Epiphany 2016

As if we need to demonstrate that the church is out of touch with the world around us, here we are to celebrate three wise men bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh.  With the possible exception of the gold, what could be more passé than this little tableau?  What could be more obsolete?

It has long since been a trope of Epiphany sermons that these men are probably not kings, that the scriptures nowhere tell us that there were three of them, and that their journey (if it ever actually happened at all: questionable) was not likely to have brought them to a Bethlehem stable 12 days after Christmas.  So I repeat: what could be more obsolete than the wise men?  Even their clothes are out of fashion, unless you consider what I am wearing tonight “in fashion.”

But it gets worse, for there is an old-fashioned, but important word at the center of the story of the Epiphany – used three times in the short section of Matthew’s gospel that tells us the story.  And this word is what makes the story really out of date.  The word is “homage.”

The wise men tell Herod that they are looking for the child-king of the Jews so that they may “pay him homage.”  Herod disingenuously asks to be informed of the child’s location so that he too may “pay him homage.”  And when the wise men finally do arrive at the house in Bethlehem, they kneel down and “pay him homage,” as they had intended to all along.

Homage.  In feudal terms it is a “formal and public acknowledgement of allegiance, wherein a tenant or vassal declared himself the man of the king… and bound himself to his service.”

Or, it is “a render or money payment made as an acknowledgement of vassalage.”

Or it is “acknowledgment of superiority in respect of rank, worth, beauty, etc.; reverence, dutiful respect, or honour shown.”[i]

And all these, I submit are woefully out of date ideas.  All fine and well for a Christmas pageant, but meaningless as a way of life any more, at least in 21st century America.  No one in our day and age, in our hemisphere (that I can tell) pays anyone homage anymore.  No one makes formal, public statements of vassalage.  No one outside of the military makes acknowledgement of superior rank, worth, or beauty, etc.  And no one pays money for the privilege of declaring himself “the king’s man,” or anyone else’s man, woman, or child.

So if we come to church on the Feast of the Epiphany and go on and on about how we like the wise men we should be, about what a model they are for the Christian life or faith, then I contend that we are being disingenuous – and that means the character in the story with which we probably have the most in common is wicked old king Herod.  By this way of looking at things, Herod is the very model of the modern mainline Christian.  He knows what to say, but he hardly means it at all; or if he does, his intentions are quite other than they appear to be.  “Oh do please let me know about Jesus when you find him.  I do so mean to come and pay him homage with you in church.”

Lest you think I am referring only to people who are not here in church tonight, or to those church-goers who will not get around to this Gospel story till Sunday, when it falls more conveniently on the time they were going to go to church anyway, let me assure that I include you and me in this assessment.  We do what we want.  If we bend low to bow to Jesus it is because we want to, not because we are required to.  It satisfies some desire of ours to make a gesture of costliness that actually costs us nothing.  And if we give some small contribution to the church, it is because we want to, or at least because we have not been sufficiently pissed off by the Rector… yet.  It satisfies some desire in us to take a stab at giving, and chances are that it doesn’t really cost us too much. 

And let me tell you that I know whereof I speak, because I am speaking to myself.

And what would we do if we got Jesus in our hands, if we had him in our clutches?  Would we worship him?  Or would we berate him with all the things that have gone wrong in the world and with the church, and in our families.  It might be as hard for us not to strangle Jesus as it would have been for Herod, if Herod had gotten his hands on Jesus.

Looking at the Epiphany of our Lord this way doesn’t really lead us anywhere that’s good for us.  That’s because we are looking at the wrong thing when we look at the Epiphany this way: we are looking at ourselves first, with the wise men as stand-ins for us.  What we should be looking at is Jesus.

Another way of putting this is to say that what we really need at Epiphany is not a model for piety or for Christian stewardship.  What we really need at the Epiphany is an epiphany: a manifestation of the divine, God showing himself to us so that we might be changed.  And here, the wise men have it right.  All indications before their arrival in Bethlehem are that they are willing to cooperate with Herod, that they have no objection to bringing word back to him about the whereabouts of Jesus.  They are about to make a big mistake, but something changes their plans.  Yes, they pay homage to the little Lord Jesus, but something else happens when they see him: they see more than they saw before, and they are able to make a better choice about what to do next, just by virtue of their encounter with Jesus… because God has made himself known to them in an immediate and personal way through the person of his Son.

What we need this Epiphany is an epiphany.  Some of us are about to make mistakes.  Some of us are about to go the wrong way in our lives.  Some of us have done it before.  Some have been in collusion with the wrong people.  Some of us are willing to strangle Jesus, so to speak.  And we don’t so much need to be told to bow low, or to up our pledge (although you should feel free to do both)!  What we need is an epiphany: we need an encounter with the living God.  We need to confront Jesus face to face, so in the encounter he can do the silent work of changing our path, steering us differently, leading us home by another way – because the way we were going was no good for us.

And God calls us here tonight not to instruct us in the etiquette of vassalage, but to show himself to us: to make himself known in an immediate and personal way through the person of his Son.  It hardly matters to God that the days of paying homage are over: still he delights to make himself known to us!  And this is a big deal to us, not because we remember that once a long time ago God manifested himself to a bunch of wise men who left nice gifts behind; no, it’s a big deal to us because we believe that God has continued to make himself known to us immediately and personally in the person of his Son, day after day after day.

Churches like ours were founded precisely to make this point: to teach you and me that we don’t have to just read about Jesus and do our best to remember what it might have been like way back then… rather we can know Jesus immediately and personally through the mystical encounter we have when ever we “do this in remembrance” of him.

We are a community formed by epiphanies – which is the work of God to show himself to us, regardless of what kind of responses we might have.  God is busy making himself manifest in the person of Son – immediately and personally – in ways too numerous to count.  But if we miss all those other ways, there is always this reliable mode of epiphany: “do this in remembrance of me,” for “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be in the midst of them,” and “I am with you always,” says the Lord Jesus.

And if we happen to put on some old clothes that are long out of fashion, as I have tonight, and if we happen to resonate with the details of the story that we hear tonight.  It will do us no harm to be a little old fashioned, and to seek to pay homage to the Lord Jesus, who has called us here tonight so that he can make himself known to you and to me once more, as he seeks to do every day.

And if we should decide, quite out of step with the times, that we would like to publicly and formally acknowledge that we are the king’s men and women and children, then there is no better way, really, than to raise our voices in his praise; to enunciate our faith in the words of the Creed; and to kneel at his altar, stretch out our hands, open our mouths, and take his Body and his Blood, as he shows himself to us immediately and personally, and bids us be changed by his grace and his power, and to accept the gift of his epiphany this Epiphany, and to go home another way.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of the Epiphany, 2016

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Oxford English Dictionary

Known Knowns

I pray that… you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.  (Eph. 1:18-19)

File this under the category of people I never thought I’d quote from the pulpit: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously laid out his view of epistemology, the nature of knowledge. He said: “…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”[i]

Put aside the disastrous context of this statement of knowledge and its limits – which was an evasive way of avoiding answering a question about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. Call it the power of the Gospel to transform one man’s evasion and dissembling into another man’s illustration and illumination. Out of context, Rumsfeld’s statement is not necessarily off the mark. And if these words provide an accurate description of international diplomacy and military intelligence, then they may also provide an accurate description of God: there are things we know we know about God, things we know we don’t know about God, and there are things we don’t know we don’t know about God.

Most of the time, I suspect that many of us assign knowledge of God to only one category: the known unknowns. If you believe in God, this thinking goes, then you take, on faith, that there is much about God that you know you can never know, and you will just have to get used to this. To this way of thinking faith is nearly always confidence in things unseen, and seldom more. And this way of believing in God has become difficult in a society that sees no reason, by and large, that Thomas should not have demanded to see the prints of the nails in Jesus’ hands, and to thrust his hand into Christ’s side. Thomas was only requiring what any thinking person would require. He was only doing his due diligence. And a faith that asks, no, demands, that you simply accept as given, what amounts to a Bible full of known unknowns is a hard faith to swallow in a society that has, after all, been lied to by priests, popes, presidents, and all manner of other supposed figures of authority.

On another hand, we are told often that the younger generations are a more demanding, inquisitive, and sensitive lot than we give them credit for. We are told that they have an inchoate capacity and a thirst for the big questions, that they find a ready appeal in the mystical, and that it is the failure of the church to honestly engage these big questions, and to engage things mystical that keeps them at bay. This may be so; I don’t know. If it is, then that would suggest this is a generation of potential believers who are deeply interested in the unknown unknowns – the things we don’t know that we don’t know. And if this is the preoccupation of a younger generation – to wonder about the unknown unknowns - then no wonder they are frustrated. Who wouldn’t be? We must pray for them.

In this landscape of faith, it is sometimes forgotten that there are, within the realm of faith, known knowns – the things we know we know. It is about these known knowns that the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians is speaking when he says, “I pray that… you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” Whoever authored this letter is eager to make sure that the known knowns remain things that we Christians know we know. But already in the early church it was apparent that some were preoccupied with the unknowns – both known and unknown. And if was true then, it is even more true now. 

How many of us can say that we know what is the hope to which Christ has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe? If I gave you pencil and paper, could you jot down a few answers to these questions now? Are these knowns known to you? Or are they unknown? In this case, are these things you suspect that perhaps you should know or could know, but that actually you haven’t got a clue about, but probably that’s because you missed that Sunday, or because you think someone will tell you when you write Saint Mark’s a bigger check?

On this Sunday, the church is inviting us to take stock of the known knowns, reminding us that there are things we know we know, and that the list begins with these: what is the hope to which Christ has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

First, what is the hope to which Christ called you? The hope to which Christ has called you and me is that God’s purposes will be accomplished in our lives, in the world around us, and in the entire cosmos. The emphasis here is on God’s purposes, quite in contrast to yours, or mine, of Donald Rumsfeld’s, or anyone else’s purposes. We often speak about this hope in the terms that Jesus himself used: describing it as the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of justice and peace, of righteousness and humility, of beauty and gentleness, of harmony and of love. In the kingdom of God all people live together peaceably, and neither death nor the fear of death has any power over us. We dare to hold on to this hope because Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of God is at hand even when it feels remote, and that we are moving toward it when we serve God and one another in love. 

And we believe that the decisive argument for this hope was made in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, and in his resurrection from the dead. Neither pain and suffering, nor the power of death could suppress or extinguish his divine and abundant life. This is a known known, as far as Christians are concerned. And so we look forward to Christ’s reign of peace and justice, of love and mercy in our lives and throughout all creation – for this is the hope to which he has called us!

Second, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints? How do you unpack the treasures of the inheritance of Christ? You start with two: the sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist: the two sacraments given to us by Jesus, and by which he is so closely and regularly known to us to this day.

And then you try to map the countless tributaries of grace that have flowed from those two sacraments: the lives of untold disciples, as well as the lives of the apostles and martyrs, the ancient divines, of monks and nuns, and priests and prophets, and generation after generation of the faithful. You map along those tributaries the works accomplished in God’s name, the beauty inspired by God’s gifts, the wisdom sought out by God’s guidance, the learning enabled by God’s enlightenment, the healing brought by gifted hands and minds, the forgiveness sought and given, the justice fought for and upheld, the music made for the beauty of holiness. You see that map laid out like an illuminated manuscript, and you marvel at the artistry and color, the craftsmanship and ingenuity that God has inspired, and that has been carried out in his Name in so many ways and so many places. You recognize that that glorious inheritance is an intellectual, architectural, artistic, spiritual, and deeply personal record that spans thousands of years, and that has embraced innovation and inquiry, and that has been a source of deep wisdom. And you see that as long as God calls his church together to be baptized in his Spirit, and fed by his Son, to be shaped by his Word and molded by his sacraments, these tributaries of heart and mind and hands – things we know we know - continue to carve pathways for the soul in this world and in the world to come.

Third, what is the immeasurable greatness of Christ’s power for us who believe? How do you even look for God’s power in Christ – with a telescope or a microscope, or both? Or do you need a Large Hadron Collider? How do you begin to tally the dimensions of a power that created the galaxies but that is made perfect in weakness?

The power of God in Christ has so often and so mistakenly been invoked to serve questionable ends – like crusades, or like the subjugation of women, or like the defense of slavery – that it is easy to be suspicious of it.

But the true power of God in Christ is not only the same force that brought all things into being, it is also the power that marched in non-violence for the civil rights of all people, that locates the perfect pattern of faith in a woman whose sacred “yes” established her partnership with God, and the truest expression of which has always been found when one people is delivered from the clutches of an oppressor to find freedom. And it’s that power that dispenses forgiveness and reconciliation in the face of hatred and mistrust; that finds patience in the face of insufferable antagonism; that delivers bravery in the face of tremendous fear; and that shines light of unimaginable brightness into the face of gloomy darkness.

The stories of faith we tell – from the story of creation, to the story of the Exodus, to the story of the march to Selma – are told to illustrate this immeasurable power, to remind us that although it exceeds our capacity to measure, the power of God in Christ to save, to restore, to heal, and to redeem is a known known to those of us who believe.

So these are the things we know we know: we know what is the hope to which he has called you, we know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and we know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

By contrast, consider dear old Joseph, who did not even know what he did not know. How could the ways of God have been anything to him but unknowns – both known and unknown. But Joseph is dropped into the story of salvation – about which he may know very little indeed – and asked not only to come along for the ride, but to make sure the ride happens.

At every turn, the things Joseph thinks he knows – about how the world works, about what it means to be a good and decent man, about the importance of a stable home-life for an infant child (no pun intended), about his own meager ability to keep his child and its mother safe in the face of an apparently much more powerful threat – everything Joseph might think he knows is challenged and upended, and he is, instead, asked to pay attention to the angels who visit him in his dreams. 

The angels come to Joseph because God knows that Joseph cannot possibly know what he, God, is up to; Joseph cannot possibly cope with all the unknowns that he must now confront without help; and Joseph cannot possibly know what wondrous Love, what Power, what Truth he holds cradled in his arms beneath a layer of swaddling clothes.

But it seems safe to say that by the time Joseph and his family arrive in Nazareth, he knows in much greater detail what is the hope to which God had called him, what would be the riches of God’s glorious inheritance, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for those who believe.

It’s been reported that another Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, had his own summary of epistemology. “He used to talk about the difference between ‘secrets’ and ‘mysteries’ — secrets being things that were knowable but we just don’t know them, and mysteries being things that are basically unknowable.”[ii] And here we begin to get into theological categories

And this language I find more appealing than his predecessor’s, and it may also help to shed a light on the ways of God with us. For despite all that we know about God, his ways are still a mystery to us. And the full meaning of the birth of his Son, the incarnation of his divine Word remains a mystery to us. And the full depth of his love in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus remains a mystery to us. As mysteries, these remain known unknowns, and maybe even unknown unknowns.

But it would seem that God intends for us to live with mysteries that nevertheless contain few if any secrets. Within the mystery of God’s love – always beyond our knowing – there remains so very much that God wants us to know. So much so that he no longer relies only on his angels to visit us in our dreams and entice us with the promise of salvation. In the Word made flesh, God has made known to us what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe. 

It only remains for us to have the confidence to say that these are known knowns: things we know we know. And to rejoice that God has given us these mysteries of his love that contain so few, if any, secrets.

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

3 January 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Donald Rumsfeld in a Department of Defense press briefing on 12 Feb 2002.

[ii] Jamie McIntyre, quoted in “The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld,” Part 1, by Errol Morris, in The New York Times online (Opinionator), 25 March 2014

Full of Grace and Truth

Again, this morning, we hear that God’s Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is of course the Gospel passage that we read annually on Christmas Day, our annual proclamation of the Incarnation, of the mysterious reality that shapes our lives and our community and the our destiny: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth.” We read it on Christmas morning and we are reading it again today, just two days later.

Those words made us “hit our knees” on Christmas morning, and in the grandeur and joy of our Christmas Masses we could feel that we were going some little part of the way toward honoring their importance appropriately. That’s a crucial part of Christian worship: we consecrate some times and places and words as holy, we set them aside as sacred, and we show them reverence as a way of acknowledging God’s infinite glory.

But what do these words sound like to you this morning, hearing them again as the rush of Christmas is beginning to settle down a bit? Are they getting cold like the leftovers of a Christmas feast? Stale like the cookie crumbs in a tin on a kitchen counter? Dry like a tree that has been decorated and lit for a little too long? It happens to many of us at this time of year. We want to stay in the bliss of Christmas but we gradually become aware that the calendar is advancing and the days are passing and the rhythms of life are inching toward normalcy again. And by the light of day, it seems a little more awkward to be on our knees worshipping the newborn king.

I don’t mean to rush us. It’s only December 27 and Christmas is twelve days long, but we are realists, aren’t we, and we know that Christmas can’t last forever. And if Christmas day was a day of celebration, we know that not every day will be.

And I’d actually like to encourage you to take that view. I’d like to encourage you to hear that glorious, mysterious, Christmas Gospel—“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—with the ears of someone who is looking toward a life after Christmas, a life of everyday ups and downs. Just for a moment, if it’s not too soon for you, get your head out of the holidays and into the notion that this is a day just like every other.

Because that’s the kind of day into which Christ was born. He dwelt among us, God dwells among us, in plain, ordinary life. There may be tinsel and ribbons, there may not be tinsel and ribbons, but God dwells with us and we behold his glory, full of grace and truth. All the time. And everywhere. And if we aren’t hearing that word fully, we aren’t really celebrating the Incarnation in Christmastide. It’s not so much about a special thing that happened in a manger one special night. It’s about what’s happening right now among us and within us. Let’s hear those words a little differently this morning.

Let’s hear the word “Word” differently too. Let’s hear it as much more comprehensive than we usually think it is. Not a word but the Word, the eternal word, logos. God’s mind, God’s reason, God’s logic, God’s meaning. The pattern of God’s thoughts, God’s will, God’s very desires. God’s order, God’s harmony. Why stop there? Let’s embellish a little: God’s imaginings, God’s self-perception, all of God’s big ideas and creative projects. What makes God tick. Dwelling among us, in the flesh, full of grace and truth for us to behold. God is holding nothing back from us.

And if this God dwells among us every day, our ordinary life must be unfathomably precious.

And how precious this is, right here: this life we live together as the Body of Christ. What we are doing now, in this church, acknowledging and receiving and worshiping this Word who is made flesh, who fills every moment and every place. The very life of God is among us here. What makes God tick, all of God’s big ideas, right here among us, right down in us. Whatever state we are in this morning, whatever occupies our thoughts, whatever ability we have to stay aware of God’s presence, God is as close to us as our own breathing and the coursing of blood through our own veins.

If you sit with that reality for very long, and acknowledge it the way we try to do here, something changes. It gets harder to hold back. If God has put everything on the line with us, everything in our hands, if God’s will is in us and God’s thoughts are in us and God’s desires are becoming our desires, we may find ourselves longing to respond. We may find that we are vulnerable to God despite our firm determination to remain in control of our own lives. We may find more and more that we seek the rest that comes from resting in God. We may find that we thirst for the living waters that come to us from God. And it may be true, despite our best efforts to maintain some image of ourselves as powerful grownups, that we are more like newborns in the arms of God. Some part of us, hesitant and awkward and frighteningly dependent, may reach out to be held by the one who created us and loves us and wills us into being in every moment.

In this as in all things, of course, Jesus has shown us the way. The eternal Word, made flesh, the fullness of all things, came among us in just this condition: naked, helpless, awkward and uncoordinated, reaching out to be held. At that moment in Bethlehem, Jesus could be nothing but present.

And so here we are, if we have the grace to know it, in our own Bethlehem, in the place of our own profound vulnerability. Our spiritual infancy. Nothing to offer God but our own need for God. If it’s hard to keep coming back to Church, if you feel embarrassed that you haven’t outgrown being here, if you can’t put all this religion stuff behind you and get on with your adult life, if you haven’t yet found a good explanation for the fact that faith has seized hold of you and brought you to your knees, if you don’t know how to look good doing this, if you really would rather be an unchurched person but you just can’t get in that groove, rest assured. Rest deeply. Your vulnerability to God, even if it’s only fleeting, barely felt, is the sign of a great gift. You have been given power to become a child of God. You are being born, like Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus. Vulnerability is what it looks like when the Word becomes flesh.

Be reassured by that baby in the manger. Great things happened on that ordinary night in that ordinary town of Bethlehem. And great things are happening in you, with every breath you take, in this Bethlehem on Locust Street in Philadelphia.

No, if you’re like me, being given the power to become a child of God has not given you the power to rise above all suffering or solve all problems (not even other people’s). No, it doesn’t feel like winning at life. If you have answers, it may not be clear to you exactly what they are. It’s messy and a tad embarrassing and almost entirely baffling at times to be a follower of Jesus. But the Word dwells with you and in you. It is becoming flesh in you, as you become one with God in Christ. We don’t know why, but we know that this is God’s big idea. This is God’s creative project. This is God’s desire. Trust it.

Together, almost in spite of ourselves, we are beholding that glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. It is full of grace and truth. We are full of grace and truth. Thanks be to God.

Preached by Mtr. Nora Johnson

27 December 2015

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia