The Morning After

Do you know that feeling you get when something big, something wonderful, something long anticipated is now just… over? It’s a feeling we’ve all had at some point in our lives. When we’re children, it’s the feeling of waking up on the morning of December 26, or of shuffling to the car to head home after the trip to the shore or to Disney World. When we’re older, it’s the feeling of waking up to a kitchen full of dishes after a long-prepared-for 60^th birthday party, or walking into an empty house after your daughter and her new wife have gone off for their honeymoon, or, oh, I don’t know, coming back to work after a fabulous post-Easter vacation to Amsterdam, Bruges, and London. You know that feeling – that slightly disembodied, sag in the stomach, oh-so-tired feeling that wraps around you like a heavy blanket. Well, that fun is over, we sigh to ourselves. So what do we do now?

It seems that perhaps the disciples know this feeling, too. For them, Easter morning has come and gone, and the unthinkable, the impossible, the mysteriously, miraculously wonderful had actually happened. They had seen an empty tomb, heard Mary tell of a garden encounter with a man who knew her and called her by her name, and then, then, they had actually seen Jesus standing in the middle of a locked room. They had seen him and he had spoken to them, breathed the breath of the Holy Spirit on them…and then he had come back, spoken words of peace to them once again, showed his hands and his side to poor Thomas. He had come back and done “many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book,” as John the evangelist tells us. Jesus was alive, and he was around; he just kept showing up, performing miracles, speaking words of peace and promise. And his disciples must have been giddy, breathless, as excited as Christmas morning and Disney World and a London vacation all rolled into one.

But now, suddenly, it feels a lot like the morning after. Jesus seems to be gone again. The disciples are alone, gathered around the Sea of Tiberius, just looking at each other. Well, I guess that fun is over, one of them says, sighing. What do we do now? Peter looks out to sea and takes a long, heavy breath. He shrugs. I am going fishing. The others scratch their beards and nod slowly. Okay, they say finally. We will go with you. And they all shuffle over to their long-abandoned boat, feeling that slightly disembodied, sag in the stomach, what-are-we-doing-here feeling, a feeling that doesn’t really go away once they’ve pushed out to sea and lowered their nets. They sit, all night, in the silence, in the dark. Their nets hang down into the inky water, limp and empty. There are no fish and no words, really, nothing to do but just sit there, wrapped in that heavy blanket of morning-after, let-down, all-the-fun-is-surely-over feeling. Huh. What do we do now? And in the darkness and the fog, it’s hard for them to even begin to imagine an answer to that question.  

Thankfully, they don’t have to try to imagine for very long. Because once the sun comes up, there is their answer standing on the shore. There is Jesus, again, calling to them from the beach, telling them, his beloved children, exactly what to do now – cast your net on the other side of the boat, bring me some fish, come and have breakfast, feed my lambs, follow me. Just when they thought that he was gone again, and maybe gone this time for good, Jesus shows up one more time, and in his presence that heavy morning-after feeling is gone just as quickly as it came. And as the disciples stand there with sand between their toes munching on smoky bread and crispy fish, they begin to realize what Jesus is telling them: that morning-after feeling never has to come back. Jesus is inviting them into a way of life where there are no morning-afters, where there is always preaching to do, sheep to feed, a church to build, because there is always a risen Lord to follow. He is inviting them to imagine awaking each morning in happy expectation of something big, something wonderful, something long anticipated to do now, in Jesus’ holy name. No more morning afters. Only mornings before.

Because, you see, there are actually no morning-afters when it comes to faith. The truth and the beauty and the joy of the Gospel that we proclaim is never just…over. It can certainly feel like it sometimes. It feels a little bit like it this morning, in fact. After all, Easter was two weeks ago, the timpani and the trumpets are long gone, the scent of lilies has long ago faded from the air. Easter Day is well and truly over, and it’s easy to feel that kind of morning-after fog, to stare blankly at our dark, empty nets and wonder what we are supposed to do now – here, in the church, here in our hearts. But this morning, Christ is inviting you into a way of life where there are no morning-afters, where the resurrection is not something that happened once upon a time in a land far, far away, where we do not proclaim that Christ was risen but that Christ is risen, that Christ does show up to tell us what to do now.  

Sometimes Christ shows up in our lives to tell us to change something we are doing that isn’t very helpful to us or to our neighbors or to the world. Cast your nets on the other side, Christ says; trust me, do this, make this change and see the abundance of wonders I have in store for you. Sometimes Christ shows up to feed us, in the daily offering of his body and blood, in the spiritual nourishment we find in our prayer or in our service in his name. Sometimes Christ shows up to call us to task, to help us to confess the ways that we have betrayed or ignored him, the ways that we have denied his presence in our lives with or without the telling cock’s crow. Do you love me? he asks, so that we can know – really know – how deeply and how infinitely we are forgiven. And sometimes Christ shows up to call us to act – to feed his sheep, to care for his lambs, to perform our own signs and wonders in the world.

Christ shows up in a thousand little ways – when we’re looking for him and when we’re not, when we’re bright with enthusiasm and hen we’re wrapped in a thick morning-after blanket, when we’re confident about our futures and when we’re stumbling about looking for a boat to go fishing. Christ shows up in unexpected places and in unexpected ways to help us see what to do now, to help us see this as the morning before, the dawn of something new and challenging and wonderful in our lives.

And this assurance of Christ’s presence can sustain us through all of the other morning-afters of life – and not just the little ones, like after the vacation, or after the birthday or the family visit, but also the monumental, world-rocking ones, like after your mother dies, or after you lose your job, or after you discover the depth of your sister’s illness or her addiction. Because in all of these morning-afters, Christ shows up, again and again. Christ’s constant presence assures you that there is always more to come, even on those mornings when you find yourself heaving that deep sigh and experiencing that slightly disembodied, sag in the stomach, heavy blanket feeling, when you find yourself raising your eyes to the heavens and asking, “What do I do now?”

What do you do now? Look to the shoreline. Not so far away, really, only just there on the horizon. Find that familiar figure who stands before you, who encourages you to try casting your eyes and your hopes on the other side, on his side. Listen to him as he calls you to his table to eat, as he calls you to repentance so that he can offer the forgiveness you seek, as he charges you with the charge of divine love – feed my sheep. Follow me. Follow me and see that something big, something wonderful, something long anticipated – something holy, something eternal, something intimate, something transformative and wondrous and full of joy comes in the morning. For Christ is risen, and there is something, someone, to look forward to, and something for us to do now, here, on this great Easter morning before.

The Gate of Doubt

If faith is like a walled garden, then the garden wall has many gates that allow both entry and exit.  Most of the gates swing open and closed pretty easily, and the latches operate smoothly.  But there is one gate in the Garden of Faith that is much harder to open – especially from inside the garden.  It is a gate made of thick, heavy wooden planks, with sturdy iron hinges.  There is no lock on the gate – it is meant to be opened and closed if anyone wants to - and it can never be barred.  But inside the garden, thorny bushes have grown up in front of the gate to make it harder to use.  And the letters carved into the sign that is nailed to the gate tell you its name: Doubt.

Doubt is the gate through which we are so often warned we should not pass.  Over the centuries there have been many reasons that this is so, one of which is the story of Doubting Thomas, and Christ’s injunction to Thomas that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

In our own day, Doubt is a not-much-used gate because the discourse of faith doesn’t seem to allow for much grey area theses days – either you believe fervently and defend your faith ferociously, or you are a happy and satisfied atheist – or so it seems.

If you live inside the Garden of Faith – or if you even just tend a plot of ground there from time to time – the gate of Doubt probably seems dangerous to you.  To begin with, you are not absolutely certain that if you were to go outside the garden through the gate of Doubt that you could ever get back in.  There are lots of other gates that you know are meant to open from both sides – the gates of Sin and Repentance, for instance.  The Forgiveness and Mercy that grow inside the garden of faith give assurances of this – you can always get back in.  But if you were to use the gate of Doubt, then you would be dabbling in something that might keep you outside the garden of faith for the rest of your life.

If you creep up to the garden gate of Doubt late at night and listen carefully, you can hear the voices on the other side whispering questions:

“What if your prayers mean nothing and no one ever answers them?”

“What if there is no God, and the forces that control the universe neither love you nor care about you in the slightest?”

“What if all your silly worship is worthless, self-indulgent pageantry?”

“What if death is all there is at the end of life, and our bodies just become food for worms?”

The voices that whisper these questions on the other side of the gate of Doubt do not sound friendly.  And because you like the time you spend inside the garden of faith, you don’t think you want to entertain these voices and their questions; I know I don’t.

So we have learned to steer clear of the gate of Doubt; we just don’t go there.  There are plenty of other lovely sections of the garden of faith, and there are so many creative and interesting ways to open the gate of Sin when we want to foray outside the garden, that we don’t really need to bother with Doubt.  And, after all, we are assured that on the other side of the gate of Sin there is always the gate of Forgiveness to get back into the Garden.  So we leave Doubt alone.

Having left the gate of Doubt alone so long and so carefully, we seldom look around its vicinity, and we don’t notice that creeping over the wall from the other side of the gate of Doubt are two vines that have become intertwined with the thorny bushes that grow in front of the gate inside the garden.  These vines are invasive and threaten the indigenous plants of the garden of faith; they are Fear and Self-Doubt.  They cleverly present themselves in the vicinity of Doubt as though they were Doubt itself, but they are, in fact, distinct species all their own.  And the flowers of these two vines each has a scent – not entirely unpleasant, but not enticing either – something only just noticeable that is carried in the air beyond the gate of Doubt when the breeze is blowing strongly enough.  And the Scent of Fear and Self-Doubt tickles our noses and plants still other ideas in our heads, as though they were sneezes trying to get out:

“You are ugly and stupid.”

“You will never be good enough.”

“It would be better to play it safe.”

“You can’t do that: someone smarter, and stronger, and more capable than you could, but you can’t.”

These thoughts are borne on the scent of Fear and Self-Doubt, which catches us unawares from time to time, and it has the power to stop us in our tracks and leave us frozen for a while, unable to decide what to do, how to live, convinced that we have no good choices in our lives.  We imagine that these feelings are crises of faith, coming, as they do, from the vicinity of Doubt, and we remember that we have trained ourselves to steer clear of Doubt.  And we do not notice how unsteadily we are now walking in the Garden of Faith, having breathed in the scent of Fear and Self-Doubt.

The Tradition of the Garden of Faith tends to overlook the invasive species of Fear and Self-Doubt, because those vines have become all mixed up with the Gate of Doubt – where you shouldn’t be hanging out anyway!  And so we are not conditioned to identify the effects of the scent of Fear and Self-Doubt in our lives hence we have no idea what to do about it.  Instead, we just tell ourselves that it is all just a part of Doubt and the sooner we get away from the Gate of Doubt the better we will be – wasn’t that the message to Doubting Thomas, after all?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe, you sniveling doubter who has been lingering around gates you know you shouldn’t linger around!

But for a few days of the year – right around this time of year – there blossoms in the Garden of Faith a tiny little plant that carpets the garden with its little, golden blossoms in such a way that the lawns of the Garden of Faith put the Yellow Brick Road to shame, so abundant and so radiant are these tiny blossoms that seem to weave themselves into a seamless garment.  These little blossoms also have a scent – it is at once reassuring and invigorating – and the scent of these flowers has that unusual quality, found in and around the Garden of Faith, that it brings not only odor to our notice, but also sound.

These blossoms are called Thomas Flowers, because when their scent fills the garden with its perfume, it is accompanied by a sound that at first sounds like an army of cicadas making their incessant chirping noise over and over again.  But when you listen closely, at this time of year, when the Thomas Flowers are covering the ground in the Garden of Faith as far as they eye can see, you can hear in the cicada-like chirping the sound of a prayer being made over and over again: “My Lord and my God!  My Lord and my God!  My Lord and my God!”  And by a strange coincidence the sound of that chirping prayer is heard nowhere more clearly than in the vicinity of the Gate of Doubt.  And for reasons that no botanist has ever been able to explain, for about a week or two around this time of year, the vines that grow on the other side of the wall, outside the Garden, by the Gate of Doubt shrivel and die back so that they look like a few dying twigs that are at last being gotten rid of.

But after just a few short weeks, as the last golden blossoms of Thomas Flower are fading from the grass, and the sound of their chirping prayer is becoming faint (My Lord and my God!  My Lord and God!) a shoot begins to grow at the base of the vines of Fear and Self-Doubt, and you can be assured that they will soon be creeping over the wall again.

And the first lesson of the Garden of Faith is this:  There is nothing to be afraid of at the Gate of Doubt except those invasive species of Fear and Self-Doubt that grow on the other side of the gate, and would be happy to keep you there.

And the second lesson of the Garden of Faith is this: That God is able to carpet the landscape with flowers that will proclaim him Lord, and that the beauty of the Thomas Flowers and the majesty of their marvelous prayer (My Lord and my God!) will continue to bloom, causing Fear and Self-Doubt to shrivel, allowing the flowers’ prayer to hang in the air with new music at every chirp:  My Lord and my God!  My Lord and my God!  Thank you for overcoming my fear and self-doubt, my Lord, and my God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

7 April 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

What Happens Next?

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.  (Luke 24:11)

The other day I sat in on a discussion at St. James School with a handful of our 5th and 6^th grade students there and a fairly well-known author.  We sometimes have visitors who come to speak to the students about their pursuits and accomplishments.  We’ve had an Olympic rower, an IronMan triathlete, and the head of a local private school, among others, and most recently this author who is a writer of short stories.  He talked with the students about how you tell a story, and he suggested that first you start with an interesting idea – for instance, let’s say there is a dog who has two heads, that’s interesting.  Next, he suggested, you start to ask questions about the dog with two heads: how did the dog get two heads?  The kids offered their own questions, too.  Do the two heads like each other?  Does one head of the dog try to eat the other head’s food?

Right, said the author, and what happens next?  This question, he told us, is crucial because, of course, it’s what keeps the story interesting, and a story that people will read is a story that continues to get interesting, where the stakes keep getting higher.

Boring stories never go anywhere – maybe you have a friend, like I do, who likes to tell stories that never seem to go anywhere.  They start well, and you are listening, waiting for him to get to the good part, but the good part never comes, the stakes never get higher, and soon your interest wanes, because nothing happens next.  It is an idle tale.

St. Luke tells us that the disciples first greeted the news of the resurrection as though it was an idle tale.  I take it that this could mean a couple of things.  To begin with, it could mean that the story is just untrue – a lie.  And I think that probably many who heard the news that the women brought back from the empty tomb assumed just that – it is a lie.  But even after some of the details of the story are verified – Peter goes to the tomb and finds it just as the women reported – the possibility that the story of Jesus’ resurrection is an idle tale remains, because the question remains, what happens next?  And if nothing much happens next, then it is still more or less an idle tale.

If this question was pressing to those who first learned the good news of the resurrection, then it is no less pressing to us today.  Is the Gospel if Jesus an idle tale or isn’t it?  Is it a lie – as many these days contend that it is?  And, even if the tomb was empty and Jesus was raised from the dead, so what?  What happens next?

Well, we know what happens next in some ways: Jesus hangs around for forty days, St Paul tells the story to anyone who will listen and the church grows, Constantine legitimizes the faith and the church expands, Eastern and Western Christians fight over minutia and the church splits in two, Martin Luther has a hammer and he isn’t afraid to use it when there is a nail and a door around, Henry VIII has a mistress and he isn’t afraid to marry her (as long as he can get a divorce!), and so on and so on and so on.

And all of those are good stories, and many others – BUT, they still could be idle tales to YOU, if you can’t answer the question in your own life: what happens next?  Because, let’s face it, in life the stakes are always getting higher – more is on the line today than it was yesterday, for most of us.  So if the story of Jesus, and the news of his resurrection isn’t any more than an idle tale, who’s got time for it?

OK, maybe you were baptized long ago when you were an infant, but you can’t remember a thing about it – what happened next?  Maybe nothing happened.  Maybe there was a brunch and then you had your second birthday, and you grew up, and nothing happened next, and you haven’t given it a second thought since then.  In this case, so far the whole thing may seem to you like an idle tale.

But maybe the story unfolded in a different way.  Maybe when you were a kid you got very, very sick.  Maybe you were in the hospital.  Maybe they didn’t know if you would make it.  Maybe your mom and your dad went to bed every night with tears on their pillows offering the only prayer they could: Please God, make her well, let her live!  Please, let what happens next be OK!

And maybe, through the skill of doctors and the care of nurses you survived that childhood illness, that’s what happened next.  I know people who this has happened to, I bet you do too.

Maybe when you got older you had a great time, you were the life of every party, but then you discovered that partying was starting to control your life, not the other way around.  And maybe this cost you your health, and your sanity, and your friends, and your job, and your money, and nearly everything as you slipped deeper and deeper into addiction.

But maybe one day it dawned on you that your life was out of control, and you could not control it, you had no idea what would happen next, but all the options seemed pretty poor, and the only thing you could do was to hand over the reins to God and ask him to take over your life, because so far you had only learned how to throw it away.  And maybe recovery has been a gift in your life, the best possible thing that could have happened next.

Or maybe you got married on a beautiful spring day to the love of your life, and everything was peaches and cream, and you looked forward to a lifetime of bliss.  But before the kids were even out of diapers the shouting matches between the two of you were interrupted only by long, steely silences that were better maintained from separate bedrooms, and the divorce was ugly, and the fight for the kids left you estranged from them, and none of this was supposed to be the stuff that happened next, but here it had happened, and now you could hardly be more miserable, and you would fall asleep at night wondering over and over, more from fear than hope: what happens next?

Shall I go on?  Middle age, and all its challenges; getting older and worrying about money, and sickness, and health, and your grown kids whose lives have not turned out the way they were supposed to; the market collapses, and with it your retirement plans.  And you are wondering: what happens next.

And sometimes you pray about it deliberately, sometimes you know that you are relying on God alone, because you know that you don’t have the strength, or the wisdom, or the patience, or the fortitude to navigate it on your own, and you think thing only thing that can happen next is that everything will only ever go downhill…

… but it doesn’t.  Somehow light shines in the darkness, hope emerges where there was none, healing happens. mercy is given, forgiveness is found.  That’s what happens next.

And then there are the graveyards.  There are more people buried in the graveyards of our hearts right here this morning than any of us can count.  There are infant children buried here in our hearts today, and there are aged grandparents buried.  There are spouses, and lovers, and best friends, and college buddies, there are sisters and brothers, fathers, and so many mothers buried here in our hearts today.  There are painful, aching memories, not only of their deaths, but of their dying – sometimes too long and drawn out, sometimes too sudden and alarming.  And alongside every one of those deaths there is the haunting question that sometimes seems just as present as it was the day she died – what happens next?  Can I survive without him?  Will the sun ever shine, and if it does, will I ever want to look at its beams again?  Will this sorrow ever get any easier to bear?  Will the loneliness ever subside?  What happens next?

At times like this, everything in life seems like an idle tale – either an outright lie (Please, don’t try to make me feel better by telling me the sun will come out tomorrow when I know it won’t!), or like that awful question will just be hanging in the air for ever – what happens next?

Hey guys, Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, isn’t that great!

Well, we’ll see; what happens next?

What happens next is this: that Jesus, having toured the depths of hell during his three-days excursion in death, now begins traveling to all the secret hells that we have set up in our own lives, like little dioramas of misery, some of which we show to anyone who wants to look, and some of which we keep hidden in the darkest corners of our souls.  The caption, the script, the banner, the title, the message of all those little hellish scenes is this: What happens next?  And it asked with a defiance that suggest the asker knows what happens next: nothing, for faith and hope and love are nothing but an idle tale – told, most often, by an idiot of some degree or another.

I have constructed such hellish dioramas in my own heart.  In fact, I am building one right now in my spare time – mostly from the borrowed material of someone I love, and whose life, I fear, is in grave danger quite beyond his control.  And nearly every day I wonder, so what happens next?  And the question frankly fills me with dread.

But I remember how those first followers of Jesus believed the news of his resurrection – the news that life would and can and does, indeed, triumph over death – how that news seemed, even to those who knew him well, an idle tale.

And I already know that it is not.  For I have seen his glory rising time after time in a thousand little Easters that smash our dioramas of hell into little bits and pieces.  I have seen it in my own life and in the lives of countless others I have known and heard about.  I have felt the warmth of the rising Sun, when I was sure it would never rise again.  I have looked into tombs I thought should be over-crowded and found them empty.

And if you never have, then today is the day to look and see that you have been given the strength, or the wisdom, or the patience, or the fortitude to navigate the dark and awful questions that leave you asking in dire hope: what happens next?

What happens next is that Jesus rises again and again from the graves of our lives, bringing hope and new life where there was only ever death and despair.  And that is a story worth telling with shouts of Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, for the Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia