First Spring Buds

I trust none of you are such weather purists that you were deflated by that great, unseasonably warm weather we had on Monday and Tuesday. It fit with the week of Rose Sunday to relax from the discipline of bundling up against the cold and bracing ourselves against the icy sidewalks, in what the calendar told us was still Winter. We felt the Spring breathe back into our bones a little bit earlier this week, and I was totally living in Spring mode. So were the early buds that came out in our garden, and gardens across the city.

Jesus begins, and the early Church expands on the idea that those who die in the Lord are like seeds planted in the Earth – their resurrection is as certain as the coming of Spring. That would make Lazarus like one of those early buds, called forth by a couple warm days in the winter, as it were. He would be destined to die again, though nonetheless chosen in the depth of winter to bloom back to earth, as a sign of God’s power in the Messiah.

But this raises questions, right? Why just one early bud, shooting up before the rest of the dead? Elsewhere in the Scriptures, Jesus seems to call dead people to life – like the Centurion’s daughter. But that girl, Jesus says, was ‘only sleeping.’ The dead are raised after Jesus’ death in Matthew’s Gospel, in an almost ghostly way. But Lazarus is different – he was dead and Jesus chose to bring him back. How wonderful for his sisters, Mary & Martha, who were mourning him. How wonderful for his friends and the rest of his family. How wonderful that they were able not just to have one last conversation with him, but many more.

But why just one Lazarus? Why couldn’t Jesus Christ have done this for our dead friends, mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, and whomever we’ve grieved in our lives? Like Martha, we know that they will rise again in the resurrection at the last day, and that Jesus who dwells among us is the resurrection. But still – why just one Lazarus?

At least 300,000 have died in Darfur. A hundred thirty five thousand people have died in Iraq since we initiated the current war. Since the outbreak of civil war in the Congo ten years ago, 2.5 million people have died. In our own city, gun violence has taken young lives at an alarming rate. And in the midst of all this anguish, still, we know, with Martha that the dead will rise again on the last day, and Jesus who dwells among us is the resurrection. But for a family who’s just lost their only daughter to a stray bullet on the streets of Baghdad or our own streets, where is the opportunity that Lazarus had, to rise and be greeted once more on this Earth by his loved ones?

The families and classmates of those killed in campus shootings in Louisana and Illinois last month, and Virginia Tech last year - those thousands of mourners would be consoled by Martha’s faith that the dead will rise again on the last day. But they might also wonder why their dead sons and daughters, classmates, sisters and brothers can’t rise a little early, like Martha’s brother.

It’s confusing. But what’s clear is that God cares for every one of us, and Jesus mourns every death – it’s impossible to read the parables of the lost sheep, and the lost coin, and not understand that. So I think what’s really confusing about this question is what theologians call the scandal of particularity. Part of what it means for God to become human and dwell among us is that he lives in a certain place, at a certain time. This means that Jesus’ ministry (of healing and teaching) and resurrection were conducted also at a certain place, at a certain time – this inevitable ‘scandal’ of particular circumstances culminates perhaps with the fact that only certain people got to see him after he rose from the dead – as for the rest of us, he says, “blessed are those who have not seen, and still believe.”

But it would have been magnificent to see. It would have been amazing to hear him preach. It would have been consoling to be healed by his very hands. It would have been wonderful if he called our own loved ones forth from the grave. But what we’re desiring thereby is that Jesus would never have ascended to heaven at all, and would instead have remained on earth forever. And even then, we would find ourselves wanting more. We wouldn’t want him just to be in one place at once time. We would want him always, wherever someone dies, calling the dead forth. And at this point, we realize what we’re really desiring is more than even Jesus’ earthly ministry, as broad as it ever could have been: we’re desiring heaven, where pain and sorrow are no more.

Now we must look back to the Resurrection of Lazarus and remember that Jesus did this and all his signs to show that the heaven we desire really exists. And that, really, is the point. Jesus did these things to show that we become part of that eternal life now, through him, and that indeed, our bodies are like seeds which will all blossom in the eternal Spring, which will all be ‘called forth,’ like Lazarus.

Our Gospel reading ends with the statement: ‘Many… therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.’ The amazing thing, I think, given our tendency to doubt, is that after those who saw Lazarus rise had themselves died, still their faith was passed on to another generation. In other words, it was amazing that there only needed to be one Lazarus, there only needed to be one earthly ministry for Jesus, there only needed to be one death on the cross and one resurrection of Christ for the mysterious and life-giving faith we now share to be passed down through history. God’s grace and truth are powerful conduits.

And that truth, the truth of which Lazarus’ resurrection is a sign, is that God has something greater in store for us than even Mary and Martha witnessed on the day Lazarus came back. God has prepared eternal life for us, and this eternal life begins now, it dwells within us. That means that resurrection can never be something only far off in the past or many years to come in the future. Paul writes: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.” Despite the ‘scandal of particularity,’ still the one Spirit of Christ dwells in all of us. The power of resurrection is alive in all of our bodies, which are the Temples of the Holy Spirit. There has been a long winter – I know, in Philly, it’s really been mild; but since the Fall from grace, metaphorically there’s indeed been a long Winter, with only a couple early buds before Spring. Still, these ‘early buds’ witness the power of their creator. Albert Camus said, in an admittedly non-Christian, but completely applicable statement: “I realized that in the depth of Winter, there lay within me an invincible Summer.”

“I realized that in the depth of Winter, there lay within me an invincible Summer.” Now, in the depth of Lent, as we walk the way of the cross, there lies within us resurrection: strength beyond any human strength, which is good, because the journey is hard. I heard a country preacher on a radio station in southwestern Virginia say: “you know why Jesus said, “Lazarus, come forth?” (And in the background, on the radio, everyone hoots and hollers.) “Cause if he would have just said, ‘come forth!’, all the dead would have been raised.”

Now, uncontrollably vibrant inside us, breathes the invincible Spirit of God who sees the dry bones of all who have gone before and says to them and us, without qualification: come forth. Out of sin, come out. Out of the old way you used to live your life before you heard about this higher love: come out. Out of death: rise again to the faint resonance of bells from our true and native land, as you’ve come so many times to the communion rail, to the looming and unfathomable peace of the varied, deep and narrow way: come, come, come; but this time, stay.

Preached by Dcn. Paul Francke
9 March 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

At a Well, Without a Bucket

The woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.” (Jn. 4:11)


There is much to distract us in the story that we hear today of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.  There is the implication of ethnic tension here; the issue the scarcity of water; the possibility of lurid details of the woman’s personal life; the ethics of marriage; the disciples’ tendency to miss the point; questions about the role of the Messiah; and other aspects of this encounter that would yield interesting results were we to dwell on them.  That is to say that this is the type of biblical story that could easily lead to a long, boring sermon.  I hope it will not – and I bet you do too!

As I have been reading and re-reading the story this week, I’ve begun to think that the crux of the story – and the aspect that connects it to our own lives – is to be found in the woman’s reaction to Jesus when she says to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.”  Or, to use a different translation, “Sir you have no bucket, and the well is deep.”

“Sir you have no bucket…”

I say that this is what connects the story to our own lives because of all the details of this episode, this is the one that does not require us to learn anything new.  You might need me to explain to you something of the background of the relationship  between Jews and Samaritans.  We could spend time delving into the issue of water scarcity in biblical lands and biblical times, and in our own.  We could do a study of the ethics of marriage, etc.  And from all these inquiries we would undoubtedly learn something useful that would shed light on the meaning of this passage.

But when we listen to what the woman says to Jesus, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep,” we don’t need to do complicated analysis in order to understand what she is getting at.  How are you, Jesus, going to give me water, when you have no bucket?  Why do you expect me to think that you have anything for me when you are standing there without the proper gear?  What would make me think that you have anything for me, when anyone can see that you don’t even have a bucket to draw water from the well?!

You have no bucket, and the well is deep.

This story takes place in an ancient context but it poses a very modern question to Jesus.  Because in our world it often looks as though Jesus is standing at the well with no bucket.

We want to believe that he is the Prince of Peace.  But war rages around us, our cities are locked in cycles of violence, and we all know households where crucifixes hang on the walls but peace is far from home.  It would appear that the well of peace is deep, but Jesus has no bucket.

We want to believe that Jesus is the Judge eternal who brings justice into the world.  But we know that justice is not evenly distributed to rich and poor, or to the weak and powerful, and that in many corners of the world might still makes right.  The well of justice is deep, but where is Jesus’ bucket?

We want to believe that Jesus is the Great Physician who heals all our infirmities.  But the more medically sophisticated we become the more frustrated we are by the cancer that comes so swiftly and so decisively, by the Alzheimer’s that settles in so slowly but surely, by the Parkinson’s that takes over so viciously, by the virus that lurks so silently but menacingly.  We have hoped that the well of healing would be deep, but how can Jesus show us since he has no bucket?

We want to believe that in Jesus we meet the Son of the God of love.  But all around us we see failures where we thought love was planted: in broken marriages, estranged families, lost friendships, and unrequited romances.  We want to believe that the well of love is deep, but even if it is, where is Jesus’ bucket?

We want to believe that Jesus conquers death with the hope of life everlasting.  But don’t we still lose the ones we love to the grave?  Isn’t our grief still real?  Don’t we still know the pain of loss and still fear the uncertainty of death?  The well of hope, if it exists, might be deep, but we cannot be sure that Jesus has a bucket.

And so we can be tempted to say, as skeptics and non-believers would, Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.

Perhaps questions like these ran through the Samaritan woman’s mind as she stood there talking with Jesus.  If so, something happened to overcome her questioning.  Something mysterious and even mystical happened in this exchange between the woman and Jesus.  Notice that John tells us that when the disciples came “they marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, ‘What do you wish?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’”  Something kept the disciples silent, preventing them from interrupting whatever it was they witnessed.  Something was happening there that prevented the disciples from making their predictable objections.  It was not just a conversation taking place between the woman and Jesus; some mysterious and mystical exchange transpired that so transformed the moment that the woman set down her water jar and left it behind.

I wonder if what happened was something like what Saint Paul is talking about when he says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”  Was there a moment, as the woman stood there assessing Jesus, ready to dismiss him because, after all, he had no bucket, and the well was deep, was there a moment that something happened to her and she realized that God’s love was being poured into her heart?  Is it possible that the Holy Spirit – as yet unrecognizable to the disciples – carried a measure of love from Jesus’ loving heart and poured it into hers?  Was it the unmistakable power of that exchange that kept the disciples silent?  Was it the overwhelming flood of God’s love, poured into her heart, that transformed all the woman’s expectations and caused her to set down her water jar and leave it behind as though she had no more need of it?

God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

During Lent we stand before God to acknowledge, among other things, that we so often stand before Jesus with a skeptical stance, as though we want to say to him, Sir you have no bucket, and every well we can think of, every well we encounter, every well that might have something we need in it is deep!  What good do you do us if you have no bucket?  

Is this any different from the stance of our earlier generations who murmured against Moses (which was really murmuring against God) and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?”    What could they possibly have thought as Moses stood there in front of the rock at Masseh?  Moses, you’ve got no bucket!  And we’re pretty sure you’ve got no sense left if you expect us to believe that you are going to get water from that old rock!

And do we find it any easier to believe that God is pouring his love into our hearts?

Tradition has it that it was for his failure of faith that God would bring water from the rock that Moses was prevented from crossing the Jordan and entering into the Promised Land.  At the end of his life, Moses was allowed to see the land to which he had been traveling for forty years in the desert, but not allowed to go over.

Jesus knows that you and I have been traveling too, sometimes across arid, lonely, painful ground.  He knows of our anguish for peace and justice and healing and love and hope.  He knows that we are afraid to place our trust in him, because the well is deep, and where is his bucket?

But Jesus does not want us to get so close to God’s promise and still miss out on it.  He doesn’t want to leave us stuck on the wrong side of the Jordan.

And so he calls us, day by day and week by week; and he calls many others who have not yet heard or responded to that call.  He calls us to make room in our hearts for the love of God that the Holy Spirit is pouring into them.  He calls you and me to come apart with him and pray.  He calls us to spend at least a moment of communion with him.  He call us to notice, when we draw close to him in prayer, in communion, that instant when no one dares speak because of that mysterious and mystical exchange when we hold out our water jars to him.  We are only hoping that he might fill them with some water.  We are only holding them out, hoping for the measure of peace we came for, the measure of justice we came for, the measure of healing, love, or hope we came for…

… and so often we have little expectation that we will receive what we have hoped for.  But see how the disciples have stopped in their tracks.  See how silent it is.  See how something more than what we had hoped for passes from him to us.  See how God’s love has already been poured into our hearts.  See how ready we are to set our jars down and leave them behind, because it was you and me that needed to be filled – not our jars.

And see how, when we let ourselves get near enough to him - to this great Rock of ages - we are filled to overflowing with that love, by which all other gifts flow in a fount of every blessing.  And we thought that Jesus didn’t even have a bucket!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
24 February 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

What is the What

In his excellent book that the whole city is now meant to be reading, Dave Eggers tells a creation story that comes from the Dinka tribes of the southern Sudan:

“When God created the earth, he made… the first [men]… tall and strong, and he made their women beautiful, more beautiful than any of the creatures of the land….

“… and when God was done and the [men and women] were standing on the earth waiting for instruction, God asked the man, ‘Now that you are here, on the most sacred and fertile land I have, I can give you one more thing.  I can give you this creature, which is called the cow….

“… God showed the man… the cattle, and the cattle were magnificent.  They were in every way exactly what the [man and woman] would want… [they] would bring them milk and  meat and prosperity of every kind.  But God was not finished….

“You can either have these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What.

“… the first man lifted his head to God and asked what this was, this What.  ‘What is the What?’ the first man asked.  And God said to the man, ‘I cannot tell you.  Still, you have to choose.  You have to choose between the cattle and the What.”

Of course the man can see what an excellent gift the cattle are.  He can imagine the health and happiness to be had in its milk and its meat, he can see that it is a peaceable animal and a great blessing from God and so the first man chooses the cattle, and leaves the What well enough alone.  But throughout time the memory of the mystery persists.  What other gift might God have had in store?  Something better, more wonderful, more frightening, more excellent than the cattle?  Or is the What a second prize, of clearly lesser value than a cow?  What is the What?

Thus God guides the human heart in imagining the beginning of all things: a garden planted in the east of Eden, a man, and a woman formed from a rib, rivers flowing, a tree of Life, and a tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  And somehow, choices to be made, even in paradise.  To accept God’s obvious blessing or to go with what’s behind Door #2, since, after all the fruit of the tree looks to be good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes?  

Our own creation story is universal in its outlook but in many ways it hews pretty closely to the African one.  And as Adam and Eve stand naked before the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, there is a sense in which they are being faced with the same kind of choice: accept God’s obvious blessing, or risk it all and find out what is the What?

There is missing, in the African story, a crucial character, slithering and sliming along: the subtle serpent is absent from this tale.  Had he been there, we can only assume that he would have bargained with the first Dinka man and the first Dinka women, convincing them that the What was worth looking into, pointing out ways that they might keep their cattle and still get the What. He could sell snake oil to a snake!  But he has no role in this story... not in those early days of story-telling.

But in Sudan the story continues, jumping forward to our own times: a chronicle of the horrific slaughter of men and women all across southern Sudan.  An exodus of Lost Boys (and others) walking across the desert into Ethiopia.  A decade of childhood spent in a refugee camp.  And finally deliverance to the promised land of these United States where the main character of the book finds himself beaten, robbed, and left sitting in an Emergency Room for hours since he has no insurance.  Perhaps the serpent, subtle as ever, has been there all along.

And the memory of the mystery persists.  What is the What?  What is that secret that God once withheld?  Was it right to choose the cattle – which had seemed such an obvious blessing?  Or would the What have been a better choice that could have delivered the people from this awful fate?

What is the What?  It is such an odd question!  We can let it take us into our own story, too.  What is it that leads us so quickly from paradise to murder?  It wasn’t the cows, surely!  It wasn’t Abel’s goats that so incited Cain!  What is the What?  

What is it that has organized this great nation of ours into the aisles of a discount super-store?  What is it that puts guns in the hands of children and then recruits them for warfare?  Is it some twisted version of a gift that once was given by God?  Is it the backwash from the rivers that flowed through Eden?  How did this garden get so polluted?  What is the What?  

Is it some Holy Grail that has inspired men perversely to fight to the death across a holy land?  Is it the power of the tree of Life, rolled up into a belt, strapped around a young girl’s midsection, and then detonated in a public square?  What is the What?

What gift did we decline?  Or is it that we have never stopped pursuing its mystery?  What fruit could we have eaten that brought things to this?  What parasite has burrowed into the human being that has made the street corners of Camden so awful and so bloody?  What is the What?

Or is the What the deceptive power that courses through corporations and congresses as they spend ever more money on weapons and less on anything else?  Or is the What light sweet crude oil – that sounds so scrumptious, but grips us with all the determined and corrupting power of a heroin addiction?  What is the What?

Perhaps our own story is not so different from the story of those tall, dark Dinka from Sudan.  Perhaps we, too, have been possessed by the memory of the mystery of what might have been (what is the What?)  How delightfully naive it must have been to see the hopes of the future possessed by a cow!  How delightfully simple it would have been to stay away from just one tree!  But that was long ago and now we are modern, sophisticated, busy people!  Give us the What – whatever it may be!  For at last we must know what we might have had - What is the What?!

If the truth is that our story is intertwined with the Africans’ story, then let us let the story take us to the desert – since it is the desert that the Lost Boys of Sudan had to cross.  But let us let our story take us to a different desert, where Jesus has gone, and where after forty days of fasting he encounters that slithering, slimy, subtle tempter.  And it turns out that the devil has been harboring the memory of the mystery all these ages.  He’s packaged it differently for Jesus.

Wouldn’t you like some bread, he asks.  Wouldn’t you like to let me help you out?  No?

Wouldn’t you like to show me just how powerful you are?  Flex your muscles?  Won’t you take my suggestion?  No?

Wouldn’t you like to add to your power?  Wouldn’t you like to rule men’s hearts with an iron fist?  No?

The devil’s temptations suggest the contours of that old mystery.  Wouldn’t Jesus like to have the What – the alternative to God’s obvious blessing?  Wouldn’t Jesus like to have it all?  What is the What?

Somehow fortified by his fasting, Jesus, who now seems to know himself more fully, also knows the folly of these false choices.  He knows, of course, about the garden and the tree.  He knows about the Dinka and the cattle.  And he knows about the What.  Jesus knows about the false choice between God’s obvious blessing and whatever it is that’s behind Door # 2, or down Aisle 12, or in the firing chamber of a gun, or gushing up from an oil well, or strapped around a suicide bomber’s waist.  Jesus knows that there was never really any good choice to be made, that accepting God’s obvious blessing is blessing enough for any people.

So Jesus goes into the desert like a new first man to confront the memory of the mystery of this ancient, nagging question – what might have been?  And when we see Jesus confront this tempting question, do we finally see it for what it is: something like a curse on our lips?

Even though that first Dinka man chose wisely, his children, or their children, would find themselves in the exact same boat as the children of Adam and Eve.  That persistent question always haunting them, unable to simply be grateful for the cows, the question hung in the air: What is the What?

So Jesus goes into the desert to become a new first man who will take the question from our lips.  Because a story like that – or a story like the folly of Eve and Adam – is a story that we are bound to go on repeating over and over until we find a new story to replace it.  This seems to be the way we are made.

Which is why today the Sudan has become a place of un-imaginable bloodshed and misery.  Far from the most sacred and beautiful land that God could give, Sudan and its people have been raped and slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands over the last ten years or more.  Africans are unwilling or unable to put a stop to this.  The Chinese are unwilling, the Europeans are unwilling.  And although we Americans will read about it and preach about the carnage that has befallen Darfur and other parts of Sudan, we have shown precious little willingness to do much about it.

We are all too willing, it would seem, to live with the What – with whatever the alternative to God’s obvious blessing is.  We are all too willing to be beguiled by smooth-talking serpents who tell us we don’t have to have it God’s way, we’ll do perfectly well on our own.  And we have not yet convinced ourselves that it is time to let this new first man take over our lives, our history.

Which is why, as Lent begins, the Church drags us into the desert with Jesus to overhear his confrontation with that old serpent.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

“You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

“Be gone, Satan!  For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

And there is no What anymore.  When Jesus comes out of the desert he begins his ministry of healing and teaching and preaching and feeding.  He holds no false bargain up to those who would hear him and follow him.  He leaves no lingering question in the air.  He only starts to call out, “Follow me, follow me!”  And soon we learn that to follow him is no easy task.  It might be easier to wonder about what God is hiding behind another door, what secret answer he may hold to an ancient question.

But there is no question.  There is only the Cross to go to with this new first man, who will take every ancient tragedy there with him to be crucified with him – and every modern tragedy as well.

And there is no What anymore – no alternative to God’s obvious blessing in this new man, who has given us a new story to tell, and who has beaten that slithering, subtle serpent at his own game.

Forty days and forty nights he is giving us to think about that old story, or to repeat the old question in our heads over and over: What is the What, what is the What?

Forty days and forty nights to leave these things in the desert, where, with the serpent, they will finally shrivel and die.  

Forty days and forty nights to discover this new first man, who the devil is forced to leave, and to whom angels come, to bring him to us, if we will have him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
10 February 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Galilees of the Gentiles

How seldom do we think of the lost tribes of Israel!  We forget that the history of God’s chosen people is a history of a fractured people: the ten Northern tribes of Israel declared their independence from the Southern tribes of Judah after the reign of King Solomon.  These ten tribes were eventually driven out of their lands by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC, never to be heard of again.  The fate of these lost tribes has been fodder for wild speculation in our own modern times.

But in Jesus’ day the fate of the Northern kingdom was not a matter of speculation: the divided kingdom had lost its Northern half to a godless imperial power.  This is not to say that all differences had been forgotten or forgiven; not to say that there was a nostalgic longing for those ten lost tribes.  It is simply to state the fact that the surviving Southern kingdom of Judah knew themselves to be a remnant of the larger family born of Abraham’s hope.

That hope had seemed to swell during the reign of David.  The people had wanted a king – begged for a king – and finally God relented and gave them David, who turned out to be a difficult character to say the least.  Still, after David came Solomon – the paragon of wisdom and virtue, who built the first temple in Jerusalem.  The temple would stand for more than 300 years, but the kingdom would split after the death of the great king.  

And so the history of God’s people continued in parallel motion, on two tracks: north and south.  Then, late in the eighth century came the Assyrian hoarde to drive the northern tribes from their lands.  No king could now recover the long-lost tribes.  The prophets might sing of them but they were gone.  And the region of Galilee, which once had been home to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali (two of the ten) remained a symbol (at least to the prophet Isaiah) of the broken state of the family of God.

The Southern kingdom would know its own troubles.  In the sixth century the Babylonians would destroy Solomon’s temple and send the remnant kingdom into exile for forty or fifty years.  And although they would eventually return and the temple would be rebuilt, things were different, as they would have to be, for this devastated people.

What had become of Israel?    
What had become of the promise?
What had become of the covenant?
What had become of Galilee?

It was to Galilee, to a town called Capernaum , that Jesus went to make his home after hearing that his cousin John the Baptist had been put in jail.  And now, Jesus becomes the hope of Galilee, although no one yet knows it.  The lost tribes will not be restored.  But the king who renews the promise of God has now arrived on the scene to little fanfare.

‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles – the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and the shadow of death light has dawned’

The evangelist remembers the prophet’s words.  The prophet remembers the lost tribes.  Galilee is more than a place on the map.  It is a region of loss, a district of waiting, an area of silent hope.  And it is now no longer a hope confined to the children who sprung from Abraham’s loins and Sarah’s womb.  It is Galilee of the Gentiles – of the nations – a hope for all people.

To those of us for whom land has become little more than a commodity it is hard to imagine that some piece of land could stand for so much.  Can it be sold to developers? – we ask ourselves.  If not, what is the great fuss about.  Our inability to understand how closely the land itself is tied to the story of Israel and its fractious history is part of what makes even current conflicts there so incomprehensible to us.  But the land has always been more to Abraham’s offspring than a place to build a house or a city.  It is the landscape of God’s promise, of his deliverance, and of his hope.

And what of Galilee, once the home of Zebulun and Naphtali?  Is hope ever to return to Galilee?

Can we allow our imaginations to consider our own lost tribes?  Can we map out in our mind’s eye the contours and features and boundaries of regions where once we had hope and now we have little or none?  Do we remember the dreams we once had?

Plot out on this map the sibling taken from you too early in life, or the one you haven’t spoken to for years.  Locate the fever of love that once kept you awake for someone.  Identify the coordinates of innocence and joy you knew as a child.  See the place where your mother nursed you and your father still cared to rest you on his knee.  Are some of these lost places in your life?

In my own family’s story there is a farm on this map, and a house in Brooklyn, and another in Queens.  There are churches on the map and priests, there are schools and teachers.  There are times before injury or illness.  There are grandparents and old friends and even pets on this map.

And if we can see all this in the personal map of our imaginations, are there not also landmarks that we share?  A church not torn by strife and constantly out of breath for trying to keep up with the world around it.  A city or a town that once was so much easier to live in.  The smoldering shadow of the Twin Towers mark an important memorial on this map.  For some of us there are places of great danger on this map – in Vietnam, or now in Iraq, or maybe right here in our own country.

See on this map all the places that God might have come to us and we have wondered if he ever would.  See the deserts spreading out for miles on this map – places we never wanted to go but found ourselves there anyway, quite against our will.  See the vistas of places we dreamed we’d travel to but that now seem well beyond our means to get there.  See all these regions of loss, these districts of waiting, these areas of silent hope.

These are all the Galilees of our lives – Galilees of the Gentiles.  These are lands across the Jordan that have seemed lost to us as we take stock of our own fractured lives and histories and find a lot of places on the maps of our imaginations that now seem foreboding, unhappy, or just plain lost to us.

Into these lost regions of our lives Jesus is moving, making his home, somewhere by the water.

Have we longed for someone to put back together the fractured picture of our lives?  And do we tell ourselves, during this political season, that a new president will do it?  A bit of change and it will all come together?  We know better than that.  And because we know better, we may have given up on ever restoring hope to the Galilees of our lives – where once there was hope but now it is gone.

But Jesus is always moving in to such places, quite un-noticed by us most of the time.  It is with little fanfare that Jesus begins to walk by the Sea of Galilee and calls out to fishermen, “Follow me.”  

Did they hear in that simple invitation the power of an almighty hand to re-draw all the maps of their lives (imaginary and otherwise)?  Could they tell that here was the one who could fulfill promises long forgotten, hopes long given up on, and dreams left for dead?  Did they see in him a great light?  Did they even know that they sat in darkness?  Do we?

‘The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’

Where have we been living all these years?  How did our eyes become so accustomed to the dark?  When did we give up on hope in these Galilees of ours?

And when will we realize that Jesus has made his home in Galilee precisely for this reason: to be a light to lighten the Galilee of the Gentiles.  To live next door to us and to encounter us daily with his gentle and simple invitation: “Follow me.”

And we don’t really need to ask where we are going.  For we have already drawn the maps in our heads.  We are going to every region of loss, every district of waiting, every area of silent hope – into every dark Galilee of our lives, Jesus invites us to go when he says, “Follow me.”  And behold, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.


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

The Beginning is Near

Behold, the former things have come to pass,
  and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
  I tell you of them.  (Is. 42:9)

A cartoon published in the New Yorker magazine last October depicts a fish who has sprouted little hind legs emerging from a body of water onto dry land.  With his front fins the fish carries a sign that reads: “The beginning is near.”  The artist, Robert Leighton, deftly teases us about both the origins and the ends of the universe, while taking a clever swipe at the stock in trade of cartoonists. What can we do in the face of this cartoon but laugh?

As a biblical commentary, Leighton’s image is not so bad.  The second verse of the Book of Genesis tells us that ‘the earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”   As the creation story unfolds, there is a sense in Genesis that everything God calls forth rises up out of those dark waters as the Spirit blows his breath and beats his great wings, uncovering continents and islands, the planets and the stars, fields and forests, birds and cattle and even fish, and finally that last, wondrous creation made in God’s own image: the human person.  All rising up out of the dark waters of creation.

What God began in the water he also continued in the water.  Noah would be delivered from the flood and brought to a rainbow of hope.  The children of Israel would be led out of captivity across the Red Sea.  And today we heard that it was as Jesus was coming up from the waters of the Jordan River that the heavens opened and that same Spirit spread his wings and blew his breath to carry the voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The beginning is near.

Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan and the promise of the Star of Bethlehem is uncovered.  The hope of Israel is revealed.  The light to lighten the Gentiles breaks forth.  Behold, the former things had all come to pass, and a new thing God now declares in the person of his beloved Son.  The beginning is near.

Christians are born in water.  We are brought up out of water by the great power of God’s Holy Spirit, breathing his holy breath into our lives, our lungs.  We are reborn into the world God made long ago, when God leads us through the fresh springs of a baptismal font, whether it’s three meters deep or three inches deep.  In water are Christians born by the power of God’s breath.  In water does God declare new things, new hope, new life.

Much has come to pass since the beginning: the creation of God’s majestic hand has been defaced by any means we can imagine.  As a people made in God’s image, we have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep.  As inheritors of light we have so often preferred the dark.  So much has come to pass.  But at the waters of baptism – so still and unassuming (not even a ripple) – the beginning is near.  The awesome power of God’s hand to make a new thing, to bring life, to bless, to anoint, to hallow, and to heal is right here at the edge of the water, where the beginning is near.

In baptism God calls us, his children, back to the beginning.  God buries us for a moment beneath the face of the deep, submerging us in those primeval waters so that we can be positioned beneath the wings of the Holy Spirit to uncover us and breathe his holy breath into us.  God, who has led us through the ages of human history, allows each of his children to begin at the beginning, unburdened by the baggage of what has been an admittedly checkered past.  So he leads each one of us to a place where the beginning is near in order to soak us in the gift of his blessing, his grace, his mercy, his love.

What God began in the water he also continues in the water.  For this reason you will find water somewhere near every door of this church, so that whether coming or going we can remind ourselves of who we are and what God has done for us.  He has brought us, by baptism, to a holy place in our lives where the beginning is near, so that we can be whomever it is he calls us to be.  Washed and reborn by baptism we emerge from the water onto dry ground so that we might evolve, day by day, into the creatures God made us to be: bearers of his own image and likeness, and members of the Body of his beloved Son.

Long ago there was a man named John who came to bear witness to that Son.  He baptized people with water, and his call to repentance was demanding, urgent, with not a little fury.  Even listening to him all these centuries later, we could be forgiven for thinking that his message finally, was that the end is near and if you don’t want to get left behind you’d better listen up!

But then came Jesus, to fulfill all righteousness.  And in the waters of the Jordan, John’s message was transposed: the fear of the end of time transformed into the hope of the beginning of time.  And a new world was born, full of promise and hope.  And the wings of a dove stirred the air with the power of the Spirit’s wings.  And a wind blew in with a voice from heaven.  And the Son of God was made known.  And the beginning was near.

Behold, the former things have come to pass,
  and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
  I tell you of them.

And that same Spirit hovers over us, always leading us to the water, beckoning us to be washed or to remember that once we were washed there in the water where God began his work of love and where he continues it day by day.  And where, day by day, the beginning is near.  Thanks be to God.

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

Inheritors of Light

“So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.” (Gal. 4:7)


Evelyn Waugh once said that the ideal relationship between a father and a son consisted of long periods of silence interrupted occasionally by sums of money arriving in the post.  Behind Waugh’s attitude lies a socio-economic reality that would very likely include boarding schools, allowances, skiing in the Alps, university education, a good marriage (whether happy or not), gracious gentlemen’s clubs, a reasonable position in finance, industry or the law, and finally an inheritance – perhaps modest, but meaningful all the same.  The few of those aspects of upper-middle class status that Waugh himself did not enjoy are all supplied handsomely to the characters in his novels.

Put Waugh’s pithy comment a slightly different way: long periods of silence interrupted by dramatic blessings from above.  This is very much the way Jesus’ relationship to God, his Father, is presented in the New Testament.

We have the stunning circumstances of this child’s birth: from shepherds to angels to wise men.  Then: nothing.  The briefest blip on the screen (in one of the Gospels), about a precocious utterance in the synagogue as a child.  Them what?  Eighteen, twenty years of silence, darkness, nothing, (maybe some carpentry).  Until his cousin John the Baptist comes on the scene, as though delivering a long-lost envelope.  And then, in the water, the cloud and the dove and the voice from heaven: This is my Beloved, my Son.  That’s a check you can take to the bank!

More silence, then, until the fateful day at Golgotha.  The man – the Son – is nailed to the Cross, and left there to die!  And there is darkness, and earthquake.  But no voice from above, and no rescue.  And, it would seem, no inheritance.  But then, there is the empty tomb, and the strange and mysterious appearances, and finally his ascension on a cloud – a last, dramatic intervention from above that, if you can believe it, might lead to the ancestral heavenly home, to his seat in the kingdom at the right hand of his Father.

And if this is how we see Jesus’ relationship with God the Father – long periods of silence interrupted by occasional blessings from above - do we really expect any more for ourselves?  And doesn’t it sometimes seem, for us, that the long periods of silence grow longer, and the occasional blessing from above less dramatic – and certainly less frequent?

Saint Paul had no such reservations, and was at pains to remind the first Christians (whether they began as Jews or not), that in Christ we are all part of one, great lineage; linked together by our ancestry in Abraham – which is more figurative than literal - and promised a share of the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.  

“Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba!  Father!”  The sexist language here is deliberate – since for most of history in most societies (and certainly in Paul’s time) it was only the sons who could expect to be heirs.  But we understand that God has sent the same Spirit into his daughters, crying, “Abba!  Father!” as well.

So much of the world hears this as an empty cry these days.  They point to those long periods of silence in our own lives as though they were proof that there is no Father to call out to, no Abba to hear our cries of worship and love and sorrow and need and joy and wonder.  And there is a suspicion out there in the world – and perhaps here in the church as well - that there is no inheritance to be had for the sons and daughters of God.  There is the suspicion that if there ever was one, it was squandered in the Crusades or the Holocaust or somewhere in Lynchburg, Virginia, but that there is no point in crying out, and nothing to cry for, no Abba listening to hear us.  What possible inheritance could there be from a Father who sends his Son to die on the Cross, and who then sits silently though so much of history?

It’s hard for us not to see the situation in Freudian terms.  No wonder the church went running back to Mary – her mother – in the face of so distant and silent a Father.  No wonder we are saddled with so much dysfunction, considering the strained family dynamic.  No wonder Jesus’ own prayer life is one of anguish, considering the demands of an oft-silent Father.

This is a cynical way to see things, and probably not very good psychology either.  Still, there are many, in our current age, who are eager to point to this Christian family narrative and call it delusional, at best.  And any thought of being heirs, is just crazy: heirs of what?!  Heirs of the legacy of the Bethlehem manger?!   Heirs of the silence of a far away God?!  Heirs of the blood poured out on the Cross?!  What does that get you?!

It is Saint John’s gospel that shows us the rich inheritance that has been ours from the very beginning.  It is in that peerless testimony that we learn about the life that is the light of men and women: the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it, the light that enlightens everyone.  For it is in our fellowship with that light – in Christ our brother – when we believe in his name, that we are given power to become the children of God, whose inheritance comes not because of our family name, or our heritage, or of any will of man, but because we were born of God!  We are inheritors of light!

Abba!  Father!  Why are you so silent?!  Why so distant from this world you made and from the creatures whom you must have loved if you bothered to make us?

God’s answer to this cry is to give us light to shine in the darkness.  It may seem to us like a silent response.  And it may be hard to take it to the bank.  But it is this inheritance that shows us that darkness will never overcome us; that suffering can be transformed into glory; and that death will never be our master.  This is the inheritance of light!

And it depends on one thing: on knowing that Jesus is our brother.

It is in the gift of Christ our brother that God’s long silences are broken.  It is in his daily, bodily presence with us in the eucharist that God’s great distance from us is foreshortened.  And it is in his own language that Christ our brother teaches us how to call out in hope: Abba!  Father!

My brothers and sisters in Christ, it is true that God our Father is often a mystery to us.  We are perplexed and often frustrated by his ways, by his silence, by his distance.  Perhaps because God knows himself, did he send us his Son, our brother, to bring us his Spirit and to teach us to cry out, Abba! Father! for anything at all.

Abba! where are you?  I am here, with Christ your brother – for where he is, there I am also.

Abba! I’m scared!   I know, child, trust in the strength of Christ, your brother.

Abba! it is dark, and I am afraid of the dark!  Here is your light, child, Jesus, your brother; the darkness will never overcome him.

Abba! I’m lonely!  Reach out to your brother, child, take his hand, he will never leave you alone.

Abba! We need you!  Here child, inherit the kingdom, ruled by the light of Christ, your brother.  Everything that is his is yours, and there is nothing to fear.

For, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  He is the true light that enlightens everyone.   He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world received him not.  He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.  

And he is our brother.  The Word is our brother.  The light is our brother.  Christ is our brother: yesterday, today, and for ever.  

Thanks be to God for that great Word, spoken once, and sounding still throughout the silences of all the ages.  

Thanks be to God for that light, given once, and shining for ever, overcoming all darkness.  

Thanks be to God for the power given to us all to become his children, brothers with Christ, and co-heirs with him of everlasting glory.

Thanks be to God, to Abba, our Father!  Thanks be to God!

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

The Light

In the nighttime,
as the darkness settles,
and becomes colder and colder,
the pipes in that old house
bang and clang with so much noise –
what you might call a clatter –
that I almost feel I should rise
to see what is the matter.

What is the matter?
As the darkness settles
and becomes colder and colder?

What is that clanging
that banging
that noise
that almost wakes me up?

There is so much noise
it could be almost anything.

It could be gunfire
from the cold desert nights of Sudan,
from the wars
that someone elses’s sons
and daughters
are fighting for us,
or from the streets of our own city,
where guns are clanging and banging
all the time: a horrible clatter.

It could be a campaign
of candidates on their way
to New Hampshire or Iowa,
making so much noise as they go,
so much clanging, signifying what?

It could be the banging
of heavy, vaulted doors,
where mortgages are kept,
locked up,
where we thought they were safe,
until even they started clanging.

It could be the tills,
the ringing registers of Christmas,
or the ATMs,
or the sound of credit
being tested
and expanded
and stretched
to what limit?

It could be in my head, or yours.
There is so much noise
inside people’s heads.
Voices, for some.
Ideas for others –
crazy ideas,
depressing ideas,
vengeful ideas,
not good ideas.
And a moaning sadness for others.
But still, a sort of clanging
or banging
that keeps you up, or almost could.
A lot of noise,
as darkness settles,
and becomes colder and colder.

But could it be something else –
all this noise?
Considering the night.
Considering the songs we sang.
Considering the promise
of angels’ wings and voices.
Considering the possibility
that shepherds make a lot of noise,
and so do kings,
when they finally show up.

And considering
that morning has now come,
and the banging, and the clanging
have not stopped,
but I can no longer be certain
that it’s the pipes
making all that noise.
What could it be?
What is the matter
on this new morning?

Of course, it is the matter
of Light on this morning,
as it is every morning.
But somehow different today.

Is it a certain slant of light?
No.  It is some whole new Light:
brighter, stronger, deeper,
and more golden
than the already golden light
of each new morning.

Who knew that light
could expand and contract
inside the pipes of that old house?
Who knew it could bang and clang,
as it rose up like heat
as the darkness settled
and became colder and colder?
Who knew whether the light
would stay trapped inside those pipes,
never to be seen,
only felt,
as though only the heat had come on.
When, in fact,
the Light was shining in the darkness,
and all I heard was some banging,
some clanging,
as though something were the matter.

Because, of course,
something is the matter –
we’ve been over that.
Let’s not pretend that all is well.
and all is well, and all is well.

All is not well.
It could have been almost anything –
all that clanging,
all that banging.
It could have been gunfire,
even here,
on Locust Street.

But it was not.
Not last night, at least,
not this new morning.

It is the matter of Light
on this new morning.
It is the matter of life,
that is the light of men
and women everywhere.
It is the matter of the true Light
that enlightens every one of us,
and all the whole world.
It is the matter of Light
that fills the world this morning
with its baby-ish cries,
as it fills that manger,
and seems to set the straw ablaze.
But it is only shining,
light-infused,
and still more golden
than the already golden light
of each new morning.

But if the Light could stay trapped
inside the pipes
of that old house: clanging,
and banging,
then what are the chances
for you and me?
What are the chances
that that same Light
courses through us,
rising up, like heat?

Did we think it was only heat?
Only hot flashes?

What are the chances
that that true Light
came into the world for you
and for me?

And what are the chances
that even now
that Light
expands and contracts
with the breath of the holy Word,
and with our own breathing –
yours, and mine?

What are the chances that the Light
really does shine in the darkness?
Even if the darkness is deep
within you, within me?
Even if it seems to get colder
and colder.

Who knows what the chances are?
And who cares?
What I care about
is all that banging and clanging,
all that clatter!
What I care about is the heat, rising,
expanding, contracting,
wherever it can,
wherever darkness settles,
and it gets colder and colder.

What I care about is the Light,
breaking forth, with so much force
on this new morning,
so much golden brilliance,
more golden
than the already golden light
of each new morning.

What I care about is the clatter
of all that Light in the world:
a joyful, holy noise,
that’s not just in my head, or yours.

It is the sound of the one, true Light
coming into the world.
It is the sound of your voices
heralding that Light
with the angels’ songs,
and with their wings.
It is the sound of the Light
overcoming darkness
in a world that often prefers darkness
to light.

That’s why it bangs.
That’s why it clangs.
That’s why there’s clatter
in the night,
as the darkness settles,
and it gets colder and colder.

The Light is growing, expanding,
contracting with Mary,
whose contractions
brought their own noise last night.

The Light was ready to be born:
banging and clanging,
and crying out with its infant cries,
so I almost felt I should rise
to see what was the matter.

Nothing is the matter.
The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
And the morning shines
with a golden Light,
more golden
than the already golden light
of each new morning.


Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Christmas Day, 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Publisher's Christmas

For more than a hundred and fifty years, maybe two hundred, Philadelphia was a publishing town.  As early as the 1740s, magazines were beginning to be published here.  By the time of the War of Independence, the city was a hotbed of publishing of all sorts, spurred on, no doubt, by the industrious Benjamin Franklin.  Shortly thereafter, the first Bibles produced in the newly independent States were published in Philadelphia by Robert Aitken.  The 19th century saw the rise of publishers like Curtis and Lippincott and the heyday of Philadelphia publishing: Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post leading the pack.

And in 1885 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America published a volume here in Philadelphia called “The Little Children’s Book for Schools and Family” which sounds hopelessly quaint to me, but which contained at least one enduring contribution to Western culture: the first two verses of the Christmas Carol, “Away in a manger.”

There is a little mystery surrounding this carol.  The author of those first two verses is completely unknown.  And although an attribution is often given for the third verse, which appeared years later, many think that it, too, came from an anonymous pen.  The hymnal in your pews will tell you only that the words are a “traditional carol.”  But I like the attribution given by an English hymnal that lists, at the bottom of the little poem, where the author’s name should be, just these words: “Anonymous, Philadelphia 1883.”

The carol is sung to several different tunes, depending on what country you live in.  And one scholar suggests that there is an old Moravian tradition of this carol being played by trombone choirs, which I imagine is not quite as good as angel choirs, but certainly better than choirs of kazoos!

Many of us know that another Philadelphia church (just the other side of Rittenhouse Square) can claim to be the home of the great carol, “O Little town of Bethlehem.”  But I think that all of Philadelphia could lay claim to “Away in a manger.”  Without the year (1883), “Anonymous, Philadelphia” could be any of us, making the prayer of this Christmas carol our prayer - “I love thee, Lord Jesus!  Look down from the sky!” – as though it were too embarrassingly innocent to admit to: a “Dear Jesus” prayer, signed only, “Anonymous, Philadelphia, 2007.”

But since we are Philadelphians – at least many of us here tonight are Philadelphians, and we are willing to adopt (for one night only) those of you who are not – and since we come from a publishing town, we have a challenge this Christmas.  It is our challenge to publish the Good News that we hear sung by angels tonight.  For where would we be if the Lutherans (Lutherans, of all people!) had never published our lovely little anonymous carol?  And where would we be if Phillips Brooks had not returned from his journey in the Holy Land to his parish on Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia – a publishing town – where “O little town of Bethlehem” could set in type and widely distributed?

And where will we be if we keep the Good News of Christmas to ourselves?  If we tell everyone about the bargains we got while shopping on line?  Or the great new place we discovered to get chocolates?  Or the fantastic deals at Macy’s?  Or of our patience in standing on line at DiBruno Brothers?  Or the deal we got on a tree this year?  Or how many times we drove to New Jersey to buy wine?  Or that your terrific new scarf came from Daffy’s, not Burberry’s, and all your ornaments and tableware came from Target not Tiffany?  Where will we be if we tell all of this but we never mention a word about this secret joy of Christmas, about the way Jesus answers our prayer – “Be near me, Lord Jesus!”

And have we come here tonight to test this prayer?  “Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask thee to stay/Close by me for ever, and love me, I pray.”  (Signed: Anonymous, Philadelphia, 2007)

It is for this reason that Jesus has called us here: to hear our prayers, and to remind us all what it’s like when he’s so near us, so available to us, so ready to be taken up in our arms, and in our hearts.  It is to let us remember what it feels like when we bring all of the frustration, disappointment and sorrow of the last year to his cradle.  To be reminded that joy can and will be kindled in our hearts like a warm fire on a cold winter’s night.  The Christ child calls us here with his Christmas wailing, so that we can sing our prayers and praises together – even the secret prayers of our hearts, too private, or frightening, or just plain embarrassing to admit ownership of them – just anonymous prayers from Philadelphia in 2007.  (“I love thee, Lord Jesus!  Look down, look down, look down from the sky!”)

And if, in the dark mystery of this night of God’s love, if in the flicker of a candle’s flame, or the resonance of a musical note, or in the eyes of your own child, if you should happen to catch a glimpse of something peaceful, something joyful, something holy this night, will you rise to the challenge in the morning?  Will you risk being brave enough to publish the Good News you and I sing about tonight?  

By this I don’t mean that you have to go and write a book about it!  You don’t have to find an agent and shop your manuscript around.  You don’t have to register the copyright or negotiate the advance.  All you have to do is find a story, one story, of Christmas.  We have heard again tonight the well-known story of the angels and shepherds, of Mary and Joseph, and no room at the inn.  But what Christmas story could you or I publish that has not yet been told?

What anger could we let go of this Christmas-time?  What offence could we forgive?  What grudge could we finally let go of?  What self-righteousness could we give up?

What injustice could we stand up against?  What conflict we could we help to resolve?  What imbalance could we set right in the scales?

What persistent wound could we ask God to heal?  What chronic sickness could we ask him to help us learn to live with?  What loss could we ask God to help us accept?

We live in a world that has become violent, cruel and often disappointing, despite the truth that God made this world to be good; we live in a world that conspires to distract us from all kinds of miseries – of others and our own – with shiny things and 3-D animation, and almost anything you’d care to be addicted to.  And Jesus knows that we come to his cradle with all the woes of foreign policy, family dynamics, and financial strain weighing on us.  And still he hears us sing, “Look down from the sky!”

Do you know that this baby Jesus holds heaven and earth in his pudgy hands?  Do you see how he transforms a stable into palace and a refugee girl into the Queen of heaven, her consort Prince a carpenter only moments ago?

Do you believe that his birth can change the world – and has already done it?  Do you see how for his sake men and women have lived beyond themselves, achieved great things, and learned to love and care for one another for no reason other than that we are neighbors?

Do you realize that even death, our greatest fear, has been vanquished by this tiny child, because once he traveled for us across the great divide between life and death and closed the gap with nothing but his awesome love?

“Be near me, Lord Jesus!” who makes all things new!  I ask thee to stay, to stay, to stay, and to stay close by me for ever, and love me I pray…  

Will this only ever be a secret prayer of our hearts on Christmas Eve?  Or do we dare to publish the hope that we place in this little child?  Where will this world of ours be if we don’t all become little publishers of hope this Christmas-time?

Away in a manger, all those nights and years ago, God came down to us: a tiny, little child, nothing but a baby.  And since then, nothing has ever been the same – since Love came down that first Christmas.

And who are you and I to keep such joyful news to ourselves?  Even if we never dare to admit who “Anonymous, Philadelphia, 2007” really is.  Is it you this Christmas?  Is it me?  

We love thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky, and stay, and stay, and stay, and stay by our side, on this cold winter’s night, until morning is nigh!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Christmas Eve, 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Baseball in Zion

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing.


What can break Americans’ hearts like baseball can?  The wounds of war are deeper, to be sure, but the betrayals of baseball sting with a certain sharpness.  The release of the report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in major league baseball shows us how the boys of summer can strike us a blow even as winter sets in.

It has, of course, been dawning on us that the heroes of the great American pastime are not what they used to be.  And those who think back to the Black Sox scandal of 1919 realize that they probably never were.  Still, it stings to find that our dreams have been misplaced; that the icon for all that is good and pure in America is more or less a sham; that like everything else, baseball is a business; and its players are often not worthy of the adoration we would heap on them.  And there is no point in pretending – let alone hoping - that it ain’t so.

What did we expect?  Did we expect that because a man could swing a bat in a certain arc, with a certain force, that made him good?  Did we expect that a stolen base was an accomplishment of justice?  Did we expect that pitching a no-hitter was actually a virtue, pointing toward the possibility of Truth and Goodness in the world?  Did we really think that a home run could really heal a sick child, listening to the World Series on the radio?  And did we expect that in a society that happily uses Botox, liposuction, and all manner of nips and tucks to re-engineer our bodies (not to mention all the chemistry we use daily to re-engineer our moods), that somehow it would never occur to athletes to give steroids a whirl?

We are learning, in America, to be disappointed.  We are learning how to be let down by our government, our schools, our churches, and even baseball.  We often have to learn how to be disappointed by our parents, our children, our neighbors, our friends, as well.  This is what it is to be human.

So it is no surprise that John the Baptist is wondering, when we catch up with him in today’s Gospel reading, about Jesus.  “Are you he who is to come?  Or shall we look for another?”   Growing up, as he did, listening to the story of how he leapt in his mother’s womb when her cousin came to visit, and with the outlandish tale that his father was told what to name him by an angel, wasn’t John set up for disappointment from his earliest days?  But his question today, is full of guarded hope.  “Are you he who is to come? Or shall we look for another?”

The people who had listened to John’s somewhat fantastic preaching, they, too, are poised for disappointment.  The kingdom of heaven is at hand!?  What are the chances this is so?  The possibility of disappointment hangs heavy in the air.  John the Baptist may yet turn out to be John, the crazy guy in a camel’s hair shirt.  

And Jesus…  well, who’s to say that he isn’t less than he appears to be, that he isn’t pocketing the money from his collections, and fooling around with the emotionally needy women who are drawn to him while their own husbands (if they have one) are away all day doing men’s work?

Perhaps, John the Baptist is not what he appears to be.  Perhaps Jesus isn’t what he appears to be either.  It wouldn’t be the first time we were disappointed, and it won’t be the last.  This is what it is to be human.

It is the voice of the prophet that prepares us not to be disappointed: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom…”

The prophet knows what it is to be human.  He knows that we would sell out, and that we have been sold.  He could be counted on even to see baseball for what it is.  He speaks to people whose hearts have been broken.    And he has nothing more than his poetry and his voice to break through the veil of spin and repression, and chemistry that we have used to manage our disappointment: “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not!  Behold, your God… will come and save you.’”  He knows that we need to be saved, because he sees how we have been banished to disappointment, and sometimes even to despair.

And if baseball has broken our hearts, yet again, just imagine what our government has done to us over the decades; just imagine what the church has done to us these past years, let alone throughout the rest of history.  Just imagine how shattered we are.  It’s just that we can admit our disappointment in baseball and its players.  Do we dare to admit (even to ourselves) how badly our hearts have been broken by all the rest?  And do we dare to admit that we fear God will break our hearts, too?  What do we expect?

Do we really expect that there is a Son of God whose gentle touch is a sign that he is good?  Do we really expect that the invisible spirit of that Son can bring justice into this unjust world of ours?  Do we really expect that the story of a man who was killed on a cross, so many thousands of years ago, has the power to point to the possibility of Truth and Goodness in the world – let alone something beyond this world!?  Do we really expect there is someone who can give the blind their sight, make the lame to walk, the lepers whole, and the deaf to hear?  Do we really expect the dead to be raised up?  Do we expect the poor to receive good news – in this city?!

Of course not!  We expect our hearts to be broken – even baseball teaches us this now!  We expect to be cheated, lied to, left behind, to have to fend for ourselves, and to survive only if we prove to be the fittest.  We expect market forces to determine the measure of comfort we will enjoy in retirement.  We expect to be sold, one way or another, just like the mortgages on our homes, to the highest bidder.  Most of the time we cannot admit any of this – and so we let our hearts be broken by baseball, because at least we believe that is a heartbreak that will mend.

But God knows that real heartbreak lurks around many corners.  God knows how we flirt with disaster in this militarized nuclear age.  God knows that a city where 25% of the people live in poverty (but that still claims to be a city of brotherly love) is a catastrophe that has already happened.  God knows that even in a city with five medical schools hearts are broken around sickbeds every day.  God knows that a church whose leaders can’t speak to one another without lawyers is in some trouble.  God knows that we have had to learn to expect to be disappointed.

To his prophet he gave only a voice and a poem.  But to his Son he gave real power: power to save everything that would be lost or stolen or cheated away, or withered, or held for ransom.  God knows how low our expectations are, and he knows that we are often no more certain about Jesus than his cousin John was in those first days.  Is this he who is to come?  Or shall we wait for another?

If you think that there are precious few miracles, these days, to point to the hope that comes from Jesus, come and see what happens – in this hopeless world – when you put your disappointed heart in his hands.  Come and see what happens when you give your illness and your injury to him.  Come and see if the dead have no hope.  Come and see if the poor are to be banished for ever to disappointment.  Come and see what happens when we put our trust in God!

Come and see what it means to set our sights on a promised land – on Zion, that holy mountain where God prepares a feast for us and where the cups are overflowing.  Come and see what it means to be free: ransomed from the power of disappointing heartbreak by the promise of hope!  Come and see!

How is it that we live in a society that will give up on God before it gives up on baseball?

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  You and I – and anyone we can bring with us – are the ransomed of the Lord.  We have been wandering in a wilderness of disappointment.  But Zion lies ahead of us, and there is no other to wait for: the One who could unlock the gate has already gone ahead of us.

And all we have to do is try to decide if we will put our trust in him, and go wherever he calls us to go.   Or would we could wait patiently through the winter for another baseball season to begin, and see if we aren’t disappointed.

The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing…  And is this Jesus the One who is to come, or shall we wait for another?

Come.  And see!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
16 December 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Onion

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky tells this story:

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

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

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

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

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

Seek ye first the kingdom of God.  

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

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

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

Turning the Page

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will God ever turn this page?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radiohead Stewardship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s up to you.

No really.  It’s up to you.


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

The Shaking of the Nations

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Sub-Prime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always Crying, Day and Night

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

One of the many natural features of this country still known by a Native American name is a river called the Kanawha. On the north bank about halfway through that river, a city rose, with a large state capitol building much like the one in Washington. Staring at the capitol grounds, on the opposite bank of the Kanawha, stand four or five quiet hills: ancient hills which were once, of course, mountains. Among Europeans, pig ranchers settled there first, people who weren’t able to settle any closer to the city because of the nature of their work. Later, after the First World War there came professional families who found they could nestle themselves in those hills and feel comfortably distant from the city across the river, though the city itself is fairly quiet to begin with. On the ridge of one of those hills there's a Depression-era house, set back from a street much quieter than Locust. It has an angular, slate roofline, white painted brick walls, and windows hidden and hushed by tall vines. Nearly everything about the house makes you think it was built for quiet. 

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

I didn’t even believe in God at the time, and I suppose I couldn't have been more different as a comatose atheist from the widow in our Gospel reading (St Luke 18:1-8a). It was a good thing for me that God is not like the unjust judge in that story, and does not need to be annoyed into action. Nothing would have been less compelling to the unrighteous judge than if the righteous widow suddenly fell silent, unable to plead her case. (My silence, by the way, came from hyponatremia, an electrolyte imbalance that sometimes happens to runners.) Had God been like the unrighteous judge, he would have forgotten about me as soon as he could. And I stress all this because it's too easy to assume that Jesus, in his parables about 'authorities,' is always really talking about God. Jesus was an iconoclast, we should recall, so some of his teaching highlights simply the seediness of many people endowed with church or state authority.

It’s a good thing God is not like that the unjust judge, because that would also be a terrible model. This story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge in St Luke's Gospel is prefaced by an editorial comment not found in St Mark's apparently older telling of the story. Luke begins Mark's story with these new words: “And Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Certainly, these are signs of a peaceful spiritual life. But I wonder if Luke's editorial preface really takes in Jesus’ strong words at the end of this parable, the words which our lectionary cuts off: “even so," - that is, despite all this prayer - "will the Son of Man find faith on the Earth?” 

Even among those who pray day and night, Jesus questions their faith. For all our crying, is there meaning? Not necessarily, he suggests, and he continues to suggest this in other parables. When you and I are too weak, too forgetful, even too lost in comfort and peace to think of God, God is never lost. When my parents rushed five hundred miles to that hospital the night that I fell into a coma, it wasn’t because I kept prodding them to notice me; they came because they're my parents. Why would we expect less from God? I know it's hard, but why should those you and I care for expect any less of us?

We’re not always at that point in our relationships: there's one reason. We go through phases that lack that natural, implicit trust, perhaps because it's still building, or because we're not sure we want it built. Building faith, after all, takes vulnerability and can be awkward to say the least. But it can be much less awkward if we know what we really want, from ourselves and others, because only then can we know exactly what to say. So when you and I cry out as it were to our friends, to our families, or to God, what do we really want? What words, if any, are beneath our words? Am we asking for what we really want, and this thing you or I want, is it even good? Are you or I coming to prayer to return to God, to solemnize our thoughts, needs, and hopes for the world? Do you or I come to him to witness ourselves being forgiven and uplifted by the ground of our being? Or are we coming to prayer because we’re afraid there’s no other way God will remember us?

What we should be trying to say and have said to us is what the psalmist believes God says to him, in the 139th psalm. With our children, our spouse, our partner or friends, there's a closeness that implies knowledge, care, trust, and the desire to protect those things to the extent that the other will let us. We can cry to God day and night, but we may or may not mean anything. We can forget about him and try to live as though we'd never felt him at work in our lives. Or we can get it right: we can be ourselves, open about everything, committed to sorting out the things that need sorted. The strange thing is that in any of these cases, he's never exactly closer or further away: "If you ascend to heaven, I am there; if you make the grave your bed, I am there also; this is my body, this is my blood, no matter where you go, no matter what you say. I made your bones and filled you with my Spirit, in which you can be still and know that I am God, your God, even when you can no longer pray."  

by The Rev. Paul Francke 

God's Kindling

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INCREASE YOUR FAITH!


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

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

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

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

Kindle the gift of God that is in you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Just a Matter of Time

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

A Co-dependent God

Moses saw that the people had broken loose. (Ex 32:25)


Translations of the 25th verse of the 32nd chapter of Exodus (which comes a few paragraphs after our reading this morning) are wonderful.  Moses has come down from the mountain where God has given him the tablets of the law.  The first item on those tablets – the very first item – says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  You shall have no other gods before me.”

So Moses is carrying this weighty message with him and comes down from what would have been a pretty intense experience: receiving the law of God.  He has left his little brother in charge.  He is tired, but excited.  He has been standing quite close to the presence of the living God.  And what does he find but a party: dancing and singing, and God-knows what else, all around another god – a graven image, no less – the second item mentioned on the tablets!  If Aaron had been trying, he could not have gotten it more wrong.  Maybe he was trying.  Sibling rivalry gone bad.

And the Scriptures say something like this: “Moses saw that the people had broken loose.”  But here is where the translations are interesting.  The King James Version says that the people “were naked,” as though nothing worse could be said of them.  Modern translations often say that they were “running wild,” or that the people got “out of control and made fools of themselves.”  All of these translations might be right, for all I know.  But I like the Revised Standard Version that we started with: the people had broken loose.

The had broken loose from their moorings, I guess, and anything could happen.  This was especially bad, considering the context, since Moses was bringing them the law, which was supposed to provide them with a certain moral and religious compass.  “I am the Lord your God… no other gods before me,” and we will certainly not be having any graven images!

Oh, how the people had broken loose!

Throughout much of the Hebrew Scriptures we find a preoccupation with establishing the primacy of God, of YAHWEH.  It could be said that of all sins the failure to remember that YAHWEH is their God is the greatest one.  When the Israelites are called a “stiff-necked” people it is often because they have turned from God and dallied with idols.  The judges and kings and prophets of Israel are called upon to keep the people in line: to remember that their God is an awesome God (as a popular praise song puts it).  The Psalmist often recounts how the people test God as again and again they go on sinning.

Throughout the Scriptures we encounter this concern that God should assert his rights over his people, because, after all, they need to be safe-guarded from their own foolishness.  They are “prone to wander” as one of our hymns puts it.  Which means they are prone to prefer a God they can make with their own gold (which is where the calf came from), one they can put away in a drawer or a cupboard when they are done with it.  God’s children – who he freed from slavery -  are in danger of breaking loose from their own freedom: running wild, even naked in the streets.  They are likely to get out of control and make fools of themselves.  And they are likely to do so at the worst possible moment: graven images left right out in the open where big brother will see it.

It strikes me that what we see throughout the early Scriptures is the depiction of a co-dependent relationship between God and his children.  According to one definition, co-dependent people “form or maintain relationships that are one-sided.”  They have “low self-esteem and look for anything outside themselves to make them feel better.”  They have a tendency to enter into relationship s with people [or gods?] who are emotionally unavailable.”  The condition is often called “relationship addiction” since both parties tend to go back to one another over and over, despite a strong tendency to make one another miserable.

And one wonders, has God become the enabler of our co-dependency?  Or is he a co-dependent God himself?  The history recounted in the Scriptures suggests as much.  Over and over our dysfunction plays itself out along the same patterns.  Are we simply addicted to this God who controls us with his insistence of our shamefulness?  Who looks at us in our nakedness and tells us we look ridiculous (or just fat)?  Who pushes as away from him with his remoteness and his rules (you can eat from any tree but one – as though we were going to leave the forbidden fruit on the branch under those circumstances!)?

This is how the relationship strikes a lot of people I know.  Like the children of Israel, you and I are foolish, co-dependents who keep running back to a controlling, over-bearing God who shames us with his insistence on our sinfulness.  Many of our friends see this and wonder why we have not been able to give up this addiction – especially since we finally live in an era when so much help is available!  We can sleep in on Sundays, there is brunch to be had!  Most likely, there is medication available for us if we need it.  And haven’t we learned that we can be good people, with a reasonable moral compass without some god making us feel bad all the time?!

And then we hear Jesus tell this parable: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.'”

This is his explanation for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.  In Biblical terms, these are the very people who have obviously broken loose, run wild, gotten out of control and made fools of themselves.  These are those who are standing naked before God; and so we might expect to hear God’s Son take the old familiar, co-dependent line: you look ridiculous, stupid, hopeless… and you certainly look fat.

But Jesus does not seem to want to enable this co-dependency.  Jesus feels no need to shame those who he knows are sinners.  Jesus probably doesn’t even think they look fat.  He thinks they look lost, and they need someone to go after them and find them.

“What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?  And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.'  Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

There is joy before the angels of God when on sinner repents, when one of us who is lost gets found!

My brothers and sisters, we have a strong tendency to get lost.  Maybe it’s because we don’t pay attention, or maybe we have a bad sense of direction, or maybe it’s because we live in a very confusing world where it unusually easy to get lost.  Maybe our sense of direction is not as good as we think it is.  And maybe we have gotten used to adapting; deciding that this is where we really wanted to end up anyway – no matter where this happens to be.  We have a strong, strong tendency to get lost, it goes hand in hand with our tendency to break loose, which is why Jesus sometimes sees in us a likeness with sheep.

And Jesus reminds us that God his Father (and ours) has an un-erring tendency to seek us out, to find us, to want to lay us on his shoulders and bring us home.

Like Father, like Son: Jesus comes to us to remind us that when we are lost, he is looking for us, searching, sweeping, calling us by name.

Do you remember how easy it was for Aaron to get the people to give him their jewelry and melt the gold?  All he had to do was ask.  And it seemed to him that the graven image of the calf just leapt out of the fire on its own.  So easy to do!  So easy to break loose and get lost!

And now we have gold and silver, we have steel and iron that we can shape into our idols, we have titanium, and other precious materials.  We have weapons-grade plutonium.  We have poppy-fields of heroin.  We have clear-cut rain forests of old-growth trees.  We have hedge funds of unimaginable wealth. And we have rivers of oil.  How easily all these fascinating, wonderful, pleasurable thing seem to leap out when we toss these things into the furnace of our industry!  How easily new idols are fashioned.  How easily we break loose.  How easily we become lost.

And, of course, it is not just a male thing to be reluctant to admit that we are lost.  It is a human thing.  And is it so deeply ingrained that we would prefer to be co-dependent?  Would we prefer to be told that we are ridiculous, stupid, inadequate, or just fat?  Is this preferable to us to admitting we are lost?

Long, long ago we humans broke loose.  We did it, I guess, because we discovered that God would let us do it; that the tethers that attach us to him are flimsy by design.

We are as ready to break loose from the tethers of God’s care for us as we ever were.  And we have learned to make much more sophisticated idols than the golden calf, much more dangerous ones, too.

And considering all we have done, and all the harm we could still do, it is understandable that we don’t wish to be found.  It makes sense that we suppose God will react with the same fierce anger that would possess us.  We assume that he will judge us the way we would judge ourselves: ridiculous, out-of-control, foolish, and fat.

But instead, he sweeps us from our feet and lifts us onto his shoulders, and clucks or sighs as the sound of angels rejoicing is heard, and he carries us home, knowing full well that tomorrow we may well get lost again.  But still he puts us on his shoulders and carries us home rejoicing, and carries us home, and carries us home, and carries us home.

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

Superbad

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost…?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, `This man began to build, and was not able to finish.' (Luke 14:27-28)


Despite a positive review in the New Yorker, I cannot actually recommend that you go to see the teen-oriented film, Superbad, mostly because you would never forgive me.  You are a Ritz-Five, opera–going, ballet-loving, orchestra-subscribing crowd.  Many of you would never make it past the vulgar language of the first few scenes of the film without storming out of the theatre wondering if I had gone completely mad.  You are grown-ups!  You would be shocked, appalled, offended.  

I was charmed.  

But allow me to share with you the basic idea of the film.  Two teenage boys, Evan and Seth, are about to graduate from high school.  They have managed to get themselves invited to a party hosted by one of the hottest and most popular girls in school, on the promise that they will be able to procure alcohol for said party.  The boys, however, are clueless.  Evan is gangly and awkward and painfully earnest.   Seth is pudgy, with an awful, curly mop of hair, and possessed by his hormones.  The two boys desperately want to be “superbad,” (meaning good).  They are breathless to lose at least some measure of their innocence with the fairer sex, but a great gulf is fixed between them and the girls they so admire.   

Alcohol seems to them to be their only hope.  If only they can provide it, and if only the girls get drunk enough, the boys hope to make it at least to first base – if only by mistake - as the drinks make the girls careless.  But Evan and Seth are woefully and obviously underage.  They have promised booze, but they have none.  And their innocence remains in tact as the film launches into their journey to procure some liquor – any liquor at all.

Strangely, this seems to be exactly the kind of thing Jesus is warning about in today’s Gospel reading.  Don’t set out to do something unless you are quite sure you have what it takes to finish the job.  But from the earliest moments of Superbad it is quite clear that these boys don’t have what it takes to achieve their ambitious goals.  They are doomed to remain innocent, their virginity firmly in tact in every conceivable sense.

If only we outgrew such adolescent quandaries!  But alas, we often seem doomed to repeat them.  In the church we are so beset by our own anxieties these days that one wonders what will become of us.  We have dreams (do we not?) of being “superbad” (by which I mean good).  We see around us the vestiges of an era when the church could do what she liked and stand tall about it.  We remember the stories of missions and schools and the expanding empire of Christendom.  But today these memories seem to be like hormones mocking us (as in adolescent boys) for wanting to be something we cannot be.  The pews are not full, people walk right by our doors and ignore us, we cannot do the things we think we ought to be doing, we cannot afford the things we think we ought to be able to afford.  And neither can most of our neighboring churches.

And what’s worst, religion is mocked in the public square.  Jesus and his Cross are fashion accessories at best (and ironic ones, at that).  The height to which the steeple of this church once soared is now belittled in nearly every sense of the word.  The churches are of full of scandal.  Our own Anglican church is in constant crisis at the diocesan, national and international levels.  There is bickering, legal maneuvering and name-calling.

How did we become teenagers again?  Not children, but apparently not grown up yet either?  How did we get stuck here again in this adolescent angst?  And we wonder, will the day ever come?  Will we ever get there?  And of course the question occurs to us, (doesn’t it?): Do we have what it takes to finish what once was begun?  Can we even finish our own little piece of it (whatever it is), here on Locust Street?  

“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”

If you really want to feel like a teenager again, try to pretend that I am your father or your mother telling you this:  “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”  Does this make you want to shrug?  Or grunt non-commitally?  What are we to do with this teaching from Jesus.  Does he honestly expect us to take up our cross?  Does he really want us to be prepared to be at enmity with those we love?  Does he expect us to give our things away – truly?  What can we possibly do in the face of this kind of teaching but shrug and walk away, as though we didn’t really hear it?

The answer is that Jesus expects us to grow up.  He expects us not to be ruled by our passions for things: for clothes and cars and real estate, or for status, or power.  He expects us to be more than teenage bundles of hormones desperately grasping for the things we hope will make us “superbad.”   Jesus expects us to live not for ourselves, but for others.  And the cross he asks us to take up is the pry-bar that pulls us away from our selfishness and opens our eyes to the others around us.  Our cross is anything that helps us do this: whether it’s feeding the hungry on Saturday mornings, or visiting someone when they need us, or picking up the phone to check on a friend.  Your children can certainly be your cross (don’t they sometimes feel like it) as they demand more of you than can possibly be reasonable.  And your parents may play the same role at the other end of life.  And the list goes on.  We take up our cross bit by bit as we learn to live our lives less for ourselves.  

And the question is, have we started something that we can finish?  Do we have what it takes to grow up into what Saint Paul calls the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ?  Can we really live outside of ourselves, or we will constantly be longing to return to that juvenile time when someone took care of us?

In the film (which, of course, you will never see: I recommend you never see it!) the boys, Evan and Seth, discover that they, of course, have set out on the wrong journey.  They had set out to try to satisfy their hormonal rages, which cannot be achieved with booze or sex.  They begin to discover that the only journey that they can finish is the journey of growing up: learning to care about one another, and to respect the girls, who are, indeed, out of their league, but oddly responsive to displays of inner dignity, rather than false machismo.  The boys find out that they will never get anywhere unless they begin to learn to live beyond the immediate cruelty of their passionate self-obsession.  And they begin to find that within themselves they have had what it takes to make this journey all along.

And it is good news to discover that you may just have what it takes, after all.  It is good news to find out in the midst of teenage angst that God has bestowed you with more than you knew.  It is good news to realize that once you stop obsessing about yourself you become a much better person.  And if this is true for teenagers (boys and girls alike), then I suspect that it is also true for the church: that when we live beyond the immediate cruelty of our self-obsession we do much better.  That is, when we allow the Cross to pry us from our selfish concerns, we find out that we are more than we ever knew.  And when we have the Cross, we have everything it takes to complete what we have begun.

Here at Saint Mark’s, the work of discipleship was taken up 160 years ago.  And it looks to me, as I observe what those men and women built just with stones and glass and wood, that our predecessors were deeply confident that God had given them everything they needed to undertake any journey, to achieve any goal for the sake of Christ.  They probably could never have imagined the kind of angst that can grip the church these days.  And I doubt they could fathom the puzzling state of the Christian religion in this country and around the world today.

Nevertheless, we have been given here at this marvelous place, what you might call a “superbad” legacy – by which I mean extraordinarily good – that was left to us by men and women who were grown-up in their faith.  We are invited, at the foot of the Cross that is the very center of this place, to learn to live beyond ourselves, to discover that we have what it takes and have had it all along, to be more than we ever knew we could be, and to share this good news with anyone and everyone who will listen.

It’s not actually all that complicated – no more complicated than growing up.  And when we begin to do it - to live in love, beyond the immediate cruelty of passionate self-obsession, living instead for others – we discover that the life of a disciple, lived in Christ, guided by his Cross, this life is “superbad,” which means it is very, very good.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
9 September 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

Friend, Go Up Higher

Many eastern cultures, we are told, maintain rather clear and strict customs about seating placements, to this very day.  Where you sit in a room or at a table says a lot, in these cultures, about who you are.

We subscribe to more democratic seating principles in this country, occasionally taking the trouble to alternate boy, girl, boy, girl.  Only at wedding receptions and White House functions do Americans concern themselves with more involved seating arrangements, and even then our seating charts often tell us more about who gets along with whom than who is who.  

Jesus lived in a society a bit more attentive to who is who.  So when he tells a story about the seating at a marriage feast, the punch line is not going to be about who got stuck sitting next to Aunt Martha.  When Jesus tells a story about the seating at a marriage feast, he is going to tell us something about who is who.

“Do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited.”  This will cause what the Australians call a kerfuffle, as the host has to come and tell you to get out of your seat and give it to the one who deserves it.  “But when you are invited, go and sit at the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’”

Friend, go up higher.  I have always thought this is one of the loveliest phrases in Scripture in its graceful simplicity.  I sometimes imagine that Jesus wants to teach us to say it to one another, when really he is trying to teach us where to sit so that we might be the ones being addressed by this invitation: Friend, go up higher.

Jesus’ teaching here is simple, but hard for us to hear, since we are so accustomed to simply sitting wherever we choose.  Jesus is teaching about humility, which we tend to mistake for low self-esteem.  And Episcopalians are not geared for low-self esteem.  In our confusion about the two, it can sometimes seem that we are not geared for humility either.

It’s interesting to note that while Jesus lived during a time when there were ritualized ways of demonstrating humility (the sprinkling of ashes on one’s forehead, for instance) we find no record of his practice of these rituals.  In fact, we have much evidence that he regarded such ritual humility with suspicion.  He preferred the real thing.  Jesus’ humility was lived out day by day, in the company he kept, the style of his dress, I suppose, and in his manners.  So it is no surprise that he should teach his disciples to show their humility not in some ritualized way, but in their manners, even in which seat they should choose at a banquet.

Sometimes it’s reassuring to discover that there is Good News to be found in something as simple as good manners.  But of course Jesus’ idea of good manners is different from our own.  Jesus is not advocating mere self-deprecation, and he is not providing an unorthodox strategy to get the best seat in the end.  He is suggesting that we take the lowest seat, because the lowest seat is also closest to the door, closest to those who have not been invited at all.

And so he says to the man who invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or your rich neighbors….  But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  What kind of manners are these?  Talking to his host this way?  And are we to extrapolate a practice for ourselves here too?  Does he mean for us to invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to our parties, even to church?

Yes, I believe Jesus does mean this, though most of us, myself included, are a long way from being ready to learn it, let alone live this lesson in radical hospitality.

The lesson is, however, part and parcel of the suggestion that we should take the lowest seat, the one nearest the door, closest to those who have not been invited.  Because we know, of course, that that is exactly where Jesus would wind up: rejected, driven out of town to his execution, abandoned by those who said they’d follow him.  And from his dismal point of view on the Cross, you can be sure Jesus knows who is who.

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”  He could have been talking about himself, who would know utter humility and who would be raised to undreamt of exaltation.  But could he be talking about you or about me?  Do we have the kind of humility in us that Jesus asks of us?  The secret is, of course, that it requires a healthy self-esteem to take the lowest seat.

And it takes a healthy self-esteem to choose to live with real humility, rather than just ritualize it.  It takes someone who knows themselves, who knows who’s who, to sit near enough the door that you can hear the groaning of the poor, the off-beat gait of the maimed, the lame, the tapping of the blind.  This is where Jesus wants us.  Because he knows how easy it is for us, in our splendid lives, to forget all about them, to mistake them for somebody else, to forget that we are all children of the same Father.  And Jesus wants us to know who’s who.  He wants us near the door so that we can do something about those left waiting outside.

In one of the gospels we hear Jesus’ followers worrying about just how much humility they can bear.  Peter speaks on their behalf, saying, “Lord, we have left everything and followed you.  What then shall we have?”  What shall we have?  Isn’t this a familiar question?

Jesus tells Peter that he and the others will sit on thrones to judge the tribes of Israel, which, frankly, was not what Peter had in mind, I think.  And he ends by repeating one of his favorite sound bites: the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Which is a lot like saying that he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

So let’s just say we try taking the lower seat.  Let’s say we are open to this life of humility.  What then shall we have?  We’ll have two things.  First, we’ll have the healthy self-esteem that come of knowing not only who is who but who we are.  And this is a good thing.  And second, we will be in the right place, at the right time to hear that lovely invitation: Friend, go up higher.  And that will be a good place to be.

And perhaps, if we have been sitting near enough the door to chat (when it’s open) with the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, perhaps when the invitation comes to us, Friend, go up higher, perhaps we might be bold enough to bring our new friends with us, who never dreamt of being given such an excellent seat.

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