It Isn't Fair

Three little words.  They are spoken in moments when our emotions run high, when our hearts race and our stomachs clench tight and our cheeks are flushed pink.  Three little words.  They often sort of spill out of our mouths in a rush, popping out when we least expect them.  Sometimes we whisper them; sometimes we mumble them.  They often sound breathy, or overly loud or…whiny.  That’s right: whiny.  Because I’m not talking about those three little words – not “I love you” – I’m talking about the other favorite three word combination in the English language: it’s not fair.

I don’t know why we humans always seem to look for the world to be fair.  I don’t know if this is something we learn in childhood, or if we actually come out of the womb looking for the tallies to be even on either side of life’s ledger.  I don’t know if the alarm that goes off in our minds when we see the scales tilted towards one side or the other (an alarm that goes off with the most enthusiasm whenever those scales seems to be tilted away from us) – I don’t know if that alarm is genetic or simply handed down by our parents.  Maybe the eternal quest to find fair is simply an American thing.  I just don’t know.  What I do know is that the search for fair – and the crying and whining when we discover something that is not fair – begins at a very early age, and it lurks around the edges of our personalities through all of the stages of our lives.  It’s not fair: Billy got two blue m-n-m’s, and I only got one.  It’s not fair: Anjel got first seat in the trumpet section and he doesn’t practice nearly as much as I do.  It’s not fair: Julia’s mom says that she can stay out until 1:00 instead of 12:30.  It’s not fair: I’ve worked really hard in school but my parents can’t afford to send me to college.  It’s not fair: all of my friends are married by now.  It’s not fair: my sister can’t get pregnant when I have five children.  It’s not fair: I’ve been loyal to this company through all of the takeover transition and I’m the one who’s losing my job. It’s not fair: I’ve never smoked a day in my life, and I’m the one who ends up with lung cancer.  It’s not fair: you don’t love me the way that I love you.  It’s not fair: I’ve lived a good life, loved long and hard, and now I end up alone and unvisited in a nursing home where no one seems to know my name.

Now sometimes when we say, “It’s not fair,” it means that there’s something in the world that needs to be changed.  And so we go about trying to change it: we write “when in the course of human events” and “[bring] forth upon this continent a new nation,” we publish abolitionist newspapers and shepherd slaves on the Underground Railroad, we protest about women’s abolition outside the White House until we are thrown in prison, we board a bus with both white and black students and ride to Mississippi.  Sometimes we see the scales of justice tipped so badly to one side or the other that we have to – we simply must – stand up and start pushing them back into place.  We cook soup and feed it to all takers on Saturday morning; we travel to Honduras with approximately 8 tons of medication and even more love and care; we unlock the gate on a school in West Allegheny. 

But most of the time, most of the time, when we say, “It’s not fair,” it doesn’t have to do with questions of true justice; we simply mean that it’s not going our way, that our life isn’t the way we envisioned it, that our expectations of the universe aren’t being met.  It’s not fair.  And what is it that our moms and our best friends and our work colleagues always say back to us?  What is that phrase?  Oh, yes.  Life isn’t fair.  That’s right.  Life isn’t fair.  Don’t expect things always to go your way.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  Sometimes you get the short end of the stick.  Because mostly, life doesn’t turn out like you expect it to; it isn’t fair, and it’s often not nearly as good as you’d hoped.  These aren’t exactly comfortable words, but they’re intended to help us toughen up, adjust our hopes and dreams, and live in the real world.

Well, we have got two classic cases of “It’s not fair” whining in our readings this morning.  First we have Jonah, this unlikely and unwilling prophet, who has finally spoken his word of warning to the people of Nineveh.  And – lo and behold – they actually listened.  They changed their evil ways, dressed themselves (and their animals) in ash and sackcloth and repented and returned to the Lord.  And so – lo and behold – the Lord actually pardons them.  And that’s when Jonah starts up with the whining.  I knew this is what was going to happen; I never really liked these Ninevites anyway and then you made me come preach to them and because of me they decide to try to be good Jews for a second and a half…and you go and forgive them.  It’s not fair!  I’ve been living the hard life of the Torah for ever, and they put some soot on their goats’ heads and you decide to pardon the whole lot.  I’m just going to go sit by myself in the corner and sulk, because you are so not fair!!  

Compare that classic whining to the whining of the early workers in today’s parable from Matthew.  These are the people who were recruited by the landowner to come work in his vineyard very first thing in the morning.  The landowner promised to pay them a good day’s wage, and so they’ve worked hard, all day, sweating in the sun, pushing through the after-lunch drowsies, hour after hour until all the work is done.  When evening comes, they go to the landowner’s manager to get their pay.  But then, wait a minute – they’re told to get at the back of the line.  They have to wait while all of the people who worked less than they did (some a lot less than they did) get their pay.  Well, that’s not fair, they should have been paid first!  But then they see that the people who worked only an hour or so got paid a full day’s wage; so they start to think that they must be getting some kind of special vineyard-laborer-of-the-week bonus.  But when they get to the head of the line, they are paid exactly what the landowner said he was going to pay them, exactly the same as the slackers who didn’t start work until 5 pm.  One day’s wage.  It’s not fair, the early workers say, those guys over there got paid the same as we did, when they spent most of the day loitering in the Wawa parking lot and we’re going home with farmer’s tans and palms full of calluses.  Not fair!

Now what’s really interesting is how the Jonah’s Lord God and Matthew’s Lord Landowner respond to these whiners.  They say essentially the same thing – the same thing that our parents and friends have been telling us for years.  You think I’m not being fair?  Guess what.  Life’s not fair.  Don’t always expect life to go the way you’re expecting it to go.  Life isn’t balanced; life isn’t fair.  Sometimes you win and sometimes I help other people to win too.  Sometimes you get the prize and sometimes I give the prize to a whole lot of other people too.  Life isn’t always what you expect it to be: sometimes it’s a whole lot better than you’d hoped. 

Life isn’t fair.  And in the sinful, human world that we live in, this usually means that hearts will be broken.  In this world, “life isn’t fair” usually means that there isn’t enough for everyone and that we need to compete for everything we have – jobs, love, security, peace, family.  But Jonah and Matthew remind us that we don’t live in just this world.  We also live in the kingdom of God, here and now.  And if we are able to see into that kingdom, and, as today’s collect says, to hold fast those things that shall endure even as we sit here among things that are passing away, how much easier we can be.  If we plant our expectation and hope in those things heavenly, how much less anxious we can be about earthly things, for in the kingdom of God, all of their brutal power fades away.  Because in that heavenly kingdom, life, true life, the life given to us by God and redeemed by His only Son, is absolutely not fair.  In that kingdom, we all get far better than we deserve.  We get the gifts of God’s love even when we don’t love Him back.  We get God’s forgiveness even when we sin repeatedly and terrifically.  We get the inspiration of the Holy Spirit even when we aren’t really looking for it; we get the gifts of bread and wine even when we have little faith. 

And all we have to do to receive these radical, life-changing, unfair gifts is to accept that God gives them to everyone else too – to admit that we are all made equal by God’s infinite blessings.  And so if we want to receive God’s forgiveness, we have to accept that God is also forgiving corporate CEO’s who are living high on the hog while their companies lay off more and more people.  If we want to receive God’s inspiration, we have to accept that God is helping other people’s creativity too.  If we want to receive God’s love and healing, we have to accept that God is loving and healing those people we most dislike too.  All we have to do is to accept that God will do with God’s Grace and God’s Love and God’s Mercy and God’s Patience whatever God wants to do, which is always to give generously.  To you.  And to me.  And to everybody else.  And that just isn’t fair.  Thanks be to God. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

18 September 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia         

Because you are so small

'Because you are so small you cannot imagine how it looked from where I see, so far above.

You imagine either that it was as horrifying to me as it was for you, or that I barely noticed it at all.

You think either that I was there in the midst of it, or that I was nowhere to be found.

You believe that I can be either here or there, but not in more than one place at a time.

You have used the awful events of that day as a reason to abuse me or to dismiss me.  And some of you have re-shaped me in your own image.

Some of you have run to shelter beneath the shadow of my wings; others have vowed never again to speak my Name.

---

Once, long ago, from a whirlwind I asked a man, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth!?”

And what could he say, because he was so small?

And now, you, from your own whirlwinds, throw the question back at me: “Where were you?”  Demanding to know, as though it was your right to ask.  “Where were you?” you want to know.  As though you are not small.

You forget that I created mastodon and mammoth, leviathan and pachyderm.  You forget that with my finger I rippled the rocky ranges into majestic peaks; that to stir the oceans I dip my pinkie into depths of sea too dark and cold for you to bear.

You forget that from my mind came forth honeybees and hummingbirds, mosquitoes and amoebas; you do not realize that I know the shapes and colors of sub-atomic particles and can count them all from my bed.

You are, in your own way, smaller than the hummingbird or honeybee: more fragile, less stable, oddly enough: more flighty.  At least the honeybees ask no questions of me.  At least the hummingbirds wage no wars 

---

I can see that day, that is to you ten years ago, unfolding before me now.  The sky is clear and bright, you remember.

I can see the jets taking off.  I can hear the radio communications.  I can see the villainy and the heroism already in the hearts of men.  I know who is who.

I can feel the pounding hearts as the plan unfolds.  I can smell the cool slivers of steel as tiny blades are unfolded.

I hear my Name taken in vain.  I have heard this before.

I have dispatched my angels before you even know what is happening.  They are ministering to the dead in the cockpits before you even know the door is locked.

I know this is unfair.  I know you would prefer it if a legion of those angels would have carried the planes on their shoulders.  I would have preferred it, too, for that is my way. 

But this is going your way: the way of men, the way of wars, the way of pain, the way of death.  So long ago you chose this way, and really, you have never stopped choosing it.  And so it goes, as a writer once said 

---

I feel the explosive heat in Arlington.  I see the field in Shanksville that I know is being readied to become a quickly dug, and shallow grave.

And I see those two proud, slender towers, reaching up to me, as they have these thirty years or so.  Extended like a child’s fingers, waiting for me to grasp them and hold on tight, as though if I held on tight enough I could protect you from everything, as children imagine.

I hear the music of the breeze between the towers.  I do not wish to see this end; I have no desire to hear this music cease 

---

Angry men are only angry men – the shape or the name or the color of their anger makes no difference.  Rage sounds the same in almost any language.  The urge to destroy fits beneath almost any uniform.  The accents of hateful slogans are lost in the shouting – they sound more or less the same to me 

---

And I can hear every cry on every flight that day.  And I can hear every gasp for air on every floor of those towers.  I know the sound of every voice.  Do you think I didn’t hear?  Do you think I didn’t listen?

I hear every prayer, and I am answering every one – though I know how hard it is for you, in your time, to recognize this.

I see the bursts of flame, like violent incisions in those long, elegant fingers: fiery blood rushing out, and with it so much life.

I know what happens when the air is thick with smoke.  I know when the elevators stopped running, and I can see the chaos in the stairways.

I can count the firemen making their way up – and they have angels, too.  I can feel their valor climbing every step, and I know, as they do by now, that black bunting was made for days like this.

I see men and women peering out of vertiginous windows and making calculations of mortality.  They will jump, but not without my consort.

I hear the struggle of resistance over land the Quaker’s once claimed for peace.  And I know there are real martyrs on that plane – though not the ones who sought to claim the title for themselves.

Because you are so small, I know, I know how much this hurts.  I know how hard it is for you to bear 

---

I remember how long ago all the brothers of Joseph dreamt of murdering him for jealousy and spite.  Do you remember this, too?

I see them toss him into a pit, reluctantly letting him live.  And I hear them haggling with the slave traders, as they settle on a price – 20 pieces of silver is his life’s worth.  He is small, too.

I watch the brothers return to their father without the youngest, his favorite.  I remember his worry.  I see the cruel brothers take the boy’s coat and dip it in goat’s blood to convince the old man that the apple of his eye is dead, so they can be rid of him at last.

Where do you think Joseph’s dreams came from?  Who do you think guided him, like a boat downwind, through the highest corridors of Pharaoh’s court?  Who do you think blessed him, although he was so small?

I watched, years later, as his brothers made their journey toward Egypt, looking for grain, in the days of famine.  I saw the gleam of recognition in Joseph’s eye when they arrived.  I listened as he sent them back for his youngest brother.  I saw Benjamin return to Joseph.  I heard Joseph wail in mourning for the family that had been lost to him but was at last restored.  I saw Jacob rise from his sickbed to be reunited with his son.

And after their father was dead, I saw the crafty brothers stand beside their long-lost brother and beg for Joseph’s forgiveness.

And this is what I heard him say:  “Do not be afraid…  even though you intended to do harm to me; God intended it for good….” 

You intended evil; but God intended it for good.  Which sounds absurd –that God can bring good out of evil – which sounds like grasping at straws; which sounds like the worst kind of kitschy, feel-good theology you can imagine…

…Until you remember that it was only Joseph’s way of saying, “I forgive you." 

---

I remember all this as I watch men thinking evil against one another, and acting on their thinking.  I remember Joseph’s simple calculus, and his faith in my good intentions.

I remember how small he was; how small you are.

I remember it as I see again the flames, as I hear again the screams, as I feel again the horror that you felt that day.

And I remember it as I hear you demanding of me: “Where were you?!?  What were you doing when the planes were hijacked, when the Pentagon was on fire, when the fuselage dug out a grave in Shanksville, when the towers burned and fell?!?

“Where were you?!?  What were you doing?”

They intended it for evil; how can I intend it for good? 

---

And I fear you cannot comprehend or even hear this answer.  Maybe it is because you are so small.  For I know how much you have suffered.  I know how you now live with grief.  I know how satisfying vengeance would be.  I know how impossible justice is.

I know you need me to hold you in the palm of my hand, because you are so small.  I know you are fragile and beautiful.  I see my own image every time I look at you.  I know you are the most wonderful and most difficult thing I have ever made.

And I promise that because you are so small, I have never left you on your own – not even when flames engulfed you.  I have never removed my hand from you.  I have never let you out from beneath the shadow of my wings – especially when you could not fly and you needed to 

---

I know you want answers from me.  I know you want to know where I was, what I have been doing.

I will tell you, although I fear you will not believe me, and even if you do, I suspect you will not be satisfied with the answer.  I expect you will want more.

Where was I?  What was I doing?

I was forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving.

When Cain took his brother’s life, I was forgiving.

When Moses killed an Egyptian, I was forgiving.

When Joseph was reunited with his brothers, I was forgiving.

When my own children prayed to a golden calf, I was forgiving.

When they were driven into exile, I was forgiving.

When my Son was denied a clean room in which to be born, I was forgiving.

When he was betrayed, mocked, and hung on a Cross, I was forgiving.

When my children were persecuted, I was forgiving.

When my church splintered into fragments, I was forgiving.

When my beloved were sent into gas chambers, I was forgiving.

When murderers stole my holy Name from the lips of the muezzin, I was forgiving.

Wherever men with evil intentions plot in their hearts and act out those plots, I intend it for good.  But there is only one way to do it: to forgive, and forgive, and forgive. 

Until then you are just brothers who have betrayed each other; who have thrown each other into a pit and are haggling over the price of a life’s worth.  Until then, all the evil intended cannot be intended for good.

For you men – who bear my image, the imprint of my thumb, the hallmark of my making – you continue to intend evil against one another; you continue to dig pits for one another; you continue to think that a life can be haggled over as though it was yours to give or take… because you are so small.

---

 You intend so much evil; but I intend it for good…

 …which is to say that I forgive, and I forgive, and I forgive.'

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 September 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Excuses

Having recently spent a week with my twin six-year-old nephews, I find myself wondering when in childhood we learn to make excuses.   Neither of them seems adept at it yet.  When confronted with a scold, a correction, or a withering look, it seemed to me that the boys, at this age, tend either to be sorry or not.  They don’t equivocate; they are not yet reaching for excuses; not even blaming each other yet.  I chalk this behavior up to developmental progress not the disposition of their own characters, but who knows?

I do know how easy it is to look for excuses – I do it all the time.  When I have left something undone  - a phone call I should have made, a letter I should have written, work I put off till later, etc – I find myself fabricating excuses in my mind, for I am a fairly reliable accuser of myself; it’s good to beat others to the punch!  And I’m sure if ever I had done something I ought not to have done I might be tempted to look for an excuse too.

The most common excuse we hear in politics these days is that so-and-so “mis-spoke” – which is a euphemism for “lied,” or “had no idea what he was talking about,” or “made it up completely.”  These are never admissions of wrong-doing, these are excuses.

In the newspaper the other day, I read of how leaders of another denomination, much accused, are relying on the excuse that “I didn’t know I was supposed to tell anyone.”  Or, “it was better to keep it out of the press.”  Or, “I had very little training in dealing with these matters.”  These, too, are only excuses.

One of the great ecclesiastical excuses is often mined from today’s Gospel reading: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”  I know it doesn’t sound like am excuse, so let me try to explain.  During the past fifty years or so, we have learned to fashion this short sentence of our Lord’s into a first-rate excuse for failing to build up either his church or his kingdom.  And clerics have learned to be indignant at the crass suggestion that their work might be measured by the number of people they can count in their congregations.  Why focus, like accountants, they challenge, on such numbers, when all that’s needed are two or three?!?  After all, that’s what Jesus said!

There are certainly reasons that it is harder to get people into church these days.  There are reasons it can be an uphill climb to build God’s kingdom.  But there are also a lot of excuses that find smug satisfaction in Jesus’ promise that he would be in the midst of his people wherever only two or three are gathered together in his Name.

I don’t think Jesus intended this remark as an excuse.  I think he intended it as a brand of empowerment.  I think he was opening up possibilities that his disciples might have imagined were beyond them.  He told them only two of them had to agree on something and ask for it, and God could make it possible.  He knew there would be arguments, disagreements, and division – but these would not impede his kingdom.  Just bring two or three of you together, and there I will be, with power to change the world! 

+ + +

Some time in the morning of Wednesday, August 24, three children must have set out along a dusty road in the hills of northwestern Honduras.  They were unaccompanied by any parent – I don’t know why.  The eldest, was, I think, in his early teens, the others, each a couple of years younger.  They must have heard about the Gran Brigada Medicina – as our free medical clinic was advertised – from one of the flyers that were distributed, or by word of mouth.  Like many of the families we saw walking the rutted roads of the steep hillsides, their feet were the only mode of transportation available to them.

I first learned of the children when I reached for a slip of paper that was handed over to our makeshift pharmacy for every family of patients.  I did not notice the children’s names, I am embarrassed to say, or even their ages, at the time.  I saw that no medications were prescribed, except the anti-parasitic that we gave to everyone, and children’s multi-vitamins.  This was odd.  I turned the sheet of paper over to read the diagnosis.  There was a list of complaints – aches and pains of various kinds – but no diagnosis, and no treatment.  Maybe this was a mistake?  I identified the doctor’s handwriting and went into the adjacent building where the clinic was operating, and he was already seeing another patient.

“Is there some mistake here?” I interrupted.  “Is there something we should be doing, something we can give these children?”

He looked at me with sincere eyes.  “There is nothing to diagnose,” he said to me.  “Their condition is a result of poor hygiene and malnutrition, because they are poor.  They walked for two hours on their own to get here.  They need food, if we have any.”

If I’d been thinking, I’d have rummaged through everyone’s bags and collected various granola bars and scraps of food that we might have been carrying.  But I wasn’t thinking.  I didn’t do it, and I didn’t even find the children.  I went back to the pharmacy and I grabbed a big bundle of vitamins and a few children’s Tylenol, and I handed them over to be distributed when the three children’s turn came.  And I cannot tell you any more of what became of those three kids who walked so far to get so little. 

+ + +

While I was in Honduras, one of my dogs had to go to the vet, for a not especially expensive visit that cost about five times what it cost us to see one patient in Honduras.  I feel as though I need to make an excuse here, but I can’t even define what exactly it is for.  Except that what else can I do in the face of three children who walk for two hours to a free medical clinic that cannot treat them because their illness is poverty and their hunger I had not the wherewithal to feed.

+ + +

The Christian Church these days is something of a mess.  It is marked by scandal, hypocrisy, abuse, name-calling, foolishness, hatreds, self-absorption, and a too-often anemic enthusiasm for the Good News of God in Christ.  She consoles herself with excuses, and with the regular reminder that where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there he is in the midst of them.

But every morning there are children who wake up with no one to care for them, no way to feed themselves, no access to clean water, and no way to find a doctor of the kind found by the dozen across the river at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  Unless we decide to go to them, as the doctors and nurses, and non-medical folks who went to Honduras in the name of this parish did two weeks ago.

It would be misleading to be self-congratulatory and tell you what a marvelous job we did – although we did a marvelous job.  It would be a mistake to believe, even for a moment, that all is well because of our week’s work in Concepcion del Norte.

But it would be wrong to miss the importance and the power of two or three or fifteen people agreeing on a mission of love and care and healing.  It would be blindness to miss the clear evidence of Christ’s presence among the men and women who you sent to do that work in Honduras.  And it would be tragic to fail to recognize the power of God to transform lives and even the whole world when we gather together by our twos and threes, our fifteens and fifties, our hundreds and our thousands.

This is precisely why three years ago this parish adopted an empty church in North Philadelphia as our mission.  And why we have founded there a school that is to open in two days at Saint James the Less, which seeks to serve children like those who walked to the Gran Brigada Medicina – children who have not enough to survive in this world.

This is why we cannot console ourselves with excuses, and why we must not be satisfied with two or three gathered together, when Christ has given us so much power, by calling his people together here on Locust Street for more than 160 years.

And Christ has given each and every one of us power when we were baptized with his Holy Spirit.

Christ gave you power to build up his kingdom.  Christ gave you power to reach out in love.  Christ gave you power to change your own life and the lives of those you touch.  Christ gave you power to bear with grace the image of your creator.  Christ gave you power to conquer darkness and despair.  Christ gave you power to heal brokenness and to forgive those who vex you.  Christ gave you power to live beyond the grave.  Christ gave you power to do whatever you ask in his Name. 

Christ has not given you or me an excuse… to be less than he calls us to be, smaller than we should be, timid of hope, puny in our dreaming, stagnant in our work, tight-fisted in our giving, reluctant in our hospitality, reserved in our loving.

Every day there are homes in this city where two or three children wake up hungry, without all they need, and no good parent to guide them in this difficult world.  But Christ is in their midst too – those beautiful children of his!  And they are walking towards us every day. 

What, I pray, do we intend to do?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 September 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia