A Vineyard Not Forsaken

Before this weekend I was connected to Buffalo by a single bottle of wine.  I have never been to this city before.  I have never visited nearby Niagara Falls.  Although I was brought up in New York, as far as I know I have never been to this part of the state before.  And the bottle of wine that connected me to Buffalo did not come from the nearby wine-producing region along the shores of Lake Erie.  It was a bottle of red, of un-identified (or at least un-memorable) variety.  It was consumed, at least in part, by me in the basement kitchen of your new bishop’s apartment at the General Seminary when he was my professor there.  I feel quite certain that part of the bottle of wine was consumed by him.

The wine was made by Bishop Franklin’s father-in-law, Carmela’s father, Joe, who had obviously imported some of his Old World ways to the New World.  I suspect the wine was made in his garage in North Buffalo.  It was, if memory serves me, a gallon bottle: the kind with a little round handle up at the neck, what can only be called a jug.  And without meaning to be at all unkind to Joe, I seem to recall that the quality of the wine – while not at all unpleasant – was appropriate to its container.  Let me put it this way: it had a screw-cap, back in the days when that told you everything you needed to know about a bottle of wine.

I do not know where the grapes for that wine came from.  Since I, too, live in a city with a thankfully large and noticeable Italian-American population, I understand that when it comes to things like sourcing grapes for wine that you are going to crush, ferment, and bottle in your own garage, there are ways…  Nevertheless, I can give you no details about the provenance of the grapes.  I only know that I drank a goodly portion of the wine with my professor, your bishop, and I believe we enjoyed every drop!

I have since learned that if you want to make good wine you must begin in the vineyard; this is where all good wine begins – where the vines are carefully trellised and pruned, and the rain and the sun dispense their gifts of moisture and warmth in just the right measure, and the vines yield luscious, ripe grapes that are ready at harvest time to be pressed, and fermented, and aged, and then bottled, in time.

Good wine begins in the vineyard.

The winery is a different matter.  It is here that the winemaker applies his art – in better vintages, to extract the glories of the grapes; and in lesser vintages to compensate for their shortcomings.  It’s in the winery that the must (the juice from the crushed grapes) is allowed to ferment, the barrels are chosen and prepared, where the maturing wine is monitored and adjusted, blended and finessed.  The wine will be dispensed into its bottles, the labels affixed, and the marketing plan for the wine begun in the winery, and lots of other good and important work.  But good wine is not really made in a winery.  Good wine is made in the vineyard, because it all begins in the vineyard.

Leaving the vineyard aside for just a moment, these days in the church we often feel beset by problems: by shrinking congregations, shrinking budgets, shrinking prestige, shrinking promise.  It is easy to feel as if something is slipping away from us; something that we have loved and thought that we could count on, but which has grown fragile and oddly sort of un-graspable.  I never imagined, when I was ordained fifteen years ago, that the church would look so different now, and that my ministry would look so different from what I thought I’d prepared for  in those lovely days back on Chelsea Square at the General Seminary.

But look in any direction in the church and you will find some difficulty, some challenge, some conflict, some problems.  These are not all you will find, but you will find them.  And it can be disquieting.  I am told that this may even be true in the Diocese of Western New York.

Sometimes the most disquieting of those difficulties, challenges, conflicts and problems are the headline grabbers: the break-away churches, the abuse scandals, the personal ordinariates, the so-called “covenants”.  I suppose in some places even the election of a bishop could be a bit disquieting.

And I want to suggest to you today that these are, by and large, winery problems.  They are not at all un-important or insignificant, but they are experienced and dealt with in the confines of the winery.  And when they are, it seems as though production comes to a halt, the bottling is shut down, and even the wine maturing in barrels seems imperiled.

And the hard part about being a bishop, if you ask me, is that you agree to take a job in the winery – where all this stuff plays out, and where every difficulty, challenge, conflict, and problem comes across your desk and invades your prayers.

Meanwhile, we parish priests know that our work is not in the winery, it is in the vineyard.  We walk every day among the vines of our little plots of land.  We’ve seen the vines flourish or wither.  We have baptized new vines and buried old, dead ones.  We have sometimes done some pruning, but mostly our vines are self-pruning, for better or worse.  We try our best to train the vines along a trellis – narrower for some, wider for others – but the vines are often unruly and unresponsive, insisting on their own way, but we love them anyway: what choice do we have?  Some of us have been working with the same vines for a long time, some of us have a long time yet to go in the same vineyard.  And we know that we will be working in the vineyard rain or shine, hurricane or hail, blight or bliss.  We love our annual visitation from the winery, mind you, but we suspect that our experience of the wine-making process is fundamentally different out in the vineyard than it is in the winery.

Reflecting on all this, some time ago I tried to eliminate a word from my vocabulary.  That word is “success.”  It can be hard to decide that we don’t want to be successful.  But search the New Testament for it and you will have a hard time finding the word there.  Success is not a New Testament idea.

Fruitfulness, on the other hand, is very much a New Testament idea.  And I contend that fruitfulness will not always look like success.  Indeed the suffering, death, and even the resurrection of Jesus did not look very much like success to the first disciples.  But it was fruitful.  And fruitfulness is what Jesus calls us to, and fruitfulness always brings us back to the vineyard.

It is my joy to celebrate with you the consecration and what used to be called the “enthronement” of your new bishop, because I know what a good laborer he has been in the vineyard – from long before he was ordained or ever dreamt of it, to the days he came to work with me in the vineyard I work in, in Philadelphia, just a few months ago.  And I expect that you know this about Bill, too.  That you have seen his sensitivity, his care and concern, his delight in walking and talking and just being among the vines of the vineyard.  I expect you noticed how fruitful his ministry has been as both a lay person and a priest, and this observation, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, led you to elect him to be your bishop.  And as Bill takes up this new ministry, it comes as no surprise to him, I am sure, to hear a reminder from me that good wine is made in the vineyard, where it always begins.

The rest of us need to remember this, too.  Because although it is true that tending the vines has become a harder job than it once was, as conditions have become more challenging and the soil always seems to be rocky, we are reminded that the best wines often come from vineyards where the vines have learned to struggle and have sunk their roots deep into the ground to find water and nutrients that are hard to reach.

And as we work to be fruitful in the vineyards, and we are assaulted with all kinds of disquieting news, much of which comes to us from the winery, and is being handled in the winery, worried about in the winery, we have a secret that we must not forget.  We know that when things get rough in the winery and production seems imperiled, that we can always push a wheelbarrow or two of grapes up the hill and into our garage, where we can crush the grapes and put the must into an old barrel or two, and let God do whatever it is that God does to turn that crushed grape juice into wine.  We can even make pretty good wine out there in the garage because we have good vines, and good wine is made in the vineyard.

But the best wine is made when vineyard and winery are working together to be fruitful in a happy synergy, grateful for the gifts available in each place, eager to encourage one another to do the best we can because what we hope to end up with, after all, is the best wine we can make.

It is surprising to me that in the Episcopal church, where we have been blessed with a large network of parishes, the challenging conditions of the past decades have sometimes left us scratching our heads wondering what to do about all these old churches, all these old vineyards, that sometimes are in disrepair, sometimes have become overgrown, sometimes many of the vines have withered and died.  It is as though we cannot imagine any longer that vines could flourish in these vineyards; that wine could be made from their grapes.

And I can tell you this about your new bishop: he is not confused about this, perhaps because of what he learned from his father-in-law, in his garage in North Buffalo, I don’t know.  He knows that there are vineyards that need work, repair, that in some places new vines need to be brought in and planted, that vineyard workers need to be taught what to do out there among the rows of vines.  He knows that the vines need to be cared for and loved.  Because he knows that when you have been given vineyards, you have been given a great gift, because the vineyard is what you need to make wine. Good wine always begins in the vineyard.

God has never stopped calling us to be fruitful, never stopped calling us to toil in the vineyards he has planted.  God has never deprived his people of what we need to make wine – and to make good wine.  Even when his children had been driven out of their own vineyards, their own holy city, he called them back from their exile, as we are being called now, with a call that would serve well as a watchword for the ministry of a new bishop:

Go through, go through the gates,

prepare the way for the people;

build up, build up the highway,

clear it of stones,

lift up an ensign over the people…

… they shall be called, “The Holy People,

the Redeemed of the Lord.”

And you shall be called, “Sought Out,

A Vineyard Not Forsaken.”

Has the highway to your vineyard been obstructed by stones that leave you stumbling?

Has the ensign of your hope been torn down?

Do you wonder if anyone will ever seek you out?

Are you afraid that you have been forsaken?

Do you wonder if there is any more wine to be made from your vineyard?

Are you wondering if your new bishop knows that good wine is made in the vineyard – must begin in the vineyard?

If any of these questions ring true, then join with me in calling with all confidence on your bishop, our brother, Bill:

Go through, go through the gates with us… 

Build up, build up the highway, clear it of stones!

Lift up the ensign of God’s love and hope over your people – over the laborers in the vineyard…

…so that together you may make good wine from the grapes you grow on the vines you tend.

Because you shall be called the Holy People,

the Redeemed of the Lord!

And you shall be called “Sought Out!”

And you shall be a Vineyard Not Forsaken!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

at the enthronement of The Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin,

XI Bishop of Western New York

at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Buffalo

The Carnival of Blood

Seven score and ten years ago, our fathers embarked on an adventure of slaughter that would soak the ground with blood.  We have our wars today, but have sent them overseas, like so many other difficult endeavors.  We hear about them from a distance, and remain mostly untroubled as we wait for the price of gas to fall, the stock market to rise, and a cheaper way to get cable TV.  But the nation we populate today was forged in bloodshed, close-up and personal: first in a revolution, and then refined in a civil war that one soldier called a “carnival of blood.”  625,000 soldiers died in the Civil War – about a third of them in combat, the others from illness or other causes.  The war unfurled carpets of dead bodies on battlefields from Gettysburg to Vicksburg and beyond, as the machinery of war grew ever more efficient and effective.

One of the great heroes of the war (on this side of the Mason-Dixon line) lived around the corner from here on 19th Street, and was a member of this parish.  General George Gordon Meade commanded the Army of the Potomac at the bloodbath of Gettysburg where the tide of the war began to turn toward victory for the Union.  Not long after the war, General Meade would be buried from this church, with President Ulysses S. Grant in attendance.

An odd discovery was made in the aftermath of Gettysburg when they finally got around to cleaning up the battlefield.  Of the weapons gathered up, some 24,000 rifles were still loaded, suggesting to some historians that a great many soldiers were reluctant to fire their weapons.  Hard to say.  Easier to say that a great many were perfectly willing to do so.

On another battlefield in Georgia, the bloodiest battle after Gettysburg, the story is told of a Confederate soldier who decided he was unwilling to kill the advancing Yankees, and stood on the battlefield firing his weapon directly up into the air.  When his captain threatened to shoot him if he didn’t aim at the enemy, the soldier is said to have replied “You can kill me if you want to, but I am not going to appear before my God with the blood of another man on my soul.”  How things turned out for the soldier does not appear to be part of the historic record.

The Bishop of Georgia at the time said that “to shed such blood as we have spilled in this contest for the mere name of independence, for the vanity or the pride of having a separate national existence, would be unjustifiable before God and man.  We must have higher aims than these.”  But if those higher aims were to justify the enslavement of other human beings, then they have been shown to be worthless.

A Yankee preacher declared from the safety of Rhode Island that the dead were “the price and purchase-money of our triumph,” and that “in this blood our unity is cemented and forever sanctified,” which is easier said from Providence than from Richmond or Atlanta.

As the end of the war was nearing, President Lincoln could invoke the providence of the divine hand, which “has its own purposes,” by quoting the Psalms: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”  And when that great man died from his own bullet wound on Good Friday of 1865, at least one earnest clergyman made the connection to the Passion of our Lord, asserting about Lincoln that “one man has died for the people, in order that the whole nation might not perish.”

The blood flowing through the veins of this nation belongs to men and women of other generations, and yet it has not forged us into one nation, nor could it ever.  And yet as a people, a society, a nation, we have not stopped looking for other men to kill in the hopes that we will accomplish some righteous deed, and prove ourselves good.  That we are not alone in this regard does not excuse us, for we can only be responsible for ourselves.

We cling to the notion that there are certain murders that will be good for us; that it will be expedient that one man, here and there, should die for the people.  The target changes from time to time, but the idea remains more or less the same.  But even the bullets fired into the wisest father this nation has ever known on that Good Friday of 1865 did not make us one nation, under God.  His sacrifice could accomplish little more than grief and sorrow that lingers to this day when we reflect on it.

Was it really that idea – that one man should die for the people – that riled the crowd, and convinced the governor to crucify Jesus?  Perhaps, although it seems a bit far-fetched.  Something turned the crowd from their cheers of Hosanna! to the cries to crucify him.  Maybe it was precisely the fear that he really was the Messiah, and therefore blood was sure to be spilled – since they assumed the anointed one would soon raise an army and take up arms – that they preferred the idea that his blood should be spilled rather than theirs.  Who knows?

Today we are swimming upstream in the blood of history to the veins of one who was guilty of nothing.  His blood is mingled now with the blood that seeped into the soil from here to Mississippi, more or less.  Was there something noble in the sacrifice of all those men seven score and ten years ago?  No doubt there was.  Was there something holy in it?  Maybe so.  Did it accomplish, as Lincoln asserted, the purposes of God?  We console ourselves with the thought that perhaps it did.

But only once have God’s purposes required the offering of blood, and on that Good Friday, it was his own blood to shed.

We continue to yield to the tempting notion that there is more bloodshed that can accomplish righteous deeds, and we devise ways to carry out this desire in broad daylight, as though it were less gruesome, somehow, than the self-inflicted carnival of blood this nation endured all those years ago.  Would we do better to fire our ammunition into the air, if we must shoot at something, than to appear before our God with the blood of other men on our souls?  The folly of bloodshed in war persists in the vain hope of righteousness, even as the thought that Jesus’ death and bloodshed meant anything at all sounds more like a fairy tale to many people.  And so we continue to put more hope in the blood that we can shed than in the blood that was shed for us.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said all he needed to say about slavery when he said that “it may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.  But,” he went on, “let us judge not, that we be not judged.”  He might have said that it is stranger still to ask God’s assistance in wringing righteousness from another man’s blood.  Still, we must judge not, that we be not judged.

But it would be wise of us to learn how strange and costly it is for us to imagine that we could ever wring anything but misery and suffering out of bloodshed, and certainly not righteousness.  For the righteous spilling of blood, that has the power to redeem all the blood ever shed, and which is somehow redeeming all that bloodshed by the secret workings of God’s grace, was accomplished once and for all by God when he gave his Son to suffer and to die on a green hill far away.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Palm Sunday 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Six-Word Gospel

I recently learned of a new literary genre called the six-word memoir.  The idea ostensibly came from a bet someone once made with Ernest Hemingway for the great author to write a story in six words.  Legend has it that he came up with this: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” but no one knows if this one-sentence story actually came from Hemingway.

The idea, as I understand it, is to say a lot in a small space.  And since we live in an age when people love to talk about themselves more than anything else, the memoir seems to be the dominant form of six-word writing.

Here are a few six-word memoirs, if you are struggling with the concept:

“Not quite what I was planning.”

“I am turning into my mother.”

“I still make coffee for two.”

“27 divorced, 33 single, happy, finally.”

“Named me Joy, didn’t work out.”

“Never really finished anything, except cake.”

You get the idea?  There are often details to be filled, in: some obvious, others mysterious, but the six words give you enough to get the gist of the story.

There is a collection of six –word memoirs by famous and semi-famous people.  For instance:

Chef Mario Batali wrote, “Brought it to a boil, often.”

From the satirist and comedian Stephen Colbert we get “Well, I thought it was funny.”

And you would think that this one came from our own Bill Franklin: “Secret of life: marry an Italian,” but it is actually the six-word memoir of writer Nora Ephron.

Soldiers have written six-word memoirs about the war in Iraq:

“Stayed too long, left too soon,” is one memoir from an Iraq veteran, another is, “Joined Army, left legs in Iraq.” 

You can say a lot in six words.

The six-word format easily drifts into realms other than memoir, more commentary then account.  Yogi Bera mastered it when he said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

It’s a format that helps us to find pithy ways of saying something we might not otherwise know how to say… about ourselves, about life, even about God.  For instance there’s this one that tells us a lot about its author: “Bi-polar, no two ways about it.”

Or: “On high horse; afraid of heights.”

Or: “Getting a haircut, wanting a facelift.”

Anyone can do this.  Anyone can say a lot in the small space of six words.  Perhaps you are sitting in your pew thinking of a six-word memoir you could write of your own life.   A friend of mine quickly came up with this: “I keep trying to be me.”

Sometimes such a short memoir is suggestive of events we can only guess at.  One writer gives us this: “Bad brakes discovered at high speed,” which sounds painful whether it’s meant literally or metaphorically.

Teenagers seem to find the format especially welcome since they often have a lot to say but not yet the patience or means to say it.  And six words provides plenty of space for angst.  So they have given us these:

“Shaking with sadness and repressed rage.”

“Mad at her.  Madder at myself.”

“Counselor told Dad about cutting, etc.”

“Bumped down to ‘best friend understudy.’”

“Never too old to love Disney.” (Not all teens are unhappy.)

“Four words: My Dad found out.”

One teen pointed out that Shakespeare would have been adept at the format, since he gave us: “To be, or not to be?”

I began to wonder if the six-word format, which can express so much about the human condition, might also work for religion.  Start looking for it among six-word memoirists and you will find theological reflection in six words: “God is my co-pilot; you aren’t,” is one example I came across. 

Or, “God is hope.  I am hopeless.” 

Or another, “Desperately wanting to believe in God.”

If we stop talking only about ourselves, does the six-word format still deliver?  Could there be a six-word Gospel?  Better yet, a six-word sermon?  (Though at this point it’s already way too late for that!)  So much of faith and religion is tied up in words; it can be easy to trip over all those words: a whole Bible full of them, pages of them in your leaflet this morning, a Prayer Book in your pew if you need it, and hymns full of words, words, words (more insight from Shakespeare in just three words!)  Is there any way we can say a lot about the life of faith, about God, about Jesus, about Easter with fewer words?  With only six words?

We might begin this way: “With God all things are possible.”

Or, if I gave you this, “I was lost, now I’m found,” I think we’d all be able to start singing the same hymn together.  Same if I asked, “Shall we gather at the river?”

I can tell you whole Bible stories in six words, I think, as long as you know a little background.  Try these:

God said, “Let there be light.”

Who said don’t eat the apple?

It rained forty days and nights.

And I will be your God.

(Here’s one I can do in two words: Sarah laughed.)

Moses said, “Let my people go!”

David picked up five smooth stones.

By waters of Babylon we wept.

God asked, “Can these bones live?”

John wore camel’s hair; ate locusts.

Blessed are the pure in heart.

Care for him; I’ll repay you.

Hosanna to the Son of David 

Why, what evil has he done?

This day you’ll be in paradise.

God, why have you forsaken me?

Who will roll away the stone?

In just ninety-eight words we can cover a lot of the Bible!

Sometimes it feels as if we have forgotten how to say a lot in a little space.  Especially about faith.  Especially about God.  But because you can pack a lot of pain and suffering into six words, as well as a lot of hopes and dreams, our six-word memoirs – even the one you might be writing in your head right now - need a six word Gospel just to keep up!

And faith in Jesus seems as though it ought to be able to say a lot in a small space.  After all, when God sent his Son Jesus into the world, he was saying a great deal in a small space.  It began in the small space of Mary’s womb and seemed to end in the small space of a borrowed tomb.  The whole story took place in small spaces – in a small-ish corner of the world, in the small region of Galilee, the small city of Jerusalem.  The central drama of the Jesus story takes place in the small space of three days – a week if you stretch it out to Palm Sunday.  And after his resurrection, Jesus would be with his disciples for only the small space of forty days, before his ascension into heaven.  If we try to compress the Easter message into six words, does it fit?

I think it does.  We can do it prosaically, like this:

Died on Friday; rose on Sunday.

Or more eloquently, like the angels, like this:

He’s not here; he is risen.

We can remember the way the risen Lord showed himself to his followers like this:

Disciples knew Jesus in breaking bread.

And if we were George Frederic Handel we could do it musically like this:

O death, where is thy victory?

But actually the church has been proclaiming a six-word Gospel for as long as anyone can remember.  We have known that in a world full of doubt, confusion, suffering, pain, and not a little joy, too, the Gospel needs to be available in a handy travel size that’s easy to remember, easy to access, easy to share.

Do you know the six-word Gospel?  It’s a Gospel that makes a bold claim.  Not everyone can believe it, and some people will think you are nuts for repeating it.  But it says, in the space of six words, that the whole world has been changed by God’s grace and power.  It says not to be afraid when fear seems close at hand.  It says you are not alone when you suspect everyone has abandoned you.  It says that light is shining somewhere even when you believe the darkness has won.  It says that yes, death is part of life, but not the end of it.  It says that evil will not triumph over good.  It says that when you are weak you have strength yet to be discovered.  It says that when you are lost you will be found.  It says all this and much, much more, in its scant six words. 

They are six words you know, and I pray you will leave here with them not only in your minds, but engraved on your hearts, and ready on your lips.  And I believe you can proclaim these six words of faith without me even telling you what they are.  So, I’ll let you practice once, secretly, in a whisper, so that only we can hear it; and then we’ll do it again for the angels to hear.

Are you ready?  Can you feel the six words coming into mind?  Forming on your lips?  Do you know what they are?  I’ll give you a clue, and I promise you will know the six-word Gospel.  Let’s practice; this time in a whisper.

[Me:] Alleluia, Christ is risen.

[You:] The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

I knew you could do it!  I knew you would know it!

Now, this time for the angels!

[Me:] ALLELUIA!  CHRIST IS RISEN!

[You:] THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!  ALLELUIA!

The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia