More Than Just One

There once was a man, a leader, who looked out upon his people and saw that they were broken apart. It had been his hope to make them one, to unite them in one triumphant band. But watching them as they went about their daily work, he saw that they were deeply and hopelessly divided, and that without help they would continue to live lives of separation and regret. And so this man, this leader, made a decision. He himself would make things right. He would offer himself up as a sacrifice, turn himself over to be hated and abused, and in his sacrifice, his people would find their way. In his sacrifice, his people would see how they were bound to each other, and they would ultimately take hold of the glorious victory that was rightly theirs. In other words, they might just take home the gold medal.

Like many of you, I have had the Olympics on the brain this week, and I've found myself thinking back to one of the greatest Olympic moments of all time – not in 2016 in the sunny carnival of Rio de Janeiro, but in 1980 in the “frozen tundra”* that was Lake Placid, New York. Herb Brooks was the coach of the American men’s hockey team that year, a team that was expected – no, guaranteed – to lose. The fearsome engine of Soviet sports was in full swing then, and the teams of the Soviet bloc were unstoppable. The men had played together for years; they skated like lightning and moved across the ice like a machine. Brooks’ team, on the other hand, was composed mostly of college hot-shots, who not only had never played together but had actively played against each other. Their inter-collegiate rivalries ran deep, and Brooks found himself coaching a team that hated the idea of playing with each other more than they hated the idea of losing to the Soviets.

But Brooks had an idea. He would sacrifice himself before the altar of Olympic glory in order to give his team of bull-headed, fractious young men a whisper of a chance of winning. He did the only thing he could do to stop them from hating each other so much; he made himself so hard-nosed, so tyrannical, so despicable, that they all started to hate him. And when they all started hating him, they finally found something in common. They were still infuriated, but now, they were all infuriated about the same thing. Suddenly, they started playing as a team. And you know the end of the story – they beat the Soviets, and then beat Finland, and took home the gold. Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

But this wasn’t, actually, a miracle. It was a masterful plan, made by one man, who was willing to sacrifice himself, his own likeability, to make his team one. For Herb Brooks, unity was everything. It was worth any cost he might have to pay. It was worth it to be hated if he could give those young men the chance to earn what they had long desired – a gold medal and a place in those Olympic legends we all like to tell this time of year. Okay, so his plan was just the slightest bit manipulative, but Herb Brooks made those players a team, made them one, and we admire him for it.

There is something innately admirable about unity. There’s something noble about the idea of a group of disparate people uniting for a common purpose or against a common enemy. It’s truly American, it’s truly human, to seek unity and to place those who bring it about on a pedestal, or, often, in office. When there is work to be done, when there is an impossible mountain to climb, or when fear is all around, unity can feel like the only thing that matters, the highest good, no matter what price we might have to pay for it. Unity at any cost can begin to sound almost like Gospel…right up until the moment we hear Jesus’ message to his disciples in today’s passage from Luke. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled,” he says. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Hearing that, we realize that there is more to the story than unity at any cost.

But to be honest, I’m not sure how much of that story I want to hear. I mean, last week we heard Jesus say, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And this week he says he’s coming to bring division? Is there any promise, any news, anything we would like to hear less right now? Have mercy, O Lord, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of division. The maelstrom of our division threatens to swamp us at any moment. Wave after wave crashes down on us every day, in every news cycle – white and black, men and women, rich and poor, undocumented workers and American citizens, gun-owners and non-gun-owners, Muslims and everybody else, black lives matter and blue lives matter and all lives matter, Republican and Democrat and all of their various and sundry sub-divisions. And then there are the divisions that don’t make the news – the divisions in our workplaces or in our households or hearts, the ugly divisions that splinter our Church. We live amongst the wreckage of these divisions every moment of every day. So wouldn’t it be nice to hear Jesus say to us, Do not be afraid, little flock, for I have a masterful plan to take all of those divisions away. You won’t even know what’s happening. I’ll fix it to make you all one, and we’ll worry about everything else later. Sounds promising, right? Sounds like a bit of a miracle. And should we expect anything less of our Savior than this?

But this is not what our Savior says. Jesus does not promise us unity at all costs, because Jesus is interested in more than that. Jesus is interested in more than a unity built upon hypocrisy and hatred. Jesus is interested in more than a unity held together by disgust and disdain. Jesus is interested in more than a unity of some that builds walls to keep others out. Jesus is interested in more than a unity that is only on our own terms, a unity that is built upon the sand of our partial understandings. Jesus wants more than just cheap unity.** Jesus wants us to be more than just one; Jesus wants us to be one in him.

And to be made one in him, Jesus offers us a hope that less like the promise of gold and glory and more like a sword that slices into our world and reorders everything – the top on the bottom, the bottom on the top, the secret truth brought to the fore, the lowly asked to sit up higher, our every expectation turned downside up in the light of Christ’s refining fire. Remember, this is a Messiah whose mother sang him to sleep each night with the words of the Magnificat. A unity that ignores these Gospel truths is worth nothing at all. What is the point of such unity if it keeps the mighty in their seat and puts down the humble and meek? What good is a unity that continues to fill the rich with good things and sends the hungry empty away?

Jesus wants more for us than this, he longs for a unity that connects us not just to each other but to the very heart of God. And so, he tells us, we are to do this one thing. We are to pay attention. We are to interpret the present time. And that time, our time, needs us to live the words of Our Lady’s Magnificat. Our time needs us to save the weak and the orphan, to defend the humble and needy, and to deliver them from the power of the wicked. Our time needs us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Our time needs us to refuse to see any of our neighbors as less worthy of love then we are. Our time needs us to embrace all those who differ from us, especially those who differ the most. Our time needs us to unite not to defeat our enemies but to love them. Our time needs us to refuse, again and again, to use words that threaten and harm. Our time needs us to embrace, again and again, the language of the gospel, which shines the light of the truth of God’s love into the world like a beacon of hope. Our time needs us to pay attention, to live the promises we hold, to seek a costly unity.

And the gift, the unearned prize, the real miracle, is that Jesus Christ our Savior has already accomplished the one thing that makes that kind of deep, enduring, transformative unity possible. He has been baptized with his own unique baptism, raised up high – not upon a pedestal, but upon the cross, to draw all people to himself. He has offered himself up as a sacrifice, not through hatred, but through love. All we need do is come to the foot of that cross, here – receive this bread and this wine and be re-membered into one body, confess our sins and return to the Lord, sing psalms and spiritual songs with one voice, let the truth of the Gospel catch fire in our hearts that it may shine out into our time, into our world. Come and count the cost of this unity, paid for you and for me by a God who is very near to you. Come, and do not be afraid. For it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

14 August 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

*Borrowed shamelessly from NFL films

**Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "cheap grace"

You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead

Luke’s gospel brings us some of the most familiar and most compelling parables that Jesus tells, and there are several that only appear in this Gospel. It is also one of the few parables that Jesus tells where the heavens open and God’s own voice is heard. And God has something to say. There is this farmer. His great trouble is how to deal with an abundance; fruitful fields and a great harvest. He is a planner and so he decides to expand his operations and build bigger barns and safely put away today’s produce for tomorrow’s need. And that’s when God intervenes. “You fool,” he says. Harsh words from anyone, but from God? Devastating. You fool.

So how exactly is this person a fool? Certainly not in working the land and carefully planting, tending and nurturing crops. And not in taking stock of what he has and making provision for the future; that is commended more than once in scripture and often provides survival in times of famine. “You fool,” not because of what he had done but because of his complete absorption in himself. Listen to his comical speech: he addresses himself, who else is worth talking to? And the whole conversation never gets outside his little head. What do I have? How can I keep what is mine? This is my plan and now I am secure and nothing need trouble me, aren’t I special? There is no act of gratitude, no taking the first fruits to the temple as a sign that land and life and all is a gift from God. There is no mention of laborers’ wages or interest in the craftsmen who built his barn. Here there is no talk of neighbors or family brought in to rejoice together. Think of other parables Jesus tells. The woman who found the lost coin? She throws a block party to celebrate what she found. The king whose dinner guests beg off? He sends servants into the streets and byways to find someone to come and share his meal. And that other farmer, the father whose younger son crawls home, disgraced and desperate? He kills the fatted calf and throws a party big enough to offend the elder brother. Jesus’ parables are a riot of festival and rejoicing. Not this farmer. No, his plan was carefully laid out for his own comfort and security. He could rest in his own accomplishments and confide in his own plans, and spend no time or money or produce on things like gratitude or compassion or community. He was rich and secure. Until he wasn’t.

“This night, your life will be demanded of you, and then whose will these things be?” Whose will they be? The parable has circled back to the question of how an inheritance is to be divided, and maybe now we see why Jesus was so impatient with the question. Settling an estate can be a point of gratitude for the past and of strengthening the bonds of those who continue. It can also be a point where old resentments and current anxieties press hard against the ties of friendship and family. Here, Jesus wants us to see one thing more. The question that the rich fool couldn’t answer was exactly that, “Whose will they be?” and the implied answer is simple: they never were yours, not in any absolute way. You received them and then held them until you had to put them down. They were yours by the creative goodness of God from the shared work of a community that made your work possible. They were yours to be used for good, your good and others. And they were only yours for a time.

Flannery O’Connor wrote a story, actually one about the aftermath of a death, and its title is enough of a story in itself: “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead.” So the rich fool’s life was demanded of him and the next morning, when those field hands he didn’t mention paying got up, when the craftsmen who’d built the new barns heard about it, when the neighbor’s he’d pretty much ignored saw the hearse driving away, they were all still in possession of whatever little bit they had. There was, we can assume, food on their tables as they shook their heads over the news. But the rich man, he was dead, and that’s as poor as you can be.

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, Jesus says, because it is greed that cuts us off from life. For life is not the weight of possessions, nor is it secured in bigger barns, and it is not sustained by what we clutch. Wealth (or the overwhelming longing for wealth), overweening ambition, or even just prudent planning empty of gratitude and generosity is like an addiction, and like an addiction it will choke out every competing interest or concern. Greed will blind a person to what is good in the very thing that greed grasps. Money and wealth can do good things, but greed refuses to see the source or the point. Greed makes an idol of its focus and as scriptures insistently reminds us, idols are cold, dead things that can do no one any good. The biggest lie that this idol whispers in our ears is that we are invulnerable, that what we have isolates us from need. Maybe it places us above those who have less in this culture. It means we are secure and in control. And when we hear that, and believe it, we cannot hear God speak. Well, the rich farmer couldn’t until those fearsome words, “Fool, this night your life is demanded of you.” You can’t be poorer than dead.

But that was him, and it was a parable, and so where do we stand? Paul says we have died already, so we are one step ahead of the foolish farmer. We have died and our life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, we will appear with him in glory.

When Christ appears, we will appear with him. When people introduce themselves one of the things we do is give a name and then some identifier: where we are in school, what sort of work we do, where we might be from. We listen and then share our own, quietly sizing each other up in other categories depending on the reason we encountered each other. But Paul insists that all of that – some of it profoundly important and life-enhancing, some of it simply realities of where we fall in the structures of the world, some of it the result of good or bad decisions – the ways we introduce ourselves or size each other up are finally as irrelevant as the rich fool’s wealth. When Christ appears, you will appear with him. After calling on us to live lives that turn away from evil and corruption, from lies and deception and from greed, Paul takes us one step further into poverty: there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free. We can no longer claim those identities, either as our privilege or another’s shame. They can no longer hold us back from each other. Christ has gathered all of that up in his incarnation. Nothing human is foreign him who was made “truly man.” The fullness of humanity bridges all of that and the fullness of humanity now in Christ is hid in God. You have died and your life is hid with Christ in God, and when Christ appears, you will appear with him. Anything we do that breaks down suspicions and heals divisions we do because whatever the division, Christ stands on both sides. If we confess and repent our own prejudice or pride or if we stand against the structures of a divided society, we are simply seeking Christ in whom all are one and who is in all. When Christ appears, we will appear with him, and then the beauty of every distinction and the gift in each particularity will be seen in the blessed unity that the Holy Spirit strives to perfect. Christ is all and in all.

Christ’s appearing is never far from hand: a passage of the Gospels, the blessed grace we encounter in the sacraments, the holiness of beauty, the joy of work that matters, the compassion that heals, the cup of water given in his name. Christ appears for those who have eyes and ears to perceive, and when we see and know Christ, we know ourselves. We know ourselves transformed, Paul says, we will appear with him in glory. And there we who are as poor as dead become heirs of a kingdom, and there in Christ’s transfiguring beauty, people like us shine with a glory that no riches and no earthly status can claim.

That is what made the rich farmer so foolish. For all that he had and for all his prudence, this is what he needed: a heart grateful enough to see God’s hand as the source of every good thing, and then a compassionate heart, that in knowing his own poverty he could see in others the needs he could meet, the good he could do, and the gifts he could give. “You fool,” God says, to the one who counts possessions, but not as blessings and gifts; to the one who builds barns and storehouses, but not for the well-being of others. “You fool,” he says to the one who forgets that all of this and even the ways in which we define ourselves is passing away, ours for the day and then to be given back into the hands from whence it came. And yet in baptism, our death is already behind us, drawn into Christ’s own life. Our poverty is enriched with his grace, and our true self remains to be received as gift, to be seen as revelation, to be revealed in glory when Christ who is our life is revealed.

Preached by Father David Cobb

31 July 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Traction and Distraction

I was walking on campus a few days ago, just here behind the chapel, when I saw a small group of people huddled together on the path, looking around anxiously and glancing back and forth at their phones. It looked like a father and two daughters, and as I approached them I could hear the father say, “Well, I don’t know, where is it?” Now I had been at Sewanee for a little less than 48 hours, but when I see someone who looks lost, it’s hard for me not to try to help them. So I began to move towards them, silently praying that they might be looking for one of the three buildings I knew how to find. But as I got closer, I saw one of the daughters grin like a girl on Christmas morning. She beamed up at her father, “It’s the little green one, isn’t it?” she said to him. And it was then that I knew. This wasn’t a prospective student and her family looking for the admissions office; this was a family playing Pokémon Go.             

If you haven’t heard the news this week – like, for example, if you’ve been stuck under a rock or if you’ve been a part of the Sewanee Church Music Conference and therefore spending roughly 17 hours a day singing or registering service music – there’s a new game that’s sweeping the nation. No, check that, there’s a new game that has swept the nation, and it’s called Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is, according to Wikipedia, a “free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game.” Translated that from Silicon Valley speak, that means that this game takes the view through your phone’s camera and superimposes a virtual reality overtop of it. The player’s job, then, is to use their cameras to hunt down virtual creatures in the Pokémon world. So you’re using your phone to look at the bike rack outside of McClurg dining hall, for example, and suddenly there’s a little green one, or a Pikachu, or a whatever-its-called looking back at you. It is, apparently, addictively fun.

It is also, apparently, pretty darn dangerous. People playing this game have been staring at their phones and then walking into stuff all week. Players have been stepping off of curbs and into intersections, ramming into people and even, in at least one case, ramming their car into a tree. On Thursday two Pokémon Go-ers were so intent on capturing the little green guy that they actually walked right off a cliff. The all-consuming pull of the smartphone has reached a whole new level with this new game. Pokémon Go has created an entirely new definition of distraction.

Martha, as far as we know, did not have a smartphone. There were no little green ones lurking in the corners of her house, and she wasn’t looking at anything except the work she had to get done. But she was still hopelessly distracted. She and her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus were friends of Jesus’ – new friends, perhaps, as this is the first time Luke mentions Martha in his Gospel. Jesus and his disciples have just rolled into town, and Jesus needs a place to rest for a while – a soft cushion, a home-cooked meal, a quiet room to pray and sleep. And Martha is a good person, a faithful Jew. She knows the importance of hospitality, and she’s happy to offer it.

And so she gets down to business. There is cleaning to be done, and bread to bake, and blankets and rugs to air out. There is water to draw and a goat to be milked and the fire to stoke and keep hot. She’s working hard; she’s in the zone, firing on all cylinders, and everything is going smoothly…until she notices her sister, Mary, doing absolutely nothing. She’s sitting on the floor with Jesus, doing nothing – just listening. Well, Martha thinks, that’s fine, I can probably get this done faster without her anyway. But the longer Martha sweeps and kneads and milks and sweats, the more animated the conversation becomes in her head. What is Mary doing, she thinks. Has she not noticed me swirling around the house like a cyclone? I mean, it’s kind of obvious that I’m killing myself here – would it be too much to ask for her to pick up on the fact that I need a little help? No, no, it’s fine, she can listen to him, I’ll do it all myself. I always do it all myself. Always me. Always poor Martha, cooking and cleaning and, you know, tending the livestock – as if I wouldn’t mind sitting around with my feet up eating bon bons every once in a while. But no, I’ll just keep working, because if I stop, well, then what happens? The house gets dusty and the milk will turn which is disgusting and who would want to live that way anyway and why, oh why, Lord does it always have to be me that does everything for everybody except for myself?!

Okay. So perhaps I exaggerate just a tiny bit. But we know that in this moment Martha is troubled. She is, as Luke tells us, distracted by her many tasks, so distracted that she finally approaches Jesus and asks for his help in getting Mary to pitch in. Even in the asking, she is so distracted that Jesus, looking up at her flushed face, chooses to say her name aloud. Not once, but twice. Martha, Martha, he says, trying to really get her attention. Martha, Martha, look at yourself. You’re dis-tracted, literally “pulled apart” right now. Take a breath, and take a look. See what is right before your eyes – your sister, Mary. She has chosen the better way.

Now just to be clear, I don’t think Jesus means only that sitting still was the better way. I don’t think that he means doing nothing but listening is the only way to be. This story can easily be read as a recommendation of the contemplative life over and above the active life, but I don’t think that’s entirely what our Lord was getting at. After all, generations of Christians have been pretty darn active and pretty darn faithful at the same time. Ora et labora, St. Benedict reminds us, prayer and work, and those Benedictines seem to be doing just fine.

No, there is more to the story here. The better way that Jesus is talking about is the way of being not-distracted, not pulled apart. It’s about listening and being present no matter what you’re doing. Martha’s problem isn’t that she’s doing something. Martha’s problem is that she’s doing one thing but she’s thinking about something else. She’s looking at the world, but she’s seeing only her own worries superimposed over the view. She’s pulled apart, living in two places at once. Her attention is divided, and so she misses out on seeing the holiness that is all around her. She misses the beauty of the goat’s milk glistening in the bowl like silk. She overlooks the miracle of how a little yeast leavens the whole loaf. She doesn’t smell the sweetness of fresh air as it blows into dusty rooms, doesn’t hear the music in the rise and fall of Jesus’ voice. She is distracted, and anxious, and worried, and she misses the presence of God that is all around her.

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I, too, feel like I’ve just missed it, times when I feel like I’ve spent the entire day looking at one thing but seeing another. I feel pulled apart, by my work or my worries, or by the world’s bad news. You and I can be distracted by many things. You are getting older and your body doesn’t work the same anymore. You have just received a diagnosis that makes your heart beat fast with fear. Your marriage is stuck, or your family is distant, or your faith has gone dry. You live in a world full of dangerous creatures that pop up out of nowhere with terrifying frequency and tragic results. You and I can be distracted by many things. And when we’re distracted, we tend to make bad decisions. We become short-tempered and unforgiving. We act out of fear instead of hope; we look for vengeance instead of mercy. We expect scarcity instead of abundance. We see neighbors as other instead of as sisters and brothers, and we start walking around this world around ramming into each other or stepping off of cliffs. We get pulled apart, and we tend to try to pull the rest of the world apart with us.

But this day, in this still and holy place, hear our Lord speaking to you, Martha. Martha. Choose the better way. Choose me. Look to me, whatever you are doing. See me superimposed over all of the cares of the world. Listen to me with a still, present, and open heart. Find traction for your soul in me. For I am never distracted. You are always first on my mind, when you lay your head down at night and when you blink your eyes open in the morning, and all of the hours when you sing inbetween. You are always mine, and I am always drawn to you. So choose the better way. There is need of only one thing. Look for me with your whole heart. Listen to me, that you may live.   

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 July 2016

All Saints' Chapel, Sewanee, Tennessee