The Kingdom of Heaven is Like

There has been a little trend in the movies this year of films based on Bible stories. At the beginning of the year, there was Son of God, about the life of Jesus. Then came Noah. Up next is Exodus: Gods and Kings, with Batman, I mean Christian Bale, playing Moses. Now all of these adaptations are really action-packed. These are not contemplative reflections on the spiritual dimensions of God’s presence with God’s people; no, these are big CGI extravaganzas that glam up the most cinematic moments of the story. Exodus is being directed by Ridley Scott, known for blockbusters like Alien and Gladiator. Noah added all kinds of dramatic elements into the biblical narrative, like ancient near-eastern bombs and terrifying fallen angels. Even Son of God included some over-the-top storms on the Sea of Galilee and at least one shot of Jesus wielding a staff like a Jedi knight.

Compare all of this to a movie that our 20s/30s group watched this past spring, a movie that I know some of you know well: the 1964 film The Gospel According to Matthew, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. When reading through the Gospel to prepare for the making of the film, Pasolini found himself fascinated not by the dramatic miracles in Matthew, but by the speeches. He loved the moments of Jesus’ teaching, the moments that were filled to the brim with words. And so in his film, there are long stretches of scenes with little to no action at all – shot after shot of Jesus’ face, just talking. “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst….” “You have heard it said….” “But I say to you….” Simple, still shots, with a flood of words, so many words that at times you can feel like you want to pause the movie, take a moment, and think about what you’ve heard.

This morning’s Gospel reading is more like Pasolini. There is very little dialogue and almost no action. We aren’t told where Jesus is or what he’s doing. There’s just shot after shot of him talking: “The kingdom of heaven is like…the kingdom of heaven is like…the kingdom of heaven is like.” Five parables packed on top of one another like sardines. Now it’s hard to tell if Jesus really talked this way. Maybe he did – maybe he just woke up of a morning and decided that that day would be simile day. Or maybe this is just the Gospel writer organizing things – the miracles go here, the Sermon on the Mount here, parables here. To be sure, the lectionary is organizing things for us today by serving up all five of these baby parables while skipping over the eleven verses in the middle. We heard those verses last week, Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the wheat and the tares.

Because remember, this is the third week of parables in a row. But the last two weeks, we’ve heard not only the parable but also Jesus’ explanation. We were given a chance to take a breath, to click pause, to step outside of the parable for a second to reflect on what we’ve heard. But there is no time for that today. The parables just come one on top of the other – bang, bang, bang – full of words, rich with imagery, with no time to pause and ask questions or just to mull over them for a minute.

Now we could take that time now. We could pause and pick through each parable, exploring the metaphors, delving into some of the strangeness of them – that a mustard bush was really just a nuisance of a weed, that yeast was considered unclean, that a man seemed to have been digging for treasure in a field he didn’t actually own. But that sounds like five sermons, not one, and it is a gorgeous summer day and we have brunch to get to, so let’s not do that.

And besides that, I think the folks who shaped the lectionary are really on to something here. I think there’s something to the bang, bang, bang, approach of these parables. Because when they are stacked on top of each other like this, what do we hear, again, and again, and again – the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like. And as we hear this phrase over and over, we start to hear something else, something really important. We eventually hear that Jesus really seems to know what the kingdom of heaven is like. It sounds like he has actually been there, like he really knows the kingdom, personally, intimately. He has spent so much time there that he can describe it to us in all of these different ways. And so he says the kingdom of heaven is like all of these things, and we believe him, because we’re sure he has seen it.

And not only has Jesus seen it, he wants us to see it as well. He wants us to spend some serious time in the kingdom. Why else would Jesus tell us about it over and over if he didn’t want us to go there? He who “overcame the sharpness of death has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.” He has thrown wide the doors and wants us to enter in. And I don’t mean in the future, I mean now. The kingdom of heaven is, Jesus tells us, right now, not just on that great gettin’ up mornin’. The kingdom of heaven is, here and now, not in all of its fullness, of course, but it is nonetheless, more real, more dense, just more than all of this earthly kingdom.

It is, though, not always readily apparent. The kingdom is not always easy to see in this world. It is often lost, hidden behind heartbreak and sorrow, obscured by pain and persecution and the paraphernalia of this mortal life. If we are to look beyond these things temporal to see the things eternal, we will need some help. And so Jesus offers us all of these fabulous similes. Because he knows that if we are going to see the kingdom, we will have to use our imaginations. Not to pretend, for the kingdom is not pretend. Using our imaginations does not mean that the kingdom we see is imaginary. It means that it is image-full, illuminated; it means that we are opening the eyes of our hearts along with the eyes in our head, that we are learning to see what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Using our imaginations helps us to look at this broken mess of a world and to see more. Using our imaginations helps us to endure a news cycle like that of this past week and to see that those stories are not the full stories; the news is not just grief and anger and waste – the news of the kingdom is comfort and reconciliation and growth. Our imaginations help us to look at something that seems as worthless as a mustard bush – for example, an oversized, underused rectory attached to a church on Locust Street – and see how it can be a place where servants come from all over to make their homes in its hallways. Our imaginations help us to look at something as tiny and seemingly insignificant as bowl of soup and see how that one small thing can transform an entire life, an entire city of lives. Our imaginations help us to find something that just forty years ago was well and truly hidden – like the call to ordained ministry among women in the Church – and do whatever we need to do to bring it into the light. Our imaginations help each of us to find that one thing – that call, that relationship, that offering, that work, that service – that is worth everything to us, and to shed all of the flotsam and jetsam of our lives to give it the place it deserves in our lives.

 It is only when we use our imaginations in this way that we can look at this world and see the promise, the more of the kingdom. And this world desperately needs us to see in this way, to look at the Holy Land and the thousands of children at our borders and the violently mentally ill and Christians in Iraq and those on death row and to see not mustard seeds and yeast and lost treasure, not things worthless and hidden and broken, but a kingdom of abundance and freedom and purpose and hope and life.

The kingdom of heaven has come near to you, Jesus has promised, if only you are willing to turn around and look at it. So look. Let yourself be a disciple trained for the kingdom of heaven. Employ and enjoy the gift of your imagination, let yourself be flooded with image after image, with shot after shot, of the kingdom. And then, when you are filled to the brim with visions of the kingdom, go live a life that is action-packed. Step out into this world and proclaim in your own voice, in word and in deed, what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

27 July 2014

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Slow Children

One night you awaken in the dark to find yourself at the wheel of the car.  It could be that you are dreaming, that remains to be seen.  Driving along the road you can see that the speed limit is clearly posted: 65 miles an hour.  This, you know full well, entitles you to drive at 75 miles an hour, maybe 80, with impunity.  Which you do as you pass the state trooper with hardly a thought.

As you continue to drive, you notice the signs along the road that seem a bit unusual.  You drive past a sign that is a surprise to you.  It reads: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  This is odd, but on reflection, as you speed along, you realize that, as with the speed limit, you have had to learn to interpret this sign too.  It is not quite as clear as it seems to be.  And anyway, there are fewer police to enforce that particular law.  I mean, I interpret that golden rule all the time.  Every day I pass people on the street to whom I do not apply the golden rule.  But it’s not just the hungry and the homeless I am able to zoom past with hardly a thought.  I drive by plenty of people that I know and love at 75 miles an hour sometimes, hoping you do not know that it’s me in the car that just whizzed past you, on your right.

You are driving south.  Most of the signs are of little interest.  They are for exits you do not need and roads which you have no intention of traveling.  You can pass by those signs with hardly a glance except to no notice that you are well into North Carolina now, or is it already Tennessee already?  You realize that you do not know where you are going or why.  This car, you realize, has a mind of its own.  You never chose this journey, and you are not in charge.  But as long as you are not paying for the gas, you don’t object.  And the radio is set to NPR, so what’s to complain about?

Before you get clear across Oklahoma, the car turns south and you hit Texas.  You speed past Dallas and San Antonio and you push further south.  Somewhere in Texas you see a sign that is familiar to you, but it is out of place because you don’t normally see these signs on the highways.  It is a yellow rectangle, portrait view, outlined in black, with a stylized running figure in the middle, and the words “SLOW CHILDREN” spelled out across the top and bottom.  Clearly the sign is out of place.  Children do not play along the highways – or at least they shouldn’t.  You pause in your mind, but your foot never eases up on the gas. 

You are listening to NPR so by now you have an inkling of who these children are since you are in Texas, but you do not know why you are being taken here.  You do not yet know what the signs mean, since you have not yet seen any children.

Then you see that perplexing sign again: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  And now another sign that simply reads, “Abba, Father!”  And you read it to yourself as you pass beneath it, breathing the words as a kind of prayer.  “Abba, Father.”

On the radio there is talk of the 50,000 immigrant children teeming on our borders in places like Brownsville, Texas.  And you look up and you see a sign that tells you that you are headed for Brownsville.  And then another sign reminds you: “SLOW CHILDREN.”

And a small voice comes on the radio, and it is as though the voice is speaking to you, which makes no sense, since the voice is on the radio, and is also speaking in Spanish, which you do not speak except to order una cervesa now and then.  But you become certain that the small, Spanish-speaking voice is addressing you from the radio, so you find that you are, in fact, compelled somehow to slow down, and eventually to pull over, to stop and listen, the way you very rarely will do when you hear a piece of sublimely beautiful music on the radio and you want to hear it to the end and to find out what it is, so you sit in your car on the side of the road, waiting for the music to end, and hoping the announcer will identify the piece.

Lost in this thought momentarily, your attention returns to the voice on the radio, which, now that you have pulled over, you seem to be able to understand.  It is a child’s voice.  Inexplicably, the child is quoting St. Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

“What are you talking about?” you address the radio.

“I am talking about hope,” the child’s voice replies.  And so now you are talking to the radio – or to the child who is talking to you through the radio.

“Child,” you say, “what are you doing?  Why are you talking to me this way?”

“Because I am an orphan and a stranger in a strange land,” comes the voice.  “I have come from poverty and from murder and from hopelessness.  I have been sent away from certain hopelessness to a blind hope across your border.  ‘Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.’”

“Who taught you that?” you ask, “I don’t think that St. Paul was talking about illegal immigrants when he wrote that.”

“Neither do I,” says the child, “but are you telling me that St. Paul had no words of hope for me?  Are you telling me that I am wrong to hear hope in the message of Jesus? Are you telling me that I should return my mind and my dreams to despair?

“Am I an illegal immigrant?” asks the child.  “I am an orphan, I know that.  Do you think my parents sent me away as though this is summer camp and I would return?  I am jammed into a detention center where my lice are dancing with the lice of other children, laughing at us because no one will ever stop them from crossing the border.

“I am here hoping for something that I cannot even name, grasping for something that I am not old enough to grasp for.  I am poor, and malnourished, and uneducated.  I am blind to whatever there is to hope for here, but I am assured that it is better than the hopelessness whence I came.  Are you telling me that I am wrong?  Are you telling me that my faith is misplaced?”

An awkward silence fills the car.

“Child,” you say, “you are too young to understand this, but you cannot stay here.  You misunderstand the Scriptures if you think that they are calling you to hope for something here.  We are not a Christian nation.  We don’t owe you anything.  We can’t adopt you.”

“Jesus was adopted by Joseph,” the child’s voice says.

“Yes, but that was different,” you say.

“How was it different?” the child asks.

This will not be a fruitful line of discussion to pursue.  You change the direction.

“Do you know how many of you there are!?!?  What are we supposed to do with you all?” you ask.

“How am I supposed to know?” replies the child, “I am only a child.”

“You are an illegal immigrant,” you tell the voice.

“I am a refugee,” the child replies.

“No you’re not!”

“Then I am a pilgrim,” says the child.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” you say.

“Do you know where I have come from?  Do you know the desert I have crossed to get here?  How can you say that I am not a pilgrim!?”

“Pilgrims don’t escape hopeless situations only to settle in new lands,” you say.

“Perhaps not,” says the child, “but have you read what you are teaching your own children in Social Studies?  I think you might find there is something there about pilgrims fleeing a bad situation in hope of finding a better one.  So you might want to get your story straight.”

“This is a semantic argument,” you assert to the radio.

“But I am not a semantic argument,” says the child.  “I am a child of God.  The circumstances of my birth, and of my up-bringing, and of my homeland cannot be blamed on me, troublesome though they may all be.

“I have lived much of my life in a spirit of fear, never more so than when I set out on the journey to this place – a journey I never wished for, and which has left me without anything in the world, including my mother.  And now I am here.  At night, remembering what my mother taught me, I pray to God, I ask God to help me.  I say, ‘Our Father, nuestra señor, Abba, father!’  Is it me praying, or is it the Spirit praying in me?  How should I know?  I am only a child.

“How will I go back from here?  Where will I go?  Will my parents be there?  Will they take me?  Do they want me?  Don’t you think these questions keep me awake at night, sobbing into my dirty pillow? 

“So, yes, I am willing to look to St. Paul, I am willing to look anywhere at all to find an argument for someone to take me, for someone to feed me, for someone to care for me.  I am willing to look anywhere for hope.  Am I misreading the scriptures if I find it there?

“Why should the scriptures address your first-world, inner, spiritual problems, but not my third-world, outward, concrete problems?  Don’t you think that the scriptures are more familiar with the latter than the former?

“Why shouldn’t I hope for what I do not see?  Why shouldn’t I wait for it with patience?  Why shouldn’t I groan inwardly while I wait for adoption?  What else can I do?  Did you hear what St. Paul said?  He could have been speaking for me: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

“But, child, this is not was he was talking about!  He was talking about the glory of God, he was talking about the kingdom that awaits us; he was not talking about crossing illegally into America!” you protest.

“Perhaps not,” says the child.  “You have your sufferings and I have mine.  You have your hope and I have mine.  For the moment, mine has brought me here, to this sorry existence at the border of the land of plenty, where I am sneered at and treated as nothing more than a dirty problem, but certainly I am not treated as a child.

“For now, I will grasp at any hope I can, even if it is hoping for something I cannot see.  I will grasp at any faith I can.  And if there is someone teaching that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us, then I am going to pay attention.  Because otherwise I am not at all sure the sufferings of this present time are worth it.  Something better must await me in this world or in the next, and before long it won’t matter to me which it is.

“Otherwise, what am I but a weed allowed to grow here for a time while the wheat grows, only to be bundled together by the reapers and burned in the fire when the wheat is collected?  Is this the message the Gospel has for me?  Am I only a weed?”

You sigh in the driver’s seat, and you pause before responding as tenderly as you can, “Child, you do not understand.  It’s not your fault, but really, you fail to see the complexity of the situation.”

The child replies, “It’s true that I fail to see much that is complex about the hunger in my tummy and the fear in my heart.  Except that now I do not know which would be worse, to stay here or to be sent back; that’s a little complex.  It is hot here, and there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but then I have never known anyplace that was not hot and where there was not much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  But what choice have I got but to hope for what I cannot see?  What choice have I got but to believe that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed?  What choice have I got but to wait for it with patience?  What choice have I got but to cry out through my tears, ‘Abba, father!’  What choice have I got but to hope?”

You don’t know what to say to the child.  And the radio begins to crackle with static, and the news from NPR comes on.  And you can see the dim lights of Brownsville in the distance.  And you realize that the car is now in your control, and you could easily turn around and leave this place without ever slowing down for the children.  You can easily avoid them, and so can I.

And here we are on the side of the road, wondering what to do, crying, Abba, father amidst the sufferings of this present time.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

20 July 2014

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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