As Far As The East Is From The West

As far as the east is from the west,
so far has [God] removed our sins from us.  (Ps 103:12)

How far is the east from the west?

We come to God carrying a little or a lot.
Some of it needs blessing.
A lot of it needs to be let go of.

We don’t know how or where exactly to find God
(who is notoriously elusive),
in order to obtain that blessing,
or to have the ablation performed,
so that we can get rid of
whatever we need to get rid of.
So we come to church,
because God is reliably to be found here.

Many of us are more motivated by the exhaustion
of carrying with us things we can no longer carry
than we are by the desire for blessing.

Ash Wednesday is a day
to do something
about the exhaustion.

What am I to do? we ask.
What am I to do with all this stuff
I have been carrying for so long,
and that is weighing me down?
I don’t think I can carry it any longer.

Where did we get the idea
that God’s primary interest
was to judge us on the basis of our burdens?
To think less of us,
because of what we’ve been carrying?

What am I to do? we ask.
What am I to do with all this stuff
I have been carrying for so long,
and that is weighing me down?

Set it down, says the Lord.
Set it down,
and let’s unpack it together.

Oh, but if we unpack it together,
then you will see all the ugly details
of what I have been carrying with me,
some of which has become old and stale,
which makes it even uglier!

And if you see all those ugly details,
and if you realize how long
I have been carrying some of this stuff,
you will judge me harshly, to be sure.

The Lord disarms us with a smudge of ash.
Remember that you are dust
and to dust you shall return.
What interest does God have
in reducing our lives to dust and ashes?

Our lives were nothing but dust and ashes
before God put his breath into us.
But when our lives return to dust and ashes,
the breath will still have been breathed through us.
And we will still have embodied God’s breath;
and some small particle of the breath of God
will still smell like you,
will still smell like me.

Remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

Now, come, where were we,
with all the stuff you were going to unpack?

I left it over there, you say.
I left it behind me
when you called me here
to put this smudge of dirty ash on me.
Why have you marked me like this,
for shame?

Show me again,
says the breath of God;
show me where you left it:
all that you were carrying for so long
that was weighing you down.

It’s back there, you say.
I left it behind me,
when I came in here to face the east,
to face you.

It’s further behind me than I realized, you say,
as you squint to count the parcels you have left behind,
making sure they are all still there.
You cannot tell.

Turn again to the east,
God’s breath says,
bearing the faintest scent of you on it;
bearing the faintest scent of me.
Turn again to face me,
and leave those things behind.

All that? you say.
I can leave all that behind?
Aren’t my sins packed up in those parcels,
And spilling out?

Oh, yes,
comes the breath of God,
oh yes, your sins are in there.
Turn again to the east;
turn again to face me.

You had turned back again,
to check on the parcels that you left behind,
that you were carrying for so long,
that were weighing you down, the burdens for which
you had expected God to judge you.
But you can hardly see them in the distance now,
it’s as though you are sailing away from them,
and leaving them all behind
on a shore to which you will never return.

Perhaps God is collecting those parcels,
to inspect their contents,
and to wince in the process
of the accounting of your sins,
or mine.
You suspect that that is what God is doing:
pinching his nose,
at the lingering odor of you,
or me.

Comes the breath of God,
Turn again to the east;
turn again to face me.

And in your turning,
you are carried further and further away
from all that you were carrying for so long,
and that weighed you down,
from all your sins.
And so am I.

What are we to do?
What are we to do with this stuff
we have been carrying for so long,
and that has been weighing us down?

Set it down, says the Lord.
Set it down.

Remember that you are dust
and to dust you shall return.
What interest does God have
in reducing our lives to dust and ashes?

Our lives were nothing but dust and ashes
before God put his breath into us.
But when our lives return to dust and ashes,
the breath will still have been breathed through us.
And we will still have embodied God’s breath;
and some small particle of the breath of God
will still smell like you,
will still smell like me.

Remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

Now, come, where were we,
with all the stuff you were going to unpack?

I left it over there, you say.
I left it behind me
when you called me here.

Show me again,
says the breath of God;
show me where you left it:
all that you were carrying for so long
that was weighing you down.

It’s back there, you say.
I left it behind me,
when I came in here to face the east,
to face you.

When you turn back, and look behind you,
the breath of God asks, can you tell me where it is?
What has become of all your parcels?
What has become of all your sins?

But you cannot answer;
You do not know.
And you realize that you are not exhausted
any longer.
And a desire for blessing is being born in you,
and in me.

Comes the breath of God,
Turn again to the east;
turn again to face me.
And you do.
And I do.

The blessing for which you were once too exhausted,
now seems as though perhaps it is within reach.

What has become of all your parcels?
What has become of all your sins?
Where are they now?

As far as the east is from the west, you say,
as far as the east is from the west,
So far has he removed our sins from us.

For he himself knows whereof we are made;
he remembers that we are but dust.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

What interest does God have
in reducing our lives to dust and ashes?

Our lives were nothing but dust and ashes
before God put his breath into us.
But when our lives return to dust and ashes,
the breath will still have been breathed through us.
And we will still have embodied God’s breath;
and some small particle of the breath of God
will still smell like you,
will still smell like me.

That’s how far the east is from the west:
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has [God] removed our sins from us.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Ash Wednesday 2024
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Are We Ducks or Disciples?

“This is my Son, the Beloved; Listen to him!” The great composer Igor Stravinsky once had something pretty marvelous to say about listening. In an interview, he famously said, “To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.” And so I wonder, are we ducks when it comes to listening to the voice of Jesus in our lives? I wonder, of course, because apparently we are so dreadful when it comes to listening that God has to sometimes break into our time and space, overshadow us with a cloud, and yell at us, “This is my Son, the Beloved! Listen to him!” Any good teacher knows that you don’t raise your voice like that for any old reason. You save it for when you really need to get the attention of the hopeless ducks in the room. 

But why do we need to be compelled to listen to Jesus? Most of us are here at church because we think we are already listening. And what does it mean to listen to him anyway? What do we need to do in order to fulfill God’s shouted command to listen to Jesus? 

As Stravinsky so memorably pointed out, listening is not a passive activity. It requires something more than simply being quiet and hearing the sounds. But I think it does start with being quiet. If we look at the context clues Mark gives us, the command to listen seems like it is a direct result of Peter’s babbling. Certainly listening starts by stopping our own babbling so that we can put aside our own wills, and perhaps more importantly, put aside our own fears. Mark says that Peter babbles because no one knew quite what to say about Jesus’ metamorphosis. They were terrified. 

They may have left everything behind to follow Jesus because they really believed there was something special about him – Immediately before this passage, Peter even confesses his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, after all. Yet something about the supernatural confirmation of Jesus, not just as the Messiah, but as God’s own beloved son, has shaken them. It’s one thing to believe with the head and the heart, but quite another to be viscerally overwhelmed by an encounter with the living God on the top of a mountain in a cloud. And so they are terrified and cannot quiet themselves enough to listen to what this moment might have to teach them.

But it seems to me that being quiet is only the start. When we are quiet, we can hear, but it is still not a given that we will listen. A duck hears also, remember? To listen to someone generally means that you are at least open to considering that what they have to say may change something about your actions or beliefs. Think about the phrase, which I’ve often said about my own children, I admit – I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. Did my child hear what I said in this case? Probably. Did my child listen enough to change his course of action? Probably not.

Here again, good ol’ Igor has some words of wisdom for us. In the same interview, Stravinsky said, “Some let the ear be present and they make no effort to understand. To receive music you have to open the ears and wait, not for Godot, but for the music; you must feel that it is something you need.” You must feel that it is something you need. Well, siblings in Christ, I am here to testify to the fact that the voice of Jesus is something we need. The world needs to listen to his voice. 

But after thousands of years of pushing away the voice of Jesus in favor of our own interpretation of his words, we have become practiced at hearing, and not listening. We have gotten so used to explaining away Jesus’ words that make us uncomfortable, that we no longer listen. We babble – well, what Jesus was trying to say when he said “Go, sell what you own, and give your money to the poor” isn’t really that we should give all our money away. What he really meant was – and you can fill in the blank with whatever way you like to justify this. Or, whatever saying of Jesus you find difficult. 

I don’t know about you, but deep down in my soul, I long to listen to Jesus. I know I do. Because the times when I have listened to Jesus have been times of transformation of my will and my life. Times when I have recognized the voice of Jesus speaking to me from a person I would otherwise overlook. But I don’t always listen to the voice of Jesus, probably for the very same reason. I know that if I do, it will require something of me, and the something it requires might be something I’m scared to do – a transformation of my will and my life. Uncomfortable interactions with the world. I know the voice of Jesus is something I need, as much as Stravinsky needed to listen to music, but I still turn away at times.

Stravinsky also has a solution to the problem - betcha’ didn’t know he was such a good theologian, did you? Neither did I until recently, but I’m not surprised. Music is one of God’s greatest love languages, after all, whether or not musicians are always willing to admit to it. Stravinsky gives his opinion about why modern audiences are not able to truly listen (in the deeper sense of the word) to music. He said this is because our primary way of experiencing music nowadays is passive, for us, usually through an electronic device. Stravinsky reasoned that in the past, people were better able to listen to music because more people learned to play music. He said, speaking of audiences of generations past, “They had the habit of music played with their own hands, not only by ears. Now we hear music by the gramophone. This gives maybe more people a connection with music, but the result is not the same because the passive is not the active.”

And indeed he is right – the passive is not the active. At the risk of sounding mildly evangelical, and I promise, I sympathize if you cringe at this next bit – but, the reason we can’t or won’t listen to the voice of Jesus is because we are not engaged as often as we could be in an active relationship with him. It takes time and patience to learn to listen to the voice of Jesus. If you think of a spouse or a close friend of yours, you might realize that listening to what that person is really saying gets easier over time. At first, you might hear their words, but miss the subtle cues that give you more insight into what is happening beneath the surface. A small smile or a gesture that lets you know more information than a casual passerby hearing their words would know. 

Listening to Jesus is such an important and grand task that it takes a lifetime, and probably longer, to get the hang of it. And it is not a simple matter of being quiet, although that is never a bad place to start. It takes making active listening in loving relationship a priority. Considering Jesus’ words and actions on more than a surface level. What’s more, it involves taking the voice to which you have listened, and actually doing something about what you heard. Allowing his words to transfigure your own life so much that it catches the attention of others who may want to know how to listen, too.

Yes, any duck can hear the voice of Jesus, but, let’s face it, as great as ducks are, they have a limited capacity to carry out Christ’s mission in the world. I have nothing against ducks, per se. It’s just that we are called to be human beings who are living into the full stature of Christ, rather than ducks, who are presumably called to be…ducks. Perhaps I’ll learn more about duck nature and faith some day, and will have to apologize to the ducks out there, but for now, let’s go with my assumption that ducks’ ability to listen, and then to act or obey what they have heard, is limited. A duck can only be a duck, and in simply being a duck glorifies God in its own way.

Human beings, however, are called to listen, and from their listening, go forth to serve. By doing so, we move from passive recipients of God’s grace and glory into active listeners participating in the plan of salvation. I hope you are finding ways to listen to Jesus’ voice in an active way. Perhaps in your listening, you might hear Jesus invite you into service here at Saint Mark’s – by volunteering with the Saturday Soup Bowl, or if you really want to experience Jesus working in an active way, come help us out with Children’s Formation classes! Or perhaps your listening to the voice of Jesus invites you to help marginalized people in our community outside our church walls. The beginning of Lent next week seems to me an ideal time to take on a spiritual discipline of deep listening. 

Whatever you hear when you listen to Jesus, you’ll know that you are a disciple (and not a duck) because the passive is not the active. You’ll listen to the voice of God’s beloved, and then act on what you have heard, opening up possibilities for transfiguration in your own life that far exceeds the glory of a duck, in my opinion. 

Preached by Mtr. Meghan Mazur
11 February 2024
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

What About the Demons?

On any given week in church we face the question of whether or not it does anybody any good for us to be here.  You might not have asked that question, but a lot of other people have.  And the question of whether or not it does anybody any good to be here might hinge on whether or not the scriptures have anything useful to say to us.  And that question might hinge on whether or not the Gospel or any other reading assigned on a given day had anything to do with “demons.”  And I would contend that the “demons” question (which is inextricably linked to the “unclean spirits” question) would tend, for most modern audiences to militate against the possibility that there is a message of tremendous usefulness at hand, and thefore also to chafe against the possibility that coming to church on a day like today will do you any good.

Last week, St. Mark told us about a man with an unclean spirit.  And this week, after telling us that Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever, our patron tells us that Jesus “cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.”   Generally speaking talk of demons and unclean spirits  in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry takes place within the first half or so of the narrative.  When they do come up, it happens in two ways.  Either Jesus is casting out demons and unclean spirits, or he is being accused of being possessed by a demon.  But the appearance and topic of or concern with demons disappears from the latter half or so of the Gospel narratives, by my observation, anyway.  It’s as though dealing with demons and unclean spirits is something Jesus had to attend to in order to get on with the rest of his work and ministry.  But once it’s done, it’s done.  I point this pattern out because I want people to take Jesus seriously.  And I fear that modern people who encounter demons and unclean spirits at the first part of the Jesus story will consign this narrative to the realm of fantasy literature, which is where demons are generally and frequently to be found in our own day.

Living in a city that is teeming with “eds and meds,” there’s almost no point in trying to address the question of whether or not Jesus actually healed people with his touch and his command.  It goes without saying that such details will be characterized as fantasy (or as delusional) by many.  I’m willing to leave the matter of Jesus healing in the  “miracles” file, and come back to it some other time.  But I think we do have to work work through the demons.  And I suspect that the most common way to do that is to say that the demons and the unclean spirits are metaphors for conditions for which today we have clinical diagnoses.

Now, demons, as a metaphor, are a useful thing, even today.  The idea that some of us (maybe most or all of us) have “demons,” in quotes, that we have to deal with is not unhelpful, and probably not untrue, as long as the “demons” remain in quotation marks.  Try to get an appointment with a therapist these days, and you will discover that a lot of people are working through their stuff, a good deal of which might be described as “demons” (in quotes), at least on a bad day.  Therapists are in high demand these days, as people try to work through all kinds of stuff… clinically.  And this is as it should be.

That stuff might come from abuse you suffered as a child, or as an adult.  It might be related to addiction that you have addressed, or that still needs addressing.  It might stem from your childhood or your family of origin, or it might be the result of your brain chemistry.  It might be something that medication can help you with, or it might be something for which the meds just don’t seem to do much good.  The stuff you deal with as your demons might be an irrational fear.  Or it might be some lingering issue from a relationship that didn’t work out as you’d hoped it would.  Your demons might manifest themselves in compulsive behavior, or depression, or manic episodes.  Or they might hiss and spit at you through your grief for a loved one whom you’ve lost.  Maybe your demon’s name is spelled with an ADHD.  Or maybe it’s known to you in bouts of anxiety.  They could come as a result of a lost pregnancy, or a child who is lost to you in one of several painful ways that children are taken from us.  Your demons could be a matter of spiritual malaise, or inattentiveness, and could well reside within your heart and not your head.  Your demons could be the result of a failure to forgive, or to accept forgiveness, or to seek forgiveness in the first place.  Or your demons could have resulted in a self-loathing that nobody knows about, but you, and that you feel every time you look into the mirror.

Now, it’s not my intention to dismiss demons as nothing but a metaphor for untreated mental health issues.  Nor is it my intention to convince you that demons are real.  It is my intention to try to convince you that we still have something to learn from the scriptures, even though their world-view is different from our own.  And it is my intention to try to convince you that Jesus’ ministry, his healing touch, and his command over every aspect of the created order - which could include demons and unclean spirits, for all I know - is real, because that created order also includes you and me.

So I think it’s interesting that Jesus deals with the demons and the unclean sprits early in his ministry.  He deals with the demons first.  This week and and last week’s passages of Mark’s Gospel are still in the first chapter.  And remember, the demons will disappear from the narrative before long.  St. Mark is deliberate in his choice of words, and he is not naive.  He knows the difference between “healing” - which is what Jesus does for the sick - and “casting out” - which is what Jesus does with the demons.  There is a difference between sickness and demons, and they require different solutions.  Interestingly, in St. Mark’s Gospel, Jesus continues to heal people miraculously long after the last mention of him casting out demons.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really know what to make of the Gospel accounts of demons and unclean spirits.  I think I am comfortable with Shakespeare’s insight that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, and so I am willing to take the scriptures on their own terms, and really try to look and see if there is anything for us to glean from even the parts we seem ready and able to do without.  And I see two possibilities about how we might regard the demons and the unclean sprits, one of which, is, I think, more useful than the other.

The first and less useful possibility, is that whatever demons are, if they have any reality beyond the power of metaphor, Jesus dealt with them way back then, and that was that.  That was then, but this is now.  Did he destroy the demons altogether?  Had a few errant demons escaped whatever dimension they should have remained in, but Jesus sent them packing, and now they are contained again?  I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter to me.  What I know is that even within the context of the Gospels, once the demons are gone, they are gone; and they don’t have any more bearing on what happens or what Jesus accomplishes, so that’s that.

The second possibility admittedly may well rest on seeing the demons as a kind of metaphor, but I almost never met a metaphor that I didn’t like, so I’m comfortable with this approach.  The second possibility is that it is important that we see that indeed, most of us have demons to contend with, in the metaphorical sense.  You can think of them as demons or unclean spirits - either will do.  We can even deal with them clinically, and maybe we should do just that, since we do not seem to live in an age of miracles, these days.  Yes, many of us should be dealing clinically with whatever we think our demons are.  Because, yes, most of us have demons to contend with.  Hence, the difficulty of finding a therapist at the moment.  And Jesus knows that most of us have demons to contend with, and he knows that it has always been thus.

Jesus has a non-clinical approach to our demons, that, nevertheless, could inform the clinical approach we take to dealing with our demons.  It is so obvious that it seems silly that we don’t more readily identify this aspect of what it means for Jesus to cast out demons.  And it addresses a very important insight that all of us must come to when we want to confront our own demons.  In fact, it is at the very heart of what we have to come to know and believe if we are to make any headway in dealing with our own demons.  And this insight has very important implications.

This is what Jesus is showing us when he casts out demons.  He is showing us that we are not our demons.  You are not your demons; and your demons are not you.  Your demons do not define you, they are not truly a part of you, and they were never meant to be, and they can be cast out, destroyed, and consigned to your past, and to your memory.  They do not need to control your life.

Here’s the implication of this understanding of the demons, and why all mention of the demons disappears as the narrative of Jesus’ ministry progresses.  Jesus did not come to us to deal with demons.  The demons already know who he is, and  maybe it’s even a little tiresome for Jesus to have to contend with demons, when the reason he came to us is for us!

Whatever your demons are, your demons are not you.  You are not the abuse, or the addiction, or the brain chemistry.  You are not nothing but  your childhood, or the effects of your family of origin, or your meds, or that persistent fear, or the compulsive behavior, the depression, or the manic episode.  You are not your ADHD.  You are not your grief.  You are not your children.  You are not your spiritual malaise, or the forgiveness that you need to seek or to offer.  You are not whatever lives inside of you that hates yourself.  Whether demons be real or a metaphor for what haunts you - you are not your demons.

And Jesus came into the world for you, to minister to you, to heal and soothe and save you.  Jesus came into the world because we did not know him yet.  The demons already knew him, and he reminded them of who they were dealing with.  And by halfway through his story, the demons are gone, cast out, destroyed!  And without the demons to deal with, Jesus could get on with his ministry to the people he came for: you and me!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I don’t really know what to make of the Gospel accounts of demons and unclean spirits.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, and so I am willing to take the scriptures on their own terms.  Mostly, I am willing to regard the demons and the unclean spirits on the terms with which Jesus regarded them: as obstacles to clear away so that he could get on with loving his people, so that he could get on with loving you and me!

On any given week in church we face the question of whether or not it does anybody any good for us to be here.  You might not have asked that question, but a lot of other people have.  If you are confused by the demons and the unclean spirits you hear about in the scriptures, and if they pose a barrier to your faith, or your confidence in the Gospel, let me try to reassure you that it does us a lot of good to be in church if we want to grow in love.    Because the Lord of Love is the One who has the power to clear away every obstacle to love, every real, or imagined, or clinical demon or condition that could prevent us from getting to him, or that could prevent him from getting to us.

Did you hear what he said to his disciples when they came to find him and tell him that everyone was looking for him?  “Let us go,” he said, “so that I may proclaim the message… for that is what I came out to do.”

The message is love.  The message is that God loves you and God forgives you, and God wants you to love yourself and forgive yourself.  The message is that God will cast out every demon who stands in his way and in your way, so that you can get to Jesus, and so he can get to you.  Because God is love.  Christ is love.  Jesus is love.  And you are meant for love.  And love is meant for you!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 February 2024
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia