A Good Spring Scourging

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

I have always loved to read. Indeed, I have been a bookworm from my mother’s womb, a trait I inherited honestly from both my parents, who were never, ever without something to read. I was reading on my own by the age of three and devouring chapter books by the time I started Kindergarten. So when I entered middle school, of course, I decided that it was time to write my own novel. Longhand. With a Papermate erasable pen. I can’t remember the subject matter, although I have a vague recollection that it had something to do with a long-abandoned cottage in the woods that was tangled in the vines of an overgrown garden…and in my own florid, overwrought prose. But in my ten-year-old mind, the more adjectives, the better. What tripped me up was the dialogue. I felt pressure, for some reason, to place an adverb after every single line. How else would the readers (of which I imagined there would be many) know what the speakers were thinking and feeling? So line after line of the text ended with phrases like, “…she said, sadly,” “he said, bravely,” “she said, happily, simperingly, fabulously, tearfully, frustratedly…” and on and on and on. I remember my mother – my loving, patient, wonderful mother – reading my first draft and suggesting that, perhaps, there wasn’t a need for quite so many descriptors. But without my adverbs, I was lost. What to do? So my first great novel languished in its notebook and was eventually lost to time. And oh, how I wish I had that notebook now!

There is a decided lack of adverbs in scripture. Remember that the earliest texts of Holy Scripture were stamped letter by letter into clay or scribed onto paper that was both rare and expensive. So every letter, every word mattered. And apparently the writers of scripture did not feel the need, as I did, to provide an emotional context for every single statement, or, for that matter, for many at all. The Bible doesn’t offer us many phrases like, “…Moses said, petulantly,” or “Jesus told his disciples, exhaustedly.” There is little verbiage about the emotional state of speakers in scripture, even in the Gospels. Very occasionally, the Gospel writers will provide us with a clue as to Jesus’ emotional state – he weeps, he loves, he is amazed, he is moved with compassion, or pity. Mark’s Gospel offers more descriptors than any of the other three – Jesus looks at the Pharisees “with anger,” he sighs “deep in his spirit” when asked for a sign, he is “indignant” when the disciples try to prevent the little children from coming to him. But for the most part, we are left to imagine what Jesus was feeling in any given moment. When he spoke words to the disciples, or the Pharisees, or the centurion, or the woman with the hemorrhage, was he smiling? Frowning? Laughing? Outraged? Most often, we just don’t know.

But today’s Gospel has long been seen as a clear example of Jesus’ anger and indignation boiling over. For centuries, people have imagined him striding into the outer court of the Temple, disciples in tow, spoiling for a fight. As he had suspected, he finds not a serene and holy gathering of God’s people making their way into the inner courts to offer their yearly Passover sacrifices, but a wholly tangled mess – animal-sellers hawking their wares, the incessant buzzing of bargaining in the air, queues of anxious pilgrims all knotted up in a jumble by the trade tables where corrupt moneychangers sit at tables, inscrutable and hidden by piles of coins – and always the braying and bleating of cattle and sheep and doves, oh my. Faced with this frenetic scene, Jesus stands alone with clenched fists, furious to see this Saturday-at-the-Philadelphia-Flower-Show, Target-on-Black-Friday, McGillan’s-on-Saint-Patrick’s-Day kind of mob scene in this most sacred place. And so he grabs a whip and goes nuts – flailing the animals and the animal sellers alike, kicking over tables, hurling fistfuls of coins into the air, spinning and shoving until finally he stands alone in the middle of the court, his whip dangling at his side, panting and covered in sweat and dust and pigeon feathers.

And this is a completely fair picture of what this scene may have looked like. I have no doubt that Jesus experienced anger, and this moment known as the “Scourging of the Temple” may be the best example we have of Jesus’ letting loose some of his long pent-up frustration. But without that long stream of repetitive adverbs, is it possible that there is another way to look at this story?

The Scourging of the Temple is one of really only three stories that appear in all four Gospels. But John, as is John’s wont, treats this story very differently than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. First of all, in John’s Gospel, this story takes place right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. There is no long build-up to this event in John, so there is no sense of stifled frustration with the religious authorities after a Gospel’s-worth of confrontations and arguments. Secondly, it is only in John’s Gospel, in fact, that Jesus uses a whip. But notice what the text says here, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.” This was no handy whip that Jesus seized on an impulse; this was a whip that Jesus made himself, wove together out of reeds or grass, to help him get the animals up and out of the court. And finally, we can see that Jesus’ core complaint is different in John’s Gospel. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus is full of righteous indignation. He accuses the moneychangers of corruption, of cheating the pilgrims who needed to trade their Roman coins for temple shekels, which were the only coins that could be used to pay the required temple tax. But here in John, there is no fiery accusation of robbery, only the command to stop making the house of his Father into a house of trade.

And so what if we pictured the scene this way – Jesus enters the Temple courts on Passover because he is a faithful Jew. As he ascends the Temple mount he feels at the root of his being the sympathetic vibration between his body, where the fullness of God dwells, and the innermost room in the Temple, the Holy of Holies, where the fullness of God dwells. He knows a deep consonance between the place where he stands and the body he stands in; he knows that he is the place where God’s love will be most powerfully contained. He knows what he has to offer to the world, he knows the sacrifice he will make for the people who press in all around him…and yet no one else knows it. No one else can even see him through the maze of people and sheep and never-ending queues. What to do? Clear out the court, he says. He braids a cord to help him control the animals and sends them on their way. But that doesn’t grab the attention of the people who are afraid of losing their place in line, so he knocks over the tables so that there is no longer anything to be in line for. And only then does he stand in the middle, his impromptu cattle prod hanging at his side, his face intense and earnest – stop what you are doing, he says. Look up from your queue, look at me, for I am the temple of the full, final sacrifice, I am the temple that will be raised up in three days. No queue, no buying and selling, no trading necessary here.

Seen this way, this Gospel story is not only a Scourging but also, importantly, a Cleansing. A cleansing of the Temple – a clearing of the way so that all of the people could see with unobstructed view and undistracted attention the invitation that stood before them. See me. Follow me. Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem was the coming of something new and astounding, something that required space and attention. And His coming into our lives means precisely the same thing. Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple put it this way: “His coming means a purge. So it is always, not less with the shrine of our hearts than with the Jewish Temple.” Jesus’ coming clears away those things that distract us, drives out those things that get in the way of our truly seeing Him, unclutters our hearts so that Christ may be enthroned there. What is it that blocks your view? Fear? Busy-ness? Over-scrupulousness or anxiety? Judgment, of others or of yourself? Are you reticent to forgive or be forgiven? Do material things get in the way of remembering that it is the Lord who is your strength and your redeemer? Do the great commandments of God seem like walls that are impossible to scale instead of hand-holds that help you love God and your neighbor? What stands between you and Christ? And are you prepared to have it cleared out? Because our Lord Jesus Christ has come, is coming, and will come again; he stands ready to cleanse you, body and soul. He stands here, at this altar, now, offering your heart a good old-fashioned spring scourging. “Take these things out of here,” he says to you, “Stop making the shrine of your heart anything less than fully my own.” What to do, what to do? Say yes, Christ says. Yes, we say, finally, humbly, thankfully.                                          

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

11 March 2012

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The Swallows of Philadelphia

It’s been a good few years since the swallows that used to dependably stop at Mission San Juan Capistrano actually showed up in significant numbers.  Some people think it’s spreading suburban development that’s kept the birds away as they make their annual migration.  Who knows?

Here in Philadelphia we have our own mysterious swallows to contend with, but their story is sort of the reverse image of the romantic pattern of the swallows who would swoop into the picturesque adobe Spanish mission church in Orange County the same week of every year and then wing their way south on their continuing annual pilgrimage.  In our case, we have swallows, the Philadelphia Inquirer tells us, who have moved in for good, giving up their migratory habits in favor of Philly real estate.  But they have not chosen a picturesque site, a place of beauty, or of spiritual significance.  No, these swallows have made their home in a sewage treatment plant in Northeast Philadelphia, which they have decided is a pleasant enough home year ‘round to break them of their snowbird pattern, and so they stay put there all year long, in increasing numbers.  The Northern Rough-winged Swallows are supposed to migrate south for the winter to the Gulf states or as far as Central America.  They forage on the wing, as the birders say, usually flying low, snatching insects in mid-air as they zoom along.  And the allures of a Philadelphia sewage treatment plant have apparently proved to be so thoroughly delightful, that the birds will not budge, even though they ought to be hard-wired to move south for the winter.  Such are the mysteries of nature.

Who can say whether or not God created humans to be migratory creatures?  I suppose I have heard somewhere of long-ago ancestors who led nomadic lives following food – be it herds of animals or the availability of nuts and berries.  But the story of human spirituality is certainly a story of migration to and from the heart of God.  Gestated in the divine womb, and incubated in Paradise, the very next chapter of the human story tells of our migration to other climes of self-assertion that we thought would suit us better, where we supposed we could escape our newly discovered shame, and make good on our own.

On the contrary, we quickly learned to slaughter one another: brother lifting up his hand against his own brother to take his life – which he knew had been given to him by God.  The story that the Scriptures tell traces such prodigal migrations away from God, followed by regular pleading returns when things go badly and the sweat of our brows reminds us that once all was beauty and ease.

By the time God sent his Son, the Beloved, in whom he was well pleased, to live and work and teach among us, even he would migrate for a season into the wilderness to be tempted – as though he was only one of us, just another migratory bird on an annual journey that would bring him safely home.  But, of course, his unique migration pattern is a story that unfolds in the weeks to come.

Suffice it to say that, spiritually speaking, we humans are migratory creatures – we have lived out a pattern of rejection of and return to God: fleeing away, and then flying home when the weather gets cold, the going gets tough, or our shame is more than we can bear.

The ancient rabbis knew why we lived our lives this way: we are sinners, prone to wander, prone to indulge ourselves with things that are not good for us, prone to take what is not ours to take, prone to assert our power just because we can and not because it is right to do so, prone to spill blood as though it was ours to spill, as though God had not measured out every teaspoon of it in our veins with care when he made us, as though he had not aerated that blood with his own breath, and prone to worship other gods – especially those mode from gold.

Your sins and mine may be less colorful, less drastic, less imaginative, but they are no less real, no less selfish, no less insulting to the true and living God.  Do you need me to suggest what yours might be?  Do you need me to air mine, still in need of yet another cycle in the washer, in front of you in order to get the point?  Do you need me to show the other gods you and I have worshiped, do you need me to measure out the gold that tempts us, and count is hefty weight?  Can’t you think of what you’ve done that you ought not to have done, and what you’ve left undone that you ought to have done?  If you can’t, see me later; I may be able to help jog your memory.

But some homing mechanism in our souls is meant to draw us back, when we remember our sins; to bring us home to God when we hear the frost melting to the north and imagine the cool breezes that await us there, and remember how we can cavort on the wing when we are free from these burdens of our own making.  God does not mind that we have made this journey over and over; it is the consequence of our choices, the result of living east of Eden, and he knows us for what we are, for who we are.  And if a soul must migrate for its own well-being, then so be it.  Consider the swallows, how they peregrinate, returning again and again to their places of refreshment.  Except, of course, these days in Philadelphia.  Where the swallows have preferred to stay put in the sewage treatment plant, where, it would seem, they can find everything they need.

And what about you and me?  Have we given up on migrating to and from the heart of God?  Have we found it tiresome to make the journey year by year that requires us - at least for forty days and forty nights - to try to find a minute or two in all these hours to acknowledge our sins, to see our wretchedness, to call ourselves miserable, to know how we offend?

I suppose the swallows who have moved permanently into the sewage treatment plant have gotten used to the stench, or at least they can blame the foul odor on the trash heap, and pretend that none of it comes from them.  How dare we suggest that the foul odor comes from ‘neath their rough feathers!

I don’t know if it’s good for the swallows or not to have given up their migratory life; I have no idea.  But I suspect that we - if we begin to live like these swallows, and give up on our migration to and from the heart of God - I suspect that we pay a price for it, as we begin to think that it’s perfectly alright to live in the sewage, as though God had never meant us for Paradise.  And I think this is what we risk if we make light of Lent, which is meant to be a season of migration back to God, knowing that we are prone to wander away from God.

So many of us have decided to just stay where we are.  We have built mansions for ourselves in the sewage plant and invested heavily in Glade products, because, actually, they do a reasonable job of masking the odor.  But Lent comes to tug at some ancient string of our hearts that wants to take wing so we can find our way out of the sewage and back to God.  Lent comes to remind us that although the way was hard and long, it is invigorating to remember how far we could fly.

This is what we call repentance: being honest about our sins, stopping long enough to realize that too often we have chosen the trash heap, and sometimes it seems as though we have decided to live there permanently.

We don’t come here at the beginning of Lent to make ourselves miserable; we come here because in our selfishness, we have actually already done that.  But eventually the Glade wears off, and we begin to notice a funny smell, as we take account of ourselves and the lives we have chosen.   And even though we have become fat on the insects that thrive amongst the sewage, we begin to remember the view from above, and the way the coastline passed beneath us as we made our way home in the old days of our migration.  And we hear a voice calling us to come home, come home.

And we wonder if the burden of our choices – the burden of our sins – has become too much for us to carry all that way.  But we realize that there is no harm in trying, that there is nothing keeping us here in the sewage treatment plant except our own stubbornness – what the Scriptures call being stiff-necked.

And we stop to say a prayer that might be only one word long – Sorry – but which seems like it needs repeating over and over again.

And we find that far from leaving us out of breath, we are strengthened now, and ready to lean into the breeze that is already lifting us up, and to take to the wing, and to fly, God being our helper, our pardoner, our Salvation, and our true home.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

26 February 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Faith on Your Forehead

Am I the only one who is always a bit taken aback by this Gospel reading on Ash Wednesday?  Am I the only one who hears this text and wonders about what it is I’m actually doing here in this service and in this season – wonders if Jesus is pleased with the way I’m planning for Lent, what Jesus thinks about my walking around Center City with ashes on my forehead? Am I the only one who feels a bit chastened by these words – “beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven”?

The first time I attended an Ash Wednesday service was only eleven years ago, and it was actually here at Saint Mark’s. I was new to the Episcopal Church, new to mainstream Christianity in general, and definitely new to Lent. I’ll never forget looking at myself in the mirror, at the smudge of ash across my forehead and the little flakes that had fallen into my eyebrows and onto my nose; I’ll never forget the feeling of deep belonging that came along with this reflection; I looked like, and felt like, a real, live Christian. As I walked around the city that night, I couldn’t help but notice others, strangers with the same sooty mark, and I was so filled with joy that I wanted to rush up to them and hug them and say, You! You are a Christian! I am a Christian too! (For the record, I did not actually do this.)

In subsequent years, I’ve continued to find the sight of so many Christians walking around in public with their faith pressed into their foreheads to be very moving, even joyful. And I’ve always appreciated the opportunity to talk with friends about what we might give up for Lent, about what practices we’re thinking of taking on. I’ve loved moments like the year I turned on the ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption” and saw Tony Reali, the man the show’s hosts call “stat boy,” sitting proudly in the studio with his suit and his ashes on. I liked that his piety was right out there for everyone to see, and I liked the idea that mine was too.

But year after year on Ash Wednesday, I hear the words “whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets,” and “when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others,” and I have to wonder if I’m doing this right. Should I keep my Lenten disciplines secret? Should I not tell anyone if I decide to give up diet Coke or chocolate or meat? Should I hide the fact that I’m getting up early to pray or reading scripture instead of watching television? Should I wipe the ashes off of my forehead as I walk out of the church so that no one can see that I’ve worshipped in church on this day of fasting? I’ve known people – faithful, wonderful people – who have done any and all of these things; perhaps some of you might even do the same.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that of course Jesus is right. Anything that we do to put our Lenten piety on display, to show off how hard we’re working or how holy we are, isn’t of much use to God or anyone else. If Lent is about showing off, then it isn’t about anything at all. But I think, at the risk of sounding like I’m “correcting” the Gospel, that there might be more to this Gospel story as we hear it in this time and in this place. I wonder if it’s possible that we, the Church, couldn’t do with a few more public acts of sincere piety.

Not to overstate the obvious, but in Jesus’ time, almost everything first-century Jews would have done would have been influenced by their faith. They would have said prayers as they rose in the morning, more prayers when they ate, left home, began their work. They would’ve had blessings for plowing a new field, blessings for the harvest, for marriage and new babies and deaths. Their days and weeks and seasons and years would have been shaped by thousands of little acts of their faith, some private, but many of them public – acts of piety that were shared by everyone else in their community. So the question in first century Palestine was not whether or not your acts of piety were public, because much of the time that decision wasn’t up to you. The question was whether or not your acts of piety were sincere, whether or not the state of your interior faith matched the quality of your exterior acts.

But in our time, thousands of years later, our faith is often less about what we do in the public square and more about what we do in our own homes or in our own heads. Christians, especially Episcopalians, just don’t display our faith much. When was the last time you said grace – in public – in a swanky Center City restaurant – out loud – before the appetizer course? When was the last time you prayed publicly before you began your work day, before you started a meeting, or when you sat down as a department to look at financial statements? How often do you share in communal acts of faith with your neighborhood, your friends at school, or your work colleagues? Now some of this, granted, is shaped by the multicultural, pluralistic society in which we live, but some of it is shaped by our own discomfort. We pray, of course, but we often don’t pray out loud (even within our families). We come to church, of course, but do we always tell people that for us Sunday worship takes priority over soccer games or brunch or vacation time? And speaking of our time, how do we obey that pesky fourth commandment about honoring Sabbath time and keeping it holy? Do we say, “I can’t come to the company picnic because that’s my Sabbath time,” or do we just let that one slide?

Now I get it; it’s risky to wear our faith on our foreheads. It takes courage to step out on the street and say yes, that’s right, I am a follower of Christ. But if we aren’t willing to do that, who is going to do it for us? If we aren’t willing to claim our faith publicly, it will just become easier for society to push us to the margins, and we will no reason to act surprised when our Church shrinks and shrinks, and evangelism becomes harder and harder, and people wonder more and more where the fix is going to come from.

Now, of course, none of this is a surprise to the living Christ. And I think that this idea of reclaiming our public piety is, actually, consonant with the Gospel message for today. Because for all of his words of warning, Jesus did fully expect his disciples to live out their faith in the public sphere. Jesus expected his followers to speak about their faith, to use Gospel language, to make life decisions based on their understanding of their relationship with God and their neighbors…and to be explicit about the reasoning behind those decisions. So maybe in first-century Palestine the problem was not so much doing public acts of piety but doing them in a humble, authentic, God-focused way. And in twenty-first century Philadelphia the problem is not so much showing off our faith but letting it shine through into our public works and acts. Same coin, different side. And so maybe, just maybe, it is time to take some of our prayer, some of our fasting, some of our alms-giving, some of our piety, out into the light and practice it in public.

Perhaps it is time to say out loud to this secular, material, spiritual-but-not-religious world, Yes! I am a Christian, even though you think I am outdated, naive, superstitious, and irrelevant. Yes! I am a Christian, even when that means that you’re going to lump me in with everyone else who uses that word, even those who support and advocate for that which I absolutely despise. Yes! I fast. Yes! I give alms. Yes! I pray. And yes! I wear my faith on my forehead, even when you can’t see it, in the shape of a cross where in my baptism I was sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. And yes! I struggle always to be humble and authentic and God-focused, but that is just part of the deal, part of this day, which is messy and challenging, and rewarding and perplexing and glorious and wonderful. Yes! I am a Christian…and won't you be a Christian too?   

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Ash Wednesday 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia