The English rock band Radiohead, having grown tired of the “decaying business model” of record labels that produce and distribute recordings, recently decided to produce and distribute their own album, cutting out the label altogether.
There are two ways to obtain their latest work, which is titled “In Rainbows,” both of which must be accomplished on the band’s website. You can order a “discbox” comprising two discs, two vinyl albums, and a booklet for £40 (around $82); this will be shipped to you on or before December 3rd. Or, you can order a digital download that includes most (but not all) of the songs from the discbox, in a slightly lower fidelity of recording.
If you choose to order the digital download, a few clicks of the mouse on your computer eventually takes you to the checkout page. On that page, where the price should be there are just blank spaces to be filled in by you, the consumer. A question-mark stands helpfully beside these blank spaces. Click on the question-mark, and the following message appears: “It’s up to you.” Since you are now a little confused, there is another question mark immediately below that one. Click on the second question mark, and you are reassured: “No really, it’s up to you.”
A writer in the New York Times recently reported that when he bought the download he paid absolutely nothing for it, which is, by some accounts, what about a third of the first million or so of Radiohead’s downloading fans have done. Some others have paid as much as $20. The average price seems to be about $8. But you can, of course, get it for free.
Jonny Greenwood, one of the band members said of this experiment, “It’s fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, that’s just an interesting question to ask people.”
It has been some time since any of our Sunday readings mentioned money, and certainly it’s been some time since the topic was raised from this pulpit. I was so relieved to find Zacchaeus bring the subject up in today’s Gospel reading. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and Saint Luke tells us he was rich. For whatever reasons, he was eager to meet Jesus. One suspects he did not know what was in store for him. Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house.
What happened inside that house we don’t know. Did Zacchaeus break down and confess his sins? Did he decide he needed to assuage some guilt? Did he receive an anointing of the Holy Spirit? Have a vision? Did Jesus tell him a secret? Twist his arm? Or did Jesus just “make the ask,” as they say these days?
Whatever it was, by the time Jesus was done with him, Zacchaeus was proudly announcing that he was giving half his fortune away to the poor. Half of everything he had! That Jesus sure does know how to make the ask! Whatever it was that happened to Zacchaeus, we know what it was worth to him: half of what he had… which is no small number for a rich guy.
So, now, here we are. In a week’s time each and every one of us (and a number of us who aren’t here today) will be given a card with some blank spaces on them, where numbers are meant to go: indications of your financial support for the work of the Gospel in this church.
And there are a lot of different ways we could phrase the question to try to help one another choose the numbers we are going to put there. It could be interesting to ask, like Radiohead, what the music’s worth. It would be interesting to think about what these buildings are worth, or the gardens; what a Bible Study session is worth, or a morning at the Soup Bowl. It could be interesting to try to calculate what the friendship and love of a community like this is worth, or what a prayer is worth, or a sermon.
And it might be interesting to try to calculate what it’s worth to be in the presence of the living Christ, who joins us here whenever we gather in his Name. It might be interesting to figure what it’s worth – whatever it is that happens when you are alone with Jesus, when you feel his presence in your life, when you rely on his love, his strength, his mercy, his friendship. Do we even know what it is that happens to one another when we are inside this house with Jesus? And could we ever say, really what it’s worth? Half of everything I have?
It is one of the most remarkable aspects of our relationship with Jesus: though he has given us everything we have, and though he gave his life for us, he never really makes “the ask.” Because we can, of course, have everything from Jesus for free.
If this parish really is what we try to be: a place where Jesus’ love is made known in his blessed Sacraments, and in and through one another, then it seems fair to phrase the question this way: What is the love of Jesus worth to us? What’s it worth?
And isn’t it amazing that in the face of such a complicated and multi-faceted question – that surely means something different to each and every one of us – the answer is so simple:
It’s up to you.
No really. It’s up to you.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 November 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
The Shaking of the Nations
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while… and I will shake all nations. (Haggai 2:6-7)
Late in the 6th century, BC, the Persian king Cyrus allowed exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem to begin to rebuild the temple: the center of Jewish faith and religion that had been destroyed earlier that century. Cyrus had defeated the Babylonians, who had driven the Jews out of their homeland. And the prophet Haggai did much to enable the building project on the return to Jerusalem. He proclaimed that “the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,” which is another way of saying that when it comes to the greatness of God, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Throughout the ages the nations had surely been shaken. The rise of Persian rule came only at the conquest of a powerful Babylonian empire. And the shaking of the nations would continue for centuries as Alexander the Great brought Greek hegemony to the region, eventually to be followed Roman rule in Jesus’ day.
But all that shaking of the nations was the doing of kings and princes, armies and soldiers. We could debate what, if anything God had to do with it.
When his own chosen and beloved children were brought home, however, God promised, through his prophet, to shake all nations: not to establish a new world order, but to build and furnish his own temple, so that “the treasures of all nations shall come in;” to make sure that people knew that “the silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.” It is a divine shakedown with a singular purpose: that God might be glorified.
The temple was, in fact, rebuilt under Cyrus’ rule, though perhaps not with quite the lavishness that Haggai predicted. Nevertheless, it stood as the center of Jewish faith for 500 years.
In our own day, we are witnesses to the nations literally shaking all around us. Many of you in the Troop can attest to this personally from your service in Bosnia and Iraq. You know, better than I, what it means – on the ground – when the nations are shaken.
And once again, as you know well, this shaking of the nations comes at the hands of princes and kings, and presidents, of terrorists, militias, and armies. Does it matter what the cause of the shaking of the nations is, when you are shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and you can only pray for it to stop?
Next month, you’ll begin your training for your deployment on the Sinai Peninsula. Your job, as I understand it, is related directly to the shaking of the nations: to preserve and ensure the peace between Egypt and Israel: a watchful presence in a tremulous region prone to quakes that are begun on the ground not by seismic movement but by princes, kings, presidents, armies, militias and terrorists. There are enough of all of them to go around, are there not?
But you will be there on the Sinai Peninsula to guard the peace in a shaky region. Your mission is part and parcel of a project to prevent the shaking of the nations by princes, kings, presidents, armies, terrorists and militias. Because only God has the right to shake all nations, and God only does so for the sake of his own glory: so that the latter splendor of his house should be greater than the former.
And though you may never place a stone on a stone, though you may never, in the course of your duty, carry a brick from here to there, though you may never wield a hammer or a saw, in your watchful mission you are given the opportunity to be builders, with God, of a lasting peace.
The history of the ages has been a history of mankind’s ever increasing power, and the ages of man are marked by the material we use for our tools and our weapons, as we have gotten more and more adept at shaking the nations around us.
But the shaking of the nations is, in fact, the prerogative of God, which he undertakes for his own glory, because the silver is his and the gold is his, indeed so is the water, the iron ore, the dirt of the hillsides and the sheep that graze there. He made the olive trees and the sandy beaches, the shade comes from palm trees that are his, and the dates get their sweetness from his sublime sweetness. The salt and the spices are his. Fire was first lit by his hand. Cotton and aloe, cactus and fruit trees are all his. Even the oil is his.
As you prepare to stand on the threshold of the Holy Land, which is shaky ground, may you do so with God’s blessing. May you ever remember that all things come from the hand of the God who made you, who loves you, who guides and protects you. And may your mission be one of the lasting stones that build up a temple of God’s peace in the world, to finally bring an end to all this shaking!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
At Evensong for the Blessing of the First City Troop
28 October 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
Sub-Prime
As I understand it, the financial crisis brought about by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage business is the result of lending institutions giving loans to borrowers who were not really qualified for them: that is, “sub-prime” borrowers. People with bad credit histories are more likely to fail to make their mortgage payments.
And, if I have this right, mortgages these days are sold in bundles, like baseball cards used to be, to collectors, or, rather, to investment banks. And interest rates climbed. And, as far as I can tell, when shareholders of investment banks began to realize that they held investments that comprised a lot of mortgages that may not get paid, this made them nervous. And the walls, as they say, come tumbling down.
And it all started because lenders made risky loans to people who were not really going to be able to afford them: sub-prime lending to sub-prime borrowers.
Because our lives so often seem to be governed by economics, we tend to think of God in economic terms, to imagine that his is the invisible hand that guides all the various markets of our lives. Without realizing it, we can fall into the habit of thinking of God as some great, big, mysterious economic force out in the universe, like Warren Buffet or China (both almost as mysterious and unknown to us as God).
But in God’s case, he handles more than just money. He deals in what the Scriptures used to call “weal and woe,” he deals with forest fires and hurricanes, with sickness and health, with husbands, wives and lovers, God manages the economy of life and death. He is the great central banker in the sky. Or so it is easy for us to conceive of him.
That is how the children of Israel are thinking about God, when we hear the prophet Jeremiah portray them pleading to him for rain to bring end to a drought, as we did in the first reading this morning. “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Art thou not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on thee, for thou doest all these things.” Their pleading amounts to their loan application. They are deeply concerned that they are sub-prime borrowers. And they are right. They have defaulted on the gifts of God’s grace before, and they will do it again.
And when we get to the Gospel passage this morning, we also encounter an unusual kind of economy. A Pharisee, who has been meticulous in his observance of the Jewish law, is offering his prayer to God. He knows that his credit is good. He approaches God confident in his own grade-A, prime righteousness. He is grateful not only for his own sake, but by contrast (as he looks around) to the unsavory tax-collector he sees nearby. For the tax-collector, as anyone could see, is sub-prime: his credit is bad, he does not keep the law fastidiously, his righteousness is beneath questionable. We need not wonder how the invisible hand of an economic God would distribute justification. The Pharisee is on solid ground here.
But, as is often the case, Jesus sees things differently. The tax-collector, Jesus tells us, will not even lift up his eyes to heaven – Jesus tells us it’s not for shame, but out of humility. The tax-collector beats his breast and prays, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
God, be merciful to me a sinner. Sub-prime. Bad credit. Not worth the risk. That’s our tax-collector. He sees himself in much the same way the Pharisee sees him: sub-prime.
And a God who cared anything at all about economics wouldn’t take the risk. A God whose invisible hand awarded weal and woe on the basis of merit – from some kind of spiritual credit rating – would know just what to do with a sinner like this. A systematic God, who knew at least as much as your average Wharton graduate, would pay out predictable dividends to these two men who stand praying in the temple.
But the living God, who made the whole universe, does not manage his creation with skills honed in business school. God embraces the sinner. The Son of God seeks out those in need, the weak and the faltering. He exalts the humble and meek. He fills the hungry. The first will be last. And the dead shall be raised to new life. The economics of God operate more like sub-prime lending: God shows a preference for those who have less, whose credit is poor; he embraces the doubtful, the wretched, the lost, the sick, the struggling, the outcast, the notorious sinner.
The Pharisee knew well the economy of the law. He was right – on his own terms – to be pleased with himself. But Jesus teaches us over and over again that God is not like us. And on God’s terms there are good investments to be found among the sub-prime: in those of us who at best can beat our breast and plead for mercy.
To many people – especially to those who are well pleased with themselves – this divine economy sounds like at least as bad an idea as sub-prime mortgage lending. To this way of thinking, God is a domineering master who delights in the groveling of his servants. And I suppose to the self-satisfied it is very hard to hear good news in this Gospel.
But to those who look into their own lives and see shortcomings, disappointment, failures, missed opportunities, unhappy relationships, and a world that is in a shambles at the hands of the self-satisfied; to those who have looked inside their own selves and seen the promise of God’s likeness graven on our souls, but come to the painful conclusion that we have failed to shape our lives by that godly image; to us it is good news indeed that God sees hope where we would give up, that God never labels anyone sub-prime, and that for the humble, there is a promise of exaltation.
Sadly, there is great confusion in the church today about all this. Too many church leaders are perfectly prepared to look around at others – especially at women and at gay and lesbian people – and say to God, “ I thank thee that I am not like those others.” On their own terms – terms tied to what I would call a narrow, misguided, and legalistic reading of Scripture – they are satisfied with their righteousness.
But the Scriptures are not printed in columns because they are meant to represent the ledger-book of an economically rationalist God. And Saint Luke specifically tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.”
Here in this place, we have been bundled together by God’s grace. He has much invested in us, who have been made in his own image. And God doesn’t call us to be self-satisfied. God isn’t bothered by all that we see in ourselves or one another that looks sub-prime. God doesn’t manage his creation like an investment bank.
God hears us when we pray; he knows that we are sinners, who rely upon his mercy. He knows that our application is weak, our credit is bad, that the risk in giving anything at all to us is steep. And he loves us anyway. And he exalts the humble and meek!
And what can we say in the face of this wondrous economy of God’s but to pray: God, be merciful to us sinners, be merciful to us sinners.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
28 October 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia