Requiem for Phil

There are at least two good reasons to pay attention to the rituals of the burial of the dead.  The first, looking backward, is that in tending to the dead in their burial we have a small, last opportunity to make amends for our failing to pay attention to, care for, or love someone while he was alive.  The second, looking forward, is that from our care for the dead in their burial, we can actually learn something about how we can do better in caring for one another while we are still alive.

In Phil’s case neither is an easy lesson to learn.  He seldom spoke at all, and when he did, it was only to reply in the shortest, most succinct way possible.  To inquiries about his well-being, his happiness, or his needs, he provided no information on which a helpful response could be built.  He declined help, and always claimed to be “OK.”  It was hard to help him: he seemed not to want your help, my help.  Not that any of us really knew what to do to help him, but a lot of us –his family, his friends (such as they are), his church – we would have tried, if he’d let us.

There was one thing Phil allowed us to do: he allowed us to let him in.

We opened the doors of a soup kitchen almost thirteen years ago and he came in.  He came here every Saturday morning, except for the short time last spring he was in the hospital.  He allowed us to let him in.  From that time on, he often slept in the gardens.  Did he want help finding shelter, or another place to stay?  No.  OK.  OK.  But he allowed us to let him in to the gardens, where, I guess, he felt safe.  Every day this church is open for prayer: two Masses most days, sometimes three.  For nearly all these thirteen years Phil has come to every Sunday Mass, and sometimes to every Mass every day.  He would sit quietly throughout Mass.  He would receive Communion.  He allowed us to let him in to church. 

He allowed Jesus to let him in too, as far as I can tell.  He knelt, day by day, at the rail; he stretched out his hands to take the Bread; he guided the Cup to his lips.  If that’s not allowing Jesus to let you in, then what are we doing here?  What am I doing here?

He allowed us to let him in.  And he allowed Jesus to let him in.

Recently a friend who has had a very bad year, with far too much death than is fair, shared an essay with the title that makes the point: “Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason.”[i]  Religious-type people are famous for claiming that everything does happen for a reason and that it must all be part of God’s plan that is just obscure and confusing to us, beyond our wisdom.  I don’t know.  Although I am sure that God’s wisdom is far beyond my knowing, I often agree that Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason.

Something happened to Phil.  His brother told me that Phil loved baseball, and that he’d wanted to become an umpire.  What a great dream!  What a great goal!  But something happened – I don’t know what.  And I can’t say that it happened for a reason.  I only know that whatever happened to Phil, happened.  Probably over a period of some time, when those close to him could not see it or figure it out.  Maybe Phil couldn’t see it happening himself.  So he couldn’t figure it out.  Couldn’t fix it.

In the article, “Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason,” the author writes these concise and thoughtful words: “Some things in life cannot be fixed.  They can only be carried.”

Some things cannot be fixed.  They can only be carried.

Phil did not carry much around with him.  He had a small bag.  I don’t know if he kept things elsewhere; I doubt it.  He didn’t carry much.  I wonder what else he was carrying that I couldn’t see; that couldn’t be fixed?  I don’t know.  I wish that I had known how to fix things for Phil, or that I had known someone who knew.  I think we can do better as a society than we do for people like Phil who have to carry some things with them that the rest of cannot see – but we see the effects of it.  Since we cannot fix things, since we did not, I am glad that we can do this last, small, final act of kindness for Phil and give him what used to be called “a proper burial.” 

Looking backward, we couldn’t give him a proper place in the world while he was living.  To make amends, perhaps, we give him a place in death, as we ask for God’s mercy on him, and on us, and we seek forgiveness all around.

Looking forward, we know that Phil was not unique; he was not alone as someone who had no place of his own to lay his head, to choose the words that Jesus used to describe himself.  Many others tonight and every night have no place to lay their heads in safety, warmth, and comfort.

Tonight, as we dream of heaven, we are dreaming not only for what we hope lies ahead for Phil, but in a way, for all the things he went without in this life (a feast of fat things, and of wine on the lees, for instance, to quote the prophet).  As we give voice to these dreams for the dead, can we convince ourselves to try to do a better job for the living who need our care, our attention, and our love – especially those who have to carry so much invisible baggage?  I don’t know what exactly that might mean, but I think if we tried harder we could do a better job, and sometimes that’s what’s needed.

But, of course, some things in life can’t be fixed.  They can only be carried.

Now all we can do for Phil is carry him, now that he can carry himself no more.  Now we carry his body from this place, which was as close to a home as he had these past thirteen years.  He can’t be fixed.  He can only be carried.  So we will carry him as far as we can.  To the doors of the church.  To the hearse.  To the grave.  And then we will give him to God to carry.

And God picks up all the things that we can no longer carry, and never could fix, and he makes them new, in a world of life far beyond our imagining.

And God beckons Phil to a garden, or to a city, or to gates, beyond which lies the promise of heaven.  And I believe that Phil will allow it; and I am certain that God will let him in.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

at the Requiem for Philip John Schultz

28 October 2015

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

[i] by Tim Lawrence, timjlawrence.com

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