In Memoriam - Cynthia McFarland

Cynthia preferred the best version of herself.  When she read in church from the lectern there, she summoned the plummiest, most BBC-inspired version of her accent, which was itself a matter of preservation of the what she considered the best version of herself.

Many of you will know of stories and examples of Cynthia’s remarkable ability to locate and deploy the best version of herself, and any sketch I could supply here this morning would be inadequate.  Cynthia didn’t see the point of doing something inadequate, when you could do much better. 

Her great limitation, that I know of, was her fear flying.  This required her to arrange long journeys by train to visit her mother-in-law in Arizona, or to go anywhere at all on this continent.  And it prevented her from joining a group of us from Saint Mark’s a couple of years ago on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  She dreamt up a scheme to make a long voyage by boat to meet us in Jerusalem, but this plan proved to be too impractical.  I know it was a disappointment for Cynthia to forego the trip, but Cynthia didn’t dwell on disappointment – it wouldn’t have been the best version of herself to allow herself to do so.

I suppose that is one way of explaining why when Cynthia was sick she disappeared from view – not the best version of herself.  And when she allowed herself to be seen she would declare with firm resolution that the thing to do was to soldier on and beat the cancer.  To hear her make the pronouncement, one could almost conclude that it might actually have been in her power to do so.  I’m sure she thought that it would have been the best version of herself to summon the strength to shrink and kill the cancer from within – which is to say to draw upon the deep resources of her faith in order to be healed.

Cynthia’s faith in God and love of her Lord Jesus was the best version of herself, and she knew it.  She relied upon the Holy Spirit to guide her.  I am sure it was this reliance that allowed her to bear the loss of her beloved Frederic gracefully, and to endure the pain of the various stages of her own sickness with such poise.

Now, as you know, Cynthia was a canon of the Diocese of New Jersey.  In my recalcitrant, high church clericalism, I have never quite understood the creation of lay canons, but this is quite beside the point, and completely irrelevant now.  For whatever else she may have embodied in the church, Cynthia showed us something significant about priesthood.  Call it the priesthood of all believers if you must; she saw life as a sacrament, and she lived her life sacramentally.  You choose the best version of yourself when you believe that God has asked you to provide outward and visible signs of inward and invisible grace.  That’s what Cynthia did.  That’s why Cynthia cared so much about the images and stories we presented or preserved – because these were opportunities for God’s sacramental disclosure.

Did she see the Internet as an opportunity for God to make himself known sacramentally?  Yes, she did – long before most of us did.

Did she regard the choice of a typeface, or the arc of a letter carved in stone as an opportunity for God to make himself known sacramentally?  Yes, she did.

Did she see God revealed in art and architecture and nature all around her?  In the gracefulness of her cats?  Yes, she did.

Did she regard with reverence and love the people whose ministry in the world made God’s presence known abroad in powerful ways?  Yes, she did – especially in the bishops of the church – whether the living ones she served and befriended, or the dead ones she collected in portraiture and biography.

Cynthia’s priesthood was primarily located in her stewardship of certain images and stories that needed to be preserved and on display so that God’s work in the world could be seen and known.  And she carried out this priestly work with a great deal more devotion, faithfulness, and skill than is possessed by many of us who have been ordained.

A few days before she died, when Cynthia was in the throes of painful chemo-therapy, I went to see her in the hospital.  On the way there I happened to run into a friend and parishioner here who had just left Cynthia’s bedside, and who provided me with the helpful tip that she’d been feeding Cynthia ice chips – the only thing she was allowed to quench her thirst.

During my visit, it eventually occurred to me that Cynthia might still be thirsty, and I offered to get her some ice chips: she took me up on the offer enthusiastically.  Cynthia allowed me to stand by her bedside and spoon-feed her the ice chips with a plastic spoon.  As she let the cold ice dissolve in her mouth, she uttered a word that was both report and prayer: “Manna,” she said, “manna from heaven.”  When the plastic cup was emptied of ice chips, she simply looked at me with a smile, and said, “More chips, please.  More chips, please!”

It was unlike Cynthia to ask for more of something; her manners would not normally allow it – not what she’d have considered the best version of herself.  But she’d have known that asking for more manna under the circumstances was a permissible breach of etiquette.  And these were not normal circumstances, as she knew well.  And if ice chips were the manna that God was providing in her need, she would take all she could get.  Cynthia knew that day that I carried the Blessed Sacrament in my coat pocket.  And when she’d slaked her thirst, more or less, she asked to receive that, too, saying something like, “Now, from one manna to another.”

On the day before she died I arrived again at her bedside with the Blessed Sacrament in my pocket.  It never occurred to me that this would be my last visit to her.  She was awake, but weak, and she told me right away that she’d had a bad night, and was too tired for a visit, but that she wanted very much to receive the Sacrament.  Which is to say that she wanted to be near the Lord of her life, whose strength, grace, forgiveness and healing were the things in which she had placed her trust and her hope.

I’ve thought a bit about Cynthia’s fear of flying over these last days, and a bit about her disappointment that she was not able to concoct a voyage by sea to meet her friends from Saint Mark’s in Jerusalem when we traveled there.  Life is full of such disappointments, of course.  Cynthia knew that well.

But I console myself with the knowledge that Cynthia is no longer afraid of flying.  And I trust that she is now on a journey to a holy land – of what distance, duration, or arduousness I cannot say – but which will undoubtedly lead her into the nearest possible presence of the Lord of life, whom she loved and worshiped in this life, who fed her with manna, and who calls her – with all of us – to come ever closer, and live again, and to become the new best versions of our selves, by his grace.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

at the Requiem Mass for Cynthia McFarland

22 February 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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.