Pop-Up Garden

(To listen to Fr. Mullen's sermon, please click here).

On Walnut Street, a few blocks from here, between 19th and 20th streets, on the north side, across the street from the Church of the Holy Trinity you will find a vacant lot.  Two summers ago that vacant lot was not so vacant, it was the location of the Philadelphia Horticultural Society’s Pop-Up Garden.  The PHS Pop-Up Garden is meant, according to their promotional material to “transform… a forgotten outdoor area into a gorgeous, landscaped community space.”  And I would have to say that the Horticultural Society succeeded marvelously to that end.

Last summer the Pop-Up Garden was located on Broad Street, next to the Chambers-Wylie Memorial Presbyterian Church that houses the excellent Broad Street Ministries.  That vacant lot, too, was brilliantly and artfully transformed into a vibrant green-space that housed a popular beer garden.  And today, the space has been returned to its former status as a vacant lot.

This summer the Pop-Up Garden will be located on South Street, between Broad and 15th Streets, in the grassy lot next to the Jamaican Jerk Hut – long more verdant than your average vacant lot.  Nevertheless, I am sure that it has been brilliantly transformed with style and panache. 

Something has been bothering me about these pop-up gardens – even though I know it is wrong-headed of me to be grumpy about something that is basically good for our city, and that brings a lot of people pleasure.  If I want to put it into biblical terms I can reach for this morning’s Gospel: these pop-up gardens, since they have no root, as the Gospel says, they wither away.  And what you have left when the summer is over, is exactly what you started with – a vacant lot.

I am tempted to wax self-righteous on the matter – a temptation that so often lies close at hand.  I mean, gardens, by their definition almost, are not meant to be “pop-up;” for then they too quickly cease to be gardens.  A garden is meant to grow, and to produce, and to change with the seasons.  A garden is meant to experience the cycle of life and death, and then the return of life again.  A garden was God’s idea of Paradise.  A garden can be a metaphor for the resurrection – but not a pop-up garden.  So I struggle with the pop-up garden because I want it to be more that it aspires to be itself.  I want the transformation to be permanent, or at least long-lasting.  I want the seeds to find root in good soil and bring forth grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty (to return to the Gospel reading).  For all I know this is what the folks at the PHS would like too, but you have to start somewhere, so I hope you will not hear much criticism in what I am saying.

Speaking of waxing self-righteous, I also want to tell you of the most remarkable day that we experienced here at Saint Mark’s on Friday.  First, a little context: this past week a triennial gathering of youth-groups from Episcopal churches all across the nation has been taking place in and around Philadelphia: the Episcopal Youth Event.  On Friday, 1,000 teenagers were taken on buses on various pilgrimages throughout the city – stopping not only at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and Benjamin Franklin’s grave, but also at Christ Church, and (depending on which bus you were on) Episcopal Community Services, and St Thomas African Episcopal Church, at St. James School, a few other spots, and, if you were really lucky, Saint Mark’s Locust Street!

We were scheduled to receive three pairs of buses, each pair delivering about 112 or so teenagers to our doorstep for 40 minutes.  During this time we were supposed to share with these kids something about who we are as a parish community and what we do.  This, I thought, was the perfect opportunity for an extended sermon to each group from me.  What could bus-loads of teenagers brought here whether they liked it or not possibly appreciate more than the sound of my voice, and the pearls of my wisdom?  But the Holy Spirit intervened on the kids’ behalf, and put me in mind of doing something distinctly Anglo-catholic, and almost counter-intuitive for a captive congregation of teenagers: Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Suffice it to say that the Spirit had his way.  And we arranged to give the kids brief words of welcome, a short service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament (complete with organ, choir, and coped assistants), followed by soft pretzels and lemonade in the garden before we sent them back to their buses.  This we accomplished yesterday, not for three groups of 112 teenagers, but for four groups, since one pair of buses got out of synch and was directed to just “go to Saint Mark’s where they’ll know what to do with you,” resulting in the first ever “emergency Benediction.”

Under any circumstances it would be surreal to offer Benediction four times in one day.  To do so for more than four hundred teenagers was a remarkable experience, I can tell you.  And many of us who were here for all four services, decided that this is probably what heaven is like: Benediction every hour on the hour, with music from Matt Glandorf and the Saint Mark’s choir!

I think I am also safe in saying that it has been a long time since Saint Mark’s had four hundred-some-odd teenagers in church… for Benediction.  And I want to gloat about this, and yield to the temptation to wax self-righteous, because it was a wonderful, glorious day here on Friday, and God was very, very good to us, I can tell you!  But then I think about the pop-up gardens and my objections to them, and how the seeds of pop-up gardens have so little opportunity to take root, how likely they are to wither and die.  And I have to ask myself if a pop-up Benediction is better than a pop-up garden?  Well, I hope it is, but there is still a lesson to be learned here, I am sure.

Because glorious though Friday was, with its succession of Benedictions, on reflection, I find it slightly dis-satisfying, since for us it is hard to know whether or not the seeds sown will ever produce any fruit in those teenagers.  Let us pray that that will be the case.

And the good news is, of course, that Saint Mark’s is not a pop-up parish, and our life of worship here is no life of pop-up worship.  The roots are deeper than that, probably deeper than any of us knows, in this place.  So it’s unfair to think of those Friday services as pop-up Benedictions.  But that means that what we really had were four pop-up congregations of pop-up youths.

And herein lies the opportunity for us: to ask God to teach us, to help us, and to guide us so that children and youth will become an ever more important part of the life of this parish; to make us un-satisfied with pop-up children, pop-up youth groups whose roots are not to be found in this place; and to till the ground around us in such a way as to prepare for them to be nurtured, to flourish, and to grow in this place.

I once knew an old priest in Virginia whose name was Rufus Womble.  Rufus was impish and handsome, even in his eighties, and funny.  He began every sermon with three jokes, no matter what; he thought it was important to get people laughing.  He always wore a blue cassock and nothing else – no surplice or stole or alb or anything. 

Rufus’ ministry was all about healing, and he came to the parish where I was Curate every Thursday for a healing service with laying-on-of hands.  Rufus used to tell me, “No matter what the assigned readings are, I always preach about healing; I always manage to bring it around to healing.”  And I thought this single-mindedness of Rufus’ was a bit silly and unsophisticated.  But Rufus’ life had been changed – no, saved – by healing which he attributed to Jesus (I can’t remember the circumstances).  So for him, every word of the Gospel was, in fact, full of healing, and he could not help but talk about it.

I think about that single-mindedness, having spoken to you last week about children, and finding that the Gospel today, which nowhere mentions children, has also brought my mind and my prayers around to children and to youth.  Perhaps it is the case that I should always be preaching about children, no matter what the readings are.  After all, my life was changed – no, saved – as a child when I was shown the power, and glory, and strength, and beauty, and love of God at work in his church.  And I wish for every child to be shown what I was shown as a child.

And as long as there are too few children in this parish, maybe I should use this pulpit as a watchtower to keep an eye out for them, to call them in, to point them out to you, since so many seem to have fled from our midst, one way or another.

Once, a long time ago, this space on Locust Street was a vacant lot.  But countless fruitful seeds have been sown here on countless fruitful souls, who have lived countless fruitful lives, some growing a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty - who knows?  This is no pop-up church.  But without the young, without children being shaped and formed, being taught to love the Lord Jesus and to worship him, being equipped to be pilgrims or disciples or saints, how will they every take root in the Gospel of love and grow up?

We are a garden - meant to grow, and to produce, and to change with the seasons.  We are meant to experience the cycle of life and death, and then the return of life again.  We are an icon of God’s idea of Paradise.  And as a garden, this place is more than a metaphor for the resurrection – we are the place and the people where resurrection happens!

But without children and youth, how can we be sure that this beautiful, verdant, flowery stretch of Locust Street will not itself some day be returned to its status as a vacant lot?  God forbid that it should ever be so.  And teach us, Lord, to suffer the little children to come to you, right here in this place.  And let us grow a hundred-fold, or sixty, or thirty… that would be a good start!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

13 July 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

La Farmacia

(To listen to Fr. Mullen's sermon, please click here).

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  (Mt. 11: 28)

The altar in the church of Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados, on the outskirts of Puerto Cortez in Honduras, is free-standing.  It is, in fact, a crudely made table, nailed together, its plank-top painted white.  It was not difficult to lift it and carry it off of its platform and into the sacristy – through a door on the Gospel side, more or less the same location as the sacristy here at Saint Mark’s.  But in this sacristy there are no vestments stored, and no precious vessels.  The wooden chalice and paten we had used for the Mass were already washed up and placed in the shoebox they are kept in somewhere else.

The shelves of the sacristy had been lined with the contents of many of the duffel bags we carried with us to Honduras: Amoxicillin, Doxycycline, Lisinopril, Glipizide, Benadryl and its liquid sibling Banophen, Metoprolol, Cepahlexin, Ciprofloxacin, Ranitidine, Albendazole, Metronidazole, Prednisone, Azithromycin, Hydrochlorothiazide, Hydocortisone, triple-antibiotic, and Chlortrimazol creams, and Albutrin inhalers, along with liquid Tylenol for children in two different dosages, suspensions of antibiotics ready to be reconstituted (also for children), baby aspirin, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Tums by the thousands, and a small cache of injectable medications kept inside a locked metal cabinet that I was not allowed to look at, let alone touch that I know included insulin, and thousand and thousands of vitamins for children and adults.

I will not bore you with an inventory of the comparable supply of medical supplies also carried in those duffel bags: stethoscopes, scalpels, swabs, pulse-ox monitors, bandages, otoscopes, tongue depressors, blood-pressure cuffs, gauze, curettes, and all manner of other paraphernalia that was arrayed in another building, a short way down the hill, beneath the sacristy, which became the examination rooms for our four doctors.

Most of my time – during this past mission trip to Honduras, as in the last one we organized three years ago – was spent in what had been the sacristy but was now transformed into la farmacia.  And here, the altar had become our work-table – its planks nailed close enough together that we did not have to worry about even the smallest pills slipping down in between them to the floor, as we counted them out into little zip-lock baggies, and wrote out instructions in Spanish, guided by our interpreters.

La farmacia – the pharmacy – was somewhat insulated from the organized chaos of the church, where patients were greeted, vital signs were taken, and triage was done so we could get an idea of the overall condition, complaints, and needs of the patients.  Down the hill in the examination rooms is where the doctors were talking with, examining closely, and treating patients before sending them back up the hill with their diagnoses and prescriptions written out.  The patients then waited in the church again, while we filled prescriptions in the pharmacy, had them checked by a nurse, and sent them out with a translator and a nurse to provide instructions.  Which is to say that inside la farmacia we were also somewhat insulated from the actual human beings whom we had come to serve, since we had not been assigned to deal with the patients face-to-face.

But you must abandon any idea that the separation was meaningful between those of us in the small sacristy/pharmacy and the people we served on that hillside outside of Puerto Cortez.  Because the sacristy – la farmacia – a room of maybe 10 x 12 feet – enjoyed two large windows, covered with bars, and a metal mesh, but no glass, and a large metal door that we kept open.  The door allowed not only access down the path to the examination rooms, but also welcome ventilation during the hot, humid days.

And these three large openings to the room – two windows and one door – were almost constantly attended by children.  Faces peered in through windows watching the counting of pills as though it might suddenly turn fascinating.  And little bodies leaned on the door jambs, poked heads inside, struck up conversations, played patty-cake, asked for handouts of various sorts, and hovered constantly at the open door that led outside from la farmacia.  So our actual contact – primarily with the children from the nearby school and the surrounding neighborhood – was non-stop.  I never really saw a single patient, as such, in the clinic; but I sure did spend time with a lot of children!

The neighborhood around the church is nicknamed Colonia Episcopal.  It was largely destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 – a storm that devastated Honduras.  And the church on the hillside was left more or less a ruin afterward.  Its school was turned over to the state, and the local residents were left to rebuild their shanty-town in the haphazard way that is seen a lot throughout Honduras.  With few parishioners and damaged by the storm, the little church was eventually closed by the diocese and left to decay for several years, until a formidable woman, who happens also to be a midwife with whom we worked this past week, went to the bishop and asked him to allow them to reclaim the church and its school and to rebuild.  The bishop gave them a chance, and a bit of help in funding for a new roof for the church building, which was by then in terrible disrepair.

Today the roof keeps rain out very effectively, I can attest.  The church is painted bright yellow, and its large white cross is easily visible from the highway that leads past it into the city of Puerto Cortez.  And every day last week children cavorted on every side of the church, inside and out, and at every window and door, including those that opened into la farmacia.  I assume that our presence merely intensified the kind of cavorting that is probably a regular feature of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Desamaparados – which can be translated “Our Lady of the Dispossessed,” or “Our Lady of the Defenseless.”

Among the most striking experiences of the week 14 of us from Saint Mark’s just spent in Honduras was the experience of the church as a magnet for children, for there were children absolutely everywhere.  About two -thirds or more of all our patients were children.  But as I mentioned, the church was also surrounded by children every day – children in bare feet, covered in dirt, filthy-dirty as we sometimes say around here, too small for their ages because they are not sufficiently well nourished, their heads sometimes teeming with lice – and yet, of course, absolutely adorable in every way.  The kids played with deflated soccer balls.  They used rubber gloves given to them by our doctors as balloons.  They chased each other, played tag, and they squealed with delight when we squirted them with water from 60-cc syringes.

The remarkable thing about children is that they often do not know that they have been given heavy burdens to bear.  These children certainly showed few signs of being aware of the heavy burden of poverty that was draped over each of their shoulders, and which will weigh heavily on them all as they get older.

It is, of course, the most saccharine of clichés to point out that the future belongs to the young – to children.  Perhaps it is a disdain for the clichéd, then, that renders Episcopalians so often indifferent to children in our churches.  The idea that the church could be a magnet for children is laughable in many of our churches, outside of the South where the important place of children in the church remains an article of religion.

But on a hillside in poverty-wracked Honduras, where the church has almost nothing to work with, I know of a church that that for at least five days was an absolute magnet for children.

It is a tenet of mission work in this modern era that the missionaries will very likely bring at least as much back with them as they brought to those whom they were called to serve.  Among the many lessons I hope I have brought back with me from Honduras is the image (I pray, a lasting one) of the church as a magnet for children: a church where children want to be, where they know their concerns are foremost in the minds of the adults who surround them, where they know there is something for them, where they will be fed and cared for, and maybe even healed, where they can play and sing and be joyful, and where, without doubt, they will be safe.  Search the shelves of any pharmacy and you will discover that there is no easy prescription for this – though it is the cure the church is so dearly in need of.

We have begun, here at Saint Mark’s, to take children much more seriously, to begin to enjoy again their more numerous presence among us, and to see in them a vision of our future, unclear though that vision may yet be.

Over the doors of this church are inscribed the words from the Gospel we read today: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  We don’t always hear in these words of Jesus a call to children – whose burdens are often masked by their innocence, their resiliency, and their smiles.  And, God willing, it will be the case that not all the children who come to us will be weighed down by poverty or other burdens that are heavy to bear.  But even the children of the well-to-do carry burdens with them.

By God’s blessing and mercy, may this place become a magnet for them and for all children.  May they be peering in our windows and leaning up against our doors and playing in our gardens so they can’t help but spill inside.  And may they always find rest and hope and joy here in this place.  And, by God’s grace, perhaps the little children will become the prescription for whatever ails us now, and the hope for our future.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 July 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Welcoming A Prophet

(To listen to Mother Nora's sermon, please click here)

Here is a short list of unlikely things that people in our world seem to believe:

Many of us seem to believe that we can eat, drink, and spend much more than we should, without the consequences catching up with us.  We seem to believe that in our cities expensive real estate and expensive restaurants and expensive shops can increase forever, but the quality of our schools and our public services can only decay.  We seem to believe that changing the way we make use of our natural resources is completely impossible, even when we know that continuing on our present track is virtually guaranteed to bring suffering and destruction on a scale we are barely able to contemplate.  We seem to believe that war is human nature and peace is a luxury meant only for a lucky few.

What’s destructive is easy for us to believe.  What’s life-giving and actually sensible seems unrealistic to us. 

Maybe this inclination only to believe what’s harmful has something to do with the set of instructions Jesus gives to his disciples in this morning’s Gospel.  For Jesus’s words to them are also words to us, and they speak of a long history of being able by the grace of God to believe that in Jesus the Kingdom of God is truly near:  “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.”

The disciples believed Jesus when he came to them.  They believed him, eventually: not without doubt, not without mistakes, not without turning back when the worst came.  In spite of their own weaknesses, they believed him.  By the grace of God, they believed him enough.  They were able to welcome the prophet who stood before them.  Somehow the evidence of his love and his truth were enough to help them stop believing only what was destructive. 

And when they had seen him resurrected and ascended and the Spirit filled them, they were able to go out into the world to tell other people.  “We have seen him,” they said.  “We have known God in him. When we were with him the Kingdom of God burst into bloom around us, and the last suddenly became the first, and the healings we had never dared to expect took place before our eyes.”  And somehow, they too were believed.  Not without struggle, not without persecution, but they were believed, just enough.  They were believed enough, and God was present with them enough, that we are still here today, gathered on a Sunday morning in Philadelphia, listening to the words that they took care to preserve, following the teachings they recorded as best we are able, each in our own way staking our lives on the faith we inherited from them.  We too believe.  We follow in a long, long tradition of people who have been able by the grace of God to welcome Jesus and those whom Jesus has sent.

How did you become part of that tradition?  How did you find yourself believing the words of Jesus enough to spend your Sunday morning here?

Have you seen that kingdom of God open up all around you?  When did it happen?  Do you talk about it much?  When and where are your eyes opened?  When is your heart opened?  In a cloud of incense?  When you hear about how someone else became a follower of Jesus?  Maybe the voices of a choir lifted in praise of God changed everything for you one Sunday morning.  Maybe every Sunday morning.  Maybe seeing the passion and commitment of the people who have kept the Saturday Soup Bowl open for ten years, in freezing cold and sweltering heat, moves you to believe.  Maybe it’s the quiet reverence of the person in the pew in front of you, actually kneeling and praying.  Maybe it’s the steady, difficult, joyful progress of the Saint James School.  The sweet faces, maybe, of the children who gather for the 9:00 Mass?  When you serve as an acolyte, are you touched by the feeling of moving and praying in unison with your fellow servers? Aren’t you kind of amazed that someone close to you is on a medical mission trip to Honduras, or has journeyed to the Philippines in the aftermath of a destructive typhoon, or to South Sudan, to extend the embrace of God’s love to those whose needs are great? 

Aren’t you amazed by the sight of your own hands stretched out to receive Communion?  Your own hand guiding the chalice carefully toward your lips, because you desire to drink from the cup of salvation?  Aren’t you more than a little amazed to find that that’s really you at the altar rail, taking the Body of Christ in your hands and drinking from the cup of his Blood?

Have you grasped the full beauty of the Holy Spirit working within you?  Because whatever brings you here this morning, something you saw or heard, some gesture or posture or voice or act, when you stirred in response to it, you were welcoming a prophet. 

Those people whose faith moved you were prophets.  They dared to proclaim the kingdom of heaven instead of the little magic kingdom of futility that we humans construct on our own.

And when you welcomed that prophet, Jesus tells us in this morning’s Gospel, you received a prophet’s reward.  Maybe we can even put it this way: when you welcomed a prophet, you yourself were being prophetic. 

You didn’t shrug your shoulders and tell yourself that the beauty of the faith you saw in action was a fantasy.  You didn’t use that moment to dig yourself deeper into the destructive hole we are all so busy digging.  You saw the kingdom of heaven and for a moment you accepted it, let it carry you forward, let it propel you to your knees, to the altar, to the world’s places of need.

You are just what this world needs, because you are moved by the Spirit that moves Jesus.  You are part of a long tradition of welcoming the truth—the beautiful, holy, life-giving truth—in a world that does not know how to believe in its own survival.

You are nothing less than prophetic when you reach out your hands and say “Amen.” It may not be easy for you.  You may not talk about it much.  You may be vaguely embarrassed when you think about the life of faith you are living.  But even in hesitation and silence, you are moved by those whom God has sent.  You believe enough for today, and by the grace of God you may come to believe ever more strongly. We may come to believe more strongly together.  This is how Jesus has chosen to build his kingdom: by opening hearts and keeping them open.  Trust what Jesus trusts.  Accept the truth of the love that brings you here.

The smallest gesture of acceptance in the Kingdom of God is enough to open the floodgates of heaven’s grace.

Preached by  Mother Nora Johnson

29 June 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia