Stay Here

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

I have very few memories of the house my family lived in when I was born because we moved when I was only three. One clear memory I have of that home, though, is of standing alone in my bedroom one night when all of the lights went out. It was a beautiful bedroom as I remember it – an airy attic room with a peaked ceiling and a wide window seat. It was pink and cozy and held all of my favorite things, like my big cardboard toy box, my Fisher Price record player, and my yellow ragdoll named Sunny.

On this night in particular I was, for some reason, upstairs all by myself, awake, and watching an enormous thunderstorm roll in. The storm didn’t bother me – even when I was a very little girl I always liked the flash and bang of a really dramatic summer squall. But this evening, after a particularly bright splash of lightning and a particularly close clap of thunder, I was suddenly plunged into deep darkness. And this did bother me. I remember feeling a little quiver of panic run through my belly. What was I supposed to do now? Where was I to go? But before this little pulse of panic pushed me into some dangerous action, like trying to run downstairs to find my parents in the dark, I heard my dad’s voice, calling up the steep staircase to me. Erika, he said, stay right where you are. Stand still – I’m coming to you.

Immediately that little quiver of fear just slipped right out of my body. It was still storming, and it was still pitch black, but Dad was coming, and now I knew what to do. Stay still and wait, and he’d be there soon. And sure enough, after what seemed like just a breath between thunderclaps, I saw a flickering light begin to spread up the stairwell. And then Dad was there, just as he’d promised, standing in my room. He was holding a sturdy white candle, and the light from its flame spilled into the room, chasing away the shadows and making my beautiful room somehow even more beautiful, warmer, rosier, more magical. The light and Dad’s presence reassured me that I was safe and that I was, after all of that, right where I was supposed to be.

40 days it’s been. 40 days that Jesus has been showing up with his disciples since Easter morning. 40 days of his resurrected body, 40 days of his somewhat sporadic but infinitely miraculous presence. On this fortieth day, they are standing with him on the hill of Bethany, looking out across the valley at the stormy city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has not been a particularly comfortable place for the disciples. It is not home for these Galilean fishermen. It is not a place where they have many friends or any family; it is the place where they themselves have been threatened and where they saw Jesus arrested and tried, beaten and killed. Even after the resurrection, Jerusalem has been largely a place of fear – of hiding in dark rooms and of starting, spooked, when Jesus suddenly popped up in their midst. Recently in Jerusalem they have been overjoyed, of course, but they have also been confounded, afraid, and at times left largely in the dark.

And now Jesus seems to be telling them that he is preparing to leave them alone. Again. He is giving them final instructions – again – telling them what to do and how to be when he goes to his father. And I imagine that the thought of being entirely on their own in this post-resurrection world might have sent a tiny quiver of panic running through some of their bellies. They don’t really understand the resurrection fully, they haven’t learned everything they need to know. Things are still dangerous for them out there, and plans are vague. What are they supposed to do now? Where are they supposed to go and how are they supposed to get there?

But before their panic can send them spinning out and running down into the valley like a herd of frightened cattle, they hear Jesus’ voice speak to them a command that is simple and clear. Just stay here, he says. Stay here in the city and wait. Stand still – don’t go anywhere just yet. Stay here and I promise that the Holy Spirit will come find you. And then, perhaps with a flash and a bang, or perhaps with a rustle and a whisper, Jesus is gone, taken up into heaven, ascended to sit at the right hand of his Father. But his words still ring out in the air. He has not left them comfortless. He has lifted up his hands and blessed them, and he has left them holding a powerful promise. They will stay where they are, they will stand still in Jerusalem, and they will let the Holy Spirit come find them. They know that they will not stay in Jerusalem forever. They will begin as witnesses there, but then spread out to “Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” But for now, in this moment of uncertainty and inbetween, they will stay still and wait, knowing that the Holy Spirit will be right there. And with that, the quivers of fear and panic just slide right on out of their bodies, and they return to Jerusalem with great joy.

Tonight, you and I are entering into the season of Ascensiontide, a small little seasonette at the end of Easter, a season within a season. But like other major seasons of the year, Ascensiontide does have a purpose, a plan for us. It is, at its core, a season of preparation, like Advent or Lent. It is a season when we are invited to prepare for a holy coming, when we are asked to spend a period of time – the next ten days, to be exact – getting ready. But if Advent tells us to get ready by keeping awake, and if Lent tells us to get ready to repenting, Ascensiontide tells us to get ready by standing still. Ascensiontide encourages us to practice staying right where we are and letting ourselves be found. Ascensiontide promises us that the Holy Spirit is not out there somewhere, passive, waiting; the Holy Spirit is on the move, searching for us. The Holy Spirit will come to us, even if – especially if – we are in times of great darkness and sorrow, times of confusion and inbetween, times when we begin to feel those small quivers of panic running through our bellies.

Ascensiontide reminds us that it is in those times that we can so clearly remember Jesus’ voice speaking words of promise. No matter where we are, no matter how dark it may seem in our own hearts or in the world, there is hope. Don’t panic; don’t run. Don’t let your fear and your anxiety push your soul into a place of danger. Just stay where you are and the Holy Spirit will come find you.

There will be times in our lives when we are called to move – sent out to feed, to bless, to serve, to wash, to love, to listen, to teach, to baptize, to make disciples, to heal, to visit, to go, to find. But this little season of Ascensiontide reminds us that there are other times when we are called to let ourselves be found, to stand still, to wait with eyes open and awake, to wait facing in the right direction, but to wait and let God do the finding. Ascensiontide reminds us that there are times when we hear God’s voice calling to us in the dark. Stay where you are, my dearest beloved. I’m coming to you. And when that happens, the Holy Spirit will come find us, bringing a light that transforms the world, making all of our lives more beautiful, more vibrant, more warm and grace-filled and true, reassuring us that we are safe, and that being found we are, in fact, exactly where we are supposed to be.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

29 May 2014 - The Feast of the Ascension

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Real Estate

People in southern California have a habit of talking incessantly about real estate.  It seems to make no difference whether or not they are looking for a house or selling a house, the topic of real estate is in idée fixe in southern California: a preoccupation they can not let go of.  No wonder the reality-TV industry is full of shows about real estate: how to improve your property value, your curb appeal, your neighbor’s curb appeal; how to add a rental apartment to your house, how to flip a house, how to unload a house you can’t seem to flip, how to be a first-time buyer, whether or not to put your house on the market, etc., etc., etc.

You would think southern Californians have other things to talk about – like what to do when they run out of water – but nothing fascinates them like real estate.  And it drives me crazy when I go there to visit family and friends and the conversation inevitably turns to real estate – a topic I have no desire whatsoever to hear about and about which I have absolutely nothing to say.

Except that once, and once only that I can think of, Jesus chimed in on the theme of real estate.  We heard it today in the newer translation, but I admit a preference for the older one: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

If you think about these things at all, you probably do not think about this as a discussion about real estate.  If this text has made any impression on you at all it may be because you heard it at a funeral – this is a very commonly read lesson at funerals.  In that context, Jesus is making the ultimate sales pitch – Have I got a place for you to spend eternity!  The real estate in question is literally heavenly: Jesus is promising that there is a place prepared for his followers in the realms to which he must travel first.  And the poetic King James translation deliberately stretches the imagination with its promise of a house that comprises many mansions. 

Jesus is not only making a sales pitch, he is also making a promise: there is a place for you wherever I am going; do not let your hearts be troubled.  Among all the mansions of my Father’s house there will surely be one that’s right for you.  But very quickly, Jesus tires of the real estate conversation.  “And,” he says, “you know the way to the place where I am going….”  Eventually landing on his signature line: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  We are not talking about real estate any longer.  And here’s why: Jesus is not peddling a faith that is primarily about securing heavenly real estate.  Jesus is gathering a community that needs to do the work of the kingdom of heaven on this side of the grave.

Now remember, Jesus has already promised the real estate: in my Father’s house are many mansions.  OK – that’s the stuff in the life to come.  But nearly all of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is about what we do with our lives on this side of the grave.  For the kingdom of God is at hand. 

And when Jesus speaks with his disciples about his Father’s house with many mansions, he is preparing them for his departure from this world, not theirs.  He is teaching them about how to get on with the work of the kingdom after he has gone, because that work must continue here on the ground.  And if those were important lessons for the first disciples, then they are even more important for us, since we continue the work of the kingdom here on the ground, long after Jesus ascended into heaven.  And it would not be surprising if we felt a bit like Thomas, who says to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Thomas thinks he is asking about a reward that awaits him.  He thinks he is asking about real estate.  He wants to tell Jesus that wherever he is going, he’ll follow and meet him there.  He thinks he’s asking for directions – How do I get to the mansions?

And Jesus’ reply essentially shifts the topic – Let’s not make it about the mansions.  Let’s make it about the Way; let’s make it about Truth; let’s make it about Life.  And let me define all those for you, since when you try to define them you are likely to make them all about the real estate.

The difference here is about what becomes important to us.  Because when you are fixated on real estate, then your appliances and your paint colors, and your hardwood floors, and your bathroom fixtures become matters of great importance.

But when you are more concerned with the Way, the Truth, and the Life, then other things matter; things like: who you are traveling with, and how prepared you are to treat someone’s wounds, and whether or not you can share your food with a hungry traveler who has lost hers, and whether or not your opinion really is the final definition of truth, and whether or not you can help alleviate a friend’s pain, and how to let someone die with compassion and dignity – these become real and immediate concerns.  And when these kinds of questions become real and immediate concerns, then your faith is shaped less by the promises of real estate in heaven, and more by the urgency that the kingdom of God is at hand in the here and now.

Of course, when you stop to think about it, the term “real estate” is meant to define something concrete (so to speak), more or less immoveable, permanent, and lasting.  And we want to proclaim that the kingdom of God is, if not concrete, then immoveable, permanent, and lasting.  This partly explains the church’s own penchant for real estate like this bit of property on Locust Street, about which we care a great deal.  But if our own real estate (or anyone else’s) became our chief preoccupation then we would probably be forgetting to make our lives about following the Way, standing up for the Truth, and finding real meaning in Life.

Jesus promises us that in his Father’s house there are many mansions.  This is promise of life in the world to come that we can count on.  But you would think that as Christians in a world full of pain and suffering and confusion and injustice that we might have a few other things to talk about before we spend too much time and energy talking about the real estate in heaven – which comprises many mansions: surely one to fit every style and need.

Jesus tells us that we already know how to talk about the way to address the pain and suffering, the confusion and injustice, and everything else that troubles us in the world.  Talk about him.  Make Jesus our idée fixe, our great preoccupation, the thing about which we just can’t stop talking, who just keeps coming up in conversation after conversation, about whose words and teaching there is much to be explored.  Then we might begin to discover the Way; we might begin to learn Truth; we might begin to live Life.

And let not your hearts be troubled, when at last we shall be with him in the world to come, there will be a mansion prepared in one of the many rooms of his Father’s house.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

18 May 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

I am the Gate

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

There’s a village inside most of our heads.  And in the village there’s a little square where trades are practiced and craftsmen set up shop, and where the things we want to buy are readily for sale at prices we can afford.  There are plays and movies and poems and music all on offer in the village inside our heads – and they are usually our favorites.  There’s a doctor or two that some of us avoid like the plague and on whom others of us call at all hours of the day and night.  There’s a therapist too – but it’s not always clear that the therapist in the village inside our heads is the right therapist for us.  There’s a critic who stands on a street-corner and who calls out comments and posts daily critiques – stapling them to a kiosk on the corner where they can be read by anyone in the village.

Your mother sits in a rocking chair on a porch not far from the center of town, and chances are good that your father’s voice can be heard with more or less resonance in certain locations, and from certain rooms in the house in which you grew up, which is always to be found in the village inside your head.

And there’s an inner architect who works with us inside our heads to help us build and to develop the village inside our heads.  This is the architect with whom you image the addition that will double the size of your house, or the renovation of the kitchen that requires no compromise.  It’s the architect with whom you first make plans for the cottage on the shore, or the house in the country, or the condo on the square. 

In the village inside your head your pied-a-terre in the city is only minutes away from your place in the country – takes no time to get there, and the traffic is never bad.  You can have it all: a place in the mountains, and a spot right on the beach, as well as a Tuscan villa, and a little apartment in Paris.  Not only do you have an architect in the village inside your head, you also have the best real estate agent around!

All your dearest friends are also your nearest friends in the village inside your head, and they never move further away than you want them to.

Since you are listening to this sermon, chances are good that there is a church in the square in the village inside your head, and the priest or the pastor, the minister or the vicar of the church in the middle of the village inside your head is the best one for miles: knows just the right way to do things, preaches the best (and the shortest) sermons, always makes you feel good about who you are and your relationship with God.  (You have never met such a vicar outside the village inside your head, but you cling to hope.)

And there’s a mason, or a carpenter, or a handyman, or a fence-builder in the village inside your head whom eventually you and your architect hire to build a wall or a fence or a barrier of some sort around the village inside your head. Only if you have the most medieval fantasies do you also require a moat to surround the village inside your head – but some of you might.  I don’t know why you must build the wall or the fence or the barrier or the moat – after all it’s only a village inside your head – but you do, we do. We build our defenses, and there are some things that must be defended, and many of them reside in the village inside our heads.

Are there sheep in the village inside your head?  There are in mine… along with Labradors and horses.  The sheep in the village inside my head need to be protected – that’s one reason (but only one) for the wall, which in my case is made of dry-stacked field stones.

When I hear Jesus teaching, I know that he is talking about the sheep that graze in the pastures around the village inside my head.  And when I survey the lovely scene inside my head, I become aware that I am not the rector of the church in that village, nor am I the critic, or the baker, or a singer, I am not even one of the Labradors: I see that I am one of the sheep in the village inside my head, surrounded by the lovely, dry-stacked, fieldstone wall.  And I hear Jesus teaching. I hear him promising to keep we sheep safe.  I hear him assuring me from the other side of the wall: “Fear not,” he says.  “It’s true that there are thieves and bandits, there are strangers who will call your name, but fear not, for I am your shepherd.”

I am munching grass on my side of the wall, and it had not even occurred to me that I needed a shepherd, here inside my village, where everything is constructed just so, just as I want, just as it ought to be to please me.  “Don’t worry about me, Jesus,” I bleat out.  “I’m just fine here in the village inside my head.  My architect has designed this lovely wall, and my craftsmen have built it with skill and artistry.  We have no thieves or robbers here, not even any strangers – they cannot get in, for it is a very fine wall, and the grass in here is yummy!  Thanks, though!”

“My child,” Jesus calls back over the wall, “that would all be fine and well, but you do not actually live in the perfect village inside your head.  You live in the real world.  And in the real world there are indeed thieves and robbers and strangers and worse!”

And just like that, a heavy, grey cloud rolls in to darken the once bright sky of the perfect village inside my head, where I begin to quickly walk along the perimeter of the wall, with mounting anxiety.

With the cloud overhead, and me tracing the perimeter inside the wall that surrounds it, the village inside my head begins to feel small and claustrophobic, and I begin to worry if there can possibly be enough grass in here to sustain me and the other sheep.  And I keep tracing the inside of the wall, and as I do, the interior of my village feels smaller and smaller, and the cloud still hangs overhead.

And I hear a voice calling me by name, and I know the voice, for some reason I know it is Jesus, and it is the only thing that takes the edge off the mounting anxiety, as the village seems to grow smaller and smaller and the grass supply looks less and less likely to be able to feed me and the other sheep for very long.  And I begin to realize that I have been walking along the perimeter of the wall, and that there is one big problem with this wall: the wall has no gate!

I dial up the architect in my head to check with him.  “Where’s the gate in the wall?”  I ask.

“No gate,” he replies, “we didn’t see the need for it.”

No gate.  Didn’t see the need for it.

And I see the vicar standing over by the lovely church in the square in the village, and I trot over to her, panting.

“Vicar,” I say, “are we trapped inside this village?  Is this where we are meant to be?  Is it safe here inside the wall that I have built without any gate?”

And the vicar strokes my soft, wooly coat, and feels the lanolin on her fingers, and says to me, “Oh, I suppose it’s safe,” she says, “but you do not really live in the village inside your head.  I do (which is why my sermons are so good and so short) but you do not.  You live in the real world.”

The vicar can see by the look on my face that I am distraught.  She knows that I am thinking of all the disaster, plague, poverty, famine, and war that one encounters in the real world.  And I look up at her with a face that says, “Why?  Why must I live in the real world?  Why can’t I live in this lovely, perfect village inside my head, if only that blasted cloud would go away?”

The vicar smiles a kindly smile, knowing what I am thinking, and says to me, “That’s easy, child.  You must live in the real world because that’s where Jesus lives, that’s where Jesus is to be found, not here in the perfect constructs of your mind – pleasant though that thought might be.”

As the implications of what the vicar is saying begin to dawn on me, I become anxious again, even hopeless, for around the perfect village inside my head I have built a wall with no gate; didn’t see the reason.  And I wonder if I am trapped.

As if she can read my mind, the vicar addresses me: “Child, you thought that you would build an inner wall to protect you from all the evils of the world around you.  Doing so, you saw no need to include a gate.  But now you cannot tell if the wall you have built has kept your adversaries out, or kept you in.  Is it a bulwark or a prison?  Hard to say.  But since it has no gate, it could easily be either, or.  But I hear someone calling you from beyond the wall.  If I were you, child, I would listen.”

And because she has always been the perfect vicar, I take her advice.  I stand quietly, let my heartbeat slow down, and listen.

And I hear Jesus calling me by name – yes, I know his voice.  And I am expecting him to give me a carefully reasoned argument about the existence of God, and explaining the problem of evil, and unraveling the mysteries of the origins of the universe, and providing me with a light-filled vision of heavenly promises that await me in the world to come.  But he does none of that.

Instead, he calls my name again and says, “I know you have built a lovely village inside your head.  I have been there; I have spent many days with you there, as I think you know.

“There is nothing wrong with the village inside your head, and much that is right with it.  The only problem is, it is not the real world in which you and I must live.  We cannot escape all that you shut out beyond the wall that you so beautifully designed and had so beautifully built – except without a gate; you saw no need.

“Now you see the need.  And I am calling you by name to tell you that I am the gate.

“I am the gate that provides passage between the real world and all the possibilities of your dreams, your hopes, your plans, and more.

“I am the gate between sorrow and joy.

“I am the gate between darkness and light.

“I am the gate between hatred and love.

“I am the gate between sin and forgiveness.

"I am the gate between cruelty and justice.

“I am the gate between famine and plenty.

“I am the gate between foolishness and wisdom.

“I am the gate between death and life.

“You built a wall with no gate.  And in time you could no longer tell if it was good for you or bad for you.  You do need a gate.

“And I am the gate.  You may go in and come out; you will find pasture.  And you will be saved, even though you are not even sure why you need to be.

“Remember, you were not sure you needed a gate, either.

“I am the gate.  And I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”

And just like that, the cloud lifts, the sun is shining.  And a lovely, architecturally perfect gate appears in the wall before me, and the latch is un-done, and the gate swings open.

And it’s noisier, and more complicated and confusing out here than it was in the village inside my head.  But I look over my shoulder and see that the gate is not disappearing nor locking behind me: I can go in and come out. I leave nothing behind that I cannot return to.

But a great deal lies before me, I can see.  And a voice that I know is calling my name.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 May 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia