Sterling Silver

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. (Malachi 3:1)

The message from God, through the prophet Malachi, to at least some of the priests of Israel was this: Not good enough.  “When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong?  And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong?  Try presenting that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says the Lord of Hosts.”  Not good enough!”  This is the fundamental shortcoming that Malachi is addressing.  He is not calling for universal justice or peace.  He is not pleading the cause of the poor.  He says nothing about healing, forgiveness, or mercy.  At issue is the way the priests have gone about the business of worshiping God, giving God honor, giving God glory.  Not to say the priests haven’t done their job at all.  It’s just not good enough – sending your second or your third-best won’t do.  You bring your best for God, simply and only your best.  Nothing else will do.  Keep it up, Malachi warns, and see what happens.  “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple… but who can abide the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?  For he is like a refiner’s fire!”

Now, as you may know, we have a lot of silver here at Saint Mark’s.  Recently a silver missal stand – the thing on which the big book rests on the altar – this missal stand was damaged, and I brought it in to a shop, up above Fishtown, to have it repaired.  Not only was the missal stand dented, it’s in need of a good cleaning, too.  It’s covered in dark, tarnished blotches and its color is dull.  It needs to have the lacquer stripped off, and to be polished and re-lacquered.

When I brought it to the shop and asked for this treatment, the owner – a craftsman who deals with a lot of silver – warned me that if it was only silver plate the silver would be stripped off in this process too. “Oh no, I said, it’s sterling.  See, it’s hallmarked.”

“Well,” the man said, “I’ve seen hallmarks on things that aren’t really sterling before. And this is awfully heavy to be sterling.  That would be a lot of silver,” he said hefting it up and down to demonstrate.

“Well,” I said, “we have quite a lot of silver at Saint Mark’s."   And I may have sort of winked.

“Let’s see,” he said: still doubtful.

He took the missal stand to a polishing wheel and pressed the flat surface of its back against the wheel.  Off came the varnish, and under the pressure of the wheel the metal underneath began to sparkle: sterling, for sure.  The man was impressed.  “So, maybe you have some more work for me?” he asked.

“Like I said,” I replied, “we’ve got quite a lot of silver.”  And I may have sort of winked again.

For he is like a refiner’s fire.  But who may abide the day of his coming, and who may stand when he appeareth?

It’s widely acknowledged that we live in an age when giving your best to God is considered a bridge too far.  Not long ago, a great preoccupation of the church was to advertize that worshipers should “come as you are” to church.  For all I know this is still going on in many places, though it flies in the face of most of the biblical attitudes about the way we should approach God in his holiness.  Moses took off his shoes; Elijah covered his face with his mantle; the vestments of the high priest were prescribed in elaborate detail; the wedding guest was ejected because he lacked a wedding garment.  Scripture seldom encourages anyone but children to come as you are into the presence of God.  Though children do get a special pass, I think.

And yet… we also live in an age when many people, having concluded that religious leaders, like me, judge them to be not good enough, simply avoid God’s temple: steer clear of God’s holy presence.  “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple,” but what will it matter if you are not there?

I suspect that part of the problem is that people simply do not know who they are, do not know that they belong in the presence of the living God, do not hear God calling them to approach, have no confidence that they might survive the refining fire of his presence.  This is because – if I may borrow the image of my metalworking friend in Fishtown – many people are no longer sure that they are made of sterling silver, and are not even concerned with the question, since silver requires a lot of polishing, protection, and attention.  Which is to say that we live in an age when much has grown tarnished and unrecognizable as the real thing.  (I’m speaking literally and figuratively here, you understand.)

But here’s the thing: the refiners’ fire doesn’t so much worry you if you know you are made of sterling silver.  But having forgotten who we are, what we are made of, we have felt free to wander away from the Temple of the Lord.

The prophet’s words are not meant to drive us away, they are meant to give us pause, and ask ourselves who we really are, what we are really made of, whether or not we belong near the refining fire of God’s sacred presence.

The suspicion is that because we know ourselves to be damaged, dented, and tarnished, we do not belong, we are not good enough, and have nothing good enough to offer God, and that getting near to the refining fire of God’s presence will only end badly, if indeed there is a God at all.  But this is the wrong conclusion to reach.

Just a few lines after the well-known verses of Malachi that Handel set to music, comes this assertion:

“Bring full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house; and thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”  There are few more charming images in all of Scripture than the picture of God throwing open the windows of heaven, leaning out, and pouring his blessing out upon his people from buckets, if only they will bring him their best.

Living in an age, as we do, in which people fail to know who they are, it has become so much harder for many people to bring their best to God.  This may be why, in the graceful alchemy of God, the refiner’s fire of Malachi has been transformed into the candlelight of Simeon and Anna.  The roaring, blue heat of refining flames has been contained, and has become the golden flicker of candlelight.

Simeon and Anna knew who they were; and their faithfulness – Simeon in being obedient to the call of the Holy Spirit, and Anna in her long waiting in the Temple – their faithfulness represents the best they can offer to God.  Along comes Jesus, carried in the arms of his parents.  The Lord whom you seek suddenly comes to his Temple.  And a consuming fire does not ignite.  Flames do not leap up to devour the impure and to define the narrow boundaries of God’s love.  Rather, Simeon takes up the child and sings a song, inspired, no doubt, by the Holy Spirit.  And Simeon’s song does not tell of a salvation that has come only to those who were purified in the refiner’s fire; it tells, rather, that the Lord who has suddenly come to his Temple will be a light to lighten the Gentiles – he brings salvation for all people.

The message from God through the prophet Malachi, to at least some of the priests of Israel was this: Not good enough.  But the message from God through his prophets Simeon and Anna is different.  It is more like this:

My dear, dented, damaged, tarnished friend: life is complicated and challenging, and sometimes it is very hard to remember who you are in this world, and what you are made of.  But God knows who you are, and what you are made of.  You are made of silver, my child - solid, sterling silver – and you bear the hallmark of the handiwork of God.  Do not let the confusion of others confuse you, too.  Do not be fooled by the doubts of this world.  Do not worry that you are beyond repair, or that your color has faded never to be restored, or that you cannot stand up straight.  And do not fear the refining fires of God’s love.  Come to him; hear his Spirit calling you; wait for him if waiting is what he requires – this may be the best you can do for him, and God desires your best.

See how, in the presence of Jesus, God’s refining power becomes candlelight.  See how it lights the way.  See how you shine in his light!  See how God has opened the windows of heaven and poured out his blessings.  See how the light grows when we gather together like this.  And see what an awful lot of silver we have here!  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Candlemas, 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Called, Changed, Sent

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Modern translations of the Scriptures have brought many blessings of clarity, meaning, and wisdom to our encounter with holy writ, none of which is apparent in the famous line we hear this morning on the lips of Jesus: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  This sounds ridiculous; it sounds like Jesus is promising to do a magic trick that will leave Andrew, Peter, James, and John flapping around on the dock, their lips puckered, and their gills heaving.  It certainly does not sound like the sort of call that would convince you to drop your net and follow the guy.  Everyone knows that what Jesus really said was, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  He wasn’t being sexist; he was just using the linguistic conventions of Jacobean English.  Duh!

I raise the matter not to be curmudgeonly, but because something has been lost here, despite our translators’ intention to hold onto it.  And I think it’s important that we try to reclaim whatever has been lost, as I will try to demonstrate.  What’s been lost isn’t a turn of phrase, it is the urgent and appealing sense of call, transformation, and mission.

There are Andrew and Peter (still going by his old name, Simon), doing what they do: casting their nets, being fishermen.  There are James and John with their father, doing what they do: mending their nets, being fishermen.  And along comes Jesus, and his call is inexplicably like a siren-song to them (but in a good way).  Immediately they drop what they are doing to follow him.  And in an instant, St. Matthew tells us that they have ceased to be the people they were before, as they drop what they are doing to follow Jesus; they are about to be transformed into something new that their old selves (fishermen) intriguingly prepared them to be (fishers of men); and this new vocation brings with it a missional implication of gathering up disciples, just at their old vocation involved gathering fish into nets.

Now, you don’t see lots of fishermen at career day these days, and that is a problem if we are looking for this passage to say something to us in our own day and age; if we think that Jesus means for us to be eavesdropping on his call to Andrew, Peter, James, and John, and to hear him speaking to us, too, through the ages.  When you and I are doing what we do, it isn’t casting or mending nets.  And, aspirationally speaking, being a fisherman isn’t high on a lot of people’s lists outside of Newfoundland and Alaska.  So our context, does not contribute anything to the situation already made difficult by the translation (“fish for people” – ugh!).

Plus, we know, don’t we, that over-fishing is a big problem in our own time!  I know practically nothing about commercial fishing, except what I’ve seen on Deadliest Catch, and except that I am pretty sure the methods of industrialized fishing have left large ocean fisheries depleted of a number of once abundant species.  Plenty of fish in the ocean there are not – at least not as plentiful as they used to be!

But wait a minute!  This is a useful point of reflection for an Episcopalian: perhaps there are not enough fish in the ocean?  I contend that this view is the tacitly held Episcopal position on both over-fishing in the North Atlantic, and interpreting and appropriating Matthew Chapter 4, verse 19 in our own contemporary context.  We hear Jesus say: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” which grates on our ears to start with, as we yearn for the older translation.  And in a fashion that is atypical for an Episcopal response to the contemporary meaning of nearly any passage of the Scriptures, we have a ready reply. “Oh my,” we say, “there just aren’t enough fish in the ocean!”

How else can we explain the empty pews in church today?  How else can we explain that we Episcopalians are becoming more adept at closing churches than at opening them?  How else can we explain the despondency and resignation that possesses the church in so many quarters?  How else can we explain the empty pews in this church, this morning?  How else can we explain it?  How else?  There must just not be enough fish in the ocean.  Ain’t that a shame.

It would be convenient to blame all this on that lousy translation: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  Gawd, how I hate that!  It sounds ridiculous!  I wouldn’t get up off my tuchas for a rabbi who wanted to make me fish for people!  I hear no call!  I hear no promise of transformation!  I hear no mission in the words!  Oh, I would like to blame these empty pews on that silly translation!  But I cannot.

And I think I know where the fault truly lies.  Here’s what happens: When you start to worry that there are not enough fish in the sea, you gradually, without intending to, without even knowing that you are doing it, begin to turn your own little corner of the ocean into an aquarium, where you carefully protect your endangered species: pisces episcopalianis.  You make it safe for these rare and exotic fish: you keep the water warm, and the filters running.  You put pretty little model churches in the aquarium like castles for the fish to swim in, through, and around.  You keep them fed, and you do your absolute best for the fish, because you truly do care about them.  And you begin to regard with some pride your beautiful aquarium, forgetting that once you were called to be fishers of men.  As though, now, there are not enough fish in the ocean.  And do you forget what happened a long time ago: Jesus was walking along, and he saw these fishermen, and he called them, he changed them, and he sent them out to build up the kingdom of God?

The church does not struggle today because there are not enough fish in the ocean, the church struggles because we have not listened to the call of Jesus; we have not allowed ourselves to be transformed by following our Lord; we have not taken up the mission of Christ!  I know the waters are rough.  I know some of the fish have become hostile; some have joined other religions; some are avowed atheists; some think we are crazy.  Do you think it was any easier for Andrew, and Peter, and James, and John!?!?

Well, we say, there were plenty of fish in the ocean back then, but not enough today.  Humbug!  The ocean is teeming with fish, and they are hungry.  They are hungry for a reasonable religion that takes seriously the simplicity of the Golden Rule, a church that earnestly means what it says about God, and that reverently worships the one, true, only, and living God!

We cannot pretend that the waters have been over-fished, when we know it is not true – there are too many people enjoying brunch at Parc right now for us to take this line of reasoning seriously.  Instead, we must hear the call of Jesus; we must allow him to change us, even though we do not want to be changed; and we must take his mission seriously to heart – telling the story of why it matters to be his follower.

For me it has always been simple.  No other path leads anywhere.  No other path promises justice, freedom, peace, mercy, forgiveness, beauty, life, and hope the way his path does.  And nothing else I have seen in the world has had the power to call me when I did not want to be called; to change me when I did not want to be changed; and to send me where I did not want to go… and to make me very happy in the process!

Jesus can do all this just by walking by, and calling out.  But it depends on our willingness to heed him, to allow him to change us, and to go out where he sends us.

People often ask the clergy, “when did you get the call.”  And I take this question seriously.  I have a story I tell about it – some versions shorter, others are longer.  But one of the troubles with the church is that we believe that this question is reserved for the clergy – and we clergy are perfectly happy to keep it for ourselves.  But not one of those four fishermen – not Andrew, not Peter, not James, not John – went to seminary after Jesus called them.  But when they got the call, they knew it, and they responded to it.

Jesus doesn’t just call people into professional, ordained ministry: he calls all his people as he moves among them in life; he promises transformation to all his people; he has a mission for all his people, including me, and including you.  And there are lots of fish in the ocean, my friends, there are lots of fish.  And we have room for more of them here, and in churches around this city, and across this land.

Right now, a few blocks away from here, at the corner of 15th and Walnut streets, the southeast corner of the street is surrounded by construction fences, and a project has begun there that has drawn a lot of excitement and interest.  The project is the construction of a building to house – wait for it – a branch of The Cheesecake Factory.

I promise you that the people behind this project have carefully considered how many fish there are in the waters around our neighborhood, so to speak.  And I promise you that they have meticulously thought through the question of Sunday mornings.  I promise you that not a few of you will find yourselves there after church on Sundays.  And what have they got?  Cheesecake?

We have got the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This Gospel is pardon and hope, mercy and forgiveness, justice and peace, healing and life!  This is better than cheesecake!

Along comes Jesus.  Hear Jesus calling you.  Allow him to transform your life, to change you from what you were to what you can become.  And come with me on his mission to build up his kingdom, which is to renew this troubled world and to give hope for the world that is to come!

Jesus is calling, Jesus is calling.  Let us follow him, and he will make us fishers of men, and lo, there are oodles of fish in the sea!  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

26 January 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Jesus Blowing Bubbles

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Breathing under water is easy.  In fact, when you are getting certified in SCUBA diving, they teach you how to breathe under water even if your equipment fails.  There is a wonderful moment when they teach you how to breathe if your regulator malfunctions and won’t stop discharging air when you need to exhale. (The regulator is the thing you clench in your teeth that delivers the air through your mouth and into your lungs.)  What you do is you take the regulator more or less out of your mouth and let the air flow out of it in a long column of bubbles that rises past your face, tickling your nose as they go.  Then you push your lips into this column of bubbles and sip the air as it rushes upward.  When they tell you that you must breathe under water this way for at least 30 seconds, you think this is going to be hard or a weird sensation in some way.  But it turns out to be amazingly easy to sip the air from the stream of bubbles rising in front of your face.  It really is surprisingly easy to breathe underwater.

I mention all of this because in the Gospel reading today, Jesus spends a bit of time under water.  And the question is: what is he doing there?  It is a question that John the Baptist himself asks.  “I need to be baptized by you,” John says to Jesus, “and do you come to me?”

John has been telling everyone that he is not the Messiah, that another is to come who is more powerful than he.  John has told his followers that he himself baptizes them with water, but there is one coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire!  And John knows that the one who is to come is Jesus, the latchet of whose shoes he is not worthy to stoop down and unloose (as he puts it).  So what is Jesus doing, coming to his cousin John to be baptized?

Jesus’ own explanation is this: “it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  Now, I do not call this a helpful answer, and I expect that John didn’t find it all that helpful either.  But it’s what Jesus said, and it seems to convey that he is sure of what must be done, so John goes along with it.  But what is really going on here?

Baptism, the church now says, is the way we are incorporated, joined, folded into the Body of Christ.  It’s the way we become Christians, the method by which we are knitted into the life of the new covenant with God, which is a relationship with his Son, Jesus, living by the Spirit in the world today.  Baptism is a spiritual cleansing, or purification, we are told, by which we are assured of the forgiveness of God for all our sins.  Baptism is the promise of life to come: death to the old self and rebirth to a new life in Christ.  Baptism is the way you become a hardcore follower of Jesus.

So why is Jesus being baptized?  He is the Word incarnate, born of the Virgin Mary.  He is the eternal Son of God, the Alpha and Omega, in him the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.  He is human, but he is divine: he is divinity itself.  He is the way, he is truth, he is life.  His is the Body that was offered for the salvation of the world, that was broken that we might be made whole.  It’s his Body that is made present to us the wonderful mystery of the Blessed Sacrament, that lends its form to the church, and onto which all Christians are grafted in the unity of the one Spirit.

When John saw Jesus coming he declared the good news that Israel had been waiting for, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  “He must increase,” John would later say, “but I must decrease.”  So why does Jesus show up at John’s little patch of the Jordan River to be baptized by him.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Jesus’ baptism is not the prototype of our Christian baptisms – it cannot be, and even John acknowledges this.  But Jesus’ baptism is an important moment of preparation for all other Christian baptism, and I think I know why.  I think it’s because of what Jesus was doing while he was under water.

Remember, Jesus wasn’t baptized in a font like ours, over which he would have had to bend his head for John to pour water onto.  Jesus was baptized standing in the muddy water of the Jordan River.  Maybe the rains had been good and the water was nice and deep, and maybe Jesus went in well past his waist, the water about mid-level of his chest, his arms stretched out to steady himself in the gentle flow of water moving by.

Did he bend his knees, and just allow himself to drop down below the surface of the water?  Or did John guide his head forward, as Jesus bent at the waist to fold himself, face first, under the surface?  Or did he just let go of himself altogether and let his body flop down into the river?

And how long did he stay under? Did he whoosh quickly up after only a few seconds, his long hair flinging water through the air as his flipped his head back?  Or did he disappear under the water for more than just a moment or two, maybe even making John a little nervous about how long his cousin had been under?

I don’t know.

But I think I do know what Jesus was doing under the water.  I think he was blowing bubbles.

There in the Jordan River I think Jesus opened his mouth and blew bubbles, to create a kind of under-water spring, whence air rushes out: not just the carbon dioxide that we all breathe out, with a little oxygen as well; but (somehow) when he blew bubbles, he created a stream of air, with just the right mix of oxygen and nitrogen that we need to breathe.  Jesus was blowing bubbles to create this spring of baptism, this well of new life where you can purse your lips and lean forward to sip the air out of the column of bubbles rising past you when you are baptized, born again, given the promise that comes only by the Name of Jesus, and through his life-giving Spirit.

You are thinking that this is fanciful: another one of my stories.  But I beg you to reconsider.

Because God knows that life takes us all under water from time to time, so to speak.  God knows that life gets dark, and frightening, and cold, and that it sometimes seems that you don’t know where your next breath is going to come from.  This happens to us.  And it happens to old people, and young people, and middle aged people, and to children who are too young to even know it is happening to them.  The water starts to close in around you, and you start to sink, and the more you struggle, the faster you feel yourself slipping beneath the surface, where there will be no air to breathe.

The hard part about breathing under water is convincing yourself that you will be able to do it – this is true in SCUBA diving as well as in faith.  It seems like it ought not to be possible.  It seems like a silly idea: believing.  Anyone can see we were not made for this – no gills!  And in life when you find yourself metaphorically under water, you generally do not have any equipment with you – no mask, no tank, no gauges, no regulator from which to draw deep breaths of air.

Which is why Jesus was blowing bubbles in the Jordan River: to begin the column of air that every Christian would breathe from when he or she went under the water – not just in baptism, but every time we find the water coming up around our necks, and we know that soon we will be under the surface.

Saint Paul put it this way: “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him.”  What on earth does this mean?

It means that the first place we go to die with Jesus is under the water.  And there we discover that it is not death that awaits us, but his column of marvelous, billowing bubbles, from which we are to breathe new life, when we purse our lips together, lean into the stream of air, and breathe!

These days there are plenty of people who don’t see the point in following Jesus, and can’t see the purpose in being part of his church.  One reason is this: because part of life, for most of us, is lived under water.  And you want to know, when you are falling deeper and deeper in the water, that there is some air to breathe, and you want to have had someone around to show you how.

The very first time I descended with SCUBA gear to the quite moderate depth of twenty-five feet below the surface, after initial success I very quickly became nervous.  Nothing was going wrong, per se, and nothing was even deviating from the plan, but as I looked around, I was gripped by the sense that I should not be able to do this, that there was something terribly wrong with breathing under water, that I might drown if I stayed there.  My nerves got the better of me, and I did the worst thing I could possibly do: I raced up toward the surface as fast as I could, in a blind panic, gasping for air.

It’s dangerous to do this.  And in deeper diving – or in real life - it may be impossible to do it, which is why they teach you that it is generally better to try to address your fears, to fix your problems, to find a way to breathe under water, and then, once you have found a way to breathe, then to find a way to return safely to the surface.

Jesus is the way to breathe under water, which is why I think, all those years ago, he spent a few moments blowing bubbles in the Jordan River, to create a column of air that is mystically linked to every place a person has ever been dunked in or drizzled with water in his Name, and in the Name of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit…

… so there would be air to breathe, even when everything else has stopped working, and you feel that you should not be able to breathe, and the water is dark and cold, and life is in peril, and you just want to run or swim away as fast as you can, which might very well kill you if you did.  And you start to panic.

Until you see a column of bubbles rising in the water, and you purse your lips, and you lean into the stream of air, and you breathe in the new life that Jesus has prepared for you.  And you find that it is surprisingly easy.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Baptism of our Lord, 12 January 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia