True Handiwork

The rich young man had not always been the rich young man. He had always been rich, mind you, but he had spent his fair share of time as the rich young teenager and the rich young toddler and the rich young infant. And yet in all of that time, he had never once taken being rich for granted. For you see, the rich young man had a rich old man for a father, and the rich old man had taught his son a thing or two about the family business. And not the business of deciding how best to import fine linens or how to judge the quality of Persian perfumes or how much to charge for an ephod of oil or whatever the family business was. The rich old man had taught his son, almost from the moment his son's chubby baby fingers could reach out and grab the fringe of his prayer shawl, about the business of prayer.

The rich old man had delighted in teaching his son how to pray. How to sing the sch'ma, how to bless the bread of the Sabbath, how to listen for the whisper of the Ruach in his soul and feel the pattern of the law written in his heart. The rich old man had loved teaching his son how to seek Wisdom and how to give thanks when he found Her, how to chew on the meaty texts of scripture and drink down its promises like fine wine. And above all, the rich old man had loved to teach his son to pray the psalms, to let the music of those ancient prayers vibrate through his bones, to let their words melt into his being like honey on the tongue. Every morning and each night, in the market and at the temple, in times of work and in times of rest, the rich old man would reach into the psalms like a merchant reaching into a bag of pearls, hold one up, admire its luster, and pass it along to his son like the treasure he knew it to be. Create me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.And, of course, day after day, May the graciousness of the lord our God be upon us; prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.

And their handiwork did prosper, day after day, year after year. 30, 60, 100 fold, the rich old man and the rich young man saw their business grow and flourish. And the more they prospered, the more they prayed. And the more the prayed, the more grateful they became, for they were reminded each day that their prosperity was a gift of God. Prosper our handiwork, they prayed, and when their prayers were answered, they gave thanks, and they did not take their blessings for granted.

The old man and the young man were known in their village not as rich men but as men of prayer. They were known to always give out of their abundance to the poor. They took in an orphan child once who was the same age as the rich young man, and they sent bread and oil to a widow woman who was dying a slow, lonely death nearby. They worshiped regularly, never took the Lord's name in vain, and honored the wisdom of the elders. They loved each other with a great and abiding love, and the women and men who knew them often remarked on how the old and the young were blessed beyond measure - by their handiwork, by their prosperity, and by their love for each other and for their God.

And so it was not so great of a surprise when the rich young man decided to go hear this preacher he had heard so much about in his business travels. The stories of this man's words, his teaching and his miracles, followed the rich young man from town to town, and when he got back home he told his father that he had to go see him. The old man watched his son bound from the house with happy expectation in his eyes, and he prayed for him. Show your servant your works, o Lord, and your splendor to your children…and to mine.  But when the rich young man came home again, his eyes were full of confusion. I asked him about eternal life, he told his father, and he asked me what I had been taught. I told him that you had taught me from my youth how to follow the commandments, how to pray, how to live in this world that God has given us. He seemed moved by my answer, and I stood by his side, waiting for him to offer some word, some wisdom that I had never heard before. But he said nothing like this. He told me not that I was blessed but that I was lacking. Sell what you have, he said, and give the money to the poor. And then come and follow me. And what was I to say to that? Is not our wealth a gift of God? Prosper our handiwork, we pray each day, and are we not prosperous? Is not our handiwork blessed? Is not this the answer to our prayers?

The rich old man looked at his son that he loved so much, saw the pain in his eyes, and did not know what to say. He reached into his bag of beautiful psalms and pulled out only bits and pieces that he feared would be no consolation. Help me, God, seemed to be the only prayer in his heart. Help me to find the answer for my son and for me, an answer that will illuminate our hearts and minds, bring us wisdom and truth and right action. What shall we do? What shall I do?

But before the rich old man could speak a word, there came a tiny timid knock at the door. The rich old man tore his eyes from his son's head hanging low against slumped shoulders and walked to the door. He opened it, and there, standing before him, was a skinny slip of a boy, all elbows and shoulder blades with hardly any flesh to accompany his bones. Please sir, the boy said, I have heard that you are a good and generous man, a man who knows how to care for the orphan and the widow, for the poor and the lowly. I am hungry, he said to the rich old man, and there is no bread. My mother is sick, and my father is dead, and there is no bread. I am the oldest, and my younger sister cries out in the night for the pains in her stomach, and there is no bread.

And the rich old man looked at this boy, all skin and bones, and loved him. Son, he called, go and fetch some fresh bread from the basket, and wrap up some cheese and wine, and pick a few sweet dates and bring them all to me. So the rich young man dragged himself from his stupor and packed a cloth full of food for the poor young boy. His father called a servant to help the young boy home, and as they waited for the servant to ready himself they three shared sweet pastry and grapes together under the light of the stars. The servant came and picked up the cloth, heavy with food, and promised that he would find out where this boy lived so that they could send more bread tomorrow.

And as the servant and the poor young boy walked out into the moonlight, the boy turned around and smiled at the rich men standing in the doorway. I prayed, he said, his eyes open wide. I prayed that God would help me, and here you are. You are the answer to my prayer. The Lord our God is good and gracious, may he prosper the work of your hands for ever.

And the rich old man and the rich young man stood in wonder and watched that poor young boy walking into the night. They stepped inside and shut the door and looked at each other with eyes wide. And the rich old man asked his son, Could it be that simple? That when we were asking God to prosper our handiwork, he was indeed answering our prayers...but that we were thinking of the wrong work. It was not the business, with the spending and the saving that was our work. This was our work: feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Prosper our handiwork, we prayed, and God answered that prayer again and again, year after year, and you and I never knew how. Surely the Lord is gracious to us, and we did not even know how much.

I do not know how my story ends. Nor do I know how the Gospel story ends – Mark follows Jesus and not the rich young man into the next chapter. I do not know how our story ends.  And I think that this is very good news. Because over the coming weeks, you and I will have time, concentrated time set aside to wonder about our own work. You and I have time set aside to talk about the place our money has in our lives, to think about what our true handiwork might be. You and I have time set aside to pray and to listen for the invitation of Jesus Christ that will never stop coming – Follow me. Follow me. You and I have the time to learn to put down all of our stuff so that our hands are free for holy work. So teach us to number these days, O Lord, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. And may the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us. Prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

11 October 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Them Ain't My Cows

A photo flashed across my screen.  It depicts a wire fence surrounding an unkempt yard somewhere in the countryside.  A rusted old tractor is on one side, the plow attachment off to another, a tumble-down shed toward the corner, a farm house in the background.  Hanging from the wire fence is an upside down plastic pink flamingo, and a sign that is hard to ignore, somehow.  The sign reads, “Them ain’t my cows.”  There are no cows in the photo.

The sign in the photo could raise lots of questions.  Where are the cows?  Whose cows are they?  With whom was the property owner trying to communicate this vital information, and why?  But the sign provides a clear answer to only one question, albeit a question that makes no sense in the absence of cows.  But let there be no doubt: them ain’t my cows.

I don’t think Jesus had a very sophisticated signage program, since he had a pretty weak personal brand by today’s standards.  But I think he’d have found something intriguing in that sign hung on the wire fence located in the countryside of who-knows-where in America.  Especially since there weren’t any cows around the Judean countryside.  In fact, I think Jesus might have found such a sign useful in some of his arguments with the Pharisees, especially when they came to test him, as we hear they did in the Gospel reading this morning. 

The Pharisees asked Jesus if divorce is lawful according to the ancient religious law.  I don’t know enough about the politics of the day to know what sort of trap they thought they were setting for Jesus.  I don’t know whose agenda they were pushing.  I don’t know if someone snuck a county clerk in the back way to see Jesus just so the media would report on this conversation.  I expect that the exchange would have felt right at home in the current political climate, as the advocates of a particular point of view try to force others either to adopt their view or to disparage the perspective of their opponents.

I don’t know what Jesus made of it.  He first provides a perfunctory answer.  And when pressed, he takes a conservative hard line against divorce.  But in the context of the moment, there is no sense that Jesus is all that interested in the question.

Moments later, however, Jesus becomes “indignant,” Saint Mark tells us, not because of anything to do with the question of divorce, but because his own disciples are preventing children from coming to be near him and touch him.

What I wish is this: I wish Jesus had reached behind him and pulled out a sign in response to that challenge from the Pharisees, a sign that read: “Them ain’t my cows.”  It isn’t that the question of divorce is or was unimportant or un-interesting.  But, as with other questions posed to Jesus, he is not interested in the answer that his interlocutors are after.  (And it is very clear that they are looking for their own right answer, not for wisdom from Jesus: they came to test him.)  Who is my neighbor?  What must I do to inherit eternal life?  Is it lawful to pay taxes to Ceasar?  These questions are all asked by people who only want answers they have already decided upon, not by those who are seeking real wisdom.

But Jesus is not willing to give the answers people are already looking for.  And he often needs to turn the question on its head in order to teach about the kingdom of God.  (Them ain’t my cows.)

If Jesus had just answered the Pharisees that way – Them ain’t my cows – there would surely have been some children around who would have giggled at the answer.  But those children were being shooed away by his own disciples.  So Jesus saw the real teaching moment: “Let the little children come to me.”  Or in the older but still somehow familiar translation: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

And then, for the benefit of the giggling children: “Them ain’t my cows.”  It is a nonsense, of course, and no one appreciates nonsense like children.

Living in an age when religion is often considered a nonsense, we might pay closer attention to the ability of children to find value and meaning where adults cannot; to see a reason to smile where adults can only frown; and to hear the voice of love where adults insist on the application of law.  Jesus represents all these attitudes, although it seldom suits our purposes to remember him this way. 

We have much in common with those who wanted to keep the children away from Jesus, and this has become a problem for the church.  We have made it almost as difficult to bring children to Jesus as it was to bring them to see the pope.  We have erected barriers, security measures, and checkpoints.  We have wrapped Jesus in armor of our own design so that nothing can threaten our idea of him.  And if we allow the occasional interloper through the barriers for a kiss on the head, then we can pretend that we have not put up miles of fencing around the places he can truly be found, that we have not issued a limited number of tickets just to be in the vicinity of the jumbo-trons that show the images of him that we choose to transmit.  If we make it that hard to see the pope, just imagine how disinclined we really are to suffer the little children to come to Jesus.

What I mean to say isn’t that papal security is unimportant, but that we have become so expert at the wrong questions that we hardly even know how to do what Jesus asks of us – let the little children come to him.  Them ain’t my cows.

It would appear that one of the gifts of the current Bishop of Rome is his ability to re-define the question.  When all the encyclicals are issued, in the day when his ministry is evaluated, some of us are hoping, for instance, that the most important words he will ever have uttered will be these: “Who am I to judge?”  A question almost incomprehensible to many of his predecessors, especially in its particular context, that must sound to numerous religious ears as nonsensical as “Them ain’t my cows,” and even antithetical to the premise of the question about marriage and divorce.

Perhaps, then, as a church we need to learn to provide this response more readily to the questions and situations that so easily lead us to put the children outside.  Them ain’t my cows.  Perhaps we could use this nonsensical catch-phrase as a Pavlovian tool to redirect our attention and energy in precisely the way that Jesus tried to redirect the attention and energy of his opponents and followers alike – toward the care of children.

‘“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.’  What if we concerned ourselves for the next ten years with no other passage of scripture but these three verses?

To so many people today the image of the church (if they have one at all) is not dissimilar to that photo that flashed across my screen.  A wire fence surrounds a run-down yard, filled with rusting and out-dated implements that don’t work any more and aren’t even especially nice to look at.  A house is protected in the distance, but for whom?  The scene is empty of people, certainly no children.  Something cheap and leftover has been hung upside down on the ugly wire fence, and a meaningless sign proclaims a senseless message to no one in particular, and with no real urgency.  Them ain’t my cows.

Arguments about divorce – or gay marriage, or all sorts of other cultural issues – are not likely to change this picture, in my opinion.  Them ain’t my cows.

Bringing children to Jesus is the only real way to change this picture.  Not the Jesus whom we carefully guard and present as a more anemic version of our idea of our own best selves, but the Jesus who knows how likely we are to prevent children from coming right up to him and touching him.  If we could work on suffering the little children to come to Jesus, we might be surprised how many other things would take care of themselves – maybe even divorce, here and there.

Jesus wants a church in which children are welcome and encouraged to come to him, because such a church is a useful icon of the kingdom of God, “for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”  But we – and I mean the church far beyond Locust Street – we have perfected our role as disciples who drive children away from Jesus.  That a few can withstand our resistance is hardly proof otherwise.

It would be easy to get caught in the trap about the admittedly vexing question of divorce.  And it is vastly easier to do so than to put up with the hassle of suffering the little children to come to Jesus – at least as disruptive to us as it was to those first disciples.

But them ain’t my cows.  And them ain’t Jesus’ cows either.

Jesus is asking us, commanding us to suffer the little children to come unto him.  And that, my friends, is a very different picture: it is a picture of hope, and kindness, and generosity, and mercy, and sacrifice, and tenderness, and the willingness not to judge.  It is a picture of love.  And it is a picture of the kingdom of God – where little children who are crawling, and scribbling, and shouting, and dancing, and crying, and tugging, and snacking, and dribbling, and rocking, and napping, and running, and worrying, and singing, and jumping, and trying, and failing, and learning, and growing, and praying, and sighing, and hoping, and skipping, and playing, and suffering, and healing, and wondering, and yearning, and falling, and getting up, are all very much at home – for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

As for all the other stuff we could worry about: for the moment, at least, them ain’t my cows.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 October 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Siege Mentality

My brothers and sisters, I stand before you today as a fellow citizen of a city under siege. The barricades are up, the guards are at attention, and the jumbotrons are broadcasting steadily. They’ve taken over the art museum and Independence Hall, two important symbolic locations for reasons both cultural and political. The invading forces are led by an elderly man dressed all in white who rides a strange vehicle that allows him to wave to his followers at all times. Sometimes he keeps a lower profile, riding a smaller car with the symbolic name “Fiat.” The foot soldiers of this army include an astonishing number of women and children, distinguished by their supernatural ability to withstand hours of walking and standing. They seem just like us, but if you talk to them for a while you will discover that they have unfamiliar ideas about transubstantiation and apostolic succession, and a notable preoccupation with family values. They are known to carry their possessions in clear backpacks, which suggests to me a puzzling failure to worry about getting mugged.

Is this the wrong way to start the sermon? It doesn’t seem to be heading anywhere good, does it? Let me try again: My brothers and sisters, I stand before you today as a fellow citizen of what has temporarily and quite wonderfully begun to look just a little bit like the city of God. Most improbably, residents of Philadelphia have gone along with the plan to clear out their cars, and in some cases themselves, in order to make room to honor the religious beliefs of a group notably more conservative than many in this liberal city. But it goes beyond that, really. It’s more than just honoring someone else’s religious belief. It has become acceptable for many to acknowledge that the sheer presence of someone good, the sheer presence of Pope Francis, is electrifying. It has become acceptable to admit that, in a city numbed by the failure of its school systems and the violence of its streets, we long to speak and act boldly about caring for the poor and the suffering and the weak. It has become acceptable this weekend to welcome immigrants and praise them for their courage and their determination. In Spanish. Proudly. We can admit, in this country with a broken political system and a dangerous, caustic political discourse, that we long for things to be different. Suddenly everybody likes humility. When did that happen? I look around and it’s the same Philadelphia, the same USA, the same broken world, but it has been turned inside out and suddenly we can all admit that we are longing to live together in peace.

So which is it for you? The City of God or a city under siege? Are you like me, moving between the two from moment to moment? How strange to be in this condition, to be unable to tell whether I feel that my life has been invaded or whether I am feeling the stirrings of hope. And how very unexpected that this bright feeling of blessedness should come from straining to welcome people who may indeed disagree with me sharply. I suspect that this unusual feeling has something to do with the Holy Spirit. And I suspect that following God has always felt a bit like being under siege. The Israelites were liberated from Egypt, yes, but also subject to a long wandering in the desert and a set of strict rules that marked them as God’s people, and then exile from Jerusalem, and then the return home to a painful task of rebuilding.

And the disciples of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel this morning are also hearing about tough discipline and painful tasks. Jesus told them last week that they must learn to welcome a little child and be like a little child. It sounds lovely. And this week he is still talking about tender care for little ones, and welcoming strangers who don’t follow him. But it turns out that if they mess that up, if they put stumbling blocks in the way of the child or the stranger, they would be better off drowning in the sea with a millstone around their necks. And Jesus goes on: cutting off your hand is better than letting that hand offend you! And you don’t really need two feet, do you? And couldn’t you get along with one eye? This is totally outrageous. Yes, we want to be a “welcoming church,” but how many of us are willing to feel so radically dispossessed in the name of the Gospel? It’s one thing to welcome a little child, but who wants to welcome crazy Jesus?

It’s just possible that living in the City of God, or at least having a foretaste of what that could be, feels like living in a city under siege. It’s possible that there are places we can’t go and things we can’t do. Maybe there are things we just can’t carry with us if we want that special glimpse of blessedness as the Fiat rides by. Maybe that feeling that the world is ours, designed for our pleasure and our convenience, has to change if we are to live in peace and in real joy.

After all, what are we out there hoping to see? A man who represents the peace and love of Christ and Christ’s joyous, forgiving embrace of all humanity. And how does he represent it? By giving up much of what we demand for ourselves: freedom, ease of movement, comfort. Pope Francis is 78 years old and he is visibly exhausting himself in our midst, on our behalf. He seems sincerely joyful and humble, and tough. I’m not sure, but I suspect that for many bishops he feels more like crazy Jesus than the “Papa Francisco” we think we know and love.

Everyone will be salted with fire, Jesus tells us. Salt will flavor us and will also purify us. We crave it but we dare not make use of its sharp metallic tang without some sense of discipline and limitation. Living the life God has planned for is never going to be the same as doing what comes easily. When Jesus comes to town he takes up a lot of space and brings with him a whole giant crowd of people that we may or may not feel like loving. We may or may not want to be identified with his followers. The joy of his presence will be real, I suspect, exactly in relation to the extent that his presence makes us uncomfortable.

But the celebration is real. If we are feeling nudged in some way by the presence of this leader in our city, even if we are only moved to watch a bit of television coverage and marvel at his stamina, we are marveling at something about God’s very real call to each one of us. It seems that we are hard wired to respond to grace. Humility and self-giving speak to us. Something reaches us, as it reached the disciples, even when they balked at what God was telling them. Mark’s Gospel ends with the disciples in fear and doubt. Their experience of God among them is a trial by fire. Nothing comes easily, and they don’t get it right. And out of that baffling experience comes their salvation and ours. Out of that discomfort comes the joy that we are looking for. Only a figure as austere as this Jesus can speak to our world, with all its willful, self-induced suffering in the name of pleasure.

We are all salted with fire. The words may never make sense to us but the experience is visceral. And the hope is real.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

27 September 2015

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia