the city of God.”

Preached by the Rev. Paul Francke on 1 November, 2007 

The English rock band Radiohead, having grown tired of the “decaying business model” of record labels that produce and distribute recordings, recently decided to produce and distribute their own album, cutting out the label altogether.  

There are two ways to obtain their latest work, which is titled “In Rainbows,” both of which must be accomplished on the band’s website.  You can order a “discbox” comprising two discs, two vinyl albums, and a booklet for £40 (around $82); this will be shipped to you on or before December 3rd.  Or, you can order a digital download that includes most (but not all) of the songs from the discbox, in a slightly lower fidelity of recording.

If you choose to order the digital download, a few clicks of the mouse on your computer eventually takes you to the checkout page.  On that page, where the price should be there are just blank spaces to be filled in by you, the consumer.  A question-mark stands helpfully beside these blank spaces.   Click on the question-mark, and the following message appears: “It’s up to you.”  Since you are now a little confused, there is another question mark immediately below that one.  Click on the second question mark, and you are reassured: “No really, it’s up to you.”

A writer in the New York Times recently reported that when he bought the download he paid absolutely nothing for it, which is, by some accounts, what about a third of the first million or so of Radiohead’s downloading fans have done.  Some others have paid as much as $20.  The average price seems to be about $8.  But you can, of course, get it for free.

Jonny Greenwood, one of the band members said of this experiment, “It’s fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, that’s just an interesting question to ask people.”

It has been some time since any of our Sunday readings mentioned money, and certainly it’s been some time since the topic was raised from this pulpit.  I was so relieved to find Zacchaeus bring the subject up in today’s Gospel reading.  Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and Saint Luke tells us he was rich.  For whatever reasons, he was eager to meet Jesus.  One suspects he did not know what was in store for him.  Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house.

What happened inside that house we don’t know.  Did Zacchaeus break down and confess his sins?  Did he decide he needed to assuage some guilt?  Did he receive an anointing of the Holy Spirit?  Have a vision?  Did Jesus tell him a secret?  Twist his arm?  Or did Jesus just “make the ask,” as they say these days?

Whatever it was, by the time Jesus was done with him, Zacchaeus was proudly announcing that he was giving half his fortune away to the poor.  Half of everything he had!  That Jesus sure does know how to make the ask!  Whatever it was that happened to Zacchaeus, we know what it was worth to him: half of what he had… which is no small number for a rich guy.

So, now, here we are.  In a week’s time each and every one of us (and a number of us who aren’t here today) will be given a card with some blank spaces on them, where numbers are meant to go: indications of your financial support for the work of the Gospel in this church.

And there are a lot of different ways we could phrase the question to try to help one another choose the numbers we are going to put there.  It could be interesting to ask, like Radiohead, what the music’s worth.  It would be interesting to think about what these buildings are worth, or the gardens; what a Bible Study session is worth, or a morning at the Soup Bowl.  It could be interesting to try to calculate what the friendship and love of a community like this is worth, or what a prayer is worth, or a sermon.

And it might be interesting to try to calculate what it’s worth to be in the presence of the living Christ, who joins us here whenever we gather in his Name.  It might be interesting to figure what it’s worth – whatever it is that happens when you are alone with Jesus, when you feel his presence in your life, when you rely on his love, his strength, his mercy, his friendship.  Do we even know what it is that happens to one another when we are inside this house with Jesus?  And could we ever say, really what it’s worth?  Half of everything I have?

It is one of the most remarkable aspects of our relationship with Jesus: though he has given us everything we have, and though he gave his life for us, he never really makes “the ask.” Because we can, of course, have everything from Jesus for free.

If this parish really is what we try to be: a place where Jesus’ love is made known in his blessed Sacraments, and in and through one another, then it seems fair to phrase the question this way: What is the love of Jesus worth to us?  What’s it worth?

And isn’t it amazing that in the face of such a complicated and multi-faceted question – that surely means something different to each and every one of us – the answer is so simple:

It’s up to you.

No really.  It’s up to you.


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 November 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia