Listening Up

Ask an actor what he or she says during a crowd scene in a movie or a play and you’re likely to get a whole host of answers. When I was in plays at my high school, my director always told us to say Peas and carrots, under our breath, peas and carrots, peas and carrots, over and over again. Something about the sibilance of all those s’s made our conversation seem more real, he said. But other actors choose different words, or different vegetables at least. One actor I know said that she was told to always just say potato, potato, potato. Rhubarb is apparently another popular choice for a nonsense crowd word. And one movie extra said that a director had told her to repeat the phrase strawberry pie balls. I don’t know what those are, exactly, but they sound delicious, and I find myself wondering how anyone who’s ever played in a crowd scene ever escapes being completely ravenous when the scene is over.

But real crowds, we know, don’t sound anything like that. Real crowds don’t sound so much like a low, constant murmur as they do random snatches of discussions that get pulled out of the air and knit together into one strange quilt of conversation. You can hear that man on his cell phone, that woman talking to her girlfriend, that gaggle of teenagers all talking at the same time. You can usually pick phrases out of a crowd, but rarely can you weave them together into a story that makes any kind of sense.

I would imagine that this was what Bartimaeus heard as he sat at his normal post outside the city walls of Jericho. Because if that ancient crowd was anything like the crowds we know, not everyone along that road was talking about the same thing. Bartimaeus wasn’t hearing a wash of just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus coming towards him, but bits and pieces of sentences, fragments of conversations about absolutely everything under the sun. That man was lamenting the state of the roads and why the Romans always seemed to be resetting pavestones just when he trying to get his cart to work. That woman was talking about the leading candidate for prefect and how he gets his hair to do that thing on the top of his head. This woman was complaining about the head coach of the local gladiators, suggesting that maybe he really shouldn’t be working with professionals. This man wondering where his son has run off to; that woman wondering if her daughter will ever have a child; that man ruing his lack of good footwear; this woman moaning about the heat. Words upon words, words that faded in and out, snapshots of discussions that continued on long after they passed by Bartimaeus’s well-tuned and attentive ears.

But in the midst of all of this hubbub, Bartimaeus started to hear something else, something that stuck out of the normal noise. He leaned forward and listened up, concentrated hard enough that he started to notice a pattern, a rhythm to the random phrases he heard popping out of the air. Jesus…Jesus, yes him…from Nazareth…heard that he said it’s harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…but there were twelve baskets left over, twelve…the boy was foaming at the mouth, and then I thought he was dead, but he stood up and…put that child right there in his lap…he healed a blind man…healed a blind man…healed a blind man….

And suddenly, Bartimaeus wasn’t hearing fragments and broken pieces of conversation; suddenly he was hearing a story. He heard in that crowd the ancient story of the One Who Was Coming, the Messiah, the Son of David, anointed to heal hearts and nations, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to make the lame leap and the dumb sing. He heard in all of that hullabaloo a word for him, that the One Who Was Coming was here. And he heard it when Christ showed up, he knew it the moment Jesus was there. He recognized his presence, heard him pass close, and opened his mouth and yelled. He bellowed for all he was worth and would not stop until that Holy One himself stopped and listened. Which, of course, the Holy One did. It’s really no wonder Bartimaeus followed behind Jesus after his sight was restored. He had finally met the one who helped him to see – and not just to see, but to see how all of those little pieces fit together into one, great, improbable, magnificent story, a story for the world, a story for him. And those were words Bartimaeus wanted to hear for the rest of his life.            

There is hubbub in our world. There is hullabaloo and crowd noise and clamor. There is debate and posturing, speeches and excuses and rationalizations. There is so much information out there that it sometimes feels like it makes about as much sense as a crowd of extras saying rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb as if it means something. And then there is noise of our own lives. There are conversations about jobs and futures, about calling and vocation. There are conversations about health and safety, about cure and comfort. There are conversations about how you’re raising the kids, and how you’re being a kid. There are conversations about how you’re caring for your parents, and how you’re caring for yourselves. There are conversations about time and effort and money. There are conversations you want to have, and some that you don’t, conversations on the phone, face to face, screen to screen, mouth to microphone. There are so many conversations with so many words that sometimes it feels like it’s hard to weave them together into something meaningful, into a story that says something to the world and to you.

And so we get out of the noise and come here to this place to worship and to find our place in the crowd of people all called God’s beloved. And we take time to pray, to be silent and discover what God might have to say to us. But Bartimaeus shows us another way to do this, to find the story, to find Christ. And that is by listening up, by leaning in and actually listening to all of that hullabaloo. Because God does not only speak to us in places set apart and worship made holy. God does not only speak to us in stillness and silence. God also speaks to us in the midst of all of those other words. God speaks to us when things are noisy, when conversations are difficult or fractured or incomplete. God speaks to us with the “still, small voice of calm”* when we are otherwise surrounded by things that sound a lot like rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.

God speaks to us – we just have to be willing to pay attention, to notice when something piques our interest, catches our ear. We have to be willing to notice the news story that grabs our attention and won’t let go, the comment made by a friend that lingers long into the evening, that image haunts our dreams. We have to be willing to lean in to that little tug of the gut that says, listen here, pay attention here, this is for you. Christ is here for you, right here, leaning in to hear you, holding a holy stillness right in the middle of your life. Christ is right here, eager to hear what you want – healing, strength, comfort, bravery; a voice, a call, a home; justice, mercy, forgiveness; hands to work, a heart to love, eyes to see.

And this attention, this listening, is faith. It’s faith to believe that God might have a voice great enough to cut through the noise. It’s faith to believe that Christ is present, and that Christ has something to say to you, to all of these people called God’s own beloved, even those people in the crowd you find difficult to love. It’s faith to believe that even though you feel like you’ve been stuck sitting in the same place listening to the same noise for a long, long time, you still might hear Christ calling you to get up and run.

It’s faith to keep listening in a world with so much noise and to trust that you will hear a word spoken for you, to hope that you will pick up a thread of grace that God can knit together into a story of such redemption and love that it will fill your heart with indescribable joy. It’s faith to keep listening – and that faith makes us well. So lean in and listen up. And get up; take heart; Jesus is calling you.     

*from John Greenleaf Whittier

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

25 October 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

A Viral Gospel

A virus – in the biological sense – I am informed, is a “small infectious agent that replicates only inside the cells of other living organisms.”  Medical science began to understand the pathology of viruses about 130 years ago, and for nearly all that time there has been no such thing as a “good” virus, as there are, say, “good” bacteria in the gut, etc, that the human body needs and relies on.  But recently some scientists working with mice have begun to see that there are situations in which a specific virus can have a curative effect in certain circumstances.  So maybe it will turn out that there is such a thing as a “good” virus.

Such a development would make sense in a world where the concept of “going viral” has taken on increasingly positive connotations.  A video of a sneezing baby panda, for instance, has been viewed on line nearly 217 million times.  In a world where the competition for the attention of ideas seems to be ever increasing, your video, idea, image, or snippet of text going viral can be like hitting a jackpot of some sort.  And it represents exactly the kind of success we seem to value: immediate and far-reaching.  That’s going viral.

Viral phenomena were, of course, unknown in first century Palestine when the word about Jesus began to spread.

In the 14th verse of the 4th chapter of St. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle identifies someone named Luke as a “beloved physician.”  This person may or may not be the same person who wrote the Gospel attached to Luke’s name, and the Book of Acts, which is a second part of that Gospel.  Some scholars think, yes.  Other scholars think, no.  But let’s assume, as it has become commonplace to do, that the author of the Gospel of St. Luke was, in fact a physician.  St. Paul tells us nothing of Luke’s skill, knowledge, or wisdom as a medical practitioner.  We can assume that Luke was that rare kind of doctor who made house calls, since he is called a “beloved” physician, but beyond that we know nothing about his medical practice.  We do know that Luke cannot possibly have had any knowledge of viruses, which is somewhat ironic, since what he had on his hands was a virus – or at least something that was about to go viral in a way that has seldom been matched in human history.  He had the story of salvation that comes from God by the power of the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

How odd that we live in a world that is easily petrified by the threat of the spread of a virus (think Ebola), and whose imagination has more than once been captured by the potentially unstoppable nature of viruses, and which has seen the replication of a video of a sneezing baby panda 217 million times, and yet in the church we have so little confidence in the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: the Good News of the Son of God.  How rare it has become for us to expect from the Gospel any kind of viral accomplishments: immediate and far-reaching.

(In sincere fairness, it must be said, that a virus wreaked havoc in this church right here on Locust Street, and robbed this parish and many others of too many of her sons during the AIDS epidemic.  So it would be unwise of me to confuse the literal virus with the figurative one.  Please know that I know the difference.)

But I am struck, when I look at the modern American church and beyond, that we sometimes seem as though we have this Gospel on our hands that we can’t seem to get to go viral – as if its infectious replication inside other living beings is somehow a process we can’t get started, or maybe we are afraid to get started because we are not sure that it is good for people.

I wonder what St. Luke thought about the stories he collected about Jesus – beginning with the birth of John the Baptist, and going all the way to the Ascension of Jesus, just in Volume I!  I wonder if he thought he had a best seller on his hands.  I wonder if he knew he had something that would go viral.

He knew he had something that needed to be set down in writing for the sake of others.  Did he think of it as a prescription?  Did he believe that there would be healing balm in the words he penned?

Did he understand the weight of his words when he wrote that “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”?

Was he thinking of the Hippocratic oath when he related the words of Jesus, “Judge not, lest ye be judged”?

Were some of his poorer patients on his mind when he recorded the words of the Magnificat?

Did he wish it was in his power to send demons, swine-bound, over a bank and into the depths of a lake?

Had he seen the power of faith in promoting healing; had he known that power in the application of the practice of medicine?

Had he himself offered up his seat to another and said, “Friend, go up higher”?

Had he treated rich men in grand houses, and also tended the sores of poor men like Lazarus who beg at their gates?

Had he himself given away his money to the poor in order to follow the Way of Jesus?

And had he shared what was left of his fortunes with the church like a good and faithful steward?

Was it his privilege to host the church in his home when the bread was broken and the cup was passed, following Jesus’ command to “Do this in remembrance of me”?

Had he himself searched for the location of the empty tomb, hoping to find its stone still rolled away from the mouth of the cave?

Did he know people who had been there with Jesus when the cloud lifted him up out of their sight?

What did make of all these stories that he set down, all these sayings of Jesus, all the parables, and the canticles?  What did he think he had on his hands?

And what do we think we have on our hands with this Gospel of Jesus?

Do we know what we have?  Do we have any inkling that its power and appeal might be greater than the image of a sneezing baby panda?

Do we even suspect anymore that that there is something essentially holy in this text that should be replicated, word by word, without mutation, on the living cells of our lives?  Or has the Gospel fallen prey to the germophobia that characterizes so much of the rest of our society?  Have we become so well vaccinated that the power of the Good News of Jesus struggles to take hold in our broken world, our broken lives, our broken hearts?

If we come together today to give thanks for St. Luke and his ministry as either physician or evangelist, then it is for this reason: that by his ministry something very good went viral in the world, became infectious, contagious, and began replicating within the cells of human life.

And we need to remember the power of the ministry of the Gospel.  We need to know what it is we have here, and we need to make sure that it is not sealed up in child-proof containers, or with lids so tight that arthritic hands cannot remove them.  We need to have confidence again in the viral appeal of these stories – this wonderful collection of stories that Luke has given us.  And we need to try again to reclaim the power of narrative to shape our lives, to lead us to understanding, to transmit faith, and to express hope.

Who knows if Luke wrote down these stories with the idea that they might go viral, as they assuredly did?  What we know is that he wrote them down because he knew they would be good for us – better than any medicine he knew.

The power of medicine and the power of the Gospel are not mutually exclusive categories.  Often they work best together – I expect Luke knew that, too.  But in our world, the more we invest in medicine, the less confident we seem to be in Jesus and his parables, or his Cross, or his empty tomb, or his apostles and their remarkable determination to spread Good News.

Volume II of Luke’s writing – the Acts of the Apostles – is the account of the early church, and particularly of St. Paul, to make the Gospel viral: to spread it abroad, replicating it as widely and as wonderfully as possible.  No matter that Luke knew nothing of actual viruses.  He knew of the pathology of hope that restored St. Paul’s vision, flung him across the globe, upheld him through shipwreck, sustained him in prison, motivated his preaching, and shaped the growing Body of believers.

The mice at NYU School of Medicine were given significant doses of antibiotics, which had the effect of killing off the good bacteria that mice (like humans) need in their guts in order to stay healthy.  Then the mice were infected with murine norovirus, normally harmless in mice.  With the introduction of the virus, the guts of the mice returned to normal, and their health was restored.

There are, indeed, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

I don’t want to live in a world without antibiotics.  But as a thought exercise, swap the word “Gospel” for the word “virus” and see where it gets you: With the introduction of the Gospel… their health was restored.  And that’s just talking about mice!

Jesus is talking about you and about me – and St. Luke knows this, which is why he wrote down his majestic narrative of Jesus for us: he knew it would be good for us, even if we have not always been sure.  He knew that the word about Jesus was already beginning to go viral: “a report about him spread through all the surrounding country,” he writes.  And he knew that this report - expanded by his pen – would continue to heal the world and transform those who heard it.

On his feast – Luke’s feast - it is our challenge to learn to know this too, and to tell the stories of Jesus that he told, and share them with the world.  For the Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus, because he alone is anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year – even this year – of the Lord’s favor. 

That’s the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Pray, God, let it go viral!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

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