Saint Christopher in Spain

Saint Christopher in Spain

Fr. Sean Mullen

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5)

A dilemma gripped me as I prepared to walk from Sevilla to Santiago de Compostela this summer along the Via de la Plata – the ancient route that Romans, Moors, Spaniards, and pilgrims have traveled for centuries. I estimated that it would take me about forty days of walking to cover the distance of just over a thousand kilometers (or 621 miles). I had carefully worked out (I thought) how much I needed to carry in my pack: just a little more than two changes of clothes (one for walking, and one to change into while the others were washed in the sink and dried in the sun); a pair of Tevas to wear when the hiking shoes came off; rain gear just in case; a corkscrew without question: a Kindle loaded with books to read during the down time. But the dilemma was posed by my walking partner, a priest from London, who assured me by email that he’d be bringing a Bible and a Prayer Book in order to pray the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer each day. Ugh!

I did not want to carry these books with me. I pray these Offices all the time here at home, aided greatly by the custom we have at Saint Mark’s of saying the Offices daily in church, but when I travel, my commitment to this discipline is not so good, especially if it involves carrying two books, that even in their lightweight version (both books bound together, printed on light, onionskin-like paper) weighs one pound, twelve ounces. Plus, I already had both books loaded onto my Kindle. But I knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to do the kind of flipping around, back and forth that is required in both books when you use these forms of prayer. The Kindle would be impractical. So, would I bring this brick of a book and carry it with me?

As I prepared to leave for Spain, this question nagged at me, as I tried to trim more weight from my backpack, to make the walking easier over such a long distance. Out of a sense of duty, and in order to avoid shame I decided to bring the book.

Once I began to walk, I regretted the decision almost immediately. My walking partner was much more committed to the practice of the Daily Office while traveling than I was. Oh, I began and ended my days with prayer. I spent hours of walking, dedicating my footsteps to people, worries, issues I wanted to pray about. I made it my habit to say the Angelus as each day’s walking began, and to punctuate each day with those prayers as the hours went on. With wide open space in front of me, and no one around to hear, I’d sing the Magnificat to the settings of various composers, bouncing back and forth from the treble and tenor lines, filling in the other parts in my head.

But the heat of southern Spain, and the weariness on arrival at the end of each day’s walking, and the preoccupation of washing my clothes, and planning the next day’s walk, and tending to meals, more often than not distracted me from praying the Daily Office. My prayer was internal and impromptu, and in no way stunted by my failure of discipline. I was praying more than usual, not less. And more freely, too, covering more ground, being (I hoped) more attentive to the Spirit, listening more than I was accustomed to. And going to Mass whenever I could.

My walking partner was much more regular in his practice of the Daily Office than I was, and quickly abandoned hope of saying the prayers together with me each day. He could often be found, book in hand, faithfully and silently reciting his psalms, when I was off procuring wine and cheese and chorizo for the evening meal.

But still the book was in my pack. And for a while I kept it up on the top, in the somewhat careful order I had of packing everything. The Bible-Prayer Book combo was one of the last things to go into the pack, making it about as accessible as my sunscreen. But eventually practicality won out over good intentions, and the red brick of a book migrated to the bottom of the rucksack, where on some days it wasn’t removed at all.

About two weeks into the walk, I decided that my packing had not been as strategically planned as I thought it had been, and I actually had some extra clothes – things intended for colder weather that I was clearly not going to need under the heat of the Spanish sun. I put together a little bundle of things and prepared to send them back to my hosts in Madrid, where I could pick them up at the end of my walk.

And as I was about to leave for the post office, I looked at the red brick of a book - the Word of God, and the prayers of the church, with its little ribbons hanging out. And oh, how I wanted to be rid of it! This was my chance to lighten my load. Books are heavy, and this one in particular. And it’s not like I was using it. And I had the Kindle if I really needed anything. But somehow, I could not bring myself to remove the book from my backpack and get rid of it. I knew that a significant part of me did not want to carry this thing with me, but some other insistent part of me couldn’t help but see the book as a symbol, the carrying of which was more important than its use.

I began to think of the weight of this book in my pack as something I needed to carry, and wanted to carry. I had noticed that in Spanish cathedrals you often find, on one of the transept walls, near the doors that are used for daily entry, an extremely large mural of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ-child across the river. 

Remember the legend that St. Christopher, on converting to Christian faith, sought to serve Christ, and was instructed by a hermit to assist people in the crossing of a dangerous river. One day, a little child came to the riverside in need of Christopher’s help. “Christopher lifted the child in his great arms, placed him on his shoulder, and started across, staff in hand. At every step the load grew more burdensome, and Christopher came near losing his balance in the rushing water. On reaching the other bank, he put the boy down, saying, ‘Child, thou hast put me in dire peril, and hast weighed so heavily on me that if I had borne the whole weight of the world upon my shoulders it could not have burdened me more heavily.’ The boy answered, ‘Wonder not, Christopher, for not only hast thou borne the whole world on thy shoulders, but Him who created the world.’”“[i]

And so, I began to identify with St. Christopher just a little bit, and to think of my book as a holy passenger that I could not forsake, and to see it as a matter, not only of honor, but of faith, to carry this little red book, weighing one pound twelve ounces, with me among the other things that were part of my load. Which at last brings me to the Gospel reading today, in which we hear the apostles beg of Jesus, “O Lord, increase our faith!” This is a sentiment, a request, a prayer, a desire, that it is difficult for us to adopt as our own, I suspect, for in our lives we wish for the increase of many things:

O Lord, increase my salary!

Increase my investment returns.

Increase the interest on my savings account. While you are at it, increase the savings therein!

Increase the value of my real estate.

Increase the time I get to spend with my children.

Increase the number of my vacation days.

Increase the number of my days on this earth, or the number of days I will have with the ones I love.

O Lord, increase my health, or my happiness, or Lord, at least increase my hair!

O Lord, increase the peace in this mad and warring world!

O Lord, increase the number of voters who agree with me!

Increase the people who come to church.

Increase the chances that the orchestra will be back on stage again soon!

Increase the education of our children, and the welfare of our nation.

Increase our security and our safety.

Increase the rain, O Lord, except when it rains too much, then increase the sunshine.

Increase the life of my cell phone battery, and the strength of my cellular signal.

O Lord, increase my memory as it starts to fail, and my strength, and my balance, and my independence as I grow older.

Increase the civility of public discourse, and the justice we seek in this land.

Increase equality between men and women, and among people of all colors and creeds

Increase the bees, who are struggling so.

Increase the flowers. O Lord, and the rainbows, and the days I get to spend at the beach.

Increase, O Lord, increase!

We have so much that we can easily ask God to increase. But to increase our faith? This is a difficult prayer. What would it mean to increase our faith?

I suspect that many of us imagine that if our faith was increased we’d be better at doing things like praying the Daily Office with great devotion, discipline, and regularity; marking our days with the prayers of the church, and coloring our lives with a piety that we imagine others, holier than we are, are possessed of.

But I wonder if perhaps, there is an answer to that hope (O Lord, increase our faith!) that is actually much simpler. Maybe it’s a question of finding the one thing we need to carry, amid all the other things we’d do better off to let go of, leave behind, and give up.

If life is a pilgrimage – a journey with God, to God – then you want to be careful about how you pack your rucksack, because the things you carry matter. And amid all the other things we want to carry, it is so easy to leave Jesus behind, on the far shore, considering that he is just too heavy and inconvenient to bring with us, and after all, what difference does he make?

I cannot say for sure, what difference it made to carry that little red book with me from the south of Spain all the way to the north for a span of forty-two days. But I can say without a doubt that I am glad I carried it, because it seems to have been a way that God increased my faith – helping me to find not only the strength, but the will, and the desire to carry something, that I had first thought I’d rather not have with me at all.

I have reflected for a while with a photo of one of those very large murals of St. Christopher – the one in Zamora Cathedral. And I notice that he has big calves, just like I do. And it’s hard to tell, but I think he has athletic tape around one of his toes, as I often did when walking in Spain. And he is carrying a wooden staff that he has just picked up in the woods somewhere, as I did. But he has no backpack strapped to his shoulders and his waist. He has only the Lord Jesus, resting on his shoulder, demanding his attention, and giving him (and the whole world around them) his blessing. 

And I think how glad I am that I carried that red book with me. And it makes me want to pray, O Lord, increase my faith!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

2 October 2016

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] fr. Lives of the Saints, John J. Crawley & Co.

Don't Go to Hell

Don't Go to Hell

Mtr. Nora Johnson

Here is the bad news from this morning’s Gospel: resurrection doesn’t fix everything, at least not the way it appears to on Easter cards or in movies about the life of Jesus. You know the image: a blinding light, maybe with the form of a blonde, blue-eyed man seeming to emerge from its center, hands outstretched. There may be a cave, angels, clouds from behind which the sun begins to break through. It looks really good. It looks like once that happens everything is taken care of. It looks like it answers every argument and opens every heart. The image may be a little short on detail but it really packs a wallop.

And yet here we are two thousand years later and we know that not every heart is open. And we know that not every argument has been won. And we mostly feel sure that we can’t make an entrance like that blonde Jesus does, with sunlight flashing from behind us and angels standing witness. That’s too bad, isn’t it? Oh for that power. Oh to be so decisive and cataclysmic and gleaming. It just feels like that’s what resurrection is supposed to mean, and I think many of us carry around a secret sense of disappointment when that doesn’t work for us.

While we are on the subject of disappointment: this morning’s Gospel from Luke contains what may be the only joke about the resurrection in all of scripture. It’s quite disturbing. At the end of the parable, when the rich man asks that Lazarus be sent from the dead to warn his rich brothers that they ought to change their ways, Father Abraham refuses. No, he says, even if someone were sent from beyond the grave to warn that basket of deplorables, they would refuse to believe. Their hearts aren’t going to open.

The joke, if we can call it that, is that Luke’s readers know that Jesus has come from beyond the grave, and that that fact has made all the difference in the world to them. If they are paying attention, though, they will be struggling with the fact that Jesus has not made a big difference to many of their friends and neighbors. They must hear this remark from Father Abraham as a nod to their own reality. Maybe they hear it as an ironic way of lessening the immense psychic strangeness of the post-resurrection world. How mysterious it must be to them to know that Jesus is with them in great power and glory, but that the kingdom hasn’t come in any straightforward way that solves all their problems.

Luke’s first readers must have known as we do that even in the world for which Jesus has died and in which he has been reborn, there are still vast chasms that separate us from one another. Let me put it more strongly: in this world that God so loved that he gave his only son, this world for whom Jesus lived and died and rose again, this world that God can’t resist—in this world, the vast chasms that separate us from one another are the absolute hallmark of our separation from God. And Luke’s parable is written with a kind of brutal realism that makes us feel the results of that separation.

Let’s be clear: the rich man in this parable wasn’t just rich. He wasn’t a person who tried to follow his conscience but got cold feet at the prospect of giving everything to the poor. He wasn’t a person who tried, even tried ineffectually, to do something positive in the world. He wasn’t much concerned about the notion of “giving back” in thanksgiving for his blessings. This was a man who dressed to the nines and feasted richly every day with no thought at all for the poor man at his gate. The gate is an eloquent expression of his rigid focus on wealth. “Keep the poor away from me,” he seems to be saying, “because my life has nothing to do with theirs. My wellbeing is not only not dependent upon the wellbeing of others, it is directly opposed to the wellbeing of others. The only answer is to lock the gate.” We know him for his clothes, his food, and his desire to lock out the poor. Nothing else. Build a wall, he seems to want to suggest, and make Lazarus pay for it.

And when he dies, the vision of the afterlife we’re given for him is nothing but a grimmer image of his earthly existence. That same sense of separation and limitation become overpowering. That same sense that life is limited to material pleasure and fear of material suffering is still with him. There he is, face to face with ultimate reality, and he has learned nothing. We don’t hear anything about his personal regrets, just that he is now in physical agony. His desire is not to know God or repent of his sins, but to have some cool water, and of course he wants Lazarus to deliver it. He seems to think that the isolation could be bearable if only it were just a little more comfortable. If only there were servants and power. That worked for him on earth, so why not try it in the afterlife?

And that gate he used to keep out anyone who challenged his self-indulgent worldview has now become some kind of great, existential gap. It doesn’t open and close anymore. Its hinges are rusted shut. It stretches before him for eternity, and it seems to stretch back behind him, to his life on earth, with that same sense of eternal inevitability. No, there is absolutely no hope for this rich man or for his family or for his cronies. Suddenly it’s not just that he won’t change, it’s that he can’t change, and nobody like him can change, and there is nothing at all that can be done except to suffer in this world of his own making, a suffocating, hot, claustrophobic world in which all the doors are closed. Suddenly he is in a world in which even the resurrection is just a joke, even to Father Abraham.

Is this what the afterlife looks like? No. That’s not really what this story is trying to map out for us. Is the resurrection a joke? No, never, not in any way. This story is written by someone who is shot through with resurrection hope, for people who are shot through with resurrection hope, and it records in some way the truth of Jesus’s earthly ministry, which was founded on and steeped in and ultimately the cause of profound, glorious, resurrection hope.

And here’s what it does for us: it teaches us how to know heaven on earth by knowing what the road to hell looks like. It teaches us the power of the smallest act of charity, by showing us what a life without charity looks like. It teaches us what openness and humility can do, by showing us how arrogance and self-will can spiral out of control. This story, for all its grim inevitability, is a lesson in how to change. And how to change is pretty simple. Can’t commit right now to a life of evangelical poverty? Try giving something small away. Can’t love your neighbor? Try not ignoring your neighbor. Try admitting that your neighbor exists. Don’t shoot your neighbor or put your neighbor in jail on some slim pretext. Can’t drum up an abundant feeling of hope and charity? Try not embracing cynicism with your whole heart and soul, just for a few minutes.

It’s really simple. Just don’t go to hell. I mean it. What we do here on earth creates a reality for us. What we practice here on earth starts to shape the world that we live in for ourselves and for others. Our daily defensiveness and rigidity really are the building blocks of a vast chasm that separates us from all that is holy and all that is true. So don’t go to hell, just for today. Don’t give up on the world. Don’t turn your back on this aching, hungry, world.

Can’t make an entrance like that Easter Card Resurrection Jesus, with the light shining and the arms outstretched and the clouds parting? Don’t worry about it. Just come back a little from the ways you used to be dead. Look up from your anxiety about where we are headed and focus on where we are right now, where love and kindness are abundantly possible, and you are here because you want to hope, and you are surrounded by people who have all returned from graves of one kind or another. This is real. This is the kingdom of God in action. Whatever resurrection really looks like, it has your face and your energy level and your limitations, just for today, while you take small steps away from the grave, to open the gate that keeps you locked up in fear and arrogance. Resurrection looks like this community, this church full of open hearts and open hands and open faces. This moment.

Don’t go to hell. Don’t go to hell today. By the grace of God, stay here with us. Just nudge that gate open and stay with us. Don’t go to hell.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

25 September 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Claiming of the Shrewd

There once was a time when a man woke up of a Sunday morn and decided that he wanted to go to church. The sheets were warm, and the pillows were soft, and for a moment he was tempted to stay right where he was and worship at the Church of the Holy Comforter by the Springs. But something in his soul was stirring, and so he dragged himself from the cocoon of his cozy bed, dressed, and walked into town, looking for a place to worship.

When he arrived in the town square, he found himself in front of two different churches. He headed first to the right, towards the building with the plain wooden sign that read “Church of God” in small, simple letters. He entered into the dark space, and when his eyes adjusted to the light, this is what he saw:

He saw a tall, arching ceiling that drew his eyes up into shadow. He saw plain, ordinary pews, all just the same. He saw people of all kinds – all shapes and sizes, all races and genders, the rich and the poor and the powerful and the meek – sitting beside one another. He saw children sitting there, too, just like everybody else. He saw people smiling, saying hello, or kneeling quietly in prayer. He saw people pass by him in the doorway, bow their heads, cross themselves with holy water before stepping inside. He saw gold and silver and rich satin, all assembled in particular spots, marking the spaces in the church that seemed the most sacred, the thin places where the human and the divine touched. And in the center of the church, he saw the figure of a man, hanging from a cross, humbled and beaten and rejected, but somehow, shockingly, lifted up for all to see, reigning over all with a great and quiet majesty.

The man stood and watched this scene for a moment, taking in the people and the cross and face of that man broken upon it. He felt his soul go still, and he thought he might stay. But there was that other building to try across the street, and so he pulled himself out of the stillness and back into the town square.

Across the street, the other building was strikingly different from the one he had just left. This one had all of its gold and gemstones on the outside, shining in the sun like beacons. There was a sign, too, but this sign was enormous. The letters were 20 feet high, covered in gold with lights that twinkled around their borders. They were placed high up on the wall of the building, towering above the square, and they proclaimed, in all caps, “CHURCH OF MAMMON.” The man shielded his eyes, looked both ways, crossed the street, and entered in. And this is what he saw:                            

Opulence, everywhere. The light inside the church shone on splendor spilling out all over the place. When people entered into the church behind him, they didn’t bow their heads and dip a finger into a bowl of holy water; instead they lifted their faces and examined themselves in a mirror on the wall, giving their hair a final pat or their tie one final tug. Those that were dressed in bespoke suits and designer dresses ushered themselves to a plush seat in the front row, into golden chairs studded with diamonds and lined with rich fur. Other people, whose clothes were lovely, but off the rack, took a seat behind the golden ones in chairs that were a bit plainer with only a simple cushion. Those who showed up in clothes from last season shuffled to benches in the back of the room, where they sat hunched over, bunched together, and largely ignored. The ones who came to the door worn and dirty were told there was no room for them in the inn.

The man saw that most of the people looked very much the same – they were powerful and pretty, they were almost all the same color and almost all the same age. There were no children to be seen, but the man noticed a few of them being whisked away to another room where they would have to wait until they were old enough to have something positive and profitable to contribute. And in the center of the room, where in the other church the man had seen that hollowed-out, holy man hanging from his cross, in this church, there was…nothing. The front of the church was completely empty. But the people didn’t seem to mind, busy as they were commenting on each other’s new things, looking around to see how they compared to their neighbors, worrying about how they might move up higher.

 There was, the man thought, something to worship here, but it wasn’t holy and it wasn’t helpful. And it certainly wasn’t what he had woken up thinking about that morning. And so he turned and went back to the little wooden church to sit together with the rich and the poor and with all the little children in the shadow of that man with a face like love and his arms stretched out in what, in all truth, looked like a profound embrace.

If only it were so easy. If only we could see the signs so clearly, hear a verbal warning, “You are now leaving the Church of God and are entering the Church of Mammon.” Jesus told us that we cannot serve both God and wealth, and we agree, we nod our heads, but then we leave this church and step onto the street and wonder how exactly to tell. Am I serving God if I give money to a person on the street who may use it to buy drugs? Am I serving Mammon if I go buy a new book? A better pair of shoes? A luxury condo on Rittenhouse Square? We cannot serve both God and Mammon. Right. We know. But how do we know?

 Truth is, it’s complicated. Figuring out what to do with our money, how to relate to our stuff, is a thorny business. But it is our thorny business, and Jesus wants us to pay attention to it. Why else would he talk about it so much? I mean, really, for a man who lived off of the generosity of strangers and had nowhere to lay his head, he talks about money a lot. He knows it's tricky, so tricky in fact that when he does talk about it what he has to say isn’t always crystal clear. Look at today’s parable of the unjust steward – what is even going on here? Is the rich man really so blameless in all of this mess? If so, why do his debtors owe him so much? When the steward has his master’s debtors pay a bill for half of what they owe, is he cutting his losses or cutting out the unfair interest? And why is any of this praiseworthy? It’s a confusing, complicated story, about a confusing, complicated subject.

It’s such a complicated subject, in fact, that if we’re going to figure it out, we’re going to have to be smart. We’re going to have to be savvy. We’re going to have to be shrewd. If the motives of the unjust steward are unclear and his merits somewhat murky, at least we know that he was shrewd. He was thinking; he was planning, he was clever and canny and he paid attention to detail. We have to be as shrewd as the unjust manager; we have to claim that shrewdness as a part of our discipleship and put it to work for God’s purposes. We have to take the time to think about how we spend our money, how we give it away, how we treat our stuff, and how we treat our neighbors. We have to be clever and canny, and most of all, we have to pay attention to detail. For our service to God or to Mammon isn’t determined – mostly – by what we do when we receive a windfall. Our service to God or to Mammon is determined by what we do with a very, very little, with the tiniest of tiny bits.

And when we are shrewd – faithfully, humbly shrewd - each of these tiny moments becomes an opportunity for grace. For God is there in each moment. God has been there for every decision you’ve made today, from the moment you woke up of a mind to go to church to the moment you sat down after the Gospel. God will continue to be there, from the moment you step out onto Locust Street until the moment you lay your head down tonight. So, you holy Church of God, come to this place and sit before the one with arms stretched out in mercy. Take in his love and feel your souls go still. And then go forth from this place like the beloved, glorious, shrewd disciples that you are. Be faithful, in a very little and in very much. Worship the Lord, and serve only him. And the Lord shall direct your going out and your coming in, your saving and your spending, your serving, from this time forth for evermore.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

18 September 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia