Situation Ethics

                     …….Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or

                                      sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?......

Once upon a time in the long-ago 1970’s one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues was

an ethical system called Situation Ethics,  the premise of which was that if love was to be best served,

sometimes other moral principles and codes could be put aside. This ethical system was grounded in 

unconditional agape love,  the absolute law of love.  Situation  Ethics argued that if

other laws needed to be broken in order for universal agape love to be fully realized, the very love  

that Jesus taught in the two great commandments of the Gospels,  then so be it. In Situation

Ethics, the ends can justify the means, assuming, of course, that the “situation” is not intrinsically bad

or evil. Situation Ethics is among the purest systems of moral ambiguity but when we consider the

horrors of the sexual abuse of children and the silence of those institutions in which it occurs, moral

ambiguity is useless as a denominator.

On this last Sunday of the Church Year, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Church reveals its wisdom in

maintaining the rhythm of the Christian life of worship and preserving joyful anticipation and

expectations, very much in stark contrast to Situation Ethics. There is certainty and clarity,  all part

of the Good News, as are today’s readings in which, once again, we are shown  how to see ourselves and

our world in a deliberate and mindful way.  Matthew’s Gospel lets us ask the Lord, “when did

we see you?  “If we missed you, we didn’t mean to and if we encountered you and responded

accordingly, we are blessed.”  How remarkable it is that God allows those of us who are mindful as well

as those of us not mindful  to ask the same question.  And because the Gospel is a living conversation ,

we can chose the Grace that comes with our affirmation of Christ in those we welcome, feed,  clothe,

take care of, heal, protect  and cherish, or we can remain unaware that we have done anything wrong

and in our pretend ignorance hope for God’s mercy.    

The Gospel with its challenges was with us in the time of Situation Ethics just as it is

with us now. But oh, how different the times are: what was “situational” and morally ambiguous

in the 1970’s is not “situational” or morally ambiguous now. This is not to say that in our time we are

free from the hubris that comes from spiritual aridity or that we are not living in what Jean Vanier calls

a “mixture of light and darkness, of love and hate, of trust and of fear.” It is, though, to say that we are

clear and unambiguous about one thing--the perversity of the sexual abuse of children, especially when

it occurs in the protected confines of a religious or academic institution. We are quick to condemn the

unconscionable acts perpetrated by people who have every reason to know the evil of these acts, just as

we are quick to judge the corporate institutions as hypocritical, cruel, profoundly dishonest and

deceitful, arrogant, and even dysfunctional and toxic. If you’ve been reading the papers and listening to

the commentators about the human tragedy that has come to our Penn State University, the words I’ve

used to describe the circumstances and conditions of what has transpired there will seem familiar.  We

know that the adults involved in the sexual abuse of children, directly or indirectly, are moral cowards

who seek to protect themselves in the safe confines of their respective institution instead of asking

whether what they have done is right and just and not morally reprehensible. They are neither clever

nor wise, nor do they often practice what they say they believe.

So here we are standing firm in our righteous anger, knowing that we are justified in the integrity of our

judgment because we know the gravity of the evils committed.  This is a good, clean objective, no

moral-ambiguity, non situation-ethics position, right?  Wrong.  There are, in fact, some serious 

problems with which we have to wrestle.  First of all, the scripture readings today make very clear that

God’s judgment belongs to God, not to us. We have the right and the responsibility to render judgment 

but it is our own, not God’s.  Secondly, there is  the problem of what we believe is our righteous anger.

Maybe it is righteous, but maybe it isn’t. Either way, anger is always something of a risk, especially when

we remember that anger is one of the “seven deadly sins.”  Frederick Buechner reminds us of this risk when he says:  Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways [anger]is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Thirdly comes the most difficult challenge and that is what we do about forgiveness

without apparent repentance on the part of those involved with the crimes.  We are fortunate in that

WE do not have to see to it that these heinous  crimes carry punishment. They do and they will. This is

the human side. We are Christians and our path is different in that we have the law and spirit of the

Gospel  to guide us toward forgiveness.  But forgiveness is neither  simple nor easy, especially when

we see little or no repentance.  And while letting go of our anger is part of forgiveness, we have to

be mindful that in letting go of our righteous anger we don’t grant amnesty to the unrepentant. Again,

this is God’s work.

Matthew’s Gospel today shows us that we have the choice of doing or not doing, the choice of how to

lead our Christian lives, knowing full well the consequences of one choice or the other.  Not to forgive is

a choice but a costly one, like anger. Modern theologians and spiritual directors tell us that to hang on to

the wrongs is to feed a tumor in our inner lives, and thus feed on ourselves as our own prisoners.

So finally comes the act of true forgiveness. As Christians we know that forgiveness is the way of

the Gospel, a way of acknowledging how deeply flawed we are as human beings who can harm and hurt

one another and live in untruths and deceptions.  But because we are who we are we remember that

God began by forgiving us and giving us Christ, His son, in ransom. The Good News is that God invites us

to forgive as we are forgiven and to set ourselves free. This is the gift of our Faith and we experience it

again in its richness and fullness on this Sunday of Christ the King.

……for I was hungry and you gave me food , I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you took care of me …and I was a child and you protected me.

Amen.

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

20 November 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

What Color is My Talent?

You may listen to this sermon here.

Here beginneth the first sentence of the second chapter of a book you may have read, or at least you have very probably heard of before:

“Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.”  Here endeth the reading.

The job market being what it is, the well-known book, What Color is My Parachute? is still going strong, with a new edition out every year, more than 40 years after the first edition.  This job-hunting book charts an unusual course, because it doesn’t just give advice about how to tailor your resumé for this job or that one, and it doesn’t just give you strategies for putting in a strong interview; it gives advice about you, and about your life.  For instance, the very first section of the book is called “How To Find Hope.”  And the last section of the book is all about trusting God.

In between, there are lots of lists of questions and exercises meant to help you take stock of yourself.  At the center of the book is what the author, Richard Bolles, calls “The Flower Exercise” in which you conduct an extensive self-inventory, so you can know yourself better, not only so you can present yourself more effectively to a prospective employer, but so that you can find a job for which you are actually well suited, and in which you might actually be happy.  A little later in the book, there is an exercise that asks you to take ten blank sheets of paper and spread them before you, and write at the top of each page, “Who Am I?” so that you can fill in the space on all ten pages.

As it happens, the situations that Bolles imagines in the first sentences of the second chapter of his good book are the very types of situations that trouble most of us – even people who consider themselves Christians, even people who come to church.  Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

What do you do if you are in one of those situations (or some other one that I have not imagined out loud) and you land in church on Commitment Sunday – that Sunday when I am supposed to talk to you about money, when I am supposed to encourage you to give, when I am likely to try to persuade you to give more money to the church than you were prepared to give?  You are in trouble, aren’t you?  You are wondering How To Find Hope, but I am wondering How To Find Money.  Maybe I am wondering How To Find Money In Your Checkbook.  Perhaps you should come back another day.  Perhaps you are just unlucky.

I have the Gospel on my side, after all.  You heard the parable of the talents entrusted by a man to his slaves: five to one of them; two to another; and to another, one talent.  You know where the story goes: everyone is expected to make more with what’s been given.  At the very least, earn a little interest; better yet, make a shrewd investment; whatever you do, do not bury your talent in the dirt.  And I am absolutely certain that it would be A-OK to use this story to talk to you about money and about how much of it you give; that may very well be why Jesus told it so long ago, so that you and I could have a conversation about why you don’t give enough money to the church, as I’m pretty sure you don’t (neither do I, for that matter).

But what if we didn’t use this story this morning to talk about How To Find Money?  What if we used it instead to talk about How To Find Hope?  What if the hidden question in today’s Gospel is really this:  What Color Is Your Talent?

Because, like Richard Bolles, who wants to help you in your job search, but thinks you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well; I want to help you in your search for God, but I worry that you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well.  I suspect strongly that you do not know what color is your talent; you have not realized all the gifts that God has given you; and you certainly have not found all the ways to use those gifts for your own happiness and for God’s glory.  I suspect this about you, because I also suspect it about myself.  And I can assure you that every word I ever preach to you, I am really preaching to myself.

And I also suspect it because I know enough of you well enough to see that you are selling yourselves short as children of God.  I perceive that you have taken your talents, at least some of them, and buried them in the dirt.  And I know that this is a shame.

Allow me to borrow a little more from What Color Is My Parachute.  In the section on How To Find Hope, we learn that “Hope requires that, in every situation, we have at least two alternatives.”  This makes sense, since having only one choice in life, often leaves us feeling boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless.  And if it is easy to feel this way in a job search, it is also easy to feel this way in your search for God; it’s easy to feel this way about your spiritual life; it’s easy to feel this way about being in church: boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless. 

How many of you have children or siblings or close friends who have felt precisely this way about their search for God in church, and have opted instead of continuing, to simply give up?  You mean I have to stand here and sing these hymns?  I have to believe this creed?  I have to show up at this hour and fall to my knees at these appointed moments?  I have to admit I’m a sinner?  I have to put money in that silver plate as it passes by?  This is my only option for finding God and staying with him?  No thank you!

The people I know who are furthest along on their journeys with God know full well that the journey doesn’t begin and end in the pew, because sometimes faith from the pew isn’t enough, leaves them feeling empty, unchallenged, unmoved, doesn’t provide enough spiritual calories, or provoke enough transformation.  So these people find alternative ways to engage their desire to be with God, while still keeping the Pew Option open, probably even showing up week by week, or day by day to keep the Pew Option on the table.

But they are also volunteering at St. James School to tutor a kid who needs help; or volunteering in the office to help us keep this parish running like the well-oiled machine we are; or making soup to feed to hungry people on Saturdays; or digging in the garden; or packing groceries for our Food Cupboard clients; or studying the Bible on Wednesday nights; or keeping a discipline of prayer at home; or going to yoga class to find strength and space for contemplation; or visiting a monastery for a day or two of silent retreat; or travelling to a far-off place to help people in need.

People who are really advancing in their relationship with God are very often doing so because they have found ways outside of the pew to make those advances.  And they discover that when they are in church the prayers and hymns, the Bread and the Wine, the kneeling and standing, the creeds and the scriptures, all have more meaning, all point to a bit more hope, because this Pew Option is now only one of the ways that God is being revealed in their lives.

Borrowing again from Parachute, I see there is a chapter entitled, “Attitudes Necessary for Survival.”  This seems like a good idea.  Let’s see what they are:

1)    Find something that it is within your power to change.

2)    Assume that nothing that worked before will work now, because the world is a different place than it used to be.

3)    Believe that nothing is meaningless.

Again, what works in job hunting would appear also to apply to God hunting.

Remember that the search for God is always about growth and change.  God wants you to grow, which requires you to change.  He wants you and me to move beyond our limitations, to turn from the things we do to trip ourselves up, to learn to be stronger, more loving, more wise.  Most of this change will come from God – he expects to do most of the work – but some of it must come from you.  God seeks our partnership in the process of transformation, because otherwise it is just magic, and magic transformations don’t last very long.  Real, life-changing transformations require a bit of effort on our part, so we have to look for something that it is within our power to change.

Many people learn more about religion in their childhood than at any other time of their lives, and then are surprised when their Sunday School religion is not robust enough to sustain them in their adult lives, as though you and the world you live in have not changed at all.  Assume for a moment that what worked for you as a child is not enough religion to sustain you.  Assume that you require more and different input, that you need to know more than that Jesus Loves Me.  This means that you may need to go about the practice of religion more often and differently: seeking new, more intense outlets for religious expression; discovering more than one alternative.  I promise you that you do not need to find another church in order to do that.  Whether Saint Mark’s is your home or some other church is, you will find, in most decent churches, avenues to explore your faith that you have never tried before, all under the same roof.  Maybe you should try one of them?

Can you believe in your search for God that nothing is meaningless?  Can you believe that the gifts God gave you – no matter how varied or limited you regard them to be – are all important to God and useful for the building up of his kingdom?  Do you realize that it takes no skill more advanced than ladling out a bowl of soup, or filling a basket with bread, or stuffing envelopes in the office, or greeting a person at the church door to make a difference in this world?  Do you realize that in fact, the kingdom of God depends on these apparently meaningless acts?

Listen, it is as if a man went on a journey, and has entrusted you with some of his talents, as he has entrusted some to the person next to you.  What are you to do? 

You could begin by taking ten sheets of blank paper and writing at the top of them, “Who Am I?” and then filling in all the blank space on those ten sheets of paper.  At the very least you should ask yourself why God has given you the things God has given you?  What are you supposed to do with all that God has given you?  Who are you?

If you think that Christian stewardship is all about money, that is like concluding that a job search, is all about your resumé.  Well… money may be a crucial, required ingredient to building up God’s kingdom, but it’s not the whole story.

And what I know about the Christian life is that those who live it most deeply, most thoroughly, most fully, are the ones who share their talents and their money most freely.  Look around you, and you will realize this too.

And I also know that you could all empty your bank accounts into Saint Mark’s coffers this very morning, leaving nothing for yourselves, in acts of radical offering, and we would still be no closer to the kingdom of God.  Because if the only talents you give are your green ones, then you might as well have buried them in the dirt.

Who are you?  What color is your talent?

Is it blue as the sky, because your mind is always at work dreaming up good ideas that need a community in which to be realized?

Is it silver as a fine table setting, because you have a gift for hospitality?

Is it black and white because you have a way with words?

Is it four-color because you have a way with images?

Is it brown as the soil because you love to be in the garden?

Is it waxen as a candle because you are ready to serve God at the altar in the beauty of holiness?

Is it white as a chorister’s surplice because you are ready to lift your voice in song?

Is it pink as…  well, of course there are some people here who talents are pink – thanks be to God!

Is it red as blood because you are a healer who is ready to bind up wounds?

Is it black as a chalkboard because you are a teacher who loves to help others grow?

Is it golden as a doubloon because you know that money is actually one of the easiest things to give away?

What color is your talent?  And are your prepared to turn it into something more?  Are you ready to Find Hope?

Christian stewardship is about How To Find Hope, because it encourages us to see new alternatives, especially to the old, tired ways we have been doing things, wasting our energy, forgetting to use our gifts, and throwing our money at things that amount to nothing.

Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, bored, puzzled.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job, or you have a new handicap, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

And maybe you are wondering How To Find Hope.

Maybe you need to make a pledge to dig up the talents you have buried in the dirt and make them grow into something new.

Maybe you need to discover what color is your talent.

Maybe you need to answer this question: Who am I?

Because the truth is that you yourself are the talent that Jesus is begging you not to bury in the dirt.  Your gifts and skills and charms, your weaknesses and quirks, your strengths and abilities, your history and your future, and yes, even your money, which you have gained by using all your talents. 

Everything about you is what Jesus is asking you to offer him, to see the amazing choices you can make in building up his kingdom.  So you can measure every ounce of your value, your worth; you can assess fully the complicated tincture of the color of your talent; so that finally you will know How To Find Hope!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

13 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Consider the Occupation

You may listen to this sermon here:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord.... 

It is darkness, not light;

  as if someone fled from a lion,

  and was met by a bear.  (Amos 5:18-19)

The yard around St. Paul’s Cathedral in London has been occupied for the past several weeks by an encampment of protesters, similar to the camp that has sprung up around City Hall, here in Philadelphia.  The occupiers, who are a grubby group, by and large, have posted signs in London declaring that “Capitalism is crisis,” warning, “Rich beware, your days are numbered,” and of course, proclaiming that “We are the 99%.”  The legitimacy of the protest has been questioned by some because, late at night, thermal imaging suggests that many of the tents are unoccupied, leading some to suspect that the protesters prefer to go home to their warm, comfy beds, than to actually occupy – 24/7 – a segment of the City of London.  I’m sure I don’t know.

I do know that the leadership of Saint Paul’s, working hand-in-glove with the leadership of the City, deemed the protesters to be the greatest threat to the cathedral since the German bombs of World War II, prompting them to close the cathedral for nearly a week, before the embarrassment of such prissy precaution forced the resignation of the Dean and the re-opening of Christopher Wren’s famous landmark, whose neo-classical design I have always thought more suitable for banks than churches, anyway.  (But I digress.)

I have walked among the pitched tents at City Hall, a few blocks from here, and I must say I found the whole thing underwhelming.  There is almost nothing attractive to be found there; it does not lend the appearance of youthful idealism to the city, or even resurgent hippie-ness.  The only person I ran into whom I knew was a homeless woman who has never been on the winning side of her ongoing struggle with drug addiction, sad to say.  There was not much to inspire the heart as I walked through the encampment, but for just that reason, you had to be impressed that people were continuing to stick it out in what is anything but a utopian environment.

I have a theory that may be crazy.  My theory is this: most people want to be rich.  In America we are supposed to take this for granted, but as Christians we seldom talk about it; this is problematic.  In my Bible I keep stumbling upon this question on the lips of Jesus: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?"  This rhetorical question is in line with Jesus' teaching that if you want to gain your life you have to lose it; if you want to be first you need to put yourself last; that you should let someone else take the more prominent seat at a dinner; that to be his disciple you must take up your cross (which is almost never pleasant) and follow him. Although we read this stuff in church, none of this really sounds like a good idea to most of us who profess to be Christians.  To the question, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his life?" Our implied answer is, "I'm not sure, but I'd be very interested in finding out." That is to say, I would rather be rich than follow your teachings, O Lord of the Universe.

So my theory is that most people want to be rich, or at least they think they want to be rich.  In America you can get fabulously, stinking, obscenely rich, and, what's more, you can make sure everyone knows how rich you are, which is part of the benefit of being rich.

I sometimes find myself wondering about the kind of wealth that has been amassed by certain people in this country.  I mean, after a few billion, what's the point, I'd say, in my warped way.   Until I remember that people have a thirst for power as well as money, and in our world money = power.  So even though you can't really do much more with, say, $10 billion than you could with, say, $5 billion, if you have $10 billion you are de facto twice as powerful as some schlub with only $5 billion, which, if you are in Russia, or China, or maybe even America, is important, because, well, it's better to be powerful than weak.

(I will not introduce here St. Paul's astounding revelation from the voice of Christ that his (ie Christ's) power is made perfect in weakness, because most Christians prefer to ignore this mysterious and counter-intuitive teaching, so why shouldn't I?)

Back when we had stunted imaginations, so many Americans thought the best they could do in the way of riches was to, say, own a house with a dishwasher, and a second car, and not be embarrassed by the way your kid looked in the clothes you dressed him or her in to go to school. Let's put this in shorthand - most people's imagination of richness extended only so far as being better off than their (very-likely immigrant) parents, and maybe not getting killed in a war (that would be good too, a sort of bonus, but that’s another sermon).

But time marches on and does its amazing thing. Here are some of the things time did in America.  Time watched the quality of public education (which had been a key to accomplishing the aforementioned goals of prosperity) decline dramatically, especially in urban areas; time watched manufacturing in America disappear; time watched saving in America turn into borrowing in America.

And time watched the so-called wisdom of the so-called markets decide that it was wise to create markets in which you didn't have to do anything but come up with new and convoluted ideas of how to get money to make money on its own, on paper, without the hassle of actually, like, making or doing or producing and selling something. This seemed like an especially good idea to people's whose bonuses (on which they got taxed at a lower rate than their much smaller salary) would be, shall we say, astronomically big at the end of the year, as long as paper kept making money, on paper. Yippee!

Now, what could be better than sitting back and getting rich because some of my money, on paper, made me some more money, on paper?  If compensation tells you anything, almost nothing could be better than this - not healing the sick, not teaching your kids how to read, not even defending you in court. The huge rise in financiers' compensation is a direct reflection of how much we, as a society, value this alchemy - the ability to make money with money on paper - more than we value nearly any other skill.

Remember, after all, most people want to be rich, want to "gain the whole world."  And we have created this society in which we put on display anyone who is able to get rich - we call this celebrity, which is no longer confined to movie stars, now it's also ballplayers (even if they don't win) and talk show hosts, and, lottery winners, and their counterparts: reality show stars, which is really just winning another kind of lottery.  The ne plus ultra, of this cultural lottery is, of course, winning American Idol, which allows you to become rich and famous in the span of one short TV season - yippee!  This is what we want to be: American Idols: rich and famous - fast!

Now, we know that some people work hard to get pretty rich, but we also know that some people just get lucky (sorry Winkelvoss twins, some people don’t). This is why I know what an IPO is - because implanted in my mind is the distant notion that I (who have no business ever getting involved in an IPO) could get rich if only I was in early on the right Initial Public Offering of stock.

All this is to say that we have decided that not only is there nothing wrong with being fabulously rich (sorry, French revolutionaries, you can keep your liberté, egalité and fraternité), we have decided that democracy rightly leads to the possibility that anyone at all has the right to do what they want in the pursuit of wealth; that, in fact, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are only second-rate stand-ins for money.

Put it another way, we actually believe that money does buy happiness, and we are looking for some serious happiness therapy.

Put it another way: most of us would very much like to know what it would profit us to gain the whole world, please, but with as little effort and in as little time as possible.

Now, because of this not-so-latent desire to be rich, and the expectation that it is somehow reasonable to think that I could be fabulously rich without being born to money, working especially hard, or selling all my organs, I have taken my pitchfork out of the garage and buried it deep in the backyard somewhere.  It's true that once my forebears would have grabbed their pitchforks and stormed a castle, (or a gated community, or an Upper East Side town house, or Bryn Mawr) to demand, say, a honest day's pay for an honest day's work, to see to it that a sick child got decent medical treatment, or to defend the small plot of land they had to till in order to harvest enough tubers to get through the winter.  But no one wants an American Idol with a menacing pitchfork in his hand, so many of us have buried those implements of outrage in the backyard.

Meanwhile, we are distracted by the shiny things we can easily afford at Wal-Mart despite that fact that our wages have not increased meaningfully in 30 years.  We don't care, we’re waiting for the IPO, or the lottery, or American Idol!  And while we wait we have a big-screen TVs!  And the most wonderful processed foods!  Life may not be perfect but our needs are met almost as quickly as we are told what they are!

By now you surely think I am crazy, that I have lost it.  But we are living in a nation in which I hear people vociferously arguing against their best interests all the time, in which people foolishly think that corporations, in the end, will represent the best interests of the people, but the government, in the end, can't possibly be interested in the best interests of the people.  And this, in the city where the entire bold and beautiful idea of American democratic government was hatched!  But somehow we have been convinced by the narrative that the marketplace cares about our well-being.  Maybe because of how much I love my iPhone, which seems to be meeting my needs so beautifully, as long as my needs are not, say, nutrition or healthcare or education.

And so, although every indication around us shows that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle is a lot further away from the top than it used to be, but not so far away from the bottom, we live in a society where people who hope to be rich deride the grubby people who may or may not be sleeping in their tents as they wage a protest against this widening gap between those have and those who have not.

But I still wonder if there is wisdom in the ancient question that Jesus asked: "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but forfeit his life?"  It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I suspect there are a whole lot of people trying to discover the answer, or at the very least wishing they could.

Which is why the prophet Amos warned that the day of Lord might not be so pleasant, as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear, which is, I suspect, how the leaders of St. Paul’s Cathedral felt when they realized what they’d done by closing their doors, and seeking ways to evict the protesters.  It has been deeply gratifying to read in the papers, how the tide has shifted at St. Paul’s in London; to see the church remember that power and wealth have no currency in the kingdom of God, where justice will some day roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.  And to recognize that dis-organized, inarticulate, grubby, sometimes misguided, and perhaps even inclined-to-sleep-in-their-own-beds-at-home as the Occupy protesters may be, they are a reminder that our secret longings to be rich will not prevail against God’s desire for justice and righteousness – which have most often been at enmity with the amassing of great wealth.

And the real question for the church is this: when we encounter the possibility that justice is beginning to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream, are we willing to get wet?  Or will we head for higher ground so we can keep our money dry?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia