Living the New Commandment

Camp Wapiti - some 600 beautiful acres on the banks of the Elk River in Maryland - is the fledgling diocesan camp and conference center and a lightning rod for disagreement and conflict in this diocese. Many people believe that our bishop has channeled funds - either inappropriately or unwisely - to the camp at the expense of other vital programs, like the support of poor, inner-city parishes.

Not long ago I heard the director of the camp address those concerns with the appeal that although mistakes may have been made, the fact remains that we own it, we are there are on the ground at Wapiti, and shouldn't we give it a chance?

What struck me about this plea was that it is practically a verbatim repetition of an argument we hear about the war in Iraq: mistakes may have been made, but the fact remains that we are there, on the ground in Iraq, and shouldn't we give it a chance, do our best to make it work?

I don't intend to use time in the pulpit this morning as a critique of either Camp Wapiti or the Iraq war - although I believe there is much to critique in both cases. But it is remarkable how often and well we in the church have learned to mimic strategies, outlooks, and postures that we first observe on the evening news.

Elections for bishops have borrowed campaign strategies from secular political campaigns. Our special interest groups use the same tactics of polarization and fear-mongering as political special interest groups. Our leaders jostle for power with the same mixture of intensity and false humility. We regularly look to big business for organizational models and methods of leadership and real estate development. We have learned our lessons well from the secular world: why shouldn't we borrow rationales for staying the course at Wapiti, because, after all, we are already there?

All communities have politics. The Twelve apostles were playing at politics when they argued about who among them would be greatest. The church is not, nor could it be, immune from politics.

Still, as a community we claim to be striving for something else, we say that we have gathered ourselves around the story of the One who came not to be served but to serve. We hold on so tightly to the memory of the night he showed what he meant by that that we re-enact the drama of his love once a year when we wash one another's feet.

And on that night, after supper, Jesus, who had spent many hours teaching his disciples about the Jewish law, gave them another teaching to follow:

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

His own disciples showed little evidence from that point on that they understood this teaching - except that they must have repeated it to others, passing it on enough times for it to be written down and handed on to us.

And through the ages, as we look back, we might wonder if others have shown much evidence of learning this lesson: love one another as he loved them - love one another enough to wash each other's feet, enough to die for those you love. Love one another so that all may know that we are his disciples.

Is it unfair to suggest that more often than not we Christians have lived the mirror-image of this teaching: that by our failure to love one another, we have caused many to wonder if we are following anyone, or if Jesus could possibly be worth following? And would it be fair to say that we have so often been following somebody else's script, somebody else's model, somebody else's business plan that there has been precious little time or space to worry about this one, little commandment: love one another?

Would it be fair to say that much of the time we have no earthly idea what love is?

This past week, in a very disturbing story, the New York Times shed some light on the preparations and attitudes of young suicide bombers who are on their way to Iraq. They seem to me to be filled with righteous indignation, moral certitude, and religious zeal. Never mind that they have little idea of what exactly they are being righteously indignant about, that their moral compasses are drastically off-course, and their zeal only serves to warp their religion. They are also, to my reading, full of anger and hatred.

A 24 year old man featured in the article was stopped at the Iraqi border and sent back to Jordan. He is disappointed that he was not able to blow himself up and he is envious of those who have. "I am happy for them but I cry for myself because I couldn't do it yet. I want to spread the roots of God on this earth and free the land of occupiers. I don't love anything in this world. What I care about is fighting."

I don't know much about Islam, to tell you the truth. But I do know that if, as I believe, there is only one God, then the God to which Muslims pray is the same God to whom I pray and you pray. It is the God who sent his Son to give us a new commandment: to love one another.

And can Christians - whose history includes the Crusades and the Inquisition, the Reformation and the English Civil War, who colluded with Nazis, and slave owners, and conquistadors - can Christians claim a much better record of following this one, simple commandment: to love one another?

We want, quite desperately I think, to contrast ourselves to that bleak and hopeless way of thinking. We - like many Muslims - want to live the exact reverse image of that young man's short credo: we don't want to fight anything in this world; what we care about is loving. We want to have an answer to that nihilism: that they'll know we are Christians by our love. We want to shape our lives by this new commandment.

But when we stop to think about this condition we are in - as a church, or as individuals in it - and we hear ourselves repeating the same political slogans that once we heard on the evening news: well, yes, mistakes have been made, but we are where we are, here on the ground, and shouldn't we just stick with it and give life like this a chance? Then are we really providing a witness to that simple, new commandment?

Jesus' command to love one another is a challenge to that kind of thinking and to the status quo - because he knows that mutual love, respect and affection is not our fall-back position. Staying the course is our fall-back position; especially if that course includes holding a grudge, nursing a hatred, plotting revenge or settling a score.

Sure, mistakes have been made - that's how we got in this mess - but why not give it a shot? Why change gears now, with all this gentle talk of love?

Jesus' command to love one another is a rebuke to our self-indulgence and pride.

And when we begin to appropriate the ways and means of this world - the tactics of secular politics, the cynicism of polarization, and mechanics of power struggles, and the inclination to "spin" things so they show us at our best - then Jesus' command to love one another as he loved his disciples is an intervention aimed at preventing the long slide down that slippery slope.

When we begin to accept the state of affairs as they are, although mistakes may have happened, but here we are and shouldn't we just go with it - then Jesus' simple commandment calls us to account. Is this how we love one another?

Here at Saint Mark's, we could heed Jesus' command in a thousand new ways - building on the many ways it has been lived out here for decades, and in the church for centuries. But a few general guidelines in choosing those ways of heeding the command to love one another seem useful.

First we can practice radical hospitality - looking for every opportunity to welcome the newcomer, the stranger, and the lost into our midst. To call hospitality radical is to say that the habit of welcoming others is something that would be so ingrained in us that it is part of our very core of being as a community, and not something that we seek to delegate to the ushers, or a committee, or to someone, anyone else. This can involve everything from paying attention to who is standing alone at coffee hour to helping to run a program of Christian formation to introduce people to faith and strengthen the faith of others.

Second, we can recommit ourselves to take up the work of caring for the poor and those in need - not just a few of us on Saturday mornings or another few on weekdays in the Food Cupboard. Not only can we do a better job of being attentive to those in need in our own community, we can adopt a more expansive definition of "one another" by actively look for ways to bring relief to the poor, the elderly, the sick and lonely, those who are in prison.

Third, we can devote ourselves more and more to the daily practice of prayer in which God invites us to be in conversation with him, to reflect on the choices we make, to seek forgiveness when we make bad ones, and to learn, again and again, that the call to repentance is never a call to stay the course a little longer, because although mistakes have been made, this is where we are, and shouldn't we give it a chance.

The call to repent is a call to be better followers of the new commandment; to be willing to stop doing what we are doing, to turn and go another way - especially when the way we are going engenders nothing but conflict, discord, and the disposition to choose to fight rather than find a way to love.

Christians are called to witness this new commandment to the world. We are called to be men and women whose hearts are so set on loving our neighbor as ourselves - loving one another as Jesus loves us - that we cannot be deterred from this mission. Love one another with righteous indignation that there are those in this world who love nothing. Love one another with the moral certitude that this is the only commandment worth dying for. Love one another with a religious zeal that exposes all other religious fervor as cheap.

Jesus gave us this simple little new commandment - which, of course, is anything but simple to follow.

And the question is, will we try to follow it? Or will we defend ourselves with a script we learned somewhere else - acknowledging that yes, mistakes have been made, but couldn't we, shouldn't we try living this way a little longer? Stay the course, give it a chance see how it goes?

His hands still wet from washing our feet, Jesus challenges us to choose to live a different way: to fight over nothing in this world, but only to love.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
6 May 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

Beautiful-Feet-People

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'"

A pilgrim making his way to Canterbury on foot (the way that Chaucer's pilgrims did) from London or Winchester or anywhere in Britain, would have a hard time finding a place to spend a night. In the 1530s, as part of his program of opposition to Rome, King Henry the VIIIth ordered the dissolution of more than 800 monastic communities, many of which would have provided shelter for pilgrims.

Henry was interested in consolidating power and acquiring wealth - both of which the monks often held in good supply. And one way he ensured that monastic communities would not spring back up after his henchmen had seized their riches and dissipated their power, was to have them take one last thing: the lead sheets that formed the roofs of their buildings. This last theft benefited the king in two ways: it gave him a ready supply of a valuable (if heavy) commodity, and it ensured that the monastic buildings wouldn't last too long, since a building without a roof is neither useful nor likely stay standing.

A roof is an important thing. And many of you know that we have recently begun some rather expensive work on our roof - still in the early stages, but there is much more to come. And if you know this, you may be admiring the way I have so deftly introduced the topic of our roof (and its expensive repair) into the liturgical proceedings of the celebration of our patronal feast. Perhaps you are already reaching for your checkbook…. (God bless you!)

Yes, a roof is an important thing. A pilgrim traveling, even today, in Spain knows this, since many ancient monastic communities there still provide lodging for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. On the pilgrim's way in Spain you will come across towns that attest to their ancient monastic roots with the word "hospital" in their names, like Hospital de Orbigo.

Now, I know you thought you knew what a hospital was. But if you are snooty enough to look up your words in the Oxford English Dictionary (and you know that I am snooty enough to do so), you may be surprised to learn, as I was, that the very first definition of "hospital" is this: a "house… for the reception and entertainment of pilgrims, travelers, and strangers." I can assure you that there is at least one more sermon in that definition than the one you are getting tonight. But for the moment, I hope you will stay with me on my meandering musings about pilgrims, hospitals and roofs.

Just yesterday I was in a local hospital where I had a good look at my left foot which has been encased in fiberglass for the past five weeks and is now wrapped up in Velcro. And I can tell you, having thought a lot about that foot, and having walked to Santiago, that pilgrims are feet people. They think about their feet a lot. They think carefully about the shoes they are going to put on their feet for the journey. They think about resting their feet when they are weary. They think about caring for their feet when they are blistered or sore. They think about what they are going to do if their feet give out. They think about applying tape and moleskin to their feet. They look for someone to massage their feet or to lance the blisters that they cannot easily reach themselves. They worry about keeping their feet dry and warm and clean. Pilgrims are feet people! You walk for 500 miles and you will become a foot person too!

And while a pilgrim is grateful every single night to have a roof over her head, while pilgrims have benefited for centuries from the hospitals that have provided them shelter, pilgrims are not roof people. They will never be more distracted, more preoccupied, more obsessed with the care and maintenance of the roof over their heads - or the lack thereof - than they will be with the care and maintenance of their feet.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

Tonight as we gather here to celebrate the Feast of our patron, Saint Mark, one thing we might do is to reflect on what it means to be in a community that has identified itself with the name of an evangelist: one who brings good news.

If you read the recent newsletter with its information about our roof, or if you have looked up at the moisture-driven stains of efflourescence on the upper reaches of the walls and thought to yourself, "That can't be good…" or if you have heard some other way that we have roof problems, and maybe some stone problems, and actually a big problem when it comes to accessibility in our buildings, and if you've been next door and seen the plaster problems, or the plumbing problems, and then you look up again and think about the roof problems…

… you might begin to think that we are going to have to become roof people: fixated on caring for that slate, upgrading that copper flashing, cleaning out those gutters. You might have heard about the price tag. And you might be guessing, rightly, that it is only likely to go up. And you might be starting to get the idea that life at Saint Mark's is going to be all about the roof for the next little while, or all about the stone, or the plaster, or whatever. It would not be unreasonable to begin to conclude that we will have to be roof people.

But how will people ever hear about good tidings, how will people ever hear about peace, how will people ever hear about salvation, how will people ever hear about the God who reigns in Zion, if we, his people, are all about the roof?

We have got to be feet people!

We have got to be beautiful-feet-people!

And perhaps this is what it means to be a part of a community that has identified itself with the name of an evangelist, of one who brings good news, as Mark did - the first of the four evangelists to write the story of Jesus. Perhaps it means that we have got be obsessed with feet. We have got to care passionately about where our feet carry us and what the do when they get us there.

We have got to use our feet to bring good tidings to people who have heard precious little good news. We have to use our feet to bring prayers and comfort and healing to those who are sick. We have to use our feet to bring consolation and care to the dying and to those who grieve. We have to use our feet to bring food to the poor and the hungry. We have to use our feet to visit those who languish in prison. We have to use our feet to help teach kids who this city's schools will fail. We have to use our feet to bring freedom to the oppressed. We have to use our feet to bring justice to those from whom it has been denied. We have to use our feet to bring to hope to those who thought they had none. We have to use our feet to bring light to those who live in darkness. We have to use our feet to bring the story of salvation who have never heard anything but a story that left them damned.

You know that if we use our feet like this, we are going to have some tired, blistered, worn out, nasty feet! But they will be beautiful!

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings… who says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

My brothers and sisters, we have got a roof to fix, it's true. But we are not roof people! Our lives have been linked by the name of Saint Mark to a bringer-of-good-news, whose beautiful feet have led countless souls to hear the Word of salvation. And like his legacy, the only legacy worth leaving in this world is the legacy of beautiful-feet-people who publish peace and salvation and who dare to proclaim to the world: Your God reigns!

Yes, we have a roof to fix, and we will fix it. But by God's grace we are not and never will be roof people - though we will always care that there is a roof on this place. We will fix that roof precisely because we are beautiful-feet-people who care yet more deeply for every pilgrim whose feet carry them here than we could ever care about a roof!

And we pray that every time we leave this place, we do so with beautiful feet, bringing good tidings of peace and salvation, of hope and light and love, and whose feet proclaim with every step we take, even if our voices should fail to say it to the world: Your God reigns!

Preached by the Reverend Sean E. Mullen
Saint Mark's Day, 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Scroll

Last week was a bad week.

Back when the Twin Towers fell, I was glued to the TV - it was almost impossible not to be. When Saddam Hussein went to the gallows, I gave in to curiosity and watched - once - the disgusting on-line footage of the prelude to his execution. I could go no further.

All during this past week I have been aware that the Internet is full of images that portray both the melee of confusion at Virginia Tech this week as well as the so-called manifesto of the killer of 32 people. But I am unable to bring myself to watch either the footage from Blacksburg or the killer's homemade videos. It is too much for me, to tell you the truth. And I am not sure I am yet blasé enough to watch again the evidence of such evil cruelty, as though it were just another day of the evening news. There are times when the reality of dark forces in this world is just too plain to be ignored. And how will we ever make sense of the killings in Virginia this week?

It is, of course, the scale of the tragedy that makes it too hard to watch - as well as the odor of evil that must surely linger around all the yellow emergency tape strung up by the Police, and in the envelope that arrived at NBC containing the gunman's deranged testimony.

But even if I do not watch these images up close, I cannot escape the dark power of their awful consequences. And even if I never switched on the TV or the computer or read the paper, I would surely encounter the darkness more locally. There is the idiot who mowed down two pedestrians just a block from here on Friday as he tried to evade responsibility for a traffic accident he had caused - and sent one bystander to the hospital in critical condition. There are the diagnoses of illness that bring life-changing (and life-threatening) news to people's lives every day. There are the statistics of poverty that place our own city at the top of some lists in America, since up to a quarter of the people in this city live in serious want. I could go on, and so could you; we each know the smaller-scale (but no less painful) tragedies that touch our lives deeply, and make us cringe at the power of darkness, even though there is no footage of them to watch on the Internet or TV.

And so, I cannot watch the gun-waving rants of a young man whose life was somehow - inexplicably to me - lost to darkness. I cannot even read anymore the endless and immediate analyses of his personal history, his state of mind, or his writings. I do not want to get any closer to that darkness - that evil - than I have to. Darkness will find its ways to get close enough to me, and to you.

There are those who call religion little more than a collective emotional salve to be applied to the frightening power of that darkness. Is our proclamation of good news just a pretty garden of denial that makes us feel better, since we have no ready answer for the painful question of why bad things happen to good people?

In the face of that question we come today to a reading from the Book of Revelation, which is the type of thing we would normally pay little attention to, because, after all, who can make any sense of this stuff? Saint John the Divine writes about his vision in which he sees a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God. (I'm already starting to get confused.) And there are the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders, each with a golden harp and a golden bowl of incense (which means this is already a nightmare for some people). And there is the song they are singing - Worthy is the Lamb - which is perfectly nice when sung to Handel's music, but is it really anything more than good material for an oratorio? What is going on here?

What the twenty-four elders are singing about; what the Lamb is worthy for; the occasion for all the incense and the harps and the bowing, etc…. What it's all about is this scroll that the Lamb has taken from the one who is seated on the throne. The scroll has writing on both sides, and it is sealed with seven seals. And a couple of chapters earlier in John's Revelation a mighty angel had asked the pregnant question: Who is worthy to open the scroll and break the seals? And the episode we read today is the answer to that question. And if you are still with me here, you may be asking, "Who cares?"

Because if you are familiar with the vision of Saint John the Divine, you know that things do not get any simpler or any easy any time soon. The Lamb will begin to open the seven seals of the scroll. And four horsemen will bring conquering power and, slaughter, and justice, and death. And then the souls of the righteous will be robed in white and told to rest a little longer. And when the Lamb gets to the sixth seal there is an earthquake, and the sun turns black, and the moon becomes like blood, and the stars fall to earth, and the sky vanishes like a scroll rolling itself up, and so frightening is all this that even the kings of the earth shout out to the mountains, "Fall on us!"

And do I want to watch this? Can I possibly want to learn about what's going to happen when the seventh seal is opened? Do I want to read on and hear any more of this? It seems like too much for me. Is this really any better than the TV news or the Internet - which at least, mostly, doesn't claim to be a vision of God?

Sure enough, when we get to the seventh seal and the angels start to blow their horns, it sounds more like all hell has broken loose than all of heaven. If this is the journey God is calling us to go one, I feel perfectly happy to be left behind!

More often than not we have stopped paying attention to the rantings of Saint John the Divine long before the Lamb gets to the seventh seal, anyway. In fact, many of us would give more time to the rantings of the Virginia Tech gunman than we would to the seer of Patmos. We get it so typically backwards: absorbed by the musings of madness that illustrate nothing but evil, but almost completely inoculated to the vision that points to a heavenly intent.

All week long, as the heaviness of the sadness of what happened at Virginia Tech has been weighted down in my life even further by the sadness of other deaths closer to home, and the question of why bad things happen to good people has been ringing in my ears, I have been thinking about that scroll: the scroll that the Lamb has taken and is worthy to un-seal. Saint John is very clear in his vision that the scroll has writing on it. But nowhere are its contents read. It is the opening of the seals that unleashes apocalyptic events, not the reading of the scroll. But it seems to me that the scroll - the opening of which sets in motion events that both horrify and confuse me - the scroll itself may be more than what it appears to be. And maybe I am just indulging in the soothing balm of religion when I try to convince myself that written somewhere in the heavens (maybe on that scroll) is an answer to this awful question of why bad things happen to good people.

It seems hopeful to me, you see, that John sees that the scroll has writing on both sides - because I feel certain that the answer to this awful question cannot be simple. And since the opening of the seals on the scroll begins an avalanche of conquering might, slaughter, justice and death; since it clothes the righteous in white and then un-hooks the stars from the sky; since it shakes the earth with the force of every natural disaster ever known… it seems not unreasonable that the text of the scroll - which John never gets to read - may provide some answer about why these things happen. It may provide some end point for all the unanswered "Whys?" uttered in countless, grasping prayers.

Because we give up so easily on John's Revelation, we often forget that it does not end with opening of the seventh seal and the angels blowing their trumpets. We forget that all this drama, this calamity is leading somewhere. We forget that the vision John is given to watch is finally a vision not of tragedy but of hope: a new heaven and a new earth, without sorrow or sighing.

When we give up on the vision too soon, it is often because we read it too much like a set of directions from Mapquest, as though they were a literal description of the route we must follow. And why go there since it sounds so unpleasant as one seal after another is opened? We forget that there is writing on the scroll that might be worth reading - should we ever get to see it. We forget that while John sees much, he is not shown everything.

And we forget that at the end of John's vision there is a new Jerusalem (frankly, something that it is almost impossible for us to imagine, since in my lifetime the real Jerusalem has never stood for anything more than conflict, and violence, and discord, and warfare, and terror). But John sees a vision of a new Jerusalem: a city of peace and hope, where a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows through the middle of the street of the city. And that anyone who wishes may take the water of life as a gift.

Last week was a bad week, so bad that I found myself averting my eyes from the evidence of it. It was a week that will have filled many hearts with anguished, one-word prayers: Why?

… to which I have many words of consolation but no real answer.

But there is a scroll, somewhere in the heavens, whose opened seals might unlock the power of every anguished "Why?" ever uttered, and which may, for all I know, hold the answer to those cries.

And since there is hardly an apocalyptic moment described in the vision of Saint John that we have not seen in our lifetimes - conquering power, slaughter, justice, and death:at the very least, the work of the four horsemen - then I am not ready to give up on the final destination of John's vision. I am not ready to stop watching because it seems too much for me. Because if the havoc unleashed by the opening of those seven seals - which is havoc very much like the havoc taking place all around us - if all this havoc is worth paying attention to, then maybe there is also something written on that scroll to be read - maybe there is more to be revealed.

And there is a Lamb who was slain and who is worthy to open the seals of that scroll.

And there is a holy city. There is a new Jerusalem, thank God!

And there is an answer to all our anguished "Whys?"

There is a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city.

And that is a vision of God's promise and our hope that I am willing to watch and to wait for!

Preached by the Reverend Sean E. Mullen
22 April 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia