A Great Gulf

A few weeks ago I stopped into a little shop on the Main Line that had been recommended to me as a place to find a natty bowtie.  This is the type of place that sells men’s shirts for $135, ladies sweaters for $200. So I thought the bowties at $45 were a steal – and the selection was very handsome indeed!  I was the only person in the small shop, and I suspected that, since they sold exclusively things that nobody needs, the effects of the rotten economy might be taking their toll.

“How has business been?” I asked the preppy, pretty, blonde saleswoman.

“Oh,” she replied, “Not bad at all.  In fact, sales are up this year!”  I assume that many shoppers must have walked out with more than a single bowtie, which seemed like quite a splurge to me.  (But I must say it is very sharp!)

My purchase and the shop it came from were still in my mind when I read in the news that 44 million Americans live in poverty.  That means a family of four living on $22,000!  I am paid close to four times that and have only two dogs and a cat to support, and many months seem tight to me.  Not so tight, however, as to prevent me from purchasing the odd bowtie.

Leave aside for a moment the unsettling teaching of Saint Paul that “those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”  Because we already know that this kind of moralistic teaching falls on deaf ears.  We are experts at rationalizing it.  We can easily say that we are not the rich ones, don’t want to be rich anyway, have no hope of becoming rich, etc.  Even Paul gives us an out just a few lines later when he gives instructions to those who happen to be rich – instructions far more sympathetic to their situation than, for instance, the suggestion that they should sell what they have and give it to the poor – but then Paul had probably never read that story.

But think about the story Jesus tells of the poor man Lazarus, stinking and covered with sores that the dogs lick, begging at the gate of the house of a rich man.  We don’t know why Lazarus is poor, but it does not seem to be the fault of the Obama administration.  We know only that Lazarus longed to feast on the scraps from the rich man’s table.

Now, I am stopped dead in my tracks already to think of the scraps that are chucked into the trash from my table.  I am a little assaulted by this story already.  I can too easily picture myself cleaning out the fridge of old, wasted leftovers, while I’m wearing my new bowtie (which happens to be pink with subtle white pattern).

But the crux of the story does not take place in this life; it happens in the next life, after both Lazarus and the rich man are dead and have gone to their reward: Lazarus, carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham in heaven, and the rich man (perhaps because of the way he obtained his riches?) to the flames of Hades.  From there, you recall, the rich man calls out to Father Abraham, begging him to allow Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”  But Abraham replies that this is not possible because a great chasm is fixed (or, as the KJV puts it, a great “gulf”) between the rich man suffering in Hades and Lazarus, being comforted in heaven.

If you want to be argumentative, we could talk about various biblical attitudes toward the afterlife.  We could wrangle the theological implications of heaven and hell.  We could question the motives of a loving God who allows this rich man to suffer so in hell, and whether or not there is any truth to this arrangement in the afterlife.  But to do so would be to miss the point of the story.  For although he promises us life in the world to come, Jesus is almost always more concerned with that piece of the kingdom of God that is already near at hand – in this world.  There is nothing that can be done, he says, about the gulf that is fixed between Lazarus and the rich man in the next life; but there is something to be done about the gulf fixed between rich and poor in this life.

Jesus is really only concerned to teach about the torments or ecstasies of the next life in so much as they provide a point of reflection for choices we make in this life.  Whether these represent the truth about life in the next world or a teaching device that spoke powerfully to his audience is hard for us to say.  What is easier to say is that Jesus regularly contrasts the hope of the rich (which he sees as bleak) to the hope of the poor (for whom he holds out great promise).  His message is shaped to be more easily heard by beggars in the street than by shoppers looking for bowties.

And the gulf that he tells us is fixed between Lazarus in heaven and the rich man in Hades, is nothing more than a mirror image of the gulf that separated them on earth, even though they lived their lives within steps of each other.  Such a chasm, a gulf, exists today between rich and poor, and that gulf is growing ever bigger in America.  Splashy gifts of $100 million here and there (announced with fanfare on Oprah, but representing barley more than scraps from a billionaire’s table) do almost nothing to narrow the gap between rich and poor that is now wider in America than it has been since the Roaring Twenties.  And the point of Jesus’ story is to ask us to worry about the gulf, about the chasm that yawns ever larger between the poor and the rich.

In America we have often tried to assert that poverty is the result of the moral failings of the poor: their laziness, stupidity, or mental illness (as if that was their fault too).  But Jesus strongly suggests to us that poverty is a result of the moral failings of the rich: our greediness, indifference, and cruelty.

And as Jesus sees the chasm between rich and poor growing wider and wider, he pushes us to consider whether it must be so, whether we really want it to be so, and he’s telling us that if we want to align our wills with God’s will, we need to think about crossing the gulf, or at least narrowing it.

Most of you know, of course, that at Saint Mark’s we try to cross the gulf every week here with the Food Cupboard and the Saturday Soup Bowl.  By doing so we acknowledge that we are rich men and women with poor people sitting more or less at our gates who deserve more than scraps from our tables.  While these ministries allow us to cross the gulf, they do nothing at all to narrow it.  They treat the symptom (hunger) not the disease (poverty).

To my knowledge, only one solution has ever meaningful addressed the reality of poverty and the forces that allow it to persist and grow, and that solution is education.  Our work to start a school for poor kids at Saint James the Less is nothing less than an effort, not only to cross the chasm between rich and poor, but to narrow that gulf, at least a little bit.

It is a travesty that in the nation that invented the system of free public education we now have more than 14% of our population living in poverty, and an even great travesty that the release of this information is not cause for widespread outrage.  44 million Lazaruses do not seem to be a troubling reality for many in this country; I can only suppose this is because Lazarus is powerless and unlikely to vote.

But Jesus is trying to teach us to pay attention to Lazarus.  He is trying to show us how great a gulf is already fixed between us.  And he is asking us to worry about the gulf, to bother to cross it, and to do what we can to narrow this great chasm between rich and poor, because not to do so is soul-destroying to the rich, who can well afford to do something to help.

And part of the challenge, of course, is to know who you are in this story.  Part of the challenge is to stop for a moment at the counter, with a natty, new bowtie in your hand, and wonder whether this might mean that there is a great gulf fixed between you and 44 million Lazaruses.  At which point it doesn’t really matter what you believe about heaven and hell.  All that matters is what you intend to do about the gulf that is already spread out before you.

So far there is little good news to be heard in this analysis of either the Gospel or our national scandal of poverty, so let me try to show you where the good news in all this is.

From time to time rich men (and women) do look down as we pass through our gates, bowties fluttering in the breeze, and notice Lazarus sitting there, his sores of interest to the dogs that follow in our wake.  And from time to time it occurs to us to do something for this poor soul, to go back to the fridge and pile some leftovers on a paper plate, and bring it out wrapped in foil, with a plastic fork and a paper towel for a napkin and give it to poor Lazarus.  Or we might give $100 million dollars to the Newark School District.  Or something in between – like making soup, or traveling to Honduras, or opening a school.

And when we do this, when we yield to this curious urge to pay attention to the poor among us, we almost always begin with the benevolent thought that poor Lazarus will be better off when we have done our good deed.  Maybe it makes us feel good to have provided Lazarus with a meal, so we determine to do it again next week.  And maybe this even becomes a habit, this small gesture to improve the sorry lot of Lazarus’s existence, if only for a meal a week.  And maybe Lazarus’s life is changed in some way, big or small, as a result of at least one good meal a week, one act of kindness in a world that has lorded its greediness, indifference and cruelty over his supposed laziness, stupidity, and mental illness.

But if the rich men (and women) stick with it, week after week, meal after meal, what may happen is, that the angels of God begin to cinch together the cords of the gulf that once divided us, and bring us closer together.  And we may discover that while we think possibly we may have done Lazarus some good, we know that we have been changed as our lives move more closely in contact with those who before consorted only with our dogs as they licked the infected wounds of the poor.

And will we choose to do this because we are afraid that otherwise we’ll burn in hell?  I doubt it.  We’ll do it because the great gulf fixed between rich and poor grows so great that it begins to disgust us.  We’ll do it not because we are making decisions about what kind of world we want to live in in the next life, but because of what kind of world we want to live in in this life.

And should that lead us to a greater joy in the world to come, to a neighborhood of bliss in the vicinity of Lazarus and Abraham, then praise to be to God for such a wonder!  But I hope we shall not wait to hear news from those long departed to tell us whether or not this is so.  After all, we have Moses and the prophets, and the teachings of the Lord of love.  And their word is good enough for me.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

26 September 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia



Hooves in the Mud

For five days in July I had the glorious experience of riding a horse along the lanes and beaches and country tracks of County Sligo in northwestern Ireland.  As a novice rider, I can tell you it was an adventure, and I was glad to have my old friend and experienced horseman, Joe, along with me.  It was Joe who reassured me, just as my horse was about to gallop as fast as I have ever moved on a horse, that I could manage it and wouldn’t fall off.  It was Joe who led the way through terrain our horses were not sure they wanted to cover – and convinced them (and me) that everything was perfectly alright, never mind that cliff to your right.  It was Joe, who convinced me that it if I was the one to open all gates and knock on all doors, I’d get a lot of needed practice mounting my horse from the ground, without a mounting block.

Joe’s experience and good humor were invaluable on the trip – three days of which saw just the two of us and our big Irish hunters riding from B&B to B&B, all our things stuffed into saddlebags.  The horses were amazing; they managed to walk over rocky coastline, navigate a peat bog, gallop over mussel-strewn beaches, climb up sand dunes, wade across a tidal pool, stroll in the surf, and canter along country lanes.

One afternoon, we were heading up a wooded hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  The further we got into the woods the deeper the mud became, and we could hear the horses’ hooves slurping as they pulled them out of the mud one step at a time.  For a few yards at least it seemed the mud must be up to the horses’ knees, and they were moving slowly, gingerly, a little hesitatingly.  Worried for the horses in this deep mud, I turned to ask Joe, “Should we dismount?”

“Are you kidding me?” he said  “We can’t dismount; we couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud.  Stick with the horses!”  Sure enough, our horses, Diamond, and Garry Finn, steadily plodded along without ever seriously stumbling or losing a shoe in the deep mud.

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail – this could be a description of what some days in our lives feel like.  It could be a description for the unemployment rate – or some other aspects of our economy at the moment.  It could be a description of the war in Afghanistan.  Except that mud doesn’t seem to apply in the desert, it could be a description of the work that faces our 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq, who are curiously still being given combat pay (and rightly, so, I have no doubt). 

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  It could be a description of life in the church – in this diocese and beyond as we struggle with our various issues.  It could describe the way our 7 million American Muslim brothers and sisters feel as they endure outrageous insult after insult from various political leaders, media outlets, church pastors, and probably neighbors, too.

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.

Back on my Irish hillside, atop my Irish horse, I can tell you, that it never really occurred to me that I might be in trouble, that things could go wrong.  Our horses had managed every obstacle so superbly.  And what did I know about horses and mud.  In fact, when I suggested that we dismount, I thought I was only doing the noble thing: being kind on a wet, uphill stretch of trail, to this wonderful beast who had carried me so confidently and gracefully.  It was only when I turned to Joe, with what I thought was a beneficent suggestion that the light dawned.  “Are you kidding me?  We can’t dismount; we couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud!”

For many of us, who lead relatively comfortable middle-class lives, life is often like this.  We fell relatively confident.  Things get muddy, but we don’t imagine there is real trouble lurking; we suspect we could just dismount and walk the rest of the way, leading our horses by the reins.  But lately, as the mud has gotten deeper, perhaps we feel a knot in our stomachs.   The mortgage is harder to pay, the job you are looking for is harder to find, the insurance company still won’t pay that bill, you discovered another lump, his meds aren’t working so well, it’s harder to fall asleep every night, the anger isn’t subsiding, the cigarettes or the booze or whatever is harder to quit than you thought, the silences at home are growing longer and more unbearable, mother doesn’t always recognize you anymore, the pain just won’t go away, the ache of grief can still cripple you nine years later… heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.

And it turns out that faith looks very much like this: like heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail; finding cause to wonder whether or not you can make it; considering the possibility that you should continue the rest of the way on foot; and realizing, “Are you kidding? You can’t possibly make it through this mud!”

Of course, the first step of faith is to realize that you have been riding a horse all along!

Back in what increasingly looks like the old days to me, we used to hear these words from today’s Epistle reading every Sunday: “This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  They were part of a tiny collection of verses called the “Comfortable Words” that the priest recited just after the confession of sin.

Today they are uncomfortable for us to hear, because we think the phrase is talking about us: sinners?!?  Why must the church always be so negative!?  Why this insistent focus on sin?!  It’s so un-contemporary, so not what people are looking for!  But of course, those words are not primarily about us; they are primarily about Jesus and his ministry of forgiveness and salvation.  They are Saint Paul’s way of saying, “Are you kidding me?  We couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud!”

And, of course, Saint Paul knows that a lot of the mud in our lives is not the result of exterior forces acting on us without our participation, like a heavy rainfall.  Much of the mud we get stuck in comes from within, through some interior leak in our spiritual plumbing, which is why you can get stuck in the mud in the middle of the desert.  He just calls that “sin.”

Back in Ireland, the muddy trail that Joe and I were riding along was sheltered by trees, and my focus, after I realized that this entire journey was really up to the horse, was down: watching his front hooves as best I could; listening to the slow, steady slurps of his progress, one step at a time.  It wasn’t long - maybe ten or fifteen minutes – till we came out of the muddy patch and into a dry clearing where we could turn and look behind us.  We discovered we had travelled much higher than we imagined we were going.  The green checkerboard of the Irish countryside spread out beneath us, and a short distance beyond that, the sea.  We consulted our map, and found that it was just for this that we had slogged up the hillside – this beautiful view, toward which we didn’t even realize we were headed - now we were heading down a paved path, back to the long, flat expanses of sandy coastline where our horses would run again, faster than I thought possible.

This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be receive, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I might as well be the foremost.  Put it another way: we are heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  Chances are good that we got ourselves on this hillside out of sheer willfulness, selfishness, greed, or some set of mixed motives.  And by the time it occurs to us to get at all worried about the footing…  Are you kidding me?!

But the good news is that you are riding a horse who is surefooted and knows the terrain.  And you are headed for a clearing where you may well discover that you have travelled much further uphill, much higher than you realized or imagined.

And the view is grand, as they would say in Ireland.  And the way that leads back down the hillside is easier.  And it leads to the sea, and the broad flat beaches, where you can run as fast as you like, as long as you can stay on your horse!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

12 September 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia



Friend, Go Up Higher

Forty-seven years ago, on the steps beneath Lincoln,

was a man, and a speech, and a wonderful dream,

about the country we live in, and the way he’d been thinkin’

of our freedom, our values, and that sort of theme.

It was moving to hear, or so I’ve been told;

it was stirring, the crowd quite a sight to behold,

they were black, they were white, they were pink, they were brown.

As they gathered to talk and to sing and to pray

for the marvelous, wonderful, glorious day

when God’s merciful spirit would come down.

For it seems that back then there would be no objection

if a person were beaten or shot at and killed

on the basis of naught but his darker complexion.

And I think I’m not wrong that blood was thus spilled.

This seems crazy to me, it seems clearly so wrong,

which is why they were gathered in that long-ago throng,

in the multiple shades of our own melting pot

to sing “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty,”

which to some of the world must seem somewhat flighty,

but which may be the only real hope that we’ve got.

Now it’s all these years later and we’re gathered in church,

and hatred we know, just has not been abolished,

and we hear in the Gospel of how someone’s perch

tells you something about just exactly how polished

will be the crown on their head at the end of their days,

when they’re called on to answer for all of their ways,

and they’re asked by St. Peter, who stands at the door,

“Were you kind, were you humble, did you do your darn’d best;

do you know how you get to be here with the blest?

Just how much did you care for the sick and the poor?”

Now to some this is just a ridiculous question

it’s thought of by lefties and commies and pinkos

too stupid or lazy to get rich in professions,

and who run to the government teat for their drink.  Oh,

yes we’ve become, it would seem, such a nation,

where it’s riches for some, but for others starvation,

or nearly.  I assure you this approach takes its toll,

not just on people of color – of brown, beige and black –

it comes at a cost to every Tom, Dick, and Jack,

just ask all our workers at the Saturday Soup Bowl.

So Jesus reminds us when he tells us a story

of a man who goes to a party and sits

in the worst seat, clearly a place of no glory

at all.  But he sees all the people of glitz

tripping over themselves to get the best seats,

as if this were somehow indicative of feats

of worthiness, noblesse oblige, or perhaps honor.

But their host had a guest for that seat well in mind,

and sends the swells packing, other places to find,

and ponder a future as nothings and goners.

When you go to a party, our Lord recommends,

don’t take the best seat, take a place that is lower,

and as others go past you, even your friends,

don’t worry, be happy, don’t grimace or glower.

It’s a good thing when you and I choose to be humble;

it’s really no cause to bristle or grumble.

Not everyone here can sing in the choir;

not all of us need to be close to the altar;

there’s a motto we’ll hear that’s not found in the Psalter,

when your host takes your hand and says, “Friend, go up higher.”

It was five years ago, in a storm called Katrina

that set the great city of New Orleans afloat.

It was awful; there was chaos, even at the arena

where many gathered in hopes that they’d soon find a boat

to take them to safety; to find higher ground;

though sadly so many good souls out there drowned

in the waters that flooded the city that week.

A group from this church went to help not long after;

to try to bring some small relief from disaster.

And the sight left us gaping, with few words to speak.

And still to this day that great city’s a mess,

with houses and businesses and lives un-rebuilt.

You’d think with the power and wealth we possess

we’d prevent this neglect, this occasion for guilt.

You’d think that from where all the powerful sit

they could see this is where all our national grit

is required to help a whole city in need.

You’d think that from way up on high, in DC,

there’d be help on the way, without much of a plea.

But you’d be mistaken, misguided indeed.

Where you stand on an issue, I’ve been told once or twice,

depends largely on where your posterior’s placed.

Which is why Jesus long ago gave us advice

to be careful in choosing a vantage point graced

with a lower perspective, since your whole P.O.V.

will be shaped by what people and things you can see.

Down low with the poor and the sick and the ailing

is where Jesus said we would find the right view;

it’s where he makes all that’s become old  brand new;

it’s where divine grace is the power prevailing.

It reminds us that when we are sailing through life,

and we realize we’ve money and privilege and health,

there are many more others with little but strife,

who’d be much better off with just a bit of the wealth

that’s been given to us, with which we are blest,

as though we were somehow better or best.

But search through the Bible to see if your riches

are a sign of a blessing from God on his throne,

or if maybe people of wealth are more prone

to be found, in the end, in hell’s lowest ditches.

Now, the Gospel is funny, it makes its demands,

and it’s full of these stories to help make us good.

It instructs us in how to use hearts, heads, and hands;

though so often its lessons are misunderstood.

Some strive to be orthodox, righteous, or pure,

as though entrance to heaven these goals would ensure.

But if entry to Paradise is what we desire

then day in and day out we could all do much worse

than to learn to repeat and to live out this verse,

when we see someone coming, to say, “Friend, go up higher.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

29 August 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia