Confirmation

Confirmation

Mtr. Erika Takacs

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The recent confirmation hearings had not gone well. As a whole, the nominees had been evasive and unimpressive, and Peter was frustrated. After all, how hard is it to answer a simple question? Like, are you or are you not the Messiah? Seems pretty straightforward, right? But you’d be amazed at the answers the disciples heard. “Are you the Messiah?” “Yes, I do believe that there is a Messiah.” Or “I AM in support of the general thinking about Messiahs.” The answers to the disciples’ other questions were no less confounding. “What would your priorities be as the Messiah?” “To be the best Messiah there ever was.” “Uh huh. And what about our work if we become your disciples?” “Well, first of all, you should become my disciples, because I will have only the best disciples. You will, you know, disciple me, learn from me.” “And what exactly will we learn?” “Oh, you’ll learn my style, you’ll learn how to repeat everything I say, you’ll learn crowd control, how I like my coffee….” “Uh huh. And where will all of this learning take place?” “Well, yes, I’ll mostly be in Jerusalem, at headquarters, which is this lovely little b and b. But you’ll go out all over the place, I don’t even know where, and you will likely have no place to lay your heads, but you will still have the very best discipleship. And if you don’t, well, then, it’s definitely, probably, the Romans’ fault.” Like I said. Frustrating.

 And so when this new candidate presented himself, it was all that Peter could do to drag himself up to the microphone one more time. But drag himself he did, and what he saw across the room surprised him. The nominee wasn’t schmoozing or shaking hands; he was just sitting, calmly, like he was listening to something beautiful or waiting for something wonderful to happen. Peter cupped his mic and leaned over to his brother, “Where are his aides – you know, his people?” Andrew leaned back, “I don’t know – I think it’s just him.” Peter looked over his brother’s shoulder and saw James and John coming into the room. “Hey,” he called, “thanks for being here.” He pointed to the bag John was carrying and smiled. “Planning on getting some knitting done?” John shrugged his shoulders. “You know these hearings are a huge waste of time – thought I’d at least try to get this net fixed while I’m sitting here.”

Peter raised his hand and the room settled into quiet. He inwardly braced himself for another round of ridiculousness and tried to smile at the man sitting quietly at the far table. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Simon Peter, this is Andrew my brother; James and John, some fellow fishermen, have joined us for this hearing today as well. Welcome, we’re very glad that you’re here. Would you please state your name for the record?” The man leaned again into the microphone. “Jesus of Nazareth.” “Thank you, sir. Let’s talk about Nazareth for a second. You were born there?” The man shook his head. “No, born in Bethlehem.” “Bethlehem?!” Peter started. That was a loaded answer. He heard a murmur ripple through the crowd and took a moment to shuffle through the papers on his desk. “Interesting. I don’t have that in my records. But you were raised in Nazareth, yes?” “I was.” “But now you’re in the Galilee, living in Capernaum, correct?” “Yes.” “Why the move? This isn't exactly a hot spot for a kick-off campaign.” Jesus smiled. “It is here that my journey must begin.” Peter narrowed his eyes. “Here. In Capernaum. Says who?” Jesus sat very still. “Why, Isaiah, of course.” His voice grew rich and round, and he looked around at the crowds gathered behind him, “In Galilee of the Gentiles—the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

Peter felt his brother’s quick intake of breath. He looked over at him, a question in his eyes. This was definitely something new. Peter looked back at Jesus sitting before him. “Thank you. I’d like to move on to your message, if that’s okay with you. You’ve been quoted as saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ That’s a pretty hard-line statement – is there anything you’d like to add to that here for us today?” Jesus looked up, directly into Peter’s eyes. “No, nothing to add. This was the message of my cousin, John the Baptist, and this is my message to all people. Including you, Simon Peter.” His eyes sparkled as he continued. “Repent, Peter, for the kingdom of the heaven has come near.”

Peter felt, rather than saw, John put down his mending. Andrew was sitting forward in his chair now, and Peter actually heard the smile on James’s face as he uttered a little, “Hmm.” And all the while, Jesus just kept holding Peter’s eyes, like he was listening to something beautiful or waiting for something wonderful to happen. Peter took a deep breath and asked, “So what do you want out of this?” “That is what I want,” Jesus said. “For me to repent? But there’s nothing in that for you.” “Oh no,” Jesus replied, “there is everything in that for me. For I am for you.” Peter felt Jesus’ eyes holding him, holding on to him, and he found that he had only one question left. “Who…who are you?” Jesus smiled and stood. “Follow me. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of women and men.”   

John was up like a shot. His net, half-mended, slipped to the floor, forgotten. James was already stepping around the table. Peter and Andrew turned to look at each other again, speaking with their eyes in the way that only siblings can do. Are you going? Because I’m going…. And they went. Just like that. They went to follow the one who offered them nothing more than an invitation to follow him. They went to follow the one who offered them nothing more, and nothing less, than his whole self.

We say sometimes that we do not know how the disciples did this. What was it about Jesus, about what he said or did, about how he looked or how he spoke, about the gleam in his eye or the warmth in his touch that led the disciples to respond to his call? What was it about this moment that led them to jump in this way? We say that we do not know, and yet we most certainly do. We all know what it is to respond to Jesus’s call. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Each of us knows what it is to hear Jesus’ call and to respond, to leave something behind and to follow. This morning, each of us stopped doing something in order to come here – you put something down, put something away, chose to move. Christ was with you, called you, and you responded to his holy disruption, his call to sit with these fellow disciples, to worship him, to pray, to repent, to take, and eat.

How can we respond in this way? Not because of who we are, but because of who Christ is. His call is unlike any other. His is the call of one who goes with us, who will never ask us to go someplace he hasn’t gone before. His is the call not to follow an ideology but a man, a man both human and divine, who calls us not for his own sake, but for ours. His is the call of the Messiah who saves, not a magic man who promises to solve all of our problems. His call is a real invitation, a real question, and a real answer.           

And if, in our discipleship, we ever have any doubts about whose call we follow, all we need do is look here. Here is the one we follow; here is his heart and here are his priorities. Here is the cross, which is foolishness to those who love power but true wisdom to those who know the power of love. Here is the cross, and here is confirmation. Here is the confirmation that God is for us, at all times and in all places. Here is the confirmation that God sides with us, especially when we are weak and powerless. Here is the confirmation that God chooses us, especially when we are humble and meek. Here is the confirmation that God desires freedom for all people, that God has freed us from sin, freed us from death, freed us from tyranny, even at the cost of his own son. Here is the cross of Christ, and Christ is calling you. Get up, jump, and follow him, follow him still, follow him again, follow him further, follow him forever. For there is work to be done. There are people to be gathered up in the divine web of love; there are people to be served and offered shelter in the shadow of the cross. There are people sitting in darkness who need to be shown that the light has already dawned. There is work to be done, and so this hearing is adjourned.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

22 January 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei

Fr. Sean Mullen

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In Room 10-A of the Prado Museum in Madrid you will find among other wonderful things, a painting by the 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán that is commonly known as Agnus Dei, or Lamb of God.  It is a very famous painting, perhaps you have seen it there at the museum or in reproductions.  Or you may have seen one of the five other versions of this subject that Zurbarán painted, like the one hanging at the San Diego Museum of Art.  El Prado, however, says its version is the finest of them all, and I believe them.

The painting is simple: a wooly merino lamb is lying on its side on a grey slab of some kind, facing to the left, as the viewer observes the picture.  The Lamb has horns, elegantly curved, that look as though they could some day be made into shofars, the horn that is sounded to mark the end of Yom Kippur.  All four of its feet are bound together above the fetlock with two strands of a cord of some not-too-heavy kind: the knot is not visible.  With its feet tied together, the animal’s back makes a kind of hump, lying there on the slab, that looks as though it could be the profile of a mountain ridge if the painting was a landscape.  The left eye of the lamb (the only one we can see) is open, pale eyelashes delicately lined in; and we can see that the lamb’s gaze is directed down, past its pink nose, at the grey slab on which it lies, as if in resignation.  There is no blood shown in the painting; we are to understand that the lamb is alive, but that its destiny is sealed.  Light shines down on the lamb from the upper left at a relatively high angle, so that only a little shadow is thrown, although beyond the pool of light that bathes the lamb, all is darkness.  Behold the Lamb of God.

Zurbarán did not give the painting its name, per se.  As I understand it, some of the versions do contain inscriptions, and the one in Santa Barbara includes a faint halo over the lamb’s head.  But at the Prado there is nothing depicted on the canvas but the lamb – no explicit religious iconography - so that a viewer could suppose the painting is intended simply as a still life of the animal.  Such a viewer, would, I feel quite certain, be missing the point.  The painter is saying much more with this simple image than he can accomplish with only the strokes of his brush.  Behold the Lamb of God.

When John the Baptist announced Jesus’ arrival with these words, “Behold the Lamb of God,” he was, I think, inspired to say more about Jesus with those few words than the words themselves indicate.  And what could he possibly have thought he meant when he said that Jesus “takes away the sin of the world”?  Jesus had just wandered in from the desert; did John think that he would be driven out there again, like the ancient scape-goat, to bear the people’s sins for them?  Was he thinking of the Passover lamb, whose blood was smeared on the doorposts to protect the children of Israel?  Did he have some mystic insight into the vision of the apocalyptic lamb who sits upon the throne that had not yet been given to St. John the Divine?

And what do we think it means, that Jesus came to take away the sin of the world?  Shouldn’t we at least test the claim, made so long ago?  If Jesus’ mission was to take away the sin of the world, then he must not have done a very good job of it.  Is sin any less pervasive than it now than it was in his day? Aren’t things, in fact, worse today than they were then, at least if you want to take a measurement anywhere I can see?

What metric are we to use to evaluate the effectiveness of Jesus’ ministry to take away the sin of the world?  If John the Baptist was right, how can we demonstrate it to be so?  “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says.  But, so what?  What does that mean?  And what does it matter?

Sitting at my desk, I feel compelled, if I am to talk to you of this, to explore the question of that metric by which to demonstrate that Jesus has, indeed, taken away the sin of the world.  I think if the claims about which I preach are true, I should be able to do this.  If I am going to call him the Lamb of God, I should know what I am talking about.  I should be able to measure this somehow.  Maybe I have just not put my mind to it before.  Maybe someone has already worked this out and posted it on the Internet?  I think this could be done; I think it should be done, as I sit there at my desk, and begin to think of a chart, or a table that I could use to measure God’s success rate at taking away the sin of the world.  My computer is running, and I have sheets of paper before me, and sharpened pencils, and an open Bible, and I am thinking, and thinking, and thinking.  But it is late afternoon, and I become drowsy, and the task is harder than it should be.

People sometimes dream that they can enter into paintings – you know, walk along the Seine with Seurat, or, row among the water lilies with Monet, or check the drooping time with Dalí.  What would I do if I could inhabit that masterpiece of Zurbarán’s in a dream for a little while, if I could shrink down and crawl up into the canvas, and hear the slow breath of the lamb, smell the heavy odor of his wool, and feel the lanolin on my fingers as I reach down to stroke his coat?

The impulse, of course, is to untie him.  But perhaps that is why the knot is out of sight, so that I will not be tempted.  And in my dream, I have no knife with which to cut the cord.  What am I to do?  Clearly the lamb is in trouble, but I cannot save this lamb.  Is there anything I can do for him?  It would seem that there is nothing he can do for me.

So in my dream, I lie down beside the lamb.  I have no shoes on, and perhaps no shirt, I don’t know.  I know that I can smell him, and I can hear him breathing.  He is smaller than a Labrador.  I put my arm out to touch him, and he does not shudder, but I can feel the steady, slow rhythm of his side, as he draws breath in and out, for now.  He is not struggling.  He shifts his eyes to look at me; and his gaze, that looked so sad to me before, is gentle, not frightened.

Very quickly, a sensation is coming over me.  For I had thought I had entered this painting to discover something about the lamb.  But now that I hear his breathing, and feel the rise and fall of his breast, and smell the musty odor of his coat, I sense that I am beginning to know something new about myself, not about the lamb.  I am moved, as I lie beside this lamb, all of a sudden, for I seem to know myself in some rich complexity as both a beloved child of God whose blessings are many, and as a sinner whose foolishness is now flashing before my eyes, as if it was my destiny that was sealed here on this slab, not his.  He is the one who is bound, but now I can see myself for who I am – marvelously made, but oh so prone to wander.  I am looking into the tired eyes of this condemned lamb, lying on my side, staring into his calm eyes, my hand stroking his soft wool, and along with all my blessings, I can see everyone I have ever hurt, and every stupid thing I have ever done, and every good deed I left undone.  And I feel as though I can hear some choir singing a litany just for me: “Have mercy upon him, miserable sinner.”  The choir is singing for me, I know, not angrily, but in some recitation of the truth.

Bound as he is this way, as I face the lamb in my dream, I can only reach out to him across his fettered hooves.  But something in me needs to be closer.  So I get up and crawl around him to a part of the painting that is obscured from view, and I lie down behind the lamb, spooning, embracing the wooly hump of his back with my torso and arms so I can hold him close to me, and reach under his horns and scratch him soothingly behind the ears.  This way, the pace of my breathing can match his slow breath, and you would think that I am cradling him thus to calm the frightened lamb.  But he is not frightened, and I am the one who is becoming calm, as the choir’s singing fades away, and I hear the echo of mercy more clearly than the accounting of my sins.  And I think that the lamb does not fall asleep, but I do, with a restfulness that I have never known before.  And if I am dreaming within my dream, I cannot tell what the inner dream is.  But a new chorus is beginning to rouse me: Behold the Lamb of God.

Because we have been trained by cash registers, credit cards, and spread sheets – which often inspire nightmares, but seldom dreams – we find it hard to escape the idea that the cries of John the Baptist are claims that must be quantified, tested, audited, and reported.  But that is not really how faith works.  It’s not how redemption works.  It’s not how salvation works.

You believe – you become a person of faith – because you enter into this vision of this lamb, and confronted by him, you see, you know to be true, things that you did not know to be true before.  You see what a sinner you are, and yet here is the lamb, bound before you, and already you know that he has taken away your sin and the sin of the world, and you discover that you can now get on with being marvelously made.

Redemption is not a mystic transaction within the economy of sin; it is a living encounter with this weak and helpless lamb, whose power is nevertheless greater than any other power in the universe.  It is the drop to your knees when you decide to reach out to touch this lamb, to love him, and to try to match your breath to his, which, you find, is stronger than it should be for a lamb who appears to be doomed.

And salvation is not wrought by war-weary angels who battle on our behalf with a dragon, (although the angels have surely fought their battles).  But the salvation of our souls, our lives, our all, is accomplished by this small lamb: tied up and undoubtedly headed for death.  And to be in his presence, thus bound, is to discover that it must be so, for he must go where we will some day go, to mark the path that leads through the grave and gate of death and beyond into a new life prepared for all who love him.

Behold the Lamb of God; behold him who takes away the sin of the world.

It turns out that this claim, hangs not on my ability to provide a table of sins forgiven, erased, or eradicated.  It turns out to be an invitation, not only to behold, but to encounter, to embrace the One who comes in the name of the Lord.  He was sent for you and for me – for our sakes and for all – to give his life as a ransom for many. 

It is already accomplished, already done, it is finished.  All that is required is to behold this lamb, to come to him, and to take him as your savior.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

15 January 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Ready Eye

A Ready Eye

Mtr. Erika Takacs

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There are people in the world who hate the light. They moan about the light, throw their hands up in the air and shake their heads about it. They dodge it whenever they can, preferring to skitter around in the darkness, even if that means an occasional bump on the shins. They’ll tell anyone they meet about their loathing of the light, about how the light is the enemy, how the light ruins everything. They’ll pick themselves up and move far away, deeper into the forest or further out into the desert just to try and escape that ever-present, always disappointing, perpetually troublesome light.

Now these people are not mole people. They’re not cave dwellers or orcs or goths. They’re not particularly maudlin or pessimistic. These people are astronomers, amateur astronomers to be exact, astronomers who don’t have access to giant telescopes in an observatory somewhere in the middle of the deepest, blackest wilderness. These are the astronomers who are using their own telescopes, slogging them out into their own backyards, using their own two arms to swing a galaxy or nebula into view, and struggling every night against the light. Porch lights, street lights, automatic motion-detecting lights, lights from cars, lights from airplanes, and most of all – worst of all, the greatest culprit of all – lights from cities, the soft, nearly unnoticeable glow that hovers just over the horizon, turning the sky from a sacred, heavenly blackest black to a muddy, reddish brown. Light is all around, and when you are trying to pinpoint one beam of it streaming down from far, far away at 299,792,458 meters per second, ambient light is the enemy. When you’re trying to see starlight, the blacker the viewfinder, the better.

I experienced this in person over Thanksgiving when I was visiting my husband’s family in North Carolina. My father-in-law is one of those brilliant amateur astronomers. He and my mother-in-law live in a small town, very purposefully, so that while the light from the nearest city can sometimes be a bother, it doesn’t make nighttime viewing impossible. When we were there in November, we went out every night, and every night my father-in-law went through the same routine – he would haul out the telescope and set up a table for all of his different eyepieces, and then he would make sure that all of the lights on the back of the house were turned off. We were in as dark an environment as we could possibly muster.

Or so I thought. But there was one more level of darkness, a deeper kind of black that my father-in-law explained to me on our first night in the backyard. Once, when I stood up from gazing into the telescope, he told me to close my viewing eye, even to put my hand over the lid, while he changed out the eyepiece. By doing so, I was keeping my pupil dilated as much as possible. Instead of opening my eye between viewings, and letting that pernicious light from the next town over or the neighbor’s front porch run right into my retina, I was keeping my eye primed and ready, so that when I looked back into the eyepiece, my eye could take it all in right away. I was keeping my eye in the dark so that it could see all of the light the eyepiece had to offer – the tiniest pair of twin stars, the fuzziest blot of a nebula, the subtlest shade of red that colored a particular planet. By keeping my eye in the dark, I found that I could see much, much more.

Now, I would imagine that the wise men didn’t have to worry too much about light pollution. One would think that if you wanted to find the dark in the first-century, the dark would be fairly easy to find. But for the magi, using only their own two eyes to view the workings of the heavens, finding that true darkness was still important. They were astronomers, after all – darkness was mother’s milk to them, darkness was gift and blessing. I can see them now, standing in their own backyard, going through their own nighttime routine – they’d set up the table for the astrolabe and the quadrant, and then carefully extinguish the candles in the windows, close the back door to keep the firelight inside, and ask the gardener for the thousandth time to please, please, for the love of all that is holy could he please put out the garden lamps for just a couple of minutes. I’m sure they would sigh when the lights from the heart of Babylon lit up the night too brightly. And who knows what they thought when they neared the city of Jerusalem? All of this light! Cover your eye, Caspar, use your hand, keep your eye in the blessed, blessed dark.

And because they did keep their eyes in the blessed, blessed dark, they were able to truly see. They saw this new light, this strange wild star, that didn’t do what it was supposed to do, that didn’t go where it was supposed to go, that wasn’t tethered to any map that the magi knew.* They kept their eyes in the dark so that their pupils were as wide open as possible, fully able to take in what the night sky had to offer them. They kept their eyes in the dark so that they could be ready to see the miracle right in front of them.

Now, if you had asked the wise men all those centuries ago if they were haters of the light, I’m sure they would have said no. Astronomers aren’t haters of the light, they would have protested. Astronomers love the light. We love the light so much we spend hours looking for light we can barely find. We spend a lifetime watching the light moving towards us from a thousand suns that died a thousand lifetimes ago. We love the light – we name it, record it, honor and celebrate it. We love the light – it’s just that we know which light to love. We know which light to look for, which light to revere. We look for the light that is coming into the world, the light that shines into the darkness and will not be overcome. We look for the light that marks the place where God’s heart lies, where God takes on hands and feet and curly brown hair so that we can know and feel how carefully each of the hairs of our own heads is counted. We look for the light that shows the glory of the Lord, born in a manger. This is the light that draws us here. This is the light that makes us kings stream from far-away nations to lay gifts at the feet of a poor child. This is the light that puts all other lights to shame. The lights of Babylon or Jerusalem or the gardener’s burning lamps are fine, but we have sought the true light, and we will do all we can to keep our eyes ready to see the continuing miracle of that one, true light.

I don’t know about you, but I want to look for the light like this. I want to seek this one, true light. I want to see it at its rising, I want to follow it on its journey, I want to see where it stops over the incarnate Word and be overwhelmed with the joy of the magi. I want to have ready eyes to see the coming of Christ in the world. But so many times my eyes are distracted by other lights. You know the lights I mean – buy this thing and you’ll be happy, pray this way and you’ll be rewarded, just keep moving and eventually you’ll find peace. We can so easily find ourselves blinded by lights we aren’t really looking for, our pupils turned to pinpricks by the dazzling rays of other, less holy desires. And it is hard to see the gift of the one, true, long-looked-for light when our eyes are not quite ready.

But tonight we celebrate the true gift of these wonderful, wise men – that they were also wonderful, wise astronomers. And they knew that when you are looking for the true light, you need to just close your eye first. Close your eye. Cover it with your hand. Get your vision ready. Go into your closet and shut the door, and let your eye adjust to the sacred darkness. Close your eye first; be still, and let all of those other lights fade away. Close your eye and be ready. Come here to this quiet, dark place, where we have our own nightly routine – where we set a table with a plate and a cup and all of the tools we will need, and still our hearts and ready our eyes to see the light that is shining into the world. You can leave one eye open so that you don’t bump your shins too often, but come here with one eye shut, primed and ready to find that light the moment it comes into view. Let the windows of your soul open up wide to let that light, the true light of Jesus Christ, with all the true joy and true prosperity and true peace that he brings, shine into your heart. Close your eye and be ready. And then arise, shine, you holy astronomers, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

*Some of this language is borrowed from/influenced by the Godly Play stories for Advent.