God the Sender

God the Sender

My Recording

It is a good news story, in the end. The people of God are threatened; they cry out to the Lord, and the Lord hearkens unto their cry and saves them from certain death. Happy ending, happy story. But there is one moment that makes this story from the book of Numbers seem a little less than happy, one zinger that makes this seem like not-quite good news.  

The people of God have been wandering in the wilderness for-absolutely-ever at this point. They know that they should be grateful – they’re free now, free because of God, who sent Moses, who sent plagues, who sent a warning and careful instructions about lambs and lintels, and who finally sent a mighty wind to blow back the water of the Red Sea. The Israelites know all of this, but it has been a long, hot summer. They’re tired of dust and dirt, they’re tired of Moses, they’re tired of promised land instead of actual land. And so they start whining. Why did you bother bringing us up out of Egypt for this mess? There’s nothing to eat or drink…well, okay, there’s this manna and water springing from rocks but we’re so tired of it. We don’t like it, and you can’t make us eat it anymore.

And here is the sentence that sticks like gristle in the gullet: Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. Ugh. I mean, I get that the people are being a pain in the divine rear end. They’re ungrateful and selfish and they don’t have any spiritual stick-to-it-iveness. They deserve a good scolding, to hear God heaving an exasperated sigh and telling them how disappointed he is in them. I could even get on board with a good grounding – you know: that’s it! you aren’t allowed to go to the Holy Land for another 35 years. But really, poisonous snakes? And not snakes that just appeared out of the savage wilderness, but snakes that were sent. God sent the snakes, Numbers tells us. God sent the snakes to kill his own people. Not good news.

 It’s such not-good-news, in fact, that it’s tempting to try to work around this zinger. For example, we could employ the “stupid ancient peoples” theory. You know, people back then didn’t really understand the world, so they attributed all kinds of things to God. So we enlightened people who understand rain and snakes and wind and stuff can safely ignore those uncomfortable parts of the Bible because we can imagine some other explanation, like ancient near-eastern serpent migration patterns, or desert dehydration dementia. You can hear the arrogance here, but we’ve probably all had thoughts like this at some point, consciously or subconsciously. And of course there are things about the world that we understand in a more comprehensive, more molecular way than the ancient Israelites. But there is more to life than molecules. Isn’t it possible, no, probable, that these people were wise in a different way, that they knew deep truths even without having all of the facts? And wouldn’t we be stupid to reject their lives as having nothing to teach us about our own?

We could also try to work around this zinger by trying to split God in half. We could say, well, that was the Old Testament God, who was, to be honest, kind of a jerk. He was always venting his wrath and wiping out nations. But then Jesus came along and showed us the New Testament God, the God of love, God your BFF, who is like a soft pillow of mercy floating on a cloud of forgiveness covered in compassion sauce. The problem with this approach is not only that it’s theologically harmful, it’s also deeply unscriptural. To put it more simply, Jesus didn’t think this way. Jesus was a big fan of the Old Testament, or, to borrow a helpful rephrase, the Older Testament. This Older Testament God was Jesus’ God. Jesus preached only continuity between the God of his ancestors and the God he called Father, taught a fulfillment of the ancient law and a new covenant built on God’s righteousness and lasting promise. So this work-around doesn’t work either, because there’s no working around this zinger if Jesus didn’t want to.

There is a third way, of course, to work around this zinger. And that is to just ignore the whole story, to assert that God is inherently capricious – full of tenderness one moment and dialed up to full smiting mode the next. Why worship a God like this at all? Why pay him any attention? Frankly, why acknowledge that such a God might even exist? We can choose to reject the zinger, the story, the whole kit-n-caboodle, and in the process, allow none of it to have any impact at all on our lives. Which, frankly, would be a terrible shame. Because this is a good news story, in the end. There is grace here for us, even in that zinger of a sentence, if only we are brave enough to look at it full in the face.

We have to be brave, you and I, because this story is, at its heart, about sin. The people of God aren’t just whining here. They’ve whined before, and God’s response in those cases has been to get a little annoyed and then to send a lot of help – manna, quails, water from dry places. But this time, the people are actually turning away. They speak against God, and their words carve out a chasm of discontent and doubt between them and their Creator. Their actions separate them from God’s purpose and plan. This is sin. So these snakes are not a penalty for the people’s complaining; the snakes are a corrective for extreme, potentially fatal missteps.

But still, those snakes remain a pretty frightening thought. It’s uncomfortable to imagine God punishing his children – punishing us – for anything. But honestly, what is the alternative? Would we really prefer to have a divine doormat, a God who looks upon us down here in the sandbox, whacking the devil out of each other like three year olds, and says, Ooh, that looks like it hurts, but I guess they’ll grow out of it? Or a God who looks down at us grabbing toys and throwing sand in each other’s eyes and says, let them have at it because I just don’t care anymore? Or might it be okay to imagine a God who would look down at his people and say: stop that! and take our toys away? Might it be okay, even good news, to imagine a God who would actually correct us because he hasn’t given up on us yet?

Of course, the truth is that 99.9% of the time, God doesn’t have to do any stomping at all, for our sin carries its own reward. We speak against God, step off in the wrong direction, and find ourselves running from serpents in a wilderness of our making. The wages of sin is death, and you and I do more in our own lives to contribute to our own suffering than God would ever do. Let me be clear: when I’m talking about these kinds of corrections, this kind of punishment, I do not mean the deeply unhelpful platitudes spoken, however kindly, in hospital emergency rooms and around gravesides about God not sending more than we can handle or testing us to make us stronger. God does not send us cancer to test how faithful we are or Alzheimer’s disease to make us stronger through misery. But God does try really hard to get us back on the right path. And to borrow a phrase of Anne Lamott’s – sometimes he can do this by gently tapping us on the shoulder, and other times he has to stomp on our feet.

But even if we do imagine that God might someday send snakes, there is reassurance there. Even in the shadow of that zinger, there is reassurance that God will do even that to bring us back to him, and that that is not all of the story. Because God has always known that he would do much, much more than send a shake on the shoulder or a snake in the grass. God has always known that he would do much, much more than sending a bronze snake lifted on a staff to ward off  the deaths of a few. God does not only send snakes. God also sent his Son, not to condemn us, but to save us. The wages of sin is death, but God is more interested in gift, the gift of grace and the chance to once again be wholly his. There is no zinger of pain or suffering or death that God has not experienced in his own self, not cross that we are ever asked to bear alone. Those zingers are not the end of the story. The end of the story is no end at all. The end is eternal life. The end is Jesus Christ, lifted up on a cross so that everyone may come and see, take and eat, and to look up and see life and light and hope, even when the snakes are biting. This story is, in the end, and in the beginning and in all of the steps and stumbles inbetween, a good news story.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

15 March 2015, Laetare Sunday

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The Marketplace

The Marketplace

Ftr. Mullen 3.8.15

Despite the frequent objections that he is obtuse, remote, and unclear, at crucial moments God has been know to pronounce and provide specific, detailed instructions.

In the beginning, when God creates the universe, he provides detailed instructions as he calls the world into being, day by day, even though he is only speaking to himself.

When God reconsiders his creation, and plans to scrap it and start again, he gives Noah detailed instructions on how to build the ark, cubit by cubit.

When God calls Abraham into a covenant of love, he lays out detailed expectations about the land Abraham is to occupy.

When God is moved to lead the Hebrews out of their bondage in Egypt he lays out detailed plans for Moses, and provides daily instructions for him.

And when God wants to articulate his laws to Moses, he lays them out in great and specific detail, beginning with the Ten Commandments and continuing to dictate all 613 commandments of the Mosaic law.

When God makes David king, and David wants to build a temple, God makes his intentions clear, and tells him not to build it

When Solomon becomes king and God decides that the time for a Temple has come, Solomon follows very specific plans, as though they were supplied by the hand of a divine draftsman.

When God’s people are driven into exile he gives specific and careful instructions through his prophets that they should persevere and endure.

This is one of the great preoccupations of the Old Testament scriptures: to lay out the instructions of God as revealed to God’s people.

Another great preoccupation of the Old Testament scriptures is the elimination of idols.  Idols are false gods: things to which we are willing to offer our worship and sacrifice, but that don’t deserve either because they are not real, they are not the one, true, and living God.

Again and again in the Hebrew scriptures – in the prophets and in the Psalms especially - we hear God telling his people to “repent and turn away from your idols” (Ez. 14:6).  And again and again God’s people are tempted - most famously when they crafted a golden calf while Moses was off speaking with God.  But other idols also tempted the people who’d been told, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.”

Of course, Jesus knew all this.  And I wonder if he may have had some of this in mind when he strode into the forecourts of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Nothing he found there would have surprised him.  It’s not as though he didn’t know that there were money-changers there, that there was an economy associated with the sacrifices of the Temple.

When we look back at this famous little episode in which Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives the money-changers and the merchants out of the temple, it is somewhat incongruous, a non-sequitur in the narrative of Jesus.  We can’t quite figure out where his anger comes from, where this aggressive attitude comes from, where this righteous indignation comes from.  It is an unfamiliar picture of Jesus and it is as though it doesn’t belong in this context, almost as if it is out of place.

And I believe that the story from the second chapter of John’s Gospel is out of place.  The clue that is the give-away to me is found in the 16th verse.  Older translations put his accusation differently:

“You shall not make my Father’s house a…

house of trade

house of merchants

house of merchandise

house of traffic

a market….”

But it’s the newer translation that speaks directly to our modern day and age: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

If ever there was a defining term for 21st century America it is the marketplace.  It is the accepted conventional wisdom of our day and age that the marketplace is and ought to be the defining paradigm for all things from ideas to religion to entertainment and/or news to the welfare and happiness of our neighbors to the availability of health care to college football.  The Marketplace should decide.  Adam Smith’s invisible hand is deemed superior to any other, including the hand of God.  We have arranged our lives to bow at the altars of the markets: from commodities, to national defense, to education, and even caring for pets.  The marketplace rules.  And none rules more mightily than the stock markets, where money is translated directly into power as quickly as you can say “IPO”.  A market-driven approach is seen to embody the wisest approach to all problems: education, food distribution, wealth distribution, etc. etc.  “Let the market decide,” is the watchword of our current age, as if everyone can engage equally on the playing fields of the market – as if institutionalized and systemic imbalance is not built in to the markets, as if the markets desire a level playing field the way water seeks its own level.  As if.

Mind you, most do not question the prevailing wisdom – it would be dangerous to do so.  For where would this parish be without its investments in the stock markets?  And what of the donors who rely on markets for their income?  The dynamics of market forces provide the warp and weft of American society.  One releases one’s grip on the fabric of society only with great hesitation and trepidation.

If the marketplace cannot be said to be our new idol, then at least we can say that its shelves are stocked with the false gods to whom we offer worship and sacrifice: entertainment, celebrity, convenience, status, wealth, power, and the greatest common denominator – money.  As a society, and as individuals we are obsessed with these idols… which is why everyone wants to win the Powerball, and why winning the lottery (one way or another) is the new American dream, having replaced hard work, modest but sufficient achievement, and a measure of happiness.

And since there is hardly a church out there who would not also like to win the lottery (one way or another), American religion seldom if ever offers any alternative to the significant allures of the marketplace.  At best we hope to find our place within the marketplace, and thrive on the marketplace’s terms.

This is why I think those few strange verses of the second chapter of John’s Gospel are out of place. Jesus’ anger, his aggressive attitude, and his righteous indignation are not directed at first century Palestinians, for whom the marketplace may have been a minor perversion around the edges of the Temple.  Perhaps his anger, his aggressive attitude, and his righteous indignation are meant for you and me, who have happily adopted a marketplace of idols as our home, and yet we still pretend to be followers of Christ.

However, tempting though it is to go on and on about the evils of the marketplace, I am not allowed to do it for two reasons.  First, because, it is ludicrous to do so, and you would probably stop listening to me if I did.  In any case, we are stuck with the very mixed blessings of a market economy, which, it has to be admitted, has brought a great deal of innovation, development, and, I daresay, good into the world.

Second, the text of John’s Gospel does not allow me to rant endlessly.  For, in this episode, Jesus is not condemning all markets and all marketplaces.  He does not tell people never to buy or sell again.  It would be going too far to say that he objected to markets on principle.  We don’t even know if the money-changers and the merchants stayed out of the Temple precincts for more than half an hour after his tantrum; so we don’t even know if Jesus effected lasting change there. 

But we have no record that Jesus himself ever went shopping.  And it would not be going too far to suggest that Jesus knows that you and I are gripped by the forces of a marketplace that is always seeking to draw our attention, to win our favor, to exploit our weaknesses, and to supplant all our other allegiances.  And among all the plans that God laid out, all the instructions God has given in great detail, none of them is for a marketplace. 

But God does have plans and instructions for you and for me – for his church and for all his creation.  His plan is for peace, and his instructions embody love.  These currencies habitually fare poorly in the marketplace, since power and violence sell so much better.  And Jesus does become angry, aggressive, and righteously indignant when the marketplace encroaches on God’s domain – begins to take over those places that God intends for himself, even the most sacred shrines of his eternal presence: like your beating heart and mine, your fascinating mind and mine, your hardworking hands and mine, your shimmering imagination and mine.  These are the latter day forecourts of God’s Temple.  God laid out elaborate, specific, and detailed plans for them when he conceived of each and every one of us long before we were born, so that we would resound with the glory of God’s own image, and contribute to the building up of his kingdom.

But when our lives are dominated by the buying and selling of absolutely everything, and when that commerce obliterates the importance of everything else – including the worship of God and the sacrifices we might make to him – then we have a problem.  When the vain idols of the marketplace so enthrall us, then we have a problem – because they are false gods: things to which we are willing to offer our worship and sacrifice, but that don’t deserve either because they are not real, they are not the one, true, and living God

And when that problem has become so ingrained as to seem commonplace and entirely unobjectionable – as the money-changers and the merchants had become in the forecourts of the Temple – then we have roused Jesus’ ire.  Because the money-changers and the merchants were getting their due, but it was by no means clear that God was getting what was due to him – the worship, praise, and love of his people.

Polls tell us over and over again that America is a religious nation with an unusually lively faith.  And yet it can sometimes be difficult to see where and how God’s kingdom is being built, where God’s name is being praised across the cities and towns and countryside of this nation.  Perhaps this is because we have become so enthralled with our own shopping that we have become inattentive to God’s call, to his plan and instruction that we should love him, and love our neighbors, that we should care for the poor, the lonely, and the unloved.  Perhaps we have allowed idols of various shapes and sizes, many of them now digital – sold to us by a relentless marketing effort – to replace God in our hearts, and relegate him to a secondary or tertiary status that we get to when the shopping is done.  These are the tables that Jesus is impatient to overturn, having found a marketplace in areas reserved for God’s purposes.  Jesus comes charging into our marketplaces with a whip of cords.  And his instruction is not difficult to infer: having cleared the pavement or merchants and money-changers, he wants us to return the space to its intended use: the worship of God and the care of God’s people.

When Jesus was acting out this impatience in the forecourts of the second Temple two thousand years ago, not far away there remained a quiet and holy place, behind a curtain, where the Presence of God dwelt unperturbed and imperturbable.  For the loving kindness of God’s Presence is not a commodity that rises and falls with his moods, as we so often fear it must be.  God is constant in love as he is constantly present.  Which is why we come here where there is nothing to buy or to sell for the hour or so we spend with God in this place: to realign our sense of purpose with God’s intentions and instructions, by entering into his Presence, and to cast away the false idols of the marketplace that we really do find very appealing.

For years, my parents went to a small church outside of Boston.  They had an elderly friend there with whom they would meet every week after church.  And after Mass, and after Coffee Hour, they would collect their friend, and drive off together to a farmer’s market where together they would get supplies for the week.  Unable to drive, their friend could not have made it out to the market without my parents’ help, who would then take him to brunch and give him a ride home.

Amidst the roaring demands of a voracious marketplace, my parents’ pattern sounds almost like a good set of instructions.  First they offered their prayers and their prayers.  Next they connected with their neighbor who was in need.  And finally they ended up at the market, which was well beyond the space they had reserved for God in their lives.  I’ve long been grateful to my parents for the good example they set for me.  And now I see what a fine plan it is to follow, and how grateful I am that Jesus keeps insisting on clearing the space in my heart where I might easily otherwise just buy something.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

8 March 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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