Prove It

The recent celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday predictably spawned a round of heated debate about the conflict between science and religion. The anniversary prompted the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster (a serious, and I think a wise man) to write in a London paper that “science is a good friend to my faith…. One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and our world. This is a false opposition.” Amen to that!

Last week I heard various people confidently assert that Darwin, the great scientist, was either an ardent and faithful Christian or a confirmed atheist. A cursory check reveals that neither claim is quite true. Darwin, who began his university training for the ministry, seems to have been on a journey, spiritually speaking, in which his thinking changed (let’s not say it evolved). And even when he continued to be attracted to the moral suasion of the New Testament, he seems to have found some biblical claims hard to accept – especially claims of the miraculous. It’s not at all clear, however, that he regarded his own scientific work as a foundation for an argument against the existence of God, in fact it seems unlikely that he did.

But many’s the clever writer with a book deal these days who would build on a foundation Darwin never claims to have laid. That the archbishop of Westminster feels compelled to publicly disavow a conflict between science and faith is more a commentary on the state of public discourse in the twenty-first century than it is a reflection of any new developments in the world of religion. A great many of us already subscribe to the worldview the cardinal claimed. I suppose we might as well be grateful for him putting it so concisely.

If it’s the fantastic and unscientific that you are looking for, today you have come to the right place. First we heard about the prophet Elijah’s magnificent transportation to heaven in a chariot of fire.

And if that is not enough for you, Saint Mark offers his story of the Transfiguration. High on a mountaintop, Peter and James and John are walking with Jesus when, all of a sudden, he is transfigured: which we understand to mean that his whole person shone with God’s glory and his clothes became dazzling white; and the figures of Moses and Elijah appear to be talking with him. And no sooner has this amazing moment passed that a cloud passes over the mountain and overshadows this small party, and a voice is heard from the cloud “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then, suddenly, all returns to normal, and Peter and James and John are alone again with Jesus, who suggests that maybe they just keep all this between them for the time being.

Ever since we watched the Wise Men ride up to the stable and lay their gifts at the child’s crib, the church has been taking note of these moments of epiphany – which can be defined as “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something.” Over these past weeks our Gospel stories have told us of Jesus’ baptism (when a voice from heaven first proclaimed “This is my Son”); of how Jesus calls disciples who follow him, even though they know nothing of him yet; of how Jesus casts out demons (who already know who he is); of how Jesus heals the sick; and now this – this transfiguration on a mountaintop, all this light, this glory, this dark cloud, and this voice that never identifies itself because it need not do so. “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

All of which presents to the skeptic an opportunity to defy the faithful with two simple words: Prove it! Just try to prove any of it!

And this demand for proof appears to be a problem. What can any of us say to prove these stories, these claims we make about Jesus? How can our certainty about the origin of that voice ever rest on anything more than circumstantial evidence? How can we prove anything about God or about Jesus? I mean, we are Episcopalians – we don’t know the Bible that well (which is where we suspect the proof lies), and you can’t prove anything with a hymnal (which is traditionally the Episcopalian’s favorite religious book).

Those two words – prove it – leave us cowering, or at the very best changing the subject and offering to pour drinks. We don’t know how to prove anything about our faith, which is a bit of a nuisance, and which is why we resort to the rather weak claim that we’d rather not talk about it because faith is personal. (Tell that to the martyrs who suffered and died for their faith.)

But the real problem is not that we have not learned the secret proofs of our faith, locked deep in the pages of the books of the Bible we’d generally opt not to read. The real problem is the demand for proof in the first place: the very notion that something as magnificent and mystical as the transfiguration (or the incarnation, or the resurrection) is awaiting proof. The problem is in thinking that these mysteries are of the type that Encyclopedia Brown, or the Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or Jessica Fletcher or Monk might have solved by simply following all the right clues (most of them hidden in their Bibles). The real problem is that when Moses came running back to his house, out of breath, and with a stubbed toe, his face flushed and warm, and said that God had just spoken to him from a burning bush, and his neighbor looked at him with his hand on his hip, and one raised eyebrow, and said derisively, “Prove it,” there was nothing Moses could do.

The booths that Peter wants to build on the mountaintop are an impulse to give in to that demand – like stringing up yellow crime scene tape through the trees in the clearing on the mountainside to say, “this is where it happened: right here!” Peter wants to be able to prove it, or at the very least identify the spot, come back and look for clues, maybe find some DNA. And as if to underscore the uselessness of this plan, the cloud rolls in, and the voice thunders out: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

And all Jesus says to them is that they should say nothing, which is to say that there is nothing to prove.

There is nothing to prove because these moments of epiphany are sudden, intuitive moments of perception of something real: God making himself known in a burning bush, at the Jordan River, by the call to “follow me,” to the demons he casts out, by making a sick mother in law well, and standing transfigured by all the glory of God with his friends and with Moses and Elijah, and that voice declaring: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” What were they going to say, who were standing there and saw the glory, heard the voice? “Prove it”? What is there to prove?

In a wonderful poem, too salty, frankly, for me to quote in its entirety, Wendell Berry addresses the flip side of this challenge, turning the demand for proof around to those who reduce Darwin’s science and the mysteries of the cosmos to a discussion of mere chance:

In the beginning something by chance
existed that would bang and by chance
it banged, obedient to the by-chance
previously existing laws of existence
and banging, from which the rest proceeds
by logic of cause and effect also
previously existing by chance? Well,
when that happened who was there?
Did the chance that made the bang then make
the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?
Prove to me that chance did ever
make a sycamore tree, a yellow-
throated warbler nesting and singing
high up among white limbs
and the golden leaf-light, and a man
to love the tree, the bird the song
his life long, and by his love to save
them, so far, from all the machines.
By chance? Prove it….

For me, Berry’s defiance makes it easier to see how unnecessary it is to feel defensive in the face of those who say of my faith, “Prove it.” If you and I have been to the mountaintop with Christ (even metaphorically speaking), if we have seen that light, and heard that voice, then what is there for us to prove?

So Jesus calls us, week by week, up this slight mountain of only a step or two, where we hold him in the small clearing of our hands, and our hearts; and the tiny disk of flour and water is transfigured, and the chalice glows with other light. And from the cloud that we hadn’t even noticed, a voice rings silently but distinctly in our ears, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”

And there is nothing to prove at all. Either you have seen it or you haven’t; either you hear it or you don’t. Either you will follow when he calls or you won’t because, you say, you never heard a call. OK, fair enough. Either this is real or this isn’t, these moments of epiphany when the light is bright, and all is transfigured, and you know, you just know, that there is nothing to prove.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
22 February 2009
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Touching the leper

I know a priest who was called to the beside of a man who was dying of AIDS, in one of the first cases of AIDS in a western state. The man was the son of parishioners, and he had come home from New York to die. This was during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, and little was known about the transmission of AIDS. She gave him communion, and last rites, and then the man died. She didn’t think much about the fact that there was such tremendous fear and stigma about AIDS at the time, until at her parish the following Sunday, she said mass, and invited the people to communion, and no one came forward to receive. They were afraid. She had been in contact with a man who had died from a new, little understood disease, and there was incredible fear about taking bread and wine from a priest who had been that close to HIV/AIDS. She had to do a great amount of teaching to convince her parishioners that AIDS didn’t spread by the chalice, or touch.

I always think of that fear and stigma when I read the stories about leprosy in the Gospels. Leprosy was the equivalent in the ancient near east. No one had contact with a leper. They were, instantly, removed from every social sphere. They couldn’t worship in the synagogue, they couldn’t live with other people, they couldn’t participate in the economic system of the time; who would take money from a leper?

As so often happens, when we read the stories of the Gospels, we need to be reminded that a great part of their power and shock-value comes from the fact that Jesus is in these settings at all: that he speaks and teaches women, Gentiles, tax collectors, sinners, and yes, lepers.

So listen once again to the story of Jesus and the leper.

The man begging, full of desperation and fear is down on his knees in supplication. “If you choose,” which is a way of saying “If you aren’t a charlatan, or a fraud; if you aren’t like the couple of quacks who would actually consent to talk to me, if you are who you say you are,” you can heal me.

How many times had he been down on his knees, or hoping against hope that this doctor, or that teacher would actually speak to him, this dip into the Dead Sea or the miracle cure would restore him?

The man wasn’t simply ill or in physical distress. His condition was a sentence of social death, of complete isolation and humiliation, of complete stigma and total dehumanization. To have leprosy was to be unclean, to be the living walking equivalent of a dead body, to make anyone who came into contact with you unclean for days. It meant being excluded from the village, from all human touch and conversation, to be utterly and permanently alienated from family, town and tribe.

Indeed, this man had nothing to lose. He’d lost everything already. A friendless corpse, orphaned; permanently having to announce his own demise to those who otherwise might come into contact with him: “Unclean! I am unclean!”

In hopeless and utter desperation, from the edge of insanity and a place of rash and pyrrhic despair, he approaches the new teacher that has been shaking up the countryside. And there are such strange rumors about him, that people are made well, those distressed are made whole, and that his words are words of strange comfort and peace.

“Probably,” the man says to himself, “probably he won’t do anything. Probably his face will just twist with disgust and fear, like everyone else does. Probably nothing can be done and I will go on my way, alone again.”

The Gospel records Jesus’ pity. But the Greek here can also be translated as “anger,” which gives a greater nuance to the story.Jesus is angry, not with the man for approaching him, but at the situation: angry that the man is sick, angry that he is so completely cut off from his friends and family, angry that the man is driven to such desperate straits.

Jesus then does an amazing, stunning act. Not only does he allow the man to approach him, to speak to him, to make him ritually unclean, which might be enough for this poor lonely man, but Jesus doesn’t stop there. He reaches out his hand, in pity and anger, and touches him.

He sets all the cultural fear, horror and revulsion on its ear (and Jesus must have felt some of that horror himself) and not only does his touch bring physical healing to the man, but it is the first human contact that he has had in God knows how long.

I imagine him, kneeling there, the tears creeping out beneath his closed eyelids, completely and utterly stunned at that first touch in so long – not even thinking momentarily about the years of loneliness and desperation.

Is it any wonder then, that the man disregards Jesus? That, instead of finally fulfilling the process that would lead to his restoration into the social fabric of his time, instead of that, he goes out to speak with passion and amazement about this rabbi who not only healed him, but touched him, who not only spoke to him and allowed his approach, but flashed in anger at his plight.

The stories in the Gospels are flashes, brief flashes on our retina of the Incarnation; of what it means that God shares our life with us. The reason that we read the Scriptures ever week is to have these glimpses of God’s work, and to make the narrative of God’s coming into the world part of our own story and narrative, to graft our stories into the story of God’s love and action.

This is the icon that we are given, the image of God-come-down-to-earth that the generations who went before us have handed on to us. God made flesh looks not just to the powerful, wealthy and saintly but to the outcast, the pariah, the sinner. And the icon of Jesus points continually to the shocking ways in which God works.Jesus speaks to foreigners, touches lepers and teaches women. St. Francis, following his God, takes a page from that book and kisses the leper on the mouth.

It isn’t just the leper or the outcast whom Jesus heals, but everyone, children, the aged, all those who come to him in faith, or attempting to have faith, he teaches, touches, welcomes and heals.

Even so, in our own day, Jesus comes into our lives and the lives of the disposed with healing, and his coming is not preconditioned on our getting ourselves together but on his love and mercy, and the flash of anger because of our suffering. And how he heals us: he heals our sadnesses and our hurts, our longings and the woundedness that is at the heart of us. He comes down into our midst every week, scattering his presence like wafers and his compassion like drops of wine.

This story from the Gospel this morning is also a story about what our response to that unbelieveable, luminous touch of the divine in our lives should be. We will want to shout it from the rooftops; we, feeling the glory of our own healing and redemption will be more and more compelled to tell the story of the amazing rabbi, who allowed us to approach, and even spoke with us, and in his compassion and mercy touched us and made us well.

We will want people to know that he has come down to our midst, our God and King, our Savior and Messiah. He works here still, speaking into our hearts and minds, grafting us into the great story of salvation, healing our wounds and whispering to us of the sadnesses and hurts around us. That we may share with those around us the wonder of the teacher who stretches out his hand in compassion and heals.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

15 February 2009

Control

A couple of years ago, toward the end of his life, the great economist John Kenneth Gailbraith wrote the only book on economics that I have ever read. It is 62 pages long – which explains why I read it. In it, he writes about the delusion of the effectiveness of economic policy dictated by the Federal Reserve. He says:

“That nothing important results [from such policy] is overlooked. The belief that anything as complex, as diverse and by its nature personally important as money can be guided by well-discussed but painless decisions emanating from a pleasant, unobtrusive building in the nation’s capital belongs not to the real world, but to that of hope and imagination. Here our most implausible and most cherished escape from reality.”

I wonder what the old man would say about our current economic jam and its various bailouts, stimuli, and other fixes.

One of the underlying themes of Gailbraith’s short book is the idea that we are kidding ourselves if we think we are in control of things, but that we have come to believe that kidding ourselves about this is a good idea. That this self-deluding posture leads us down many dangerous paths, to some very costly and unwise decisions, does not seem to provoke us to evaluate our presumptions and decisions, or to make better choices – so much do we have invested in our way of thinking, our way of life.

Our human condition is fraught with the struggle for control of ourselves and the world around us. The Bible asserts this in its first chapters as the easy life of paradise is interrupted by the decision to take control of the only few square feet of the garden that God had fenced off. Cain’s murder of his brother is the result of his frustration that he cannot control God. And so on, and so on, and so on.

To be human is to reach for control of the things around us, even if we are over-reaching, and even if these things are fundamentally beyond our control. We even try to control the weather, with methods like seeding clouds to make it rain. And in our current economic crisis it may be that the most painful aspect of it – even more painful than the harsh reality of a hundred thousand newly unemployed people just last week – is the painful fact that despite the billions upon billions of dollars that was have already thrown at the situation, and the billions more that we are preparing to hurl, apparently events are simply out of our control.

Of course the fact of our inability to control economic events is rivaled only by the pain that comes from realizing that we cannot always control our health, or the passage from life to death.

A friend lies very sick with cancer, much too young. And cancer, still scary, is not what it used to be, because we have gotten so good at beating it, or at the very least slowing it down. But cancer is astonishingly disrespectful of our desire to control our bodies, our lives, our destinies. The relentless division of cells doesn’t give a damn about what we want, or hoped, or who we love. Like other diseases, cancer confronts us with our lack of control - and we hardly know what to do when we cannot grab the steering wheel of our lives and determine the direction they take, no matter how hard we wrestle for it.

Nowhere is this struggle more profound than at the end of life, when our practiced control makes it all but impossible to do the one simple thing that needs to be done and just unplug all the mechanisms of control that maintain the delusion that we are in charge.

Now Jesus comes walking into the synagogue. Saint Mark tells us that he taught the people, who were astonished because he taught as one with authority. Frustratingly, Mark does not tell us what Jesus taught. He only tells us that, weirdly, a man with an unclean spirit appears, out of nowhere in their midst. And believe me, this is unsettling because it makes everyone in the synagogue feel as though things are not under control.

I actually know, I think, what this feels like: to have someone who is off his meds, ill-behaving, loud, delusional, and uncooperative show up in church. I would fall short of diagnosing an unclean spirit – but perhaps only just a little short. You are knocked off balance, because you don’t know what he is going to do (it’s almost always a man), and you don’t know what you should do. Things are out of control. And, boy, is that uncomfortable, to say the least. (The best thing that ever happened to the rabbi of that synagogue is that the man with the unclean spirit ignores him. It’s Jesus he wants to confront, and so he does.)

And Jesus takes control. He has authority. He rebukes the unclean spirit and tells it what to do. And the spirit, putting up a fight, relents in the face of one who is actually in control, and is seen no more.

And the people were amazed.

And here is a point of interest in our story. The people were amazed at Jesus.

When was it, I wonder, that we stopped being able to be amazed at Jesus?

I think we would suppose that it was just inevitable, like lost innocence, but I think that’s too simple. I suspect that there has been an inverse relationship between our ability to be amazed at Jesus and our conviction that we are really in control of our own lives, and of the universe. The more confident we become in our own control, the less amazing Jesus is, and the easier it is to dismiss him.

The more we believe we are in control, the more likely we are to assert that a Jesus who can heal the sick, who has power over evil, who can bring redemption to the world by his death on a cross, who could rise from the grave, who lights the way to a resurrection faith, and who gives us even today his Body and his Blood four our spiritual nourishment – the more all this seems to belong, in Gailbraith’s words, “not to the real world, but to that of hope and imagination.”

This is the accusation leveled, is it not? That the Jesus of the Bible - who could perform miracles, and who changed the lives of those who could reach out and touch only the hem of his garment – that this Jesus has no authority beyond the hope and imagination of a deluded and dwindling number of nincompoops. That the control of the universe lies in the hands of a God mysteriously and incomprehensibly known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – pure hope and imagination!

And since we have enjoyed the increasing sensation that we are, in fact, in control of our lives, our destinies, and the fate of the universe, it has become harder and harder for us nincompoops to mount an argument against this accusation. Especially since it has been some time since we were amazed at Jesus.

Strange prophet though he be, look again at the words of Gailbraith. What lives in the world of “hope and imagination,” by his estimation, is not some religious claim about God or his Son, or the powers of the universe, but the fiercely defended delusion that we – self professed masters of science, and industry, and finance, and all manner of things – that we are in control of anything much at all.

It is the delusion of our control that Gailbraith says belongs not to the real world, but to that of hope and imagination. It is the delusion of our control that the economist says is an escape from reality. And even if he would be an reluctant prophet for my cause, he can now do nothing to prevent me from recruiting him.

Let him help us burst the false image of our control of all things. And when we have begun to let go of this fantasy, then let Jesus come into our midst. According to Mark, Jesus’ teaching – impressive though it may be – will not be what we remember. What we will remember is the way he teaches us: as one with authority.

And let the demons of our lives show up in our midst, out of nowhere, as we are trying to work out what it is about Jesus that has gripped us.

Let anxiety fill the air, as it would if a man possessed were to stand up and start raving right there, where the Gospel is proclaimed. Feel the tension rise, as your throat clenches, and every single one of us begins to look for the nearest door and think about leaving the room. This is the loss of control, we are feeling; the anxiety of knowing that we cannot control events and the best we can hope for is to just get away from here.

And if a crazy person in church can do it to us, we know, do we not, that real worries, like a lost job, a diminished retirement account, like a looming diagnosis, or another round of chemo, or, God forbid, like the awful decision about whether or not to remove life support – we know how these make us feel: that so damned much is out of our control and there is not even a doorway out of which to escape.

Let Jesus walk into these moments. He does not explain himself to us. And if he teaches us anything, we can hardly seem to remember it. But what he does, is take control, because he can. He is the author of life and of salvation – which is to say that all life and all salvation began in his loving mind and flow from his loving heart.

He is in control – whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. But Jesus will not coerce us into accepting his authority. We are free to reject it and go on struggling to maintain our own delusional state.

And one of the great struggles of human existence – recorded in the first pages of the Bible – is that struggle for control.

Let Jesus walk into that struggle. He does not promise to right every wrong immediately. He does not promise to heal every wound, and cure every illness. He never promises to make anyone rich. He does not say that care and troubles will disappear immediately from the face of the earth.

But at those moments when we have come to the awful realization that everything is spinning out of control and there is nothing whatsoever we can do, and it seems as though, perhaps no one at all is in control of anything… Jesus stands there, where even the demons know who he is.

And somehow, from that spot in a synagogue, he does indeed hold the whole world in his hands. And everything is under control. And yes, the economy is a wreck, and the cancer hasn’t gone, and my beloved still lies near death.

But the God who made us and loves us is actually in control, if only we will let him be. And when we do, it is amazing.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
1 February 2009
Saint Mark’s, Philadelphia

Eccentric fisher folk

It is ordination season, and the last of my seminary classmates are being ordained to the priesthood before Lent. I went down yesterday to Maryland for an ordination, the first where I got to lay hands upon one of my friends as a priest in the Church.

To say that this ordination was different from my own, here at St. Mark’s, would be an understatement. The church was built in 1989, rather than 1849. The choir was not as talented as our own choir (I will leave it at that). The ordinand was wearing Ferrari red three inch stiletto heels. There was a praise band in addition to the choir, and all the children had red ribbons to wave to symbolize the Holy Spirit that we were going to call down upon the ordinand. The procession was led in with a big Dove kite, and I haven’t seen that used here yet, but Pentecost is coming...

There were other little idiosyncrasies that I found amusing.After we processed in, I sat down in one of the front pews and realized that a child had left a ping-pong ball on the kneeler at the communion rail which he proceeded to retreive in the middle of the bishop's sermon.  After the clergy in my row went to the altar to receive communion, we returned to our row and I was greeted with the amusing sight of a dryer sheet lying on the ground in our pew. I’m sure that it had been inside someone’s robe and during the energetic singing (dare I say dancing) had worked its way down to the floor.“At least,” I thought, “we know that someone in this pew is wearing a clean robe.”

There were all sorts of little moments and gems of strangeness that kept hitting me, and I thought, how wonderful, how glorious that God calls us all, despite the little idiosyncrasies that we carry around with us: genuflecting and ping-pong balls, Dove kites and monstrances, praise bands and Aeolian-Skinner organs.

The first disciples were equally as eccentric, I have no doubt. They were fishermen and fishermen, then as now are a strange breed. Modern day fishing is a bit like a religion and a bit like a mania, and in some people can be both. But somehow I never imagine those disciples as modern fishermen – slightly obsessed and with poor fashion sense, I’ve always thought that fishing in Galilee during the time of the Gospels was less like fishing as we know it now, and more like working construction: manly men’s work – not for the faint of heart or body. And I have always imagined that some of the roughness from the long hours of physical labor remained with the disciples throughout their lives and comes out of the Gospels in little strange places. Think of some of the inane sentences that come out of Peter mouth, or his knee-jerk response in chopping off the high priest’s servant’s ear, or John rushing off to escape arrest with Jesus, having someone grab his robe, and streaking off through the garden, naked as the day he was born.

They were tough men, those fishermen, rough, brawny, full of laughter and slightly off-color jokes.They are the kind of men that you would like on your side in a bar fight, and perhaps they were in a few scrapes together, before they met Jesus. And what must they have thought when Jesus came up to them, and called them to follow him?What must Zebedee, that old tough fisherman have thought, or perhaps said and perhaps punctuated with some pretty choice words when his two sons dropped the nets they were fixing and rushed off to follow that Messiah and left him standing there?

There are several lessons in the Gospel this morning. The first is that, even though Jesus begins his ministry alone, almost immediately he begins to assemble a group of disciples. Fishing for people which is ministry, mission, the growth and spread of the Gospel, is communal work, rather like net fishing from a boat. It isn’t something that you can do very well, or very safely by yourself. You might, in point of fact, end up in deep water. Jesus begins to call his disciples, and he calls some interesting characters. Rough fisherman, a tax collector, a couple of fellows with some pretty radical, even revolutionary political views, women with dubious backgrounds, later even the zealously anti-Christian Saul; they all come to join the Rabbi as he trolled the alleys and plains of Palestine for people to reel in.

The second lesson that comes from the Gospel this morning has to do with the goal and purpose of fishing for people: the point is to catch more people. It isn’t to join the select few, the club of like-minded, homogenous people, but to find yourself in the pew next to the wildly idiosyncratic, the strange, the crazy. I always think about the story, still told, of the poet W. H. Auden, who was very faithful in going to mass in New York, at a church rather similar to St. Mark’s. I don’t know if he regularly didn’t get up in time, or if in some bohemian way he just preferred not to dress in a suit, but Auden would to mass in his dressing gown. As far as I know, no one ever said anything about his garb. Perhaps some of you will be inspired to try the same some Sunday...

Can you imagine those first gatherings of the followers of Jesus and the conversations around the fires that these “catches” of Jesus must have had? The tax collector, the sign and symbol of Roman oppression and the Zealots, anxious to cast off the Roman oppressors, eyeing each other from opposite sides of the ring of people. The sons of Zebedee, wondering how their aging father was making out on his own. The women who followed Jesus, risking disgrace or worse because they had left the protection of male family members and followed this Messiah.Strange and idiosyncratic. God’s rag-tag army of fisher-folk. The pews here are no different. They are filled with the incongruous and the slightly eccentric.

The third lesson is that Jesus, in calling his disciples is also calling his successors. He is calling those who will carry on the work, who will carry the nets to the far corners of the known world, will cast their nets into the ponds of the powerful, and poverty stricken, into the synagogues and into the land of Samaria; they will snare emperors and kings, courtesans and ladies-in-waiting, farmers, ironsmiths, stockbrokers, professors, the homeless, the needy, those who mourn. All of them will wiggle like fish out of the water, caught in a net of divine craftiness, and those caught will themselves go out, to cast nets into the pools of all the world.

It is not just the first disciples that Jesus calls and lands. We ourselves have been hooked. And the instructions of Jesus, to catch people, are not just for Peter and Andrew, James and John, they are words for us today.

For to be caught in that net is also to know that our calling, our journey has at its heart the need to speak about how we have been trapped. How the Divine fisherman has caught and snared us, how we have been brought to bay in the rapids after a long fight, or hauled up sharply by a wide net; and how, having been trapped, we seek also to ensnare those whom we encounter with that sweet knowledge that God actively hunts and pursues us, that divine nets are constantly set to catch us and that the Hound of Heaven is bellowing on our trail.

For the last lesson is equally good news. The work of “fishing for people” is something that Jesus teaches us to do. “I will teach you to fish for people.” “I will teach you.”This is not something that we do on our own, or with any special talents.It is not work that we need to flog ourselves into doing, or feel guilty about being unable to do. It is not work that we can aspire to do unless the great fisherman traps us. But trap us he does, and he traps us in all our glorious foibles and idiosyncrasies. He traps us, women and men of dubious faith, he traps burly fishermen and rough construction workers, poets in bathrobes, bankers, doctors, lawyers, and revolutionaries. He catches us in nets of long history, of family, of culture, of intellect and of emotion.

He catches and looks at us gasping there upon the beach, out of our element, straining to breath in this rarified air, and says simply“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

Go therefore, and fish for people. Tell them how you have been landed, stranded, hooked. And may our casts be wide and varied, may we haul in many a fish of all different shapes and sizes, and may we never lose sight of the glorious eccentric body, those of us who are the followers of the Way, who gather around altars everywhere to praise the One who has caught us in his divine net.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
25 January 2009
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

God Calling

One of the hardest parts of being in love is waiting for the phone to ring. When love is fresh and new, you count the days or hours or minutes until she calls again. In long relationships, the waiting for the phone to ring might just as easily be about annoyance as anticipation - he was supposed to have called home by now. And at the end of life, as often as not it is a phone call that brings you news of a fall that you hoped he would not suffer, or the final word of her diagnosis, or, at last, a summons to the hospital bedside.

Waiting for the phone to ring – waiting for that call (whatever it is) – is a hard part of being in love. And you don’t even need to really be in love to know the hard part of waiting for the call. A crush, the mere possibility of love, is enough to keep you checking your cell phone every minute or so. Wondering if the call will come at all. Surely it will. How long will it be? Why is he waiting so long? Is it too soon for me to call? At least now, with cell phones, you don’t have to sit at home any more and wait by the phone… just in case!

There still exists in the world today the possibility that people like you and me have at some point in our lives fallen in love with God. Although we are extraordinarily shy about it, I think it is safe to take it for granted, in the privacy of our own church – that at some point, some how, in some measure, most of us have at least had a crush on God. And for some of us it has gone further.

But whether your love affair with God is in its first throes or its last, or someplace in between, perhaps you have had the frustration of waiting for the phone to ring, so to speak: wondering if God is going to call, if he will speak to you, or at the very least send you a sign from time to time.

And I think one reason some of us remain comfortable with the use of the male pronoun to speak of God is because, just like a man, he sometimes seems to have a bad track record of communication. Why doesn’t he call more often… just to talk?!

It is often assumed that the clergy do not suffer from a lack of communication with God. I am often asked, for instance, what my “call” was like – for that, indeed, is the word we like to use when we speak of the way God seems to have reached out to us to bring us into ordained ministry.

For better or worse, the story of my own call includes no fantastic dreams, no voices in the night, not a single instance of being struck blind on the roadside. But I can tell you that for a long time I wished that it had!

And the bald truth of the matter is that the clergy do not necessarily enjoy more open channels of communication with God than others do, even though we have been given the time to make ourselves available. Just because we wear the collar does not mean we are less likely to find ourselves waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the spiritual phone to ring, and wondering, when will he call?

The unmistakable theme of the readings today is the message, in the stories of Samuel and of Philip and Nathaniel, that God calls. We hear the marvelous account of Samuel’s dream - that reminds us that even though we might hear God calling, we often have trouble recognizing the call for what it is and figuring out how to respond. And we hear about Jesus gathering his disciples by calling out to them, “Follow me!” and by making the truth about who he is plainly evident even before thy have seen what he can do.

God calls. And every time this assertion is made – in the Bible or from the pulpit or anywhere else – it is paired with a challenge to respond. But I suspect that many of us never really bother to listen much to the challenge because we get hung up on its premise. Oh yes, we believe there was a time when God used to call. Yes, we believe that there were people God called. And we may even believe that for the especially holy (or at least those with enough time on their hands to sit around and wait) God may still occasionally call.

But the assertion that every preacher will want to make – that God calls you and you and you and you to follow him, to be disciples of his Son, to take a role in the work of building up his kingdom – this seems obligatory for the preacher and unlikely to the congregant. After all, you have been sitting faithfully in your pews – some of you in the same darn pews for an awfully long time; you have been waiting patiently, it’s not like you have been hard to find. If God calls, how come you have never heard the phone ring?

It is interesting to me that both of the stories of calls that we heard today involve intermediaries. Young Samuel has Eli, and although Philip hears Jesus call out to him directly, it is Philip who first beings word of Jesus to Nathaniel. True, Nathaniel is skeptical, but he would have no questions to be answered had Philip not sought him out and brought him word of Jesus. The fact of these intermediaries in hearing God’s call is a reminder that hearing is not always as easy as we think it is, and it sometimes requires help, and a process of discernment.

The circumstances of my own conviction of God’s call involved not just one intermediary but many, over a span of some years. And I could name for you at least a dozen people who I relied on, as Samuel relied on Eli, to convince me that I should pay attention to what I thought I might be hearing, and that eventually I should learn to pray, like Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

And I know from experience that most of us need help discerning the sound of God’s call to us. It is seldom as obvious as a ringing telephone – (it’s more like having your phone set on “vibrate”). But why should it surprise us or put us off that we might need help in discerning God’s call? I would need help just to discern a birdcall, were I to stop and listen. Even if I were to go out to the woods just to hear the birds, without help I wouldn’t know what I was listening to. Why would it be easier to discern the call of God than it is to know what the birds are singing about?

Notice however, in our two biblical stories, that neither Eli nor Philip serves as interpreter. It is not up to these intermediaries to decipher messages from God. It is enough that they should help their charges turn their attention in the right direction, to learn how to ask the right question, to be in the right place at the right time.

And this morning, I get the sense that this is my task – as your priest and fellow pilgrim in faith, and as one who has himself fallen in love with God, but also known the utter frustration of waiting for the phone to ring, wondering why he does not call more often, counting the minutes, hours, and days since I last heard from him – that my task is to help you to discern: to turn your attention in the right direction, to know how to ask the right questions, and to know how to be in the right place at the right time to hear the call of God when it comes.

And my advice is simple – three things: Pray. Shut up. Go to church.

Prayer is our participation in the ongoing conversation that God has with his people. If you have something to say to God, you say it in prayer, whether it’s whispered or shouted. Put time aside to pray every day, even if it’s just a few minutes before you go to bed and you commend to God’s care the people you love and give thanks for the blessings of the day or complain about its annoyances. Pray.

Prayer is a two way street, and if you are going to learn to discern God’s call you will also want to learn how to shut up and listen. This is the hard part of prayer, when we try to keep our minds from wandering and learn how to listen for God. Learning how to meditate is a good way to learn to shut up and listen. But you can begin by just finding a quiet place and concentrating on breathing deeply and listening, listening, listening. And if you should fall asleep, don’t worry, perhaps God wants to talk to you in your dreams anyway. But by all means, shut up and listen.

Of course it sounds self-serving to say that you should go to church, and a bit beside the point, since you are obviously here. But sometimes we need to be reminded why it’s important that we are here. This parish community is founded on the notion that God has called people to gather together in this spot on Locust Street, to sing and pray and praise his name. The stones are stacked into walls here and the glass painted with pictures because of the conviction of successive generations that God has something to say and to do among the people who gather here. And it makes sense to come together in a place where God seems reliably to be found – especially in a community that carries out like clockwork every day Christ’s command to break bread together.

It’s certainly not impossible to hear God call if you don’t go to church, but at our best we are meant to be a community of those who have practiced listening for God’s call; to help one another through the waiting times, and to teach each other how to discern the sound or the feel of God’s voice. Go to church.

Pray. Shut up. Go to church. That’s my advice if you want to hear God’s call.

And the assurance I give you is this: that God does call, that he is already calling and will never stop calling you or me. Jesus’ call to follow him is a call to daily conversion, learning how to love one another as he loved us. And it is a call that never stops.

And the truth about our anxiety, when we fall in love, about waiting for the phone to ring, often has very little to do with the message of the call itself, and more to do with its latent meaning, normally some variant of, “Does he love me too?” Early on we fear that our love may be unrequited. Throughout the middle of life we fear that love has grown so stale that it’s beyond hope. And late in life we fear that first dementia and then death will rob us of the one thing that can’t be replaced in life. In all these stages of life we worry that our love will be met by nothing at all in the one we love so much.

So it is scary to think of falling in love with God, who has a history of sometimes being inscrutable. If I love him, will he love me too? And how will I know.

And the irony is that we know how much God loves us because he never stops calling us to his side, never stops beckoning us to take up our work in the building of his kingdom. He never forgets our names, or loses track of us, and he never forgets to call.

And although we live in a world where even the simple things we can do to better discern God’s call have become challenges, it remains the fact that these are pretty easy things to do: Pray. Shut up. Go to church.

And if you should happen to feel – even just for a moment – that maybe God is trying to get to you, to whisper softly in your ear, try this, just say to him, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
18 January 2009
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Guarding Jesus

If I had a pocket watch I would hold it up for you to look at, and I would begin to swing it slowly back and forth. If I could, I would put you in a trance, or better yet, I would put you to sleep, so that, like an angel of the Lord, I could speak to you in your dreams. But then, I am a preacher in a pulpit! Of course I can put you to sleep… if I just keep talking, and talking, and talking. And I can already sense you getting sleepy, oh so sleepy. Your eyelids are feeling heavy, and you want to go to sleep, sleep, sleep.

I have come to speak to you in your dreams in order to bring you a warning, like the angel did for Joseph. You must take the Child, Jesus – at whose birth we have just rejoiced - and you must flee, for there are those who are about to search for this child to destroy him. And you must guard him; you must keep him safe.

This is a jarring dream, I know, because it had seemed all along that once Christmas had come and gone you would leave Jesus here – right there in his patch of straw, behind these strong walls and these locked doors. There are men in black here to protect the child: we are paid well enough and housed nearby in order to look after him while you are away. We are here to keep him safe. Why should you be saddled with this responsibility? And really, why are angels always causing such drama? (Gloria! Fear not! You must flee!) What is there to be frightened of? Surely Jesus is safe and sound in the world?

But the dream reminds us that Jesus is never safe. And I have come to warn you in your dreams.

At least three things threaten Jesus every day. Fear. Injustice. Selfishness.

It was fear that caused Herod the king to strike a deal with the Wise Men to bring him word about Jesus. And it was fear (when those Wise Men saw through him and did not return with the information he wanted) that sent Herod into a rage that left all the male babies in Bethlehem dead by his orders. What was he afraid of? The same thing we are afraid of: losing control. (As if we are always really in control.)

Fear reached its recent apex on a September morning seven years ago, attacked by another fear (masquerading again as rage), and it has cowed us into decisions that perhaps we shall some day regret.

It is fear that drives members of the same church (like our Episcopal Church) to look for conflict where there need be none, and to create it when they cannot find it. It’s the fog of fear that makes walking away from your brother or sister in Christ look like a better idea than simply disagreeing with him or her.

It’s fear that keeps us glued to the financial news; fear that thinks keeping a handgun in the house (loaded) for safety’s sake is good idea; fear that is still awkwardly, if silently, uncomfortable in the face of someone who looks different or darker than you.

Fear insists that it is always right and will tolerate no back-talk. Fear is jealous, and green with envy, too.

Fear cannot rear a child and could never produce milk to feed it; it crushes things that need to be cradled in warm arms. Fear wants no part of the baby Jesus, whose tiny hands and little heart have no idea how to instill it in others. And since this child comes to us again and again as a baby, year after year, threatening to undermine fear, fear would gladly find this baby and destroy him. But you must keep him safe.

Fear often leads to injustice. In our society, injustice is not so much a problem in the courthouse as it is in the statehouse, or the schoolhouse, or the hospital, or the street corner.

Injustice roams the halls of the statehouse when I assert that your rights can only come at the expense of mine and then I attempt to legislate this zero sum game.

Injustice roams the halls of the schoolhouse when countless kids in this city (and may others) are subjected to a pitiful education that is still separated from a diverse society, and entirely unequal to the needs of the child or the challenges she will face in the world.

Injustice roams the halls of the hospitals when the ER becomes the clinic of last resort for millions of uninsured – a disservice both to those who need care and those who give it. It lingers on the margins of irrational cost structures, and with the stigma of a pre-existing condition, driven by an insurance industry whose mission is not to ensure the best possible care.

Injustice hangs out on street corners wherever young boys (and girls) are coerced or cajoled into joining gangs; where drugs are pushed, and used; and where the mentally ill – with no place else to go and no one else to look after them – keep warm over the steam vents.

Injustice despises a child, whose patent innocence reveals the disfigured visage of injustice for what it is: ugly and cruel. But you must keep the baby safe.

Fear and injustice thrive in the company of rank selfishness. For it is selfishness that helps us rationalize them both. After all, what’s in my best interest, is in my best interest. Should my best interest require killing all the babies in Bethlehem, I ought to at least be allowed to consider the possibility.

But mostly selfishness is so much more mundane. That purchase, that drink, that puff – none of which has done me any good, but which I wanted and enjoyed, dammit!

Selfishness delights in stinginess and calls it thrift – whether it’s money or affection, it’s parceled out oh so carefully. Selfishness dresses up greed as its just desert, when there is nothing just about it. Selfishness disregards the other for no other reason than, well, it is not me, and let every man fend for himself, and then calls this self-centered stature some kind of liberty.

Selfishness resents babies, who start out this life entirely self-centered, but who so regularly grow in respect, care and concern for others. But you must protect the child.

And I am here in your dream to warn you. These three, at least – fear, injustice, selfishness - have heard that a child was born in Bethlehem. And they would like to find him to destroy him. Because this baby’s cries bring to our ears echoes of the antidotes for fear, injustice, and selfishness: Compassion. Justice. Love.

This little baby will grow up to teach that God’s righteousness is always tempered by his mercy; that his anger is nothing compared to his loving kindness. He will grow up to embody the Golden Rule by actually doing unto others as he would have them do unto him – even if they are tax collectors or sinners or harlots or worse.

His compassion is known when the sick are made well, the poor are given cause to rejoice, the lame are able to walk, the blind receive their sight, and even when the wine runs out at a wedding. Jesus brings compassion not just to those who deserve it, but to any who ask for it by truly seeking forgiveness of past wrongs. And he must be guarded against those who would come for him.

This baby’s cries for justice ring out in every statehouse, schoolhouse, hospital, or street corner, or anywhere that ugly cruelty threatens to prevail. His innocence is a rebuke to those who abuse power for their own gain, to the wealthy who exploit the needs of the poor, to the privileged who simply don’t care about those who have less than they have.

His justice is not blind; it is eagle-eyed in its search for the poor, the needy, the hungry and those in want, to whom justice is so often denied. He must be kept safe from those who would come for him.

This baby’s love disperses the gloom of selfishness the way the rainbow fills grey heavens with light. It promises to overcome selfish despair. It looks beyond its own needs and prejudice to the one who lies bleeding in the road and it sees a neighbor there. His greater love willingly lays down his life for his friends.

His love is not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful; it does not selfishly insist on its own way. Jesus’ love rejoices in the right; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. His love never ends – but he is still just a baby, and his love depends on you and on me to be protected from the tyranny of selfishness.

So now, while you are sleeping, listen carefully. You must take the child with you when you leave this place. You must wrap him warm and tight; cradle him in your arms.

If you believe me, if you remember this dream when you awake you will do everything you can to guard this child Jesus, which means that you will not leave him here: you must take him with you when you go.

Because how can you know that he is safe otherwise? Fear, injustice, and selfishness have been known to seep even under the cracks of the doors of the church. And the fact of the matter is that the care of this child cannot be delegated only to the men (and women) in black (who have also been known to fall down on the job, it must be said).

Can you see and hear, in your dreaming, why this baby needs you to care for him, to hold him, protect him, keep him safe? Do you realize that lives depend on it?

And will you heed the warning of this dream the way Joseph did?

You do not have to look far to see the forces of fear, injustice and selfishness in the world. You can hear them scurrying around like mice in the night, and roaring past your window like heavy traffic in the daytime.

But you may not have realized how they conspire against this child whose birth brought joy to the world.

And you may not realize that his mission of compassion, justice and love depends a lot on you and me. You may not realize that this baby could easily be left right there in his manger to suffer the consequences of the fates of fear, injustice and selfishness. You may not realize that every time you hold him he strengthens you for the ministry of compassion, justice, and love.

Which is why I have put you to sleep: so I can speak to you in your dreams with this warning. You must take the child with you and go. You must keep him safe, guard and protect him for the sake of God.

And when you awaken, you must remember this dream, when I snap my fingers, you must recall what is at stake. And you must take the child with you. And go.

[SNAP]

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 January 2009
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Terrifying Freedom

In 1905 a Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein published in a few short months, four papers the ramifications of which he would spend the rest of his life untangling and which forever changed our world, not least of which because the nuclear possibilities inherent in his thought.

When I think about the inspiration involved, I always have a feeling of vertigo. Any one of these papers would have been enough to earn Einstein the Nobel prize in physics which he won in 1921, but to have four ideas of such magnitude in a few short months, to be able to condense them and publish them while toiling away in obscurity makes my brain hurt.

But whenever I think of one of the theories, I have another wave of vertigo. One of the papers that Einstein wrote lays out what has been called his special theory of relativity and sets aside any absolute theory of structure and movement in the universe. Every motion is measured in relation to a relative point, and this has dizzying ramifications for space and time.

Until Einstein, physicists had been tying themselves in knots attempting to create a grand unified scheme to describe motion across all of space and time.

Einstein simply cut through that Gordian knot with the simple assertion that all motion and movement is relative to whatever point you are using as a reference. It was a commonsensical and elegantly simple solution to a complex problem.Instead of Cartesian geometry and coordinates, and Newtonian physics, in which all motion is relative to two or three central axes, and which all seems so commonsensical to us, everything is relative to its frame of reference, and occurs in a kind of terrifying freedom which it is much harder to describe or predict, whose rules seem alien to us.

We have, in two of our readings today, a similar sense of terrifying freedom. From this letter written to the nascent Church in Galatia, we have a discussion of the freedom that is made ours in the coming of Jesus. Under the old system, "the Newtonian physics" of religion before Jesus came into the world, our relationship with the Creator was defined by a specific and complex set of interactions which hinged on our ability to maintain a strict set of rules and laws, and to atone for our sins through a sacrificial system, through a system of sacrifice and ritual cleansing and atonement.

This is the law given to Moses that the Gospel according to John speaks of this morning. The Law was given, and then in the fullness of time, the Word, the very being and core of God, enfleshed, comes into the world, and that system of law, atonement and sacrifice is fulfilled permanently, for God, taking on our flesh has destroyed the massive "otherness" between humanity and God, and pushed us out into the terrifying freedom and vertigo of the life of grace.

A funny thing happened when Einstein produced those four papers in a few short months. At first no one noticed, and then no one thought he was right, and finally no one could look at the world the same way. Even so with this magnificent event whose anniversary we celebrated this week.Jesus has come to be with us. God has come into the pain and struggle of human life, and in so doing, has redeemed it and made it beautiful and powerful, and has set our existence flaming with a light that the darkness can never dim. The light has come into the world, and burning with a scaring brilliance, has penetrated into the deepest corners of darkness.

At first no one noticed that Jesus had come, and then no one thought he was God, and then no one could look at the world the same way again, for his coming had so altered the way we see things that suddenly there was no return. For his coming cast light into all the corners of the world that had been hid before.

There is a phrase from the Gospel this morning that always strikes me with force. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not over come it." For those of you who remember the old translation, it is "The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." But the effect is the same, there is an event that is ongoing, and the response, the reaction is past tense. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness attempted, and failed to overcome it, to understand, and so the light shines still.

It is hard sometimes, to think about the light still shining. Surely we find ourselves in a similar darkness to that of Judea during the first century of this era: in the midst of violence, economic crisis, racial tensions.Surely, we have difficulty seeing and believing that the light shines.

And yet the light has burst forth, it has blazed like magnesium ribbon and our retinas are still burning with the vision of it, despite the external indicators that the darkness has overcome the light.

By blazing out with brilliance the light has shown us a new and terrifying freedom and grace. No longer do we need the discipline of the law to keep us out of dangerous and dark corners, for we live in the midst of a world redeemed and yet hurting, a world in which we can see into the dark corners and know them for what they are: dark, yet loved, waiting and longing for us to bear that light of Christ which lives in us into them and set them ablaze and shimmering with light and power.

There is a funny thing about light. You can see the source of light, and you can see where the light strikes, but you cannot actually see light. When it passes through dust or fog or mist, you can see its trail, but light itself is invisible. That is why the world seems so dark. We can see the source of that burning brilliance, Jesus the Word, and we can see where that light shines, in the darkness around the world, and down into the midst of Philadelphia, but we cannot see how extensive its reach, how broad its arc, how full of energy and warmth that light is.

And so, in some ways, our calling seems inexplicable, our course madness. Those who cannot see the source or the actual light have no idea what we do here. But we have seen his glory, and the seeming foolishness of our course is nothing when we look at it in the light which has blazed into the world.

Like Einstein, toiling away in obscurity, and finally having the genius intuition to simply scrub the whole unified motion problem, we operate here in intuitive ways. For we have seen his glory. We have seen the radiance of his coming into the world, and we have seen where his light shines. We have been adopted and made heirs of him, and we speak now to God, not as Lord or King or Judge, but as “Abba,” as Daddy.

Preached by the Rev'd Andrew N. Ashcroft

28 December 2008

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Performative Utterance

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is the rhyme that children chant in the schoolyard, during recess. But we learn, early on as children, that words do in fact hurt, and can heal. Words create whole worlds, and destroy them with a disturbing ease. Think of words like “I do.” “Go to hell!” or “I have a dream.”

Human beings use words with power. How much more so for God? Indeed, running throughout the Scriptures is a God who speaks. In a tone of the very first things Scripture tells us that God creates by using words. God speaks and worlds become. “Let there be light and there was light.” God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, and to Israel through the judges and prophets. There is something fundamental about God which is about speaking, about language and about words.

It is natural that John turns to the metaphor of language when wrestling not only with what Jesus did and what happened in the life of Jesus, but with who Jesus is and what Jesus means. Luke which we read last night records a different version of the Christmas story, Jesus was born in squalid conditions, there were signs and wonders which surrounded his birth, Herod the local ruler got a bit exercised about the talk about his birth, shepherds, angels, stars, all that has come to be recognized and over advertised in our culture today, all that which comes out for Christmas pageants and Christmas cards.

But this morning’s gospel reading hasn’t inspired many nativity plays or Christmas cartoons.John’s account is rather abstract, after all. John, writing seventy or a hundred years after the other Gospels is attempting to come to terms with the assertion and intuition that the Church has that the baby in the manger is not just a prophet or a sage, not just a hill country preacher, but somehow God, come down to live among us. So the writer to Gospel of John or the editor collecting the writings begins the work with the passage that we heard read this morning, the abstract and famous piece which seems to be one of the earliest recorded Christian hymns.

“In the beginning, was the Word,” and immediately we run up against the barrier of language. The Greek word here for “word” is “logos” and “logos is a little hard to translate. It means not simply speech like “Hi, how are you?” or “The sky is blue.” In Greek, “logos” denotes something that is concerned and linked to being, to the innermost places of our hearts and lives. The Greek word has given birth to our word “logic” and that somehow makes for a much better sense of what the composer of the hymn is trying to convey. Jesus is the intimate logic of God, the core being and principle, inscribed in flesh for us.

In college I took a linguistics class and while I've lost or repressed a great deal of what I learned then, there is one concept from modern language theory which has always fascinated me. The idea that there are some speech acts which are substantively different from most of the language that we use. Most of the time we use language as filler – we use it simply to describe, or to communicate something obvious: the dog is brown or the sky is blue or the egg on my breakfast plate is hot. But modern language theorists call certain parts of our speech "performative utterance," a performative utterance is the speech act that actually does something; rather than describing reality that is, performative utterances create reality by speaking. Like a magic spell from a fairy tale, by speaking the words we bring about what we say. When we stand across from another person and say "I take you to be my wife or my husband," we aren't simply describing a relationship that already exists, by speaking those words we are actually marrying someone. When we take a new child and wash them in the waters of Baptism and proclaim the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," we are doing precisely that, joining a lovely little one into the Church and making them one with the Body of Christ. When Sean or I are standing as the focus of this community gathered, and we say "This is my Body" or "This is my Blood" we are not describing a mystery or enacting a ritual; we as a body, as clergy and laity, are making of bread and wine, the Body and Blood of our Lord.

Performative utterance unites intention and action in a marvelous and powerful way, where saying becomes doing, and doing saying; where speech and action are one.

Which may seem like rather an abstract way to get around to talking about something substantive this morning. It is hard for me to imagine that a host of you are going to go home and, in response to the question about what the sermon this morning was about, reply “Performative utterance.” But sometimes I think the only way to understand this famous passage from John is to think of it in rather unusual terms.

Jesus is the performative utterance of God, the Word who, simply by being spoken, draws us into the heart of God.  Jesus is the word whose speech creates the world and Jesus is the word whose speech redeems the world.  Jesus is the intimate logic of God, the sentence who interrupts our darkness with a word of light that creates light,  a word of peace that creates peace, a word of love that creates love.

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we are celebrating the Incarnation, that powerful and tremendous blending of speech and action, where doing and saying become one. Where God’s speech act, God’s logic, that word which is at the core of God’s being becomes fully human and comes to live and be with us in our frailty and our humanity.

And the world is never the same again. For we have seen his glory, we have heard that word roll out like thunder. He unites earth and heaven. He becomes human that we might become divine. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.”

Preached by the Rev'd Andrew N. Ashcroft

Christmas Day 2008

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Irrational Exuberance

On the fifth of December, 1996, when the New York Stock Exchange closed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 6,437.10 points. In a speech that day, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, wondered how we would know when “irrational exuberance” had so inflated the value of assets that the market could no longer sustain such lofty heights. Greenspan was discussing the phenomenon we have come to commonly call a “bubble.” And he was wondering when it would burst.

That was the beginning of the so-called “tech bubble.” Since then we’ve seen a housing bubble, perhaps an energy bubble, and recently the whole stock market seems to have burst like one, big, over-blown bubble.

These economic bubbles occur when people are willing to pay a lot more for something than it is actually worth. And some would say that starting the day after Thanksgiving, most of America participates in a sort of Christmas bubble as we spend the next month or so buying gifts, decorating trees, stringing up lights, baking cookies, sending out cards, traveling to see family, carving up turkeys, reveling at parties, and, yes, even going to church.

There is much to be skeptical about in our American preparations for Christmas – not least the way we spend money. And it is fair to ask whether or not we get what we pay for every year in our Christmas bubble; fair to wonder: is Christmas worth it?

And if there is a Christmas bubble of shopping and spending and singing and partying, then Midnight Mass is the bubbliest of Christmas bubbles – when we have stayed up late, gotten dressed up, readied our voices, tuned our instruments, hung up all the greens, pulled out all the stops, lit up all the candles… and for what? Is tonight all just so much irrational exuberance that far exceeds the value of whatever it is we think we are doing here?

More and more this attitude takes hold in our collective thinking. This story of Jesus’ birth – very nice for the kids – but a bit far fetched, isn’t it? A star in the East? A baby born in a manger because there’s no room at the inn? Angels singing to shepherds? Wise men riding on camels? Who are you kidding?!

And if this baby born tonight is everything we say he is why is the world still so crazy, mixed up, and dangerous? If he is so Wonderful how did things get so bad? If he is such a good Counselor why are so many homes in foreclosure? If he is king of kings why has he not brought order and justice to places we hear about every day where despotic rulers still make the lives of ordinary people miserable? If he is lord of lords why has he not found a way to house those who sleep on the streets in the cold, to feed those who are hungry, to help those who struggle with addictions, to free those who are stuck in abusive relationships? If he is the Prince of Peace why do wars still rage, why do terrorists still get to do their cruel killing, why are there still so many people shot dead in the streets of our own city every year?

We have come here tonight, it is true, to be exuberant, but the question – like the question about all bubbles – is this: Is our exuberance irrational? And that depends entirely on this baby Jesus, whose birth we re-visit again tonight. Does the celebration of this birth mark just the beginning of a little bubble of joy that will have burst before the wrapping paper from tomorrow’s gifts has even made it into the recycling bin?

Most of the evidence these days seems to point to the bursting of the Jesus bubble. Fewer and fewer people go to church regularly, the churches themselves are mired in scandal, natural disasters and the progress of climate change don’t say much for a supposedly benevolent God, and the more we know about the truths of the world we live in the harder it is to believe in the myths of a religion like this one, that tells stories that don’t necessarily add up.

And so it has become easy for most of us to stop searching for God, to give up the prayers we were taught as children (and have learned to think of as childish), to rely only on ourselves, to put no trust in God, and certainly not in any church or institution claiming to represent him. Instead of reaching up for God, we put our hands to good use raising our children well, making a decent living, doing an honest day’s work, improving ourselves as best we can.

But here on this night, as we enter this Christmas bubble, it is not actually the time for reaching out to God, not the time to stretch up on your tippy-toes and see if tonight you can get close enough to catch the bubble of God’s love and keep it in tact. Tonight is a night for bending low by a cradle, for seeing that the glory of God is nothing more than a child who does not ask us to reach out to him, because he is already reaching out to us, as only babies can, reaching out for his mother, or his bottle, for a shoulder to be burped on, reaching out to grasp your finger with that surprisingly strong grasp that never fails to delight us, and that makes us wish the baby would hold on like that for a long, long time.

Tonight the God whom we have more or less decided is not powerful enough to rule our lives reaches out to us in perfect weakness as if to prove us right.

(Does it occur to us that God could have sent his angels as an army to compel us to do his will, instead of a choir of singing messengers of the birth of this child?)

The baby looks at us, and we are smiling stupidly, (after all, we have been to his crib last year, and the year before that, and so on). And of course this exuberance is irrational! It made more sense to put our faith in the stock market, than in the hope that this infant’s birth means more that it appears to mean, holds hope for the whole world.

Tonight is a night for irrational exuberance precisely because the God of all creation, who holds the stars in his hands, and stirs the wind and the seas with his breath, the Mighty God came to us with all the weakness of a baby. And knowing what we know – that things have gotten bad, that money is tight, that the world is a mess, the hungry are still hungry and the homeless still without a home, that war and terror and gunfire still rage in our streets and abroad – what other kind of God could we believe in, than one who is willing to be as weak as the weakest child? Having turned our eyes from heaven, what other kind of God could we ever relate to, than one who reaches out his needy little fingers to us, when we will not reach out to him?

And that is what is happening here tonight: a little baby has been born. And although nothing seems different yet, we have heard the song of promise from the angels, we see how even simple shepherds could tell that something unique was happening, we remember how this story meant so much to so many generations before us. And we realize that we have had a tendency to get irrationally exuberant about all the wrong things. (How can anyone truly be irrationally exuberant about a credit default swap?!)

But if we close our eyes, we can almost see that baby reaching out from his cradle and opening his pudgy palm to grasp just the tip of our finger (that’s all he needs!). And the God to whom we had not thought to reach out is reaching out to us. And there is nothing threatening or frightening at all about being so close to God. There is only this baby, so near to us, so much in need of milk and of sleep (which is why we always sing a lull-a-bye on this silent night), holding onto our fingers, almost as if he may never let go.

And you can’t even remember Alan Greenspan’s name, or what your monthly mortgage payment is, or why you were mad at your sister, or any of the long sickness before your beloved’s death, or why two nations would ever be at war, or why you thought you couldn’t face this challenge, or what your objection was to asking for help, or why you thought you weren’t good enough.

Because this baby has you by the finger. And the exuberance you feel while that baby holds on tight, is surely irrational, because not one thing in the world is any different than it was a moment ago…

...and yet the whole universe is changed by this love, born in this bubble of holy time and space.

And we wonder how long the world, or this congregation, or even our own hearts can sustain these lofty heights, the value of which is awfully hard to pin down, in any case.

And do we dare to hope, that if we are very, very careful with the love of this child; if we sing his lull-a-bye very softly; maybe this bubble will not burst?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Christmas Eve 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Annunciation Perspective

One of the great developments in Western art was the use of graphic perspective in paintings: an innovation of the Italian Renaissance, starting in the early 15th century. Although I was never much a student of art history, I seem to have fixed in my mind the image of a Renaissance painting with a grid of converging lines superimposed on the picture itself to demonstrate the way perspective works.

In my imagination the painting supporting the perspective grid is a depiction of the Annunciation, perhaps by Botticelli. The Virgin stands, a little awkwardly, having risen from her prayers. Her outer robe is blue, but it is her rose colored gown that discreetly shows womanly hips and maybe even a hint of her already swelling belly. Gabriel kneels before her, lily in hand. The floor is tiled, its broad lines of grout suggesting the grid that my imagination is drawing on it. The angel has manly features but sports elaborate drag and gossamer wings. A window behind Gabriel opens out onto a scenic view that recedes along a river toward a distant city that I imagine must be Florence.

Among the various aspects of genius in a painting like this is the ability – enabled by the use of perspective - to draw the viewer into the scene; to make you feel like you are a part of what is happening, or at the very least an active observer. All those invisible lines of the grid guiding your eye, pulling you in, gluing your attention to this moment, this annunciation. I count two or three Christmas cards on my mantle this week with a view something like this.

And here we are, just days before Christmas, telling ourselves again the story of the Annunciation. Gabriel is a far better harbinger of Christmas for us than John the Baptist – so much less threatening, and better dressed, too. But this story of the angel’s visit to Mary is not just the introduction to the Christmas story that we are, by now, panting to tell and to sing about. The Annunciation has a power all its own that makes it worth stopping to tell and to linger in this moment to watch and to listen.

Up until now, what has Gabriel been doing – or all the other angels and archangels, for that matter? It has been too many generations to count since Jacob wrestled with an angel. And if God’s messengers have been busy, it must have been in rehearsals for Milton’s poem, still to come, because these messengers of God’s work in the world have not been much in evidence, according to the Scriptures. Indeed, the space between the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament invites us to wonder what God was up to. Why this gap in the record of his saving work in the world?

These days we wonder all the time about the gaps in God’s saving work in the world. We scratch our heads, wondering if the gaps aren’t longer than the periods of activity – which may be why people have found it so important to write it down when God seemed to do something wonderful: so much time might pass till the next episode, that everyone knew they would need a reminder of the last one. Many people today have just such low expectations of God: even if we believe in God, we don’t expect him to do anything for us!

It is impossible to know what expectations Mary had of God. I’m not sure that she had any expectations at all. I often imagine that Gabriel was going door to door in Nazareth - knocking and kneeling, lily in hand – and that Mary was the first person to let the angel in.

But here they are together, the angel promising that nothing will be impossible with God, the girl finding eloquence when merely saying “Yes” would have done. The image captured and re-captured by so many artists. And all these lines forcing our perspective into this moment…

Except that maybe the power of the Annunciation is not to be found most profoundly by looking into images of it. Maybe the power of the Annunciation is to be found in its perspective, when we dare to be virtually drawn into the scene; to stand in that space between Mary and the angel – their hands outstretched to one another –to occupy that space where the lines begin to converge, into which they draw us. Maybe the power of the Annunciation is only really shown to us when we dare to walk right into the painting and turn around.

And all of a sudden all those inward-leading lines of convergence are reaching outward. And the perspective is no longer directed in toward the beautiful tile floor, past this holy encounter, through the window and into Florence, or whatever city it is on the horizon; now we are looking out from the Annunciation.

And do we see how the perspective changes everything as the lines of convergence reach out to every corner of the world? Is there any place or any moment into which these lines of our new perspective cannot reach? Any dark secret or moment of despair? Any great triumph or small personal victory?

Do we feel as if perhaps it has not been so important that angels should be flying about doing something spectacular every hour of every day of every year for all time, in light of this one great moment of angelic visitation that reaches beyond its own time and into ours and every time?

Can we believe from this vantage point, as Mary did, that nothing will be impossible with God?

The Annunciation is, in a very real way, our point of view: the perspective from which the whole human story is told from this moment on, when nothing will be impossible with God.

So much of life is, in many ways, a matter of perspective. And after all, what do we have control of in our lives – not much – except the matter of our perspective? We can’t control the stock markets, the weather, or our children, just to name a few examples that might drive us mad if we didn’t adopt an appropriate point of view.

And this wonderful encounter between an angel and a virgin girl named Mary suggests itself to us, time and time again, as the only appropriate point of view for people of faith: a perspective from which nothing is impossible.

In these last few days before Christmas we have so much to do so much to worry about: not only Christmas preparations, shopping, and bills to pay, there are also jobs and houses and fortunes being lost, wars still raging, and new tensions building up between nuclear powers, loved ones who are sick or dying, or who have been recently lost to death, pain and sickness to learn to live with, not to mention disappointment. So much, so far beyond our control.

What better thing could we do to prepare for Christmas than to walk into this Annunciation scene, and turn around, and see what a wonderful point of view it is from here, with Mary’s eloquent Yes and the scent of Gabriel’s lily still hanging in the air. From this perspective even us cynical, modern, disillusioned people might almost believe that nothing will be impossible with God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
21 December 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Waiting in the desert

Imagine, for a second, that you are standing in the middle of the desert. You’ve been dragged out to this God-forsaken place by your cousin, who is always off following some other itinerant preacher, or trying out the latest diet fad, or ordering what he thinks will be the next great product from the Home Shopping Network to shove into your Christmas stocking. He’s brought you out to see “the latest guy,” a man named John who is preaching and ritually cleansing people in the desert.  John is quite a sight. His hair and beard are wild. He smells and he is wearing a camel hair shirt, which is possibly the only thing that smells worse than a real live camel. He lives on locusts and honey, which is certainly not the most complete, balanced diet in the world, and he is flirting with annoying the wrong kind of people with some of his ill-advised comments about King Herod and his new wife.

John is proclaiming what strange preachers often proclaim, the imminent arrival of God’s Messiah, who will right the wrongs of Israel, will finally makes sure that Israel isn’t constantly getting beat up by the bigger bullies all around, or used as a cross-roads between Africa, Asia and Europe. It is what the strange religious types have been yelling about for hundreds and hundreds of years, to anyone who would listen to them, that and sin and repentance, and John is no different in that either.He washes people to remove their sins, and he talks about the need to return again to faithfulness with God.And he draws a crowd, as strange prophet types tend to do. Some are there because they like the spectacle; some are like your cousin, always looking for the next big thing. Some are there because they feel some guilt in their life and would like not to feel it anymore, and sacrificing in the Temple didn’t make them feel any better, so maybe this John character will be able to.

What would you think, looking out on that desert scene? Would you think “John is right. The Messiah is coming soon. I need to prepare myself.” Or would you think what most people probably thought: “This guy has spent a little too long in the desert sun without a hat. He’s got a screw loose.”

John is not different from the other prophets throughout the years that preached to Israel, and were ignored and laughed at and mocked and killed. John is the last of them, but no different. They came to tell Israel about its sin and failure (which everyone loves to have pointed out to them). They came to tell Israel to return to faithful covenant with God, or risk destruction. They came talking about the Messiah long promised, long expected, who never ever seemed to arrive.

Like John they all looked, or at least acted more than a little crazy.  And like John they found their mission, their calling excruciating and onerous and dangerous. Not easy, to be the mouthpiece of God. To have your fellow prophets killed, to be the last prophetic voice in the land. To have to declare to a people that you love and belong to (or at least used to belong to until you started prophesying) their sin and the coming wrath. Or even worse, to be sent to preach repentance to your sworn enemies, and then when they repented and God was merciful, to feel bitterly angry that God had not destroyed them. Or to write into your own life and marriage the infidelity of the people of Israel to their covenanted God, to take a harlot as wife, as the kind brutal symbol of God’s relationship with the people that he loved and pursued, and who constantly spurned and were faithless to him. Not easy being a prophet of God and you can tell when we read their words out in the midst of this place. They are simultaneously extremely disturbing and profoundly comforting. When they bring to us words of comfort, they are soft words, words about the end of our sojourn in the wilderness, about the ending of our trial and testing and punishment. They speak words of profound comfort – the restoration of what should be, the putting down of those who oppress us, the binding up of the sick, the lame and the poor.“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

But when they prophesy against us – we feel and justly feel – condemned. For our pride, our faithlessness, our idolatry, our injustice, our greed. And even though their voices come to us out of the dust, and out of the complex politics of ancient near eastern kingdoms and wars, still it is hard not to blanch slightly when we hear them railing.

For they speak not only about injustice and idolatry and greed and sin (which is enough in itself), but about the shortness of our lives and the tininess of our beings before the abundant power and majesty of God.“All the people are grass,” says Isaiah, and “the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” And indeed it has proved true. Although Isaiah is long since under earth, and crumbled away to ashes, the words that he spoke, attempting to crystallize in language the compulsion that he felt from God, those words come down to us still.

And they resonate with us.Despite innumerable years and miles, still we feel their condemnation. We are not much different from Israel.Still we are an unclean people, faithless often to our God, full of sin and greed and idolatry and injustice.Spurning the poor, the widows and the orphans, and offering up our sacrifices at altars other than this one.

And still we are in need of God’s comfort, God’s grace, God’s mercy to break into the squalid little messes of our lives and restore us again. “Will you not turn again, O God? Will you not remember your people?” We need the words of comfort which the prophets offer us.

But most of all we need what the prophets spoke of and longed for and knew that they would never see, in their sad poignancy and in their waiting for God to do something, to do anything, to restore Israel; we need a Savior, a Messiah, that One expected from the foundations of the world.

And so John stands in the desert, looking into the distance, the last of a long line of prophets, doing what they have done for so long: waiting. Waiting for God to act.Waiting for the Messiah to arrive.Waiting for the people to get it together. Waiting in the midst of that moment of calm before the storm, of pregnant pause, of held breath and deep anticipation. Waiting for that secret moment, that mystery beyond mysteries, which will redeem all the suffering of the prophets and of Israel, which will restore the fortunes of Zion, make of the desert a garden and gather the lambs in God’s arms.He proclaims what the prophets before him have proclaimed: Repent, turn again to God, there is One coming who is more powerful than I. I am not worthy to untie his sandals.He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

He says these things wearily, and looking into the haze of the desert, wonders sometimes, about the truth of the words which flow through him. Whether indeed that Messiah will ever come. Whether God will ever redeem his people and turn again to them. Whether the desert and the life of a prophet will get him before Herod does. Whether the waiting will ever end.

Somewhere, just over the horizon, is another man, a God-man coming out to meet John. And the path that John preaches, the path that he is attempting to smooth with harsh words and ritual cleansing, that path will stretch as straight as an arrow, from the moment that the God-man comes up from the water of baptism, directly to Jerusalem and a hill outside it.

John will be gone by then, of course. His head will be on a platter and the agony of being a prophet ended. But his eyes will have seen something that the prophets longed and waited for, against all hope. [The savior of the world, God’s messiah.]

For now, John simply looks out into the distant desert, and hopes and waits, and waits, and waits, for God to bring about his purposes.

Preached by the Rev'd Andrew Ashcroft

7 December 2008

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Apocalypse Now

A man I know was rescued from one of the top floors of the Taj Mahal Hotel some time on Wednesday or Thursday. He is unhurt, according to the report I read in the New York Times, and going by the photo of him surrounded by Indian firefighters that has been circulating among the members of the group we both sing in.

The images of smoke and flames that leapt from the graceful, Indo-Victorian arches of the hotel were frightening enough to me; I can hardly imagine how my friend felt as he barricaded his hotel room door with the bureau. And I must say he looks surprisingly composed in the photo in the Times.

But then we have all gotten better at staying composed during times of crisis, haven’t we? We managed to stay composed enough to shop on the day after Thanksgiving, despite an epochal financial crisis, just as we managed to shop after 9-11. And most of us have been successfully inoculated from two wars that someone else’s children are fighting for us: see how composed we are after more than five years of war.

So composed are we that few people are worried these days by a passage in the Bible that threatens nothing worse than a darkened sun and moon (we’ve all seen eclipses by now), or stars falling from the sky, or the powers of heaven shaken (whatever they may be). In the Gospel we hear Jesus telling about an Apocalypse-Not-Yet, but we have been living with Apocalypse-Now since before the movie even came out. And the fires of the Taj must have amounted to a tiny Apocalypse for my friend and thousands of others, and the hundreds now dead, and the soldiers and firefighters and police who responded.

Today marks the beginning of a new church year. And the church has adopted a curious habit of peering over the horizons of time to the end of all things, as she begins each new year. We have no countdown, no new year’s eve celebrations. For the church’s countdown, we are reminded, is not just to the next page of the calendar, but to the end of all time, the judgment of all things, heaven and earth passing away. And we do not count down, we cannot count down, because we have no idea when it will be. We have tried to read the signs, as Jesus says we ought, but we prove to be inept at it, and frankly, we are skeptical that he knew what he was talking about.

Jesus’ discussions of apocalypse are among the most mystifying passages of the scriptures. But why should they be when a man I know who was singing a show tune with me three weeks ago, was delivered from his own little Apocalypse-Now by the mercies of a Mumbai fire brigade?

The grenades of Afghanistan, the IEDs of Iraq, the riot police of Bangkok, the refugees of the Congo, the Janjaweed of Darfur, the slain policemen of Philadelphia, the foreclosures of so many home-loans, the diagnoses that spell nothing but tears, the devastation of hurricanes, the ravages of forest fires, the melting of arctic ice, the warming of the planet – are these not all little apocalypses: little glimpses beyond the usual horizons of time that seem to signal something bigger and more frightening than just another year gone by?

We hear Jesus saying, “Keep awake!” But we suspect that he did not know how long the night of watching would be. And I know people who cannot sleep because their own little apocalypses keep them awake – and it does not seem to help them to be deprived of sleep.

I wonder if the visions of the prophets kept them awake; if they were scrawled down on scraps of paper in the middle of the night when sleep would not come again, and visions of apocalypse raced across their minds. I wonder if it was a sleepless night when Isaiah pleaded with God – who had showed him so much, but who remained out of sight while Israel suffered in exile:

Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down! the way you did in olden days to show the world that you were in charge, and the nations would tremble at your presence! Oh that you would just do something!

The prophet wants to be able to read the signs in the sky: the darkened sun and moon, the falling stars, the powers of heaven shaken. These portents would be proof for him at least that God was at work, that some awesome, if frightening, new moment in time was approaching. And as he gazes, wide awake, out into the cosmos, searching for the signs of the almighty hand toying with the universe, he feels instead the gentle pressure of fingertips in the small of his back, or a palm pressing down on his chest hard enough to make him take a deep breath; he feels the stiff muscles of his shoulders kneaded by the hand whose attention seems (at the moment at least) not to be turned to the vast universe, but to him.

“O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.”

What does it feel like to look for the hand of God at work in the awesome expanse of the universe and discover that he is at work on you, that your life is being molded and shaped by God’s hand, that God is deeply involved with and intimately interested in you?

Not to be flip, but I think that if I were barricaded in my hotel room while armed gunmen roamed the halls and flames leapt from the windows, I would be much more interested in a God who would hold me in the palm of his hand than in a God who was rearranging the stars. And the revelation that God’s hand shapes each of our lives is the counterpoint to the expectation that he also directs the forces of the universe; just as fellowship with his incarnate Son is the counterpoint to the worship of a transcendent Lord.

But it is hard for us to accept that we are the clay and God is our potter because that means we have to accept that we are not in control of everything. And it’s hard for us to accept that for the most part we are unfinished work while we live this life, and therefore prone to be re-shaped, refashioned, kneaded, twisted, pounded down, built back up.

Why does God treat us this way? Can the clay really ever know what the potter has in mind for it? Or could it guess what beauty or what usefulness it is destined for while it is being formed?

But clay never has to learn to trust its potter the way we must learn to trust God. And all these little apocalypses of our own lives and of our world put us right on the edge of trust in God – likely to go one way or the other. I imagine it’s hard to be agnostic when your heart is pounding and you are covered in sweat, your back pressed up against the bureau that you have heaved over against the door to keep the gunmen out. I don’t mean to suggest that God arranges these little apocalypses with the purpose of trying our trust in him, but I do think they end up having that effect.

And we have gotten so good at searching for meaning, so adept at understanding big things, so talented at unlocking deep, vast secrets that it is hard for us to see at moments like these that the work of God’s hand may be going on deep inside of us: in the small of our backs, or in the tension of our shoulders, or even in our shortened, shallowed breath, and our weakened, pathetic bodies as we begin to discover that no piece of pottery lasts for ever.

All of which may help explain why it is that we feel so inclined to pray for peace as a new year comes to us, and as we stand on our tippy-toes to peer over the horizons of time to try to see if the end is near – hoping that it is not, but sometimes feeling that the signs are awfully foreboding. We would settle for an inner peace that kept us centered, calm, somehow safe through all the little apocalypses that are going on around us; even as we hope for that greater peace that we suspect only God can accomplish and we wonder why he is so slow about it. Oh that he would take charge again and make something happen!

Scan the heavens, the earth, the pages of the papers for signs of God’s peace coming into the world and our lives. The signs are hard to see and even harder to read. Shout out our prayers for peace, and our frustration when those prayers come echoing back, apparently un-answered. Look across the horizon of time to see if God’s plan is yet view, if his peace is glowing yonder with the light of dawn. By all means, stay awake and watch for this coming, so long promised.

But in your watching, should you grow faint or bored or disillusioned, before you give up, stop and see if there is not the slightest hint of the gentle press of fingers in the small of your back, easing you, ever so slightly, of your burden. Or is there the weight of a hand on your chest, not pushing, just pressing hard enough to feel your heart race, to calm it, and to steady your breath? Or does he have you by the shoulders, stopping you in your tracks and trying, trying to get you to relax, to let go of the tension you insist on carrying in your muscles and in your bones?

And is he trying to re-shape you and me? Is he trying to mold us into people that more closely resemble his original design, his own image? Is he trying to fashion us into that beautiful thing that we can become when we stop trying to control everything?

And is that what we will look like beyond the horizons of time, when he has made all things perfect, all things new?

O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
and do not remember iniquity for ever.
Now consider, we are all your people.

We are all your people.

Pray, give us peace, at this moment, in each of our lives, and throughout the world. Give us peace in this new year. We are the clay and you are our potter. We are all your people. We are all your people. We are all you people.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Advent Sunday, 30 November 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Verb for Thanksgiving

The effect of standing in the Rockies, or the Himalayas, or of sailing on the vast, open sea is to feel a bit insignificant. As “the Bailout” of the American economy advances, and the numbers mount – to well over a $1.5 trillion committed by the federal government in the past few months, a kind of insignificance can settle in when we consider how measly are our own resources.

Who are you and I in the face of the titans of banking, industry, or government? We’ve never made – or lost – a single billion in our time, nor are we likely to, I dare say. How are we to feel about the mountains of money that are shifting tectonically around us? And should the fact of our own puny bank accounts result in a sense of low self-esteem? And how are we to give thanks on a day like this? Our attention from the serialized bailout is distracted for a moment by the violent and frightening attacks in India. What kind of Thanksgiving is this?

In the church we are sometimes reminded that parts of speech matter. For instance, in American society, today’s feast is a proper noun: Thanksgiving. It is a national holiday that has nothing at all to do with the church’s marking of time, the passage of her year. Our Prayer Book provides readings and a prayer or two for the occasion out of necessity, but the day is not included in the church calendar; the Pilgrims (such as they were) have never counted as saints. But they would have known that in the church thanksgiving is not a noun, but a verb. It is, perhaps, the most fundamental, crucial, foundational of all verbs in the life of the church. Its Greek roots are preserved in the adopted English word that the church now typically uses for the Mass: the Eucharist – which is literally translated, “thanksgiving.”

And the church is meant to be animated by this verb: thanksgiving. We are given life and action in it; we have something to do. We have thanks to offer to God. An old prayer of the church, not too much used these days, put it this way, in talking to God: “…give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful; and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days….”

That’s a prayer full of thanksgiving verbs. We still use it when we say Morning and Evening Prayer here daily at Saint Mark’s. And as I utter those words I grew up saying, I wonder how long my life will have to be before the prayer, known as the “General Thanksgiving” finally takes over my heart, my life.

How long before I learn to be unfeignedly thankful to God, when I have gotten so very good at feigning it?

How long before I can more reliably show forth God’s praise not only with my lips but in my life?

How long before I am able, really, to give up myself to God’s service?

And I can hardly even think about walking before God in holiness and righteousness – not even for one day, let alone all my days!

And yet I believe that I can continue to try to adopt thanksgiving in my life as a verb and not a noun. This seems like a simple project, but I know it will not be: to make thanksgiving something I have to offer, not take; something I have to do, not something I merely get to enjoy.

But the more I become a pilgrim of thanksgiving – journeying on that pathway from noun to verb – the more I have the sense that I am surrounded by the astonishing beauty and generosity of God’s creation. It’s the same kind of feeling I had when I was able to glimpse from the foothills the high peaks of the Himalayas.

And it is not the dawning of insignificance you feel when you realize that God has allowed you to wend your way through his marvelous creation; it is sheer gratitude.

(And it’s not a noun that’s needed in the face of the violence we’ve seem in Mumbai these last few hours, it’s the kind of verbs that compel us to give up our lives to God’s service if ever we are to free the world of the scourge of this kind of violence.)

And who knows what the effect will be of all those mountains of bailout cash that are shifting and growing as we try to cope with the economic crisis of our time? Perhaps they will not make us feel insignificant either.

But for now, they are only nouns, these trillions of dollars. And we have a far more important verb to deal with this morning. We have thanksgiving to do. Thanks be to God for such a verb in our lives!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Thanksgiving Day 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Feast of Christ the King

Today we celebrate… - what do we celebrate? - the kingship of Christ. Yes, we also are gathered to celebrate the ordination of Andrew as priest, because Christ is King. In our OT reading Isaiah glimpsed the kingship of God – glimpsed the throne, overwhelming glory, angels, the lot, in a vision. ‘Yet my eyes have seen the King’. Must have wondered if his eyes needed testing afterwards. The gospel depicts much the same scene: Christ is seated on a throne, in glory, with angels around him. Yet King Uzziah has died and everyone is grieving; yet (we may presume from Matthew) there are hungry people, homeless people, plenty of tragedy. How come Christ is King? A case of those with eyes to see, to see through the outward circumstances, to see past the immediate circumstances (king dying, whatever) to glimpse the ultimate reality which is at the core of everything. Friends, Christ reigns. Despite our economic crisis; despite war in Iraq and escalating violence in Congo; …. Christ reigns. In fact history would suggest it is just these circumstances that may bring us to glimpse it. That the universe is not rolling uncontrollably in its orbit – but has been put in place, and continues to be sustained by Jesus, the creator, the word-made-flesh, the king who will return in glory.

It was the glimpse of glory – coupled with the transforming experience of forgiveness – that propelled Isaiah into ministry. To hear God’s call (presumably going on all the time – but this time he had the ears to hear) and to volunteer, he knew not for what.

And it is, so far as I know, the glimpse of God and the call of God – that has brought Andrew here. Goodness, it’s taken plenty of discernment – how many dioceses and bishops and seminaries, Andrew? – and plenty of patience on the part of those walking with Andrew and waiting. That walk has included time at Ground Zero soon after 9-11; and a few years in carpentry in Arizona. (you take following Jesus very literally, don’t you?). Can we still proclaim Christ is King having spent time amidst the dust and death and devastation of Ground Zero? Certainly it is no facile gospel that comes out of that experience. Christ has died – sure. Christ is risen – perhaps, though he sure isn’t very evident around here some of the time. But will Christ will come again? Either you give up hope: or you’re absolutely longing for it, judgment, glory and all.

Andrew is answering that question here today, with his life. Your example helps us to ‘get’ the kingship of Christ. Not because you put on fine robes and parody a king. (that would be, rather, pomposity – something that your brother and sister worked hard to deliver you from in the past; and I suspect Esme is already in training for that important work in the future). Your priesthood will help us understand the kingship of Christ when you are willing to engage with the pain of our world without hiding from it, when you are able to catch the eye of a hungry person who comes here for soup and recognize Christ -witnessing to the silver lining behind every cloud, holding firm to the hope that is set before you, demonstrating by your whole being that nothing – not homelessness or hunger, not divorce or death or twin-tower destruction – shakes the truth that lies in God: that Christ is risen and Christ will come again in glory. The meaninglessness and mess is ultimately out-narrated. You work for that day because you are one who has glimpsed the real world behind our current experience. Like Isaiah.

Isaiah is often read at an ordination, because of the parallels: you have determined a call You have glimpsed God, the fullness of God’s majesty and holiness – even if only the fringe of the hem of the robe. That concentration of godliness we assume to be terrifying – so terrifying, in fact, that we expect to die.

You have known your own weakness: that amounts not just to acknowledging your humanity and vulnerability, not just your Ground Zero hopelessness, but your sinfulness. For any of us our spiritual formation – our spiritual transformation – begins at that point of brokenness and dependence. We deserve to die; yet the grace of God is such that we not only don’t die, we are swept up into his purposes. We are invited to be part of his body. And we are called into God’s service. All of us.

God’s call = an invitation to Isaiah to hear the song of the angels. And join it. Literally, in fact, in your role as priest – to join in leading it among God’s people. At the sanctus at every Eucharistic celebration)

Following that call begins with sins forgiven, with the giddy freedom of knowing God holds nothing against you. So does yours. Prior to forgiveness, God’s holiness is terrifying. After forgiveness, God’s glory is contagious. And today the church is giving you the authority to mediate God’s forgiveness, to absolve sin, to be God’s seraph to God’s people. Being the seraphim, bringing forgiveness to others. Dangerous, vulnerable, vital. The building shaking

Now Isaiah didn’t have that privilege. The authority the church is investing in you today to forgive sins does not stem from the church itself: it begins with Christ. You can forgive the sins of others only because J died, and forgave you.

That means there is nothing about you can or should ever prevent you from forgiving others. Did you hear that? (Donatism). No matter how dreadful a mistake you make as a person, as a priest, it cannot and must not prevent you from offering God’s forgiveness as priest to others.
Because you do it in and through God, not anything of your own. Your ministry is not about you: it is about God.

That is the other cure for pomposity.
The role you played for your father years ago – taking him down a peg or two (reminding him you were the one with the rights to call him Fr Ernie). Hope Esme will play the same role for you. (Good job you’re not king, Dad, I hear her saying in the future)

You are being ordained at a time when the church is not just divided but dividing further, against a background of mainline decline, in a country heading for a serious depression. You’re crazy! Your job is not to reinstate the power of a former era; to pine for a time when the church exercised more power and influence in society; to imitate Christ’s kingship literally (that was the mistake of Israel’s kings). You are to be the seraph who commutes between the throne of heaven and the mess of a broken world; you are to be the donkey that carries the Christ the king, whether people recognize the king or not.

But by the way, Isaiah’s calling was pretty hellish. To tell people they were losers and heading for exile. We love to read the story of this call at ordinations but we always stop at verse 8. He’s volunteered but he hasn’t a clue what’s in store. I wonder if that’s how Andrew feels…

What will keep Andrew going?
Answer: the kingship of Christ.
Ultimately, nothing depends on you. Sure, the young adult program may not have its meetings…

Andrew: your priesthood qualifies you to preside at the eucharist, to lift others to the throne of God in glory. And to lead us as we join in the song of the angels around the heavenly throne:
Holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty
Heaven and earth are full of his glory: Hosanna in the highest!
Amen.

Preached by the Rev. Dr. Jo Baily Wells at the Ordination of Andrew Ashcroft to the Priesthood

23 November 2008

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them

 Sometimes, when I read the news or listen to some of the rhetoric which goes on in our church, or other churches, or other faiths, I have the distinct sense that the Scriptures are some of the most dangerous works ever set to paper, parchment, vellum, clay or stone. Wars have been fought, people are being killed, incredibly cruel and brutal things are being screamed, over the ways that holy writings are interpreted and read and passed on generation to generation.

And there are times when it seems that biblical literalism is stalking our age: people who are willing to justify many horrendous ideas and actions, in the name of their so-called literal reading of the Scriptures.

 I don’t know if any of you ever watched the television series, The West Wing, when it was on television, but there is one scene from it which I remember vividly because it dealt with the whole issue of biblical literalism. At an event at the White House, the presidential character comes across a “Christian” talk radio personality. The subject of human sexuality comes up and she quotes to him from the Scriptures, chapter and verse. To which he responds with this set of questions:

I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, and always clears the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus 35:2, clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes us unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother, John, for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

It is a funny scene, and the point is to highlight the inconsistency in taking certain portions of Scripture literally when it comes to sexuality, or the role of women, but not a vast number of other portions of the Scriptures.

 It is part of the strangeness of American religion that we have been deeply affected by the rhetoric of fundamentalism which says that the Bible is literally true and its meaning is obvious; that the Scriptures say what they mean, and there is no contradiction, no complexity of interpretation to them; that what matters is how I understand the Scriptures. I like to think of this as the approach which I have heard spoken which says “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”

And even when we know intellectually that that is not the case, when we understand there to be issues of interpretation and a host of other issues which make reading the Scriptures difficult, still we react slightly when we hear the Scriptures being proof-texted, or blanch slightly when someone mentions St. Paul.

One can see in the two modern responses to the Scriptures, either to accept the Scriptures whole-heartedly and supposedly literally, or to explain them away in profoundly deep and (I think) dangerous ways, the cumulative effects of the rhetoric of Biblical literalism.

But Biblical literalism is a relatively modern way of reading the Scriptures and a dangerous one.The early church was much clearer than we are that the Scriptures were dangerous, and were not primarily to be read and interpreted individually, but to be read and interpreted within the gathered community, the body of the Church.

In contradistinction to the simple literalism around the Scriptures or the simple dismissal of the Scriptures which we see today, the collect appointed for today gives us a method of interacting with Scripture in a far more complex and nuanced way.

Rite I

Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them; that, by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.

Rite II

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.

And I love this collect not only because my father used to quote it to me all the time (one of the dangers of growing up in a clerical family), but also because I find it tremendously helpful when I open up the Scriptures, ready to write a sermon, and come across the inevitable difficult passage.

I am most enamored with the phrase “inwardly digest” the Scriptures. It is a gustatory metaphor for coming to grips with the Scriptures. We are to ingest, to ruminate, to chew the cud of the Scriptures in a bovine manner for hours, days, years, even our lifetimes. And notice that the collect is couched in the language of the people of God reading and wrestling with the Scriptures together, as a body. This is not something that I do on my own.

Which is good news as far as I am concerned when I read the Gospel passage for today. The parable of the talents is a relatively straightforward passage about stewardship and the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom is like a rich man who goes away and leaves his property in the charge of his servants or slaves. They are given his property to care for, for a time, which is precisely what stewardship is: caring for that which is not yours, which you will have to give back or return eventually. The two worthy servants increase the master’s property by their thoughtful care for it. The “wicked” servant merely buries his talent and gets punished for his terrible stewardship.

But then we come to that disturbing phrase: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” It is a phrase that I will freely admit I am fundamentally uncomfortable with. My temptation is to attempt to explain it away or, using rhetorical slight-of-hand gloss over it or interpret it. But I’m not sure that I can do that convincingly, and even if I could, I’m not sure that would be very helpful, and so what I am left with is a difficult, difficult piece of the Scriptures. Scripture not as simple or clear or evident, but “an illegible stone,” with complex directions and dimensions, a confusing text which I cannot easily solve or explain.

If the way to read the Scriptures is, as the collect says, to “inwardly digest them,” that wonderful metaphor of feasting on the Word, what do we do with the pieces of Scripture which catch in our throats, which stick in our gullets, as we attempt to swallow them, to chew on them?

“...those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away...” That doesn’t sound like the Jesus who was deeply concerned with the poor, the exile and the outcast. And I find it difficult to reconcile all this discussion of binding and casting into the outer darkness, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, with my understanding of the God of mercy.

The literal reader of the Scriptures would say of this passage that it points to the judgment of God, God’s purity, God’s holiness, God’s otherness from the human race. The other brand of interpretation might try and explain the phrase away, or make out that it was a later interpolation by the community reading and preserving the Gospel of Matthew, in response to X, Y or Z going on in their communal lives or in their identity struggles with the Judaism of their day.

Both of these methods of interpreting the Scriptures are ways of foreclosing on the process of the inward digestion of Scripture, and the ongoing reading and ingesting of Scripture in the midst of the community of the faithful. Both are attempts to make simple what is not simple, to make clear what is not clear, to make black and white that which is grey. To set boundaries, to set limits, to define the ways in which we interact with the Scriptures, the questions and emotions and experiences that we bring to them.

It is, I think, much safer to know that Scripture is simple, clear and literal, or that Scripture can be explained away as the cultural literature, poetry and myths of some ancient tribes. There is less at stake, when I don’t have to be open to the Scriptures reading me back, questioning me back, about my relationship with money, about God’s judgment, about my own personal holiness, and about our holiness as a community of faith. And therein lies the problem with the modern ways of reading the Scriptures.They are not really reading the Scriptures at all, they are not really open to the Scriptures; they aren’t reading the Scriptures in anyway which allows of the Scriptures reading back into us.

And so, lest I attempt to use rhetorical flourish not to attempt to come to grips with “...those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away...” I will now attempt to share with you the place where I am, when it comes to wrestling with that particular phrase of the Scriptures. It is very difficult for me to accept, for me to integrate into the conception that I have of Jesus and of God. I find that this phrase sits in my mind alongside those phrases which assume slavery and the subjugation of women, which justify homophobia and xenophobia. I cannot accept them, but I also cannot simply dismiss them.They point to the complexity of the God of the Scriptures, of the person of Jesus, revealed to us in documents which are troubling and difficult. Nothing would make me happier than to know that Jesus is the liberal intellectual that my conception has made him, or that God is who I think he is. But it is the hard passages of Scripture which point to the limitations of my own images of God and of Christ.

 Grant us therefore, Gracious Lord, so to hear the complexity and hardness of the Scriptures, so to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so to ruminate on their difficult words and stories, their cultural insensitivities and their unquestioned assumptions, that we may find in them that “patience and comfort” which has been the Church’s hope for long ages.

For one thing is certain. Whether we like the Scriptures or not, or are comfortable with them or not (generally I think we are not), out of the Scriptures come our common life, our practice, and our hope. Out of the Scriptures, however distant or complex, however hard or convoluted, comes to us the voice of the Living God, speaking into our world, our hearts and minds, our very beings. It has been so for untold years, that those who gather together to worship and praise the living God have in their reflection and rumination on the Scriptures, heard the rumor of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Preached by the Rev'd Andrew Ashcroft

16 November 2008

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Parade of Saints

In the past week Philadelphia got a lot of religion. That that religion was baseball hasn’t done much to advance the kingdom of God, but it has been impressive to watch, and sometimes to be a part of.

On Wednesday night, I was surprised to find myself watching the final innings of Game 5 in the World Series. I am a fair-weather baseball fan, at best (although I did predict from this pulpit two weeks ago that the Phillies would win the Series in five games!) I was even more surprised to find myself out on the street, when I took Baxter out for his last walk of the day, being drawn toward Broad Street, where we found an elated, hi-fiving, red-capped throng had taken over the streets.

What was I doing there? I have no idea. But what were any of us doing there? There was nothing to see and nothing to do but come together and cheer. There was no one even there to cheer for! But it didn’t matter There was no place to go and nothing to do, but somehow everyone knew where to go and what to do. While it’s true that some damage was done later in the night, when you consider how many people filled the streets (and how drunk some of them were) it was an amazingly happy, good-natured, spontaneous expression of joy. I can honestly tell you I have never seen or felt anything like it in my life.

And the raucous throng that I was part of on Wednesday night was reconstituted and enlarged on Friday afternoon, when the Phillies came in triumphal parade through the city. Hordes of people had been filing into the city all morning. Folks around here were inevitably heading toward Broad Street. The fair weather having continued, I still considered myself a fan, so I too headed into the streets with Baxter.

As we headed up Locust Street, across 15th, we could just see the tail end of the parade: a trailer on which someone was holding aloft the Commissioner’s Trophy. Around me people figured out that the parade had stalled briefly and we had missed most of it. But we also realized that we could head south on 15th Street and try to catch up too see the team we had come to cheer.

And so we did. People were running down 15th Street to catch up to the parade, to see those pin-striped heroes of the baseball diamond. As we passed Spruce Street and looked to our left, we could see again, the tail end of the parade, but it had stopped again. So we sped up – we all sped up! We raced down to Pine and turned left, and as we did, we saw a horse-drawn carriage, and a bulldog sitting up there on the carriage: Pat Burrell’s bulldog, Elvis – he lives around the corner from us, so Pat must have been up there too!

And then came the truck with the Philly Phantatic, and the team members and their families, and a few more buses with unidentifiable people from the Phillies organization. And the trophy again! And we cheered and cheered and cheered! It didn’t matter that we didn’t know exactly who was who (except for the bulldog). We knew who they were, and why we were there. We cheered for these heroes who somehow made us all feel good about ourselves and the world.

Now baseball analogies in American culture are often trite – all the more so in church. I ought to know, I used one at the center of my sermon two weeks ago. But today it’s not so much a baseball analogy I want to ask you to consider, though it may have sounded that way up till now.

For today the church invites us to a parade of heroes. Our procession around the church singing “For all the saints” is a kind of ultra-dignified version of the Phillies parade. If only we could imagine the raw enthusiasm this city showed for its baseball team directed at the saints whose lives have built up the kingdom of God. If only we could muster some of it ourselves.

If only we could look up at what Bruce Nichols so beautifully described last week as these thickly populated stained glass windows and see people whose stories we recognized – or at least their dogs!

If only we could run breathlessly to try to catch up with the saints: those who gave their lives for their Lord, or who lived them so spectacularly or prayerfully or thoughtfully or with such reckless generosity.

If only their promised arrival on our street would bring us out to cheer, to claim a part of their victory as our own, and to project our own best hopes for our own lives onto them.

Back on Broad Street throughout the day, most of the time there was no team to cheer, no Philly Phanatic, no Pat Burrell or his bulldog; there was only the crowd. And remarkably, beautifully really, the people gathered here in that vast crowd just cheered for one another, smiled at one another, hi-fived one another. The slightest patch of red on your clothes was taken as a clear indication of your total commitment to the cause. Your mere presence on the street was proof of your citizenship in the Phillies nation. And if the parade of heroes could only pass by for so long then we would see heroes in one another, at least for an hour or two.

And can’t we share that outlook in our commemoration of all the saints? If we tire of chasing the saints up there in the windows, or if we are convinced that they have passed us by, or if we simply never could tell who they were anyway from this distance, cant we see saints in each other? Can’t we project our own best hopes for our lives - that were projected onto these windows in vivid color – onto one another? Can’t we give each other the benefit of the doubt that we are committed to the cause – even without having to display a uniform of certain color? Can’t we accept each other’s mere presence in church as proof of citizenship in the Christian family?

Long after the euphoria of the Phillies championship has worn off, there will still be the saints to catch up to, to run after breathlessly, to admire for no other reason, perhaps, than that they can handle it when we project our own best hopes for ourselves onto them. And there may be saints who we recognize because they lived just around the corner from us, or because we recognize their dogs.

Or there may be saints who have not passed us by with the parade, but who are right here next to us, raising their voices in song with us, passing the sign of peace with us (a low-five, if you will), looking us in the eye, as we look at them, and cheer each other on with the unspoken hope that, by God, we mean to be saints too!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
All Saints’ Sunday, 2 November 2008
Saint Mark’s, Philadelphia

1929

The Pharisees sent their disciples to Jesus to ask, “Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  (Matt 22:17)


This being a political season, I wonder if the time has come for me to preach to you about the relative virtues or vices of taxation.  The question, after all, has recently been raised in a public forum, I seem to think.

This being a time of economic turmoil, I wonder if the time has come to add my voice to the chorus of what passes for wisdom about the crisis we are in and what to do about it?

The Gospel reading today seems to be inviting me to weigh in on these matters.  But I’m not so sure that any of you also wish to extend such an invitation.  There is wisdom to be found among the people of God!

Instead, I will meander, a bit, as I often do on foot, around this neighborhood.  And not long ago as I was meandering, I was walking by the Drake: the wonderful building that you can see when you walk out of the doors of this church, its grand cupola claiming a prominent space in the sky.  I have friends who used to live in a penthouse apartment there, just a floor or two below that cupola.  I loved to visit them and to sit on their big terrace looking out over the whole of the western view of the city.  Walk by the Drake, and you may be surprised to notice, as I was, that it was built in 1929 – a bit of a rough year, I’d think, for a luxury hotel (which is what it was built to be).  Walk down Locust Street to the east of here, just to the end of our block, and see that the Lanesborough – built to be the University Club of Philadelphia – was also built in 1929.

Of course it was in 1929, 79 years ago this month, that the New York Stock Exchange took its great plunge.  The Dow having peaked at a dizzying 381 points on September 23, it crashed almost 12% to 230 points on October 29, 1929.  (Those were the days!)

They had been the days – certainly in Philadelphia, and certainly for the banks here.  The wonderful, modernist PSFS building was also built in 1929 by the oldest bank in America: The Pennsylvania Savings Fund Society.  The Philadelphia Trust building (where Wachovia is, or was), was built a couple of years earlier in 1927.  The PNB building, which still supports the world’s largest ringing bell, was built on Broad Street in 1930.  By 1929, 30th Street Station was under construction.  And the Ayer Building was completed in 1929 on Washington Square – home to the nation’s oldest advertising agency.

Here at Saint Mark’s in 1929 the parish busied itself with moving its second mission church, Saint Michael’s, from 19th and Lombard in Center City out to Yeadon in Delaware County.

Of course, Prohibition was in effect in 1929, so I guess people had to keep busy somehow.  Olympic rower Jack Kelly was busy that year here in Philadelphia with his new-born daughter Grace.

It was, as I say, quite a time in Philadelphia.

And on October 12, 1929, just two weeks before the Stock Market crash, The Philadelphia Athletics scored ten runs in a single inning of Game 4 of the World Series against the Chicago Cubs, winning the game by two runs, and solidifying their lead in the series at three games to one – a series they would go on to win in the next game, played in Shibe Park, here in Philadelphia.

How quickly, I wonder, did the euphoria of the World Series win evaporate with the crash of the market?  How empty, I wonder, were the offices in all those bank buildings during the Great Depression, with its stifled credit market?  How different, I wonder, are the times today?  I wonder.

And I don’t know quite how to react to Warren Buffett’s recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times in which he shares a simple guiding principle: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”  That doesn’t sound much like the Gospel to me!

Except of course that it’s a perspective that counts on the reversal of fortunes.  And the Gospel is almost always about the reversal of fortunes.  From the moment Mary hears the unusual message from Gabriel this truth becomes clear to her: that her fortunes and the fortunes of the world will be reversed, somehow, by this Good News being announced to her.  The humble poor will be raised up, and the arrogant rich will be cast down.  The Gospel always sounds better to the poor (something we might keep in mind from time to time!)

Jesus, of course, knows this.  The sage from Nazareth even knows more than the sage from Omaha!  And notice how un-concerned is our sage from Nazareth with the question of taxes.  He will not be taken in with this “gotcha” question!  Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; what do I care about that?  But will you even give a thought to giving to God the things that are God’s?

Will we give a thought to giving to God the things that are God’s?

In the church, of course, we don’t have taxes.  The primary reason for this is because we all figure out what we have to pay in taxes, but the question in church is how much we feel called to give.  This church stands as a testament to the marvelous grace that men and women have felt called to give to the church with great generosity no matter how much they have had to pay in taxes.

And now we are in a difficult time.  And how can we give a thought to giving to God the things that area God’s?  What claim to does God have on your hard-earned dollars?  What right has Saint Mark’s to collect them on God’s behalf?  Especially now?!?  What if it’s just like 1929 all over again?

If it was just like 1929, what could I say to convince you that God has a claim to your money and to mine?  How could I persuade you that Saint Mark’s is the place that deserves the gifts you are called to give back to God… when it’s really a question of deciding whether or not you believe in the Gospel that brings a reversal of fortunes?  Because, while it isn’t true for all of us, very few of us are ever in danger of giving too much to God – myself included.  And the Gospel has always sounded dearer to those who are willing to give more of what they have away.

Christians have long held to an axiom that is more profound than Warren Buffett’s investment advice.  It might go something like this: Be hopeful when others are fearful, and when others are hopeful, rejoice that your hope has been compounded!

What if it’s just like 1929 all over again?  If it is, then a little girl has been born who will grow up to be a princess, and the most beautiful woman in the world.  (Be hopeful when others are fearful!)

Whether or not the economic situation today is really similar to that of 1929, there is certainly enough anxiety around to make a lot of people fearful.  But all we have to do is walk around this neighborhood to remember that the world did not actually come to a screeching halt in 1929.  And if the buildings that were built that year were more empty than full for a while, their fortunes have been reversed – and many of them are now luxury condos.  And do we really think that God has less in store for his people than he does for a bunch of buildings?  (Be hopeful when others are fearful!)

And in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the World Series of 1929, the A’s (who were down, 8 – 0) pulled off a reversal of fortunes that’s been called one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.  Do we really think that God has less in store for us than he did for a baseball team?  (Be hopeful when others are fearful!)

And although the A’s moved away long ago, if it’s just like 1929 no wonder the Phillies are headed to the World Series – and I’m just saying don’t be surprised if they win it in Game 5!  And do we really think that God has less in store for us than he does for the Phillies?  (Be hopeful when others are fearful!)

2008, like 1929, is quite a year.  There is cause for some measure of anxiety, it has to be said.  And amidst this anxiety, will we give a thought to giving to God the things that are God’s?  Or will we just argue about taxes, and fixate absurdly on what a plumber in Ohio might have to pay?

I suppose that depends a lot on whether or not we truly believe that we are called to be hopeful when others are fearful.

And during these next couple of weeks, as we hear more and more from the campaign trail that sounds like the loaded question from the Pharisees – Is it good to pay taxes or not? – Let us remember that Jesus found practically nothing to discuss on the topic.

Because he had a more difficult question to ask, no matter what year it is: Will you give a thought to giving to God the things that are God’s?

Put it another way: Will we be hopeful when others are fearful?

Good question.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
19 October 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Feast

Feasting really has gone out of fashion in this day and age. Do we really ever get invited to a feast? We go to formal dinners occasionally, but we are far more likely to inhale a TV dinner or a handful of Chicken McNuggets by ourselves then we are to sit down to a meal with a large group of people. And I’m not even sure that merely a large group qualifies as a feast. There is in the word “feasting” a sense of solemnity, of length, of plenty, of laughter, of toasting, and of overwhelming abundance. A feast isn’t really a feast without huge sides of meat, without vast trays of delicacies, barrels of beer and vast amounts of wine, and the obligatory roast pig with an apple in its mouth. Feasting is not for those who are closely examining their waistlines or are in bondage to nutritionists.

A feast is what we imagine pirates doing, after a successful day of pillaging; or Vikings, boasting of their exploits in battle. There is, in short, in feasting a certain roughness or gruffness; a quality of being slightly out of control, slightly wild. A feast is more like a fraternity party and less like a Norman Rockwell-esque Thanksgiving Dinner.

We, certainly do not feast. We, frozen chosen Episcopalians would look slightly askance at too great a display of emotion, that kind of wildness at a social event. We gather certainly, for communal dinners, but really, feasting is a bit passé and bit rustic. We would be forced to yell at our companions across the table, and listen to their slightly off-color jokes. Feasting might make us slightly uncomfortable and exposed.

But we must learn to feast, because if the Scriptures that we read today are correct, feasting is our final goal and delight. Feasting is our future.

It is unfortunate that feasting has left our experience, because it is a preeminent and much used image throughout the Scriptures; a way of talking about the incomprehensible and unimaginable future that God is preparing for his beloved people; a way of talking about heaven.

First, in the passage that we heard from Isaiah, we have the wonderful image of the mountaintop feast, where God gathers all peoples and makes for them a feast of rich food filled with marrow and well-aged wines strained clear. The feast is a celebration, because in the future which God prepares for all peoples, the sadness of life and sorrow of death are removed and God wipes the tears from our faces.

And Lord knows that we need to be reminded of this hope, as we have watched the stock markets and the financial markets of the world crumble, as we have watched our own savings dwindle and people all around us struggle to make ends meet.

Lord knows that we need an abundant feast, as people are struggling to find the money to feed themselves and their loved ones.

Lord knows that there are many, many tears on our faces, as we look at a world and a city filled with violence and poverty.

And the Lord does know all that, and there is tremendous and vast hope in knowing that our sadness and our cries are not ignored and that the day of feasting and an end to sadness is coming.

But the hope of that day is not just pie in the sky. The passage from Isaiah is about what God will do, at some future moment. The parable from the Gospel of Matthew this morning is about what God has already done in Jesus. The kingdom of heaven, which has come near us, which is among us, is like a wedding feast. A wedding feast which was RSVP only, but when those guests failed to come, to which all are invited, those worthy and those unworthy.

At first blush, this parable seems to portray the king as an arbitrary and angry ruler, who has simply decided to have a party, and if he has to force the guests to come, he is powerful and will do it. When he finds a guest who isn’t dressed correctly, he tosses him out of the feast. Is this really how God is? Arbitrary, petulant and dangerous?

But no, of course God is not like that, nor is that the meaning of the parable. The feast, you see, is the most important thing; the feast is the end and purpose of our life, what we were made for. That restlessness and sense that we sometimes have of not quite being home; that is because we were made for the feast, and instead we are in the midst of fasting and suffering. The feast is the reversal of the Fall, the return to Eden, rest after long labor, the period at the end of the sentence. And so to have an invitation to the feast and not go, or to go and not be ready for the feast is a drastic and massive failing. It is like having tickets to see the Phillies play in Game 7 of the World Series (God willing) and instead decide to go to a movie, or stay home and watch the game on television.

What the parable is teaching is the necessity of being ready when that great and glorious day, long hid from our sight comes. That day when we are invited into the festal hall of the King with all sorts and conditions of people, and showered with food and drink to celebrate the end of death and the healing of grief.

What we are about this morning is preparing for the Feast. What we do here at the altar is a kind of mini-feast, a practice feast, a way to get ourselves ready for that final, eternal feast. We gather as all sorts and conditions of people, we gather however worthy or unworthy we feel. We gather, business people and paupers, young and old, many races; all the peoples that God has made. We gather and are made one and become a sign and symbol of what we were created for: the feast to end all feasts and the party to end all parties.

What we do as the church, as the People of the Way gathered here is both preparation for and participation in that great and glorious day hid from our sight. This mass is an image, an icon of the Wedding Feast of our God, the Supper of the Lamb, in which our God spreads out a feast for us, wipes away our tears and showers down upon us the abundant food and drink of eternity.

Though we cannot see it, and though so much of our world seems dark, we are already in the outer chambers of the king’s palace. Already the feast has begun and we wait only for the doors to swing open to admit us into the gathering; that great crowd of witnesses which none can number.

Come then, come to the Feast; prepare yourselves for heavenly food and drink. The rich food will be upon the altar, the well-aged wine in the chalice. With this feast, God will wipe away our tears, not for the last time, but for time being; with this feast we will be strengthened, for the work ahead of us, to go out into the world, to comfort those who mourn and bind up the broken-hearted, to be with the sick, the friendless and the needy, to work for the restoration of the Kingdom, that we may be ready when that great and glorious day is upon us.

Preached by the Rev’d Andrew Ashcroft

12 October 2008

St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Vine

When I first moved to Philadelphia, six years ago, I lived in a third floor apartment, in the front of an old townhouse on Pine Street, almost at the corner of 19th Street.  It was a great old building.  It’s one of those wide old row-houses that has three large windows across the front on every floor.  And it faced south, so we got a lot of sunlight in all those windows.  My landlord had grown up in the house when it was a single family home, with his father’s doctor’s office on the ground floor.  As a child, my landlord had planted  - in a patch of soil at the front of the house that could not be more than a square foot: probably less – a vine of unidentified type.

I suppose the vine must have flowered during the spring or summer, but its flowers were not its distinctive trait.  The vine was (and still is) a prolific grower.  During the spring and summer of my first year in that apartment I watched it grow from its tiny dirt patch at street level up to my third floor windows, by which point it had spread out across the entire width of the building.  The branches of the vine had, by summer’s end, encased the air conditioner in one of my windows and had sent tendrils up into the spaces around the unit so that green shoots were wending their way into my living room.

For a while, I thought this was charming: the vine was a welcome burst of green in the brick-scape of my block, (and the plaster walls of my apartment).  But eventually (when it came time to take the A/C out of the window) the vine began to look less charming to me and more like a nuisance.  And my landlord, who had never been particularly attentive to small repairs or general maintenance in the building, began to seem somewhat negligent to me.

It was a crisp, fall day when I took the air conditioner out of my window, opened the other two windows in the front of the apartment and leaned out as far as I could with some kind of improvised pruning shears.  The vine had done a good job of attaching itself to the brick and the cable TV wire, and old hardware still on the façade of the building by the windows.  It was holding on tight!  And I ripped long strands of it by the handful, snipped them with my shears, and tossed them to the ground, shouting to warn passers-by as I did.  And a great heap of green and brown strands of vine piled up, down there on the sidewalk.

Of course, I hadn’t eliminated the vine altogether.  I’d gotten the widest, topmost portion, and torn it off, down to about the top of the second story windows.  But I’d gotten that vine out of my windows and out of my life… at least until the next year!

And I felt so good about taking matters into my own hands.  I felt a silly kind of accomplishment at such a simple task.  I felt a sillier kind of pride in putting that vine in its place!  And I felt a kind of superiority to both the vine and the landlord, both of which were starting to bother me.  But where was the vine now?  Not climbing in my window any longer!  I was no one to be trifled with!


A single theme runs through most of the readings we’ve been given from Scripture this morning: a vine (or, in the Gospel reading, a vineyard, where there were lots of vines).  The vine is a well-known biblical image.  Jesus would use it to talk about himself: I am the vine and ye are the branches, he said.  But before Jesus, it was the Jewish nation, the children of Israel, who identified with the vine.  The psalmist reminds God of this image:

You have brought a vine our of Egypt;
you cast out the nations and planted it.
You prepared the ground for it;
it took root and filled the land…
…you stretched out its tendrils to the sea
and its branches to the river…

But despite her heritage, the vine of Israel was so often abused: attacked by her neighbors; hacked at by enemies; ripped apart by strife without and within.  The psalmist questions God about his care for this vine, Israel:

Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.

Behold and tend this vine.

Where has the landlord gone?  Why does he not show more concern for this vine, planted by his own hand, so long ago?  These same questions lurk behind the parable that Jesus tells:  “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.  Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.”

You remember what happens.  It comes time for the harvest – time to collect his rent, his portion of what is due – and rather than give up so much as a bunch of grapes from the vine, the tenants brutalize the landlord’s messengers.  Twice this happens before the landlord decides to send his son to collect, on the theory that the tenants will respect him.  But of course, the tenants decide that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and to hell with the other tenth.  They kill the landlord’s son, pour themselves a beer, and start to work out a plan to claim ownership of the vineyard and all its vines.

I imagine that the tenants felt a sense of accomplishment, when they had disposed of the body of the landlord’s son: a kind of pride in what they’d done.  I imagine they felt quite superior to the landlord and his son.

Jesus was a good storyteller; he does not tell his listeners the end of the story, he lets them tell it themselves when he asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”  It was not hard to provide an answer: He will make them pay!


Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.

Why has God made it so easy for us to brutalize everything he’s given us: the earth, one another, even his own Son?   Why did he make us so ready to take matters into our own hands that with glee we will pull down the vines that he himself planted?  Why has he planted a vineyard, with a wall and a winepress and a watchtower - to protect it and ensue its productivity – and then made it so easy for us to thwart his designs?

I do not know the answers to these questions.  What I know is that God has planted a vine.

And I remember with what purposeful pride did I tear down the vine outside my windows; with what self-righteous resentment toward my landlord.  And I know that it was OK to cut that vine back.  But I also know there are other vines that God has planted in my life that I could just as easily cut down, that would be better left to grow and to bear fruit.  And I know I’d have had a word or two for my landlord, had he challenged me about my rights to cut back that vine.  “Well, where have you been?  Why have you not been taking care of it?


Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.

Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine.

My friends, God has placed us in a vineyard, and we, his people, are what the prophet called the “pleasant planting” of the Lord.  We are the cuttings from the true vine from which all good things come.  And it is part of the mysterious ways of God that in so many ways he allows us to tell the ends of stories ourselves.

Why do we spend so much time leaning out of windows with pruning shears in our hands when there are grapes to be harvested, if only we would look for them?

God has placed us in a vineyard.  When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to us tenants?  It is up to us to tell the end of that story.  What will we do with all that God has given to us?

There is a vine running through the story of our lives that was planted by God.  Some years its grapes are sweeter than others; some years they taste pretty sour.  We would so like to have God take care of it: look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine!  But God has planted the vine of his loving kindness in a tiny patch of soil just outside your windows and mine.  And it is trying to get inside. And it’s up to you and me to tend this vine.

The good news, of course, is that we can never really destroy the vine.  The best we can do is prune it away from our windows, cut it back, down to the tops of the windows below us – avoid its creeping advances for another year.

And despite our regular frustration that God is too much an absentee landlord in our lives, who lets things get out of hand and doesn’t come around to fix them, the vine he has planted will keep coming back year after year, trying hard to invade our space, work its tendrils through the cracks in our windows, and finally wrap its gentle arms around us in a green embrace of heavenly love…

… until the day comes when we finally welcome the true vine into our lives, and just let it take over.  And we eat its sweet grapes, from which we will also make wine – which is why God planted it in the first place: a gift to be fermented and transformed into something more complex than it appears to be.

But Christ lets us tell the end of the story, ourselves.  He sends the vine into the windows of our lives to see what we will do with it.  And then he asks: When the owner of the vine comes, and the time of judgment is here, and the measure of our lives is taken, what will he do to us, his tenants?

And I suppose that depends a lot on what he finds out on the sidewalk of our lives: a pile of decaying branches that we have cut down?  Or a barrel of wine made from the grapes that we tended from the vine that God planted.  

I know what it’s like to cut down the vine, but now, I think I’d rather have wine, and I hope you would too!  And I think that if we look together we will find grapes on the vine that are ripe and ready to be pressed.  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
5 October 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Bailout

Therefore my beloved… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his own good pleasure.  (Phil. 2:12-13)


Fear and trembling – normally reserved for only the most horrible natural disasters and terrorist attacks – have made something of a comeback in the halls of Congress the past week or so.  And all it took was $700 billion.

Although I understand little of the detailed machinations in the banking and credit industries that brought us to the current crisis, I think I understand something of the political realties that have caused law-makers to huddle in all-night meetings, and both presidential candidates to be wary of saying very much, and a general sense of urgency to pass legislation that no one is very happy about.  For politicians – many of whom are up for re-election in just over a month – there is the heavy weight of a kind of accountability here.  The only thing worse than passing a $700 billion bailout would be doing nothing.  The risk that more banks would fail, the economy would go into a tailspin, and the suffering would be legion, is too great for men and women who are, after all, supposed to be more or less in charge.  Hence, fear and trembling: better to take the bailout than to risk the consequences.

The church is well familiar with fear and trembling.  She has deployed them with their silent partner, guilt, over many centuries.  Somewhere not so far from Saint Peter’s desk, we were encouraged to believe, were angelic accountants poring over the books of our lives and obviously finding a lot of bad credit, sub-prime mortgages, and the like.  The day would come when we would be held to account for all our failings, short-comings, and meannesses; and where would we be then?  Fear and trembling were meant to motivate us to curb our dangerous impulses and desires, and generally to keep us in check: our salvation was being worked out for us in the back rooms of heaven, and we had plenty of reason to quake.

This pattern of thinking is a kind of bailout mentality.  The church’s legislation of salvation (so to speak) wasn’t very appealing to anyone, but what was the alternative?  Eternal flame?  Unquenchable fire?  Better to take the bailout, even if it wasn’t a very happy state of affairs, than to risk the consequences.

To this way of thinking Jesus is the central figure in the bailout – the Treasury Secretary, as it were, in the economy of sin and grace.  Like him or not, it was he who held the power to bail out a world that was spiraling toward ruin.  And the mystery was, by what great power did he negotiate the bailout of the world with the others in the Administration: the Father and the Holy Spirit?

Now comes along Saint Paul, whose faith came from a personal encounter with the risen Jesus, and who writes to us (by way of the Philippians):

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God… [he] emptied himself…humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death  - even death on a cross.”  

Let this mind be in you.  What does this mean?  Paul is talking about the meaning of Jesus’ death on the Cross – the great act of atonement that Jesus was destined for as the Son of God, but still had to be willing to choose, as a human being fully alive.  And Paul does not seem to be describing a bailout here for miserable sinners.  But what is he talking about?

We are confused by Paul’s language, because we have so hoped that in a relationship with Jesus we would be fulfilled, but Paul tells us that Jesus emptied and humbled himself – and this doesn’t sound fulfilling.  We are ready to ignore Paul’s instruction because the thought of “death on a Cross” is a little too dramatic, and frankly unrealistic for us; it stretches our imaginations a little too far.  We are unprepared to learn from Paul’s advice because we don’t think we have that much in common with Jesus, and we’re not sure we would want to, anyway.  We expected Jesus’ death to be a bailout of the spiritual and existential kind. but Paul is not talking about a bailout here.  Jesus’ journey to the Cross is not a last act of desperation to pay down a debt to God.  It is an act of utter humility and perfect love, chosen by Jesus as a sign of the power of God made perfect in weakness.

And it is this mind: of selfless love, humility, and obedience that Paul says should be in me and in you: a willingness to become weak so that we might find strength, to go last on the promise that some day we will be first, to be the least among our friends – servants of all – if we want to be great, and to lose our lives (lose them!) if we want to find something like the meaning of life for all eternity.  Let this mind be in you and in me?!?  Is it any wonder we would prefer a bailout, even if it comes with a strong dose of guilt?

Back in Washington, the fear and trembling about the financial bailout stem from the real possibility of failure.  What if it doesn’t work, and more banks collapse, and the market tanks, and who knows what else?

But when Paul writes that we should “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling,” he goes on to say, “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  And the implication is that we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because of the real possibility of success!

Let this mind of humility and obedience be in you, and see if you are not better off.

Let this mind be in you that frees you to empty yourself, and see if you are not, in fact, filled up with blessings.

Let this mind be in you that leads you to the way of the Cross – which looks so much like the way of death – and see if it does not, in fact lead to life, and even conquer the fear of death.

Let this mind of Christ be in you.  For he was in the form of God, but you and I are made in the image of God, too.

Let this mind be in you as you work out your own salvation as a sojourner with Christ, not a pawn in some backroom bailout bargain.

Let this mind be in you even amidst the fear and trembling that comes with the possibility that, wow, there is strength to be found in the midst of weakness, there is a greatness to be found in choosing to serve others, there is life to be had where we thought there could only be death!

Let this mind be in you, for it is God who is at work in you!  It is God who is at work in you!

We Christians are not the citizenry of a bailout banana republic whose baptismal certificates are the devalued commercial paper of a volatile market.  We are the sons and daughters of God, who, when we let this mind of Christ be in us, discover that it is God who is at work in us.

My brothers and sisters, I hope that our elected representatives find a good and affordable solution to our current financial woes, and I make no pretense at knowing what that might be.  If a bailout is what’s needed – even at exorbitant cost – then, I suppose, so be it; better to take the bailout.

But you and I do not need (or, I suspect, want) a bailout God whose Son cuts a deal for us in the backrooms of heaven.  Better to have a Savior who gives us a piece of his mind, when he calls us to follow him on the way of obedience and humility that leads to the Cross.  Better to learn to travel that way with Jesus, even though it is tiring and hard.  Better to be accountable to the One whose practice is forgiveness and mercy.  Better to work out our own salvation with the kind of fear and trembling that comes of having traveled so far, being so close, unbelievably almost there: the fear that we might actually succeed – and what would that mean for us?!  Better to know, at those moments when it seems a bailout is the best we could possibly do, that it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Jesus himself knew what it was like to think that a bailout was the best he could do – he prayed for it in a garden.  But his prayer was answered with the reminder that God was in him.

And a bailout for our sins and all that’s gone wrong in the world, will not be necessary.  Debts have been canceled once and for all.  Credit has been extended, once and for all.  Love has been lifted up, once and for all, by the one who gave himself up to make the Cross an eternal sign of hope for a world that thought a bailout was the best it could do.  But now we know better – thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
28 September 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia