The Definition of Imposition

First you learn the baby words. Narthex, nave, sanctuary. Then a few that are a little more advanced – tabernacle, rood screen, and chancel. As you mature, you begin to try out some words that are a little more daring, like words that describe ordinary items in a church-ish way. Not a cup, but a chalice. Not a plate, but a paten. Not a napkin, but a purificator. (Microsoft Word, by the by, does not speak church. I know this because “purificator” got that ugly little red squiggle under it as I typed it.) And finally, when you feel fully confident and all grown-up, you pull out the grandest churchspeak word of all. You correctly use, in a complete sentence, the word aspergillium. As in, “Did you notice the priest’s hands were so wet that when she went to bless us with holy water she shot the aspergillium across the room?” (True story.)

There is, of course, another way to prove your fluency in churchspeak, and that is to use ordinary words in a new way. To use communicate as a way of describing the distribution of the holy bread and wine instead of the means of exchanging information. To use the word voluntary as a noun instead of an adjective. And, in tonight’s case, to change the way you use the word imposition. For tonight, in a few moments, we will begin the imposition of ashes. Meaning that we will impose – or put – ashes – upon – your foreheads.

Now when we use the word imposition out there in the non- churchspeak world, we, of course, use it in its modern context. An imposition is something you don’t want, something you wouldn’t cross the street for, let alone queue up for. An imposition is a burden, a weight, an encumbrance that really, in all fairness, should carry with it an apology. To use it in a sentence: “I’m planning on bringing all six of my cats with you when I come to visit; I hope that won’t be too much of an imposition.”

But this evening, when we offer the imposition of ashes, that is not how the Church is intending this word to be heard. We aren’t saying that we mean to lay something on you that is an undue obligation, something taxing and troublesome. The imposition this evening isn’t meant to be onerous. We mean to impose in a literal sense – to put upon, to set upon your foreheads a little smudge of ash. A simple reminder – it is Lent again, time to repent and return to the Lord.

And it’s true that much of the time Lent doesn’t feel like an imposition at all. Many of us experience the coming of Lent as a desperately needed tug in the right direction. Our lives have gotten off center – we’re spending too much time on the computer and too little time on our knees. We aren’t eating or exercising or serving or studying the way we want to. And so Lent comes along like a much-needed drill sergeant, yelling, “Get up, you maggot! Time to do your spiritual sit-ups. Give me 50. Oh, come on, you call that contemplative prayer? My 97-year-old grandma can center herself better than that.”

And this is fine; it’s good, in fact. Lent should be a time to get back into shape. It should be a time reevaluate the course our life is on and to make adjustments, that’s part of the point of the season. But Lent is not just about trimming the fat, or losing the fat, or losing talking about trimming the fat on Facebook. Because if we’re approaching Lent with the feeling that we can just breeze right on through it, then I think we’re really missing out on something.

Because there’s nothing light and breezy about the words we use during the imposition of ashes. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Ah. Hmm. Well, perhaps imposition isn’t such a strange word to use after all. Because if we really listen to these words, if we really hear what the Church is reminding us this night, it all might seem just a bit burdensome. It might seem like a burden to come to church this evening – on a weeknight, no less, and on a freezing cold weeknight, at that – only to be reminded that you’re going to die, just like everyone else in this room. It might feel just a little bit onerous to hear how sinful you should feel, how much repenting and confessing you should be doing. It might be that the upcoming 40-day journey through Lent feels like just the tiniest bit too much – too much time, too much fasting, too, much being put upon.

This is especially true when you are experiencing one of those times in your life when you just aren’t feeling particularly wretched. Perhaps you’re feeling as innocent as a newborn babe, or as wise and wonderful as a wrinkled old man. Perhaps you’re sitting here feeling as full-hearted as a bride or as giddy as a bridegroom. Perhaps life is good, and you’re feeling pretty darn good about yourself, thank you very much, and you don’t feel like you actually have much to repent for, let alone the fasting and the weeping and the rending your clothes and hearts.

Of course, Lent can also feel like an imposition when your life isn’t filled with sunshine and lollipops. Perhaps the imposition of ashes and the invitation to a holy Lent feels onerous to you precisely because life is already shoving you down into the dust. Perhaps your life already feels like a day of darkness and gloom, of clouds as thick as a plague. Perhaps you’re wondering why even bother repenting, why bother turning back to a God who lets this thing – this death, this depression, this divorce, this destruction – happen. Return to me with all your heart? Forget that, Lord, and why would you want this broken old thing anyway.

So how do we deal with Lents like these? How do we shove off this feeling of burden, this sense that we are being imposed upon in ways that we don’t want or can hardly bear? The trick, I think, is to reframe the word. Because the truth is that Ash Wednesday is about imposition. Just not in the ways we might imagine. For Ash Wednesday reminds us of the way God allowed himself to be imposed upon for you and for me. Ash Wednesday reminds us that God chose to let himself be put upon for our sakes, to let the cross be put upon his shoulders, to let our own sin be put upon his head. Ash Wednesday reminds us that God “made him to be sin who knew no sin,” so that through the life, death, and resurrection of his only Son we could actually become righteous and reflective of God’s image and likeness. And Ash Wednesday does impose upon us – not suffering, but love; not grinding guilt, but the gift of clarifying, reviving hope.

This is why we are all invited to a holy Lent. Not just those of us who want it, but every single one of us – the aged and the children and the infants at the breast, the content and the jubilant and the just so-so. Because Lent is about us – all of us – being swept off our feet by the imposition of God’s love upon our own tender, broken hearts. Lent is about acknowledging that you and I are so overwhelmingly blessed that we cannot help but fall to the ground, to the dust, trembling in the face of such blinding love and mercy. Lent is about being knocked off-center by the gift of God’s fundamental steadfastness, of God’s refusal to ever let us go.

So if you are filled with joy, return to the Lord and rejoice. If you are filled with pain, return to the Lord, even now, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” And if you’re filled with confidence and plans for the season, return to the Lord, with hearts open for God’s holy surprise.

I entreat you, then, on behalf of Christ, to put on all the fullness of this holy Lent. Let God impose upon you the weight of his mercy, the yoke of his forgiveness, the burden of his blessing. Repent and return to the Lord, and feel the touch of this holy imposition of love. For there, in this holy imposition, there in this steadfast love, there is your God.

 Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

18 February 2015, Ash Wednesday

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Tell No One

At the end of the little passage we heard read from St. Mark’s Gospel today comes the only commandment of Jesus’ that every Episcopalian loves to follow.  Jesus is coming down the mountain with Peter and James and John.  He has just been transfigured before them – his entire being glowing with light.  The great figures of the faith have appeared with him.  A voice from heaven has declared Jesus to be the Beloved Son of God.  The three disciples are terrified.  And as they are making their way down the mountainside, Jesus gives them the one, singular commandment that is dear to every faithful, church-going Episcopalian’s heart:  Jesus “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen.”

Tell no one!  Oh how we have internalized this sacred teaching, and clutched it close to our bosom.  No one could ever accuse Episcopalians of being uninterested in the scriptures and following their precepts to judge by our adherence to this order.  This instruction to keep silent about the truth of Jesus is a particular and recurrent feature in the Gospel of Mark – our patron here in this parish – so we, of all Episcopalians should delight to live into it with a practiced and sacred silence.  Keep our mouths shut about Jesus?  You don’t have to tell us twice.  Mum’s the word!  Wouldn’t dream about spilling the beans about any possible relationship we might have with Jesus – especially if it involves the suggestion that he is kind of special – even the Son of God!  Tell no one?  You got it, Jesus!  We’re on your side!  We have turned the lock and thrown away the key!  Just try to get us to talk about you, or to mention your glory!  We have nothing to say!

Tell no one!  Was ever another commandment so obeyed?!?

St. Mark tells us that it was not difficult for Peter, James, and John to obey this commandment either, at least for a while.  There are instance in the Gospels when Jesus instructs people to tell no one about him and they immediately start blabbing, but in the very next verse that follows the passage we heard today the evangelist says that the three disciples “kept the matter to themselves.”   How grateful we must be for their example.  For, when it comes to Jesus and his church, there is hardly a matter that we are not eager to keep to ourselves.

Perhaps the reasons Peter, James, and John, kept silent about the transfiguration of Jesus and told no one are the same reasons we so consistently keep silent about him.  Perhaps we, like them, are embarrassed.

The vision they saw, after all, was hard to believe, and even harder to understand.  How could it be?  What does it mean?  Were their eyes playing tricks on them?  Were they a little ashamed that they felt so terrified?  Peter had tried to take control and impose some meaning and order on the scene, but in the way it all unfolded, his efforts to do so are remembered as naïve and silly.

Who wants to be thought of as naïve and silly?  And who wants to build their faith on the stories of ancient visions the implications of which are obscure and imprecise?  How in the 21st century are we to be taken seriously if we open a conversation with our friends about what we heard in church today?  Let me tell you about the day Jesus started glowing…!  This is at least a little embarrassing.  In fact, in our own day it is even more embarrassing than it was for Peter, James, and John.  Just going to church is a bit of an embarrassment these days.  It raises all kinds of questions about what world you think you are living in.  Because we do not live in a world where people glow on mountaintops, and in which voices are heard emanating from clouds.  In our world if you hear voices telling you to listen to someone, then you need to see a shrink, not a priest, because you are probably a little dangerous.

There are more reasons to be embarrassed by Jesus and his church in the current moment than I can possibly list or explain from this pulpit this morning.  Whether it’s because religion and religious observance just seem outmoded these days, or because so many people think of the church (and religion in general) as fundamentally hypocritical, or because the long, historical catalog of the sins of the church and her leaders is so well known.  There are ample reasons to tell no one that for an hour or so each week – or maybe more – you come to a place where most of what we do is talk, and sing, and think, and pray about Jesus.

Scholars have reached no consensus about why Jesus so frequently instructed people to tell no one about him.  It certainly goes against the grain of our own conventional wisdom.  How could he possibly accomplish anything if he wasn’t well known?  How could he save the world if he couldn’t spread the word?

If you look closely at the text of today’s Gospel reading you will see that Jesus’ instruction to “tell no one” is qualified: “he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” 

Let us suppose that Peter and James and John took this instruction seriously.  And let us suppose that some time not long after the resurrection the three of those disciples got together and started remembering together the episode on the mountaintop with the cloud and the voice, and Elijah and Moses, and their rabbi glowing with light.  I imagine they compared notes, and maybe they had to prompt one another to recall precisely what it was that the voice said as it tumbled down to them from the cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

What an unusual divine command this seems to be.  The voice does not compel the three disciples to “do as he says.”  It does not provoke them to “follow wherever he goes.”  The voice does not lay out a plan for world domination, nor does it promise rewards in heaven to martyrs of the faith.  It only gives the somewhat benign instruction to “listen.”  But, oh, how hard it is to listen.  Harder in our own day and age, I suspect, than ever before.  And if it was obvious to Peter and James and John what it meant to listen to Jesus; it is by no means obvious in our own time what that might mean.

And yet, that is one of the chief purposes for our gathering in Christ’s name: to listen to him.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that our purpose is to listen for Jesus.  We gather together to train our ears like a compound listening device to identify the silent sounds of Jesus.  The church, we hope, will function like some kind of giant seashell that echoes with a distant sound that can’t possibly be contained within it, yet still makes the sound plausible, present, and deeply suggestive of the truth.

Listen to him.  Listen to him.  Listen to him.

Perhaps the reason we are still so embarrassed to talk about Jesus is because we have not spent enough real time listening to him.

Here we are poised on the edge of Lent – a time of the church year when we know we are supposed to do something, but we are not always sure what we are supposed to do.  I wonder if we should allow for the possibility that we are just supposed to listen.  Maybe there is a voice encouraging us to listen during these weeks of Lent that lie ahead of us.

Maybe if we listen, we will begin to hear the songs of peace that Jesus wants to teach us, maybe he will help us to find ways to feed the hungry, help the poor, care for the planet, and be the better versions of ourselves that we sometimes want to be.

Maybe we have to listen, just sit and listen for Jesus before we’ll ever be able to listen to Jesus.

What would be wrong with spending five weeks or so just listening in church?  This was God’s prescription for Peter and James and John after the embarrassment of the transfiguration, when the three of them – singled out by Jesus to be his inner circle – proved to be naïve and silly, and easily embarrassed, if you ask me.  God’s command (if you want to call it that) in the face of such embarrassment was to listen.  This is his Son, the Beloved; listen to him.

Let us help each other listen for Jesus in hopes that listening for him will allow us to listen to him. 

And weeks from now, when the winter has warmed, and the ice has thawed, and the tulips are opening, and the Cross has been erected, bled upon, and taken down again, and the empty tomb is shown again to be just as empty as it always has been.  Then, if we have been listening, maybe we’ll be brave enough – having listened carefully, prayerfully, and hopefully - maybe then we’ll be brave enough and eager enough to want to tell someone about it!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

15 February 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Confession of St. Peter

Eleven days ago, when militant Islamists in Paris gunned down cartoonists in the offices of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo, a chill went through our hearts.  We all know it wasn’t the first terrorist attack in a big western city.  It wasn’t even the most brutal act of terrorism in world news that week, tragically: Boko Haram killed two thousand people in Nigeria during that same span of time.  But the attackers in Paris knew what the impact would be of their partially symbolic action.  We westerners pride ourselves on freedom of the press.  We pride ourselves on tolerating a diversity of views.  Lots of us grew up reading Mad Magazine.  Some of us are big fans of The Onion, or Jon Stewart.  Some of us lament the passing of what we call the “Stephen Colbert persona.”  An attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris would frighten and radicalize even leftists who have long opposed American and European policies in the Middle East. 

And it did work to some extent, didn’t it?  Violence does cause fear.  On the one hand, there was a massive, and welcome, show of support for the slain journalists.  The slogan “Je suis Charlie”—I am Charlie—began to appear everywhere.  And, predictably enough, many of the entrenched debates in our culture acquired a renewed sense of urgency and vigor.  Just how fiercely do we all support freedom of speech?  What exactly are the ethics of satire against a violent oppositional force that claims to speak for a stigmatized religious and cultural minority?  We heard from all the annoying voices on the left and right, some of whom we agreed with, and some of whom left us muttering angrily over our coffee and newspaper at the breakfast table.  Everybody jumped in.  Everybody took a stand.  Everybody was required to.  Presidents and Secretaries of State who did not physically stand with the protesters were apologetic.  Popes whose comments were taken to imply a less than fully sympathetic stance were roundly criticized.  “#Je suis Charlie” was met with the hashtag “je ne suis pas Charlie”—I am not Charlie.  And then we had to read the article that explained why not being Charlie was really the answer to the violent conflict that increasingly besets us. You either had to be Charlie or not be Charlie last week, as pundits and thoughtful observers tried to find a place to stand that made them feel they had the correct response to this terrifying attack. 

“I am Charlie.”  “I am not Charlie.”  All in all, however well intended, a disheartening struggle.  All in all, a discouraging chorus of voices, in my view.  All in all, a reduction of complex issues into the politics of the public gesture and the catchy slogan.

It’s an unsettling backdrop for this morning’s Gospel.  Against this backdrop, we may hear Jesus at Caesarea Philippi, asking his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  We can hear in Matthew a distant historical echo of the debates that were swirling around Jesus: “He is John the Baptist”; “He is Elijah”;  “He is Jeremiah.”  Faced in their own day with something frightening that they couldn’t control, the inhabitants of first-century Palestine, like us, divided into camps and argued.  And it sounds, at first, as though Jesus himself were taken in by their gossip, as though he were looking for a high number of “likes” on Facebook, or re-tweets.  It almost feels as though he were engaging in impression management or message control or whatever it is that media consultants tell clients to watch out for these days.  It’s easy for us to imagine that he’s happy Peter got it right because he is concerned with his brand.  And that would make our own task easy, too, as hearers of this Gospel.  All we have to do is get the brand identification.  We have to know that Jesus is the Messiah, not a prophet.  #je suis justified.

What’s harder for us, things being what they are in our world, is to see that Jesus wants us to do something more than “friend” him on Facebook.  Getting the language right, knowing what we are meant to say and believe about Jesus, is far and away the easiest part of discipleship, even if we struggle to believe.  Identifying with the right answer is such a reflexive gesture for us.  But an abstract identification with Jesus as the Messiah doesn’t by itself get us or the world very far.  The world is already full of Christians who wear the label unthinkingly, and that world is a mess.  If we aren’t careful, our profession of faith will become one more badge that we wear to demonstrate that we are superior, right-thinking, and in control of the baffling mysteries of this universe in which we live.

Jesus wants much more.  Jesus wants to build his church on us.  He wants our fundamental confession of faith to be the building block of something much larger.  He doesn’t tell Peter, “Great, you’ve got it now. Think up a great meme and we’ll go viral.”  On the contrary, he tells the disciples to remain quiet about who he is, because he has deeper work to do.  And in later verses that are left out of this morning’s Gospel, Jesus begins to teach the disciples that he will go to Jerusalem and be killed, and rise from the dead.  That’s when we realize that Peter’s confession, profound and true though it may be, is superficial unless it’s sacrificial.

Christian faith, that is, is superficial and even destructive if it isn’t about telling the truth about how hopelessly sinful we humans are and how desperately we need the salvation of our God.  Christian faith is broken if it can’t address the real trouble we are in.  Christian faith is just a gesture if it doesn’t teach us that the people we resent, ignore, exclude, despise, fear, and even torture and kill are people in whom God dwells.  They are the people in whom God very pointedly dwells.

Jesus built his church on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith, not because it was an A+ answer but because it was a first step into the deep mystery of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  “If you really know who I am,” Jesus is saying, “you will follow me into the truth that frightens you: the truth about dropping your defensiveness, surrendering your desire to win, surrendering your compulsion to look blameless.”  If we really know Jesus as our Messiah we will be on the road to Calvary.  We will be learning to acknowledge that we are part of what Christ dies about, that we are ourselves caught up in systems that oppress and kill innocent victims.  That there is no “us” vs. “them,” and in God’s eyes there never will be, and there never can be.  We will stop looking for the perfect stance and the perfect gesture.  The cross of Christ says everything we need to say.  The cross of Christ, which strips away our pretensions, gives us the only identity we need.

This is the full confession of Christ’s kingdom.  This is and always will be the rock upon which Jesus builds his church.  Our salvation comes from knowing that in and beyond the suffering of the innocent is God’s unceasing redemption of the world. 

This week, beginning as it does with our celebration of the Confession of Peter and ending next Sunday with the feast of the Conversion of Paul, is a week that we set aside to pray for Christian unity.  Many of us will gather at the Roman Catholic basilica this Tuesday night, at the invitation of the Catholic Archdiocese, and we will humbly ask God’s forgiveness for our sad divisions and our bitter history of mutual contempt.  In its quiet way, this is a beautiful step toward acknowledging that we, the church, the rocks upon whom Jesus has built, are forever in need of his forgiveness and redemption.  It is a quiet way of trying to be Christian, with God’s help.  It acknowledges that we have no righteous stance of our own from which to preach to others.  It is the work of repentance that God offers us for our genuine salvation. It won’t have the viral appeal of a hashtag or a meme, and it won’t in all likelihood leave us feeling as though we have won out over any enemies.  But it will allow the grace of God to work through us, and it will help us take some small step away from the “us vs. them” mentality through which we are forever working destruction.  Can you join us?  Not so much to take a stand, but to ask for help?  That’s all we need to say, and we need to say it more than ever.  

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

18 January 2015

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia