I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us…. For in this hope we were saved. (Rom 8:18, 24)
It probably never occurred to Saint Paul that we would be reading his letters 2000 years after he wrote them. Those letters are full of evidence that Paul believed that the world was headed for a fateful moment in history when God’s purposes would be fulfilled and his glory would inhabit the earth and his kingdom would be established: the eager longing of creation would be realized. This he expected sooner rather than later.
Not so the animators and story-tellers at Disney studios. The recent animated film WALL-E imagines what will have become of us and the rest of creation 700 years from now. The earth is literally a wasteland, overwhelmed by the mountains of rubbish generated by a consumer society gone out of control.
Having rendered the planet uninhabitable, humans have evacuated to become refugees in space, living on luxury liner space ships where a single corporation, Buy-N-Large, relentlessly markets the next available meal. In the description of one film critic, humans have become “ a flabby mass of pea-brained idiots who are literally too fat to walk.”
Back on earth, it appears that the creation long ago ceased its groaning toward a promised blessing. A single robot remains functioning: WALL-E is its acronym-ed name. He is one of an army of obsolete robots who piled the trash into mountains. All alone except for a cockroach he has befriended, WALL-E continues daily in his futile work.
Over the centuries WALL-E has become a collector of things that particularly interest him. (This is a Disney movie, after all, so the robot has to be lovable.) And one day he discovers something he has never before come across: a little green shoot with four or five leaves that has inexplicably sprouted amongst the mountains of waste. This plant becomes a part of WALL-E’s collection of interesting things.
It turns out that probes have been sent from the space ship to search for just such signs of life on earth, in the now-faded hope that some day the planet would be inhabitable again. WALL-E falls head-over-heels for the sexy probe he encounters, and (this being Disney) romance ensues. When the probe (whose acronym spells her name, EVE) discovers the plant in WALL-E’s collections, their relationship is threatened as she succumbs to her hard-wired directive to return the plant to the space ship for verification, romance be damned.
Back on the ship it becomes clear that the desire to return to earth was long ago obviated by the convenience of being fed by a corporation that knows what you want and can keep you distracted while it feeds you. The plant, and the possibility that earth may once again be habitable, is not such a welcome development. And so the story of WALL-E and EVE’s romance becomes intertwined with the question of whether or not the obese humans will overcome their dependence on Buy-N-Large and actually return to earth.
Despite the romancing robots, as Disney films go, this one has a strange air of plausibility. It is a caricature that makes features of ourselves, our habits, and our impact on this planet easily recognizable. The implicit criticisms are only tolerable because it is only a cartoon, after all, and WALL-E and EVE are awfully cute together.
To put a biblical gloss on the story, you might say that the humans have managed to elude the fate they deserve for their selfish piggy-ness. Rather than face the kind of judgment we hear Jesus describe in the parable of the weeds in the field, where some end up thrown into the furnace of fire, the humans have simply decamped to outer space: fat and happy. But in escaping their fate, they have left behind hope, and can now look forward to nothing more than their next meal.
And as a symbol of hope, the little sprout of a plant is a useful image. Like so much hope, it is something that was long ago given up on, forgotten by many. So effectively have the humans adjusted to their new lives, in fact, that the promise of hope seems even unwelcome now. Who needs it? And since it threatens to interfere with the corporate culture (and profits) powerful forces are at work to destroy it once it appears on the scene.
In our own day the idea of Christian hope is often reduced to a cartoonish caricature of wishful thinking. Belief in a God who promises to establish a kingdom where justice and peace prevail is on a par with the belief that God will help you find a parking space if you only ask him nicely enough. These are both acts of wishful thinking of a quite deluded sort, the current thinking goes.
But here are the facts. We are, in fact, covering our planet with mountains of trash, at the same time as we are poisoning the atmosphere, exhausting natural resources, exterminating entire species, and ruining entire eco-systems. We have even left so much litter in outer space already that you have to be careful where you fly when you head for the stars.
The more sports clubs and gyms we build, the less healthy we seem to be. The more nutritional information we print on our food packaging, the fatter we get.
We are quite happy to submit to the guidance of corporate America as long as it gives us what we want super-sized and super-cheap. We will even provide tax breaks to such a corporation so that it can undermine local businesses and treat its own employees miserably.
We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on entertainment to keep ourselves distracted while we wage wars in other places.
These sad realities are not biblical judgments of us and our society, they are the results of our own selfish piggy-ness. And they help us to forget about hope.
But this is Christian hope: that somewhere in the trash heaps of our lives there is a small green shoot struggling to survive. That among the landfills of plastic bags, and tires, and old cell phones a little sprout lives. That from the pile of ashes that is to be our mortal remains, there is new life to be born. That God has already begun building a kingdom where justice and peace will prevail.
Most of us have become refugees of hope. We have assumed that hope is really only wishful thinking, and we have booked our tickets for a cruise with Buy-N-Large, because if we can’t have hope, at least we can eat whatever we want and keep ourselves distracted. And why worry ourselves about hope when even the church herself is such an inept guardian of it? Better to glide through the heavens in luxuriant obesity, satisfied that we were at least smart enough to get out while the getting was good.
At the end of the Disney film, a decisive struggle takes place between the flabby, weak-willed captain of the space ship and its corporately programmed auto-pilot over whether or not to return to earth. Will the complacent captain awaken to his own humanity? Will the corporate plan override latent hope? Will the plant survive to bring forth seed and propagate new life in a world of trash?
WALL-E the robot has managed to protect the plant. And as the captain and the auto-pilot fight each other on the bridge, the space ship lists to one side, endangering the humans and their chubby children. As the opportunity to return to earth seems to be slipping out of reach, it is WALL-E – who has seemed more human than the humans, and who therefore knows what it is like to be desperately in love with EVE – it is WALL-E who sacrifices himself – crushed beneath the machinery of the space ship during the conflict – to save the day. His sacrifice clinches the victory for the captain and the humans, and ensures their return to their rightful home.
And of course, it is only a cartoon. But I believe it is based on a true story; that something green still grows where we would have left behind only wasteland; that there is one who saves us, even when it seems we are beyond being saved; that God has someplace for us to go in this life he has given us.
Was WALL-E’s demise really his end? Is his small carcass, too, headed for the scrap heap? I won’t ruin the end of the story for you. Except to say that I believe it is based on a true story.
There is a green shoot of hope in the world, sprouting several leaves. And it is more than wishful thinking; it is hope. And in this hope, we were saved.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
20 July 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
Learning to Fetch
For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Is 55:10-11)
Although you wouldn’t think so to look at him today with a tennis ball or a stick, my dog Baxter needed to be taught to fetch when he was a puppy, as most puppies do. Since he is a retriever his instruction was meant to unlock the instincts that have already been bred into him. And today he is liable to bring me a found tennis ball or a stick in Rittenhouse Square and ask me to throw it for him so he can fetch it. But when he was just a puppy he had to be encouraged to chase after a ball – to “go get it!” – and then to bring it back, where he received a reward for his success.
These days I can throw a stick or a ball for him that lands somewhere he cannot see it; I can tell Baxter to “go find the stick,” or “go find the ball” and he will put his eyes and his nose and all his retriever instincts to work and eventually find it and bring it back to me. To borrow the phrase from the prophet: the word that goes forth from my mouth does not return to me empty, but it accomplishes that which I purposed, and it prospers in that for which I sent it.
The prophet imagines that God’s word is as effective in accomplishing God’s purposes as Baxter is at fetching a ball. As effective as the rain and snow providing water for seeds to grow. The surety of God’s purposes is as plain a fact to the prophet as is the effect of a healthy rain on the tomato plants in a garden: they accomplish that for which they were purposed; they prosper in that for which they are sent.
Of course, while Baxter is a very good retriever, and responds well when told to “go get the ball,” he is not always as responsive to other commands. “Come here, Baxter,” gets mixed results. “Don’t jump up on her, Baxter,” is not foolproof. “Don’t eat that, Baxter,” falls on completely deaf ears. The words that go forth from my mouth do not always accomplish that which I purpose, nor do they always prosper in that for which I send them.
It is by no means plain to much of the world, that God’s word is especially effective. In fact, it is by no means plain to much of the world that what you and I might call “God’s word” means anything at all.
The church is a proving ground for the confidence of the prophet – where his prophecy is put to the test. It is the community in which we discover whether or not God’s word is, in fact, to accomplish that which God purposes. And you and I and every Christian person are crucial to the outcome. It is here, in the church, that God begins to unlock in us the power of his own image, in which we were made; encouraging us to learn to be the kind of people he made us to be, to do the kinds of things he made us to do, to build the kind of society he made us to build, ushering in the kingdom of heaven. It is here in the Church that God teaches puppies how to fetch, if you will.
The parable of the sower, which Jesus tells in the reading from Matthew’s Gospel this morning, is his way of describing to his disciples (and to us) what is expected of them (and of us). It is a way of encouraging them (and us) to learn to “go get the ball,” as it were. This parable about seeds which either do or do not yield grain is a way of drawing a picture of the prophecy of Isaiah: “so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it will accomplish that which I purpose.”
Of course, in telling the disciples this parable, Jesus is telling them what a crucial role they play in the fulfilling of God’s word. God’s word will accomplish that which he purposes if they will let it grow in their hearts and unlock the instincts of love and mercy that God planted in our hearts when he first created us and saw that we were good. But it is possible that God’s word will find in them (and in us) only hard, rocky, or thorny ground where the seeds of his love and mercy will not grow.
And so the question the parable poses to us is this: Do we believe that we hear in it, God encouraging each and every one of us to “go get the ball”? Do we find that God is encouraging us to do something about his word? Do we believe that we might have something specific to do in the fulfilling of God’s word?
There are a thousand different ways to respond to this parable. I see people accomplishing that which God purposes every week when they deliver soup they have made to our Saturday Soup Bowl, or when they show up early Saturday mornings to serve that soup or wash the dishes.
It happened here during Vacation Bible School when a corps of volunteers from this parish led a group of more than twenty kids in a week of growing and learning.
It happened when our mission team set up a free medical clinic for a week in Honduras.
Some of you respond to God’s encouragement by your commitment to prayer and worship in the church throughout the week, coming to daily mass or joining in morning or evening prayer, or through your participation in weekly Bible study.
Several people here are helping to accomplish that which God purposes (I hope!) by volunteering in the office, or with another church agency.
I am hoping that we will develop a wonderful new field in which to accomplish the purposes of God by adopting Saint James the Less as a mission of this parish.
And of course there are many of you who have ways of accomplishing that which God purposes about which I will never know, through your care for others, or through your commitment to social justice, or your efforts to care for our planet.
It is not actually hard to find ways to be a part of the fulfilling of God’s word, if we believe that God has really called us to this challenge. But how will the world know of the power of God’s word if we don’t let it grow in our hearts, in our lives?
In telling his parable, Jesus is also reminding his followers, and us, that we have a choice. We do not have to do what he says, we do not have to go where he calls, we do not have to learn to go get the ball. We are free to do as we like and to disregard God’s word entirely. But what seeds will die on the hard, or rocky, or thorny ground of our lives if we make that choice?
It is often said of the men that Jesus gathered as his disciples that they were not an especially astute, brainy, or clever bunch. (These are not characteristics shared by the women who followed Jesus, however, who were altogether more sensible!) One evidence of the thick-headedness of the disciples is their need to have a parable like the one we read today explained to them. Can they really be so slow? Do they really fail to see that Jesus is showing them that the kingdom of God will grow in their hearts and be built with their hands if they will let it, if they are willing to learn to go get the ball?
And what about us? Where do we think the kingdom of God has been planted if not in our hearts? How do we think the kingdom of God will be built if not with our hands? Can we really be so slow? Do we really have to have the parable explained to us, too? Or do we believe already that God’s word shall not return to him empty, but it shall accomplish that which he purposed, and prosper in the thing for which he sent it? Which is really another way of asking if we are ready to go get the ball, and receive our reward.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
13 July 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
How will he know us?
Not long ago I was traveling out of town for a wedding at which I was to preach, in Williamsburg, where I went to college. I was staying in a hotel that happened to have a lovely, sunny courtyard where I pulled up a chair and reviewed the notes for my sermon and did some reading. As I sat there, I realized that there was a familiar face at a table on the other side of the courtyard. I was certain I knew the face but it took me a while to attach it to a name. But it was not someone I had known in college, so although the face matched perfectly the forensic files in my brain, something didn’t make sense. This was a high school teacher from Connecticut (wasn’t it?). What was he doing at a hotel in Virginia? And how could I be sure that my visual file and name file were properly matched?
I sat there in the sunny courtyard, now only pretending to read, glancing over the top of my book, as I tested the theory over and over in my head. Is it him? It can’t be him. It sure looks like him. What would he be doing here? Shouldn’t he look older than he does? Am I in the right town?
Eventually – and I mean after, like, an hour, not just a few minutes – I decided to take the risk. I rose from my seat and strode over to him – all casual confidence. “Aren’t you Bob So-and-so?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “aren’t you Sean Mullen?” And by golly, I was! “You look just the way I remember you,” he said. (Apparently I wasn’t thin in high school either.)
“So do you,” said I. (And he had always been thin.)
Since that chance encounter I have seen photos from a high school reunion that I couldn’t attend, and while they were not all photos of my classmates, I can tell you I didn’t see a single face that I recognized, and I’m sure there must have been at least one or two from my vintage – I know there were!
How will I know you when I see you, down the line? How will you know me when you see me, many years hence? What if I have lost weight? What if you have!?! Will you know me, years from now if our paths should part and then cross again? Will I know you? In a subtle way this is the question that Jesus is planting in the minds of his disciples during the tenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel that we have been reading for the past few weeks. How will you know me many years hence? How will I know you? Will my Father in heaven, who has been watching us work and talk and eat together, recognize you as one of my old friends? You will be different, for sure. You will be heavier, greyer, bald-er. Maybe you will be unrecognizable at the gates of heaven. Maybe Jesus will be different too – maybe he will have shaved his beard, and finally cut his hair. How will he know us when we come to him? How will we know him?
I think the reason Jesus plants the seed of this question in the minds of his disciples is because he wants them to start practicing what they will look like when they get to heaven before they get there. How will we know one another when the time comes, and everything is different, and it’s very, very important that we are recognizable to the one who knows even the number of hairs on our heads? How will we know him; and how will he know us?
We have to practice what we will look like when we get to the gates of heaven. In a way, that’s what the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is all about. We have been hearing parts of it for the past few weeks as Jesus gives instructions to his disciples for their missionary work. “Take no gold, nor copper… no bag for your journey, … nor sandals… Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves…. He who finds his life will lose it…. He who receives you receives me.” We can think of these as ways of practicing what they will look like when they get to heaven.
Because it changes you if you travel around doing God’s work with no money, no bag, no sandals. It changes you if you are willing to be a sheep in the midst of wolves and not put on a wolf’s clothing. It changes you if you are willing to lose your life for Jesus’ sake. It changes you if you greet everyone as though they might be the Christ in disguise. What would we look like if we lived this way; if we practiced what we will look like when we get to heaven?
Of course, this is not a question of standing in front of a mirror, or of ordering the right clothes from a catalog, or of finding bargains on line. It is a question of hearing Jesus’ call to carry out his mission in the world: this is how he tells his disciples to practice what they will look like when they find him beside the Father’s throne. And carrying out Christ’s mission is also the way we can practice what we will look like, if we want to be easily recognizable, when we find ourselves reviewing our performance evaluations with St. Peter beside us.
For several years I have been dreaming of a way to practice what we might look like on that day, which I want to share with you:
About five and a half miles from here (which Google maps estimates would takes us 17 minutes to drive in 10 steps, but I’m sure we could eliminate two of them), at an intersection where West Hunting Park Avenue crosses West Clearfield Street, less than a mile from the Tasty Baking Company, overlooking Laurel Hill and Mt. Peace cemeteries, is a little parish church that was founded a year before Saint Mark’s and before even the cemeteries were there.
The parish of St. James the Less is named for the other James mentioned in the New Testament (not the one who is regularly found with Peter and John). In its graveyard are buried the Wanamaker family (except Fernanda, who is buried here at Saint Mark’s); Catherine Fiske, who gave the beautiful red doors of this church in memory of her husband Louis, who rests there with her; Agnes Irwin, the great educator who founded the school that now bears her name, and who was the first dean of Radcliffe College; and a host of other bishops, soldiers, captains of industry, and luminaries of 19th century Philadelphia.
The beautiful church and its graveyard are surrounded by stone walls. Across the street stands a rambling old rectory and a large parish house that has been converted to house a school that no longer operates. No worship has taken place at the church for two years now, since the parish that was there chose to leave the Episcopal Church and was forced, by court order, to abandon the property under the circumstances. A caretaker keeps the lawn and trees in check, and unlocks the gates for infrequent visitors. Beyond the churchyard walls there stretch out neighborhoods of Philadelphia that bear little resemblance to the church’s lovely immediate surroundings or to our own parish’s neighborhood. Poverty, drugs, single-parent households, and lousy schools characterize reality for many, many folks in North Philadelphia.
When I discovered that the Diocese of Pennsylvania was considering leasing out the Rectory and Parish House of Saint James the Less to be converted to artists’ studios, I balked at the notion of this sacred ground being re-purposed for such a mundane use in the midst of a city desperately in need of the mission of the gospel.
“Well, what would you do with it?” I was asked.
I answered: I would take up the mission of the Gospel, and use the resources there to let the Gospel change people’s lives. I would adopt Saint James the Less as a mission parish of Saint Mark’s – after all we have founded missions before, built them from the ground up. I would do what it takes, by finding partners to share the work. I would get people praying in the church again, get children learning in the parish house again, and playing on the playground again. I would put together a team of people who hate to see the resources of the church slide into decay. I would practice there what I want to look like when I meet Jesus in the day of judgment, and I would help other people practice too.
Now, I said all this in a slightly more detailed way, around a conference table, with stern faces looking at me. I may have even sounded impatient when I said it to the powers that be. I said it in writing, and I made presentations. I copied sermons of mine and handed them out. I gave them facts and figures about the neighborhood. I tried a hard sell once, and a soft sell the next time. And I don’t know that I had much hope, since we happen to be a church that is preoccupied with its own internal scandals, and stumbling over its dysfunction. But I asked.
And do you know, during this past week, those powers that be called me up and said to me, “OK, if you’re so smart, give it a try.” And they have agreed to allow Saint Mark’s to adopt the Church of Saint James the Less as a mission of our parish And so, it would seem that I have committed you, my wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ, to a missionary life. We have been jolted into that old reality, that it had seemed the church forgot, when a parish church could take on a mission. (Saint Mark’s founded two or three missions in its earliest decades.) And now we have been called again to assume the missionary role that this parish wore so well in the 19th century as part of our 21st century heritage.
We are being sent with no gold or copper or sandals or bag or staff; we are being set loose, like sheep in the midst of wolves. We are being launched into a great missionary journey of exactly 5.5 miles, as the Google-crow flies.
I have some ideas abut what this journey might look like. But there will have to be much prayer, much discussion, and many partners gathered before the shape of things to come for this new mission will be known clearly.
But I believe that this is an opportunity for all of us at Saint Mark’s and anyone who wishes to join us (and already I know that there are those who do) to practice what we will look like when we have to look Jesus in the face and account for ourselves.
Because a church without a mission is no church at all. And a Christian who has never set out on a journey, (who has never been a pilgrim) has never given himself a chance to be changed (and may still be a sheep wearing his wolf’s clothing!). The missionary life is the church’s life, when she dares to risk her life – to lose her life, so that she may truly find it.
How will God ever know us if we don’t respond to his call, even if it asks a lot of us? How will Christ recognize us as his old friends if we have not worked side by side with him, seeking his face in the face of others? And how will we know him, if we distance ourselves from his call to serve him by serving others, and the years pass by.
Will Christ stare at us, matching the face to the name, but not at all certain what we are doing there, in front of him, and perhaps suspecting that we are in the wrong place? Will he wonder why we sheep tried to live our whole lives in wolf’s clothing? Will he think it's cheeky of us to want to be familiar with him at last only when the day is past and the work is done?
How will God know us if we don’t allow ourselves to be changed, to be shaped by the work he calls us to do, to go where he tells is to go, to work in the vineyard, even if we arrive late, to strip off our wolf’s clothing and be a sheep in the midst of wolves?
How will God know us if we don’t allow ourselves to be changed into the people he made us to be, by responding to his call, and carrying out his mission, and losing our old lives to take up the new ones that are shaped by his mission?
And how will we know him, in the end, if we don’t practice what it might be like to stand nearer to him?
Let us dare to take on the mission he calls us to, which is to really allow ourselves to be sheep in the midst of wolves, and to risk our lives for his sake. Let us dare to practice in a missionary journey of 5.5 miles, what we hope we will look like when Christ is looking for us.
Let us dream of a city where two churches, just five and half miles away can become a powerful nexus of transformation, where we join together to become the people God made us to be, so that finally, when the day of judgment comes, he will look at us – who have practiced what we might look like on this day, so that we would be known by him – and he will say, “You know, you look just the way I remember you.”
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
29 June 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia