What are you waiting for?

You may listen to Father Mullen's Sermon here.

The Mount of Olives stands just east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley, affording the visitor to that holy place a wonderful view of the Old City, where the shining, golden Dome of the Rock (whence the Prophet Mohammad is said to have ascended into heaven) dominates the vista.  The slopes of the Mount of Olives have become, over the centuries, a burial site for Jews, Christians and Muslims, all of whom are welcome to believe (in some measure) that this spot, looking toward a sealed gate in the eastern-facing wall of the Old City of Jerusalem, may be the place where the Messiah will come to bring about, or to complete the salvation of mankind.  And it would seem that with salvation, as in real estate, location is everything.

When our group of 22 pilgrims from Saint Mark’s walked from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem last month, we could see black-clad men with their side-locks, tassels, and broad-brimmed black hats visiting graves.  I know there are Christian and Muslim graves there somewhere, but most of what you can see are burial places for Jews, who place a stone on a grave as memorial gesture when visiting.

Something put it into my head to visit the graves of the dead while we were in Jerusalem – I had a question I wanted to ask - but it was not a part of the itinerary, so I knew I would have to make a secret mission of it.  The wee hours of the morning seemed like a good time to be walking among the hopeful dead anyway, so I stole out of the hotel one morning well before sunrise to go to visit the dead on the Mount of Olives.

I found a chink in a fence I was able to squeeze through and in no time I was ambling among the flat, table-top graves that are spread out on the hillside like a giant keyboard of some kind.  No grass grows between the graves, there is only dirt and stones.  The moon was bright, so I was able to navigate easily among the tombs.  I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, I just wanted to find someone there who’d be willing to talk to me – a goy from Philadelphia – someone who might be willing to entertain my question.  I picked my way among the graves, trying to make enough noise to be heard by the dead if they wanted to talk, but no so much noise as to wake the dead if they preferred to remain sleeping.

Eventually I paused, and I sat on the edge of a gravestone, looking back to the old city as the moonlight glistened on the Dome of the Rock, and in the still darkness before dawn I heard the sound of old, gravelly throat being cleared somewhere behind me.

“What brings you here at this hour?” the voice asked.

Dispensing with small talk, I got right to the point, “Sir, I have a question to ask.”

“American?” asked the man.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Oy vey,” said the old voice, “another American tourist.”

“I’m not a tourist, I’m a pilgrim!” I began to protest, before realizing that the dead old Jew really didn’t care about my semantic distinctions, so I repeated the purpose of my visit, “Sir, I have a question to ask, if I may?”

“So, ask,” said the man.

“You were buried here in order to wait,” I ventured, “but what, may I ask, are you waiting for?” giving voice to the question I had come here to ask of the dead.

“What am I waiting for?” the old voice repeated.

“What are you waiting for?”

Taking a slow, deep breath, (which was only for effect, since he was already dead) the man replied, “In the last chapter of the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, we read this:

“ ‘A day is coming for the Lord… On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east…  Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.’ ”  And he let out a breath of ghostly air.

“So you are waiting for the coming of Messiah?” I asked.

“Yes,” sighed the tired voice, “I am waiting for Messiah.”

“Why?” I asked, hoping this was not pushing my luck.

“ ‘On that day,’ the prophet says, ‘there shall not be either cold nor frost.  And there shall be continuous day… not day and night, for at evening time there shall be light.

“ ‘On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem… it shall continue in summer as in winter.

“ ‘And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.’

“For this,” said the man from his grave, “for this, I am waiting.”

“So, you are waiting for endless day, for living water, and for the time when the Lord will be one and his name will be one?”  I asked.

“Just as the prophet said,” the voice allowed.

“May I ask, sir, if it’s no trouble, what does this mean?” I pressed on.

“It’s no trouble,” came the answer, “what else have I got to do?

“You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve had time to think about it, lying here on this hillside.  There’s more to consider than just these few lines, of course, but my memory isn’t what it used to be, so I find myself going back to what I know, what little I can remember, and to me it seems like enough, at least for now.

“On that day there shall not be either cold or frost: this is good news to a cadaver, because it’s the cold the kills; it’s the slow seeping away of life’s heat, the gradual slipping into deeper, colder water – it’s like every burial is a burial at sea, and you just get colder and colder till the chill has emptied your veins and penetrated your bones. 

“Here, on the Mount of Olives, cold and frost won’t do: it spoils the olives and kills the trees.  So this promise that there shall not be either cold or frost is a sign of life.

“And there shall be continuous day.  This, my child, is a promise of justice, because cruelty and wrongdoing cavort in the night hours, but justice thrives in the daylight.

“Remember that murder, robbery and warfare are all planned in the night, or underground, or in dark places.  Greed despises the light where it can be seen eating more than it should, taking more than it needs, while Hunger moans close at hand.

“Lies are best perpetrated in the night; secrets that erode trust are mostly nocturnal.

“Do you think the lights burned brightly in Auschwitz?  No more than they do along the wall I can almost see from here, or in any place where injustice is cloaked with the confidence that my destiny trumps your rights.

“If you want to keep a child stupid, don’t give him any light.  You know this,” the man said, “you can see this from where you live. 

“Why do you think they called the Dark Ages dark?  Wickedness swaggered with the conviction that might made right, while Justice was locked somewhere in a dungeon.

“But where there is continuous day, there will be justice, for even at evening, when cruelty and wrongdoing are ready to go about their work that requires the cover of darkness, there shall be light.”

“And what about the living water flowing out from Jerusalem?” I asked.

“Have you seen the desert just beyond these hills?” he cried.  “Do you know what water means in this place?

“Do you remember what Isaiah said?

“ ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

and rejoice with joy and singing…

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water;

the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,

the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

‘A highway shall be there,

and it shall be call the Holy Way…

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’

“Need I say more about the living waters that God promises will one day flow from Jerusalem?” the old man asked.

“Your memory is not so bad after all,” I joked.  And the man let out a sigh of contentment.

Then I repeated the last part of the prophecy of Zechariah he had quoted to me:

“ ‘And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.’ ”

And the dead man took up his discourse:

“ You have seen how we fight here?  You have seen the land mines and the guns and the tanks, no?  And our arsenal is puny compared to yours, is it not? 

“You know how men abuse one another in the name of God – it has ever been thus.  You know how God has been used as a justification for slavery, warfare, and oppression of all kinds – always because my version of God is different from your version; my text reads differently from yours, even if they are identical.  And this is done from one corner of the globe to the other.

“We cannot fool ourselves for ever.  We cannot pretend for eternity that this way of treating one another pleases God.  In time he will make himself known; in time he will establish his rule.

“How I yearn for the day that the Lord will at last be king over all the earth, to put all that to and end; when all people will see and know that the Lord is one, and his Name is one.  Is this not worth waiting for?” asked my aged, departed friend.

Knowing it would be unwise to turn around and look for the body of my long-dead companion, for it was still enclosed in its tomb, I gazed at the old city across the valley from where I sat among the graves.

“That’s a lot to wait for,” I said.

“Oy,” said the man, “a lot to wait for, indeed”

“Why is it so important to be right here, on the Mount of Olives?” I asked.

“When the Lord comes,” said the old voice, “I suppose it may be that he will save all creation at once, that there will be no waiting, that you won’t need to take a number, as though you were standing in line at a delicatessen.  I suppose it may be that God can manage the machinery of salvation with greater efficiency than I can imagine. 

“I suppose it may be that an American goy will be as likely to be saved as me, a faithful Jew, who did his best to observe the commandments.

“But my burial here on this hillside, my desire to wait here, just across from the Eastern Gate, with the words of the prophet ringing in my post-mortem ears, is not intended to say anything at all about God.  God will do what God will do, and there is nothing at all I can do about that except to be faithful.

“But to wait here is a choice I make, so that even in death I can declare my faith, so that my body may rest in hope, not only repose. 

“To wait here is to continue to pray, even with the cold, decaying dust of my bones, that Life triumphs over Death; that God will bring Justice; that a living stream will some day flow from the streets of this holy city on the edge of a desert; and that the Lord our God is indeed one, and will be king over all the earth.

“To wait here is to be a witness to my children of this faith, and to hope that perhaps they will live the faith better than I did: more truly, more peaceably, more honorably.

“To wait here is to declare at the end of my life what I could only say inadequately while I was alive: that even though we all go down to the dust there is something to wait for.

“To wait here is to stand as a testimony to the One by whom all things were created, and for whom all life is lived.

“Don’t you see how few are willing to live their lives for him anymore?  Even if they claim to believe in him, they are not willing to change their lives!

“Don’t you see how few are willing to wait for God, to keep watch for him?

“Me, I made the last choice I could make in life, to set myself as near as I could to the place where his glory will pass by, when he comes with a sound of many waters, and when the earth will shine with his glory.

“What am I waiting for?  Why do I wait here?  What else could I do? 

“I am waiting because I believe God is faithful. 

“I am waiting because I believe God will restore paradise. 

“I am waiting because I believe God will establish justice at last. 

“I am waiting because I have faith that God will show his mercy on my soul and on all souls.

“I am waiting because I am thirsty, as I have been all my life, and I long for the living waters to flow from the streets of Jerusalem.

“I am waiting because I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!

“I am waiting because God is coming.  What better is there to wait for?”

I sat in silence for a moment to let his anthem sink in and to hear its faint echoes in the valley below and the soft harmonies that seemed to be coming silently from the graves around us.

Then I said to the man, “I don’t know what I expected to hear from you, but it wasn’t this.  You know that I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that he has come, and that he will come again.  I expected something, crazier from you, I guess, something angrier, and more selfish.  I expected more politics, more vengeance.  I expected at least to have to argue with you.”

“There is enough of conflict in life,” he said, “too much, in fact, to drag it all into the grave with you.

“In death, it is enough to hope in God.

And then he looked at me, I know, although I did not turn to look back at him, for there was nothing to see.  But I could feel his eyes looking deeply into mine, as he gazed at me from his grave.  And he said to me, “He’s coming, you know.  God is coming.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “I know.  He’s coming soon.” 

And I heard a long and ghostly sigh as I picked up a stone from the ground, and turned around to place it on the old man’s grave.  And as the sun rose over Jerusalem, I made my way home to join the other pilgrims for prayers, and for breakfast.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 November 2011

Saint Mark's Chruch, Philadelphia

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