Sugar Snap Peas (Or, Where Rainbows Come From)

Years ago in Australia I got to know a couple who regularly had me over for dinner.  Ray was on the Vestry of his local parish, and his wife Christine was a wonderful cook and hostess.  She had style and grace and understated flair.  She held dinner parties apparently without effort, and made you wish you could do it just as well and just as easily.  And somehow you could just tell that she came by this talent long before Martha Stewart was ever on the scene.

I was eager both to return the favor of a home-cooked meal, and to impress Christine, so I invited them over for dinner.  And although I cannot remember most of what I served them that night, I know that the menu included sugar snap peas – a favorite of mine – probably sautéed in some butter.

The cooks among you will know that sugar snap peas have a sort of a stringy thing that runs down the seam of the peapod.  Interestingly, this feature of the anatomy of a peapod is called a “string,” and although it is entirely edible, it is also somewhat tough, makes the snap peas hard to chew, and can get stuck in your teeth.  All of these features tend to undermine the enjoyment of the sweetness of a delicious snap pea.  The thoughtful and conscientious cook will, therefore, remove the strings from the peapods before cooking and serving so that his guests do not have to deal with them.

I don’t remember precisely what happened in the preparation of that meal.  I can’t recall if I was just running late, or if something went wrong, or if I just forgot, or if for some reason I decided that removing the strings from the snap peas was unnecessary.  Keep in mind, I was eager to impress Christine – I was certainly seeking her approval, for whatever reasons.  And while I can remember no other details of the meal, I can remember this: when I cleared Christine’s plate after the main course, on her plate, off to the side, was a perfect little pile of strings from the sugar snap peas that she had delicately and unobtrusively removed herself before consuming the peas, since I had not seen fit to do so.  How she accomplished this without me noticing I cannot say. 

Whether Christine meant it this way or not, I felt chastised by each and every little green string on her plate.  It was not only that I had not bothered to remove the strings myself – it was also that I realized I had wanted to do so, but had somehow managed not to.  So the chastisement of the strings was joined by an inner chastisement of my own, for failing to do what I wanted to do for someone who had treated me well, and whose kindness I wished to reciprocate.

Living as we do in a world that can hardly talk about sins any more, I am introducing the green strings of my sugar snap peas as a way of easing you into the topic.  Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I think that sin is not a very big topic these days, even among church-goers.  I simply do not run into too many people who are worried about their sins.  In fact, I think that a great many people consider that sin is a topic that the church would do well to talk about even less than we do (which would not be easy in most Episcopal churches), since any discussion of sin shows you to be out of touch with the current milieu.

Hence, the strings of the sugar snap peas – for if you like, you can think of them as stand-ins for sin.  They represent things I had not done but ought to have done, at their most obvious level.  But all I have to do is imagine looking at that plate in a mirror in order to see the snap pea strings as things I have done that I ought not to have done.

As Lent begins, I like the snap pea strings as a stand-in for my sins because of the way the strings themselves accused me: piled there on the plate.  Christine didn’t have to say a word.  I suppose she could have complained out loud, but she is much too genteel.  Or, she could have eaten the peas with their strings on.  But I rather imagine that Christine saw it as a teaching moment that required nothing to be said.  It’s crucial to my understanding of this lesson, I repeat, that I wanted the same thing that Christine wanted – I wanted to serve her string-less snap peas.  If I hadn’t cared I’d not have felt chastised, and I certainly wouldn’t be talking about it all these years later.

Lent comes around like clockwork and invites me and you to consider the strings of the sugar snap peas.  This holy, introspective season suggests – with more words than my friend used – that we each look carefully to find the things we have left undone that we ought to have done, as well as the things we have done that we ought not to have done.  Look for the little piles of green strings.  And let’s face it: I’ve done worse than leave the strings on a few snap peas now and then.  Maybe you have too. 

But you have to start somewhere, and in a world that is dubious about the discussion of sin maybe it’s best to start with the small things.  Once we are comfortable admitting the small stuff maybe we’ll have the nerve to move on to the big things – and believe me, it can take some nerve to own up to your sins.

There is a common perception out there, that acknowledging sins is something that could only be required by an angry God in search of appeasement.  But here again, my little dinner party suggests a different possibility.  Christine directed no anger or judgment of any kind toward me; she simply allowed my work to speak for itself.  And of course, I already knew that her aspirations for the dinner were really no different than mine – we wanted the same thing: string-less peas.

I’m not entirely sure that God requires anything more than that.  I suspect that God expects our sins to speak for themselves, too – because he is always calling us closer to him, and our sins push him away.  And maybe God hopes to use Lent as a teaching moment wherein we may discover that we want the same things God wants.  This is not the conventional way of thinking about sin, or about Lent which usually begins with the assumption that our wills and desires must be bent by force in order to comply with God’s will and desire.

But every now and then we begin Lent, as we have this year, with a second story – the story of the rainbow that God set in the heavens as a reminder of his covenant of love.  In Genesis, God says the rainbow is a reminder to him that he should never again destroy the face of the earth, never again hold our sins so firmly and harshly against us.  It is almost as if we are watching God come to the realization that he wants the same things for us that we do: to live honest, happy, healthy lives.

I have long thought that the story of the Flood and of Noah’s ark was first told when some Mesopotamian child asked her father or her mother where rainbows come from.  That lucky child had a great story-teller for a parent, who backed way up to tell of a time when “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil.”  And so unfolds the story of the building of the ark; and the gathering of the animals, two by two; and the rain, and destruction; and the raven, and the dove with the olive leaf; and finally the rainbow – God’s sign of his covenant of love to remind us and him that we want the same things, or at least we ought to, yes, we ought to want the same things as God wants for us.  And the story has been told all these eons because it’s true, even though it may be completely made up. 

But you can’t always find a rainbow when you need one.  So sometimes a little stack of the green strings from a serving of sugar snap peas will have to do as a reminder that God wants nothing more than what we ought to want – to be honest, healthy, and happy.

And the things that we have done that we ought not to have done; and the things we have left un-done that we ought to have done need not stand in the way of honest, healthy, happy lives … if we will only ask God to forgive us for them, and hang his rainbow in the heavens again and again, and teach us how to love.

Some day I hope one of my nephews, or some child in Sunday School, or just any kid at all, asks me where the strings on sugar snap peas come from.  (Although how this conversation would get started I am struggling to imagine!)  And I will tell the story of my dinner with Ray and Christine, and the little pile of strings on her plate.  And I’ll say how sorry I was about those strings because I’d meant to remove them.  And I’ll say that Christine never held it against me – even invited me to cook with her in her own kitchen after that.  And if there’s time, I’ll tell whatever child I’m talking to that it reminds me of an even better story – the story of where rainbows come from – and the point is kind of the same.  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The First Sunday in Lent

22 February 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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