Admitted to the Flock

This is a time of year when I get to hear more than usual about the struggles and joys of people who are coming into the Episcopal Church. As you may know, the feast of Saint Mark is coming up next week, April 25, and some of your fellow parishioners will be confirmed or received into the church when the Bishop visits our parish and celebrates Mass with us on that evening. What we call “Confirmation Class”—though it’s also a class for adults who hope to be baptized or who just want to spend some time learning and thinking and praying about their faith—begins in our parish in January and continues weekly into April. Every Sunday after coffee hour we have been meeting in the library over the parish hall, and we’ve talked about church history, the sacraments, the scriptures, prayer, moral decision making. Week after week, we read, talked, prayed and, I hope, deepened our sense of what it means to be part of the Church. Our last class is this afternoon. Not a class, really, it’s a rehearsal for the liturgy we’ll be participating in a week from tomorrow.

At the same time, during this same season, my other vocation is also wrapped up in bringing new people into the fold. My day job involves teaching college students, and right now we are in the middle of an elaborate process called College Admissions. You may know something about how this works, from your own experience or that of your children. Let me hasten to tell you that I went to UCLA, and I did this because it was nearby and it sounded good. It seemed hard to fill out the forms but that’s about all it took. The process my students go through to get into the college of their choice seems by comparison to be entirely overwhelming. Students—or at least students who are lucky enough to have the resources--start early, building resumes in high school, getting not only the grades and the test scores but the extracurricular experiences and skills that will ensure them admission to a great school. They tour colleges with their parents. They sort out the relative benefits of early admissions and fallback schools. They write state of the art application essays. It seems that every one of them is required to declare that they have a particular passion: for neuroscience or poetry, art history or engineering. And, aided by consultants and eager parents, they set about to match their passion with the college that will nurture it and make it grow into transferrable skills for the job market.

Once they get accepted to a few places, if they are so lucky, these high school seniors begin extensive comparisons of the options at their potential places of matriculation. They visit campus for admitted students’ weekend, where they ask all the right questions and try to feel for themselves whether the environment is congenial. Facebook pages and blogs and wikis help them communicate with one another and with students who will give them the lowdown about the colleges under consideration. Every year at this time, I get a steady stream of visitors in my classes, and I’m aware of a pressure on all of us to get the decisions right. Like all professors, I’m supposed to help my college attract the very best students. Let me say that the experience of meeting these students and working with them is as rewarding and joyful as it ever was, but I’m increasingly aware of the business of managing them into our academic environment. It’s a business undertaken with great care and ethical consideration on our campus, but it’s unmistakably business.

Why is Christianity so much simpler to fall into? In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus tells us, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”  I don’t know that any one of the people being confirmed or received this year would tell you that they had heard a voice leading them on. But according to Jesus, that’s what happened to them and to you and to me. We heard Jesus’s voice, and he knew us, and we followed. We heard a voice, we followed, but we did not know that we were being called. Yes, there is a process of preparation that the church makes available to Christians, and yes it used to be much more extended and elaborate than it is now, but I don’t think it was ever like the College Admissions Process. There was never the idea that you would match your “passion” to the perfect institution, or that you could invest in a “perfect fit” to turn yourself into the person you dreamt of becoming.

So little of what brings us here is in our control. So little of what makes faith possible is up to us. Faith itself, it seems, is being known by Jesus: not an accomplishment of our own, not something we know, not really a decision, not a plan for improving ourselves or making the world a better place. Just a response to a voice that we don’t even quite think we hear.  We don’t have to write an essay about our skills or compare financial aid offers (though financial aid for Christians sounds good to me). Few of us take time to compare the fitness facilities or the food services before we embark on a life of Christian belief. We just kind of walk into a church one Sunday, or we look online and decide to visit. Or we see one of those signs on the corner: “The Episcopal Church welcomes you.” Or there is a crisis that draws us in, in pain and exhaustion. Something calls us.

How can God’s plan for our salvation be such a slender thing? We are all here this morning without an admissions office or an acceptance rate. We are a flock, and we’ve flocked together through a process that may be invisible even to ourselves. Where’s the plan? Well, how’s this for a description of our admissions plan: “The growing together of Christians is the tip of the great underground structure of the universe, in which God seeks to bring all created things together in Christ, so that the harmony of the universe will reflect the eternal glory.”[1] That’s from Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and I like it. A lot.

What brought you here today, what makes us a flock, is “the tip of the great underground structure of the universe.” Your thought that this would be a good Sunday to come to Mass was a little hint from the cosmic force that is the love of Christ. Coffee hour is a vision of the harmony of the universe. Our communion is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet God has planned for all eternity.

We don’t own this or control it or think of it as an investment or a plan for self-improvement. We surrender to it. With gratitude and relief we come to realize that the Good Shepherd knows us. It’s more than knowing our passion or our skills or what’s a perfect fit for us. Our Good Shepherd knows where we come from and where we are going, and how all of creation is being reconciled. We become who we are not through a process of planning and investment, but through a surprising process of recognition and acceptance. Our perfect fit is with a God who calls us to more than we can ask or imagine, who helps us find ourselves by dying to ourselves, who shows us that we are on the best path when we know least about where we are going.

Do you have low test scores? Come on in, this is the flock for you. Are you uncertain about what you are called to do? Sounds like you are called to be one of us. Are you prone to wander? Wander over here. Our Good Shepherd has a plan for us, even when we fail at time management and skills assessment. Our Good Shepherd has raised us up in love, and that love is the force that holds all of creation together. We are made one, and that oneness is God’s gift to us. One flock, into which is gathering all creation.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

April 17, 2016

Saint Mark's Church Philadelphia

Feed My Sheep

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

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