Every now and then, if the door that leads from the cloister to the Parish House is not closed, and if we have an especially enthusiastic thurifer, and if smoke wafts from the church, through the cloister, past that doorway, into the Parish House, a loud alarm goes off (as happened here the other night). It is a reminder to me that here at Saint Mark’s we have prepared ourselves (up to a point) for at least one aspect f the great vision of the prophet Isaiah, who sees God in his glory, seated on a throne, high and lifted up, and, Isaiah tells us… the ‘house was filled with smoke.”
To the dismay of protestants and asthmatics, we get close, every now and then, to recreating that one aspect of the scene in the prophet’s vision, in which he tells us that the many-winged seraphim are flying about and calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy!” And, Isaiah says, the foundations of the thresholds are shaken at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
19th century Anglo-Catholic Romantics believed that this scene could be not so much re-enacted as evoked with the right kind of architecture, music, vesture… and with enough smoke. They even went so far as to make reference to the more detailed and fantastic vision of the heavenly throne given to Saint John the Divine in his Revelation. Unable to reproduce lightning strikes and thunder peals or a rainbow that looks like an emerald, they could at least hang seven lamps before the altar to evoke the seven torches we heard about in John’s Revelation today, which are, he tells us, the seven spirits of God. And because they could, they did.
And you can be sure that they believed, in their 19th century, Anglo-Catholic Romantic innocence, that whether you could see them or not, the many-winged seraphim would and did, in fact, descend from heaven to hover over the throne of this altar, calling out to one another in tones too high for you and me to hear: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
It was not, I think, actually naivete on the part of those 19th century Anglo-Catholic Romantics who built this place that caused them to think that with the right architecture, music, vesture, and with a bit of charcoal and incense, hey could evoke the image of the secret temples of God. It was, instead, a conviction, an eagerness, that it is OK to try to enter into the mystery of God’s presence, his being, his love. Indeed it was a conviction, even an eagerness, that it is helpful and necessary to try to enter into the mystery of God’s presence, being, and his love, especially if mere mortals were going to try to evoke not only the vision that Isaiah had, but his response to the call of God, the sound of whose voice causes the foundations of the thresholds to shake when he calls with grammatical precision, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Isaiah was no fool. He was a Jew living in exile. With his people he had been cast out of his land. Like generations of Jews before and after him, his understanding of his community of faith was tied deeply to the land. It was in a plot of land – a garden – that God first created man and woman. It was to a piece of real estate – a promised land flowing with milk and honey – that God led Abraham and Sarah through the wilderness. It was again to a promised land that God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. It was from that land, more or less, that Isaiah and the others with him had been ejected, and for which he now longed.
And if it was not to a specific piece of land that those 19th century Anglo-Catholic Romantics felt called when they bought property on Locust Street, then it was at least to the temple of God that those ancestors of ours were drawn. Knowing that God’s call go hither and yon was often anchored in specificity of one sort or another, they could at least set the stage for the sound of the One whose voice would shake the foundations of the thresholds when he calls out from the cloud, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Today, in many quarters, the belief in a God who calls to us – or any God at all, for that matter – is regarded with some derision. God himself is regarded as a significantly less impressive figure than the one beheld in Isaiah’s or John’s visions. A well-known writer is busily selling a provocative book called God is not great: meant to be an affront to those of us in any faith still foolish enough to proclaim that he is. The New York Times Book Review gave that book an approving review a few weeks ago and I promise you sales are not bad.
And one can see why. Fundamentalists from Lynchburg to Najaf and everywhere in between have done much, in my opinion, to give God a bad name. The inane discussion (such as it is) about creationism versus evolution fuels sound bites in all the media, and makes people of faith sound like ninnies. The internecine warfare in our own Anglican church sounds to many like just what it is: a struggle for power. Why believe in God or participate in any of God’s religions if this is where it gets you?
Meanwhile, in Sudan, the slaughter that has taken a quarter of a million lives and driven millions of others into exile goes on – just to pick one on-going horror of the moment this morning.
And if we are going to gather in church on Trinity Sunday to assert that we believe in a triune God: three persons in one Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we ought to stop and ask ourselves what it matters. About the doctrine of the Holy Trinity the church has had much to say: a lot of it confusing to most of us. Even the prescribed creed that used to be said on this day to assert the truth of the three-personed God makes it clear that God in all his persons is “incomprehensible.”
So what are we doing here?
We are talking our cue from those 19th century Anglo-Catholic Romantics, who were themselves taking cues from the fathers of the early church, who noticed how God spoke with plural personal pronouns. More importantly, they took seriously the witness of the prophets, the deep connection to the land of Abraham and Moses that they read about in Hebrew scripture. They did not turn aside from that witness when they embraced the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. And they took seriously the gift of the Holy Spirit that they read about throughout the New Testament and that they experienced in the grace of baptism: life transformed by the love of God.
Those early church fathers taught about the Trinity – God in three persons – because it was the unmistakable way they encountered God in history, in scripture and in their own lives. Yes, it all seems a bit incomprehensible, but after all it is God we are talking about here!
And we follow that lead. We stand in the midst of a cloud of God’s mystery – believing that it is a good idea (if sometimes dangerous) to enter into that cloud. We do it because we believe that in the thick obfuscation of that cloud there is not to be found an old, bearded man; nor is there an rejuvenated Jesus; there is not a swirling scirroco or a dancing flame – appealing as all these images may be.
In the midst of the cloud of mystery, there is, we expect, a voice that will shake the foundations of the thresholds that asks of us, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
And we don’t know how to answer, except in dumb silence, unless we dare to stand for a moment at least in the presence of all that awesome Presence.
And when we do, do we allow ourselves to learn from those 19th century Anglo-Catholic Romantics something about the desire to know and love and praise as much of God as we are able to know and to love and to praise? Do we want to know and love and praise, as I think they did, even the hidden parts of God (which I suspect is most of God)? Do we want to know and love and praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit precisely because this is the way God has chosen to reveal himself to us… for reasons that we must admit are often incomprehensible? Do we want to know and to love and to praise the aspects of God that we can only smell, or that we can only taste, or that we can only feel burning our eyes, stinging the backs of our throats, or tickling our noses till we sneeze?
God is great! And there is more of God beneath a cloud of smoke than we could ever claim to see.
I am not qualified to explain to you the mystery of a three-personed God. And the church has never regarded the mysteries of God in the same way as the mysteries of Agatha Christie: something to be solved. We have instead regarded the mysteries of God’s love and God’s being as clouds that beckon us to enter in, even if the foundations of the thresholds shake.
It has to be said that it goes against the grain of our modern society to leave a mystery well enough alone. It goes against the grain to create a cloud of obscuring smoke where the air is otherwise clear. And it goes against the grain to answer that awesome question the way Isaiah answered it, without so much as a clue to where he was being sent: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
What did Isaiah know except that his eyes were burning with the presence of the Lord, his ears were ringing with the sound of seraphim’s winged song, his legs were trembling as the foundations of the threshold underneath him shook... what did he know? Could he have even guessed that this was the voice of a triune God? Would it have mattered? Did he have any idea what he was saying or where he would be sent? Wasn’t he scared and humbled and full of the sense of his own inadequacies?
And didn’t he stand there before the throne of God? And didn’t he open wide as one of the seraphim flew to him with a burning coal to purify his lips? And didn’t he surprise himself when he heard a familiar voice – one that sounded like his own voice – call out to the smoky Presence without any idea what his answer meant or where it would take him: Here am I, send me?
And what do we know except that the day could come when God could call us to help make peace in the world where the is none; God could ask us to bring the gospel of hope to men and women who have no hope; God could lead us to help end the sad divisions of our squabbling church…
… and should we have the grace, to answer as Isaiah did (Here am I, send me!) may we also have the grace to say when they ask us who sent us, that we come in the Name of the true and living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Trinity Sunday, 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
Ivory-Bill Witnesses
A couple of years ago, almost to the week, the bird-watching community throughout this country was in an absolute tizzy over sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker – thought to have been extinct since 1944. But several supposed sightings in 2004 and 2005 led to such excitement that even I (who has never once had the slightest urge to watch a bird) had learned about the possibility that this elusive species might still be among us.
I did not know that scientists (if not bird-watchers) have specific terminology for classes or species of animals that disappear for a time only to reappear again later. Such creatures are referred to in paleontology as “Lazarus taxon.” Considering our context this evening I’ll spare you an explanation of the biblical reference in that term.
At the time, two years ago, I took it as a hopeful sign that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (which carries the nickname, the “Lord God bird”) might have re-emerged, since one writer had asserted that “the most common explanation given for the bird’s disappearance was that it ‘could not stand the presence of mankind or association with advancing civilization.’” The possibility that the woodpecker might have found a way to co-exist with us, despite the odds, seemed, as I say, quite hopeful.
From time to time over the last two years, it has occurred to me that I might check in on the woodpecker that captured the imagination of so many – even those of us who never think to watch a bird unless it flies directly into sight. And I am aware that in the months that have passed no definitive proof has come out that can be said to establish the bird’s existence beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Teams have been dispatched to the swamps of Florida and Arkansas. A $10,000 reward was offered for any information leading to the discovery of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker nest, roost or feeding site. Films and videotapes have been scrutinized and analyzed frame by frame. You can find people who will tell you that they are absolutely certain the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is out there somewhere. But you can also find people who will tell you, sadly, that it is gone and seems to be gone for ever.
Tonight we are not here to discuss the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. And we are not here to discuss the raising of Lazarus, who, presumably, eventually died a natural death and went, finally, to his grave. Tonight we are here remembering the stories that tell us that forty days after his miraculous resurrection from the dead, Jesus of Nazareth was lifted up on a cloud and carried into the heavens while his followers looked on.
This kind of story is hardly unique. The prophet Elijah is said to have been carried to heaven in a chariot of fire in the midst of a whirlwind. Tradition has it that the prophet Muhammad was taken up to heaven and then returned to Mecca. And our own tradition suggests that Mary’s assumption into heaven may have been a somewhat spectacular departure from this earth.
So let’s just say we take the story of Jesus’ ascension at face value. Let’s just say we believe that the apostles who gathered there that day looked up at the soles of Jesus’ feet as they got smaller and smaller, disappearing into the skies. Let’s just say it happened – what does it cost us to believe this, after all? It still leaves us with a difficult question: What now?
After all, we know that there are those who consider us Christians as nothing more than glorified bird-watchers, waiting for the return of a very odd bird who was last seen riding a cloud to heaven.
And we know that there have been expeditions launched, holy sites analyzed, and even rewards offered for some kind of evidence – any evidence would do – to prove or disprove the claims that this Jesus, who was taken up into heaven, is the Son of God and that in him lies the hope and salvation of the whole world.
And you can find people who will tell you that they are absolutely certain that Jesus is reigning from his throne in heaven and at work in the world by the power of his spirit. And you can find those who will tell you, gladly, that he is gone for ever. (And don’t think that they buy this story about him being taken to heaven on a cloud. See Elijah, Muhammad, and Mary as a rationale for their skepticism.)
If you are going to believe what we say about Jesus tonight; if you are going to believe that he was killed on the Cross and rose from the dead; if you are going to believe that he walked and talked and ate with his disciples during the forty days that followed; if you are going to believe that he was carried on a cloud up into heaven where now he sits at the right hand of God… if you are going to believe any of this, you are going to believe it by faith.
And faith is a gift. Faith is not proof positive. Faith is not a videotape. Faith often looks as though it does not hold up under scrutiny and analysis. You would not want to believe in the continuing existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker just on faith.
But we are not talking about a woodpecker here. We are not talking about some species of creature that might have dropped out of sight for a couple of thousand years.
Tonight we are talking about the Lord of Life, the Prince of Peace, the Son of God.
Where has he gone? What are we to do? What now?
The Eleven – those crucial disciples who were left standing there – must have asked the same questions among themselves. And what did they do? They remembered his instructions: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” And they did the oddest thing: they did what Jesus had told them to do. Saint Mark, the patron saint of this parish, tells us that “they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.”
They preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them!
The answer to their questions came as they did what Jesus had instructed – and what so few of us Christians can bring ourselves to do anymore. “Go!” he said to them. “Get out of here! Keep it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving! Go!”
And so we hear of Saint Paul’s journeys and Saint Peter’s. We hear that James went to Spain and Thomas to the subcontinent. They went and they preached… while the Lord worked with them!
And they did it by faith – that gift that had been given to them. They did it, I suspect, because what else were they going to do? Sit around a talk about it? You can’t even find a woodpecker by just sitting around and talking about it.
They preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them.
Now you may be sitting there telling yourself that this passage has nothing to do with you since you have no intention of preaching to anyone – in fact you probably find the whole idea distasteful. But I want to suggest that the most important word of Jesus’ instructions is the first word: Go!
You may not think you are called to preach the gospel: not in your church, not on a street corner, and not to the whole creation. You may not think you have much to say. You may not think you know much about the Bible or about Jesus. You may not think you are a preacher. And you may be right. But no matter who you are, you can do what Jesus says if you can get up and GO!
In giving this simple command, Jesus created a missionary church. He did not say, Wait here until people find you. He did not say, Hang a sign outside that lets people know they can come in. He said, Go!
And his apostles – who had trouble knowing how to answer their questions (Where has he gone? What are we to do? What now?) could at least do that: they could go!
And you and I can too! And even if we don’t think we are preachers, we can always do as St. Francis, that wise saint, suggested: Preach the gospel everyewhere; use words if you must.
Which means that your life and mine can be a witness to the world of the way the Lord works with us even now. Our prayers and our praise to God, our care for one another, our generosity to those in need, our commitment to the poor, our readiness to visit the sick and those in prison, our willingness to struggle for justice – especially with those to whom it is denied, our responsible stewardship of the good earth that we have been given, our openness to those who disagree with us, our readiness to welcome the stranger in our midst, our conviction that decent medical care ought not to be a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthy, our readiness to sit by the dying as witnesses to holy death and then to be patient and supportive of those who grieve... all of these can be eloquent sermons declaring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. And we can preach most of them without ever opening our mouths.
And these are the signs that the Lord is working with us even now!
My friends, none of this is proof. Capture every moment of it on film and watch it frame by frame and you will never see the mystical image of Jesus flash in front of you like some exposed subliminal advertising.
All we have is faith – that gift that compels us to go, and to keep on going, confident that as we go the Lord is working with us. For many, faith is not enough – not even enough to convince them of a woodpecker’s existence.
But, of course, we are not looking for a woodpecker – Ivory-billed or otherwise. We are looking for the kingdom of heaven, where the ascended Jesus already sits at the right hand of God. And we know that there is nothing to be proved, and only one way to find that kingdom: it is to go and preach everywhere (using words if we must), while the Lord works with us to do what ever he will.
It is my honor and privilege and my joy to have been called here to work with you in the building up of God’s kingdom. And it is my sincere prayer that God will always make us ready to go wherever he calls us, as compelling witnesses not only of his love, but of the plain truth that it is the Lord who works with us day by day, and who makes all things possible!
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is nicknamed the Lord God bird because it is a bird of such distinctive beauty and grace that on seeing it, people are said to have exclaimed that tiny creed: Lord God!
Although I doubt that the mere sight of a woodpecker could make a believer out of anyone, I know that if we will go wherever God calls us, with the Lord working with us, people will see in us the evidence of god’s beauty and God’s grace. And if they do there is no telling what will happen in people’s lives when they get a look, and see what the Lord God has done with us!
Preached by Fr. Sean E. Mullen
The Feast of the Ascension: 17 May 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia
The Gift of Peace
For 72 years, from 1682 till 1754, at the insistence of the Quakers, the colony of Pennsylvania maintained no militia. Despite repeated calls to establish some armed body, the Quaker pacifists held to the principle. By 1747 this unrelenting pacifism, in the face of war between Britain, France and Spain, had driven Ben Franklin to publish a call to arms: the pamphlet, “Plain Truth.” That same year he established the League for the Defense of the City and Province, with some 10,000 men responding to his plea.
In 1755, after repeated failed legislative attempts to fund a militia, Franklin persuaded the Pennsylvania Assembly to borrow the money required for militia supplies. Dogged insistence on peace did not jibe with Franklin’s famous pragmatism. There is, however, something somehow ennobling about being a part of a society that once tried a serious experiment in peaceful living – no matter how many times removed we are from the distant cousins who tried (however vainly) to enforce the peace.
Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”
Franklin, I think, might have understood part of what we hear Jesus saying today: “not as the world gives do I give to you.” The world does not give us peace; Franklin knew that well. And in the absence of evidence of peace in the world, it is not entirely clear what became of the gift of peace that Jesus said he was giving to his disciples.
Biblical scholars tell us that we are prone to over-simplify what Jesus was talking about. His gift of peace is not, some say, meant to imply the end of warfare, not the banishment of gunshots from our streets or our schools, not the quelling of domestic violence in our homes. No, his peace, we are told, passes all understanding. It is more than an end to our foolish destruction of one another. It is the peace of salvation, the peace of communion with God. It is the establishment of his kingdom: the vision of the city that we hear about in the Revelation to Saint John: the new Jerusalem that needs no sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its lamp; where the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God, through the middle of the street of the city. And anyone who wishes may take the water as a gift.
In the face of this vision of peace, the mere cessation of warfare, we are told, is an entirely inadequate understanding of God’s peace – a lesser peace, to be sure, but we have settled for it. And on reflection it does seem cheap to think we have achieved peace when we manage to bring a war to its conclusion. This is a bit like thinking that all is well in the house when Mom and Dad have stopped fighting – but even a child knows that this is not true, and chances are the shouting will begin again soon.
So then, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, is more than a moment of relative calm, more than a treaty signed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, more than the assurance that our kids are safe in school. But would it be so wrong to try to establish this lesser peace in Christ’s name – to claim a beachhead for Christ, planting his peaceful flag over the landscape here and there where we decide we are not willing to tear one another apart?
The gift of peace that Jesus bequeaths to his disciples is a gift that they never asked for. And like them, we often have a hard time dealing with gifts we never asked for. I know someone who keeps such gifts in a closet, waiting for an opportunity to re-gift them. We all know what it is like to receive a tie that we will never tie, socks that will never see our feet, tchotchkes that will never be displayed, etc., etc. What do we do with gifts we never asked for?
We have a hard enough time dealing with the one commandment Jesus gave: to love one another as he loved his disciples. Somehow the Ten Commandments seemed like enough – at least they were enforceable – we didn’t ask for one more! And now we are faced with this un-asked-for gift of peace. Which sounds like a gift that belongs in the it’s-the-thought-that-counts category.
Jesus offers us the gift of his peace. And like any gift we never asked for, we are not sure we want it. He offers us the gift of peace: inviting us to be partners in building the city of God as we build up his kingdom. He offers us a vision of a city of peace when all we wanted was a bigger house or at least a condo. He offers us the gift of peace, and we would have settled for central air conditioning. He offers us the gift of peace when all we wanted was to have our nails done. He offers the gift of peace and we are not sure we want it. And if we, his latter-day disciples, are the inheritors of the gift of peace (which in many ways we never asked for either) what are we to do with this gift that we can hardly even define?
Like Ben Franklin, we have generally esteemed the gift of peace to be impractical – even the lesser peace that only brings an end to fighting. We have, after all, the means to wage astonishing warfare – means that are sometimes effective, it must be said, at maintaining a certain kind of peace. But do we – even those of us who claim to be Jesus’ disciples – do we really think a peace that passes all understanding is something we would enjoy? Is the gift of peace something we could even hope for?
The Quakers held fast to the hope for peace, and they had the will for it – still do - even if they lacked the means for it – which is perhaps as close to receiving the gift as we can get. Was their refusal to arm themselves a kind of sacramental act: an outward and visible sign of some inward corporate grace? A symbol of the city they knew God has already built in his divine mind and which they believe God means for us all, finally, to dwell in?
And although as a society (and a city) we have much for which to be grateful to Franklin, perhaps as a parish community of Christian disciples we should be less grateful for this one aspect of his pragmatic legacy: that his quite practical point of view prevailed. Perhaps we should be more eager than he was to learn how the desire for peace – even a lesser peace than that peace which passes all understanding – can be stronger than our feeble means to achieve it.
Can we hear Jesus when he tells us, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”? He knows that the gift of peace is one for which we are not prepared and that we are not sure we want it. He knows that we are unpracticed even at keeping a lesser peace. Be not afraid. He will supply the means for peace. He alone can establish peace within the walls of the new Jerusalem.
The royal charter that William Penn received in 1681 from Charles II granted to him the powers of “Captain General” of whatever army he might raise, and authorized him to "levy, muster and traine all sorts of men, of any condition soever, . . . to make Warre." This gift of the king’s was entirely practical, and almost certainly necessary.
But for 72 years the desire for a certain kind of peace prevailed in Penn’s colony, in what seemed, even at the time, an unlikely zeal for another kind of gift: the gift of peace, quite superior to that gift which had been given to Penn by Charles II.
And maybe that is the crucial thing to learn about the gift of peace that Jesus gave - that peace which passes our understanding, that we have not fully known, cannot even describe – to want this impractical gift more than to not want it. Maybe the challenge is not to understand it but just to want it, so that our feeble capacity for peace might surpass our stunning ability to “make Warre,” as it did here, for a season, in William Penn’s colony, where again today, the gift of peace is ours, if we want it.
Preached by the Rev. Sean E. Mullen
13 May 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia