Punch a Higher Floor

Punch a Higher Floor

Mtr. Erika Takacs

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever, and that’s a mighty long time, but I’m here to tell you, there’s something else: the after world. A world of never-ending happiness. You can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills – you know the one, Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright – instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby. ’Cause in this life, things are much harder than in the after world. In this life, you’re on your own. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. Punch a higher floor.

Now some of you are undoubtedly wondering where this sermon is going and/or worrying that that I’ve gone around the bend. But some of you are giggling. Some of you, who were born in that sweet spot that means you can remember the 1980’s, know exactly what is going on and were probably saying those words along with me. Because you know that the words I just quoted are, in fact, the beginning of a song written by that recently late, always great rock star, Prince. Prince, who, in addition to being a funky, enigmatic celebrity, a surprisingly tender songwriter, and an absolutely fierce guitarist, was also, apparently, an amateur theologian.

Because the after-life that Prince describes in this little pre-song sermonette is actually pretty consistent with the description of that holy city that comes down out of heaven, the new Jerusalem, in the Book of Revelation. Prince is right. In this new world after world, there is never-ending happiness, and you can always see the sun, day or night. The city of St. John’s vision is a city of peace and order and tremendous beauty, a city that glitters with diamonds and pearls and every gem that sparkles under the sun. It is a city that contains within its borders all the fullness of Creation – a river bright as crystal that flashes and flows down the middle of the street; a tree of life that bears rich fruit all year with leaves that heal and strengthen. It is a city and a garden, where one can imagine bustling streets beside fields dotted with red, yellow, and purple; rain that washes the rooftops and sweetens the mown fields; the murmur of happy conversation mixing with the soft warble and coo that is heard when doves cry and bed down for the night.

And this new Jerusalem is also a city where, indeed, you can always see the sun – the glory of God, shining with such warmth and brightness that it is as if there is no night at all. The people who live in this city are filled with glory and honor and marked with God’s own name on their foreheads. They live in a world of great beauty, no fear, and the presence of God so wondrously immanent that the whole city has become a place of worship, where each side street and corner holds the holiest of holies. A world of never-ending happiness, indeed.      

And a world that at times seems very, very far away. For here we sit, in a city drowning in trash, with roads that crumble away beneath our feet. Here we sit in a city where Creation has to struggle to keep a hand hold in tiny sanctuaries of green like the gardens that we will bless today. Here we sit in a city where we cannot even keep this church open during the day for fear of thieves in the temple, where more than a quarter of our people live in poverty, where thousands of our children go to school and to bed hungry each night, and where the darkness of gun violence descends each night like a shroud. In this life, things are much harder than the after world, for sure.

Now, bear with me a bit here, but I’m going to suggest that Prince actually knows the right answer to this problem. Prince actually describes the right means of closing the distance that seems to loom between our city and the holy city of Revelation, between our present and God’s future. When the elevator tries to bring you down, he advises, go crazy. Punch a higher floor. I think this is actually exactly what we need to do, and exactly what the book of Revelation is all about. When we feel ourselves sinking down into a world that feels stuck in political turmoil, flagrant self-interest, deceit and greed and sin and all of their painful consequences, we need to punch a higher floor. We need to look up and behold God’s vision for our world, God’s vision for us, God’s beautiful future bearing down on us. We need to punch a higher floor, to hold pictures like St. John’s holy city before our eyes, use them like beacons to guide and warm our hearts.

And this, frankly, seems a little crazy to the rest of the world. Get real, the world says. This isn’t time for some fantasy. You can’t focus on the after world – get your eyes down back here, down in the muck, where there is real work, and real people, and real life. That higher floor might be a tempting escape, the world says, but it doesn’t help us down here one bit. And lest you think that I’m talking only about the world out there, be assured, I’m also talking about the world in here. It’s a sign o’ the times that we, the Church, are just as tempted to think this way as the rest of the world is. When the elevator brings us down, with news of shrinking populations in main-line churches, or the Biblical illiteracy of millennials, or the disinterest of Generation X-ers in shaping their families in the church, we can tend to just get off the elevator and walk around for a while in the basement, muttering to ourselves about the good old days or how we need to become relevant again or how church buildings or organs or pews are the problem.

But to do this is to ignore one of God’s most wondrous and creative gifts. God has given us this image of the new Jerusalem exactly because God knows that we’re in the basement. We’re down here, in this world, where people are imperfect and life can be hard, and so God offers us the gift of knowing ahead of time what the fullness of God’s redeeming work looks like – not as an escape, not so that we can ignore the way our society can ravage Creation and People alike, but so that we will know how to help. We must keep this vision of beauty and safety, light and love, inclusion and blessing before our eyes now, because wherever the elevator lets us off, it’s our job to try as much as we can to grow that vision, to help make it real in this world. We must hold on to the gift of this revelation and lead a revolution of vision so that in looking to the future we will see more clearly our present. If we forget that we are, at our core, a people who are expecting the full redemption of this groaning Creation, we run the risk of losing our focus, losing our way, or – most unhappily – losing hope. But when we punch a higher floor and see that vision of God ruling in love in God’s own kingdom, we will find the hope that does not fail us. Crazy as it sounds.

Prince the amateur theologian did get one thing very wrong, though, so please allow me to correct him. It’s true that in this life, things are much harder than in the after world. We will not eradicate poverty in our lifetime, or prevent people from stealing, or eliminate all laws and policies that discriminate and spread hatred and mistrust. But in this life, we are not on our own. We are always moving and working and falling and hoping and trying to punch a higher floor in the presence of the living Christ. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came among us to live and to teach, here, on this sub-floor level, and he has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the ages. When the elevator doors opened and he saw what lay before him, all he could think was that this was where he wanted to make his home. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, he told us. Love one another as I have loved you, he told us. I would die 4 U, he told us, and then he did, and then was raised to show us that we would never be on our own again.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. And not just to get through it, but to have life and have it abundantly. So do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. For God has prepared for us such good things as surpass our understanding. There will be no more night, nor lamp nor sun, for the Lord your God will be your light. And if you start to sink in worry and woe, go ahead. Go crazy. Punch a higher floor.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, 1 May 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

(with gratitude for lyrics and song titles by Prince)

Love in a Time of Subarus

Love in a Time of Subarus

Fr. Sean Mullen

At the risk of sounding like something of a crank, I will confess to you that for a few years now, something has been bothering me… and this is it: the Subaru tag-line that claims “Love is what makes a Subaru a Subaru.”  This gets under my skin.

Allow me to state the obvious.  Love is not what makes a Subaru a Subaru.  Full-time four-wheel-drive, good gas mileage, legendary durability, and good road handling all contribute to what makes a Subaru a Subaru.  I know this, having once driven a little green Subaru in a big loop around this entire country, with my old dog, Baxter, in the back seat.  It was a great trip.  And, yes, I loved it.  I’d go so far as to say that I loved that car.  But I am using the word “love” here casually and colloquially, not definitively – either for the car or the emotion.  It was a great car.  But it was not love that made it great.  Not in any meaningful sense of the words.  Not if the word “love” is going to have any real meaning left at the end of the day.  Love does not make a Subaru a Subaru.

I am tempted by the reading from the Gospel of John today to say something that I shouldn’t say.  We hear Jesus say, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  In light of this statement, I am tempted to counter the Subaru slogan with a slogan of my own.  I am tempted to say, you see, that “love is what makes a Christian a Christian.”  But would that be wrong of me to assert?  What about Muslims, and Jews, and Buddhists, and Hindus?  What about Christians whose faith looks very different from mine, and to me, sometimes un-loving?  What about people of no faith at all?  Am I denying them love?  How could love belong only to Christians?  Of course it cannot.

But we have in Jesus this unusual figure – God incarnate – whose only real commandment to his disciples is that they should love one another.  If it sounds simple to us, we can assume it sounded simple to his first followers too, and, therefore, confusing.  What about the rules? they must have thought.  What about the law?  What about keeping ourselves pure for God?  Aren’t there things we shouldn’t eat, people we shouldn’t consort with, items we shouldn’t touch, songs we should learn by heart, secrets we should aspire to learn, complexities of theological nuance you alone can impart to us?

Well, says Jesus, by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  (Was ever another commandment so disobeyed?)

But let’s change gears for a moment.  Two children are with us this morning – Lily and Grace – to receive the sacrament of Baptism – a gift of God’s grace.  Who can argue that this is not a lovely thing?  But the question is, would these children be better off with a Subaru?  Is there anything meaningful beyond the rite of passage that this sacrament represents?  A Subaru, after all, promises to provide these girls with “longevity, safety, versatility, and adventure.”[i]  Aren’t these more useful properties than whatever ineffable gifts these girls will receive from a sprinkle of water, a dab of oil, and a briefly flickering flame?

The answer to that question, I propose, depends on what you think about love.  For the baptismal rite is somewhat misleading, in that it tends to suggest that Baptism is a gate through which you may enter, provided you know the answers to a few questions.  To make it easy, however, we make it an open-book test, somewhat cheapening the cost of admission.  But to see the sacrament of Holy Baptism in this way is to largely miss the point.  For although questions and answers have almost always been associated with the sacrament, neither the questions nor the answers are really what Baptism is about.  For Baptism is about love.  The gift of Baptism is the assurance of the gift of God’s love in abundant supply.  It is the act of drawing near to the river of God’s love, wading out into the midst of it, in the vicinity of a waterfall, and holding ourselves and our children out under the cascading flow of grace that is God’s love, until we are drenched with it!  This is how Christians are made.  Not with questions and answers; not with study and examination, not with spiritual challenges or feats of strength, but just with God’s love: freely given to anyone who seeks it.

But what is love?  The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are God’s way of enshrining love in the midst of his people.  And the Sacraments (especially Baptism and the Eucharist) are his way of keeping light burning at that shrine for ever.

Healing, forgiveness, welcome to the stranger and the sinner; humility, non-violence, peace; abundant food for the hungry, concern for the poor, a pre-eminent regard for children; appropriate laxity in religious observance, deep prayer, costly giving; power that is made perfect in weakness, the willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, confidence in God in the face of death, and faith in new life beyond the grave.  These are the descriptors of God’s love in the person of his Son Jesus.  And if you think these are a better foundation for a life defined by love than, say, full-time four-wheel-drive, then you have come to the right place!

The Subaru that I drove cross-country was a gift, given to the church by someone in need of a tax write-off.  It had more than 100,000 miles on it when I got it, and it needed a little work, but not much.  It was a terrific little car to drive: it was the smallest model, five-speed stick-shift.  We travelled west on the southern route, along I-40; and back east from the north, along I-90. 

When I got home, I parked the car on the street south of here around 21st and Catherine, and left it there a few days.  But when I went to retrieve the car, I couldn’t find it: it wasn’t where I thought I’d left it.  I wandered around, on the theory that I’d just forgotten the precise parking spot.  Eventually, about a block and a half away, on the opposite side of the street, I found a little green Subaru that looked like mine, and had the same license plate as mine, but this car had its roof crushed in on one side, and its rear windshield smashed in, and there were bricks in the back of the car among the shards of safety glass.

There was a man sitting on a stoop across the street from the car, and I asked him, “Do you know what happened to this car?”

“Oh yes,” he replied, pointing to a pile of bricks just near where I’d thought I’d parked the car, “that house over there fell on it.”

A house had collapsed on top of the car, and police had moved the vehicle across the street to a new parking spot, where, in a minor miracle it had not yet gotten a parking ticket!

Now, I want Lily and Grace to know something about the love of God in their lives.  I want their baptism to have real meaning, as they grow into themselves, and become the people God has made them to be.  I want them to know the love of their families, and their friends, and I want them, some day, to fall deeply in love with someone who will make them happy.  I want the word “love” to mean more to them than brand-loyalty to a car company.  And I want them to know healing, and forgiveness, and welcome to the stranger and the sinner; and humility, non-violence, peace; abundant food for the hungry, concern for the poor.  I want them, when they grow up, to have a pre-eminent regard for children; and even appropriate laxity in religious observance.  I want them to practice deep prayer, costly giving; and to learn that Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness.  I want them to know that greater love hath no man than the willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  And I want them to have confidence in God in the face of death, and faith in new, resurrected life beyond the grave.

I also want them to know that sometimes houses fall on cars, like a ton of bricks; hat things get ruined and fall apart; that friends and family will disappoint you; that failure is part of life; that there are forces in the world that can crush you; and that sometimes the house falls down on you from the outside, but sometimes it falls down on the inside.  This is life, and a Subaru can get you through a lot of it, but you are going to need more than a sturdy car if you are going to be a person who really loves, in the face of all that can go wrong in the world.

So, yes, I do want longevity, safety, versatility, and adventure for these children, as their parents do, and maybe even full-time four-wheel-drive, if that’s what they need when they grow up.  But more than that I want them to know God’s love, and know that when the longevity, safety, versatility, and adventure have run out of everything else – as it inevitably will – God’s love will still be burning like a light in the darkness; God’s love will still be flowing like a river, over mighty falls; and God’s love will be the best and truest guide to their lives, and the only commandment worth keeping: to love one another.

The Psalmist, in a moment of supreme poetic license, declares that “there is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God.”  To the untrained ear this statement might sound like nonsense.  What can it mean?  Where is this river?  What gladness flows from its waters?  Where is this city of God? 

But those who have been baptized know the answer to this question: the streams of the river flow here.  The city of God is being built up here!  And great gladness comes from following the one, true commandment to love one another!

Now, let’s buckle up, and drive over to and through the waters of love.  For it’s love that makes us who we are in Christ, and that makes Grace and Lily Christians on this glad day!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 April 2016

Saint Mark's Chruch, Philadelphia

[i] from “How Subaru fell in love and never looked back,” by Tim Nudd, AdWeek, April 8, 2013

Admitted to the Flock

Admitted to the Flock

Mtr. Nora Johnson

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