Feed My Sheep

Feed My Sheep

Fr. Sean Mullen

Sheep, vines, children, the sick, the weak, the outcast, and the poor: Jesus had a way of making his priorities known, and they tended to be categories of people and things that need looking after. Having triumphed over the grave, he did not set up a luxurious encampment on the beach to receive supplicants, and dole out the spoils of his victory. Instead, he appeared mysteriously, unannounced, and ambiguously to his followers. But still he made himself known. He showed up on the beach after his disciples had had a failed night of fishing, but he changed everything. He should have given them a secret. He should have written them an encyclical. He should have taken a ring off his finger and given it to one of them. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he gave them fish. And he called Peter to him, and asked him, “Do you love me?”

Peter is a fisherman. They are sitting together on a beach, eating fish. Jesus has just helped them miraculously to catch a shoal of fish. “Do you love me,” he asks Peter, “more than these?”

“Yes, Lord, you know I do,” comes the answer.

“Feed my sheep.”

We are on a beach. With fisherman. Eating fish. There is not a sheep in sight. This is what you might call a non-sequitur. “Feed my sheep.” But fish are remarkably good at looking after themselves (as long as you don’t over-fish them). They are good for miracles, but not so good for parables. And they don’t fit the category of people and things that need looking after. Hence, Peter, “feed my sheep.” Three times, Jesus gives him a variation on the theme. “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

The modern shepherd, James Rebanks, writes in his excellent book, The Shepherd’s Life, that his “job is simple: get around the fields and feed and shepherd the different flocks of ewes – dealing with any issues that arise.” Then he provides three simple rules of shepherding: “First rule of shepherding: it’s not about you, it’s about the sheep and the land. Second rule: you can’t win sometimes. Third rule: shut up, and go do the work.”

We live in a complex and complicated world, but some things are still straightforward: people need to be fed and shepherded. And you probably have to start with the people who most need looking after: children, the sick, the weak, the outcast, and the poor. As a rule of thumb, this one works for sheep, and in churches, and probably more broadly, too. People need to be fed and shepherded; and you start with the ones who most need looking after; you don’t leave them to fend for themselves with the leftovers from the ablest sheep. You don’t make sure the fattest sheep get fatter. It’s not complicated.

Let’s look at the rules. First rule: it’s not about you. Which is to say that the world does not revolve around you. Or as I once heard declared at a funeral in this church years ago: get over yourself. Most of us want it to be about ourselves. I often want it to be about me (whatever it is). But it’s not about me and it’s not about you. It’s about the land – and you can see what we are doing to that (poisoning it). And it’s about the sheep.

Who are the sheep? Are you a sheep or a shepherd? Depends, I guess, on the moment. There are probably times in your life when you get to be each. You might be a sheep to me, but a shepherd to someone else. It’s complicated. Except it’s not. Because it’s not about me, and it’s not about you. I’ll try to remember that. Will you?

Second rule: you can’t win sometimes. Do you need me to elaborate? You don’t already know this? We don’t get to win sometimes. But that doesn’t mean the game is over. There are still sheep out there. There is still land out there. The sheep needs you. The land needs you. Just because you and I don’t get to win sometimes, doesn’t mean we lose. It just means we don’t always win. It’s okay. Get over yourself: see Rule One. Many days are twenty-four straight hours of Rule Two. The days that are not, give cause for rejoicing. Get good at rejoicing, and enjoy it while you can. Rule Two is not going away.

Rule Three: shut up and go do the work. You don’t like Rule Three? You think I like Rule Three? Rule Three is why I go on pilgrimage every now and then. If you are a pilgrim, walking every day, whether you want to or not, you have to get up and walk. You can quit, but then you are not a pilgrim anymore. You have to get up and walk. It doesn’t matter if you want to, or if it feels good, or if the weather is nice. You have to go. You have someplace to go. God has someplace for you to go. The sheep need to be fed. Shut up, and go do the work.

The church struggles mightily with this one. We would rather hold seminars about the work. We would like to study texts that talk about the work. We are fascinated by the way ancient peoples once did the work. We think it’s nice how monks and nuns do the work. And we notice how much work there is to do in places where they are not as rich as we are. We don’t mind sending a little bit of money to people who seem to be doing the work. But only a little bit. But Rule Three is uncompromising. Shut up. And go do the work.

The shepherd who wrote these rules did not think he was channeling Jesus. But he was. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. The three rules of shepherding are an ever-so-slightly wordier re-iteration of Jesus’ instructions to Peter. But here’s the amazing thing: Jesus wants us to understand that if we love him, this is all we have to do to show it. Just keep these three rules. Feed his sheep.

You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be pure. You don’t even have to be a virgin. For all I know, you don’t even have to be in a state of grace. You do have to be paying attention to the idea that Jesus is asking you, “Do you love me?”

We live in a complex and complicated world, but some things are still straightforward: people need to be fed and shepherded. And sometimes you get to be the sheep, and sometimes you get to be the shepherd. And daily we have to answer the question that Jesus asks us: Do we love him? The church in Europe and North America has been in a tizzy for decades now about what we should be doing, how to be the church, why things are so complicated, confusing, and difficult. And I don’t want to pretend that the world is not complex and complicated – for it is. But we can make things more or less complicated. And we make some things complicated that don’t have to be. Sheep and vines, if you want to be poetic. Children, the sick, the weak, the outcast, and the poor, if you want to be concrete. Feed his lambs. Tend his sheep. Feed his sheep.

It’s not about you or me. Sometimes we can’t win. Shut up, and go do the work.

All for this: because among the many things bequeathed by Peter to the Church of Christ is this question on the lips of our Lord Jesus: “Do you love me?” Do we love him? How can we tell him? How can we show it? What difference will it make? All the difference in the world if we will feed his lambs; tend his sheep; feed his sheep.

And when he was done teaching Peter how to love him, he gave one more simple instruction: “Come,” he said, “follow me.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

10 April 2016

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Marks in His Hands

The Marks in His Hands

Mtr. Erika Takacs

Linzer cookies are thin, usually round, always delicious shortbread cookies. They are sandwich cookies, actually, with a filling of jam and a coating of lightly-dusted confectioner sugar. They are given their unique look by the fact that the top cookie usually has a hole cut out of it – traditionally a circle, I think, although Ina Garten uses a heart, and if Ina does it, well, then so would I – and through the cut out glistens the richly red, shiny with sugar, simply gorgeous raspberry jam. They are lovely cookies, as beautiful to look at as they are to eat.

That is, unless they are in the style like the ones that popped up on my Facebook page during Holy Week. A parishioner, who shall not be named but who is a member of our vestry and whose first name starts with Alessandra, tagged me in a post in which she shared a photo of Linzer cookies, complete with top cookie cutout, confectioner sugar, and glistening red jam. But the cookies themselves were shaped like a little hand, thereby making the shining red jam a confectionary representation of the bloody wounds of the crucifixion. Now I’m not particularly squeamish about things irreverent, but these cookies made me go blech, which was probably the point. I think my official comment on Facebook was simply the word “Eww…” with a long line of w’s. Other comments to the post were equally colorful with tones that ranged from the morbidly fascinated to the simply grossed out.

But my favorite comment by far was from someone I don’t know, someone who looked at these Passiontide-themed Linzer cookies and could think only one thing: “Aren’t the stigmata in the wrong place?” This comment refers to the modern understanding that the ancient practice of crucifixion usually involved nailing the convicted person’s arms to the cross through the wrist, and not through the palm. So, this man asked, don’t these Linzer cookies have the hole in the wrong place? The fact that someone could look at these cookies with the hole and the jam and the implication of blood and wounds and think only of historical inaccuracies can mean only one thing – that there is another detail-oriented church nerd/ history buff out there in the world, and that we are surely destined to become friends.

But whether or not history tells us that Jesus’ wounds would have been in his wrists, the Gospel of John seems pretty clear that he has been wounded right here, in the palm of his hands. And it is the hands that Thomas is interested in seeing; it is the hands that Thomas requires for proof of the resurrection. Thomas, of course, had not been in the locked room with the rest of the disciples when Jesus had made his first appearance to them; Thomas was out. We don’t know where he was – buying bread, getting the lay of the land, visiting Mary or Nicodemus or his unnamed twin – but we do know for sure that Thomas wasn’t hiding like the rest of the disciples. He was out and about, a move entirely characteristic of the man who had once rallied his fellow disciples to follow Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus with the words, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Thomas was gutsy in that moment, and gutsy again to be parading around Jerusalem when the rest of the disciples were holed up in a room with the door locked and the blinds drawn.

And when Thomas returns to the room and hears the disciples bubbling over about Jesus’ return, his bold streak continues to burn bright. Well, fine, you say you saw him, but I’m not going to believe until I see the mark of the nails in his hands. Thomas, bravely, demands that he get to see for himself. And what he demands to see is so interesting. He doesn’t say, Well, I’m not going to believe that it’s Jesus until I look him straight in the eye, or, I won’t be convinced until I hear his voice, ask him my name, quiz him on what we talked about in that long conversation on Thursday night. No, Thomas is interested in seeing his wounds, witnessing the marks of torture and pain right there in the palms of his hands. Thomas, it seems, is interested in more than just whether or not this magically-appearing man is Jesus; Thomas wants to be sure that this man is the same Jesus.

Thomas needs to see that this Jesus is that Jesus, that this new, resurrected man is the same man he knew before. Thomas needs to see that these hands are the same hands he saw before, the same hands that broke barley loaves into a million pieces, the same hands that drew signs in the dust before the feet of the woman caught in adultery, spread mud on a blind man’s eyes. Thomas needs to see that these hands are the same hands he looked to for direction when he asked Jesus to show him the way, the same hands that had poured cool water over Thomas’s tired feet and rubbed a soft towel over his rough heels. And Thomas needs to know that these hands are the same hands that had been bound together so tightly that his palms went white from the pressure, hands that had been beaten and bruised before being nailed to the hard wood of the cross.

Thomas needs to know that these hands are the same hands because he is less than interested in some kind of cleaned-up version of Jesus, a magic man who not only feels no pain but also remembers no pain. A man who walks through walls is a great party trick, but Thomas needs to know that Jesus is more than that. Thomas needs to know that Jesus still knows him, still knows his life – his anger, his fear, his pain – even if he now knows that life in a new way. After all, Thomas was the one who thought he was marching off to his own death, and he needs to know that everything Jesus suffered in his stead wasn’t just a waste, that it wasn’t pain and blood all for nothing. If Jesus’ hands were going to be wounded and broken, then Thomas needs to know that those wounds were themselves taken up and transformed, that they became a source of strength and new life, that they are redeemed but not forgotten.

Because Thomas wants a real Easter. Thomas wants an Easter that is more than just lilies and lace; Thomas wants dirt and flesh, blood and bone. Thomas wants Easter to be about real redemption, about real salvation, about the stuff of this world, his life, being transformed and glorified now. To paraphrase our Presiding Bishop, Thomas wants more than just a fairy tale. He needs those hands, those glorious wounded hands, to hold him, his life, his pain, in a way that really, honestly, profoundly matters.

And isn’t this what we want, too? Isn’t this what we need, what this world needs? A real Easter. Not just one day of Easter eggs and bonnets, not just one day of sweet resurrection with sugar on top, but something real and lasting, something enduring, something that actually touches the lives we live now and invites our lives to reach out and grasp its power. We need to know that Easter can hold us, hold our pain and our joy, our suffering and our celebration, our sins and our acts of great grace and goodness. We need Easter to have some flesh on its bones, and we need to see that the risen Christ still knows our bones, our flesh, our own wounds. We need to know that the risen Christ can reach out those wounded hands and take up our hearts – broken with sorrow or bursting with joy – and hold them in all the fullness that his mortal life and his eternal life have known.

This morning, in a few moments, we will baptize little Quinn, brush him with water and bless him with oil. And this morning, Thomas helps to remind us that this is no fairy tale moment. For Quinn has been born into a world of great beauty and great brutality, and his baptism needs to hold him in moments of both. And it will. For in his baptism we proclaim that he is buried with Christ in his death, wounds and hands and all, and raised with him to a new life, wounds and hands and all. In this baptism we proclaim that our lives are held in the palm of Christ’s hand, who knows us and our lives, and whose life, death, and resurrection transforms us for ever. In this baptism, we proclaim a real Easter, made more beautiful and more joyful and more miraculous for all of the woundedness it can hold. This is a real Easter, a real Savior, a real life that is sweet beyond compare. For Christ is risen, and we are risen with him. Do not doubt, but believe.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

3 April 2016, The Second Sunday of Easter

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Easter in Brussels

Easter in Brussels

Fr. Sean Mullen

Since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ, shall all be made alive.  (1 Cor. 15:21-22)

Picture Judas in daVinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper.  He is seated to Jesus’ right, on the left-hand side of the painting from the viewer’s perspective.  He is in a group of three, like all the other apostles in the painting, with Peter and John.  He is clutching the little bag that we understand holds the thirty pieces of silver that he has been paid to betray Jesus.  In the painting, the Master has just announced that “one of you will betray me.” DaVinci shows us four groupings of the apostles reacting, questioning, accusing, defending, and generally trying to figure out what is going on.  I’m not sure they ever did.  Judas, however, thought he had things figured out.  No one knows what his motives were for betraying Jesus.  You have to wonder, why didn’t anyone ask Judas what was in the bag?  “Hey, Judas, what’cha got in that bag?”  Might they have caught him silver-handed, as it were?  Would things have turned out differently then?  I think Judas should have been on a watch-list of some sort.  He should not have been allowed to fly, for sure.  I imagine that Judas could have been the type of guy who was stockpiling ammonium nitrate and ball bearings in his shed.  And perhaps he was disappointed to discover that Jesus had no need for these.

When I hear St. Paul’s concise summary of Christian theology – since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead – I think not only of Adam (as was Paul’s intention), I also think of Judas.  And I start to think of lists of lots of other men by whom has come death (yes, my view is somewhat sexist here, but I think it holds up).  And because the image is fresh in my mind, I’m thinking of a security photo taken at the Brussels airport of two men pushing their luggage, each wearing only one glove, and a man in a hat.

When I heard the news on Tuesday of the bombings in Brussels, the news-caster reported that authorities had this security photo, and that they were looking for a man in a hat.  And this sounded absurd to me.  A man in a hat?  They did not seem to have narrowed it down very much.  Thankfully, they had more information to go on, but, of course, it was already too late.

Until now, when I thought of Belgium, I thought of chocolate.  This week I happened to check the website of Godiva (the Belgian chocolate maker, founded in Brussels in 1926) to see if there was any mention of the attacks.  What I found was a “limited time offer” to “buy one, get one 50% off” on “select chocolate bunnies.”  This was tempting, I admit.

It took a bit of poking around on the Internet, but I also found that the Godiva chocolates we buy here in America are mostly made in a factory in Reading, PA, not in Brussels.  And I tried to think of some way to include the story of Lady Godiva riding naked through the streets of Coventry in order to satisfy her perverse husband’s demand that in return he would reduce the taxes of the people of the city – but that story proves to be difficult to work into an Easter sermon.

Since by man came death… we are looking for a man in a hat.  In recent months I have read in-depth articles about Anders Breivik, the mass-shooter who murdered children in Norway; about Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; and about a host of American teenage boys and young men who have marched into schools with guns and opened fire.  And now, the man in the hat, who it would appear was apprehended yesterday.  These stories span decades, of course, and they are only representative of the kind of world we leave in; they are hardly exhaustive.  By man comes death. 

I suppose there is a fairly direct line from the man in the hat all the way back to Judas, and then way back to Cain (the first murderer), and then to Adam, who at least knew he was doing something wrong, which is more than can be said about the man in the hat.  By man comes death: truer words never spoken.

I peeked at the Godiva website because I was wondering what Easter would feel like in Brussels this week, when death at the hands of violent men is so present to the people of that city.  In Europe, as in so much of the world, and in our own country too, Easter is not what it used to be.  Oh, it’s fine for chocolate bunnies, I suppose.  But the actual Easter part of Easter is not what it used to be.  This is the second part of St. Paul’s Christian Theology for Dummies, in One Short Sentence: “by a man came also the resurrection of the dead…. [and] in Christ shall all be made alive.”

For reasons that I only barely understand, we are living in an age when, although it is painfully clear that by man comes death, it is not so obvious to people that a resurrection would be a good idea; that some antidote to all this death, all this violence, all these bombs, all these guns, all this murder, all these wars, all this bloodshed might be a good idea.  It’s not just a question of whether or not people know the Christian story; it’s a matter of whether or not we even know why that story might be important or helpful.

Since by man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.

If you showed The Last Supper to someone who did not know the story it depicts, I am not so sure that they could easily identify the betrayer at the table.  If I didn’t know better, I might guess that it was Matthew, the person in the painting whose face is looking decidedly away from Jesus.  I’m not sure I would guess that the betrayer is Judas: the one clutching the bag.  I might suspect that he’s got chocolate bunnies in there, waiting to share them with his friends. 

I don’t begrudge the Belgians their chocolates – certainly not on this Easter of all Easters, when any solace in Brussels should be taken for what it’s worth.  But I find myself praying for a better Easter in Brussels this morning than can be had when all you have is chocolate bunnies to work with.  Since the reality is so very plain in Brussels this week that death can come by a man in a hat; it does not seem overly pious of me to pray also for the resurrection of the dead; that also in Christ shall all be made alive.  And if I am praying for a better Easter in Brussels, I am only using that city as a place-holder for us all – praying for a better Easter for every single person on the face of the earth.

A better Easter is an Easter that can proclaim more than just the sad fact that by man comes death.  A better Easter means an Easter that knows that by a man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For we are living in a world that desperately needs to know the truth of the resurrection; that needs to be reassured that we will not be mired in all this death; that needs to know that also in Christ shall all be made alive!

Lady Godiva by John Collier, c 1897

Come to think of it, Lady Godiva was neither Belgian, nor a chocolatier.  She was, however, according to legend, a Christian.  Her story was first chronicled (whether it’s true or not) by English Benedictine monks.  You can spin this story a lot of ways, but it always begins with her concern for others – for the poor, especially, who were burdened by heavy taxes levied by her husband.  Why does Lady Godiva care?  Why does she persist in pestering her husband to be better than he is, to be kinder than he is?

Can you just hear the conversation between the two?

Him: “I’ll lower the taxes the day you ride naked through the center of town.”

Her: “Very well, then, fetch me my horse!”

Or, as Tennyson put it in his poem:

...She told him of their tears,
And prayed him, ‘If they pay this tax they starve.’
Whereat he stared, replying half amazed,
‘You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?’ – ‘But I would die,’ said she.[i]

By man comes death.  Adam decides to indulge his desire despite God’s instruction.  Cain decides that he can rid himself of Abel.  Judas can be bought for thirty pieces of silver.  The poor are expendable as the rich pursue their goals.  A man in a hat can ensure that his accomplices do their awful deed and blow themselves up (supposedly in the name of God).  By man comes death.

If you happened to be spending Easter in Brussels this morning, I can locate at least seven Easter egg hunts you can go to, but I strongly suspect that a pall will cover these events today.  Plastic Easter eggs – even if they are filled with the best Belgian chocolate – are no salve in the face of the pain that that city and its citizens have endured this week.

At the very least they could use a woman on a horse – naked or not, I hardly think it matters – riding through the city to let them know that not only does her little finger ache, but she would die for them.  It is unlikely that any such ride, however, has ever taken place in the annals of history.  More’s the pity.

And there are those who suspect that no such thing as the resurrection ever took place, who believe that it is far-fetched, delusional, and self-serving to place our hope in the man by whom has come the resurrection of the dead.  He rode into town on a donkey, not a horse.  He was stripped naked only to be nailed to his Cross to die.  And it might have ended there, since by man comes death.

But by the grace and power of God, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead!  And his Name is Jesus!  No death-dealing plot worth thirty pieces of silver, or any amount for that matter, could dislodge the intention of God in sending his Son to save us from the fear of death.

Perhaps I am naïve to be continually surprised that men believe there is a price that can justify our violence, warfare, and murder.  And I remain mystified to realize how eager we are to be the one who clutches the purse with the coins inside.  Maybe this is a sign in me of a lack of imagination or nerve; I don’t know.  But I know that the only price that has ever bought us freedom was the life of one Man, given freely, for the love of God.  And since by man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive!

How I wish that we could all be transported to spend our Easter morning this morning in Brussels, or in Paris, or in Ankara, or in Baghdad, or in the thousand other places where so recently by man has come death with all its bitterness.

How I wish we could enlist Lady Godiva – or anyone willing to ride on (in almost any state of undress) with the message of God’s love. 

How I wish the world were as hungry for this message as it is for chocolate bunnies.  Until it is, I shall have to take my cue from the chocolatiers of Belgium, and refine the message until it is sweet enough to be practically irresistible, as it seems to me to be on this Easter morning, when all of Brussels and all the world knows how true it is that by man comes death.

The story of Lady Godiva asserts that so courteous and grateful were the good people of Coventry that as the naked Lady rode forth they stayed inside, shutters, curtains, and blinds all drawn shut, out of respect for their heroine.  But our task this morning is to call to those shuttered inside to look out, to behold and see in this world of death that by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead…[and] even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Fetch me my horse!  Fetch yours!  And let us cry it till our voices tire: Alleluia, Christ is risen!  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Easter Day 2016

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Godiva”, 1840