Creating Barriers to God

Creating Barriers to God

Mtr. Nora Johnson

Zacchaeus is the chief tax collector and a wealthy man. What would drive him up a tree?

It’s easy to like Zacchaeus’s story. It’s easy to admire his spunk, or his zeal. He’s fantastically ready to give away half of what he has, and to repay what he may justly owe. I’d love to be able to identify with that particular readiness. I don’t think I can. Sometimes, though I think I do identify with Zacchaeus as he climbs the sycamore. Because like many of you I know something about what it is to feel faintly ridiculous about my own desire to see Jesus. That feeling of having gone out on a limb is familiar to many Christians in the twenty-first century. Nice story. I’m glad to see him get his reward.

Still, why should he have to climb a tree? We know he wants to see Jesus. Everybody does. That’s a good thing, right? They want to cast eyes upon Jesus as he passes through, and it’s hard not to feel some kinship with them. There is some kind of ardor, or at least a powerful curiosity, that leads that crowd to stand by the side of the road, just hoping to get a glimpse of this healer and teacher on his way to Jerusalem. They know something is happening in their midst, and as New Testament crowds go, that makes them pretty enlightened. Just last week, the Gospel of Matthew told us about Jesus being unable to do anything much in a crowd of people from his own hometown, because they lacked faith and they took offense at him. But Luke’s crowd from Jericho is all fired up. They aren’t hiding their interest in Jesus. They’ve turned out for Jesus in large numbers, it seems. We would do well to learn from them.

But it still bothers me that Zacchaeus has to climb a tree. While that crowd has come together to seek Jesus, while their eyes are trained on this itinerant holy man, they seem unable or unwilling to notice their short friend Zacchaeus. Do you ever wonder about this? It’s fun to imagine him climbing a tree, but what are the unspoken rules of that crowd that make him climb in the first place?

I wonder who else can’t see Jesus in that crowd. I wonder whom else it would be awkward for them to acknowledge. Are the children lifted up on their parents’ shoulders or do they stand in a sea of adults, wondering what all the excitement is about? Are they left to their own devices? I wonder what the man on crutches or the woman with the hemorrhage have to do to get close to the healer. What about the one with the demonic spirit or the leper or the one who is too hungry to focus on anything other than begging right at that moment? What do you do in that crowd if you are blind?

What would it feel like to be standing in a crowd and to realize that there is no way that particular group of people are going to get you close to what you’re looking for in your life with God? They’ll let you stand there, sure, but their backs are firmly turned away from your actual needs, your honest stature. They may have taken your measure silently—I guess everybody knows Zacchaeus is short—but they don’t want to talk about why you feel diminished among them. It would apparently feel awkward to turn to Zacchaeus and ask whether he would like to move up to the front of the line.

Zacchaeus knows how the game is played. He knows what kind of community that is. He is the chief tax collector, a collaborator with the Roman forces that dominate the people, and he knows that whatever he needs in that crowd, he has to take. He knows enough to know that no friendly invitation will be forthcoming. No one will overcome the awkwardness and shoo him on up to the front. So he runs ahead and climbs a tree. Like you do.

All this while, Jesus has been passing through the crowd of people eager to see him. He must intuit something about the spirit of that community. Maybe he just knows that they are like everybody else, and they come to see him in the same way they set about trying to get power or riches or approval or a good parcel of land or the best place at a banqueting table. You take what you want because it’s not going to be given to you. Jesus knows that for that crowd, even desire for holiness has become a kind of a scarce commodity. There are only so many places at the front of the line, only so many people who can be touched by the holy man, only so many chances to have an encounter.

Maybe Jesus knows that we can’t stop ourselves from thinking that his love is a scarce commodity. We know that God’s love is infinite and ever-abundant but how often are we really willing to let that knowledge change how we live? How many people come and go among us, without a deep sense of having been known and loved? How many people can’t see Jesus here because of a feeling of elitism or exclusivity? What are the barriers to entry at Saint Mark’s, physical and social? Is there self-satisfaction? Competition?

The answer is “Yes, of course.” Not because this isn’t a great church. I know a lot about the warmth and forgiveness and faith and creative outreach that are available here, and it blows my mind sometimes to think about what happens in this place. But we are still sinners, aren’t we. This is and always will be a church full of sinners on a long, uneven, journey of healing and transformation. And every one of us will want to jockey for a position at some time or another. Every one of us will foolishly try to measure our own closeness to God by measuring the between us and the nearest competitor. Every one of us will slip into imagining that Jesus is the object of our desire, something out there to attain.

But Jesus is no object. Jesus is no commodity. Jesus is the desire itself. Jesus is the whole process of transformation: the curiosity, the heart warming. And Jesus is the excluded one, too: the short one, the forgotten one, the one who comes out on the wrong end of the social interaction, the one who has already been written off before the competition starts.

And so while all the good people of Jericho, with their growing sense of spiritual desire, jockey for the chance to feast their eyes upon Jesus, our Lord turns his own eyes upon Zacchaeus, and he reorders that whole community. He redirects their quest. “Zacchaeus,” he says, “I need your hospitality.”

Now, I guess, if that crowd wants to get close to Jesus, they will have to go find him in uncomfortable proximity to the people they ignore. They will have to risk looking like the awkward people who hang out at Zacchaeus’s house. They will have to stop straining to achieve something for themselves, and start seeing the people Jesus sees, loving the people Jesus loves, choosing the people with whom Jesus has publicly cast his lot.

That’s a challenge for every one of us, every day. We will have to stop imagining that if we could just feel like insiders within these walls we could win the love of Jesus. We will have to become people who know that if our eyes are really on the Lord, they are constantly being trained to see our neighbors. What we want to receive, we will have to learn to offer. Instead of competing for something we imagine we can own, we have to learn to celebrate what God has in store for someone else.

We’ll have to engage that question that has been coming up again and again at Saint Mark’s in recent weeks: who is our neighbor? And the good news is that a great feast awaits those who are willing to ask that question and bear the answer. It’s a feast at which no scarcity need be feared, no outsider need ever be turned away, no sinner need hold back out of a sense of unworthiness. It’s a feast at which we find the community and belonging we have really always sought, a feast at which we drop the burdens of our own difference and our own isolation. Jesus is not far away, not just passing through our town on the way to Jerusalem. We don’t have to jockey for a place with him. Jesus is here with us, now, and he is playing host at the table of your least valued acquaintance. Let us seek him together. Let us find him. Let us dine with him in incomparable grace and splendor.  Today and every day, salvation is coming to our house.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

October 30, 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

To Be a Saint

To Be a Saint

Mtr. Erika Takacs

This past April, a man from Tennessee named Ben Stucki was reading his Facebook news feed. I wasn’t there, so I can’t know for sure, but if Ben is anything like me, he was in a marginally comatose state while doing so, scrolling halfheartedly past videos on how to make boeuf bourguignon in under 3 minutes in your microwave, advertisements for the world’s most comfortable yoga pants, and photos of friends-you-can-barely-remember’s kids/pets/dinners/vacations/new haircuts. But suddenly, like a beacon of light in the middle of the world’s most boring storm, there it was – the thing that Ben had been looking for, the thing that made his internet trolling worth it for the day.

The thing was a meme, which is, according to Google, “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.” This particular meme looked like an ordinary political campaign sticker – you know, I’m With Her, or Make America Great Again – but the words on this sticker were anything but ordinary. Giant Meteor 2016, it read, and then under it in smaller, sadder print: Just end it already.

I’m guessing that many of you have seen this slogan around town, but you may not know that you have Ben Stucki to thank for it. Ben was the person who took that meme and turned it into a real bumper sticker. He made only a few at first. He really only wanted one for himself, but the printer he used sold only in blocks of 50, so Ben put the rest up for sale on Amazon. And someone bought it, and then someone else saw it, and someone famous tweeted it, and by June of this year he had sold over 1500 Giant Meteor bumper stickers. I can’t even imagine how many he’s sold by now.

You can see the appeal of the Giant Meteor campaign. No matter which candidate you’re planning on voting for by this time next week, this year’s presidential campaign has been an uglier version of the ugly campaigns we’re used to. The hyperbole is more hyper, the scare tactics scarier, the scandals wilder, the bruises bigger. No matter who we’re hoping will win, many of us are already feeling pretty defeated, so much so that a joke about the total annihilation of the world makes us shake our heads and chuckle a bit. Giant Meteor 2016 is funny, in a tired kind of way. It’s also a sign that over the past months we’ve lost something – something that was itself the theme of a rather significant campaign sticker from 8 years ago: hope.

What’s interesting is that the question this bumper sticker raises isn’t if we’ve lost hope or why – the question this bumper sticker raises is whether or not it really matters. So we’ve lost hope, so what? After all, it doesn’t seem like there’s much to be very hopeful about. Is it so unreasonable to feel anxiety, or anger, or apathy instead – I mean, look where we’ve ended up, and look what’s headed this way. Maybe it’s better to be brutally realistic, to prepare ourselves for a disappointing future so that we don’t find ourselves disappointed and surprised. Maybe the gallows humor of Giant Meteor 2016 is better for us in the end. Laugh, eat, and drink, for tomorrow we die.

We could have a long and complex discussion about the place of hope versus pragmatism in American politics, or about how we as American citizens can have a healthy emotional engagement with the political process – when to turn the other cheek, when to turn away, where to draw the line, when to click off the computer. But I’m going to suggest a different discussion tonight. Because tonight, we sit in this place not first and foremost as Americans, but as Christians, and as Christians, we can and should have an entirely different conversation about hope.

The conversation begins here: “In Christ, we have also obtained an inheritance…so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.” “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.” Notice that for the author of the letter to the Ephesians, hope is a given. You who were the first to set your hope on Christ, you who claim a hope to which you have been called. Not you who might sometimes feel hopeful, or you who imagine what hope might be like. For this community of early Christians, hope was a fact of their discipleship. It is just how they lived in the world.

And remember, this letter wasn’t written for a perfect world. This wasn’t some golden age when city states were free from tyranny, ego, corruption, and ignorance. This wasn’t some idyllic moment when everyone told the truth, gave generously, and loved perfectly. This time was as marked by as much hope-killing absurdity as ours is. And yet, for these Christians, there was no cynicism there. There was no weariness there. And there certainly was no Giant Meteor LXII bumper sticker there. Because this community of disciples did not find their hope in the future that the world dictated. This community of disciples did not ground their hope in the actions of women and men, even good women and men. This community of disciples knew that their hope was not a flittery, fluttery thing – not so much a thing with feathers* as a thing of iron that anchored them to a more profound reality. Because their hope was in the one seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. Their hope was in the one who fills all in all. Their hope was in the power and presence and persistence of Jesus Christ. And that hope does not fail.

This is the hope to which Christ called that community of disciples, and this is the hope to which Christ calls this community of disciples. Not hope in Donald Trump. Not hope in Hillary Clinton. Not even hope in the wisdom of the founders and the fail safes of our political process. Not hope that it’ll all just go away, but hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope in his power. Hope in his generosity. Hope in his tenacity. Hope that his life, death, and resurrection is making all things new, even this mess. Hope that in him, we are made one. Hope that we can be one whole body, not just the left arm and the right arm. Hope that our inheritance of light and life and mercy and justice can flood the world with grace. Hope that our hope can bring hope to all the hopeless.

This is what it means to be a saint. Saints are all of those Christians who have lived – and died – in the hope of Christ. Saints are people who claim hope as their birthright, who choose hope, day after day, no matter what storms rage around them. Saints are those who know themselves to be called by Christ to hope, even when the world seems dark and full of fear. 

Yes, the world seems hopeless to us right now. That’s okay. God does not see it that way. And God is giving us this gift, this inheritance of hope, free of charge, so that we don’t have to see it that way either. We have a chance to see the bigger picture tonight, God’s picture. This moment is a blessed opportunity to strip the sticky sourness and sad cynicism from our lives and to claim our inheritance as saints of God – to claim hope. This is our opportunity to set our hope on Christ and then to live like it, tonight, and tomorrow, and next Tuesday, and next Wednesday, to love our enemies, to do good to those who use us poorly, to give generously and freely, to do unto everyone we meet what we would have done to us. This is our chance to choose to hope that God is working in the world, that we have a part to play in that work, and that God will not quit until the work is finished.  

This is the work we have to do, you and I: to follow the saints who have come before in all virtuous and godly living and to hope in Christ. If you are starting to lose your hope, reach down into the darkness and grab it with both hands. Bear it into the light and set your hope on Christ. Be his. Be hopeful. Be a saint of God. Hope 2016. And forever and ever. Amen.

*from Emily Dickinson

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

All Saints Day, 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Who Is James?

Who Is James?

Fr. Sean Mullen

There are at least two, and possibly as many as four or five, or more, men named James who are mentioned by name in the New Testament. To arrive in church of a Sunday morning and be greeted by a leaflet that announces that we are observing today the Feast of St. James of Jerusalem is to be invited into confusion. Come on in; you are most welcome.

Without question, one of the twelve apostles was called James, who was the brother of John, both sons of Zebedee. This is St. James the Apostle, the Greater, the patron saint of Spain, the path to whose shrine at Santiago de Compostela countless pilgrims have trod – my own self three different times. And he has nothing whatsoever to do with today.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that two Jameses were among the Twelve: the aforementioned son of Zebedee, and another James, the son of Alpheus. This second James is usually nicknamed St. James the Less – probably because he was younger than James the Greater, or possibly because he was shorter. But chances are he is not the person we are here to celebrate either, because his feast day is May 3, so hold your horses.

Some people attribute the Epistle of James, wherein we are exhorted to be doers of the word and not hearers only, to this shorter, younger man. This authorship seems unlikely to me, but what do I know? Could this be yet another James?

More than once, in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we are told that there is a James whose mother is Mary. Well, actually we are told that there is a Mary whose son is James, but you get the point. Is this, too, yet another James? And here is where things begin to get interesting or confusing, as the case may be. Because as you may recall, the mother of Jesus is also named Mary, and in some quarters of the church she is thought of with what you might call high regard. And the Scriptures, specifically the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as those of Paul, all attest that Jesus had brothers (and sisters, but we are by no means ready to deal with sisters today!).

What’s more, the writer of the Epistle of Jude claims to be a “brother” of James, but only a “servant” of Jesus, just in case you are trying to keep track of all the Jameses.

In other iterations of identity, some saintly James has been given the moniker “James the Just,” “James the brother of the Lord,” and eventually “James of Jerusalem,” this latter James, said by the church’s earliest historian to have been the bishop of Jerusalem.

And so, it would appear that it is this last James whose life, witness, and ministry we celebrate today. But I hope I have adequately demonstrated that to say such a thing is to say nearly nothing, for we hardly know about whom it is we are speaking.

Much of the problem in saying anything useful about any of the lesser Jameses is that it tends to bring up the thorny question of whether or not Jesus had brothers, as each and every one of the earliest biblical writers suggests he did, in what you might call no uncertain terms. In and of themselves, siblings would be unobjectionable for our Lord, except, of course, for the long-held tradition that such a thing is impossible since Mary, the Mother of our Lord, was a virgin before, during, and forever after the birth of Jesus. The perpetual virginity of Mary - a teaching with deep and ancient roots in the church - precludes the possibility of siblings for Jesus, making it difficult to say just what the biblical writers might mean when they call James the brother of Jesus, and refer to our Lord’s brothers and sisters.

All of this confusion makes it difficult to say just how many Jameses there were, and what the parentage of each may have been. And of course, all of it makes it difficult to know what or who we should be celebrating today.

It is tempting to turn the tables on James, and more or less ignore him. Taking a cue from this morning’s Gospel reading, and from the church’s preoccupation with what it is that James’s identity says about Mary, it is tempting, instead, to raise a song to our Lady – is not his mother called Mary? Yes! She is! And she has captured our hearts, and led us to faith! The church delights to claim Mary as our mother, too – her perpetual virginity proving no impediment to adopting all humanity as her own children. Hail Mary! Hail Mary! Hail Mary, full of grace!

But if we only fixate on Mary, then it seems likely that we are using her as a way to avoid discussing the elephant in the room, which is that we are deeply uncertain about our own relationship to Jesus. Our confusion about how James might or might not be related to Jesus, just might correlate pretty well to our confusion about how we relate to Jesus. Is Jesus, our friend, our brother, a casual acquaintance? A teacher, master, guru, rabbi? Is Jesus the light of the world? Our Lord and Savior? Or is he just cause for confusion in our lives, and therefore better left unexamined? Is not his mother called Mary? That’s good enough for me!

It is telling that the Gospel reading assigned for today’s feast does not only raise questions about Jesus’ family ties. In this passage we are also famously reminded that the prophet and his message are not without honor except where they are most familiar – like, say, here in church. So, here is a paradox: those most likely to ignore the teachings of the Lord are those to whom he is best known; but those to whom he is best known hardly know him at all. No wonder we have so often preferred to run to his mother, who might at least bake us cookies.

So, forget all the Jameses for a moment, and ask yourself, as I must ask myself, do you really want to know Jesus? Do you really want him in your life? Do you really want to explore what demands he makes, what promises he gives, and what expectations he brings? For Jesus is always asking us to live our lives not for ourselves but for others; to be generous in what we give away; to traverse the boundaries of class, race, religion, etc. that keep us comfortable; to accept pain and suffering as a necessary part of life; to trust in God more than we trust in ourselves; to become better at forgiving one another than we are at judging one another; to choose justice over purity or self-righteousness; to adopt a posture of humility; and to make knowing him – truly knowing him, and welcoming him into our hearts, and being transformed by his love – the object of life’s pilgrimage. Is any of this what you want? Is it why you have come to church today? Is it why I am here?

Perhaps it is one of the ironies of today that we celebrate the James who stayed in Jerusalem – where Jesus was well known – in contrast to Paul, who would carry the Name of Jesus to places where his story was entirely unknown. For if Jesus meant what he said, then it is likely that where he is most-well-known known that he is least-well-loved. This teaching should be a fairly chilling warning to us and to all his church.

And maybe we are destined to be uncertain and confused about the Jameses for as long as we are uncertain and confused about Jesus. But what difference does it make if we are?

At the end of our short Gospel reading today, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus “did not do many deeds of power there [in his hometown, where he was well known] because of their unbelief.”

Well, I need Jesus to do some deeds of power in my life, and I bet you do too. I want Jesus to do some deeds of power here in this church, and in the neighborhood around us, and in our city, our nation, and our world! And I don’t want my unbelief or yours to be an impediment to the power of Jesus in our lives and in the world.

So maybe we should embrace the possibility of being more like James – since someone named James seems to be lurking around practically every corner of the New Testament. James is an apostle, a brother, a cousin, a bishop, a friend. He is there in the company of Jesus at nearly every turn. His humility is such that he is hardly known. His grace is such that he is a leader of the church. His faith is such that he is willing to die for it. Maybe James, like a Waldo for his time, is found wherever we need him to be, as long as it’s near Jesus, encouraging us to be better followers, brothers, sisters, leaders, friends, since this is actually hard for us.

And if some day someone were to come to this place, to this community of people, and ask questions like the ones we hear in the Gospel –

“Where did this man [Jesus] get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” –

then we could stand tall, and with confidence and faith cry out, “Yes! We are his brothers and his sisters. And Mary is our mother! Come, and let him be your brother too!”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Saint James of Jerusalem

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia