Pentecost 2013

Reading and understanding the Greek of the New Testament have never been strengths of mine.  My seminary professor of New Testament Greek accurately predicted that I would forget nearly everything she taught me, except how to use a few reference books.  I can’t say I’m proud of this, I’m only being honest.

But sometimes I sit alone in the church here, when no one else is around.  Sometimes I am praying, or thinking, or sometimes my mind just wanders; sometimes I am just looking around, listening.  And sometimes I hear in my head the words of the Gospels, like words Jesus spoke to his disciples in the Gospel reading today - “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” – and I think to myself, What are you going on about Jesus?

Today is the Feast of Pentecost – the very day that we rejoice that the Holy Spirit has come into the world and filled God’s people with power!  Today is about wind and fire and the force and majesty of the Divine Presence that transcends language, nation, race, color, or culture. Today is about BIG THINGS!

But I hear Jesus preparing us for it, and all I hear is this: “I will ask the Father, and he will send you an Advocate.”  To my ears it sounds as though Jesus is promising us that in time God will provide us with a court appointed lawyer.  And this is not the biggest wish I could hope for!  To my ears, it sounds like Jesus is saying, “I will ask the Father, and he will send you a Public Defender.”   And I think – that’s Nathan!  We already have Nathan.  Is this the best God can do?  So I assume that something gets lost in translation, when we hear Jesus say that God wills end us an Advocate or a Comforter.

I mean, we live in a world that is full of uncertainty and anxiety and fear.  And I myself am not without my own uncertainties, anxieties, and fears.  Couldn’t you and I use more than an Advocate, more than a Comforter?  It makes me wish I knew more New Testament Greek.  But I only know enough to look up the words in some reference books, where I am told that the word translated as Advocate or Comforter is, in its Anglicized version actually the word, “Paraclete.”  And I think, Wow, big help!

If I look up “Paraclete” I find out that the word means something like, “one who is called near.”  And I think of Jesus promising to his followers, his friends that God the Father will send to us one who is called near, and I start to think maybe we are getting somewhere.  (And I should have worked at my Greek when I had the chance.)

For reasons that I can’t recall, my mind drifts to the Oscar-winning film, Argo.  Even if you didn’t see the movie, you probably know something about the story of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.  The movie tells the improbable tale of the rescue of six American diplomats who managed to avoid being taken hostage and were secretly given refuge in the Canadian Ambassador’s home.  The movie – which is by no means a strictly historically accurate account of what actually happened – depicts a CIA operative, Tony Mendez, who comes up with a plan to rescue the six diplomats by getting them to pose as a Canadian film crew preparing to shoot a film in Iran.

In the film, the six Americans are going a little stir crazy, holed up in the Ambassador’s residence, and they are reluctant to go along with Mendez’s plan, because it seems far-fetched to them, with a pretty good chance of failure.  They are gripped by uncertainty, anxiety and fear, taking the specific shape that they might end up being caught and executed in the heated anti-American atmosphere of Tehran at that time.

In one scene, Mendez is explaining that they will each have to pose as a different member of a film production company, they’ll have to learn their fake identities, and stick to their cover stories, no matter what.  One of diplomats most opposed to the plan objects, “We can’t stand up to that.  We don’t know what the hell movie people do.”

Mendez, the CIA agent replies, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

As the film unfolds (and indeed as history did unfold) Mendez manages to shepherd the six safely out of Iran, just as planned, using the slightly goofy cover story he’d cooked up, and some really helpful passports provided by the Canadian government.

Whatever other merits Argo may or may not have, it does a good job of depicting the atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear among the six Americans hiding inside the Ambassador’s home.  You have no trouble believing that they are really afraid for their lives, and have reason to be.  You can feel the tension build, the longer they are in hiding, and the more likely it becomes that they will be found out.  But the only thing more frightening to them than remaining hidden is taking the risk of leaving their fragile sanctuary under any circumstances whatsoever.  Their dilemma is not helped by the measure of the resources sent to them: a guy with a flimsy cover story and some Canadian passports.  No Marines, no stash of secret firepower, no helicopters to whisk them away.  Only a guy urging them to play along with a fairly outlandish cover story, and who promises, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do. 

In the church, we often cling to the idea that the feast of Pentecost is a stunning moment of dazzling effect: a rushing wind, and divided tongues of fire resting over the heads of the disciples of Jesus.  We are willfully in denial that this image is merely quaint in a world that has known the battles at Gettysburg and Normandy, or that has sent rovers to Mars, or that has pulled bodies out of wreckage in Haiti or more recently in Bangladesh, or that has watched the footage of an un-manned drone doing its work, or that can recall the implication of the mushroom clouds we caused to rise over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or that is still coming to terms with the destructive potential of a pressure cooker.

The church celebrates the Feast of Pentecost – which is the very day, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, when the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to our spiritual ancestors.  This Spirit is supposed to be our promise, our power, the source of what will sustain us through good times and bad.  This Spirit is God’s power moving through us – the power of the almighty, the maker of heaven and earth…

… and we get what – a strong breeze and Bunson burners?  Speaking in tongues?  Like that is going to help?  The Spirit is supposed to be our Marines, our firepower,  our helicopters, not just our translator!

The disciples were gathered together in one place – probably more or less in hiding – but a crowd gathered at the sound of the wind, and the din of voices grows.  And even in that moment there is skepticism about what this event might have meant.  Is it a wonderful sign from God, a manifestation of his amazing power?  Or is everyone here just drunk?

It’s easy for us to forget that the disciples were huddling together, probably to deal with their uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.  By no means was it clear that having followed Jesus and cast their lot with him had been a good idea.  He had been hung a cross; who was to say that others among their number wouldn’t be next to be marched up to Calvary, especially after the word of his supposed resurrection spread?

Were they reminding themselves of what he had said to them – “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever”?

Now, I’m thinking that their Greek was better than mine.  So I’m thinking that this promise spoke to them in ways that it may not immediately speak to us.  I’m thinking that, yes, they were uncertain, anxious, and afraid.  And when they heard Jesus say that God would send them an Advocate, a Comforter, a Paraclete, they heard something like this: “That’s what I’m hear for.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do,” except the voice wasn’t the familiar voice of Jesus, it was, rather, a voice carried to them on certain breeze, speaking to them in a tongue they could clearly understand.

For reasons known only to God himself, the days of rushing winds, divided tongues of fires, and multi-lingual confabulations seem to be well and truly over.  Not that those particular forces would do much these days to quell our uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.  But what isn’t over is this gentle and confident promise of Jesus’, whenever we tell him we can’t do it, we are afraid to go outside, we are too weak, or too scared, or just too ready to give up: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

And the promise comes to us not so much from the lips of Jesus, as from a certain breeze, that is probably blowing through the pews right now.  Maybe you can feel it rustling the hairs on the back of your neck.  And maybe you can hear it in a language that is crystal clear to you – clearer than anything I could ever say to you: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

This is the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to you.  It is the voice of the one who is called near, the Comforter, the Advocate.  “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

And this is a big promise, a big thing for God to say to us, because, of course, our greatest fear is just this: that God is not here, that he won’t be with us, and that he is not doing anything at all…  which would mean that all our uncertainties, anxieties, and fears are amazingly well founded.

Maybe the world we live in has made puny the power of a Spirit who arrives on the breath of the wind, and alights with tongues of fire, and takes over the tongues or ears of those within a certain radius of his voice.  It can certainly seem that way.  But there is nothing puny about this promise from the one who is called near: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

It is the promise that once turned the whole world upside down – for the better. 

The powers of this world keep asserting themselves, as they try to keep the world in an alignment that suits them best.  And this leaves many of us with uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

But to the church, God has sent an Advocate, a Comforter, one who is called near to you and to me in our time of trouble.  And when we object that there is no way this can work, that we can’t do it, then he smiles, and says to us, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Pentecost 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Come, Lord Jesus

My grandmother always says the same grace before meals. She knows others, I’m sure, but she has only ever said one: Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed. This is Grandmom’s grace, said at every family gathering and on every major holiday, said in the same sweet, melodious voice each time, even if five minutes before this 85-year-old, 5-foot-nothing, bold, beautiful, feisty Italian woman was standing in the kitchen pointing a wooden spoon and railing against Congress or anyone who has ever or will ever play for the New York Mets. But come grace-time, and she’s all softness and light: Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and grant that all these gifts be blessed.

Now as a child, I thought that this grace was a little, well, lame. This is because I was a complete grace snob. In my immediate family, we quoted scripture before mealtime. We had standard grace quotes, like “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, or, if you were hungry: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And if you felt like showing off: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These verses didn’t always relate directly to mealtime, per se, but they were beautiful, and in their King James English, they sounded awfully official and important. As a child, I was far more impressed with the seriousness of these quotes than with the sing-songy-ness of Grandmom’s grace. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed, always seemed childish compared to, you know, THE BIBLE.

What I did not realize in my childish snobbery is that the first part of my grandmother’s prayer actually is THE BIBLE. And not only is it from THE BIBLE, it is given privilege of place by being the last prayer in the entire canon of scripture. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” Here ends the Bible. Come, Lord Jesus is one of the oldest prayers in Christendom, found not only in Revelation but in one of Paul’s letters and in the first liturgy of the Church. Come, Lord Jesus is a prayer that has been offered over and over by millions of Christians in thousands of places and times. It is the most ancient, the most scriptural, the most important of prayers.

What I also did not recognize as a child sitting at my grandmother’s dinner table was that it is also a hugely ambitious prayer, a prayer of epic proportions. I never stopped to think what we really asking. Come, Lord Jesus. What if Jesus had actually taken us up on our offer? What if he really had come? Well, he certainly would have come in and sat right down to eat, probably in that chair – you know, the extra chair from the study, the low one that makes the dinner table hit you right around here. Jesus would have sat in that lowest chair, probably at the spot in the middle of the table where the crack makes your plate wobble back and forth. Or, more likely, he would have sat at the kiddies table, with his knees tucked up around his chin, just suffering the little children all over the place. He would have cleared the table, stayed in the kitchen drying dishes, recycled the empty cans, driven the leftovers over to the homeless shelter. He would have asked provocative questions about forgiveness, invited unusual people to the table, told daring stories about a kindhearted Mets fan caring for a man who had been beaten up along the road to Citizens Bank Park. He would have challenged us by his words and his actions to truly be his disciples in our words and our actions. He would have come, our Lord Jesus, so that our dinner, and our lives, would never have been the same.  

Come, Lord Jesus is a serious, powerful prayer. It is a bold ask. Because Jesus can come in only one way – the same way he has always come, with the same purpose he has always had. Which means that when we pray this prayer, Come, Lord Jesus, we are really asking for Jesus to come and turn our world upside down. For he came, and so he will always come, to exalt the humble and meek and to fill the hungry with good things. He comes as the master to act as the servant; he comes as the highest to sit with the lowest. He comes as the purest of heart, without sin, to walk among brokenhearted sinners. He comes to manifest the glory of God in the shame of the cross. He comes with great power to give it away for great love.  He comes to shake up the world, to shake us into our right minds, to show us again and again how God rejects the priorities of this world for the grace of his heavenly kingdom.

Now all of that shaking up can be supremely uncomfortable. That’s why this prayer takes so much courage, because it means that we are inviting Jesus to change things, to change us. And that means admitting that we need that change, because sometimes you and I find it easier to adopt the priorities of this world than to fight them. We get sucked in to believing unhelpful, unholy untruths – that our worth is somehow tied to our wallets or our waistlines, that we are loved because we are powerful or perfect, that our sin is justified because of need or expediency, that faster is better, that busier is better. We get sucked into believing that when Christ said to love our enemies he surely didn’t mean dead terrorists, or kidnappers, and that when he said to give away two robes instead of one he surely didn’t mean actual clothes, or at least not our nice ones, and that when he said to serve the poor he must have meant only those who are properly grateful, or clean, or pleasant. In the Church, too, we are often tempted by these worldly priorities, tempted to look to our bottom line as the Alpha and the Omega, or to measure our success only in terms of how many people are sitting in the pews instead of how many hearts – in and out of the pews – are transformed by the Gospel.

Opening ourselves up to admitting these failings and owning our own sin, can be a vulnerable, scary business. True transformation always is. This is why this prayer has always been a prayer of the whole Church, a prayer that we offer together, as one body with Christ in us and us in Christ. Together we can have the courage to lift up our hearts and to cry out Come, Lord Jesus! Come down and shake us up. Come down right in the middle of the world’s lies and speak truth. Come down right in the center of our weakness and comfort – be strong with – us. Come down into our selfishness or apathy to help us love as we should, to help us follow you as we should, to help us wash our robes in whatever sacrifice is required to follow in the path of discipleship. Come, Lord Jesus. This is the boldest and bravest of asks, a serious, important, beautiful prayer.

And it is a prayer that is a gift. Because here is the thing: Christ is coming. He has promised that he is coming and that right soon. He is coming in a thousand little ways, this day and at the last day, to bring justice to places where the strong lord it over the weak, to bring mercy to the sick or the sin-sick souls, to bring peace and love where there is only violence and hardness of heart. Ready or not, here he comes. And Christ just wants us to be ready. So he offers us this prayer. I am the Alpha and the Omega, he says, I am the bright morning star, and I am coming. So get ready, and let everyone who hears say, “Come.” You, say Come! Let everyone who hears the great good news boldly say come. Let the Church and the city say, come. Let the faithful say come. Let the doubters say come. Let the joyful say come. Let the addicted say come. Let the children say come. Let the heartbroken say come. Let the survivors say come. Let the oppressed say come. Let the frustrated say come. Let the grandmothers and the mothers the grandfathers and the fathers say come. Let the angry, the exhausted, the jubilant, the lost, the found, the poor, the hungry say come. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed. Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

12 May 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

A New Commandment

Of Jesus’ childhood, the scriptures provide a report for only three days, when he was separated from his parents, and eventually found sitting with the rabbis in the temple.  So we know that he was a religious child.  But although holy writ does not record it anywhere, I think we can be assured that from time to time, the boy Jesus played games.  One such game he might have played with his friends after Hebrew School, and could have been called, “A New Commandment.”  It was, in fact, a learning exercise, to help memorize the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, of Jewish law.  The trick of the game was to call out something that might or might not be a commandment and see if you could fool your friends.

You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge? Old commandment!

You shall not eat a worm found in an apple?  Old commandment.

A younger brother must make the bed of his older brother in the morning?  A new commandment!

You get the idea.

Even as a boy, Jesus had a way of throwing a curveball into the game.

You shall pay your hired servant on the day of his labor?  Old commandment!

You shall forgive your sister or your wife or your mother even if she troubles you?  A new commandment!

You shall not eat the flesh of an ox that has been condemned to be stoned?  Old commandment!

You should love your enemies and pray for them?  A new commandment!

We Christians are somewhat stupefied by the idea of governing our lives by a body of 613 commandments.  Most of us had to learn to remember only the Ten Commandments when we were young, and, in truth, we generally find even those a struggle.  It is no longer clear to us why you should not boil meat in milk or wear garments that are made from a blend of linen and wool.  Our few Jewish friends who keep kosher (if we have any at all) are something of a quaint mystery to us.

Episcopal tradition, as we have received it, is blissfully free of commandments.  Try to name one thing that is required of you day-in –and-day-out in order to be an Episcopalian – I dare you.  This is not a complaint, it is just a comment – we are not much into commandments, and perhaps with good reason: commandments don’t sell very well, these days.  Americans these days do not want to be told “thou shalt” any more than they want to be told “thou shalt not.”

Jesus himself was not very big into commandments as his ministry matured.  He had a penchant for re-imagining or circumventing the traditional Jewish mitzvot (depending on your point of view).  He left behind no written set of rules.  And the one commandment he did give his followers was this: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  Of course, it has been the long tradition of the church to ignore this commandment (or to re-imagine or circumvent it, depending on your point of view).

In fairness, as commandments go, this one is a bit vague.  What does it mean to love one another?  Strangely, it is immensely easy to disagree about this.  Are we to understand “just as I have loved you” to mean that we should imitate Jesus in the way we live our lives?  If so, what does this mean?  Did he wear linen mixed with wool?  Did he boil meat in milk?  Did he forgive his brothers and sisters, or did he ignore them?  Where did he stand on gun control, or abortion, or gay rights, or the treatment of enemy combatants held in distant places?  How can we apply the injunction to love to these difficult matters?  Are we meant to?

When you think about it, it might be easier to be governed by 613 mitzvot than to have to somehow figure out what this one commandment means.  After all, it’s not so hard to understand this commandment: “You shall not shear the firstling of your flock.”  It’s easy to wear fringes on your clothes and know you are in compliance with God’s law.  But how do we show everyone that we are Jesus’ disciples by loving one another?  Doesn’t love have a way of making up its own rules?  And aren’t there far more than 613 ways for people to show that we love one another, some of them complicated, and some even a little weird?

I sometimes imagine that on the evening of the Last Supper, Jesus’ disciples were indulging in childish reminiscence and playing “A New Commandment” with each other, letting off steam as they prepared for the Passover after an exciting and confusing few days in Jerusalem.

Jesus remained quiet, an inscrutable Mona Lisa smile on his face as his friends made silly suggestions of new and outrageous mitzvot: you shall not feed a multitude of five thousand with only five loaves and two fishes, they laughed among themselves.  You shall not set the Lord’s messiah on a donkey to bring him into Jerusalem, and strow branches in his path as you sing, Hosanna in the highest!” they smirked with one another.

Interrupting his own silence and their game, Jesus gets up from the table and begins quietly to wash the feet of his disciples, much to their amazement and confusion.  And after supper, picking up on their game, he tells them this: “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”  But this is not funny.  This is not a game.  The first part of the commandment is not new at all – that you should love one another – it’s straight from the law, already a mitzvah.  So it’s the second part of the commandment that is new – as I have loved you.  Love one another as I have loved you.

Did they wonder as much as we do about how to let this commandment guide their lives?  Or was it clearer to them because of what he’d done with them, how he’d been with them, what he’d already taught to them?

Did they see that living out this new commandment would mean being guided by a few questions?

Can you wash someone’s feet with it?  A new commandment.

Can you feed a hungry belly with it?  A new commandment.

Can you heal someone with it?  A new commandment.

Can you forgive someone with it?  A new commandment.

Can you restore, renew or redeem someone with it?  A new commandment.

Contrast these questions to some others:

What does it prohibit?  Old commandment.

How can you be sure it’s pure?  Old commandment.

What ancient enmities does it preserve?  Old commandment.

Whose privilege of power does it protect?  Old commandment.

Jesus did not say what to do about the old commandments, except that he said that it was not his ministry or intention to disrupt one jot or one tittle of the old law, but to fulfill it.

Isn’t it odd how appealing the old commandments can be?  Isn’t it funny how often we allow our lives and our religion to be governed by those old questions:

What is prohibited in this church?

Who is pure and worthy in this church?

What ancient enmities must we preserve in this church?

Whose privilege and power must be protected in this church?

I don’t know, maybe those questions have some value.  But they lack the power to identify us as followers of Jesus.  For that, you need the new commandment of love.  For that, you need to ask, “Who’s washing who’s feet?”  It is surprising how easily the old questions melt away when you are washing someone else’s feet.

We live in a complicated and sophisticated age, in which we are faced with many perplexing matters.  I suppose it would be too simple to suggest that all we have to do as Christians is to learn to love one another – because to say that is somehow not saying enough, and the semantics of love are themselves complicated and sophisticated.  But if we need a test by which we might know how closely we are hewing to Christ’s new and only commandment, perhaps it is this: Who’s washing who’s feet here?

It is hard to nurture old hatreds when you kneel to wash someone’s feet. 

It is hard to count the number of bullets in a magazine (too many?  too few?) when you are washing someone’s feet.

It is hard to be critical of someone’s sexual orientation when you are washing her feet.

It is hard to feel self-righteous when you are washing someone else’s feet.  (Well actually, it’s not, but that just goes to show you how easily we can pervert nearly anything, including this test of love!)

Jesus did not give a new commandment because he thought the 613 mitzvot were too many to worry about.  He gave a new commandment because the ancient law was one commandment short.

So he girded himself with a towel, and he got down on his knees, and he began to write the new commandment of love with water and sweat, and the stink of dirty feet.  And he must have known that it would be difficult for us to follow this new commandment.  So by his service to those who should have been serving him, he posed the question by which we might test our faithfulness to the new commandment: Who’s washing who’s feet?  A question so simple, even a child can answer it.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

28 April 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia