Atonement

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

At the movies last year, you may have watched a scene that I suspect will prove to be an enduring image in cinema.  Solomon Northup – born free in the North, but kidnapped into slavery in the South – has resisted the authority of his overseer, taken his whip from him, and beaten him harshly, inflicting on his supposed master the kind of treatment intended for the slave.  The slave is rounded up and taken to a tree not too far from the gracious manor house of the plantation where his overseer plans to hang him, but another overseer intervenes after the noose has already been placed around Solomon’s neck, and the rope thrown over strong tree branch, and the men are about to hoist him to his death.  The intervention, however, leaves something to be desired. Solomon is not released from either noose or tree.  He is left there – strung up by the neck, his toes still just barely on the ground, so that he can push himself up just enough on his tippy-toes to suck in tiny breaths.  He is left there all day, his toes losing and finding their purchase in the muddy ground beneath the tree, until his owner returns and cuts him down.

The scene is hard to watch – we are left to watch Solomon hang there for what feels like ages in cinematic time.  It’s all the more chilling when you consider that something like this actually did happen to Solomon Northup in real time, recounted in his book on which the film is based.

About this scene, the cinematographer of 12 Years A Slave, Sean Bobbit, has said that it encapsulated for him the entire movie.  Specifically he said this about it: “Here’s a man who’s on the edge of death and no one can help him because he belongs to someone else.”  This is an interesting comment.  It has strong resonance with an ancient understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus.  The thinking went like this: By disobeying God and yielding to temptation in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sold their souls (and the soul of all humanity) to the devil.  We then belonged to someone else, until someone should come along and free us, cut us down – which God would eventually do in the person of his Son, Jesus.

By that reckoning, after the Fall all humanity was on the edge of death and no one could help because we belonged to someone else.  But God paid the ransom for our initial transgression and thereby out-negotiated the devil by sending his own Son to die, and then to rise from the dead.  This is a tidy story – which is nice if you like tidy stories.  If you allow for the parallel with the near-hanging of Solomon Northup, however, it has the unfortunate correlation of putting God in the place of the slave-owner.  I’d say this correlation demonstrates not a weakness of the parallel with the film, but a weakness of the tidy story.  In fact, if you employ such a tidy story to explain why Jesus dies on the cross, you will nearly always come up against some deeply unappealing suggestions about God.  God nearly always comes out looking like a slave owner: cruel, unjust, anything but divine.  I don’t recommend this way of thinking about God.

The painful, long scene in the film, however, suggests to me a different way of thinking about why Jesus dies on the Cross, and it has to do with drawing another parallel.  If you look at this scene - in which Solomon Northup is strung up to a tree by a noose, balanced between life and death – as a crucifixion scene with a different accent, then you begin to see the parallel.  For if this scene is read as a crucifixion, it becomes clear that the slave owner cannot be God at all – he is more like Pontius Pilate.

And if you watch that betrayed man, who was once free, struggling for life, but heading toward death, and if you see the weight of human indecency and suffering pulling the noose more tightly around his neck, making it harder and harder for him to breathe, to stay alive… then you begin to see who it is who is hanging there on that tree.  You begin to see Jesus.  And if you consider that most slaves who were hung by a noose from a tree were not cut down alive, then you begin to see why even this cruel scene is an imperfect crucifixion.

Human suffering and death comes in many shapes and sizes – with many causes, not the least of which is the suffering we inflict on each other, the killing we do of each other.  No religion has a good explanation of or answer to this reality – this is the Achilles’ heel of religion.  In the Christian faith, instead of an explanation for human suffering a death, we have a God who allows it to happen to himself.  I recently heard a preacher say that the way to understand the Passion and Death of Jesus is as God diving into the deep end of humanity – and I like this way of thinking of it.

The technical, theological term for this matter is “atonement.”  The word means exactly what it says if you break it down – it is about God and humanity being “at one.”  It is about crossing the divide that could separate us from the love of God.  It is about finding again the image of our maker in our own selves.  It is about seeing that we are never without God, that he will never abandon us – even though we will suspect he has.  It is about being at one with the Lord of life.

It would be tidy to proclaim on Good Friday the power of a God who can cut you free from all that enslaves you and causes you to suffer.  But that is not the story of Good Friday.

Instead we have the story of a God whose Son is strung up next to you, who will suffer with you, and who, when your feet finally slip and can find no purchase in the mud, will die with you, since dying we must all do.  And then, we are promised, there will be still more to discover, about what it means to be at one with the Lord of life.

No longer can we fool ourselves to believe that we belong to someone else – even though the suffering be hard, and death inevitable.  For in Jesus, God has, indeed, jumped into the deep end of humanity – he is at one with us, and we are at one with him through Christ.  There is no pain or suffering that divides us, nor any divine insulation that divides us.  There is not even death that divides us.  God has done it: he has died, himself so he might be at one with us, and so that we would know that we belong to no one else but him, and never have.

And though the suffering be bloody, and death be not far at hand, and though he will feel, as some of us do, that God has forsaken him, he still makes this promise to all who wish to hear it who hang there next to him: “today you will be with me in paradise;” which is to say: “today you and I shall be at one with each other.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Good Friday 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Just For Show

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

A year ago on Maundy Thursday, a certain bishop in Rome set tongues wagging, heads spinning, and hearts skipping a beat or two when he arrived at the Casal del Marmo Penitentiary Institute for Minors and washed the feet of twelve inmates there, including two women and two Muslims, as part of his observance of this holy day.  No pope had ever apparently washed the foot of a woman in this ceremony before.  Quoted in the New Yorker, the famous physician and champion of social justice, Paul Farmer, had this to say about that: “If it’s just for show, I say keep showing it.”

Francis has been keeping people on their toes during his first year or so as pope.  There’s the car he won’t be driven in, and the papal apartments he won’t live in.  There is the rumor that he sneaks out at night to minster to the homeless and the hungry.  There was the public embrace of the disfigured man whose face was covered with tumors.  There is his famous question when asked about his attitude toward gay people: “Who am I to judge,” he asked.  This is a lot to take in.  And because we are accustomed to looking at leaders with skepticism and maybe even cynicism – especially the clergy – it is natural for us to ask whether or not Francis really is sincere about all this, whether or not it is all just a front; to wonder if it isn’t really all about PR; to ask, in short, if it’s all just for show.

And although I have no special insights into this pope, and certainly no privileged information, I feel quite certain that I know, more or less, the answer to that question – is it just for show?

The answer is this: of course it is.  All this posturing, this angling, these pre-meditated demonstrations are just for show.  The pope doesn’t need to show us any of this, but for some reason he has chosen to.  I am sure that he is doing it all just for show, and with Paul Farmer, I say, keep showing it, Francis, keep showing it.

I know that it is just for show because I, too, wash feet on Maundy Thursday.  (And I feel very progressive to have washed women’s feet long before any pope had done it!)  I wash feet on Maundy Thursday.  And because my predecessor here taught me to do it this way, I do it the same way the pope does – with a kiss of the foot when I am done drying it.

I assure you that no meaningful cleaning of feet takes place in the ritual.  Francis, did not scrub in- between the inmates’ toes, and get the dirt out from under their nails.  He did not take a pumice to the rough heels of these men and women, or rub creams into their cracked, dry skin.  Neither will I provide these services here this evening.  This is not a pedicure – this is for show. This is profoundly for show.

And don’t be fooled – not even by the case for humility that I will read to you before I stoop down to wash feet here tonight.  This act is not primarily about a show of my humility or of the pope’s.  Mine needs a lot more than ten minutes of exercise in full public view, and his humble, but very public, act was clearly born from a long lifetime of much more private humility.  Yes, this washing of feet is just for show, but the show is not primarily about my humility or the pope’s. 

This is for show because the world needs desperately to be shown what God is really like.  The world needs to be shown what Jesus was trying to show his disciples about love and friendship and service and humility.  And so we do all this just for show – because we have gotten so many of the wrong ideas about God.  To be fair, a reasonable number of those wrong ideas have come from popes here and there, so it’s good for a pope to be actively about the business of showing us this other reality of God – the humble, costly, sometimes dirty love of Jesus.

Are there plenty of the people in the world who still believe women don’t deserve the same love and respect of God that men do?  You bet there are!  And someone needs to show them how wrong they are!

Are there plenty of people in the world who believe that Christians and Muslims are natural enemies of one another?  You bet there are!  And someone needs to show them how wrong they are!

Someone needs to show that God loves everyone – that there isn’t a soul on this earth, no matter how tortured, lonely, unhappy, or broken, that God doesn’t love.  There isn’t a face so ugly that God doesn’t seek to smother it with kisses.  There isn’t a religion so opposite that God doesn’t wish to find a way to embrace its followers. 

I could say these things all day long, but it doesn’t have the same effect as when I try to show it.  And since this is really love we are talking about, well, you know that as important as it is to say “I love you,” sometimes saying it isn’t enough – sometimes you just have to show it too!

Tonight is a night that is very much just for show.  Why do we doggedly keep the commandment of Jesus to take, bless, break, and share bread and wine in his Name?  Is it just because he said, “Do this?”  Only in part.  It is really because we see how in doing it we are showing the love of God in Christ – who gave his life for us: his Body and his Blood.  We sort of know how to talk about these things, a little, but awkwardly, and it gets confusing.  But what we really know is… how to do it for show: how to come together and show one another what Jesus meant, even if it is hard to explain.  And that’s what tonight is all about – and the next three days, for that matter – it’s about doing for show what we can only partially talk about.  And showing it is better anyway.

Jesus, after all, could whisper or shout answers to my prayers in my ear all day, and eventually I would have to say to him in exasperation, “At some point Jesus, you are going to have to stop telling me the answers to my prayers and start showing me!”

So there’s tonight.  This is Jesus using me, and you (especially your feet) just for show.  We put aside the words for a few minutes (hard for us to do) and we do this just for show, just to show what Jesus meant when he said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  And if a pope can wash the feet of inmates, and Muslims, and even women, then it seems like Jesus may actually have quite a lot to show us.

I read in the papers that this year Pope Francis will be washing feet at a center for people with disabilities.  And it looks as though he plans to wash the feet of women again, along with some people who are certainly not Christians (and maybe not even Catholic!).  And I want to join Paul Farmer in telling him: keep showing it, Francis, keep showing it!

But I realize that the one to whom that remark is really directed is Jesus - whose love has saved my life and changed the world.  I know that I really mean my words for him: keep showing it, Jesus, keep showing it.

For I know how much pain, confusion, loss, regret, corruption, and betrayal there is in the world.  I have some idea how adrift so many of us are when we look for love and for hope, and for the right way to treat one another, and the right way to live.

And I know how this simple lesson from Jesus  - who insisted that he wash the feet of his followers, and told them that he was not so much their Master as their friend, and taught them that he had only one new commandment which was to love one another as he loved them – I know how much this simple lesson can mean, even though it is extremely hard to learn: love one another.

And I know that even Jesus, on the night before he was crucified, when he stooped down to wash his disciples’ feet, was doing it just for show.  He needed to show them what he meant, why he lived, and why he was about to die – because he was and is love incarnate.  So he did it just for show.

And that’s my prayer tonight: keep showing it, Jesus, for heaven’s sake, keep showing it!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Maundy Thursday 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Miracle Enough

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

 She was too much of a good girl to leave it at that first statement. If ever there were a good girl in the Gospels, it would be Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus. She was the one who took care of everyone, who set aside her own needs time after time, who always put herself second or third. Scripture does not tell us about the birth order of these siblings, but surely, surely, Martha was the eldest; she was the big sister, the responsible one, the good girl.

And so when her baby brother died suddenly, and too young, she was the one who bathed the body. She was the one who wrapped him in his shroud, who arranged for the burial, and who set out dates and grapes and bread and wine for the neighbors who came to share in her family’s mourning. And when she heard that Jesus had come – finally – she was the one who rose from up from her sackcloth and ashes and went outside first to meet him.

But when she saw him, on the road, away from her house of mourning, away from her sad-eyed guests, away from her sister with her river of tears, she knew that she just had to say something, and before she could stop herself, she, the good girl, blurted it out. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She heard the words slice through the air and watched as they pierced Jesus’ already broken heart. And as good as it felt to get them off her own aching chest, she was too much of a good girl to leave it at that. And so she went on: “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” She knew as she said this what she was doing. Perhaps she did hope against hope that Jesus could actually do something for her brother or for her pain, but mostly she felt herself doing her old Martha thing – caring for others, refusing to wound with her words, not letting her own pain overwhelm anyone else.

And so it was easy to let herself be drawn into this deep but slightly abstract theological conversation. Your brother will rise again. Well, I know; he will rise again on the last day. I am the resurrection, I am the life, and those who believe in me will never die. Well, yes, Lord, she said, I do believe this. But even as she said it, she wondered if this was just one of those things that people say, like – Your brother is finally at peace now, he’s in a better place, God just needed a new angel, Lazarus was too good for this world. I believe in eternal life. It didn’t make her feel better, with the pain of her first statement still throbbing in her body. If you had been here, Jesus, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and that I believe with all my heart.

If you had been here, Jesus…and why weren’t you? It’s the question that has been circling in our own minds, filling our hearts with a prickling unease, a disquiet made worse by the fact that, unlike Martha, we have heard the beginning of the story. We know for sure that Jesus did get the report that Lazarus was sick – he knew, and he did nothing. He sat on his heels, reassuring his disciples that all of this would lead to God’s glory. He knew and yet he waited, two long days, before setting off towards Bethany. This seems callous and cold, a kind of stunt to show off for God. But surely that was not Jesus’ intent? Lord, we want to say, where were you? If you had been here, her brother would not have died. What do you have to say to that?!

Now Jesus doesn’t have much to say that, but John does. Jesus is far away, John tells us, beyond the Jordan, when word comes to him about Lazarus. He waits two days, then takes at least one more to travel all the way past Jerusalem to Bethany, only to find out that Lazarus has been dead for four days, dead, in all likelihood, before Jesus first heard that he was ill. Clearly, Jesus could not have gotten there in time to heal him; he may have multiplied loaves and fishes and walked on water but as far as we know the Gospels hold no record of his teleporting himself, at least, not until after the resurrection. So these two days of waiting are not about missing an opportunity to raise Lazarus from his sick bed; they are about being sure of the opportunity to raise Lazarus from the tomb. Four days was enough in ancient times to be certain that someone was really and truly dead, dead enough that to be brought back to life would be a true miracle.

But this grand miracle moment was not about Jesus’ showing off. He did say that this event was for God’s glory, but remember, “glory” is a loaded word in John. This glory does not look like Jesus standing before the tomb with the wind whipping his hair, crying, “Lazarus come forth” while the timpani rolls and Lazarus leaps out and men gasp and women swoon and Jesus is mobbed by an adoring crowd. That’s not glory in John. Glory in John looks like this. This is what this event leads to. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the straw that breaks the Sanhedrin’s back, that finally pushes the Jewish leadership to actually sit down and make plans to have him killed. This is the glory of which Jesus speaks, the only glory that he will accept.

But as reassuring as these truths are, Martha’s statement is still out there, ringing in our ears. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Couldn’t you have sensed that he was sick; couldn’t you have healed him from afar? Lord, if you had been here…it is a challenge that lingers, heavy in the air like smog, a challenge that resonates in the hearts of all of those others who were looking for their own miracle and didn’t find it. It is the challenge of the man in Capernaum whose son wasn’t healed from his fever from far away. It is the challenge of the other invalids who had to remain at the edges of the bubbling pool by the Sheep Gate. It is the challenge of the blind man’s friend who had been deaf from birth, of the sailors whose boat was swamped in the same storm that the disciples survived, of the other women caught in adultery, the other men possessed by demons, the other sisters of dead men. Lord, if you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened.

And it is a challenge that echoes through the centuries into the chambers of our own broken hearts. Lord, if you had been here, my father would not have had a stroke. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have first tried heroin. Lord, if you had been here, my student would not have been killed by that drunk driver, my nephew would not have come home safe from Afghanistan only to shoot himself, my mother would not have died from cancer at 45. Lord, if you had been here, none of this would have happened.  

When Martha has finished her conversation with Jesus, she dutifully fetches her sister Mary. She pulls her aside and tells her, Mary, my beloved, the teacher is outside and wants to see you. And Mary, impulsive, runs from the house, runs up to Jesus on the road and then lets the words run right out of her mouth. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And she, unlike her sister, lets this challenge just hang there with all of its withering implications. You could have changed this. Where were you?

And Jesus, remarkably, has no answer. He says not one word. He doesn’t equivocate, or explain. He doesn’t offer platitudes or prophecies. Because he knows that ultimately there is no satisfying response to this challenge. He knows better than anyone that he has not healed everyone. There are still sick people in Galilee, still possessed people in Tyre and Sidon, still dying people in Jerusalem. He knows that he cannot, he will not, he does not choose to take all of the suffering out of this world. He never did, and he never will. He knows that sometimes the blind do not see, the lame do not walk, the dead are not raised. He knows that sometimes people’s minds are so broken that they start shooting their colleagues on a military base; he knows that sometimes babies die from SIDS, which means for absolutely no reason at all. He knows that sometimes the chemo doesn’t work, that the recovery doesn’t stick, that the heart just gives out. He knows that sometimes dry bones are just dry bones.

He also knows that he is the resurrection and the life and that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. He knows that there is a balm in Gilead, that there is a kingdom where sorrow and sighing flee away, where God reigns. He knows that he will raise this friend, this brother, this disciple from the dead. He knows that what he will do in a few short weeks on the cross will change the world. But he also knows that none of this – none of this – makes suffering go away. It just doesn’t. And so he does the only thing he can. He stands with Mary and Martha, with the mourners and the neighbors, and weeps. See how he loved him, the crowds say. See how much he loved; how God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, to live and die as one of us, to walk with us, to stand with you and with me and with all the world and sometimes, to weep with us. To stay with us and weep. And perhaps that is miracle enough.