The Promised Land

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. (Deut. 30:17-18)

How I missed the sound of the gunshots, I cannot say.  Just about a month ago, while I was enjoying drinks and nibbles with the staff at St. James School, events were unfolding within earshot that went unheard by us.  This is how it was reported on the local news websites: “A man is dead after being shot on a North Philly sidewalk tonight, police said.  The victim, 21, was found lying on 33rd Street near Allegheny Avenue about 7:55 p.m. by officers from the 39th District… He had been shot five times in his torso and legs, and was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:12 p.m..”

The location of this murder. 33rd Street near Allegheny Avenue puts the body about a block away from St. James School – the school we started three years ago for kids from low-income families.  This shooting took place on a Friday.  The following Monday some of our students were late to school because the neighborhood had been cordoned off, since, as part of the investigation police were searching homes, complete with a battering ram to gain entry if need be.

Two weeks later, while I was at St. James for a meeting with the Head of School, his phone rang, and he took the call.  A young staff member who lives in the neighborhood had gone home for lunch and gotten caught in gunfire, volleyed from one side of the street to the other.  He was OK, but wanted to make sure none of the kids who lived nearby would be headed that way till the coast was clear.

Blood from shootings like this has been spilled on the floors of our students’ homes, I happen to know.  Death is not an altogether novel visitor in Allegheny West.  Violence is more of a rule of thumb than an exception.  Such are the realities of life in poverty in the city, five and a half miles from here.

There is a quaint, ironic, and I think apocryphal tale told by some few residents of the neighborhood around the school: that the little triangle of the city it sits in - enclosed by Ridge, Allegheny, and West Hunting Park Avenues - has at times been referred to as “Paradise.”  The story goes, with tongue-in-cheek, that the nickname was assigned because of the three large cemeteries that border the area to the south and the west.  But even tongue-in-cheek the nickname doesn’t get much traction, because it’s hard to think of the neighborhood with the highest murder rate in the city – an honor Allegheny West has earned more than once – as Paradise.

Biblically speaking, Paradise is someplace we have been kicked out of.  But Paradise finds its counterpart in the biblical narrative, in the Promised Land – the land said to be flowing with milk and honey, toward which Moses led the children of Israel when they escaped from slavery in Egypt, and wandered through the wilderness for forty years.  But today we hear Moses warn the Hebrews that if they are not careful they may get kicked out of the Promised Land too.  When he tells them they shall perish - they will not live long in the land that they are crossing the Jordan to enter into and possess – whether it’s death or expulsion that awaits them, the end result is the same: losing again the promise that God intends for his people.

Typically these days people stop to ask why it is that God treats folks this way.  Why does God lead his people to the Promised Land only to threaten that they may not get to stay there long?  This question pairs nicely with an earlier one: why did God plant us in Paradise only to pluck us out and tell us not to return?  The implication is that God is a bit of a psychopath, or at the very least, that God is acting out his own power issues on us, his children, who never did anything to deserve such treatment.  But this is a very recent and modern view of things, that conveniently absolves you and me and everybody else of responsibility.  Perhaps you have heard this point of view summed up by folks who say things like: “I wouldn’t want to believe in a God who leads you to the Promised Land and then threatens to kick you out.”

Moses didn’t see things that way.  Moses was preoccupied with the worry that the people whom God had entrusted to his care would turn to other gods.  And Moses knew that if they did that, things would not go well, that his people would lose again the promises of God.  It’s hard enough, Moses knew, following the one true God: it is no picnic.  But, following God had led him out of slavery and to the edge of the Promised Land, and Moses was not fickle.  And he had some experience, after all, of his people’s susceptibility to worship gods of their own making.  There had been that unhappy business of the golden calf, after all.

What Moses did not know, could not know, was how easily and how regularly God’s people, for ages after, would give up on the Promised Land themselves; how easily we’d be lured by the possibility of other gods masquerading as wealth, power, and prestige, and how willing we’d be to be kicked out of the Promised Land, losing the promises of God, in exchange for these supposed treasures.

It’s always easier to see someone else’s ruin coming than your own; easier to spot the causes of someone else’s expulsion from the Promised Land than to notice your own…  which brings me back to Allegheny West: the neighborhood around St. James School.  Because it is easier for me to see the biblical narrative playing out there, than it is in my own life, my own neighborhood.  It’s easier for me to feel as though I am standing there like Moses.  I can pretend that the Schuylkill River is the Jordan.  And I can situate myself in such away that the few acres of the school’s campus – with the church in its graveyard on one side of the street, and the school and its grounds on the other – looks like a promised land.  As I stand there, gazing across the river into this promised land, it suits me to picture myself as Moses, and to pretend that my work and the work of so many others at the school is helping (God willing) to keep some kids in the promised land, to prevent them from running off to other gods whose worship is as likely as not to lead to bloodshed, and thereby forfeit the promises of the one, true God.  And I hope that there is some real truth to this fantasy.

Because I cannot shake from my head the image of a body with five wounds, from five gunshots, lying dead in the street, one block away from the promised land that we have tried to build on Clearfield Street. What are the chances that one of our students will end up that way some day?  What of the children in the neighborhood who we are not reaching?  What will become of them?

Although I worry, with Moses, that God’s people will forsake him for the make-believe gods of wealth and power and prestige, I am more worried that we will give up on the Promised Land, having concluded that it is just part of God’s pathology to lure us to a promised land, only so he can then kick us out.

But then I think that I have focused on the wrong body, the wrong five wounds.  And I hear a voice saying:

"You have heard it said that I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  But I say to you that you have only begun to live, and the abundance of life that comes from me exceeds all your expectations.

“You have heard it said that you should seek first the kingdom of God.  But I say to you that you must provide the hands and the hearts to build up the kingdom in the midst of this world.

“You have heard it said that you are to love your neighbor as yourself.  But I say to you that you continually forget who your neighbor is; look around and see.

“You have heard it said that you must take up your cross and follow me.  But I say to you that my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

“You have heard it said that a body was found with five wounds, just a block away from the promised land.  But I say to you, let my wounds carry the hurt that is heading toward your children; let my blood spill for the salvation of those whose blood may yet be spilled in violence; let my light shine where darkness threatens to cover the land; let my hand support you through the pain and suffering; let my heart beat when yours grows weak; let my footsteps guide you to the promised land; let my vision show you the promises of God.

“You have heard it said that the promises of God are a fantasy, and a silly thing.  But I say to you that you are closer than you realize to the river.  Cross over into campground, and stay here, friend. Do not lose again the promises that God has prepared for you, do not give up on them.

“You have heard it said that five wounds and a body means death.  But I say to you that I bear five wounds that I have borne so that death may not touch you, though your blood be spilled, that my five wounds mean life.  And you will never lose again the promises of God, if you don’t want to.

“Now come across the river, dear one, come over, and stay here in the Promised Land.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

16 February 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Reflecting the Light

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

Last weekend I went to the movies with my aunt and uncle. During the numerous previews before our movie started, we saw a trailer for a new film called Vampire Academy, which, as its name suggests, is about a Hogwarts-looking prep school where all of the students just happen to be undead. It looks to have all of the typical high school drama, with all of the standard high school stereotypes – the jock, the princess, the nerd, the mean girl; it’s essentially the Breakfast Club with fangs. As I sat watching this trailer, rolling my eyes in the darkness, my aunt, in an attempt to explain the general goofiness we were seeing on the screen, leaned over to me and whispered knowingly, “You know, vampires are very ‘in’ right now.”

Vampires are very “in” right now. You can hardly turn around without running into some new vampire saga. Some of these additions to the vampire oeuvre are better than others, but what I find most interesting is how each writer of these stories tries to put a unique spin on vampire mythology. Each new story creates a slightly different vampire world with slightly different rules, rules about how new vampires are made, are their fangs retractable or not, do they drink only human blood or are they happy with a very rare steak, do they live in secret or are they “out of the coffin.” Are they cruel, parasitic monsters, or can they feel, fall in love, get married, even have little vampire babies? Each new version of the vampire story has its own set of answers to these core questions.

The one thing that is consistent among all vampire stories is that vampires and the sun don’t mix. Sunlight is always dangerous. At worst (and most of the vampire stories focus on the worst), exposure to sunlight kills them – again. It burns their skin away to ash, or exsanguinates them in a particularly unappealing way. Daylight is definitely off-limits to vampires; the nighttime with its cool, dispassionate moonlight can be their only domain.

The fact that this rule about sunlight seems to be the one great constant in these variant vampire worlds makes a recent tweet I read written by a British comedian just that much funnier. I wonder, the comedian wrote, in that musing-about-life-in-160-characters kind of way, why vampires never realize that moonlight is just reflected sunlight. Good question, isn’t it? And it exposes a real flaw in the vampire mythology. Because, really, could you imagine Dracula standing under a full moon yelling, “Oh, my skin is being burned by the light of the sun as it is reflected off of the lunar surface!”? No, of course not. Because vampire myths are based on the wrong-headed notion that moonlight is its own light, that the light of the moon actually waxes and wanes on its own, that it is light somehow made of a different stuff and is therefore harmless. And really, how boring would it be to read a book about vampires who could only ever go outside at the New Moon when it was mostly cloudy? Pretty boring. And so vampire fans are happy to live with this little inconsistency, the lie of the light – moonlight that is somehow substantively different than the sunlight it comes from.

You are the light of the world, Jesus tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, and you’d better not hide yourselves away in the shadows. Let your light shine before others so that they may see you and in seeing you, see God. Which is all fine and good; Jesus says that we are light and so it must be true. But there is just the tiniest bit of anxiety in these verses, anxiety that has sifted down from the verses that immediately precede them, where Jesus first tells his disciples that they are the salt of the earth. But, he warns, if the salt loses its saltiness, then you are in big trouble. Now I have no idea how salt loses its saltiness; I mean, you never pick up a salt shaker and say, “My gosh, this salt has no saltiness!” Is that even possible? I have no idea what Jesus is referring to in these verses, and I take some comfort that most biblical commentators don’t either. Mineralogy aside, though, Jesus’ point is clear – there is a quality about you that must be preserved, at all costs.

Which is why, I guess, the light verses make me a little nervous. Because while I have no idea how salt loses its salt-hood, I can very easily imagine how light can lose its light-hood. It just goes out. Poof. Gone. No more light. Actually, I don’t have to imagine; I know exactly what it feels like when my light goes out. I know what it feels like to feel flat and uninspired; to feel like I’ve lost my brilliance, my zeal, that warm glow of faith. I know what it’s like to feel like I just don’t have the time or the patience or even the optimism to “loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,…to share my bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into my house.” After all, all of this light work is exhausting. There is an infinite amount of darkness out there in the world, so of course I occasionally find myself feeling like this little light of mine isn’t shining anywhere.

And the question about what to do when I lose my light-hood is almost as tricky as what to do when I lose my salt-hood. What happens when my light goes out, when the flame of my faith flickers and dies? How do I make it start shining again? How do I force myself to find that spark, that energy, when I don’t even feel like looking for it? No wonder Jesus has to warn the disciples not to hide their lamp under a bushel basket. Knowing that I have this precious light inside me that must shine into the world, I, too, want to huddle around it, covering it with my hands, keeping it to myself, keeping it out of the wind so that nothing can blow it out.

But then I wonder if we are just as confused about this light as vampires are about the moon. Is it possible that we are holding on to a profoundly wrong-headed notion – the notion that our light is its own light, that our light can wax and wane and be blown out all on its own, that our light is substantively different than the light that it comes from? For surely just as moonlight is sunlight transformed, so our light is Godlight transformed. Sure, it looks and feels different. It feels like Erika light, or David light, or Kent John light, or Addie light. But it is really the light of Christ.             

Now this does not make us and our work any less important. This does not make “you are the light of the world” any less of a charge. For God has entrusted this light to us, given this light over to you and to me, the light of truth, the light of justice, the light of compassion, the light of love, and asked us to shine it into all the world. This is an important task for which we bear great responsibility. But it is not just our responsibility. For because this light is, at its core, God’s light, we never have to worry about entirely losing it. There may be times when we feel like we are mostly cloudy, or when there is a great planet of sin or frustration or apathy covering part of us in shadow, but this does not change the fact that the light will never go out. It is the light of Christ, shining into the darkness, and the darkness did not, will not, overcome it.  That light will seek us out and suddenly flare up again, often at the most unexpected times and places. As in the words of one today’s hymns, “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord who rises with healing in his wings: when comforts are declining, he grants the souls again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain."

This is a kind of double good news. First it is good news because it means that we don’t have to worry so much. We are the light of the world because Christ has made us so, not because we have made ourselves so. We don’t have to worry about our light, because our light is God himself. But there is even more good news. Because Christ is not only the source of our light; he has also given us each an eternal way to reflect that light. For in the deep, still waters of our baptisms, we are each given a reflecting pool of grace that floats deep within us. We are made into mirrors, you and I and in just a moment, little Evelyn, so that when we are given the light of Christ, we may forever reflect that light into the world.

You are the light of the world. You are a holy reflection of the light of Christ. So be free with your light, be extravagant. Hold it up in the darkest night, in the greatest storm, in the places where it will burn away all that is not of God. And if you feel your light start to flicker and fade, fear not. Remember the mirror of your baptism, and shine like the Son.

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