Saint Mark's Church

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while…  and I will shake all nations.  (Haggai 2:6-7)


Late in the 6th century, BC, the Persian king Cyrus allowed exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem to begin to rebuild the temple: the center of Jewish faith and religion that had been destroyed earlier that century.  Cyrus had defeated the Babylonians, who had driven the Jews out of their homeland.  And the prophet Haggai did much to enable the building project on the return to Jerusalem.  He proclaimed that “the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,” which is another way of saying that when it comes to the greatness of God, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Throughout the ages the nations had surely been shaken.  The rise of Persian rule came only at the conquest of a powerful Babylonian empire.  And the shaking of the nations would continue for centuries as Alexander the Great brought Greek hegemony to the region, eventually to be followed Roman rule in Jesus’ day.

But all that shaking of the nations was the doing of kings and princes, armies and soldiers.  We could debate what, if anything God had to do with it.

When his own chosen and beloved children were brought home, however, God promised, through his prophet, to shake all nations: not to establish a new world order, but to build and furnish his own temple, so that “the treasures of all nations shall come in;” to make sure that people knew that “the silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.”  It is a divine shakedown with a singular purpose: that God might be glorified.

The temple was, in fact, rebuilt under Cyrus’ rule, though perhaps not with quite the lavishness that Haggai predicted.  Nevertheless, it stood as the center of Jewish faith for 500 years.

In our own day, we are witnesses to the nations literally shaking all around us.  Many of you in the Troop can attest to this personally from your service in Bosnia and Iraq.  You know, better than I, what it means – on the ground – when the nations are shaken.

And once again, as you know well, this shaking of the nations comes at the hands of princes and kings, and presidents, of terrorists, militias, and armies.  Does it matter what the cause of the shaking of the nations is, when you are shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and you can only pray for it to stop?

Next month, you’ll begin your training for your deployment on the Sinai Peninsula.  Your job, as I understand it, is related directly to the shaking of the nations: to preserve and ensure the peace between Egypt and Israel: a watchful presence in a tremulous region prone to quakes that are begun on the ground not by seismic movement but by princes, kings, presidents, armies, militias and terrorists.  There are enough of all of them to go around, are there not?

But you will be there on the Sinai Peninsula to guard the peace in a shaky region.  Your mission is part and parcel of a project to prevent the shaking of the nations by princes, kings, presidents, armies, terrorists and militias.  Because only God has the right to shake all nations, and God only does so for the sake of his own glory: so that the latter splendor of his house should be greater than the former.

And though you may never place a stone on a stone, though you may never, in the course of your duty, carry a brick from here to there, though you may never wield a hammer or a saw, in your watchful mission you are given the opportunity to be builders, with God, of a lasting peace.  

The history of the ages has been a history of mankind’s ever increasing power, and the ages of man are marked by the material we use for our tools and our weapons, as we have gotten more and more adept at shaking the nations around us.

But the shaking of the nations is, in fact, the prerogative of God, which he undertakes for his own glory, because the silver is his and the gold is his, indeed so is the water, the iron ore, the dirt of the hillsides and the sheep that graze there.  He made the olive trees and the sandy beaches, the shade comes from palm trees that are his, and the dates get their sweetness from his sublime sweetness.  The salt and the spices are his.  Fire was first lit by his hand.  Cotton and aloe, cactus and fruit trees are all his.  Even the oil is his.

As you prepare to stand on the threshold of the Holy Land, which is shaky ground, may you do so with God’s blessing.  May you ever remember that all things come from the hand of the God who made you, who loves you, who guides and protects you.  And may your mission be one of the lasting stones that build up a temple of God’s peace in the world, to finally bring an end to all this shaking!


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
At Evensong for the Blessing of the First City Troop
28 October 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

As I understand it, the financial crisis brought about by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage business is the result of lending institutions giving loans to borrowers who were not really qualified for them: that is, “sub-prime” borrowers.  People with bad credit histories are more likely to fail to make their mortgage payments.

And, if I have this right, mortgages these days are sold in bundles, like baseball cards used to be, to collectors, or, rather, to investment banks.  And interest rates climbed.   And, as far as I can tell, when shareholders of investment banks began to realize that they held investments that comprised a lot of mortgages that may not get paid, this made them nervous.  And the walls, as they say, come tumbling down.  

And it all started because lenders made risky loans to people who were not really going to be able to afford them: sub-prime lending to sub-prime borrowers.

Because our lives so often seem to be governed by economics, we tend to think of God in economic terms, to imagine that his is the invisible hand that guides all the various markets of our lives.  Without realizing it, we can fall into the habit of thinking of God as some great, big, mysterious economic force out in the universe, like Warren Buffet or China (both almost as mysterious and unknown to us as God).  

But in God’s case, he handles more than just money.  He deals in what the Scriptures used to call “weal and woe,” he deals with forest fires and hurricanes, with sickness and health, with husbands, wives and lovers, God manages the economy of life and death.  He is the great central banker in the sky.  Or so it is easy for us to conceive of him.

That is how the children of Israel are thinking about God, when we hear the prophet Jeremiah portray them pleading to him for rain to bring end to a drought, as we did in the first reading this morning. “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain?  Or can the heavens give showers?  Art thou not he, O Lord our God?  We set our hope on thee, for thou doest all these things.”  Their pleading amounts to their loan application.  They are deeply concerned that they are sub-prime borrowers.  And they are right.  They have defaulted on the gifts of God’s grace before, and they will do it again.

And when we get to the Gospel passage this morning, we also encounter an unusual kind of economy.  A Pharisee, who has been meticulous in his observance of the Jewish law, is offering his prayer to God.  He knows that his credit is good.  He approaches God confident in his own grade-A, prime righteousness.  He is grateful not only for his own sake, but by contrast (as he looks around) to the unsavory tax-collector he sees nearby.  For the tax-collector, as anyone could see, is sub-prime: his credit is bad, he does not keep the law fastidiously, his righteousness is beneath questionable.  We need not wonder how the invisible hand of an economic God would distribute justification.  The Pharisee is on solid ground here.

But, as is often the case, Jesus sees things differently.  The tax-collector, Jesus tells us, will not even lift up his eyes to heaven – Jesus tells us it’s not for shame, but out of humility.  The tax-collector beats his breast and prays, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

God, be merciful to me a sinner.  Sub-prime.  Bad credit.  Not worth the risk.  That’s our tax-collector.  He sees himself in much the same way the Pharisee sees him: sub-prime.

And a God who cared anything at all about economics wouldn’t take the risk.  A God whose invisible hand awarded weal and woe on the basis of merit – from some kind of spiritual credit rating – would know just what to do with a sinner like this.  A systematic God, who knew at least as much as your average Wharton graduate, would pay out predictable dividends to these two men who stand praying in the temple.  

But the living God, who made the whole universe, does not manage his creation with skills honed in business school.  God embraces the sinner.  The Son of God seeks out those in need, the weak and the faltering.  He exalts the humble and meek.  He fills the hungry.  The first will be last.  And the dead shall be raised to new life.  The economics of God operate more like sub-prime lending: God shows a preference for those who have less, whose credit is poor; he embraces the doubtful, the wretched, the lost, the sick, the struggling, the outcast, the notorious sinner.

The Pharisee knew well the economy of the law.  He was right – on his own terms – to be pleased with himself.  But Jesus teaches us over and over again that God is not like us.  And on God’s terms there are good investments to be found among the sub-prime: in those of us who at best can beat our breast and plead for mercy.

To many people – especially to those who are well pleased with themselves – this divine economy sounds like at least as bad an idea as sub-prime mortgage lending.  To this way of thinking, God is a domineering master who delights in the groveling of his servants.  And I suppose to the self-satisfied it is very hard to hear good news in this Gospel.

But to those who look into their own lives and see shortcomings, disappointment, failures, missed opportunities, unhappy relationships, and a world that is in a shambles at the hands of the self-satisfied; to those who have looked inside their own selves and seen the promise of God’s likeness graven on our souls, but come to the painful conclusion that we have failed to shape our lives by that godly image; to us it is good news indeed that God sees hope where we would give up, that God never labels anyone sub-prime, and that for the humble, there is a promise of exaltation.

Sadly, there is great confusion in the church today about all this.  Too many church leaders are perfectly prepared to look around at others – especially at women and at gay and lesbian people – and say to God, “ I thank thee that I am not like those others.”  On their own terms – terms tied to what I would call a narrow, misguided, and legalistic reading of Scripture – they are satisfied with their righteousness.

But the Scriptures are not printed in columns because they are meant to represent the ledger-book of an economically rationalist God.  And Saint Luke specifically tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.”

Here in this place, we have been bundled together by God’s grace.  He has much invested in us, who have been made in his own image.  And God doesn’t call us to be self-satisfied.  God isn’t bothered by all that we see in ourselves or one another that looks sub-prime.  God doesn’t manage his creation like an investment bank.  

God hears us when we pray; he knows that we are sinners, who rely upon his mercy.  He knows that our application is weak, our credit is bad, that the risk in giving anything at all to us is steep.  And he loves us anyway.  And he exalts the humble and meek!

And what can we say in the face of this wondrous economy of God’s but to pray: God, be merciful to us sinners, be merciful to us sinners.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
28 October 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Preached by Dcn. Paul Francke

“Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Even so, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (St Luke)

One of the many rivers in this country still called by its Native American name is a river called Kanawha, the meaning of which has been lost. There’s a certain city that rises from the north bank of the Kanawha, flanked by a large capitol building not unlike the national Capital. Staring at the capitol across on the opposite banks of the Kanawha, stand four or five quiet, forested hills: ancient hills, which were once mountains. Pig farmers settled there first, people who weren’t able to settle any closer to the city because of the nature of their work. Later, after the First World War there came professional families who found they could nestle themselves in those hills and feel comfortably distant from the city across the river below, even though the city itself is pretty quiet to begin with. On the very top of one of those hills across the river from the city, there is a tall Depression-era house, uphill even from the nearest street, which is pretty slow compared with Locust Street. The house has an angular, slate roofline, white painted brick walls, and windows hidden and hushed by tall vines. The whole reason the house was built there is so that it would be quiet. And it is, quiet, now. It’s been even quieter since I moved away from it, alleviating it of my songwriting, which once meant lots of prepubescent wailing, painfully and unintentionally off key, about things I did not understand as a 9 year old – things like love, lost love, and England.

That house which was built to be quiet was indeed very, very quiet one night, two years after I’d left for college, when my Mom was awakened by a caller asking  “Are you the parent of Paul Francke?” Mom soon learned that, 500 miles away in a very unquiet city of 3 million people, I had had a grand-mal seizure on the floor of an E.R. waiting room, and that it took 3 large orderlies to hold me down, after which I went into a coma. My parents were not told why, or what were my chances, because no one knew. It was a good thing for me, during the days I spent in that coma, that we do not need to cry out to God day and night for God to keep our souls in life.

I didn’t even believe in God at the time, let alone could I have been the agitating gadfly to him that the widow was to the unrighteous judge (St Luke 18:1-8a). It was a good thing for me that God is not like the unjust judge, and does not need to be annoyed into action. Nothing would have been less compelling to the unrighteous judge than if the righteous widow suddenly fell silent, comatose, unable to plead her case. (The analogy doesn’t completely hold because I wasn’t any more ‘righteous’ than average at that time in my life, but I was a decent runner, and I was suffering from hyponatremia, an electrolyte imbalance that sometimes happens to marathon runners. That’s what had put me in the coma.) Had God been like the unrighteous judge, he would have forgotten about me as soon as he’d gotten his hands on the morning paper.

It’s a good thing God is not like that (not least because ‘he’ is only mystically a ‘he’ or ‘she,’ with no actual ‘big hands’ to read the morning paper), because, that means God’s people aren’t called to be fickle and careless with each other, either. Our Gospel story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge is prefaced by an editorial comment not found in the more ancient telling of this story, in Mark. Luke takes the earlier story, but starts it off with these new words: “And Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” For sure, we ought always to pray and not lose heart, but I wonder if that editorial comment really takes in Jesus’ strong words at the end of this parable, the words which our lectionary cuts off: “Even so, will the Son of Man find faith on the Earth?”

Jesus tells what the unrighteous Judge is like, and says metaphorically that God will be even quicker to care for his people than the unjust Judge is to vindicate the widow, because God’s people also cry to God day and night. But even though we do pray day and night, Jesus asks: will the Son of Man find faith on the Earth? For all our words, is there faith? For all our crying, is there trust? Not necessarily, he suggests, and he continues to suggest this in other parables.

We ought indeed to pray day and night when those prayers have meaning. We’ve got to declare injustice, like the widow. We’ve got to locate the ways that we and others and especially those in authority fall short of truth and love, and we must be as persistent as the widow in pushing them to change their ways. But although that is how we bring about change in ourselves and in the world, that’s not, thankfully, what we need to do to reassure ourselves that we’re loved, when our relationships are at their best – and I say that because there is a faint implication in this story, especially given the way Luke changes it from the more ancient version, that says God might just require our constant crying in order to take care of us. But that would not be true, because God, of course, is greater than the unjust judge.

When my parents rushed 500 miles to my side the night that I fell into a coma, I can assure you it wasn’t because I was persistent in prodding them to notice me; they came to my side because they loved me. When you and I are too weak, too forgetful, even too lost in joy to cry out consciously to God, God is already there with us, already watching us, already gracing us with his regard for us. And it’s a good thing that we can have a similarly implicit, time-warn trust in each other.

We get into really shaky, Jerry Springer territory whenever our relationships become crowded with cries to be noticed, real or figurative cries that say, “look, look - don’t forget about me.” When those cries start to underlie our conversations Jesus indeed has cause to question our faith: not just our faith in God, but our faith in ourselves and our partners and friends as we bear the image of God. Though you cry out day and night, Jesus asks in Luke, even so, will the Son of Man find faith on the Earth? It’s usually when we have the least trust in someone else that we cry out to them for a reminder of how they feel about us. I’m not saying DTRs haven’t saved my life, just that if they happen every other week, and if we’re suggesting them in passive aggressive ways, something’s up. On the better side of things, it’s possible over time to develop instincts which allow us to trust, to have faith, to know pretty well what someone else thinks of us. When we and another person have known each other for awhile, we begin to be able to trust our instincts, and to lie down to sleep with relative certainty that that person’s feelings for us aren’t going away over night.

That certainty is waiting to be renewed with each other and with God. A quiet trust lies beyond the irritating regularity of the sqeaky wheel asking for grease, beyond the noisy gong and the clanging symbol which have not love, beyond an endlessly rebellious child’s silence which cries its own cry day and night – beyond all that crying, there is a calm, to which Jesus points. There’s a point when we’ve been through enough ups and downs, enough failures, embarrassments, half-victories and grey areas to be able to say: this man has his flaws as I do, this child and I have our sore points, but even so, when I start to worry about them I can be still and know that this is my spouse, this is my child, this is my church, and especially, if nothing else, this is my God. They love me, they’re here for me, and I don’t have to cry out day and night to be reminded. (And if I do want them to remind me, I’m pretty sure they’ll always be happy to.)

We’re not always at that point of calm in our relationships, of course. We go through phases where almost none of our relationships have that implicit trust, that faith which is as well founded as we can humanly discern. That place of quiet trust isn’t where we always find ourselves, but, the Gospel tells us, it’s a place we can always aim for, a reality we can enter, at least with some people.

We get there, paradoxically, through words that can sometimes be painful – not painful out of hate, but painful sometimes out of embarrassment, out of vulnerability, awkwardness, and healthy admissions of anger. We get to that place especially with the people we’ve known longest by saying we’re sorry, so that we can be forgiven. We get there through the determination to broach touchy subjects, so we can learn the hard, stark facts, so that in turn we can forgive what we need to forgive in others. We get to that implicit trust by knowing when silence is being used as an aggressive tool on one hand, or on the other hand, knowing when silence is good: when it is truer and subtler than words.

So it would seem good to ask ourselves from time to time: when I cry out to my friend, to my family, to my God, what’s behind that cry? What’s underneath it? Am I asking for what I really want, and this thing that I want, is it good? In other words, am I coming to prayer to return to God, to bring my thoughts, needs, hopes for the world and thanksgivings before God, to witness myself being re-consecrated to God? Or am I coming to prayer because I’m afraid there’s no other way God will remember me? Am I yelling at my partner because I’m afraid there’s no other way he or she’ll remember me? What’s behind my words when I ‘cry out’ to other people, to appropriate Gospel language for something we do all the time, in various ways? What is my silence crying? Why has it been so long since I called my family? What’s behind that? ‘Did my kids really deserve that lecture I just gave them, or is there something in my life that I’m taking out on them?’, you might ask. What am I really trying to say?

What we should be trying to say is what the psalmist believes God can say to him, in the 139th psalm. With our children, our partner, or closest friends, there can be a closeness that admits of saying to them: ‘I know you. I know how you act; I know pretty well how you think. I’ve seen you doing what it is you love, what it is you do best, I’ve seen your ridiculous sense of humor, and I love seeing you at it. Sometimes, I know you well enough that I can guess what you’re going to say before you say it. I want to guard and protect you, and I want to give you a shoulder when you need to be comforted. There are some things you know that I don’t, and that’s okay.’

And of course we should be prone to say such things to our children, our partner, our friends, our fellow parishioners, those who disagree with us, or even strangers, because we do have a God who says those things to us. And even more than this, we have a God who says: ‘If you ascend to heaven, I am there; if you make the grave your bed, I am there also; you have my body, you have my blood; no matter where you go, no matter what you say. I made your bones and filled you with my Spirit, in which you can be still and know that I am God, even when you can no longer pray.’  

Re-kindle the gift of God that is in you. (2 Tim 1:6)


There seems to be something of a fascination these days with wilderness survival.  Books on the topic are nothing new.  But we also have several cable television shows that chronicle a lone man’s survival in the face of harsh conditions, week by week.  And a new survival film has gotten positive reviews and a lot of attention.  Most of us will never find ourselves needing to survive in the wilds of Alaska or the jungles of South America or the Australian outback.  But it is good entertainment to watch someone else try to do it!

In all these entertainment outlets, we are reminded that the top three priorities of survival must include fire, water and shelter.  Each of these necessities brings its own challenges to the survivor, but fire seems to be at the top of the list.  On the survival shows I’ve watched, I have seen fires started by rubbing two sticks together, with a handy pocket flint, by hot-wiring the battery of a downed airplane, and with the assistance of a Fritos corn chip.  I have observed embers carried in a coconut shell, wrapped in banana leaves, and shielded in a coffee can.

Fire is important to life on this earth.  The TV survivors have some cool ways to collect water, and they have constructed some pretty creative shelters.  But nothing is as exciting, or as gratifying, as that puff of smoke, that little burst of orange flame, as a spark catches some kindling, and a fire gets going.  (It’s enough to make you want to sing a campfire song!)

In his second letter to Timothy, Saint Paul includes this wonderful instruction to “re-kindle the gift of God that is in you,” which we can easily dismiss as a campfire song, or a Hallmark moment if we don’t stop to think about the implications of it.  Just as it has become easy for us to take for granted the ready availability of fire – at the turn of a knob, the flick of a finger – are we ready to take for granted the gift of God that is in each one of us?  And have we really bothered to notice that the gift is there?

And is it possible that Paul’s instruction is not just a nice thought, nicely put; perhaps he really is trying to teach Timothy something of a survival technique.  Maybe, just maybe, the gift of God that is in you and me is at least as important to life on this earth as a flame of fire.  Maybe even more so.  Re-kindle that gift of God; kindle the gift of God.

The word “kindle” is a lovely word, really. In addition to it’s obvious definition, “to start a fire,” it also means “excite, stir up, rouse, inflame or light up.”  Unexpectedly, the word can also mean “to give birth to young, especially rabbits.”  And as a noun it can be used to signify a brood or litter of animals, especially, for some reason, kittens: a kindle of kittens.  And of course it is the root from which the word “kindling” is derived: the dry, light, combustible stuff our survivors always need to start their fires: the grass or twigs or tree-bark that are ready to catch that spark and burst out into flame – to be kindled into something more, something vital to life on this earth.

The instruction to kindle the gift of God that is within you sounds to me something like a corrective to the question we hear the apostles ask in the Gospel this morning, though it doesn’t much sound like a question.  “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’”  And we might readily identify with this desire.

We see trouble all around us in the world.  Warfare rages in locations too numerous to count, the church continues to be fractious and conflicted, in our own lives we have relationships that falter, hopes that get dashed, dreams that seem too foolish to utter, expectations that are never met, diagnoses that are slow in coming and devastating when they arrive, treatments that don’t work, credit that runs out, families that disappoint, destinations that are never reached, projects that never get off the ground, romances that cool off, pets that must be put down, justice that is denied, young lives that are snuffed out, tumors that take over, gunfire that won’t stop, tests that are failed, successes that are un-appreciated, mortgages that default, and faith…

…faith that won’t grow, that doesn’t work miracles, hasn’t healed my ankle yet, didn’t change your life, hasn’t made us whole, and so far as I can tell has never yet moved a mountain, let alone a mulberry bush.

Do you notice what an unkind response Jesus gives to the apostles when they shout out at him, “Increase our faith!”?  “Pish-posh,” says Jesus.  “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed….” You know how it goes.  Increase your faith, indeed.  Like that’s the problem!

Try this: re-kindle the gift of God that is in you.  Kindle the gift of God.

Do you see how all around us religious figures have turned that question of the apostles into a command?  Increase your faith!  And many of us think it’s a command we should try to follow; many of us think it’s the key to life in this world and the next.  It is a failure of faith, this reasoning goes, that prevents us from getting where we need to go.  It is our insufficient, broken or compromised faith that needs to be strengthened, defended or restored in order to find favor with God.

Increase your faith! is the message the proudly conservative voices want to demand of gay and lesbian Christians in the Anglican church.

Increase your faith! is the law enforced by the thuggish Taliban on their own wearied brothers and sisters in faith.

Increase your faith! is the cry of countless souls racked with guilt that was planted there, quite often, by priests who must have confused a guilty conscience with a mustard seed.

INCREASE YOUR FAITH!


Pish-posh, says Jesus.  However you imagine you can increase your faith, it is nothing more than doing your duty: caring for those in need, worshiping the living God, saying your prayers, abiding by the rules.  At the end of the day, what have you done, but what the master requires of his servants?  Increase your faith?

Try this: re-kindle the gift of God that is in you.

Do we really need to increase our faith (which is a gift anyway), or to ask Jesus to do it for us?  Pish-posh!  We need to kindle the gift of God that is already in us.  Why have stowed our lamps under bushels?  Did we think they had gone out?

You and I are fires waiting to burn.  And the question comes to us this morning: when will these fires be kindled?  War that has taken our children from us – or at least a good many of their limbs – has not kindled the flames; a fair measure of chaos in the world, terror, lies, conflict, willful destruction of the planet… none of this has ignited us.  Why do our fires burn so dimly?

Kindle the gift of God that is in you!

God calls his people together for many reasons (that’s why we are here today, you know, because God has called us together here).  And one very important reason is to encourage us to re-kindle the gift of God that is within us.  Because in a world that in many places, for many people is cold and dark, and where it can be a struggle just to survive, we are God’s kindling: that combustible stuff that is ready to burst into bright, hot flame.  

If there is to be peace in the world, if there is to be hope, if there is to be love – the fruits of God’s gifts - we will have to kindle these gifts of God in our hearts.

And will we become God’s kindling?  Will we burn with the desire for peace, for hope, for love?  It’s like we are waiting for God to light a fire, and we would be very happy to stand around it and bask in its glow, its warmth, its power.  

But the gift of God is already in you and in me.  Like accidental survivors we are carrying embers of God’s peace and love and hope, we are carrying the gift, given to us already.  God has already lit the fire, when he formed each one of us with his own hand.  Who is going to re-kindle the gift if we won’t?!

The instruction to kindle the gift of God that is within you is not a call to action; it is a revelation of our identity.  It reminds us that faith is a gift, not a commodity.  And it is a way to survive in this world, a way to live without having to spend our lives shivering, huddled in the dark.  Re-kindling the gift of God is an injunction to claim power: the power of peace, of hope, and of love that God has given is.  It reminds us that God did not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice – though these days to look at Christians, you couldn’t be too sure.

God gave us a spirit of power and of love and of self-control.  You and I are carrying these embers with us – not in a coconut shell or wrapped in a banana leaf.  Maybe we don’t know where to find them, maybe we thought they had been lost, gone out, fizzled.  Maybe we didn’t realize they would be so important to life on this earth – these embers of God’s gift.  Maybe we thought we could survive without them.

And maybe we can.  But it seems awfully cold and dark in the world when we try it on our own, without the fire of God.

That fire burns in you and me, waiting to be re-started, stirred up, roused, inflamed, lit up.  It is a fire ready to give birth – not to a brood of rabbits or a kindle of kittens – but to the possibilities of peace and hope and love in our lives and in this world.

It is a fire that you and I are carrying somewhere deep inside.  It can change your life and mine; it can change the world (it has done it before).  But it must be re-kindled.  

And when that gift of God is kindled we will discover that up until now we have only just barely been surviving, but with the gift of God burning brightly, we can finally live!


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
7 October 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called….  (1 Timothy 6:12)


Seven years ago, the wonderful Indian writer, Amitav Ghosh, published a novel that tells, in a way, the story of Burma from the collapse of its monarchy at the hands of the British Empire in 1885, through the exploitation of its many natural resources, through the independence movement that followed World War II, to the coup d’etat that established the current line of military rule.

The British had known that Burma was not only strategic, it was a land of wealth.  The nation has been a leading producer worldwide of rice and teak; it has significant amounts of oil and natural gas, as well as other valuable minerals; the population is well-educated.  Yet, by 1987 (25 years into the rule of its military leaders) Burma was designated a least-developed nation by the United Nations, and most of its population remains poor.

You surely know that for some weeks now, Burma has been boiling over with anti-government protests, spurred-on, in part, because of a steep rise in the price of fuel that translated into bus fares that doubled over-night.  The footage – over the past week or ten days – of the columns of Buddhist monks walking through the streets of Rangoon or Mandalay, surrounded by the poor, ordinary people of Burma, has had me transfixed.  Sometimes the processions seem almost silent.  Sometimes there is singing, sometimes the chanting of slogans.  Sometimes the people join hands in a protective barrier as they walk or jog alongside the human river of shaved heads and maroon robes and sandaled feet.

At least some of those processions were headed through the streets of Rangoon to the guarded home of Aung San Suu Kyi, which has been her prison for a dozen years or more, and where she is to be found in the final paragraph of Amitav Ghosh’s book.  

Ghosh writes this:  “She has already succeeded….  She has torn the masks from the generals’ faces….  She haunts them unceasingly, every moment…  She has robbed them of words, of discourse.    They have no defense against her….  The truth is they’ve lost and they know this….  Soon they will have nowhere to hide…. It is just a matter of time before they are made to answer for all that they have done.”

It is just a matter of time before they are made to answer for all that they have done. This was also the case for the rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day, about whom we heard in the Gospel this morning.  It was just a matter of time.

At his gate – at his own gate! – lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.  We are meant to understand that despite this desire and his proximity, Lazarus got no crumbs.  It seems unlikely that he got more than a glance – and that a disgusted one, as the dogs licked his sores.  But it was just a matter of time, just a matter of time.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom in heaven.  And the rich man died and finds himself in hot, hot water.  It was just a matter of time. “Father Abraham!” he cries out, “Have mercy on me, have mercy on me!”  But you know how the story goes: it had just been a matter of time, after all, before he was made to answer for all he had done… or failed to do.

Abraham calls back down to the once rich man:  “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.  And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.”  It was just a matter of time.

I don’t really know what to make of this worrisome  teaching about the permanence of our fate in the life to come.  It requires either knowledge or wisdom that has not been given to me.  But this much seems clear: that the chasm between heaven and hell is not yet fixed in this life here on earth; between the rich man and Lazarus there were only steps – only inches – to be crossed.  The distance between hope and despair is miniscule.  What a difference it makes if those of us who can, will take those steps.  And if we don’t, is it just a matter of time?

The point of this parable is not to teach us something true about the afterlife; rather it is to teach us something true about this life: that how we live it matters.  The point is to “take hold” in the words from the Epistle today, to “take hold of the eternal life to which you were called,” which, apparently, is something we do in this life.  Apparently it’s something we do outside these doors, beyond those garden gates, on those streets.

Does it help to think about someplace far away?  As we sit with bated breath to find out if the other shoe will drop in Burma, do we think it’s true that it’s only a matter of time?  Will those generals be made to answer for all they have done?  Which side would we want to be on?  Is the promise of eternal life as easy as that?  Is it as easy as choosing to link arms as the monks take up their march?  

Or does it help to think about someplace closer to home?

There is a place I like to go for lunch on Walnut Street – on the other side of Broad.  I can usually be found heading there once a week or so.  And I know that in almost any weather, in the doorway of a building on the northwest corner of Walnut and Juniper Streets, I will encounter one of the many Lazaruses that inhabit this city.  He is poor, I know that.  He goes to a shelter at night, I know that.  And he will walk and talk with me for blocks at a time, I know that.   I have never seen him drunk or high.  I believe he has had a hard life.  And he is vigilant.  He always sees me coming – whether or not I am wearing a clerical collar.  He does not ask me for money, but I know that it is what’s wanted, and what’s needed.  I give him some, but it never comes close to the amount I am about to spend on lunch.

And I know precisely how to avoid him.  All I have to do is walk up Locust Street and then turn left on 13th to join Walnut there.  All I have to do is plan out my steps and I can avoid him so easily.  All I have to do is choose my route a little carefully.

I believe, however, that in some way God has planted that man in the middle of a path between me and my lunch.  It is a path that I can so easily avoid – by fixing just a small chasm of space between him and me in this city: just one block!  Then I could go on to my lunch and have thoughtful, concerned conversations about the situation in Burma.  In which case I’d have avoided doing anything about the situation far away or the person close at hand.

Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.  Like everything we have in this world, the possibility of eternal blessing with God is a gift given by his loving hand, poured out with the blood of his Son.  And it is ours for the taking.  It has been so since the beginning, when the gift was planted in a garden.  The Scriptures remind us that we generally prefer to reach for death than for life.  We like the risk.  We can’t stand not knowing what its fruit tastes like.  We reach for it because we can; it is close at hand.  It’s a bad habit of ours: reaching for death rather than life.  But the distance between hope and despair is miniscule… if only those of us who can, will take the steps, before the earth moves under our feet and we find a great chasm yawning between us.  It might just be a matter of time.

I read Amitov Ghosh’s book about Burma, The Glass Palace, five or six years ago and then promptly forgot about that far-away place or its people.  So it was a little shocking to find myself so moved by their recent struggle for justice, for freedom, for life.  It was shocking to be reminded that in this global village of ours the distance between hope and despair really is so often miniscule, just as it is closer to home.

And I was surprised to read in that final paragraph of the novel what amounts to a kind of statement of faith, placed in Aung San Suu Kyi: she has already succeeded; it is already done; victory has already been won, even if you cannot yet see it, and it is just a matter of time, just a matter of time.

This is surprisingly similar to the way we speak of our faith in the triumph of Jesus over the powers of death.  He has already succeeded; it is already done; victory has already been won, even if you cannot yet see it, and it is just a matter of time, just a matter of time.

But how we make use of that time does matter.  Whether or not we reach out to take hold of the eternal life to which we have been called does matter.  The gift of life is a gift that God has been cultivating for us from the very beginning.  But we have preferred to reach for death.  And it may just be a matter of time.

Or it may be as simple as linking arms around a long line of Buddhist monks, as simple as unlocking the gates to a house somewhere in the streets of Rangoon – what could be simpler?

Or it may be as simple as choosing to walk past that northwest corner of Thirteenth and Juniper, whether I feel like it or not.  And as I stand there talking with my Lazarus, is it fanciful of me to imagine that the earth threatens to move under my feet?  Is there a great chasm about to yawn open between us?  And what side of it will I be on?  Is it just a matter of time?

And wouldn’t it be better to take what steps I can – while I am able – to cross that meager distance between me and him, which looks a lot like the miniscule distance between hope and despair?

Take hold, my brothers and sisters, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.  Take hold!  It may be just a matter of time.  But as it was in the beginning it surely is now: the gift of life is ours for the taking, already won for us, once and for all.  But the ride from here to eternity is sure to be a bumpy one – and who knows how long it will last?!  Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and don’t let go!


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
30 September 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia