Gathered In

You may listen to this sermon here.

There once was a man who was in a line. He was not a dot; he was part of a line. But his line was not a line of hope, nor was it a line of fear – it was just a line. A queue, actually, in a grey, empty town “by the side of a long, mean street.” The man was the narrator of C.S. Lewis’s little book The Great Divorce, and he had queued up, like any good Brit would do, in a long line to wait for a bus. When the bus arrived, he got on and, like any good Anglican would do, took a seat near the very back. After a moment, the bus started out… and rose up off of the ground, carrying its passengers up and away into the sky. For you see, the man was dead, the bus stop had been in hell, and the bus was taking him to heaven.

As they flew, the man looked out the window and saw nothing but more and more grey, empty town. He asked the person sitting next to him why there were so few people down there. He was told that in fact, there were many people living in the city; it’s just that they all lived on the very outskirts of town, as far away from one another as they could. You see, in hell, you simply had to think up a new house, a few more blocks down the road, and it would appear. So if you had an argument with your neighbor, you just imagined a house a little further away, and – voila! – there it was. And of course people kept arguing, and the town kept getting bigger and bigger. The oldest residents of hell, Genghis Khan and Napoleon and the like, lived millions of miles away from the bus stop – so far away that the man on the bus would never be able to see their homes, even from high up in the sky. Hell, the man discovers, is a place of infinite separation; to be in hell is to be divided, one from another, again and again and again.

C.S. Lewis’s vision of hell is an utterly modern depiction – not a kingdom of fire and brimstone, not Dante’s world of frozen stillness, but a place of emptiness and of complete and utter disconnection. It’s brilliant, actually, because I think this exactly the hell that we fear – being out of the loop, separated and scattered. Why else would we spend so much time and money getting “connected” with new smartphones and easier wireless access? Why else do we feel the need to check philly.com five times a day, to constantly update our twitter feed, to text while walking? Because we are scared, terrified, shaking in our Uggs, that we might someday find ourselves alone on a grey, empty street, with no one and nothing in sight.

But of course, these means of being “connected” are simply surrogates for the real thing. And we know this. We know that we cannot satisfy our need for communion simply by owning the right equipment. We know deep in our being that an email is not the same as a handwritten note, that writing “Happy birthday, buddy!” on someone’s Facebook page is not the same as sending a card, that texting is not the same as a phone call, and that none of these is the same as actually standing face to face, watching someone’s face as she talks, looking into her eyes, breathing the same air. We know this, and yet we still allow ourselves to be led astray by the false promises of the world with all of its stuff. We fall in line behind those who tell us that true connection can be easy and effortless and as fast as 4G. But the longer we follow this path, the more we realize that we are, in fact, moving further and further away from our neighbors, and soon we’re living on the outskirts of our own life, divided from all meaning and all connection by the sin of separation. Because it’s hard to love God, neighbor, or yourself when you feel millions of miles away from everything.

This is where God’s people find themselves in the book of Ezekiel. They are scattered all over the place, utterly disconnected from each other and from God. They had been counting on their leaders to hold them together, but their leaders, these shepherds of Israel, have made a real wreck of things. They haven’t done a thing to care for their sheep; they haven’t fed them or healed them or kept them safe. And the sheep, broken and hungry and suffering, have wandered off and abandoned the flock. They are fighting among themselves. Some are lean and some are fat, and they are all separated and lonely and anxious. They are, in a word, in hell. Finally, God looks down on this mess and says, enough. The false shepherds are finished. “I myself will search for my sheep,” God says; I myself “will seek them out.” No longer will God use a surrogate shepherd. God Himself will go and get the people; God himself will find the lost and bring them to good pasture, bind up the wounded, feed the hungry. God has taken over; God will personally restore His kingdom, where all people are gathered in and cared for, where all people feed and rest together on one mountain, breathing the same air, and following one shepherd.

And that gathering is still going on. Here, in our worship, week after week, God seeks us out and draw us in, takes scattered sheep and makes them a flock, takes individual dots and makes them a line. Where else on earth are people gathered and fed, assembled and cared for, called together and offered rest like they are in church on Sunday morning? Where else in the world do all kinds of people – youth and old, rich and poor, the weak and the hungry and the sinners and the broken – sit together in the same pasture, look into each other’s eyes, breathe the same air and know themselves to be connected in the way that we are here? This, right here, is God’s gathering, God’s holy kingdom. Our worship creates the connection that God desires for us, the connection that we are all so desperate to find. It is not quick, and it is not effortless, but it is real. There is no need for surrogate shepherds or cell phones, only the single shepherd, Christ the King, who gathers us in, and connects us to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to our God.

And so I ask you: why in the world would we ever miss this? Why in the world would we ever choose not to come to worship on Sunday morning? And I do mean “we,” because I’ve been as guilty as anyone of hitting the snooze button and making the executive decision to attend the church of the Holy Comforter by the Springs. (Get it?) And we’re not alone. Churches everywhere – including Saint Mark’s – are seeing decreased attendance on Sunday mornings. Generally, fewer people are going to church, and, specifically, fewer churchgoers are going every week. More and more people are choosing brunch, or the Sunday New York Times, or family time or a field hockey game over weekly worship. I don’t think this means that we’ve stopped seeking deep connections; I just think it means that we’ve forgotten where to find them. We forget how wondrous and miraculous this gathering is; we forget that this is where our deepest connections are made, where our deepest hungers are satisfied by the richest food. We forget what a gift of gathering this worship is. Why in the world would we ever miss this?

And we also know, of course, that this – our worship – is not the end of the story. Today’s Gospel makes it very clear that after being gathered in, we are to go out from this place and to keep watch for the Christ that we have met here – to look for him in the faces of the poor and in the prisoner and in the hungry. To quote that great old sermon Our Present Duty by the Anglo-Catholic Bishop Frank Weston, “You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.” But we must not forget that in order to pity Jesus in the slum we must also worship Him in the Tabernacle. Because it is here that we study his face so that we can see it in the least of these. It is here that we learn true connection again and again, that we learn what true love really feels like, so that we can recognize the real thing when we see it and fight to keep it, no matter what. It is in this place, on this very day, that God has gathered us in, connected us deeply one to another in the bread and the wine. It is in this worship that God help us to find our neighbors, and it is from this font that God will grow our flock today with the baptism of Nico and Claire. Why would we ever miss that? I mean, it’s just like…heaven.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

20 November 2011 - Christ the King

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

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