Sermonshttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/en-US2008-08-07T20:18:32ZSquarespace Site Server v5.0.0 (http://www.squarespace.com/)Entouragehttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/8/3/entourage.htmlSean Mullen2008-08-03T18:25:38Z
But chances are, you have missed, most of your life, the other miracle described in this story.  Do you see a second miracle in the feeding of the 5,000?  Did anyone ever tell you there was a second miracle, and that the second one may be more important than the first – more important than sending 5,000 happy campers home with bread and fish in their bellies.

Let me tell you the other miracle.

For some time before today’s episode, Jesus has been leading his disciples around teaching them.  He gave them instructions for carrying out missionary work, but Matthew does not report that Jesus ever sends them out to do anything.  He has been telling them parables about the kingdom of God, and they have been listening.  He has given seminars on faith, and they have been listening – or trying to anyway.  He has been healing people, casting out demons, and they have been watching, maybe taking notes.

Jesus has been doing a lot.  And the disciples have been watching, listening, staying close at hand, and doing very little.  It’s alright – he hasn’t asked them to do much but be a good audience, shout A-men at the appropriate time, etc.  He has been their shepherd, and they have been excellent sheep: falling in line, and following where he calls them.

In the 14th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the disciples continue to follow along.  They get into a boat with him to go to a quiet place.  But a crowd has got wind of his arrival and there is no quiet to be had.  Matthew tells us that Jesus did his thing – he healed the sick.  What did the disciples do?  Watch, maybe.  Crowd control, perhaps.  Grumble among themselves that just when they thought they were going to get some face time with him, he does what he always did: goes to the crowd, and wows them.

So it is no surprise that as evening falls the disciples try to wrestle him back for themselves.   “The day is over,” they say.  “Everyone is hungry and tired.  Tell the crowd to get out of here and go get food for themselves.”  They are his posse, his entourage, they’d like to enjoy it a little.  The disciples are jealous for Jesus’ time.  They want to wallow in his attention, lavished just on them.  They want to enjoy the end-of-the-day beer with him, gathered in a huddle of the inner circle.  They want to bask in the glow of proximity to his power, his popularity.  They want to sit and listen to him some more.  They are definitely not asking Jesus for something to do. After all, he has never given them much to do before.

“Send the crowd away, into the villages to buy something to eat for themselves, and bring this rally to an end,” they say.

But Jesus looks at them and surprises them:  “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

The disciples do not seem to know that a miracle is at hand – let alone two miracles.  They may be starting to wonder if they have hitched themselves to the wrong wagon.  “Jesus,” they say, “we have only five loaves and two fish.”  Give us a break!  And the look he must have given them just repeated with his eyes what he had already said with his lips: You give them something to eat.

You know what happens next.  They bring him the bread and the fish.  He takes it, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples, who seem now to know what to do.  They head out into the crowd and start distributing bread and fish – I’m thinking fish sandwiches, maybe fish tacos.

Did you see the second miracle?  It happened after Jesus has taken the bread, blessed and broken it, and given it to the disciples.  Just then, where normally there would have been nothing for them to do but sit down and watch him work his magic with the crowds, it is Jesus who takes his seat, and the disciples who carry out the miracle he has just set in motion.  They are no long spectators of his ministry: they become partners in it.  They have been transformed from a grumbling posse of hangers-on who have nothing much to do but listen and watch, into active ministers of Christ’s love for the world.  Jesus takes a seat; and they are the ones who feed the people.  

You give them something to eat.  This sounded ridiculous to them.  There was no food, and they wouldn’t have known what to do, or wanted to do it even if there had been.  But now they are feeding people –fish sandwiches! – who moments ago they just wanted to get rid of.

These people – these disciples – are not the same sheep they were when they got out of the boat with Jesus.  Can you imagine how they felt as they walked among the crowd handing out food, reaching into their baskets - not daring to look to see if there is another sandwich there, another taco – and finding that their hands are full?  Can you imagine how they felt as they cleaned up – he even makes them clean up! – and they collect twelve baskets of left-overs.  Cleaning up never felt so good!

This is a miracle: this posse has become more than an entourage, they have become real disciples, partners in ministry, bearers of the gifts of Jesus.  This is not what they thought they were when they got there, you can be sure.


From this vantage point, up here in a pulpit, almost every congregation looks the same, in almost every church.  It’s not that you look like the crowd; there are too many others outside these doors who fill that role well.  Most congregations look a lot like that small group that traveled with Jesus.   You look like his posse, his entourage.  Lined up in your rows of pews, you are prepared, I believe, to listen; you are open to learning; you are happy to hear about the way Jesus heals and casts out demons.  Unflattering though it may be, you are willing to be sheep in the flock of this Good Shepherd, and you may even be determined to be a good sheep, always among the 99, never the one who strays.  And this is alright, especially if the church has not asked anything much more of you.  The church, in fact, has often been happy to keep you in your pens – I mean your pews.  This way we can keep you in line!

And I can take my place at the altar and play at being Jesus: taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it to you.  And we can all bask in the glow of the miracle that Jesus feeds us with his body and his blood.  Sometimes we like it this way: Jesus does a lot, and we can watch, listen, stay close at hand, but do very little

But not far from here, just beyond the doors to Locust Street, there is a crowded world that is hungry, and often knows it (though it has become good at staving off hunger).  There’s a hunger for justice, a huger for mercy, a hunger for tolerance and respect, a hunger for real food in some places, and for decent schools in others.  There’s a hunger for peace in a world that’s gotten good at war.  There’s a hunger for a healthy planet.  There’s a hunger for good religion that knows humility and lives by the Golden Rule.

We believe, do we not, that Jesus can feed this hungry world.  It is our faith that he gave his body and his blood to do so.  We are confident that by the power of God, the risen and glorified Christ can change the world, giving it the food it needs to feed these hunger pangs.

And do we come here week by week to watch and listen and learn?  Do we want to be told only of how Jesus has done it in times past, in other places?  Do we sit through ceremony and sermon and song just to get to that special moment when we go to the rail and stretch out our hands and have our one, brief, moment alone with Jesus?

There is a hungry world around us.  Would we send them away?  Close the doors behind us so we can have our special time with Jesus?

You give them something to eat, he says to us.  You give them something to eat.

There is a second miracle to be done right here when we hear Jesus say this, and we think to ourselves, “What is he talking about?”  What have we got to work with?  Does it amount to more than five loaves and two fish?  Probably not.  Have we ever been asked to do anything before other than sing the hymns and say “Amen.”  Maybe not.    But Jesus is working a miracle on us when he tells us, You give them something to eat.  He is making us partners with him in his ministry.  He is sitting down and sending us out and telling us we can do more than we ever imagined.

We are afraid that when we reach into the basket there will be nothing there – no more fish tacos.  But so far this church stands as a testimony that it has never happened that way.  In fact this church in its beauty is a testimony to the twelve baskets of left-overs.  At Saint Mark’s we have always had more than enough, thank God!

We have some challenges here.  There is soup to make every week and hungry mouths to be fed every Saturday morning.  There are a couple of hundred families each month who rely on our Food Cupboard for their well-being.  There are our neighbors at Saint Mary’s, and at the Church of the Crucifixion who we help and support.  There were the people of the village of Trindad in Honduras who our medical mission served.  Soon there will be our new mission at Saint James the Less which is as hungry a place as we have ever ministered.

Are we wondering if Jesus can feed all these?  Are we wishing he would just send some of them away?  Do we long to simply bask in the glow of Jesus’ proximity.  Would we be satisfied to be his entourage in the midst of this hungry world?

And is he looking at us now with that look in his eyes that just repeats what he once said already with his lips?

You give them something to eat.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
3 August 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Trust in God's Futurehttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/7/27/trust-in-gods-future.htmlSean Mullen2008-07-27T21:45:54Z

Let me tell you another parable; the kingdom of heaven is like this:

Over the past several years since my parents retired to southern California, I have gotten in the habit of borrowing their car whenever I visit them, because, of course, to be in southern California is to drive.  And it is a source of relief to me that their car is equipped with a Global Positioning System that provides directions to anywhere I could want to go.  I would find it very easy to get lost on the streets of greater Los Angeles.  But as long as my destination is programmed into the car’s GPS, a clear, benign woman’s voice guides me, turn by turn, to wherever I am going.  “In one mile, turn left,” she’ll say.  Then, “turn left here.”  When you get where you are going she announces, “You have arrived at your destination.”

I have never been tempted to give her a name, but it is easy to personify the disembodied voice that gives me such reliable directions.

More and more of us these days rely on GPS systems to get from here to there.  And while these systems display maps on their screens while you drive, using a guidance system like this is fundamentally different from using a map.  First, you don’t have to figure out how to fold it.  But you also don’t need to take it out before you leave in order to plot your course; you don’t need to know how you will reach your destination.  You can just tell it where you want to go, and let the kindly voice guide you, turn by turn.

And one of the great things about the system is this: should you ignore the voice and take a different route, she will adjust to what you’ve done and either guide you back to the route she’s plotted for you, or she will reconsider (if you’ve strayed far from your original course) and find a new way back to where you are going.

I have found my own way changed by traffic, construction, and distraction of all kinds.  I feel free to take diversions that under other circumstances would leave me pulled over by the side of the road trying to find my location on a map and plot a route back.  But with this system I never have to pull over, never have to fumble with the map.  The woman’s voice knows where I am going and she will let me stray, but she will see to it that I arrive at my destination.

I believe Jesus wants us to have that kind of confidence as we make our way to the kingdom of heaven.

Few phrases in the Bible sound as hard to believe as Saint Paul’s statement that “in everything God works for good with those who love him.”  Or to put it another way, “All things work together for good for those who love God.”  I should think that any one of us could amass a dossier of ample evidence to challenge this claim.  Such a file would include countless examples of sickness, unintended consequences, disappointments, unreliable people, daily indignities, financial strain, racial bias, and plenty of stupidity, among other things.   The point being that for most of us, Saint Paul’s assurance doesn’t seem plausible.  We have seen too much go wrong, we have suffered too much failure, we have lost too much hope to believe that all things work together for good for those who love God.

But Saint Paul - who, having suffered shipwreck and imprisonment, knew what it was like when things went badly – was very clear about something that you and I are probably less certain about.  He believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that the future was in God’s hands.  He was certain that God had a future in mind for him, and for the church, and for all creation.  And he was certain that God’s future would be realized.  And although it was not at all like Paul to simply sit back and assume that God would steer his life by auto-pilot, he felt free to steer himself anywhere he seemed to be called, confident that God would always guide him to the future that he had planned.

It is a measure of our time that we would put ourselves in the hands of a small electronic device on the freeways of Southern California in order to arrive at our destination, but we are not at all sure that we trust God to get us anywhere at all.  But I wonder if learning to trust the GPS system could actually teach us something about learning to trust God.  

Lots of people in the world want to remain map-readers.  These are folks who tend to treat the Bible as though it unerringly maps a course through the confusions of 21st century America if only we will pay attention to it.  Money management, romance, job advice, family tensions, scientific research, war or peace, and of course sex are all to be guided by instructions in the Bible.  And the mastery or memorization of certain texts is a proud accomplishment – just like being able to fold the map properly every time.

Such a perspective of holy scripture conveniently ignores how much interpretation we bring to everything we read.  Even if we are very good at finding our location on a map, for instance, if we are reading the map the wrong way, holding it upside down, we may still never get where we are going.

Another way of reading scripture is to hear in it the long testimony of confidence in God’s care for those who love and trust him; the complicated record of hope that the future lies in God’s hands.

The church, like so many of us, is sometimes prone to forget that God knows where we are going, that the future lies in God’s hands and he has already worked it out for us.

Saint Paul’s way of talking about this was to say that God had predestined the outcome of our lives.  And since we are not Presbyterians, we chafe at this assertion, uncomfortable with the idea that as if by some mystical lottery, God has already decided who will live in paradise and who will burn in hell?

But the entire thrust of Paul’s ministry was to expand the understanding of who might be included among those who love God.  He traveled abroad to carry the Gospel where it hadn’t been heard.  And he argued with other church leaders (and won) for a more expansive understanding of who could be saved.  He had a comprehensive and potentially universal view of the reach of God’s love.

Of course, there are lots of people in the world who don’t worry about the scriptures at all, who don’t worry about God, and who believe that the only future we have is the one we create for ourselves.   To me, this point of view seems a lot like driving aimlessly on the LA freeways until you run out of gas – a pointless journey that offers very little opportunity for happiness.

In my parents’ car the GPS allows you to press a button marked “Home” that calculates a route back to their house from where ever you happen to be, and then guides you there until you reach your destination.  And I think there may be nothing more complex than this to Saint Paul’s idea that in everything God works for good with those who love him.  Paul holds on to the certainty that God has a future for him: a future in this life and in the life to come.  He is free to travel far and wide, to take bold risks, to put his life on the line.  God knows where he is going; the future lies in God’s hands; and God will see to it that he arrives at his destination.

There is, of course, no real way to prove that God’s future for us is real.  And since the ride is often a bumpy one, it can be easy to suspect that the divine GPS is on the blink.  Which is why we call this kind of trust hope – because we cannot see from here the place that God is bringing us to.  And yet we dare to believe that God has a future for us that he has already planned; that that future is a blessing; and that we are in his hands.

So I know how unlikely it seems that all things really do work together for good for those that love God.  And yet I know how willing I am to get in a car without a clue as to where I am going, and just let the car guide me, confident that it knows, has a route plotted out, and will even adjust, if I should deviate from the plan, to get me where I am going.

And if I will put so much trust in the GPS system installed in my parents Prius, how much more trust should I place in the God whose hands made my body, whose Son is my Savior, and whose Spirit gives me life?

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

]]>WALL-Ehttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/7/20/wall-e.htmlSean Mullen2008-07-20T18:35:53ZI consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us….  For in this hope we were saved.  (Rom 8:18, 24)


It probably never occurred to Saint Paul that we would be reading his letters 2000 years after he wrote them.  Those letters are full of evidence that Paul believed that the world was headed for a fateful moment in history when God’s purposes would be fulfilled and his glory would inhabit the earth and his kingdom would be established: the eager longing of creation would be realized.  This he expected sooner rather than later.

Not so the animators and story-tellers at Disney studios.  The recent animated film WALL-E imagines what will have become of us and the rest of creation 700 years from now.  The earth is literally a wasteland, overwhelmed by the mountains of rubbish generated by a consumer society gone out of control.

Having rendered the planet uninhabitable, humans have evacuated to become refugees in space, living on luxury liner space ships where a single corporation, Buy-N-Large, relentlessly markets the next available meal.  In the description of one film critic, humans have become “ a flabby mass of pea-brained idiots who are literally too fat to walk.”

Back on earth, it appears that the creation long ago ceased its groaning toward a promised blessing.  A single robot remains functioning: WALL-E is its acronym-ed name.  He is one of an army of obsolete robots who piled the trash into mountains.  All alone except for a cockroach he has befriended, WALL-E continues daily in his futile work.

Over the centuries WALL-E has become a collector of things that particularly interest him.  (This is a Disney movie, after all, so the robot has to be lovable.)  And one day he discovers something he has never before come across: a little green shoot with four or five leaves that has inexplicably sprouted amongst the mountains of waste.  This plant becomes a part of WALL-E’s collection of interesting things.

It turns out that probes have been sent from the space ship to search for just such signs of life on earth, in the now-faded hope that some day the planet would be inhabitable again.  WALL-E falls head-over-heels for the sexy probe he encounters, and (this being Disney) romance ensues.  When the probe (whose acronym spells her name, EVE) discovers the plant in WALL-E’s collections, their relationship is threatened as she succumbs to her hard-wired directive to return the plant to the space ship for verification, romance be damned.

Back on the ship it becomes clear that the desire to return to earth was long ago obviated by the convenience of being fed by a corporation that knows what you want and can keep you distracted while it feeds you.  The plant, and the possibility that earth may once again be habitable, is not such a welcome development.  And so the story of WALL-E and EVE’s romance becomes intertwined with the question of whether or not the obese humans will overcome their dependence on Buy-N-Large and actually return to earth.

Despite the romancing robots, as Disney films go, this one has a strange air of plausibility.  It is a caricature that makes features of ourselves, our habits, and our impact on this planet easily recognizable.  The implicit criticisms are only tolerable because it is only a cartoon, after all, and WALL-E and EVE are awfully cute together.

To put a biblical gloss on the story, you might say that the humans have managed to elude the fate they deserve for their selfish piggy-ness.  Rather than face the kind of judgment we hear Jesus describe in the parable of the weeds in the field, where some end up thrown into the furnace of fire, the humans have simply decamped to outer space: fat and happy.  But in escaping their fate, they have left behind hope, and can now look forward to nothing more than their next meal.

And as a symbol of hope, the little sprout of a plant is a useful image.  Like so much hope, it is something that was long ago given up on, forgotten by many.  So effectively have the humans adjusted to their new lives, in fact, that the promise of hope seems even unwelcome now.  Who needs it?  And since it threatens to interfere with the corporate culture (and profits) powerful forces are at work to destroy it once it appears on the scene.

In our own day the idea of Christian hope is often reduced to a cartoonish caricature of wishful thinking.  Belief in a God who promises to establish a kingdom where justice and peace prevail is on a par with the belief that God will help you find a parking space if you only ask him nicely enough.  These are both acts of wishful thinking of a quite deluded sort, the current thinking goes.

But here are the facts.  We are, in fact, covering our planet with mountains of trash, at the same time as we are poisoning the atmosphere, exhausting natural resources, exterminating entire species, and ruining entire eco-systems.  We have even left so much litter in outer space already that you have to be careful where you fly when you head for the stars.

The more sports clubs and gyms we build, the less healthy we seem to be.  The more nutritional information we print on our food packaging, the fatter we get.

We are quite happy to submit to the guidance of corporate America as long as it gives us what we want super-sized and super-cheap.  We will even provide tax breaks to such a corporation so that it can undermine local businesses and treat its own employees miserably.

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on entertainment to keep ourselves distracted while we wage wars in other places.

These sad realities are not biblical judgments of us and our society, they are the results of our own selfish piggy-ness.  And they help us to forget about hope.

But this is Christian hope: that somewhere in the trash heaps of our lives there is a small green shoot struggling to survive.  That among the landfills of plastic bags, and tires, and old cell phones a little sprout lives.  That from the pile of ashes that is to be our mortal remains, there is new life to be born.  That God has already begun building a kingdom where justice and peace will prevail.

Most of us have become refugees of hope.  We have assumed that hope is really only wishful thinking, and we have booked our tickets for a cruise with Buy-N-Large, because if we can’t have hope, at least we can eat whatever we want and keep ourselves distracted.  And why worry ourselves about hope when even the church herself is such an inept guardian of it?  Better to glide through the heavens in luxuriant obesity, satisfied that we were at least smart enough to get out while the getting was good.

At the end of the Disney film, a decisive struggle takes place between the flabby, weak-willed captain of the space ship and its corporately programmed auto-pilot over whether or not to return to earth.  Will the complacent captain awaken to his own humanity?  Will the corporate plan override latent hope?   Will the plant survive to bring forth seed and propagate new life in a world of trash?

WALL-E the robot has managed to protect the plant.  And as the captain and the auto-pilot fight each other on the bridge, the space ship lists to one side, endangering the humans and their chubby children.  As the opportunity to return to earth seems to be slipping out of reach, it is WALL-E – who has seemed more human than the humans, and who therefore knows what it is like to be desperately in love with EVE – it is WALL-E who sacrifices himself – crushed beneath the machinery of the space ship during the conflict – to save the day.  His sacrifice clinches the victory for the captain and the humans, and ensures their return to their rightful home.  

And of course, it is only a cartoon.  But I believe it is based on a true story; that something green still grows where we would have left behind only wasteland; that there is one who saves us, even when it seems we are beyond being saved; that God has someplace for us to go in this life he has given us.

Was WALL-E’s demise really his end?  Is his small carcass, too, headed for the scrap heap?  I won’t ruin the end of the story for you.  Except to say that I believe it is based on a true story.

There is a green shoot of hope in the world, sprouting several leaves.  And it is more than wishful thinking; it is hope.  And in this hope, we were saved.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
20 July 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Learning to Fetchhttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/7/13/learning-to-fetch.htmlSean Mullen2008-07-13T19:52:25ZFor as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.  (Is 55:10-11)


Although you wouldn’t think so to look at him today with a tennis ball or a stick, my dog Baxter needed to be taught to fetch when he was a puppy, as most puppies do.  Since he is a retriever his instruction was meant to unlock the instincts that have already been bred into him.  And today he is liable to bring me a found tennis ball or a stick in Rittenhouse Square and ask me to throw it for him so he can fetch it.  But when he was just a puppy he had to be encouraged to chase after a ball – to “go get it!” – and then to bring it back, where he received a reward for his success.

These days I can throw a stick or a ball for him that lands somewhere he cannot see it; I can tell Baxter to “go find the stick,” or “go find the ball” and he will put his eyes and his nose and all his retriever instincts to work and eventually find it and bring it back to me.  To borrow the phrase from the prophet: the word that goes forth from my mouth does not return to me empty, but it accomplishes that which I purposed, and it prospers in that for which I sent it.  

The prophet imagines that God’s word is as effective in accomplishing God’s purposes as Baxter is at fetching a ball.  As effective as the rain and snow providing water for seeds to grow.  The surety of God’s purposes is as plain a fact to the prophet as is the effect of a healthy rain on the tomato plants in a garden: they accomplish that for which they were purposed; they prosper in that for which they are sent.

Of course, while Baxter is a very good retriever, and responds well when told to “go get the ball,” he is not always as responsive to other commands.  “Come here, Baxter,” gets mixed results.  “Don’t jump up on her, Baxter,” is not foolproof.  “Don’t eat that, Baxter,” falls on completely deaf ears.  The words that go forth from my mouth do not always accomplish that which I purpose, nor do they always prosper in that for which I send them.

It is by no means plain to much of the world, that God’s word is especially effective.  In fact, it is by no means plain to much of the world that what you and I might call “God’s word” means anything at all.  

The church is a proving ground for the confidence of the prophet – where his prophecy is put to the test.  It is the community in which we discover whether or not God’s word is, in fact, to accomplish that which God purposes.  And you and I and every Christian person are crucial to the outcome.  It is here, in the church, that God begins to unlock in us the power of his own image, in which we were made; encouraging us to learn to be the kind of people he made us to be, to do the kinds of things he made us to do, to build the kind of society he made us to build, ushering in the kingdom of heaven.  It is here in the Church that God teaches puppies how to fetch, if you will.

The parable of the sower, which Jesus tells in the reading from Matthew’s Gospel this morning, is his way of describing to his disciples (and to us) what is expected of them (and of us).  It is a way of encouraging them (and us) to learn to “go get the ball,” as it were.  This parable about seeds which either do or do not yield grain is a way of drawing a picture of the prophecy of Isaiah: “so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it will accomplish that which I purpose.”

Of course, in telling the disciples this parable, Jesus is telling them what a crucial role they play in the fulfilling of God’s word.  God’s word will accomplish that which he purposes if they will let it grow in their hearts and unlock the instincts of love and mercy that God planted in our hearts when he first created us and saw that we were good.  But it is possible that God’s word will find in them (and in us) only hard, rocky, or thorny ground where the seeds of his love and mercy will not grow.

And so the question the parable poses to us is this: Do we believe that we hear in it, God encouraging each and every one of us to “go get the ball”?  Do we find that God is encouraging us to do something about his word?  Do we believe that we might have something specific to do in the fulfilling of God’s word?

There are a thousand different ways to respond to this parable.  I see people accomplishing that which God purposes every week when they deliver soup they have made to our Saturday Soup Bowl, or when they show up early Saturday mornings to serve that soup or wash the dishes.  

It happened here during Vacation Bible School when a corps of volunteers from this parish led a group of more than twenty kids in a week of growing and learning.

It happened when our mission team set up a free medical clinic for a week in Honduras.

Some of you respond to God’s encouragement by your commitment to prayer and worship in the church throughout the week, coming to daily mass or joining in morning or evening prayer, or through your participation in weekly Bible study.

Several people here are helping to accomplish that which God purposes (I hope!) by volunteering in the office, or with another church agency.

I am hoping that we will develop a wonderful new field in which to accomplish the purposes of God by adopting Saint James the Less as a mission of this parish.

And of course there are many of you who have ways of accomplishing that which God purposes about which I will never know, through your care for others, or through your commitment to social justice, or your efforts to care for our planet.

It is not actually hard to find ways to be a part of the fulfilling of God’s word, if we believe that God has really called us to this challenge.  But how will the world know of the power of God’s word if we don’t let it grow in our hearts, in our lives?

In telling his parable, Jesus is also reminding his followers, and us, that we have a choice.  We do not have to do what he says, we do not have to go where he calls, we do not have to learn to go get the ball.  We are free to do as we like and to disregard God’s word entirely.  But what seeds will die on the hard, or rocky, or thorny ground of our lives if we make that choice?

It is often said of the men that Jesus gathered as his disciples that they were not an especially astute, brainy, or clever bunch.  (These are not characteristics shared by the women who followed Jesus, however, who were altogether more sensible!)  One evidence of the thick-headedness of the disciples is their need to have a parable like the one we read today explained to them.  Can they really be so slow?  Do they really fail to see that Jesus is showing them that the kingdom of God will grow in their hearts and be built with their hands if they will let it, if they are willing to learn to go get the ball?

And what about us?  Where do we think the kingdom of God has been planted if not in our hearts?  How do we think the kingdom of God will be built if not with our hands?  Can we really be so slow?  Do we really have to have the parable explained to us, too?   Or do we believe already that God’s word shall not return to him empty, but it shall accomplish that which he purposed, and prosper in the thing for which he sent it?  Which is really another way of asking if we are ready to go get the ball, and receive our reward.


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

]]>How will he know us?http://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/6/29/how-will-he-know-us.htmlSean Mullen2008-06-29T17:39:26ZNot long ago I was traveling out of town for a wedding at which I was to preach, in Williamsburg, where I went to college.  I was staying in a hotel that happened to have a lovely, sunny courtyard where I pulled up a chair and reviewed the notes for my sermon and did some reading.  As I sat there, I realized that there was a familiar face at a table on the other side of the courtyard.  I was certain I knew the face but it took me a while to attach it to a name.  But it was not someone I had known in college, so although the face matched perfectly the forensic files in my brain, something didn’t make sense.  This was a high school teacher from Connecticut (wasn’t it?).  What was he doing at a hotel in Virginia?  And how could I be sure that my visual file and name file were properly matched?

I sat there in the sunny courtyard, now only pretending to read, glancing over the top of my book, as I tested the theory over and over in my head.  Is it him?  It can’t be him.  It sure looks like him.  What would he be doing here?  Shouldn’t he look older than he does?  Am I in the right town?

Eventually – and I mean after, like, an hour, not just a few minutes – I decided to take the risk.  I rose from my seat and strode over to him – all casual confidence.  “Aren’t you Bob So-and-so?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “aren’t you Sean Mullen?”  And by golly, I was!  “You look just the way I remember you,” he said.  (Apparently I wasn’t thin in high school either.)

“So do you,” said I.  (And he had always been thin.)

Since that chance encounter I have seen photos from a high school reunion that I couldn’t attend, and while they were not all photos of my classmates, I can tell you I didn’t see a single face that I recognized, and I’m sure there must have been at least one or two from my vintage – I know there were!

How will I know you when I see you, down the line?  How will you know me when you see me, many years hence?  What if I have lost weight?  What if you have!?!  Will you know me, years from now if our paths should part and then cross again?  Will I know you?  In a subtle way this is the question that Jesus is planting in the minds of his disciples during the tenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel that we have been reading for the past few weeks.  How will you know me many years hence?  How will I know you?  Will my Father in heaven, who has been watching us work and talk and eat together, recognize you as one of my old friends?   You will be different, for sure.   You will be heavier, greyer, bald-er.  Maybe you will be unrecognizable at the gates of heaven.  Maybe Jesus will be different too – maybe he will have shaved his beard, and finally cut his hair.  How will he know us when we come to him?  How will we know him?

I think the reason Jesus plants the seed of this question in the minds of his disciples is because he wants them to start practicing what they will look like when they get to heaven before they get there.  How will we know one another when the time comes, and everything is different, and it’s very, very important that we are recognizable to the one who knows even the number of hairs on our heads?  How will we know him; and how will he know us?

We have to practice what we will look like when we get to the gates of heaven.  In a way, that’s what the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is all about.  We have been hearing parts of it for the past few weeks as Jesus gives instructions to his disciples for their missionary work.  “Take no gold, nor copper… no bag for your journey, … nor sandals…  Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves….  He who finds his life will lose it….  He who receives you receives me.”  We can think of these as ways of practicing what they will look like when they get to heaven.  

Because it changes you if you travel around doing God’s work with no money, no bag, no sandals.  It changes you if you are willing to be a sheep in the midst of wolves and not put on a wolf’s clothing.  It changes you if you are willing to lose your life for Jesus’ sake.  It changes you if you greet everyone as though they might be the Christ in disguise.  What would we look like if we lived this way; if we practiced what we will look like when we get to heaven?

Of course, this is not a question of standing in front of a mirror, or of ordering the right clothes from a catalog, or of finding bargains on line.  It is a question of hearing Jesus’ call to carry out his mission in the world: this is how he tells his disciples to practice what they will look like when they find him beside the Father’s throne.  And carrying out Christ’s mission is also the way we can practice what we will look like, if we want to be easily recognizable, when we find ourselves reviewing our performance evaluations with St. Peter beside us.

For several years I have been dreaming of a way to practice what we might look like on that day, which I want to share with you:

About five and a half miles from here (which Google maps estimates would takes us 17 minutes to drive in 10 steps, but I’m sure we could eliminate two of them), at an intersection where West Hunting Park Avenue crosses West Clearfield Street, less than a mile from the Tasty Baking Company, overlooking Laurel Hill and Mt. Peace cemeteries, is a little parish church that was founded a year before Saint Mark’s and before even the cemeteries were there.

The parish of St. James the Less is named for the other James mentioned in the New Testament (not the one who is regularly found with Peter and John).  In its graveyard are buried the Wanamaker family (except Fernanda, who is buried here at Saint Mark’s); Catherine Fiske, who gave the beautiful red doors of this church in memory of her husband Louis, who rests there with her; Agnes Irwin, the great educator who founded the school that now bears her name, and who was the first dean of Radcliffe College; and a host of other bishops, soldiers, captains of industry, and luminaries of 19th century Philadelphia.

The beautiful church and its graveyard are surrounded by stone walls.  Across the street stands a rambling old rectory and a large parish house that has been converted to house a school that no longer operates.  No worship has taken place at the church for two years now, since the parish that was there chose to leave the Episcopal Church and was forced, by court order, to abandon the property under the circumstances.  A caretaker keeps the lawn and trees in check, and unlocks the gates for infrequent visitors.  Beyond the churchyard walls there stretch out neighborhoods of Philadelphia that bear little resemblance to the church’s lovely immediate surroundings or to our own parish’s neighborhood.  Poverty, drugs, single-parent households, and lousy schools characterize reality for many, many folks in North Philadelphia.

When I discovered that the Diocese of Pennsylvania was considering leasing out the Rectory and Parish House of Saint James the Less to be converted to artists’ studios, I balked at the notion of this sacred ground being re-purposed for such a mundane use in the midst of a city desperately in need of the mission of the gospel.

“Well, what would you do with it?”  I was asked.  

I answered: I would take up the mission of the Gospel, and use the resources there to let the Gospel change people’s lives.  I would adopt Saint James the Less as a mission parish of Saint Mark’s – after all we have founded missions before, built them from the ground up.  I would do what it takes, by finding partners to share the work.  I would get people praying in the church again, get children learning in the parish house again, and playing on the playground again.  I would put together a team of people who hate to see the resources of the church slide into decay.  I would practice there what I want to look like when I meet Jesus in the day of judgment, and I would help other people practice too.

Now, I said all this in a slightly more detailed way, around a conference table, with stern faces looking at me.  I may have even sounded impatient when I said it to the powers that be.  I said it in writing, and I made presentations.  I copied sermons of mine and handed them out.  I gave them facts and figures about the neighborhood.  I tried a hard sell once, and a soft sell the next time.  And I don’t know that I had much hope, since we happen to be a church that is preoccupied with its own internal scandals, and stumbling over its dysfunction.  But I asked.

And do you know, during this past week, those powers that be called me up and said to me, “OK, if you’re so smart, give it a try.”  And they have agreed to allow Saint Mark’s to adopt the Church of Saint James the Less as a mission of our parish  And so, it would seem that I have committed you, my wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ, to a missionary life.  We have been jolted into that old reality, that it had seemed the church forgot, when a parish church could take on a mission.  (Saint Mark’s founded two or three missions in its earliest decades.)  And now we have been called again to assume the missionary role that this parish wore so well in the 19th century as part of our 21st century heritage.  

We are being sent with no gold or copper or sandals or bag or staff; we are being set loose, like sheep in the midst of wolves.  We are being launched into a great missionary journey of exactly 5.5 miles, as the Google-crow flies.

I have some ideas abut what this journey might look like.  But there will have to be much prayer, much discussion, and many partners gathered before the shape of things to come for this new mission will be known clearly.

But I believe that this is an opportunity for all of us at Saint Mark’s and anyone who wishes to join us (and already I know that there are those who do) to practice what we will look like when we have to look Jesus in the face and account for ourselves.

Because a church without a mission is no church at all.  And a Christian who has never set out on a journey, (who has never been a pilgrim) has never given himself a chance to be changed (and may still be a sheep wearing his wolf’s clothing!).  The missionary life is the church’s life, when she dares to risk her life – to lose her life, so that she may truly find it.

How will God ever know us if we don’t respond to his call, even if it asks a lot of us? How will Christ recognize us as his old friends if we have not worked side by side with him, seeking his face in the face of others?  And how will we know him, if we distance ourselves from his call to serve him by serving others, and the years pass by.

Will Christ stare at us, matching the face to the name, but not at all certain what we are doing there, in front of him, and perhaps suspecting that we are in the wrong place?  Will he wonder why we sheep tried to live our whole lives in wolf’s clothing?  Will he think it's cheeky of us to want to be familiar with him at last only when the day is past and the work is done?

How will God know us if we don’t allow ourselves to be changed, to be shaped by the work he calls us to do, to go where he tells is to go, to work in the vineyard, even if we arrive late, to strip off our wolf’s clothing and be a sheep in the midst of wolves?  

How will God know us if we don’t allow ourselves to be changed into the people he made us to be, by responding to his call, and carrying out his mission, and losing our old lives to take up the new ones that are shaped by his mission?  

And how will we know him, in the end, if we don’t practice what it might be like to stand nearer to him?

Let us dare to take on the mission he calls us to, which is to really allow ourselves to be sheep in the midst of wolves, and to risk our lives for his sake.  Let us dare to practice in a missionary journey of 5.5 miles, what we hope we will look like when Christ is looking for us.  

Let us dream of a city where two churches, just five and half miles away can become a powerful nexus of transformation, where we join together to become the people God made us to be, so that finally, when the day of judgment comes, he will look at us – who have practiced what we might look like on this day, so that we would be known by him – and he will say, “You know, you look just the way I remember you.”


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
29 June 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Bring Him a Swordhttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/6/22/bring-him-a-sword.htmlSean Mullen2008-06-22T21:17:11ZJesus said, “ Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mt 10:34)


When Solomon became king of Israel, second in David’s line, long before Jesus was born, he prayed to God, and asked for one thing: “Give me,” he asked God, “an understanding mind… that I may discern between good and evil.”  This prayer pleased God no end.  Discerning good from evil, after all, was a gift that Solomon’s father, David, had sometimes lacked.  It also struck God as a good thing that the king of his chosen people had not asked for a long life, or riches, or the defeat of his enemies.  He had asked for wisdom.  So God tells Solomon that he will give him not only wisdom – not only the thing Solomon asked for – but also the things that Solomon had not asked for: riches, and honor and long life, as well.

And within hours of this prayer, (only one verse in the Bible), Solomon is confronted with two harlots fighting over a baby.  How the harlots made it in to see the king I don’t know, but there they stand in his presence.  And you probably remember the story.  One woman’s son died in the night, and the woman with the dead son took the living child from the other woman’s bed and left her with the dead child.  They are screaming at one another in the king’s chamber: “The living child is mine!”  “No, the dead child is yours,” and so on.

And in the inaugural demonstration of his wisdom, Solomon calls to his minions, “Bring me a sword!”  You remember his threat to divide the living child in two, and how one of the harlots shrieks in horror, “Don’t do it!”  But the other woman is willing to accept the compromise.  And Solomon, in his wisdom discerns that the woman who protested the child’s slaughter is the true mother.

Bring me a sword.  This command on the lips of the king, in the presence of two harlots and one bastard child, is terrifying.  The implication of these four words – bring me a sword – is brutal.  What was Solomon going to do with the sword?

You have to wonder if the underling who went to get the heavy sword slowed his steps as he went, wondering, himself, if it was such a good idea to heed the new king’s first command.  Was this how Solomon’s reign would begin – with the blood of a child on his hands, or a prostitute or two, or perhaps all three?  And when it becomes clear that the king is willing to slice this child in two – right down the middle – was there anyone whispering in his ear a word of caution, nervously suggesting a different solution to what is after all, a matter of little importance to the king?

But the wisdom of Solomon is displayed here not so much in discerning whose child the baby was, rather his wisdom is displayed in knowing how to wield the sword.  He knows how to use his power, without drawing a single drop of blood, so that the good prevails.

His father David’s reign had begun in violence – with the defeat of the threatening Goliath – and his years on the throne were soaked with blood.  But Solomon was a different kind of king, until his own weakness for the fairer sex would cause his downfall – but that’s another story.

It is jarring, to say the least, to hear on Jesus’ lips much of what we heard in today’s reading from the gospel.  “A man’s foes will be those of his own household,” he says.  But to my ears, even more so than his anti-family-values stance, nothing is more jarring than Jesus’ statement that he has not come to bring peace on earth (which is after all what the angels sang at his birth – were they wrong?).  Nothing is more upsetting to me than his apparent threat that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword.

It is almost as if Jesus has stood up in our midst and commanded to his minion (which I suppose would be me), “Bring me a sword!”  And yes, it fills me with dread.  There are children here, after all.  Is Jesus really going to have blood on his hands?  I would like to whisper some nervous words of caution in Jesus’ ear.  This cannot be a good idea.  The implications of his words are too brutal for the Lord of love.

The evangelists who wrote down Jesus’ story were at pains to show how Jesus was descended from David’s line, in fulfillment of the prophets’ testimony.  Would he be fighter like David?  And some hoped for a warrior-messiah, the might of whose sword would establish again the hegemony of a unified Israel. Would they get what they wanted?

And here, less than half-way in to the first book of the New Testament do we begin to hear the rattling of sabers on Jesus’ lips?  Bring me a sword!  This qualifies as what scholars have called the “hard sayings” of Jesus.  That is, the words are hard to ratify with our expectations of him, or with the song of the angels who promised peace on earth to the shepherds who were called to his manger.  I suppose it was a hard saying of Solomon, when he called for a sword, too.

And so, it is important for us to see Jesus for who he actually is, and to hear his words for what they actually are, just as Solomon’s potentially terrifying words proved to be a demonstration of wisdom.

It is noteworthy that with the beginning of the Gospels there comes an end to the stories of warfare that so permeate earlier pages of Scripture.  We will not hear of war again until the very last book of the Bible, when St. John has a vision of the war in heaven (a war with, perhaps, more symbolic meaning than historic precedent).  

The gospels themselves, are fairly bloodless, except for the spilling of Jesus’ own blood in his un-contested crucifixion.  The one time Jesus seems ready to start a fight – when he overturns the tables of the money-changers – nothing comes of it, which suggests to me that he was not perceived as much of a threat at the moment.  And the only time one of his disciples actually draws a sword, Jesus tells him to put it away (and then heals the injury that it caused).

And so when we hear these hard sayings of Jesus – I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword – we have to stop for a moment and be a little wise ourselves.  We have to be able to discern what amounts to a teaching moment from what might have been a manifesto.  We have to remember that Jesus is a rabbi, raised by a proper Jewish mother, and perhaps prone to a bit of hyperbole.

Jesus is not laying out, in these few paragraphs of discussion, a manifesto for a violent uprising of faith.  He is not, in fact, calling for a sword.  And even if he were, I have no doubt that in his hands it would remain as bloodless as the sword that Solomon called for.

Jesus is talking to his followers about what would be called centuries later, the “cost of discipleship.”  And this cost, he is teaching his disciples, is high.  It could cost you everything.   And if you think that life as Jesus’ follower is going to be a love-in (Woodstock, without the music (which sounds boring anyway)), then you are sadly mistaken.  If you think you are going to “find yourself” as a member of a biblical ashram, then you are wrong.  If you think it will make your parents happy for you to lose your life for his sake – to give up your career and your earning potential, or even just your Sunday mornings  - then you are kidding yourself.  Do you really think your Jewish mothers want you running around preaching the gospel instead of going to medical school?  This is what Jesus is saying.

Remember, he has just told his disciples that he is sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves to preach his message of hope for the poor, to bring healing to the sick, and to cast out demons, to declare that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  They will be laughed at and ridiculed, turned away at many doors.  Their faith will be sorely tested, their motives questioned.  They will have cause to shake much dust off their feet as they move from house to house, town to town.

Is this pauper-king really worth it?  Is he really the messiah?  Is he truly a Son of David – anointed to bring about the Lord’s desire for his people and all the nations?  Would he even know how to handle a sword if it were brought to him?  Has he half the wisdom of Solomon?  Or will things end badly, as they did for David, as they did for Solomon, as they did for Israel?

Bring him a sword, if we must.  Put it in his hands.  Ascribe to this carpenter-preacher the power to discern right from wrong, good from evil, life from death.  Put everything on the line: your job, your house, your family, your reputation.

We have read all the stories – learned most of them in Sunday School.  But have we yet given our lives to him?  Have we been willing to hand over the power to him?  To trust him with the sword which we would rather hold ourselves?  Are we ready, willing, and able to be sheep amongst a world of wolves?  This is no way to “find” ourselves!  Will we give up our lives to his service?

It would be easier if he knew how to cut with the sword.  We would find it easier to follow a warrior-messiah, who at least speaks our language.  But see how awkward it is when Jesus even tries – I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Thanks be to God that in Jesus’ hands the edges of the sword remain bloodless, that he uses it to point to justice, to right over wrong, good over evil.

Bring him a sword, and by all means keep it out of our own hands.  Let him bend its blade to his will.  Greater than Solomon, greater than David, Jesus will never, in fact, pick up a sword and yet he will wield more power over the destiny of the world than any warrior-king ever did.

And if we are willing to be steeled by his assurance, if we are brave enough to take up his challenge, if we are faithful enough to risk losing our lives by taking up our cross and following him, what victory will be unknown to us?  What corner of heaven will not be opened to us?  What despair will remain un-transformed by hope?  What wrong will not be defeated by right?  What evil will not be conquered by good?  What death will not be re-claimed by life?

Bring him a sword!  For his hand is the only hand that can be trusted to wield the power of life and death.  His wisdom is the only wisdom that trumps our cleverness.  His love is the only love that surpasses all understanding and casts out fear.

Oh, bring him a sword, and let us see him beat it into a plowshare on the anvil of his justice!

And let it cost us everything.  Let us be ready to lose our lives for his sake, let us learn how to take up our crosses and follow him.  Let us be willing to disappoint our families, and our friends, to become aliens in this land of wolves.  And let us follow him for the simple reason that though we have until now been willing to arm almost anyone who asked for a weapon, he is the only One who knows how to use the sword without shedding a single drop of blood…

… except his own; which he has poured out already, for the salvation of the world. In a wonderful mystery of love, shared day by day, and week by week with me, and with you.

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
22 June 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Our Imaginary Friendhttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/6/8/our-imaginary-friend.htmlSean Mullen2008-06-08T23:18:19ZTheology, a professor of mine used to say, can be defined as loving God with the mind.  This is a lovely idea, and one that commends the academic pursuit of a systematic way of engaging the various questions, mysteries, revelations and commandments of religion.  And while it is a very good thing to have people in seminaries and universities, and even in parish churches, attending to theological pursuits, the truth of the matter is that most of us are not too concerned with theology – and we are happy to know that someone else is doing it.  For many of us, theology is to our daily faith as the food from Le Bec Fin is to what we produce in our own kitchens.  There is a relationship between the two, even some of the same ingredients used; but one is a highly specialized and refined version of the other.

As it happens, the Christian faith does not have its roots in theology, as the story we hear today about Abraham reminds us.  The Lord said to Abram, “Go!”  So Abram went.  And when Abram gets to an oak at Moreh, the Lord appears to Abram and says, “To your descendants I will give this land.”  This was not an invitation to move in, (the Canaanites were already living there), so Abram marks the spot with an altar - a pile of stones – and keeps moving.  This is not an account of theology.  Abram, was not using his head – just ask his wife Sarai – he was not loving God with his mind.  He was doing what he was told, engaged in some kind of relationship with the Lord, who, in a few chapters from where we left off, will change Abram’s name and bring him into a covenant of promise.  Abraham’s faith is not born in his mind: it comes from an encounter with the living God.

Many modern critics of Christian faith would find this assessment of Abraham’s faith right on target – that it is mindless.  How could you build your faith on the kind of God who would call you up a mountain to kill your only son?  How could you think your way to faith in a God who would lead you through the desert without telling you where you are going?  How could you wrap your mind around a God who will allow his own people to be enslaved?  How can you love with your mind a God who allows holocausts, and cyclones, and earthquakes, and warfare?  How can you even think about a God whose supposed salvation is achieved by the death of an innocent man by crucifixion?  A mind, these critics might suggest to us, is a terrible thing to waste on a God such as this.

The most charitable of these critics must see Christians like a group of perpetual pre-adolescents, who have found in Jesus a very lovely imaginary friend, who looks particularly nice in stained glass pictures.  But when you grow up you cannot continue to love this imaginary friend.  Your mind rebels at the uselessness of it.  Your mind invites you into greater maturity: into the real world.  Your mind encourages you to consider the outlandishness of the claims, the impossibility of the miracles, not to mention the absolute mess that the church has made of this “faith” she professes to teach.  Your mind beckons you to a different kind of love – of this world and its many pleasures, its many things.  Your mind shows you its own magnificent power and suggests you should place your trust in that.  Your mind unmasks the foolishness of faith when you are a mere teenager – if you will only allow it to, if you will cast away your imaginary friend, if you are not afraid to do so.  

Any number of the most eloquent critics of faith these days are eager to point out that they saw through the foolishness of faith as mere children – so fragile is the gossamer curtain between reason and faith, even a child can see right through it.

Saint Paul, himself, describes the faith of Abraham as “hoping against hope” – a phrase we have come to understand expresses very long odds.

You know, of course, that our imaginary friend ate with tax collectors and sinners: a rather tawdry bunch.  This was a puzzlement to the Pharisees, who were learned of the law, and who themselves loved God with their minds.  “Those who are well have no need, of a physician,” Jesus said to them, “but those who are sick.”  

“Somebody around here sure is sick,” they must have thought.  “Sick in the head!”

And suddenly a leader of the synagogue runs to Jesus in desperation.  “My daughter has just died, but you lay your hand on her and she will live!”  His imagination is running wild.  He is not using his head.  He has lost it, poor man.

And now a woman, who has had chronic bleeding for twelve years, just wants to touch the hem of his garment, in the wild imagination that some magic power will flow from him to her.  She is not using her head.

Now he is at the ruler’s house.  The flute players are there – they have been hired by the undertakers, who know their business, know the difference between a dead girl and a sleeping child.  They laughed at him: they were using their heads.

Why this child, and not all the other children taken too soon from their parents?  Why that woman and her fibroids, and not all the other suffering souls who battle illness every day?  Why are these given such lavish gifts of healing?  And how can we even imagine that Jesus is our friend if he has passed us by?  What has become of the power that was to flow from him to us, even from the hem of his garment?  If we will just stop and think about this – if we will use our minds – will we not see that this faith of ours has been placed in an unreliable imaginary friend; that we are hoping against hope?

Theology – loving God with the mind – is a wonderful thing.  But it is not the first order of business in faith.  First we must encounter the living God, more or less face-to-face.  First we must come to know our imaginary friend, Jesus, and decide whether or not he is real.  First we must hear a call so simple even a child could hear it: “Go,” it might say, or, “Follow me.”  And first we must decide that we have enough imagination to go, or to follow where Jesus calls, even though he could be nothing more than an imaginary friend.

These stories of miracles, of healing, of dead children brought back to life; these friendships forged with tax collectors and sinners are not the building blocks of a systematic theology.  They are signs that point to the way of the Cross, which is a way of suffering and salvation, a way that is not left to the imagination.

And churches are built to house these signs, to configure them in such a way as to draw our attention to that Cross, and to see who it is who hangs there.  Churches are built so the signs can lead us to the table where our imaginary friend is given real form: his Body and his Blood really given for us, shared with everyone who will sit at his table, no matter how tawdry we may be.

God knows how challenging is the life of faith, he knows what it means to hope against hope.  Perhaps that’s why he so often kindles that faith in rather small groups: Abraham’s family, a group of twelve, a hundred or so in church.

First, God calls us into a living encounter with him.  He asks us to open our minds to the possibility that these signs do not point to an imaginary friend, but to the living Lord, his Son Jesus.  He does not promise an end to all our woes, a cure for every disease, an end to infant mortality, the calming of every storm, or the staying of every disaster.  What he promises is hope against hope.  Which is to say that in his time, by his hand, all things will be redeemed, all things made new, that there will be light where we see only darkness, and life where we see only death.

And he asks you and me to allow him to be our imaginary friend long enough to show us that he is alive in us and in the world.  He asks us to see if he does not lead us to places we could not have gone on our own.  He asks us to look for forgiveness we never thought we could find.  He asks us to trust that our lives are not just nasty, brutish and short, and finally headed nowhere.  He asks us to believe that despair can be transformed into joy, that the poor can be lifted up, that the hungry will be fed, that the meek will inherit the earth.  He asks us to be brave enough, faithful enough, hopeful enough to imagine the possibility of these unlikely promises.

And in time, he even asks us to love him with our minds – to try as hard as we can to wrap our minds around his many questions, mysteries, revelations, and commandments.  And to discover what a wonderful way this is to love him, too.

But first, he asks us to look at ourselves closely, to see what a tawdry bunch we are, to come, sit at his table, and get to know him and the hope he promises against hope.  

And we find that he has stepped out of our imaginations and into the real world, and he has opened our minds, and let us love.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
8 June 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Bread of Lifehttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/5/25/bread-of-life.htmlSean Mullen2008-05-25T18:10:36ZWhen the price of wheat on the global market doubles in the course of six months, as it has over the last six months; in a world where perhaps as many as 3 billion people (or almost half the world population) live on less than $2 a day, you have to be careful about what you say about a piece of bread.  You and I may be worrying about how we will fill our gas tanks this Memorial Day weekend, but many millions of people in the world must seriously wonder how they will fill their bellies and the bellies of the children.

It has been easy for us to more or less ignore the food crisis around the globe since, as Time magazine put it a few months ago, “no one is starving in rich countries.”  Even here in Philadelphia, where we have an appallingly high level of poverty, there is much to eat.

On this feast of Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ – we find it easy to think of Jesus’ language as ‘just symbolic’ when he says “I am the bread of life,” because it is also easy for us to think of bread as ‘just symbolic.’  But to so many in the world, a dry little disc of bread is much more than a symbol; it could be the difference between life and death.

And this morning the church invites us to snap out of our easy complacency about both things: about the ready availability of a piece of bread, and the cheap symbolism of the Body of Christ.  This morning the church reminds us that both things are of immensely more value than we generally recognize: that as symbols go, a piece of bread actually has a very high value indeed, since it could be the difference between life and death.

We easily forget that most of the people who listened to Jesus and who followed him lived closer to poverty than we do.  His followers were not the well-to-do, well-heeled, or well-educated.  They were more or less poor, simple men and women who would have noticed if the price of wheat had doubled in six months.  It would have mattered to them.  And it mattered to them when Jesus told them he is the bread of life.  They remembered what the Scriptures said: that “man does not live by bread alone.”  But they also remembered that God, nevertheless, fed his people in the wilderness with manna – he sent them bread from heaven.

So we are treading on dangerous ground when we try to say anything about what Jesus might have meant when he said, “I am the bread of life.”  And we are treading on yet more dangerous ground when we take a piece of bread and call it the Body of Christ without truly considering the possibility that this Bread could be the difference between life and death.  We take so much for granted in America that we find it as easy to take Jesus for granted as it is to take a loaf of bread for granted.  

The Feast of Corpus Christi is actually uncomfortable for many because it seems a little weird to make such a fuss over these scraps of bread.  It is hard for us to see the value of God’s gift in a little wafer of bread.  But this is a failure of our imaginations, and a distinct lack of empathy for much of the world, who could easily recognize that there is nothing ‘just symbolic’ about piece of bread.  It is nothing to be taken for granted.  It could be the difference between life and death.
More than once in the gospels are we told that when facing a hungry crowd Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and shares it with those who are hungry.   More than once are we assured that in Jesus’ hands a few insufficient loaves become enough to feed a crowd of many thousands.  More than once does Jesus satisfy real hunger with what we might have dismissed as a ‘merely symbolic’ gesture: asking for bread, taking it, blessing it, breaking it, and sharing it.

And so in the church it is never ‘just a symbol’ when we talk about bread, when it is carried in its silver container from you to this altar, when it is placed here on clean linen, when – on your behalf – I take bread, bless it, break it, and share it with everyone here.  It is a hopeful thing to take a piece of bread and ask God to bless it.  It is a bold thing to break it with the intention of sharing it.  It is a dangerous thing to put it in a monstrance and look at it, if it is indeed the Bread of Life.  

For this morsel of bread is the measure of every other mouthful.  This Bread deman ds to know whether or not we are content to parade around inside our beautiful church; whether our conviction that it brings new life stops at the doors to Locust Street; whether our commitment to the Bread of Life will end when it is locked up behind a golden door; whether we have begun to see how slender is the margin of difference in this world between life and death.

People in this world are clamoring to be fed.  In the past six months – just the past six months – it has become measurably harder for millions of people to come by a loaf of bread, and the margin of difference between life and death has become more slender still.  Have we any bread to give them?

We share the bread of life here every single day – most days at 7:30 in the morning and 12:10 in the afternoon – when we offer our prayers to God for a hungry world.

We share the Bread of Life every Saturday morning when we feed the homeless and hungry of our city.

We share the Bread of life four days a week in the Food Cupboard that provides staples to 200 families a month.

We share the bread of life when we ship hundreds of pounds of medical supplies to Honduras, as PJ Prest did earlier this week.

We share the bread of life when PJ leads a group of 13 people from Saint Mark’s and the Pennsylvania College of Osteopathic Medicine on a medical mission to Honduras in two weeks.

We can share the Bread of Life without even leaving home.  By going to the parish website where you will find a link to the ONE campaign – which shares the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty in the world – those who live on less than $1 a day.  There you will find ways of contributing or otherwise getting involved.

The Bread of Life is not ‘just’ a symbol.  In the church we know that symbols have more meaning, deeper meaning than ordinary words, that they point us beyond ourselves to the places God would lead us.  And because the Bread we share today is a symbol of the margin of difference between life and death, we are challenged to see if in sharing it we are changed by this Bread, by this Body.

And we are challenged to decide if we believe this Bread, this Body of Christ, was broken only for us, who feast so richly.  For if Christ gave his Body for the salvation of the whole world, to feed us all, to give the whole world the holy food that is the difference between life and death, then who is going to carry it – in one of its several forms - to those in need if not you and me?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
25 May 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Chaotic Godhttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/5/18/chaotic-god.htmlSean Mullen2008-05-18T19:20:03ZI was never much of a science student, so I did not realize, until recently, that in classic mechanical physics there is a well-known problem called “the Three Body Problem”.  Roughly speaking – very roughly – the issue is the problem of predicting the motion of three mutually attracting bodies, like the Sun, the Earth and the Moon.  Apparently it is not so easy to do!

A short discussion of the Thee Body Problem from the Physics Department at Drexel University tells me that this problem “exhibits all the hallmarks of chaos.”  And if it is the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon we are talking about, this sounds worrisome, since I had rather thought that we had a bit of a grip on understanding the relationship between all three, and that the chances that the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon might veer off course and smash into each other had been more or less ruled out.

It turns out that chaos theory is not quite as chaotic as you or I might think.  This scientific theory does not posit, as I understand it, a state of “utter confusion” – which is the definition we most often think of when we talk about chaos.  In fact, chaos theory does not imagine the simply random interactions of the universe.  Rather, this scientific category encompasses systems that are highly dependent on initial conditions, and yet have somewhat limited predictability.  The well-known question being posed by a physicist in 1972: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

The Three Body Problem seems like an apt metaphor to reach for on Trinity Sunday.  In Christian theology, after all, we have something of a Three Body Problem: we have to account for God’s revelation of himself in the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And many pages have been filled over the centuries with explanations of the relationship and activity of these three apparently mutually attracting persons, that they are three Persons of one God.

And yet, study, ponder, or investigate the relationship of these three as we may, a complete understanding eludes us.  Try as we do to comprehend how it is that a Trinity of Persons is truly the Unity of God, it remains a mystery to us.  And if we are still referring to St. Patrick and his shamrock as a teaching aid for the God who created the universe and all that’s in it, then it would seem we have not traveled very far in our understanding of God!  Which leads me to wonder if perhaps we have to consider the possibility that God as he reveals himself to us is something of a chaotic God.

And here science comes to my aid.  Because I do not mean to suggest that God’s actions are entirely random and his purposes without meaning.  But I do mean to suggest that God’s activity in the universe is of a somewhat limited predictability, and is highly dependent on what we might call “initial conditions.”

And it turns out that a more historic look at the idea of chaos takes us right back to the beginning.  One of the earliest definitions of the word referred directly to “the formless void” that we are told about in the first lines of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  Here is chaos: the beginning, the initial conditions; God’s Spirit – or his wind – moving, swooping, over the watery face of chaos, with perhaps no more force than the flap of a butterfly’s wings.  And now his voice – which I have always imagined as a booming, thunderous voice, but perhaps it is nothing more than a whisper – he speaks.

We could not have predicted the results of his commands: the wonder of creation.  And we could not have known from the outset, as God knows, that it was good, this creation he has wrought.  But this is our chaotic God, who, with the flap of his wings and the whisper of his voice, brings forth the wonders of the universe!

At least twice in the Bible our imaginations are called back to the beginning.  Here, in Genesis where we encounter God and his Spirit, and in the opening of John’s Gospel, where we are told of God and his eternal Word.  And so, from the beginning, we encounter a Three Body Problem.  Whence this voice?  Whence this Spirit?  Whence this Word?  How are we to understand that they relate to one another?  Are these the persons of a chaotic God?

If we remind ourselves that chaos is not, first and foremost, a state of utter confusion, but rather, that pregnant but still undefined state of limited predictability when God’s Word, carried by his breath, had not yet been spoken over the formless void, is this an image of the God of chaos – since only God brings order from the chaos?

And if those first verses of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible tell us, in the beginning, of the butterfly wings of God setting an ordered course for the chaotic matter of creation, are we free to wonder if the winds that blew in Galilee centuries upon centuries later had been stirred by those wings?

And is there a resemblance, or even an echo, in the voice in Galilee to that first voice that spoke to the chaos?  Is there an inevitable link from the command that brought forth all creation to the command that tells the eleven disciples to “Go” into all the world and make more disciples with the gifts of love by baptizing and teaching in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?

And did those eleven disciples not flinch at this complicated formula - this Three Body Problem - because somehow they could simply see that it was good?  Were they un-worried because they already knew how Jesus, with his gentle breath, had given them peace in the chaos of the world and of their lives?

Of all people, you would think that we modern (or post-modern) people could appreciate a chaotic God: a God who speaks divine order to chaos with limited predictability, but still spectacular results.  Of all people, you would think that we modern people, who recognize the limits of our ability to understand quite the way the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon interact, we who cannot solve the Three Body Problem for bodies that we can gaze at through a telescope – you would think we would find the mystery of three persons in one God plausible.

Of all people, you would think that we, sophisticated, 21st century Americans, could grasp how it is that the merest flap of God’s butterfly-wings in the beginning of all things has remarkably and mysteriously brought us to this moment – that we could not have predicted – when we hear again that simplest and oft-repeated command of Jesus, “Go,” telling us that like the rest of creation we have something to do in fulfilling the purposes of God, by sharing the teaching and the grace of his love with anyone who will listen.

Of all people, you would think that we, who have adapted brilliantly to the utter confusion that we have made of the world around us,would hear the possibility of beautiful truth in the revelation of a chaotic God who translated order out of chaos in the beginning of time.

And, alone among God’s creation, we can choose to sit stupefied and stymied by our quandary over the Three Body Problem of God who has revealed himself to us in the complex unity of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Or we can heed his voice, be lifted on the currents of his breath, and animated by the gift of his love; and we can Go into the world to share that love, and see that it is very good.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
18 May 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

]]>Cyclone Pentecosthttp://www.saintmarksphiladelphia.org/sermons/2008/5/11/cyclone-pentecost.htmlSean Mullen2008-05-11T19:09:57ZAnd suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind….  (Acts 2:2)


It was not the flick of the switch of the Large Hadron Collider – a particle accelerator outside of Geneva that has been built in order to smash protons together and that some say could create a small black hole that would swallow the earth – but it was not this, the work of scientists over-stepping their bounds that wreaked havoc with the earth last week.  It was not the hands of men that swirled the winds together in a great turbine and that churned the waters from their depths to wash over the Irrawaddy Delta leaving death and destruction in their wake.

It was what the insurance companies call an “act of God” - in the rush of a mighty wind and its accompanying surge of water – that brought catastrophe to Burma: a country that can hardly afford such a fate.

And today, on Pentecost, when we remember the great rushing wind that first carried the Holy Spirit into the midst of the church, we can be forgiven for wincing at the cruel irony of these parallel stories: the whoosh of great blessing that announced the arrival of the Holy Spirit, and the terrible spinning gusts of Cyclone Nargis that washed over the better part of a nation with it a 12-foot mound of water.

No wonder ancient voices spoke about God’s wrath and his fury – words that today make us squirm but which may ring true when we consider the work of his fingers this past week.  No wonder the Psalmist posits that “the earth shall tremble at the look of him.”  No wonder so many run for cover under the easy platitude that God moves in a mysterious way, and then do their absolute best to avoid or ignore God’s movements altogether.  No wonder the world is confused about God and ready to believe those who forcefully preach that God is not great.

And yet, we could be forgiven for wondering, in the grip of disaster, if God is, in fact, good.  But can we doubt that he is great?  What is a cyclone to God but one of many eddies that he leaves in his majestic wake as he veers across the universe, his mantle of midnight velvet and stars with its white-capped ocean-fringe brushing up against we poor innocents – and few more innocent than the poor, common people of Burma.

Flip the dreaded switch of the Large Hadron Collider and risk the destruction of the world.   This we could understand: our un-doing brought about at our own hands, by our own proud science, in our own relentless need to be masters of everything.  But how can God bring such mayhem to his own creatures on the same winds that once promised hope, and that fanned the tongues of fire that crowned silly disciples?

Is it only at times of disaster that it occurs to us that God is powerful?  Are these incidents of destruction the only acts that we could possibly attribute to God anymore?  Have even we who believe ceased to allow for the possibility that God is, in fact, great?  Are we so impressed with our own human power, our own human creativity, our own human ingenuity that we believe we have left God behind, the divine vestigial relic of a darker age?

And is this our bright age – when still more will die in Burma because of the recklessness of a paranoid junta; when the gunfire in our own streets brings down children or cops without much distinction; when we cannot conceive of an end to a war we thought we were clever enough to control; when we have doused the good earth with poisons we have the gall to call “fertilizers”; when we keep going to the gas pumps to get our fix no matter how high the price of oil climbs – is this our bright age?

And suddenly today comes a sound from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind.

We – bright things - have locked our doors against the wind as though a cyclone were coming straight for us.  We have hunkered down in our self-sufficiency, and our certainty that the world and its fate really rests in our own hands.  We have milk and water and toilet paper in our bunkers.  We still have duct tape and rolls of plastic here too.  I, myself, have helped screw hurricane straps onto new houses in the Gulf Coast to keep them from blowing away.  We know how to protect ourselves when we want to.  We know how to keep the doors locked tight.

And if we know how to keep the wind out and our roofs from blowing off, we also know how to lock the doors to keep God out.  We know where to put weather stripping so not even a draft of him can blow in through the cracks.  And the world today hardly knows the difference between the insurance company’s description of an “act of God” and the real thing, mostly because the world today is not much interested in acts of God.

In my Bible only two pages separate the two different stories of Pentecost: the stories of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts and in John’s gospel.  But of course there is a sharp contrast.   In Acts, Luke tells us of the rushing, mighty wind, and the tongues of fire.  But in John the doors are locked, and the disciples are hunkered down; but Jesus finds them and comes to them anyway.  And there is no commotion, no wind, there are no tongues of fire.  There is only his greeting of peace, and then his gentle breath on them as he tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

John says it happened late on Easter Day, and Luke tells us that it happened fifty days later.  But scholars assure us that although the timing and the circumstances are described differently the stories are about the same thing: about God’s gift of his Holy Spirit to his people after the resurrection of his Son.

If it is true that God moves in a mysterious way – as it manifestly appears to be – then we may have to account for his movements that terrify us, and drive us behind locked doors.  But we also have to account for God’s quiet presence in our midst and the greeting of peace from the lips of his Son Jesus.  

And if it is true that the Holy Spirit of God can and does ride on the violet currents of wind and water that can and do wreak havoc in the world, it is also true that Jesus’ gentle breath bequeathed that same Spirit to us, to bring us peace.

The designers of that particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, quite staunchly defend their work against criticisms that when it is turned on it could create a black hole that would swallow the earth.  Nevertheless, when the suggestion was made, they did agree to double-check, to run the numbers, and they did review Stephen Hawking’s theory that such micro black holes would evaporate if they did just happen to get formed.  They did allow for the possibility, however remote, of phenomena more powerful and dangerous than those built by their own hands and intended to replicate the forces of creation.

If we can imagine our own human capacity to wield such power, why is it so hard for us to conceive of a God who wields yet more power than us?  And why do we find it so hard to believe that the Son of God could harness that power with his own breath and share it with us for the singular purpose of bringing us peace?

And it may be that the great gift of Pentecost is the realization of God’s determination to share with us both his power and his peace.  It may be that the proximity of these two stories of the Holy Spirit – just two pages apart in my Bible – is intended to link them in our imaginations, and to temper the almost un-bridled power of that Spirit, on the one hand, with the un-compromised dictate of peace, on the other.

And it may be that our challenge as mere humans is not so much to hedge against the possibility that we have usurped God’s creative power to the extent that we might unwittingly form black holes – one of the most mysterious features of the universe.  Rather, it may be that our challenge is to accept that the phenomenal power God has given us, by the extraordinary gifts of his Spirit, is intended to bring us peace.

And maybe the reason we think of natural disasters like Cyclone Nargis as “acts of God” is because we can’t help but seeing in these tragedies a projection of ourselves, and our own tendency to mis-use the power God has given us by his Spirit.

We Christians have always believed that despite this reliable tendency of ours (to mis-use the gifts that God has given us), God determined to send us his Son as our neighbor, our brother, our friend.  And in living with us as closely as a neighbor, a brother, a friend, Jesus has always been close enough to breathe on us as he offers us Peace.  

And even now, in this place, he is near enough to breathe on us.  At this very moment, tiny eddies of air, perhaps stirred up by a cyclone on the other side of the globe, are swirling invisibly around us.  They will not ignite in tongues of flame to dance above our heads.  Theses currents of God’s breath are hardly detectable, easily missed or ignored.  Yet, they carry with them the un-matched power of peace, in the echo of Jesus’ resurrection greeting to his friends: a power more awesome than anything the scientists in Geneva or anywhere can replicate.  

And it may be that the flicker of candles is the only potential evidence of that gentle breath floating among us even now, deceptively slight, pregnant with power, promising peace, and waiting only for us to inhale.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
11 May 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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