Seen and unseen

To be a Christian is to be an alien in foreign land, or to be, at least, between the times. To never feel at home, to know that there are two time frames, two realities present: the seen and the unseen, that which we know by sight and that which we know by faith; eternity and our swiftly changing world.

Since I spent some formative time studying the spirituality of the Eastern Church, I like to think of these two different realities using the metaphor of icons. Icons often have the heavy golden backdrop, which symbolizes the uncreated Divine light. And the heavy, solemn figures are meant to represent the eternal, immortal figures of saints and angels, as they are upon that other shore, and in that uncreated light.

The effect and the theory is very much that icons are windows, through which the eternal comes close to the temporal, and through which we stare at the mighty figures of the faith and through which they stare back at us.

As we go through the liturgical year, we wander, I think, between those two poles, between the unseen reality of eternity, in which Christ is risen, ascended, and King, and the seen reality of our lives, which often feel very much as if Christ's death was meaningless, faith foolish, and evil very much in the ascendancy.

I think that is why living in liturgical time sometimes feels disjointed to me. There are times when the Church is very much in the stream of earthly time, and there are times when we live in moments of eternity. In Lent and ordinary time we are rooted in the temporal, in the sense of our sinfulness and coming deaths, or in the ordinary life and teachings of Jesus, but there are moments like Eastertide when we live very much upon that other shore, in time that is not our time, when we live in the joy of the risen Christ, that joy that is ours always, whether or not we can see through the veil that shrouds it sometimes. Those moments when we live in the reality of Christ's victory.

As we go through the year with Christ, and celebrate the moments in his life that have import for us, there are some moments when the two different realities, the two different frames get remarkably close to each other, and a window seems to open and we get for an instant, a vision of the mighty and eternal.

The Ascension is just such a feast, I think, and I always feel that way about the Feast of the Transfiguration as well. These moments when we are given a vision of Jesus, not just as the rabbi and Messiah, or even as the Incarnate Word of God walking among us, but as this figure of unbelievable majesty and power eternally glorious.

But it is always slightly confusing to come to terms with those moments when eternity comes near. Often, I feel as if I'm in deep waters, playing a game whose rules have suddenly changed, when Jesus sails up into heaven, or becomes illuminated like some kind of human light bulb. Because the question always becomes, “What does it mean?” I don't have trouble finding meaning in Jesus' healing the sick, or raising the dead, or in teaching the love of God and neighbors. But what does it mean that Jesus ascended. The Church has long held it as momentous, as a great feast of the Church, but what does it mean? What does it mean in the life of Jesus, and what does it mean in the lives of those of us who apprehend him by faith, although he is hid from our sight?

I'm not sure that I can answer either of those questions satisfactorily, but there are several things that occur to me. One of the directions that the Ascension makes my mind wander in is in terms of the resurrected Jesus. I wonder if the Ascension isn't an indicator of how different the resurrected Jesus was, physically.

During Eastertide we've seen the disciples fail to recognize him again and again; we've seen him appear suddenly to the disciples, despite locked door. We've seen him skip around Palestine appearing here, there everywhere. There is clearly something about Jesus risen that is massively different and changed. His body is not like ours, because he has risen glorious from the tomb. He is present to the disciples, but not as he has been.

And yet even resurrected, Jesus is linked to a time and a place. He is changed, but still with his disciples at specific times and places. His wounds are still there, and he eats and walks with them.

I wonder if the collect for today doesn't help to explain to the meaning and importance of the Ascension for us. “Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things...”

I like to think then, that the Ascension is the moment and perhaps the symbol of the transformation when Christ, even in his resurrected body, moves from being bounded by time and place, and becomes universal, becomes present to all time and all creation.

And that, I think, is the answer to the question of why it matters. Because in many ways the Ascension might feel otherwise like an leaving, like a loss, like being abandoned. We might be tempted to say “Those lucky few disciples got to know him, but now he's gone to some castle in the sky, and I don't get to experience him or know him.”

Christ is ascended and the glory of his very being has gone out into all the world and into all history, and somehow because he is less present to us, face to face, somehow he is more present, more available, more powerful in his might and majesty.

Somehow, because he is ascended, he is present everywhere, on innumerable altars, in hearts throughout the world and times; in prisons and mines, in boardrooms and courtrooms, in tents and shanty towns, to the super wealthy and the abject poor; everywhere and every when, Christ fills all things, redeems all things, sanctifies and blesses all things, draws all things into his resurrected life, and into the very life of the Triune God.

Which is good to remember here, near the end of Eastertide, when we shift back into the life of ordinary time, and the veil that blocks out eternity comes down again.

Christ is ascended and he fills all things with his glory and majesty. He will come again in glory, and is with us unto the ages of the ages.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

The Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Oil Spill

Everyone knows by now that the huge oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is getting closer and closer to the Louisiana coast, and in a few places has already made it there.  It’s a dark, spreading menace that floats on the surface after rising up from its deep source.  Unlike the explosion and fire that caused the slick, there’s nothing violent about the encroaching puddle of oil, and yet there is a sense of dread as it expands and becomes harder to contain, and we realize that it is tremendously difficult to shut off at its source.  The danger the oil slick poses is mostly on the surface, as far as I can tell by my reading.  It spews up from the ocean depths, and that is where the leak must be stopped, but it is the expanse of oil on the surface that carries so much threat as it floats and spreads and moves closer to fragile shoreline habitats.

At the risk of sounding flippant, I wonder if there are more and more people these days in American and European society who think about Christianity this way: as a sort of malignant oil spill that sprung up all those generations ago, and for a long time spread like an oil slick, encroaching more and more with the passing years on the nations of Europe, crossing the seas to the Americas and to Africa and India with the help of the British, the Spanish, and the Portuguese.

The cynic will say that the spread of this faith was a menace in its cruel treatment of indigenous peoples in many places where it spread, in the strictures it has sought to impose on societies, in its insistence on the sinfulness of human nature, in the numerous and extravagant failings of its clergy leaders, in its dismal record of abuse, and on, and on.  And such an evaluation of Christian faith might also suggest that the sad thing is that it just floats on the surface of human lives: a superficial but sticky, messy, self-righteous kind of oil slick of faith, with nothing of any substance beneath it, except, perhaps, at its source, once, long ago.

I ask myself all the time about the depth of my own faith, and because I am a priest I wonder about the depth of your faith, too.  I wonder if our Christian identity goes deeper than the surface, or if we just got caught up in this oil slick that has so effectively seeped and floated over our lives.  But if we look below the surface, what would we see?

And then I come across these words of Jesus from John’s Gospel today, which I have read or heard a thousand times, but which always charms me:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But I have to ask myself about this commandment of Jesus and how I encounter it, how you encounter it.  Are we anything more than seagulls who’ve gotten caught in the slick of Jesus’ teaching: covered in it, in a sense, and therefore hampered in getting on with otherwise normal lives, but not really changed inside in any meaningful way?  Is our faith anything more than an accident of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time and more or less unable to escape the ever-encroaching slick?

I have to ask this because of the commandment Jesus gave.  (And generally he was not one for commandments - he was one for provocative questions, for multivalent stories, for probing conversation, and challenging points of view, but not so much one for commandments.)  I have to ask how we Christians demonstrate the truth or falsity of what he asserted: by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Lately, the world has been given cause to wonder whether or not the work of the church in spreading the Christian faith could hold up to this standard, whether it mighn’t have been a mistake not to clean up this spill before the oil slick got so big, since beneath the surface there does not appear to be a whole lot of love.

Sticking with my seagull identity for a moment, I am aware that the question has far-flung implications.  I remember flying high, and seeing how big the oil slick of Christianity is.  But in evaluating the reality of the situation I am more likely to take notice of you – the other gulls in my immediate vicinity, in may parish, as it were, if seagulls had parish churches for themselves.

First, I have to decide what I think it might mean to “have love for one another.”  Could we just put on a production of “Hair” and call it quits?  Do we have to make sure that everyone gets married and starts a family?  Or is there more to it than that?  Then I have to see if you and I, my flock of seagulls, are living up to the standard, or if we are just coated in oil.  So, I look around.

I notice first a generosity, because I know better than most that may of you are giving your money away to the church week after week, and many decided to give more away when the economy got rough.  And I know how much you gave when Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, when the tsunamis devastated the southeast Asian coast, when the earthquake rocked Haiti.  I know that there is generosity here.

I see how many of you in this community care for the poor, the hungry, the homeless.  I know how many of you have been making soup week after week after week for our Saturday Soup bowl.  I know who starts their Saturday mornings at 6 or 6:30 to be here to get things going.  I realize how many hands have stirred and ladled and served that soup.

I realize there is nothing aggrandizing about packing groceries in a bag and handing them to someone who needs them, as people have done in this parish for close to 30 years in the Food Cupboard.

I know that it is generally not self-indulgent to take a pile of linens home from the Sacristy to be washed and ironed and folded just-so, but that a faithful corps of you does that week after week anyway.  I suspect it is not easy to leave your law firm offices before noon on a Tuesday morning so you can serve at the altar for a daily Mass.

It is not always convenient, I’m sure, to prepare to lead a Bible study, or to pick up the phone to check on your ailing neighbor when you have quite enough worries at home. 

I can appreciate that the chores of the parish office – answering the phones, stuffing envelopes, generally putting up with me – are not what you would call exciting.  I know it was not fun to clean bathrooms for teenagers during City Camp.

Having spent many Thursday nights in choir rehearsals myself over the years, I remember that doing so means giving up a night of your week, and that most of us have other things we could be doing with that time.

A once-a–month visit to a nursing home to sing hymns and say prayers and share the Eucharist is not the most convenient way to spend a Saturday morning, I know.

And I know that it is not easy to sit with someone when their spouse, or their partner, or their brother or sister, mother or father has died, and there is nothing really to say, and not even many words available to pray.

But all these things, and so much more, I see you doing in this parish.

As I bob on the surface of these often choppy waters, I can stick my head down underneath and see, below the slick of oil, and I can see what is happening beneath the surface.  And even though I suspect that you, like me, are not really very good at keeping commandments, generally, there is this one commandment that we should love one another as Jesus love us, that you seem to have embraced.

Beneath the surface, I see you giving your lives away: your money, your time, your effort, your affection, your care, your love.  I see you giving it away to those who need it.  And I know that there is a well springing somewhere deep beneath the surface of our lives, but it is not an oil spill.  It is the well of God’s love, that first sprang forth in creation from deep beneath the watery nothingness, and that has spread into every corner of the world.

God’s love – and the power that comes with it – is as susceptible to abuse as every other gift he gives us, (like a garden of paradise where only one tree was off-limits).  But he did send us his Son to teach us, to live and die and rise for us.  And to give us this one commandment: that you love one another.  And when we follow it, we are not covered in a sick, sticky, dirty, oily mess; we are swaddled in the assurance of God’s love for us, we are set free from all that threatens to un-do us, and we can fly!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

2 May 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Casting Nets

They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.  (Jn. 21:3)

Shortly after I added a second dog to my household, I realized in no uncertain terms that I had become dependent, not on the company of my dogs (which, of course, I am) but on the help of several people, chief among them, Kent John, known to many of you as the person who is the first to come to work at Saint Mark’s every day, the last to leave, and the lowest paid.  Kent John is also devoted to my dogs, and can be relied upon to look after them when I go away, to walk them if I am at a late meeting, to feed them, coddle them, and generally dote on them in the extreme.  After adding the puppy to the mix last fall, I said to Kent John that I would like to think that I am capable of raising this puppy and taking care of my other dog on my own, but I was awfully glad I didn’t have to find out.

There many things in life, not much more complicated than taking care of a dog, with which we regularly need help.  Around Saint Mark’s, opening the safe or dealing with the copy machine are regular challenges that leave several of us calling for help.  In many homes it’s opening pickle jars or threading needles that constitute simple tasks for which help is almost always required.  In some families it’s getting directions and navigating in the car that are better delegated to someone not in the driver’s seat: help will be required.  None of these things is a complicated task.  It’s not as though a person shouldn’t be able to manage without help, but somehow in our lives we discover that we simply wouldn’t accomplish a number of simple things without help.

Most of Jesus’ well-known disciples were fishermen, but in the New Testament, their most publicized moments at work in their trade are when they are unlucky with their fishing nets.  They need help, as the Gospel reading today shows us.  Now, this would appear to be a problem, since fishing was not just a hobby or a pleasant pastime for these men, it was their livelihood.  It is the first thing we know about Peter and Andrew and James and John, when they are introduced to us: they are fishermen.  And it is one of the very few biographical facts we know about them at all.  Yet throughout the entire New Testament, these disciples – who we see at work several times – are never reported to have caught a single fish without the help of Jesus.  Think of it.  Either they are utter failures, completely inept at their trade… or there is a message here to be learned.

Now I don’t know much about fishing, but I know that this is not Deadliest Catch we are talking about.  This is small time: small boats, small nets, small fish.

And they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Remember that the scene here is in the days after the resurrection of Jesus, the days after Easter.  Perhaps the disciples are going fishing because life is returning to normal and their checking accounts are running low.  After all, they have been missing a lot of work, what with Passover, and then the trial of Jesus, his crucifixion, their mourning, and now the several, strange appearances he makes to them, in locked rooms, or traveling on the road, and now on the shore.

In any number of the episodes that the risen Jesus shows himself to the disciples they do not recognize him.  And this is one such occasion.  When he tells them to cast the net on the right side of the boat, they are not following the instructions of the Lord of the Universe, recently risen from the dead, they don’t know it’s him; they are taking advice from some guy on the shore, and they are hoping that perhaps he knows something they don’t.

Of course, when they do as he tells them to they catch so many fish that they can barely haul them all in.  Now, it might be that these guys are capable of getting by as fishermen on their own, but it seems an awfully good thing that they don’t have to find out.  When they fail at the work they expected to do on their own, Jesus helps them, and with his help their nets are full.

Well, here we all are in the days after Easter.  Life has returned to normal (it didn’t take long).  There is work to be done, the taxes had to be filed last week.  Lovely as Easter was, we have to get on with our lives, go to work, pay the bills, watch the Phillies lose.  Maybe we had a warm, fuzzy feeling at Easter, but it’s faded now.  And if Jesus seemed like a big part of our lives for a weekend, well, now it’s back to church as usual, if at all.  It’s back to the fishing boats, so to speak.

But remember, in the New Testament, the disciples never catch a single fish without the help of Jesus.

I wonder what you and I are trying to do that we think we ought to be able to do on our own but that we cannot do without the help of Jesus.

I wonder about the work we do every day at Saint Mark’s: from the humdrum work of taking care of these old buildings and ironing the linens, and making copies at the copier, to the more lovely working of offering our prayers and praises to God every day, to the good work of making soup for the hungry and feeding them, to the more challenging work of establishing a school at our mission at Saint James the Less.

And I wonder about my life and about yours: about nurturing meaningful relationships, caring for the people in our families, tending to the elderly and those who are sick, or just to those who are far away.  I wonder about how we deal with what we euphamize as our “inner demons” as though we could not describe them more clearly, even though we know exactly what our personal miseries look like: the depression, the self-loathing, the sleeplessness, the hatred, the anger, the fear, the addiction, etc, etc, etc.  What are we trying to deal with on our own that we cannot manage without the help of Jesus?

Easter, just two weeks away, already seems a distant memory.  The flowers are gone.  Angels have fluttered back to their heavenly coops.  Trumpets have been sent off to other, better-paying gigs till next year.  And it’s back to work in the fishing boats of our lives.

How sad it is to sit in the boat in the cool dark of the last hours of the night with nothing at all in our nets.

But there is a man standing on the shore shouting something: “Children, you have no fish, have you?”

No.  No, we have no fish, we have nothing.

Cast your nets to the right side of the boat.

And you know, of course, what happens next.

You think you can get through life on your own.  You think you are strong, smart, sophisticated.  Or at least you think you are capable enough to get on from day to day.  You think you ought to be able to make your own living, solve your own problems, and determine your own future.  I certainly think all these things about myself, much of the time.  We think that we ought to be able to catch fish on our own.

And does it surprise us how often life leaves us with empty nets strewn around the bottom of the boat?  And how heavily hangs the sorrow in our lives of the repeated trips out in the boat, night after night, giving it everything we’ve got, doing the best we can, and still coming up empty handed?  We don’t let on, how much this hurts us, but it does; it weighs heavily on our souls that we cannot do the things we think we ought to be able to do.  Even though the whole world thinks we are successful, we know the places in our lives that we just fail again and again: no fish, nothing but empty nets.

And I don’t know why you come to church, and it doesn’t really matter to me.  But I do know that if you are here, you are within shouting distance of the shore on which a man is standing, who mostly you and I do not recognize.  He is telling us not to give up.  He is telling us that we can do what we set out to do.  He is telling us that there are fish waiting to be caught.  For all we know he has been calling to the fish, as well, talking to them, guiding them to the right-hand side of the boat.  He knows that we have begun to feel like failures, and certainly to look like failures to much of the rest of the world. 

And it takes some faith to pay attention to him, because he does not seem to us to be the Lord of the Universe, recently risen from the dead.  He is just some guy on the shore shouting to us.  But his voice is carried to our ears on the loveliest breeze, scented with orange blossoms that even overcomes the odor of fish in this boat.  And it seems to us that we should do what he says, though we can’t say why, for sure.  Except that we know, we have read about these experiences that others have had before of not knowing, not recognizing, not seeing.

And there is that gentle, sweet-scented breeze that seems to be stirred up by something we cannot explain.

“Cast your nets,” the voice comes to us, “on the right side of the boat.”

And what have we got to lose?  Who knows but that when we bring them up they might be so full we cannot haul them in?

We would like to think that we could have done it our own.  But if we need help, it is OK.  There is this voice, this gentle breeze to help.  And all we have to do is cast our nets, which is to believe.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

18 April 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia