Corpus Christi

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

A few years before he took his own life, the American author, David Foster Wallace delivered a college commencement address that has since become rather famous.  In it he said this 

…in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.  There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough….  It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.  And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.[i]

Wallace went on to make an interesting claim:

…the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

Now, we could debate whether or not the question of sin is only semantics, here, but that’s a discussion for another day.  If you agree with Wallace, as I do, that “everybody worships,” then the only question is: What are you going to worship?  And the next question is: Are you going to worship the things that eat you alive: power, money, beauty, youth?  Or are you going to worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

Earlier in his speech, the writer had deployed a little parable-like story in service to his discussion:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace would go on to say that we are prone to miss the whole world around us, to fail to notice that we are swimming in water, or even to regard the most elemental realities of our lives and the world around us.  He said that it is easy for us to get trapped inside the “tiny skull-sized kingdoms” of our own heads.  And he foreshadowed his own death as he talked about the challenge of “making it to 30, or maybe even 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.”  The latter being a milestone he prevented himself from reaching, albeit, without the use of a firearm.

In the church, we are as prone as everyone else in the world to fall back on our default settings, to take things for granted, and to fail to understand something even as basic as the environment in which we live, the air we breath, the water through which we swim, the food we eat.

In the church we are as prone as everyone else to the temptation to worship the things that will eat us alive.  You have only to pick up the papers, or pay attention to the kinds of things that are happening in other denominations and our own at this very time to see that this is true.

In the church, we say that we are born in the water when we are baptized, but we then go quickly about the business of losing the memory and the meaning of that water.  Having once been dipped in pools of the stuff at our baptisms, that we say gave us new life and that promises us entry in to the life of the world to come, we can just as easily as the next fish turn to our neighbor in the pew and ask, “What the hell is water?”

No one will ever know why that hugely talented and thoughtful writer took his own life.  He was fighting severe depression.  And what can we do but surmise that he could find nothing worth worshiping in the world, and the water, so to speak, overwhelmed him.  In any case, I trust that God now cares for him and has shown him new light and new life.

Thank God, the water does not overwhelm most of us.  But it laps at our thighs and our buttocks; it creeps up to our armpits, and sometimes we find that we have to spit it out, as we fight to keep our heads above it.

So much in life gets ruined.  I found this to be true in the most mundane way not long ago when I wanted to make shortcakes for strawberry shortcake.  I reached up into my cupboard for the box of Bisquick – which is a blessing of untold measure in this world.  I opened the box and peeked inside, because I had a hunch that I was in for trouble – the box had been there, opened, for quite some time, since I last made shortbread or pancakes or anything else you make with Bisquick.

Sure enough, on examination, I could see that the Bisquick mix was speckled with the tiny black polka-dots of what are sometimes called flour beetles or weevils.  So the box had to be thrown out (which is a waste).  And it was a busy day; people were coming over to dinner, and I was running late, as usual.  The strawberries hadn’t even been washed and trimmed yet, but now I had to go out and get a new box of Bisquick.  And even though this was a mundane thing, it just made me think of how easily everything is ruined: all our plans, our schedules, and the cakes we mean to bake, so to speak.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the Bisquick.  The same thing has happened with rice, and with sugar at various points.  And, I have finally begun keeping the flour in an air-tight container, but who knows if that will actually work; the flour has gotten ruined before: it could happen again.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the things in the cupboard.  It’s how easily everything else in life gets ruined.  I have my list; you have yours – lists of things that have gotten ruined in our lives.  Let’s not argue over whose list is longer.

Things fall apart, remember. 

And as long as things are falling apart and everything gets ruined, I am likely to rely on the default settings of the way I respond to the world around me.  Which means that I am likely to mistakenly believe that the Bisquick was important, and that my powerlessness to keep it bug-free, or to produce strawberry shortcake, apparently effortlessly at the end of the meal – that these were important too.  What am I worshiping here?  Betty Crocker?  Who knows?

But the truth remains that things pile up in life – things far more important than the Bisquick.  And as they do, they seem to press against your chest – or if you want to stick with the fish metaphor, against your gills, making it hard to breathe, hard to swim through the day to day waters of life.  And you could be forgiven for beginning to think the way the Israelites thought when they were wandering in the desert – Why has God put us here, if only to kill us slowly?  If only to starve us to death in the desert?

And if you happen to go to church, as everything gets ruined in the world, and as everything falls apart around you, and as you feel the pressure mounting against your chest, against your gills.  And it’s harder and harder to swim, and you are not sure why you have been put into the world, just to swim meaninglessly amongst all the other fish…

… if you happen to go to church you might find that you are in an antique building surrounded by antique people singing antique music to an antique God.  And should you be unlucky enough to be there for the sermon, you could be congratulated, in many cases, for choosing to snooze rather than walking out in protest or boredom.

But by God’s grace, maybe, just maybe, you would stay long enough to toddle up to the altar rail with all the other fish, and to open your puckered lips for the morsel of food that is distributed there.  And although the little wafer resembles fish food at least as much as it resembles bread, maybe, just maybe, you will hear the words that the priest says as he or she presses it into your hands or onto your tongue: “The Body of Christ.”  And maybe, by God’s grace, at that moment, everything else would fall away from your consciousness, and you would just hear those words echoing in your ears as your saliva and the wine begin to dissolve the dry wafer in your mouth.  And maybe it will occur to you that everybody worships.  And you will ask yourself what you have been worshiping.  And you will ask yourself whether or not you have been worshiping things that eat you alive.

And it’s not much in the way of mental gymnastics for you to begin to see that here you have found an object of worship who prefers to feed you than to eat you alive.  And to feed you with his own self – his own Body, his own Blood, which, though mysterious, strikes you as intimate, as loving, as somehow able to save you and at least some of the things that have been ruined, some of what’s fallen apart in the world.

And it might be the case that when you get up from your knees, and turn to make your way back to your pew, and the unremarkable taste and texture of the bread you just swallowed, the wine you just sipped is already disappearing… it might be that you begin to see the world ever so slightly differently.  It might be that you begin to think to yourself, “This is water, this is water,” as you become aware of the world around you in a new way, rejoicing to think that it is all somehow the work of God’s fingers – just as you are.  And it occurs to you how marvelous it is that there is something to worship – someone to worship – who will not eat you alive, but who prefers to feed you with his Body and Blood.

Because you know what it is like to be eaten alive in this world by all that invites you to chase after money and power and looks and youth.  But here, in this somewhat antique setting, you find a God who wants to feed you, and who wants to do it more or less for free.

He wants to nourish you: body and soul.  He wants to heal everything that is broken, bind up everything that has splintered, restore everything that is ruined, and fix everything that has fallen apart in your life.  For he knows what it is like to swim in this water.  He knows how easily everything is ruined.  And he knows that this is not how it was meant to be.  He wants to feed you with a food that cannot spoil, and to give you a life that cannot be taken away from you, even when your life on this earth comes to an end.

All of which sounds foolish if you are still determined to worship the things that will eat you alive, and go on living your life oblivious even to the water through which you swim.

Or, you could worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”  All of which is pretty good description of a life fed by the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood.

This is water, this life you and I are living.  This is water.  This is water.  It can kill you, or it can give you life.  It can drown you, or it can quench your thirst.  Deciding what you worship plays a big role in determining which it’s going to be.

And you can decide to worship the things that will eat you alive.  People have been worshiping such gods for a long, long time.  Or you can decide to worship the God who feeds you with his own Body, as he makes all things new.

And you may begin to discover that the water is fine.  And then, you may begin to live.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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[i] David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water”, A Commencement Speech give at Kenyon College, 2005, published by Little Brown & Co., New York, 2009

I Saw the Lord

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

As you approach what used to be called the Wailing Wall, at what was the base of the great Temple of Jerusalem, you encounter signs that address you thus:  “Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site of the Western Wall, where the Divine Presence always rests.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the worshipers.”

It’s easy to glean the wrong meaning from such a carefully worded injunction.  As with so much else in life, it’s easy to miss the point.  It’s easy to be put off by the enforced piety that doesn’t sit well with Americans.  It’s easy to ignore the sign altogether.  It’s easy to fixate on the demand for modesty, and to disregard the outrageous and daring claim contained in the white letters printed in a sans-serif font on a brown metal sign that bears the imprimatur of the un-named Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites.  It’s easy to overlook the possibility that you are about to tread very near the place where, in the words of the Rabbi, “the Divine Presence always rests.”   It’s easy to be distracted by the Orthodox men and boys with their long coats, their curls, their fringes, and their hats, and the gear they’ve brought with them to pray packed into a plastic kit, tucked under their arms as they make their way to the Wall.

How does one approach such a Wall; that marks the boundary of the place where the Divine Presence is said to have always dwelt?  How close does one get?  Is it safe to go right up to it?  Is it respectful to do so?  Does one touch the Wall?  Or kiss it? Or fall down on one’s face in front of it?   Have you brought a prayer scribbled onto a folded scrap of paper to nestle in its cracks?  Do you have a prayer ready in your heart?

You are nowhere near as well prepared to pray as the young IDF soldier who has produced Tefillin from somewhere, and has strapped one leather box to his head like a miner’s lamp, and is winding the other around his left arm seven times before beginning his prayers.

I walked up to the Wall, and I was very aware of my breathing.  It seemed wise to be cautious in one’s breathing in such precincts.  I stretched out my hand.  I reached for the Rock, and as my fingertips came into contact with it I closed my eyes, and checked my breathing, to slow it down a little.  I don’t remember what I prayed for – I suppose I prayed for peace.  I don’t know how long I stood there; it wasn’t very long.  The earth did not shake beneath my feet.  I opened my eyes, and in front of me I saw the Wall.  Just the Wall. Nothing else.

Why would anyone believe the Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites?  If the Divine Presence rests there, as it has for ever, why is that Presence not more evident?  Why is there only that Wall left standing, with its fanatic Orthodox believers davening before it?  Why must soldiers protect the resting place of God Almighty?  Why has peace not settled alongside the Divine Presence?  Why is there so little to see?

 I would have liked to see a vision like Isaiah’s.  I’d have liked to close my eyes, reach out my hand and discover that the rock has become supple in my fingertips: has taken on the texture of the hem of the robe of the Lord of hosts.  I’d have like to smell the scent of incense, and felt the wreaths of smoke winding past my face.  I’d have liked to have heard the suggestion, at least, of the sound of the beating of seraphic wings, and to have caught a hint of the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d have liked to have heard the voice of the Lord speaking to me as Isaiah did.  I’d have liked to have seen something as a I stood near the Divine Presence.  I’d have liked to have seen the Lord.  But I opened my eyes, and I saw the Wall.

Why is it so hard to see God?  Why was it that even Moses was only allowed to catch a glimpse of his sacred backside?  Why is it that in a world where faith is faltering, God delegates the announcement of his Divine Presence to whomever it is who happens to be the Rabbi of the Western Wall.  Why does he leave us to struggle with mysterious and complicated teachings about three persons in one God, as though we had to reconcile the identity issues of a pretty serious personality disorder?

In 1897, the African American artist Henry O. Tanner made his first trip to the Holy Land, financed by Rodman Wanamaker.  When he returned, he painted the scene that we heard described in the Gospel reading assigned for Trinity Sunday – the story of Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus by night.  Nearly thirty years later, Tanner would paint the scene again in a palate of more spectral blues as the influence of impressionism takes hold of his work.

In both versions of the scene, the meeting takes place on a rooftop terrace, and Tanner includes an important detail: the stairway to the roof is carefully located, and in both cases, the artist indicates that light is shining on the stairs.

Nothing about the paintings suggests that the importance of the stairway is as a point of egress for Nicodemus or for Jesus.  The feeling is given that the stairs are lit for the viewer: for you and for me.  This is to be our way up to the rooftop, whence we may eavesdrop on the sacred instruction taking place.

It is as though any of us could simply slip up the stairs to the rooftop and see the Lord.

Not long ago, I saw both paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Tanner had been a student.  As I think of them, I find myself fixated on the stairs in both paintings.  I allow myself to imagine that at the bottom of the stairs there might be a sign posted that would read something like this:

Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site where Nicodemus is visiting with Jesus; they have been talking here for a long time, and the Divine Presence does not seem prepared to leave any time soon.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the other visitors who are also spying from the top of the stairs.

How does one approach such a stairway?  How close to the top does one get?  Can you walk right out onto the terrace and join in the conversation with Nicodemus and Jesus?  Do you reach out to touch the Lord?  Do you fall on your face and kiss his feet?  Is your head covered?  Does it need to be 

I want to stare at Tanner’s paintings long enough to close my eyes and allow myself to creep up the lighted staircase and look and listen.  I want to feel the evening breeze in Jerusalem blow across my face.  I want to hear the words it carries reach my ears: “I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above….

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

I want to see what Tanner seems to have seen without ever having seen it.   I want to bring all the prayers I can remember with me up that staircase, and all the prayers I cannot remember.  I want to press a stack of them, scrawled on scraps of paper, into Jesus’ hand, and I want to implore him to answer them, or at least to answer the prayer for peace.  I want to feel the earth shift under my feet as I draw closer to him.  I want to hear the beat of seraphic wings, and the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d like to smell the certain odor of incense that hangs in the air in his nearer presence.  I want to be able to open my eyes and see the Lord, right there in front of me, in spectral but alive brushstrokes of blues.

But when I open my eyes, I find instead that I am in front of a brownstone wall.  And all I have in common with Tanner’s vision is Philadelphia.

And the cracks in the brownstone walls are not spaces to place prayers, but obvious signs of deferred maintenance.  And I am not on a rooftop in Jerusalem; I am right here with you in Saint Mark’s.

And I am stymied again by the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and wondering what in the world they can be saying about it in church over on the other side of the Square.

And I catch hint of the scent of incense in the air.  And I look up at you, who I see gathered here faithfully to pray.  And I think of the light burning on the staircase in the painting.  And of the sign: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence always rests.

And I look down at the small disk of bread in my hands.

And I look again at you, and these stone walls around us.

And I think that perhaps that when I opened my eyes I saw the Lord too.

I think we are on a lighted staircase.

I think the Divine Presence has always rested here too.

And I know these are mysteries too deep to fathom.

But I am becoming more and more certain that I saw the Lord in this place.  And I feel like I want to post a sign outside that begins something like this: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence dwells…

But I suspect I should let the light speak for itself, and I should simply guard the stairs to make sure anyone who wishes may climb them.

And if you want to do so, I shall hold the door to the stairway open for you.  And as you walk by, you might ask me, “What’s up there?  What did you see?”

And I’ll smile, with Nicodemus and with Isaiah, and I’ll tell you: “I saw the Lord.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Trinity Sunday 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Sound of Pentecost

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

It is a tradition, in some Episcopal churches, to offer this morning’s lesson from Acts in a slightly unusual way. Because the reading tells of the disciples being inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak in many different tongues, some churches try to recreate this experience by having not just one reader for this lesson, but a whole string of readers, each of whom reads a verse or two in a language in which they are fluent. The effect, I’m sure, is to create a sense of the sound of that Pentecost morning in Palestine, to paint the aural landscape from a rich palate of sounds and inflections, to sound something like this:

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. Und es geschah schnell ein Brausen vom Himmel wie eines gewaltigen Windes und erfüllte das ganze Haus, da sie saßen. Au même moment, ils virent apparaître des sortes de langues qui ressemblaient à des flammèches. Cosí furono tutti ripieni di Spirito Santo e cominciarono a parlare in altre lingue, secondo che lo Spirito dava loro di esprimersi.

While I appreciate the intent behind these kinds of readings, there are two problems with this approach that are immediately apparent. The first is that most of the time, because of the people who read them, these verses are read in a smattering of European languages – French, Italian, German – languages whose aural colors are different than English, to be sure, but not from quite the same palate as the languages of the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. The sounds are not quite right. The greater problem, though, is that this experience is not quite right. The whole point of the disciples being gifted by the Holy Spirit to speak in different languages was so that all of the people, all of the visitors “from every nation under heaven” who were in town for the festival of Pentecost, could understand what was being said. The miracle was that everyone could understand everything, not that random people in the crowd could understand two verses in twenty. The upshot of all of this is that unless you’re someone who speaks every language known to man, as some of you undoubtedly do, the experience of these kinds of Pentecost readings is likely to be more confusing than clarifying.

In response to this concern, I’ve heard of a few churches who try a different approach. Instead of dividing up the reading into separate verses, one for each represented language, they have different people read the entire lesson in different languages – all at the same time. The lesson is read simultaneously by a whole gaggle of lectors, lined up at the front of the church and belting out these verses in their best Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese or Russian. This approach, while eliminating the problem of understanding only two verses in twenty, obviously comes with its own significant challenges, which are best summed up by a former parishioner of mine who, honestly confused by a church experience she had had while on vacation, asked me why this church had acted out the story of the Tower of Babel on Pentecost instead of the regular lections.

Now I don’t mean to make these approaches to this Pentecost reading seem overly silly, because they certainly aren’t intended that way. I do see what these churches are getting at. The day of Pentecost as we hear it described in Acts was, first and foremost, an experience – a banquet for the senses, something to be seen and felt and heard and touched. The rumble of rushing wind, the heat and light of those tongues of fire, the pure music of all of those lovely languages as they danced around the dazzled crowd. Pentecost is a day to be felt, known and understood not only with our minds but with our bodies. Pentecost is a big, larger-than-life festival day, a scene that we can easily imagine in epic, Cecil B. DeMille style, with apostles standing on majestic sets, booming forth their proclamation in hearty voices well-trained for the stage, with thousands of extras running to and fro with looks of bewildered joy on their faces and happy exclamations on their lips, with fanfares and flourishes and noise, noise, noise, noise. Pentecost is a celebration on a large scale, a loud, busy, grand and wonderful day.

But Pentecost is not just about the pomp of the circumstance. Pentecost is not just about the noise. Because the devout Jews who heard the disciples speaking in many tongues not only heard words in their own language; they actually heard the word of God. They heard what the disciples were saying, not just how they were saying it. They were able to listen past the wonder of the words themselves deep into the heart of their meaning, to hear the stories of God’s deeds of power in and by and through Jesus Christ. They not only heard; they understood. And if they understood, then they couldn’t have been just standing in place, straining to hear someone screaming at them in Mesopotamian from a far parapet; they must have followed the sound of familiarity, found the disciples who spoke their language, and gathered in tight to hear what he had to say. They must have huddled together, drawn up close, face to face, breath to breath, to hear and feel this Gospel message as near to them as it had ever been.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus promises his disciples that he will send them the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth. He says he will send them the Paraclete, a word sometimes translated as the Advocate or the Comforter. But the Greek word parakletos literally means “the one who is called alongside.” The Paraclete is the one pulled next to, the one drawn near, the one who comes up close. It is this particular gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offers us in his physical absence – not just the majesty and might of the swirling winds and fiery breath, but the intimacy of a companion, one who comes near, walks beside, and shares with.   

This has always been God’s way. For all of the smoke and fire with Moses on Mount Sinai, the flames that shot out of heaven and licked up the watery sacrifice on Elijah’s altar, the burning chariots that showed Elisha that he, too, would be a prophet, God has always also been a God of great intimacy – a personal God who speaks not only to His people but speaks to them one at a time, in their own language, who calls Moses’ own name out of a burning bush, who startles Balaam by speaking through the very donkey he is riding on, who offers Elijah the small voice of sheer silence. God has always drawn near to His people, pulled close, spoken to them persons to person.

And when the Son of God became flesh to redeem the world, he, too, spent his ministry drawing close. He spoke to the crowds, to be sure, but he also spoke to persons – to Zacchaeus and Matthias, to the Magdalene, to Nicodemus – one on one, drawing near, sharing space and breath, close and personal and intimate.

One of my professors at seminary once joked about how much easier it would have been if God had just waited until now to be made manifest. If God had just waited, he teased, he could have put Jesus Christ on CNN – the Sermon on the Mount could have been streamed live all over all the continents in every language known to woman, his healings could have been broadcast live and in HD. But then, my professor said seriously, this never actually could have happened. Because this is just not how the Son of God works. Even if he had walked the earth in our own age of lightning-fast communications, Christ still would have worked slowly, quietly, one on one, drawing close, coming alongside, and being near. 

This is how God works today, on this Pentecost. Yes, there is a feast, and yes we are celebrating, and yes we sing mighty hymns and think about the height and depth and breadth of the Holy Spirit’s life-giving and energizing work in the Church. But we also remember that aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who comes alongside you and speaks the Gospel – not just to all the multitudes where we might have to strain to hear the Good News – but right to you, in your ear, in the language that is easiest for you to hear – the language of Stravinsky, perhaps, or the language of shared prayer. The language of bended knee, the language of another’s face, the language of bread and wine. This is God’s promised gift – that he comes alongside us, wherever we are, whatever language we speak, and says, Lean in and listen. I am here, I am with you. When you are in church, at work, at school, on the streets, I am beside you. When you are kneeling in repentance, lying in weakness, standing in strength, dancing in joy, I am beside you. When you are comforting, exhorting, dreaming, prophesying, proclaiming, I am beside you. When you go into all the world, to the ends of the earth, to share and live and sing the Gospel message, I am always right beside you. So lean in close and listen, to the still, small voice – to that sound of Pentecost.