For the Martyrs of Charleston

Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.”   (Mark 4:35)

I don’t know what David was thinking when he looked up at Goliath of Gath, the Philistine champion who was supposed to whup his behind, but I know what I’d have been thinking, and you can’t say it in church. 

Whatever it was, it was almost assuredly not what the disciples were thinking when Jesus said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”  They had no cause for worry because they didn’t know that their boat was about to get swamped in a storm, and that they would soon be on the brink of drowning on the very lake they had grown up around, fished in all their lives, swam in as children, sailed on every day, and depended upon for their livelihoods.  But the only reason that their fear and trepidation was not on a par with the fear and trepidation that David may have felt – or at least that I would have felt had I been in David’s shoes – is because they couldn’t see the storm coming. 

David could see the giant right there in front of him.  We are told that David talked a tough game, bragging that he had killed both lions and bears while tending his sheep, and declining the use of Saul’s armor.  But that doesn’t mean that he was entirely free from anxiety when he stepped out to meet Goliath.  His heart may well have been in his throat when Goliath told him he’d feed his flesh to the birds and the animals.  And I suppose that he might have had confidence in his own cunning and skill, he might have been certain of his aim, but that is not where he tells Goliath that his confidence rests.  He tells Goliath this, “I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand.”  David approached Goliath with a certain self-confidence, no doubt, but mostly his confidence and trust were placed squarely in God.

Back on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples still had not come to understand who Jesus is, their faith was as yet unformed.  They were not expecting that it would be tested on the lake that day.  They had no idea what they were in for.  All they knew was that Jesus had said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”

Let us go across to the other side.  It turns out that this is not an idle invitation.  This is the invitation that God essentially gives to Noah before the flood.  It’s the invitation to Abraham as he’s packing his things to wander in the desert with Sarah.  It’s the invitation to Moses at the Red Sea with the Egyptians in hot pursuit, and again as he sets out for forty years in the wilderness.  And it is the invitation Moses is not allowed to accept as he gazes down at the Jordan River, and across the valley to the Promised Land.  Let us go across to the other side.  When Jesus goes down into that river with his cousin John, he picks up the journey that Moses was not allowed to complete, but he will cross more than just a river.  This is the invitation that Jesus makes when he tells his disciples to take up their Cross – and invitation to go with him to Golgotha, and cross the river of death.  It is an invitation implicit in every mention Jesus makes of the Kingdom of heaven, and when he tells the repentant thief that “today you will be with me in paradise.”

Let us go across to the other side.  This is the fundamental Christian invitation whenever we stand at the font and stir up the waters of Baptism, whenever we stand over a casket to commend the dead to God’s care, and whenever we peer with St. John the Divine into the mystical wonder of God’s revelation of what he will do when all things in this world come to an end, and the new Jerusalem is built in the heavens and there is no pain nor death, nor sorrow nor sighing.  Let us go across to the other side: it is no idle invitation.

This has been a Christian dream – the dream of martyrs and virgins, and crusaders, and monks, and pilgrim, and priests, and many a simple child of God – to follow Jesus’ invitation and go across to the other side… of the river, the desert, the wilderness, the lake, the path obstructed by some giant enemy, the spiritual challenge of evil, pain, suffering, and loss, the vale of tears, and the great, unknown chasm of death.

And of course this was the great dream of those generations of slaves who were shipped to these shores in chains with no hope ever of returning whence they came.  The only shred of Good News that came their way was this invitation in the Gospel that they knew was meant for them: let us go across to the other side.  How sweet the other side of some fabled Sea of Galilee must have looked!  How ravishing the opposite shore of some apocryphal Jordan River must have seemed from their sweat-soaked, blood-stained slave-hood, even if these were only realms of faith found deep in the heart that they could sing about but never actually glimpse!  Let us go across to the other side!

Let us go across to the other side.  You have to wonder whether Jesus knew that he was leadings his friends into a storm.  And you have to wonder whether he knew that he was leading his friends into a storm on Wednesday night at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, when a room full of his disciples opened their doors to a young man intent on killing them when the Bible study was done.

What was Jesus thinking!?!?  Why, oh why, does he ask his disciples to get into a boat, only to lead them into a storm that he knows they may not survive?  And this is not the first time he has done it!  How do you do that?  How do you let your children be sold into slavery?  How do you let them suffer for a hundred years after slavery is abolished?  How do you ask them to endure such slow progress in the battle for their human, civil rights?  How do you ask David to stand up against Goliath, knowing that the armor doesn’t even fit?

God has left himself open to some difficult questions, if you ask me.  And I do not claim to have all the answers.

Jesus doesn’t come across with all the answers either, he just tells his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.”  And then a deadly storm breaks out while he is asleep. 

Most times when we tell this story we focus on Jesus calming the storm as if that was the point of the story, but actually, maybe it is not?  For, once the storm is calmed they are still in the middle of the lake, and the object is to go across to the other side.  So maybe Jesus calms to the storm in order to grasp a teaching moment.   He says to his disciples in the boat, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" 

Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?  (Remember that faith was the only thing David was meaningfully armed with when he went up against Goliath!)  The seas are calmed, but there they are in the middle of the lake.  The very next line in Mark’s Gospel, after this story is told, has been identified as the first line of the next chapter, but I think perhaps it should really be the last line of the previous chapter, and of this little episode.  It says this: “They came to the other side of the sea.”  Mission accomplished.

In our own day and age, this lesson in faith is important if we are to put our trust in God, because although we may call them by other names giants there still be; storms there still be; madmen wielding guns there be.  And there is no armor that can protect us against such perils.  And sometimes the only promise Jesus can make is that we will get to the other side.  There is another side, and we will make it there!

A couple of generations ago, the leaders of the Civil Rights movement transposed and translated this faith in the journey to the other side of the sea, as they translated and transposed the songs of the slaves into another song that became the anthem of the Civil Rights movement: We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day!  This was a way of linking their hope to Jesus’ invitation to go across to the other side.  To brave the storms of racism, bigotry and hatred, armed with little other than their faith in the God who promises to get you to the other side.

It can be frustrating to find that we still have so much distance to travel.  But don’t you know that Noah felt that way, too?  Abraham felt that way, Sarah felt that way. Moses felt that way, and Aaron his brother, and all the weary children of Israel.  God knows the slaves who built my own college in Virginia must have felt frustrated that there remained so much distance to get to the other side.

And I am frustrated when I look back at a movement that was in full swing when I was born nearly fifty years ago still has so far to go to get to the other side.  Because racists there still be, bigots there still be, haters there be, and mongers of hate.  The battle must not be over since they refuse to take down the battle flag, fold it up, and put it away in a drawer where it belongs.

But Jesus is still saying to those of us with faith (and maybe nothing more), “Let us go across to the other side.”  It is not just an invitation; it is a promise.  It is a promise that he made to his disciples and that he kept though the waters raged and swelled.

It is a promise that he made to those Martyrs of Charleston: to Sharonda, Clementa, Cynthia, Tywanza, Myra, Ethel, Daniel, Depayne, and Suzie: let us go across to the other side.  And it is a promise he is keeping with them right now, as he carries them in his bosom of love.

And it is a promise he makes to us, as he invites day by day to seek his justice in this world, and his hope in the world to come: Let us go across to the other side.

It is a promise we must not stop repeating in that beautiful translation of the Civil Rights movement, and we must breathe it, and live it, and sing it, and fight for it if we have to: We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day!

Storms are coming, but why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?  We shall overcome!  Let us go across with Jesus to the other side, wherever our faith should lead us!  Let us go across to the other side!  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

21 June 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Knowing the Present

Two weeks ago, the Saint Mark’s Schola had our end-of-the-year party out in the garden. Our Schola children and their families gathered outside around freshly washed strawberries and cups of ice cold water, carefully-cut-in-exactly-half doughnuts with sugary frosting and, of course, the ubiquitous bowls of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. We ate together and talked; the parents relaxed and the children ran around in the grass. At the end of the party, when everyone was heavy with treats and sleepy with sunshine, I took a group of the children over to a little piece of the garden just behind the west end of the church. I showed them some little scraggly green plants tucked up against the stone, and I told them, with a bit of my own doughnut-induced delight, that those flowers had a very special name. What name? they asked as they looked up at me, wide-eyed. Well, I said, anticipating their excitement, those flowers are called Erica.

Honestly, they were less than impressed. I realized later that it would have been a better reveal if the flowers had had one of their names, like Vivienne or Thomas or Claudia. But they smiled anyway, and then one of them asked, What are they going to look like? I don’t know, I said, we’ll just have to wait and see – won’t that be fun? And they smiled at me, again, and we walked away, me, confident that I had inspired some happy anticipation, some sense of mystery and wonder in those little lovely minds.

It was, I think, about 30 seconds later that one of the little girls, Emma, who’s seven, tapped me on the shoulder. They look like this, Mother Erika, she said, matter-of-factly, and held up her iPhone, upon which was displayed a photo of the Erica flower in bloom, tiny orbs of translucent white clustered around the ends of spiky green branches. How did you find this? I asked. Oh, she shrugged, I just asked Siri, and she walked away. So much for my ability to inspire mystery and wonder in little lovely minds.

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. But he would not be anxious, nor would he worry, for he would have a smartphone, and he would ask his phone, Siri, what will this plant look like when it blooms? And Siri would show him a selection of photographs from various gardening websites, and he would relax and put his feet up, for he was able to know the future before it happened.

Not the parable that we were assigned to hear today. As much as we might like to hear Jesus tell us that the kingdom of God is exactly what we expect, and that we can find a full description of it on the interwebs, this is not what Jesus actually says. There is no website, there is no Siri, there is no little Burpee seed package to stick into the dirt so that we know precisely what this kingdom will become. There is only Jesus, speaking to us, telling us that the kingdom of God will sprout and grow, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head, and that we know not. There is no way for us to know what the kingdom of God will look like before our time; there is no way for us to know our future in God before it happens. We only know that the kingdom of God is part of our present and the full promise for our future, but we cannot jump ahead to find out what that future might look like.

And this is, at times, supremely frustrating. When we are anxious or afraid, when the things that have supported the structure of our lives are suddenly pulled away, we long to just ask some all-knowing search engine, “What is this going to look like when it’s all done?” We don’t feel like this all the time, thanks be to God; sometimes our outlook is sunny and bright, and when we look into the future we imagine nothing but joy and beautiful blooms. But there are those other times, times when we look at the seeds around our feet and see only the dust; times when we cannot imagine that this prayer will ever be answered, that this thing will ever change; times when we hear I don’t know if we’ll have a position for you next year or I don’t know how I feel about you anymore or We’ll just have to wait for the test results; times when the thought that the next forty years of our life might look just like the past thirty fills us with a cold dread; times when we cast our eyes about and see only questions and what-ifs and how-can-it-ever-be-the-same-again’s. And in those times, we sometimes find ourselves wishing we could see just a bit of the picture of the future. If God has a plan, what is it? If the kingdom of God is growing, it’s growing into what? If something in me is going to bloom, what will I look like when it’s done?

Jesus does not say that we will get that information. He tells us that the seeds will sprout and grow, and we will not know how. We don’t get to know how God gives the growth, as Paul says; and we don’t get to see the flowers before they bloom. We will not know. But that does not mean that this is not a Gospel story. Jesus does not offer this parable to us as a dark tale of doom but as a pronouncement of hope and a call to action.

First, the hope – we cannot know the future, but we can know that our future is in God. Always. God is God of our pasts and our presents and our futures. God is. Always. And so wherever, whenever we go, God is there. When things bloom and grow, God is there, and not just there but there moving the earth, causing beautiful, mysterious things to sprout and flourish. When things wither and die in our lives, God is there, and not just there but bringing life out of death, making all things new. There is no future without God, which means that God is always in our future, no matter what things may look like, no matter what we may look like.

And with that promise comes the call to action. Because Jesus’ parable is not just about a man who sits around watching the grass grow. No, this man sleeps and rises night and day, looks at his plants, watches them grow, pays attention to them, sees the hand of God in them, and when they grow ripe he is ready for the harvest. Just because we cannot know doesn’t mean that we should sit around waiting for our futures to come with our eyes and hearts closed. We can live in a posture of attentiveness, rising day after day to watch what God is growing. We can notice new sprouts and new buds, gifts to be counted right now, in our presents. We can help other people to notice, too, plant a little sign like one of my neighbors did that says Plants loading – do not disturb this dirt! And we can prepare ourselves for the harvest, keep our hearts and minds and lives open to gather in the blessings that are ripe and blooming. We may not be able to know the future, but we can have ready hearts and hands to live it when it comes.

A few days after our Schola party, I told Geoff, our resident head gardener, about my experience with the kids and Siri and the Erica. I laughed at myself and wondered at them as I described to him the photographs that we had all looked at. And Geoff just smiled and said, Actually, that’s not what our Erica is going to look like – our flowers will be pink, not white. And I smiled, knowing that there was still a little bit of mystery and wonder in the garden after all.

We may not know what the world will look like in six months. We may not know what this church will look like in six weeks. We may not know what we will look like in six days. But God knows. For God is already there. And we do know what God will look like then – like a planter of vines, like a grower of seeds, a God who will help those who take root in his house to flourish and to bear rich fruit; a God who loves nothing more than a good surprise, a little mystery, and a lot of wonder. The love of that God is our future, and the comfort of that is our present. That much we know.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

14 June 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Don't Speak!

The First Rule of the Holy Trinity is: You do not talk about the Holy Trinity.  The Second Rule of the Holy Trinity is: You do not talk about the Holy Trinity.  These two rules ought to be imprinted on every preacher’s consciousness.  It would save you people in the pews a lot of grief.  It would also make a lot of sense, since the doctrine of the Holy Trinity – that God is three persons in one, undivided unity of Being – is the definitive teaching of the church on the subject of a mystery beyond our knowing.  Much discussion of the mystery of the trinitarian nature of God is either drivel (think of shamrocks) or mind-numbing (see page 864 of the Prayer Book and read through the Athanasian Creed).

A good alternative is not to try to speak of the mystery of the Holy Trinity at all, but instead to follow the ancient tradition and just sing about it: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!  This is not a bad idea, since we don’t need to know the meaning of the song of angels and archangels in order to join in.  And in fact this is our daily practice at Saint Mark’s and throughout the church: simply to enunciate in speech or song the thrice-holy nature of God, confident that if it’s good enough for the choirs of heaven, it’s good enough for us.  “Holy, holy, holy,” we say, and more or less leave it at that.

There is at least one good reason, however, to pause briefly and speak of the mystery of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It is worth stopping to ask whether or not this mystery has any good news to convey to us, God’s people.  And I contend that there are at least two very powerful strands of good news to be gleaned from even a brief consideration of the mystery of God’s nature.

The first bit of good news is that Jesus is to be found within that mystery.  That is to say, that within and throughout the incomprehensible nature of the creator of the universe, the animator of all life, the redeemer of our souls is to be found the One who is God’s own ceaseless desire to make himself known to us on our own terms: Jesus, the Christ.  Let me put that another way.  When we try to look into the total and complete mysteriousness of God, utterly beyond our knowing, we inevitably encounter the One who daily makes himself known to us in the flesh as our savior and our friend: Jesus.  This is one of the many paradoxes of God, and it strikes me as good news that every time we try to gaze, so to speak, into the complete un-knowability of God, we see One whom we already know.

The second bit of good news is this: that in a society that believes we can become the Masters of everything around us, and in which we strive to do that in order to gain power over others, God remains far beyond our mastery.  Put that another way: in a society that has harnessed the power of nuclear fission, and that uses that power to dominate and to kill, God remains yet more powerful than we are.  I see it as unavoidably good news that God remains far more powerful than the awful power we have accrued to ourselves, almost always at another’s expense.  Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!

Having broken the first and second rules of the Holy Trinity, let me reach for another cinematic reference point, this time from the Woody Allen film, Bullets Over Broadway, in which John Cusack plays a young playwright who is enamored of the aging diva, Helen Sinclair, played brilliantly by Diane Wiest.  Cusack’s character is full of words, and always has something to say, including a need to articulate his deepening and overwhelming love for the aging star.

The great woman knows with every ounce of her being that she is far beyond this young man’s league, no matter how drastically her star may have fallen since its distant zenith.  On the one hand, she is reassured by his fawning attention, which, on the other hand, she finds intolerable.  Whenever the young suitor tries to profess his love for her (which is often), the diva stops up his mouth with her hands and urges him insistently, “Don’t speak; don’t speak!”  Much as she wants the attention, she frankly cannot bear it since the words of the un-known and as yet unsuccessful writer can only be counted cheap in her star economy.  (Don’t speak; don’t speak!)

On Trinity Sunday, perhaps there is an element of this dynamic in our relationship with God, whose fullness is beyond our comprehension or our ability to describe.  We want, of course, maybe even desperately, to say something about God, out of a sense of faithfulness and love.  We are earnest in our desire to use our words and say something.  On the one hand, I expect God loves us for the desire.  But on the other hand, I imagine it is almost unbearable for God to have to listen to us try to say something about that for which there are no words.

And I suspect that in the economy of the Sacred and Holy Trinity – that mystery of undivided love that knows no boundaries nor any human definition - any words that we might pour forth would be counted as cheap by comparison to the immense truth, beauty, and potential of the whole universe, bound up or un-bound in the unitive being of the three-personed God.

And I delight in the small irony that such good theological advice should come from Woody Allen, which nevertheless, I suspect should be followed at this point, as I join with the prophet to proclaim that, “Woe is me!  I am lost!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!” 

And I feel God’s hand on my mouth as I try, in all my inadequacy, in a sort of mirror image of the prophet Isaiah, who at least has seen the Lord in his temple. 

And I hear those words, in this simulacrum of the heavenly courts, delivered not by tong-wielding seraphim, or even from scripture, but from a script, and they seem right to me: “Don’t speak; don’t speak!”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Trinity Sunday 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia