Parental Advice About Angels

As you may know, the Virgin Mary has apocryphal parents who are named Anne and Joachim.  Canonical scripture doesn’t mention them, which is why this evening we will be forced to turn to holy imagination to fill in the details.

So here are the details I imagine.  I imagine Mary was raised in a smart family, a strategic family.  A family with backbone.  Mary’s family knew that if you weren’t careful, the world would sell you a bill of goods. I imagine that Mary was brought up knowing all about what not to believe, so that when she heard the words of the Angel Gabriel she would have some confidence in her assessment of his offer.  She would be ready.

Let us imagine Anne and Joachim passing on smart family wisdom to Mary at idle moments in conversation.  While washing clothes with Mary, Anne might happen to mention something about how there aresome bad angels out there and you have to make sure you only listen to the good ones. “Don’t let just any angel into your room to whisper sweet nothings to you” she might say, “Hold out for the one you can trust.” 

Joachim might lecture her on the way to the village: “Don’t let the angel of sentiment get to you.  He will tell you that you are pretty and God has a plan for your life, and you won’t notice until after he is gone that he never mentioned the salvation of the world.  Hold out for the salvation of the whole world, do you hear me? Don’t let some half-baked angel give you some silly version of personal redemption. Don’t imagine yourself as the star of some insipid religious picture.  We’re looking for an angel who brings real life to the people of God.”

Or on the way back from the fields, Joachim might say to Mary, “Don’t let the angel of complacency visit.  He will tell you that there is no need for a birth, no need for the shame or the mess or the misunderstanding.  You’re better than that and so is God.  Make him work. Don’t settle for anything less than incarnation.”

This family has favorite sayings, I imagine. “Don’t let the angel of certainty mislead you,” they might comment from time to time. “If you understand God’s plan, it’s not really God’s plan.”  These aphorisms are like glue that hold the family together in my mind.

I can imagine Anne turning to Mary late one night with real concern, maybe noticing a tendency she doesn’t like: “Mary, beware the angel of pointless self-annihilation.  God will ask enough of you without invoking maudlin fantasies about female unworthiness.”

Maybe Anne was able to give hints about what the perfect angelic encounter would feel like: “You’ll know that even though the angel is talking to you, it’s not about you.  But not being about you will be the most profound validation you’ve ever felt. It will have nothing to do with self-abasement.”

Maybe they taught her to ask questions if she needed time to think.  “ ‘How can this be?’ always works.  Don’t be afraid to make space to ponder if you need it.”

It’s clear they taught her the perfect biblical response.  “Ultimately, when you’re sure, say ‘Here I am.’ The expression in Hebrew is ‘hineni.’  It’s what all the prophets say when they are ready to accept God’s call.  Don’t forget that one.  Claim your prophetic lineage.  Even if you’re just a young girl when the angel arrives, square your shoulders and throw back your chin and show up for duty.  Say it calmly: ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord.’”

And then: “Say ‘Let it be’ –Do you hear how you sound like the creator himself when you use that expression?—‘Let it be with me according to your word.’  An elegant balance of power and submission.”  

I can imagine, I want to imagine, somehow, that they had prepared Mary to receive the angel, and to know that the angel was true.  I can imagine that they had worked to shield her from false promises, and to make sure she was up to the challenge of coming to terms with her creator.  

But of course none of these little training sessions ever happened.  What seems semi-earnestly to me to be reasonable, prudent parenting, is apparently of no interest at all to God.  I want to fortify the poor girl, strengthen her, add some resources to the picture.  But in the end, parental advice or no, when the Angel arrives it’s just Mary in that room, just Mary and the angel.  Gabriel will be short on detail, and Mary will have only a few sentences in which to hear, ponder, ask, and cooperate.  Apparently in God’s eyes, and Luke’s, training is a luxury we don’t need and shouldn’t want.

Can this be all there is for Mary, then?  And is this true for us too?  Can the Holy Spirit arrive on such short notice and find us so unrehearsed?  Are we this vulnerable to the indwelling of God among us?  Is God so casual?

I ask, because it doesn’t seem a simple thing to me these days to receive the Spirit of the Lord.  I run classes, you know, for people who are being confirmed and received and baptized as adults, and I’m astonished sometimes by the sheer audacity of a person coming forward to be sealed as Christ’s own forever.  Sure, we have classes, but how can we ever have enough?

In this world?  To bear God’s presence? To measure the distance between the life of Christ that you know is growing in you, and the life of the world that feels so grotesquely astray? How can this be? How, indeed, can it be that the spirit of God should dwell in us and we should dwell in this time and place.

If you’re hoping that by the end of the sermon I have a trick for softening this assessment of the present day and our place in it, let me assure you, I do not.  I have just this one thing to offer.  Mary had no training for the visit of the angel, but we do have her example.  We do know that a teenage girl, all by herself, asked the right questions and gave the right answers and was highly favored among women.  

We do know that even though she was young and confused, she squared her shoulders, lifted her head, and said “Let it be to me according to your word.”  An elegant balance of power and submission, a God-like “fiat” with which she consented to the renewal of all creation.

If the world has you cast down, remember that long ago in a room a young girl simply got on with her work as a follower of God.  She did not look for a more reasonable proposition.  She did not cast about for invitations from angels that offered sentiment or complacency.   It simply was for her, according to the angel’s word.  

Let me just say what the church has always said.  Turn to Mary for guidance.  Profit from her example.  Let her, let the church, offer the instruction you need in going on with the work.  Let it be for you, for all of us, according to the word God speaks.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
25 March 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Sanctuaries of Slowness

The saying goes, that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  This quip is sometimes said to articulate the so-called “law of the instrument,” which asserts that we tend to rely a great deal on the tools and approaches with which we are most familiar, or have most readily to hand, whether or not that’s what the situation calls for.

You can translate this maxim into different metaphors.  For instance, you could say that if all you have is an ax, everything looks like a tree.

I think you can also translate the properties of the expression into military terms.  If all you have is a weapon, everything looks like a target.  At least, that’s the gloss that I can add to William Davies’s excellent piece in the Times last month, entitled “Everything Is War and Nothing Is True.”*  In his piece, Davies considers “the rising profile of the military in [the] domestic politics” of various nations around the world, including the U.S. and his own nation, Great Britain.

In the church we are - or at least we ought to be - always concerned with peace.  Peace in its various expressions must be a priority for those of us who are the inheritors of the gift of Christ’s peace, which was given to us with the gift of the Holy Spirit.  After all, every day we invoke God’s blessing by asking for the gift of God’s peace, which passes all understanding.

If all you have is Jesus, everything should look like peace.  If only it were that simple.

One aspect of modern society that has abetted a rising militaristic profile, according to William Davies, is the great speed with which information travels these days.  The constant high-speed exchange of information tends to emphasize or reinforce conditions of conflict.  He says: “war demands a... paranoid system of expertise and knowledge....  In situations of conflict, the most valuable attribute of knowledge is... that it is up to the minute and aids rapid decision making.”  He goes on to say that “the conditions that most lend themselves to military responses are those in which time is running out.”

Unexpectedly, the Gospel this morning seems to me to provide just such a situation in which time is running out.  It hardly seems dire, since the time that’s running out is the time for a fig tree that has produced no figs.  But, still, for the tree, it is a matter of life and death.  The owner of the fig tree (a man, wouldn’t you know it?) has decided that time has run out for this barren tree, which has produced no fruit for three years running.  He calls to his gardener and instructs him clearly, “Cut it down!”  Now, I don’t know that the only tool the owner has is an ax, but it sure feels that way to me.

Mind you, there is a reason we read this piece of the Gospel in Lent.  Jesus has just said to the people who have gathered to listen to him that “unless you repent, you will all perish.”  And the church means for us to overhear this foreboding call to repentance as though it is intended for us, which it is.

If the only threat you’ve got is death and hell, then every problem looks like work for the grim reaper, I guess.

But if you want to know whether or not Jesus has more tools in his belt, all you have to do is keep reading.  For, immediately he begins to tell this parable of the barren fig tree, as if to drive the point home.  The owner of the barren fig tree renders judgment, and sentences the tree to perish: “Cut that tree down, since it bears no fruit!  Why should it be wasting the soil?  Time has run out!”  And the gardener swung his ax at the root of the tree, and with a single mighty blow, it fell to the ground!

That’s what Jesus should have said to drive his point home: that unless you repent you will perish.  But, of course, that is not what Jesus said.  Instead, Jesus tells us about the gardener (who may in fact have been in possession of an ax).  And what the gardener says to the owner of the fig tree that bore no figs, strangely does not immediately reinforce the lesson that time is running out, and that for the tree, the end is near. 

“Sir,” the gardener says, “let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

When I hear this parable I hear the inclination of violence, impatience, and anger interrupted and soothed by the gifts of mercy, forgiveness, and hope.  This ought to sound like good news to us.

If all you have is manure, maybe everything looks like a garden.

Put the parable in William Davies’s terms.  The owner is aware of the tree’s past poor performance.  There is money to be made from a tree or a vine that could be planted in that soil that would actually bear fruit.  And so, there is conflict.  A certain paranoid system of knowledge and expertise suits the owner’s purposes. He is in possession of up-to-the-minute information on the fruitfulness of the tree.  Rapid decision making is called for.  Time is running out.  So cut that tree down!  I mean, I suppose I am overstating the point a little bit, but that is what I do!  But if you look at this little parable through a certain lens, you can see how combative it is.  Time is running out.  And life and death are on the line.

Update the story, so the ax is not in the hands of the gardener, but mounted on a robotic tree-feller that has been programmed to eliminate fruitless trees, and it begins to take on more urgency, especially if you are the gardener, and you think the tree should live.  And even more poignantly if you are the tree!  And the robotic tree-feller is on the way!  Time is running out!  What is to be done?!?!

William Davies says that it is just such a “culture of an over-accelerated public sphere,” enabled “by technologies that we don’t know how to slow” that “is partly responsible for making democracy feel more like combat.”

Wait!  When did this sermon become about democracy?  OK.  Sorry, it hasn’t become a sermon about democracy.

But, if Davies is correct, and we are living in a world in which it often feels as though Everything Is War and Nothing Is True, then doesn’t the Gospel of Jesus Christ - who is the Prince of Peace - doesn’t our Gospel have something to say to such a world?  Especially if life and death are on the line?

Yes, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does have something vital, life-giving, merciful, and hopeful to say to a world in which Everything Is War and Nothing Is True!  To the controller of the robotic tree-feller who is causing time to run out for the tree, the Gospel has this to say, with some urgency: “Sir, let it alone!  Let it alone for one more year, at least.  Until I dig around it, and nourish it, and tend to its needs.  Let it alone for one more year, and let’s just see if it doesn’t bear fruit. Let it alone.  Let it be.  Let it be.  Let it be.”

Toward the end of his insightful article, Davies speaks of war and peace.  He writes, “the separation of war from peace that laid the ground for liberal democracy to develop was originally a legal achievement, whereas now it also requires defending sanctuaries of slowness.”

Sanctuaries of slowness.  It’s those last three words that brought you this sermon - “sanctuaries of slowness” -  since the gardener in the parable of the barren fig tree seems to me to be the caretaker, even the protector, of a sanctuary of slowness, when he tells the owner of the tree to let it alone for one more year.  Let it be.  Let it be.  Let it be.

And of course, you are the tree.  And I am the tree.  And sometimes the circumstances of the world, and technologies that we don’t know how to slow make it seem like time is running out for you and for me.  It makes it seem like Everything Is War and Nothing Is True.  And if you are the tree, if I am the tree, then this could be a question of life or death.

It is a matter of God’s unfathomable loving kindness that he calls us to inhabit, if we are able, and as much as we will allow it, sanctuaries of slowness within his church.  It can sometimes be difficult for us to see this slowness as a blessing, since we live in a “culture of an over-accelerated public sphere,” among technologies that we don’t know how to slow.

But it is in the sanctuaries of slowness that the wisdom to make peace instead of war will be found.

It is in the sanctuaries of slowness that the hope for life will overcome the forces of death.

And it is in the sanctuaries of slowness that we will find, with the aid of one who has been mistaken for a gardener before, that Everything Is Not War and Something Is True.

We have that Truth.  In fact, it is nearly all we have.

And if all we have is Jesus; shouldn’t everything start to look like peace?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
24 March 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

* “Everything Is War and Nothing Is True,” by William Davies in The New York Times, Feb 23, 2019

Of Chicks and Hens

For the reader of Scripture, one of the more humbling aspects of Biblical imagery is its tendency to use animals as metaphors for humans. After all, who really wants to be compared to sheep? But I imagine, too, that very few people would want to be assigned the fate of the goats. Nor is it flattering to be likened to the dull and stupid beasts that perish, or to wolves that deceive, or to wily foxes, or certainly not to dogs that eat the crumbs under tables.

So, we could do worse than to be compared to the avian offspring of a mother hen. Baby chickens are, after all, awfully cute. What grumpy person wouldn’t be somewhat cheered up by the image of a little chicken, covered in soft, downy feathers ambling about on unsteady legs?

And being compared to the brood of a hen is all the more compelling when we reflect on the protection that accompanies it. The hen is far more than a testy barnyard animal with ruffled feathers. The mother hen, newly delivered of offspring, has one purpose: to protect her young and to provide a blanket of warmth to nurture them. The mother hen spreads herself, almost sacrificially, over her little ones to shield them from harm. The mother hen is in the most wonderful sense deeply maternal and concerned with the welfare of her baby chickens. In the end, comparing ourselves to little birds under the all-encompassing care of a mother hen is not so bad.

Is it really a stretch, then, to imagine that Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem is in some sense directed to us, who were grafted onto the branch of Israel? Are we not, in some sense, a brood of fumbling, newly-birthed birds, whom God desires to gather under his wings when we have gone away from the nest ?

In his lament, it is as if Jesus, in despair over Jerusalem’s rejection of God’s will, is speaking as the voice of God. He is pronouncing words from his heavenly Father to all times and places, words from a mother hen to her disobedient brood. Lest we presume that Jesus’s mournful words are directed at only one specific city in the first century AD or to one group of people who persistently scorned God’s word of truth, we need only look around us now to see the continual repudiation of those who speak in God’s name.

How many of God’s prophets have been killed since Jesus’s lament over the Holy City? How many modern-day disciples of Jesus are ignored, rejected, and worse yet, murdered? It seems that Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem has continued its plaintive cry of sorrow and has followed, almost as a shadow side, the proclamation of the good news to the ends of the earth. Because wherever the good news has been preached, it has also been shunned.

And if we are little chicks in a time in which prophets and seekers after righteousness are stoned and killed, there is comfort and hope in the protective wings of God, who is concerned not only for the sparrows of this world but also for the little tiny chickens that need some direction in their journey of faith.

But if we are in some sense complicit with ancient Jerusalem in its renunciation of God’s truth, and if we are the heirs of the ones who stoned those sent by God, we are surely different from little, innocent chicks. We are not quite the cute progeny of a hen, snuggling our helpless, defenseless bodies under the incubatory cover of a protective parent.

If we’re honest, to be compared to the brood of a mother hen means that we are far closer to more self-sufficient chickens, those precocial birds who are capable of straying from the mother hen’s nest, soon after birth, while still returning back to the fold for warmth and nourishment.[1] In reality, these birds are not quite so guileless. They have garnered enough independence to have their feathers ruffled and engage in squabbles. They can also be cruel, as they nip at one another to vie for places of importance in the pecking order.

In an ideal animal world, the young chickens begin to imprint or bond themselves onto their mother soon after birth. In this nurturing relationship, the mother is a source of guidance and gentle discipline for her young. But it doesn’t mean that the chicks won’t rebel. And it doesn’t mean that the little birds won’t fail to bond with their maternal guide and wander away in errant behavior.

The mother hen, you see, does not control her young. She offers her body as a shield against harm and as necessary heat for growth, but at some point after birth, the mother hen must wean her chicks from herself. They must learn to survive in the wild world on their own without the safety of a nest to which they can return.

 If we are to adopt Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem as relevant to us and to our context, it is clear that we live in some kind of in-between time, between two worlds: the world of Jesus on earth and the world when he comes again. We live with the imprint of God on our world that was left by his only Son, an imprint that is frequently neglected and ignored. And yet we look ahead to a time to come in which that imprint’s full clarity is reclaimed.

In this in-between time, our house has truly been left to us. We journey between the time of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of the Father and his coming again in power and great glory, to judge both the living and the dead.

And meanwhile, in this transitional time of the earthly journey, the deliberate wandering away from the shelter of the divine wings has led to chaos, darkness, and evil. God’s less-than-innocent little birds have ventured forth from the nest in willful disobedience, viciously biting one another, tearing one another to pieces, and making a mess of things. The pecking order has gone awry, so that some act as if there is only room for certain members of the brood to nest under the shadow of God’s wings. And God’s holy houses have been turned into arenas strewn with the carnage resulting from cruelty and hate.

God’s desire to gather his brood from all nations under his wings of maternal protection has been disrupted by vile distortions of God’s truth. The wings of divine protection have been wings contorted by wayward chicks into weapons to slaughter the innocent. And too many in God’s vast brood of birds have strayed far from the imprint of their heavenly Father.

Surveying the landscape, it might seem that God has indeed abandoned our house to us. It might seem that we are left impotent with our broken wings, unable to fly the coop when the fighting begins and escape to safety. It can appear as if there are no longer wings under which we can take refuge to shield us from the wretchedness around us.

But God doesn’t smother us with wings. God’s wings, broad and generous in love, honoring the dignity that comes with freedom, will not restrain us in the nest against our will. God has left us the gift of his imprint on us, but we must choose to claim it.

Even among the torn feathers and in spite of the horrid exclusions of the pecking order, Christ’s promise still remains. He will come again. And when he does, we must be prepared to greet him with confidence as the blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord. This greeting will be unlike the sardonic “Hosannas!” of Jesus’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, which quickly morphed into cries of “Crucify him!” This greeting, our greeting, will be one that announces the fulfillment of God’s kingdom of justice and peace.

For the gentle, protective wings of the mother hen are still awaiting the return of the prodigal brood. The mark of the mother hen, offered to the offspring of this world so long ago, is still waiting to be recovered and realized in word and deed.

Betwixt and between, in our earthly sojourn, and in the holy mysteries of the Mass, we, too, adopt Christ’s plaintive plea over Jerusalem: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” As earth and heaven meet in this glorious banquet, we turn back to God’s nest and offer up our cry for God to gather again that aimless brood, hobbling with their broken wings amid torn feathers and wounded bodies.

Responding to Christ’s lament with our own, we turn back to the heavenly roost with our own entreaty: Oh, Christ, how we want to see you again, face to face! Oh, Heavenly Dove, how we long to dwell once again, all nations, all broods, under the span of your wings. Oh, Father, take our house and make it yours again.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
10 March 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[1] Wolter, Michael, Wayne Coppins, and Christoph Heilig, The Gospel According to Luke (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 205.