Easter Selfie

Late last year the Oxford Dictionaries organization – our favorite and snootiest word police – identified, as they do every year, a Word of the Year.  This is a word that is supposed to be indicative of the direction of the world, to encapsulate the zeitgeist of a given year, to express something about the way we see the meaning of life, or at least talk about it.  And just a few months ago that word was: “selfie.”

A selfie, properly speaking, is not just a photographic self-portrait.  It must fit certain criteria.  It should be a photo in which the photographer is also the subject, taken most often with the camera on your cell phone.  The two most common formats are the arm’s-length-selfie (in which the arm holding the camera is often partly visible), and the mirror-selfie (which I think is self-explanatory).

Another defining characteristic of the selfie is that it has been posted to a social networking site – Facebook or Instagram, for instance – and this was probably the driving purpose of the photo in the first place.  A selfie is meant to be disseminated and shared over the Internet, not to be pressed quietly between the pages of a book.

There are strong feelings out there about the prevalence of the selfie.  Some see the trend as an exuberant embrace of our ability to share with one another in the age of fast and easy digital communication.  Others see it as a sign of the total decline of Western civilization.  One writer called the selfie a “subversive twist on the traditional understanding of the photograph.  Usually conducted because the subject cannot locate a suitable photographer to take the photo, like a friend.”

But this seems like an unfair criticism, since the selfie has clearly grown beyond the strict self-portrait to include others within the frame.  President Obama was controversially seen snapping a selfie with two other heads of state at the funeral of Nelson Mandela.  A much-seen selfie of Hilary and Chelsea Clinton has been making the rounds of the web.  And the group-selfie reached what you might call its apotheosis last summer when a gaggle of teenagers posted their selfie taken with Pope Francis, who has since be captured in more than a few selfies.

On Easter morning it might seem odd to stop to consider the selfie, except that I have been wondering about the possibility of the Easter-selfie, and how it would have transformed Christian faith had the selfie been an available means of expression and communication on that first Easter morning.

To begin with, it would have saved a lot of time.  We hear in John’s Gospel that there is a lot of running to and fro the tomb that morning.  First it’s Mary Magdalene in the dark.  She runs to get Peter and the unnamed disciple Jesus loved.  They run to the tomb together, but the unnamed disciple gets there first (maybe to get the first selfie?)  But Peter is the first to look into the tomb.  The two of them race back home.  But Mary stays by the tomb weeping, only to encounter two angels with whom she chats – a selfie moment if ever there was one.  Eventually Mary, still on her own encounters a man she supposes to be the gardener, but who turns out to be Jesus.  He tells her to go back to his brothers, his friends, his disciples and report to them.  Imagine what the impact would have been if she could have just held out her smart phone as she stood beside the risen Lord and taken a selfie with him.

All this running around, all this uncertainty would have been dealt with in a matter of seconds.  Not to mention that thousands of years of skeptics would have had photographic evidence to contend with.  Doubting Thomas himself would have been spared his doubt if he’d seen the selfies of Mary with the angels and then standing beside Jesus posted on Instagram with a nice sepia filter.

But, in fact, I think the Easter selfie has greater potential than just saving time, and even greater potential than dispelling doubt.  Imagine the selfies taken by Mary Magdalene, by Peter and the other disciple.  Imagine Mary standing right beside the risen Christ – but not so close as to touch him.  And now imagine yourself there too.  Maybe, like me, you have never actually taken a selfie and posted it on line (I don’t think I have).  And yet, if I was there on that Easter morning, I think I’d want to very much.

In a way the Easter selfie is an answer to the old Good Friday hymn: Were you there.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?  Were you there?

The implied answer to the hymn, of course, is no – you weren’t there and neither was I.  The hymn is a lament of longing.  We should have been there; we would have been there if we could; we wish we’d been there.  Would something had been different if you’d been there?  Who knows?  But you were not there; we were not there.

The Easter selfie would provide a powerful counterpoint to this lament.  On the day of resurrection it would allow us to proclaim with more than a little joy: I was there!  I spoke with angels!  I gazed into the empty tomb!  I saw the risen Lord Jesus and heard him call my name!  Don’t you believe me?  Have a look at this!

Were you there when they found the empty tomb? 

Were you there when the angels came to chat?

Were you there when the gardener called your name?

Yes, yes I was there!  And ohhhh! sometimes it causes me to tremble when I look at those Easter selfies!  Yes, I was there!

Additionally, the Easter selfie would allow us to get over our great reluctance to say anything at all about our faith.  Not sure how to tell someone that you actually believe in all this Jesus stuff?  Can’t find the words to describe the power of the risen Lord to change your life and the world?  No need to put it into words.  Just post a selfie taken outside his empty tomb – in this case take it outside of church on Easter morning - and this time leave it in color!

If “selfie” really is the word of the year; if it really does accurately capture the mood of this moment in history, the direction of the world; if it expresses something about the way we see the world, then let us at least have some Easter selfies to add to all the images that seem to say nothing more than that I am alone in the world and relatively pleased with myself – or at least that’s what I want you to believe.

Let’s add to those isolating images with the images that capture us looking hopeful by an empty tomb; that show us chatting away with friends who appear to be angels (what with that hazy filter you have added and the sun shining into the lens).  Let’s post a selfie taken with the nearest gardener.  And let us not be surprised on Easter, when we find ourselves in a garden where things are meant to come to life and grow, to hear a voice connected to that unknown gardener that’s calling out a name.

And let’s let our Easter selfie be one that captures the surprise and joy on our faces when we realize that the voice is calling your name, that the gardener is not the gardener at all, that the name he is calling is yours, and that the face in the picture that matters the most is not yours or mine, but the one we are somehow surprised to find there, even though he promised that after three days he would rise from the grave, and that he would be with us always.

Take an Easter selfie with Jesus, which is best done not with a camera phone but with your heart.  But still, don’t forget to share it, and let us all see you smiling beside the risen Jesus, who, by the way, is very happy to be here in an Easter selfie with you!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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