The Extravagant Sister

Two people: one man and one woman, both with gifts worth a small fortune. They take up these gifts and use them to excess, pouring them out lavishly, spreading them around so that all is spent. At the end, nothing is left – not one drop remains. Last week it was the parable of a man, a son who wants his inheritance even though his father is still alive. Please, father, he says, can’t you just pretend that you are dead already and give me what I’m owed? And the father, remarkably, agrees, giving his son half of his wealth, wealth that the son then wastes utterly on stuff and nonsense. This week it is the story of a woman, a sister, who takes a pound of burial oil and pours it over the feet of her honored dinner guest until a fog of pungent perfume hangs in the air and a year’s wages lie in a slippery puddle on the floor. Last week it was the parable of the prodigal son. This week – the story of prodigal sister?  

But no, there’s something about that word “prodigal” that doesn’t seem quite right. True, there are some similarities between the sister and the son, but their stories feel so different. The son’s waste comes from pure selfishness, while the sister’s comes from selfless generosity. The son ends up desperate and lonely and hungry enough to eat pig slop, never a good thing, while the sister is defended and affirmed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which is always a plus. We know that we’re meant to disapprove of the son’s actions while heartily approve those of the sister. So could we really use the same word to describe them both?

Now it cannot be denied that the sister’s actions do seem to match up pretty well with the textbook definition of the word “prodigal.” Her exhausting an entire bottle of nard on one man’s feet could certainly be described as “wasteful or recklessly lavish.” This is, of course, exactly what has Judas tsking and twitching in the corner. Spikenard, at least in its pure form, is expensive, and Judas is all too happy to do the calculations in his head – one pound of nard, at the current market value, with tax and the vendor’s markup – why, this oil’s worth 300 denarii! That’s a year’s wages, he thinks, an entire year’s wages that I could have used to line my pockets – I mean, that we could have used to feed the poor, or something.

It seems a perfectly reasonable argument, and a perfectly good reason to call Mary a prodigal sister. But of course, Mary isn’t interested in being reasonable; she wants to be expansive, over-the-top – Mary wants to be the extravagant sister. Extravagant. Which of course also means wasteful, but somehow it just feels better. And there is, in fact, more to this word “extravagant” than just wastefulness – just as there is more to Mary’s story than just how much she paid for the nard.  The word “extravagant” comes from two Latin roots: “extra” meaning “outside of” and “vagari” meaning “to wander.” Interesting, isn’t it, that a word that has come to mean merely wasteful was born out of words that suggest something that travels outside the bounds, something that goes beyond the limits, pushes beyond worldly common sense.

And Mary’s extravagance is about being outside the bounds in far more profound ways that than simply the high cost of oil. To get at the heart of this kind of extravagance, we must start with the extravagance of the smell. Not to put too fine a point on it, but spikenard stinketh. Fans of nard will say that it smells earthy or musk, but others compare it to the sharp reek of goats or, of all things, the funky tang of feet. And it’s strong – it’s eye-wateringly, mouth-puckeringly pungent. The release of that much oil into what was presumably a small space would have made even the most determinedly polite guest put down her pita and wonder how long she could get away with holding her breath. When Mary fearlessly unleashes this scent into the room, she is showing true extravagance, making a gesture that is uncomfortably outside the bounds, that dares her guests to complain, to ask why. Why nard? And why now?

But the extravagance, the outside-the-bounds-ness, of nard is not limited to its pungency. Because the scent of nard is not just strong; it is also the scent of death. Nard was primarily used as an oil for anointing the dead, a strong perfume that was mixed with other spices to ward off the smell of decay. So not only does Mary fill the room with a smell that could have choked a horse – and may have even smelled like one – she also fills the room with the smell of death. And in that room sits Lazarus, her newly-resurrected brother, who had lain in that same smell for four still days. There sits Martha, her sister, who had of course been the one to go to the market to buy the nard for his burial. Death, the smell of death, the memory of death, is all around. This is too much, Mary, we want to say, too much money spent, too much smell to handle, too many memories to endure, too much fear of what has happened and what is to come. This is truly outside the bounds – Mary, how can you wish to take us there?

But Mary does want to take us there, because it is there that she shows us the true core of her extravagance – not the money, or the smell, or even the memories and allusions, but the true extravagance of Mary’s great faith. Mary knows that Jesus’ being in Bethany is dangerous. She knows Jesus’ predictions about his arrest and crucifixion; she knows that the chief priests and Pharisees have ordered the people to turn Jesus in. She knows what they all face in these six short days before the Passover – and yet…and yet she does not flinch. She doesn’t pretend that everything is business as usual, she doesn’t hide away in fear or try to sell her nard to finance Jesus’ getaway caravan – she faces the fact of Jesus’ impending suffering and death and does not look away. The authorities are hunting Jesus? Of course they are. They seek his life? Of course. They want him dead? Fine. He will be dead, he’s almost dead already. And so she takes the oil that she had been saving for his burial and instead chooses to anoint him right then. She anoints him as he is, a man with a living body that is about to be pierced, a man with beautiful, weary feet that are about to be nailed to a tree, a man who said I am resurrection and I am life and then called Lazarus out of his own spicy tomb. She anoints him without fear, for she knows that Death cannot conquer this man, that Death cannot conquer period. She has seen herself how those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy, and she is ready to sing. This is the heart of Mary’s extravagance, that she has a depth of faith to conjure up the specter of Death only to laugh in its face. This is faith that is truly beyond the bounds, that is utterly and beautifully extravagant.          

What if you and I were to take these last two weeks of Lent and live extravagantly? Not with Guinness and shamrock shakes and Irish potatoes, but with faith? What if we were to intentionally live outside the bounds that the world places on things like compassion and mercy, inclusion and hospitality? What if we were to love extravagantly, even our enemies, even ourselves, even those people whose political perspectives, we think, just stink to high heaven? What if we were to worship extravagantly, coming to church not once or twice but five days in a row during the long walk of Holy Week? What if we were to serve extravagantly, at the soup bowl or with the altar guild or at the Saint James School, or serve your housebound neighbor downstairs, or the homeless woman who hangs out on your stoop, or refugees on the other side of the world? What if we were to give extravagantly, or forgive extravagantly? What if we were to sing extravagantly? What if we were to speak the truth with love extravagantly? What if we were to rest extravagantly, remembering the gift of Sabbath and keeping that day holy, holy, holy? And what if we were to trust extravagantly, to believe the extravagant claims that we make here – that Death has no dominion, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, that God is doing a new thing, and that those who go out weeping will come in again with joy? What if we were to live utterly extravagantly, knowing, trusting that God will not see this gift as a waste. For this living may be outside the bounds of human expectations, but it is never outside the bounds of the expansive, holy, beautiful, wondrous kingdom of God. So go – be extravagant. Be an extravagant daughter, an extravagant son of God; pour out all that you have in the name of a truly extravagant God who gave his only begotten Son that you and I may have life and have it abundantly. So go, live it extravagantly.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Living in the Middle of the Story

Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  And this is true of the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son.

The beginning: There was a man who had two sons.  Everything is fine.  Life is grand.  What could be nicer?  That’s the beginning.

The middle: The younger son gets Dad to give him his share of the inheritance so he can go off in search of adventure.  He does so without any consideration of the tax implications, which, in and of itself is foolhardy, but so be it.  He wastes his money on what the biblical writer calls “dissolute living;” I’ll call it booze, drugs, and probably women, but it could have been men – who knows?  He ends up envying the pigs their feed as he tries to scrape by in his poverty.  That’s the middle.

The end: Younger son decides to go home to Father, fearful that he will be chastised for his foolishness, which, of course, is deserving of chastisement.  But Father welcomes Son home without shame or blame, kills the fatted calf for a feast, and rejoices that his Son who once was lost has now been found.  That’s the end.

Beginning; middle; end – like most stories.

Life is made up of a bunch of stories that mostly have beginnings and middles and ends.  The hard part is that we live mostly in the middle of the stories.  And as the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates, the middle is a hard place to live.

Let us forget about the Prodigal Son, himself, for a moment, for it is easy to color in the details of his dissolute life.  If you can’t do it on your own, there are reality shows on TV that will offer suggestions, or try the Harold and Kumar films, or Pulp Fiction, or the new film whose TV advertisements speak for themselves: 21 and Over.  Dissolute living is not a thing of the past.  But as I say, let us put aside the dissolute living, because that is only one middle of this story; there is another one.

The other middle of the story is taking place back at the homestead of the Prodigal Son, where his father and his brother – as well as his mother and his sister, no doubt – are worried sick.  This is the other middle of the story.

For a while he stayed in touch with them.  There were postcards, occasional phone calls, and although Mom and Dad didn’t follow him on Facebook, the other two children could give updates as they followed his progress around various Mediterranean hotspots.  Admittedly the photos he posted were sometimes worrisome – evidence of dissolute living, you might say.  But the greater worry came when he stopped calling, stopped writing, stopped posting anything on Facebook at all. He even stopped asking for more money.  This is the middle of the story.

Who knows what a mess the Prodigal Son made of himself?  Who knows how many mornings he woke up without knowing where he was – sometimes in a strange bed, sometimes in a gutter, or an alley, or under a fig tree, once in a while in a jail cell.  Who knows just exactly what he was using to ruin his mind and his body with – was it just tequila?  Or was there coke too?  Or meth?  Had he tried heroin yet?  Who knows what risks he put himself in – borrowing money, or stealing it?  In the bedroom?  With his “new friends”?

His parents didn’t know.  Neither did his sister.  Nor his brother.   They could only guess why he head disappeared; why he had lost everything.  But don’t you think they worried?  Don’t you think they sent emissaries to track him down?  Don’t you think they called his old friends to see if they had heard from him?  Don’t you think they waited by the phone for it to ring with word from the cops, or the hospital, or the morgue?

This was the middle of the story.  Sometimes the middle of the story isn’t our own misery – sometimes it is the misery of someone else we love.  Sometimes that person lives in the middle of the story for a long, long time.  The middles of many stories last far longer than the middle of the parable of the Prodigal Son.  And so does the misery.

But the middle of the story is where we live most of the time.  Maybe it’s a prodigal son or a prodigal brother or sister.  Maybe it’s the illness of someone you love, that hasn’t been properly diagnosed, or that won’t get better, or won’t heal.   Maybe it’s cancer that has come back.

Maybe it’s the dementia of your parent or spouse – who used to be so funny, so bright, so loving; who used to be the light of your life; who used to be so easy to love; and who now hardly knows you; but with whom there is nothing else especially wrong, so you know that the middle of this particular story, at this particular stage of life, is likely to go on and on and on for a while.

It’s not really your story, but you have to live through it, and it becomes a part of your story, as you navigate the fear and the sadness and the guilt of it all.  Was there something you should have done?  Something you shouldn’t have done?  Is there anything you can do now?  Have you exhausted all possibilities?  Gotten every second opinion you could?  Can you really trust this diagnosis?  Shouldn’t there be something you can do?  Should you have consulted a lawyer?  Should you have spent more money on a better lawyer?  A detective?  A doctor?  A psychic?

Don’t you think the Prodigal Son’s father thought these things?  Don’t you think his mother did?

His sister would lie awake at night and fixate on a plan.  She imagined building a pigeon coop on the roof of the house, and keeping homing pigeons there.  She imagined making copies of that photo she liked so much of her brother at the family reunion that time, when his smile was so relaxed, and he looked like nothing could ever be wrong.  She dreamt of rolling those copied photos up into little scrolls, with her contact information written on the back of them with an indelible Sharpie, and attaching them to the little legs of the pigeons with tiny rubber bands.  She imagined sending flocks of homing pigeons out over the deserts and toward the sea, across the entire Mediterranean world:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? 

PLEASE CALL IF YOU HAVE. 

PLEASE SEND HIM HOME. 

PLEASE TELL HIM WE LOVE HIM

AND WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET HIM BACK!

This is living in the middle of the story.

His brother, unable to fathom what would cause his otherwise terrific younger brother to go off the deep end, found himself hoping – yes hoping  - that maybe it was a brain tumor, because that at least would explain it; at least you could cut that out and try to fix him.  This is living in the middle of the story.  Living in the middle of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is not much fun – but many of us have lived there.  Maybe you are living there now.

There is another parable to reach for when you are stuck in the middle of the Prodigal Son: it is the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  You have to go to your bookshelf, or look under the bed, or search through your Kindle to find it, because you know it is there somewhere but you can’t remember where you put it.  It was just ten verses back in Luke’s Gospel, but it already takes a force of will to remember it: “Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

And you think to yourself, “What on earth is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to drop everything and go in search of my child, my brother, my friend?  Am I supposed to give up my job, leave the kids with the neighbors, liquidate my 401-k to go on a wild goose chase?

And if you stop, long enough to think, long enough to be quiet, long enough to listen, you might hear a voice telling you to slow down, and remember, that the parable is not meant to give you instructions; it’s meant to teach you something about God.

Oh.  And what is that?

When you are in the middle of the parable of the Prodigal Son, God is in the middle of the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  He is searching and scouring and sending his angels like swarms of pigeons to find the one you love – the one he loves.  God has not given up in the middle of this story – even though the Prodigal Son couldn’t care less about God.  God’s arms are always long enough to reach down and scoop up the lost, but such is the reality of the way he made us that he requires us to reach up too, and grab for him, just a little.

And you know that damn Prodigal Son is stubborn.  You know he thinks he can take care of himself.  You know he has always wanted to live life on his own terms.  You think he is going to reach up for God at the first opportunity?  And do you think the tequila or the coke, or the meth, or the heroin, or the “new friends” are going to let him do it so easily?

But you need to know that God is searching, swooping, reaching, for that lost child, and has been from the moment he left home.

This is called faith: the conviction of something you cannot see – that God is at work in the long, horrible middles of the stories that hurt so much: at work for the Prodigal Son, at work for his worrying father and his terrified mother, for his determined sister, and his frustrated brother, who cannot do anything to help because he has to stay home and take care of the farm!  For all of them: God is at work; and believing that is what we call faith!

But remember that the parables do not tell us much about what we should do during the middle of the story – they are not meant to; they are meant to teach us about God.  They are meant to teach us that God searches tirelessly for the lost – not because he cannot find them, but because they insist on running and hiding, but he will not stop pursuing them.  And they are meant to teach us that when we are tempted to give up hope in the middle of the story, we should reconsider and stick with it.  Because God is not giving up, nor is he ever unwilling to throw his arms wide open when that bedraggled Prodigal Son is at last able to reach out for God’s hand, and end his misery, and crawl home.  God will not turn his back when the lost child crawls home, and his love will not be withheld, nor his blessing.

All of which is meant to be a salve for the pain and difficulty of living in the middle of the story – where we still so often find ourselves.  Because it’s true that despite our best efforts, we are sometimes helpless in this world – completely unable to do the thing that we would most like to do for ourselves or for the ones we love.  Which is when we have to rely on God the most, and when it is helpful to remember that God’s Son told these stories – with perfectly ordinary beginnings; and with difficult, painful, miserable middles…

… and endings for which the term “happy” seems too cheap, and too unlikely.  Let’s say the stories have a good ending.  Let’s say God’s goodness prevails in the end.  Let’s count on it.  Indeed, let’s believe it, while we live through the middle of the story.

In fact, let’s keep the best robe hanging by the door, and a fatted calf on hand, and a ring and sandals.  Let’s be confident and faithful in the good ending that God is preparing for every long and difficult and painful middle of every story,

In fact, let’s learn to stand ready, with our arms open and our lips pursed for the kiss of welcome – for this, Jesus tells us, is how God is poised to receive all those who have strayed from his ways like lost sheep and followed too much the devices and desires of their own hearts.

But never mind that, says God, for he who is lost will be found, by the grace of God, all who are counted for dead will be made alive again, when the middle of our story leads to God’s good ending.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

10 March 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Motivated Reasoning

Back in the 1950s, psychologists conducted an experiment involving students from two Ivy League colleges.  They showed students films of controversial referees’ calls in a football game and they asked the students what they thought of the validity of the calls, with the benefit of the filmed evidence right in front of them.  What the researchers found was that the visual evidence made very little difference whatsoever to the opinions of those in the study.  Students tended to think that officiating calls favoring their own school were good, even if the evidence pretty clearly suggested otherwise.  Which group they belonged to was more important in forming their opinions than what actually happened on the field.  Social scientists call this tendency “motivated reasoning,” that is, the tendency to conform one’s assessment of information based more on one’s own particular goals and biases than on the actual facts.

Motivated reasoning has been popping up a lot lately as people try to explain the culture of political discourse in this country, where party affiliation or particular point of view – on both sides of the aisle – tend to influence individuals’ thinking more than a dispassionate assessment of the facts.  All very interesting, but not my point this morning.

Motivated Reasoning seems to come into play quite a lot in the area of religion.  For instance, many people see motivated reasoning at work in the opinions of devoutly religious people who refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence of evolution.  One’s religious affiliation and the conviction of one’s established beliefs are stronger motivators than the actual facts.  Also interesting, but still not my point.

We are gathered here today as a bunch of more or less sophisticated Episcopalians who more or less regard ourselves as quite above that kind of small-mindedness.  We are able to hold in comfortable tension the possibilities that God is Lord of the universe and Creator of all, and that the earth is several billions of years old, and that the fossil record shows that our human species evolved from less sophisticated, less upright species.  But this, too, is not my point.

My point is this: that as more or less sophisticated, and (dare I say it?) liberal Episcopalians, our sense of ourselves as sinners is often somewhat under-developed.  We prefer to leave the focus on sin to catholic nuns, and various brands of Baptists and other exotic species of Christians.  Between the guilt-ridden, old-school nuns; and the Bible thumping, accusing firebrands, sin, we figure, is well accounted for elsewhere.

Not often will you wander into an Episcopal church and hear a sermon expounding the horrors to which sin will inevitably lead.  Not often is the name “sinner” to be found on the lips of the Episcopal clergy, and less often directed at any of our parishioners.  Not often are we invited to carefully consider our sins in HD, 3-D, full color, with the expectation that we might confess our sin, repent of it, and begin to lead a more godly, righteous, and sober life, as the old, and seldom-used prayer says.

Indeed, we Episcopalians tend to think pretty well of ourselves.  We look in the mirror and we like what we see.  We evaluate ourselves, and find not too much wanting.  A royal wedding every now and then allows us to feel quite pleased with ourselves.  The follies of other denominations help us hold on to our own self-satisfied outlook.  Our reasonable religion is not incapable of a certain smugness that we sometimes wear with an air of superiority.  Asked to evaluate ourselves and examine our consciences, we do not break a sweat, for we are, in a way, inclined to think that old joke about using the wrong fork at the dinner table is, in fact, the worst kind of sin an Episcopalian could commit.

Along comes Lent, and we are asked to call ourselves names that we do not think fit us very well: “miserable sinners.”  We are asked to grovel before God, praying: “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.  Spare us, good Lord.  Good Lord, deliver us.”  We can tolerate these indignities, if we dress up nicely and sing them to music of the English Renaissance – but only just.  And generally speaking we do not believe these things we have sung about ourselves this morning.  The ritual pleases us because it allows us to recite the words we know we are required to say without actually having to invest too much in meaning them.  And over brunch we can discuss whether or not the altos really sang their part correctly all the way through.  How very Downton Abbey of us.

If we stop to reason about ourselves at all, it is a motivated reasoning that has reached all the best conclusions, and leads us to think that really God is quite lucky to have us on his side.  All this, despite an impressive array of evidence that all is not so well with us, either as individuals or as a group.

Nationally, our church is often defined by division, and has been engrossed with endless law suits.

In our own diocese, we have been consumed by conflict and the question of which side of various issues we line up on.

And in our own individual lives, does the evidence really point to an absence of sin?  To a bad fit for the name, “Sinner?”

Have we mended our strained relationship with our brother, or parents, or maybe our first spouse?

Have we done a fair assessment of our habits and given up the ones that don’t do us much good – the food, the booze, the drugs, the cigarettes, the sex, the laziness?

When we ask what it would mean to really be faithful to God, do we honestly think we measure up very well?

When we consider whether we have treated others as we would wish to be treated by them, are we also including the homeless and the hungry, those in prison, and folks who generally don’t look like us?

When we look at where and how we spend our money, does it not occur to us that perhaps we could have done better?  Much better?

And these questions represent only the first pass at the most obvious possibilities.

A fair assessment of our sins – of those areas of our lives where we come up short – will, in most cases, give us plenty to think about.  And yet, by brunch time we will have stopped thinking about it, and will have put on again the armor of complacency that leads us safely back into the world, where we must never let on that we are even familiar with the word “sin” – except as a suitable punch-line for witty repartee.

Lent, however, is an exercise in a new Motivated Reasoning, for it is an effort to motivate us to consider a new reasoning about ourselves.  It is an effort to be more critical of ourselves, more discerning in our self-evaluation, more demanding in our expectations of ourselves.

Even those of you whose low self-esteem may be your worst sin, and who certainly do not need to identify more to dislike about yourselves can benefit from discovering a new Motivated Reasoning. 

But so many of us have gotten so accustomed to thinking so well of ourselves, that it can be hard to take seriously the consideration of our sin: those things we have done which we ought not to have done, and those things left undone which we ought to have done.

Give me a pencil and piece of paper, and a few minutes on my own, and I could come up with a list for myself that is much, much longer than the Great Litany.  But of course, such an exercise is seldom required of us, not even of me.

If the psychologists are right, however, even a great deal of evidence that I amass on my own reflection is unlikely to sway me to consider my own sin, so fast do I cling to my dearly held estimation of myself.

I suppose one reason we might have adopted this kind of motivated reasoning is the unappealing suspicion that God is an angry master, just waiting to scold us.  To reflect on our sins is to invite the possibility of an ugly response from God:  “AHAAAA! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE A SNOT-NOSED SINNER WITH A RECORD AS LONG AS YOUR ARM!  AND AT LAST YOU HAVE ADMITTED IT!”

But this is a deeply misguided suspicion for Christians, who will struggle to find hints of such invective in the story of Jesus, and his ministry, his teaching, and his saving death.  It is true that Jesus found fault with the self-righteous, whose motivated reasoning prevented them for seeing themselves for who and what they really were.  But he was known to be gentle, kind, generous, and forgiving to those whose sin was widely known.

When we finally have the nerve to find new motivation, and new reasoning, and confess our faults to God, we discover that he has not been waiting to punish us; he has been waiting to forgive us.  “Pish posh,” God says, “I’ve seen a lot worse than that.”

So here we are in Lent.  This morning we have tried on the name, “miserable sinner.”  Does it not fit pretty well, at least some of the time?  I can certainly find it in my size.

We have practiced, just a little, these apparently debasing prayers: “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.  Spare us, good Lord.  Good Lord, deliver us.”  But do we find that we are not actually debased by them, rather, we are beginning to have a more honest conversation with God?

The real problem with our old reasoning, our old motivation, was that it left us very much the same people at the end of the day as we were at the beginning.  But the Motivated Reasoning of Lent is meant to change us, and to bring us into a new and happier life with God and with our neighbors.

But you know what they say: admitting you have a problem is the first step toward solving it.  Maybe if we could admit that we really are miserable sinners that would be the first step toward leading a new life, with our sin left behind, forgiven by God?

Now, that would be good news!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

17 February 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia