Slipping into the World

For those of us who are eavesdropping on Mary’s conversation with the angel Gabriel this morning, what we hear may feel very distant from what we experience. Mary at this stage in the gospel is a bit of a blank slate, just a young woman from the house of David. Her response might almost feel formulaic to us, given the numbers of times we have heard it read and sung, seen it depicted in majestic or humble artistic renderings. “How can this be?” and then “Be it unto me according to thy word.” This central event in the history of our salvation may feel more like a tableau than a lived experience, try as we might to fill it in with our imaginations.

It’s a little disappointing to me, sometimes, to feel that way about the great feast of the Annunciation. This is our feast day as well as Mary’s, right? Mary is a figure for us, the church, receiving the body of Christ, becoming the body of Christ, bearing in ourselves the body of Christ. This is the reality we live every day as Christians. We hear the call of God. We are moved through this world by God’s longing to be incarnate among us. We hope and pray that our very beings—our emotions, our instincts, our desires—are transformed day by day, moment by moment, into the being of Jesus in this world.

But this one precious moment of incarnation remains beyond us, even while it shows us to ourselves. A very fine preacher may be able to bring you a little bit closer to its visceral reality. Sometimes sentiment helps us fill in what we can’t experience. I’m very much in favor of sentimental mediations on the beauty of Mary’s “let it be.” Dwelling on Mary’s youth and her virginity and the purity of her response: those are ways of tapping into something pure and whole within us that responds to God in spite of all our double-dealing and distraction. Gratitude helps. Just giving thanks for Mary’s “yes” to God, time-worn though the notion may be, is a way of letting the power of this saving moment come closer to our hearts. Honoring and loving Mary as our mother, marveling at her courage, mourning for her loss: these are all strong forms of devotion that help us put flesh on the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary’s life and in ours.

I give thanks for my childhood experiences of Marian devotion in the Roman Catholic Church. We crowned a statue of Mary in our parish each May, and though I never got to be the May Queen who climbed the secret ladder at the back of the statue and put the wreath of roses on her head, I was a princess once. We had dresses that looked like Karen Carpenter’s and we knew that we were the flower of young womanhood. It was surpassingly beautiful to me, and even after the roses faded Mary would wear a rhinestone crown for weeks after. I loved to gaze upon it and upon her. I cherish the memory of the May altars we built in our classrooms every year. We would all bring fresh flowers from our gardens. This was California, so there were big waxy rose-parade roses with strong fragrances and colors that were impossibly bright or exquisitely soft, and we could see and smell the beauty of our love for Mary and her love for us and God’s love for everyone all day long as we did our math problems and learned our geography lessons. There were sweet little wildflowers and daisies, and I suspect a few weeds. Some years I tried to keep a little altar in my own room at home. It’s a fragrance that haunts my memories.

All of this is a digression, of course. All of it is a way of saying that Mary’s bare experience in Luke’s gospel can never be represented. It’s a story that will never be told fully, even as we live it out in our own lives day after day. The story keeps slipping away from us, and we keep turning to the extraneous details. Mary’s hair or her clothing. What the angel looked like. What the room or the garden looked like. The quality of the light. The lilies by her side.

We have no way of capturing Mary’s consciousness, and so the story of Mary’s “let it be” keeps slipping out into the world and its physical objects. Like God does. Like you and I do. Some of us pray the Rosary, running our fingers over beads as if to channel the energy that wants to flow into the physical world.

Mary’s brief story will never be told fully, and neither will ours. We will gather on days like this, feast days that require extra devotion and extra work. Days that bring extra prayer, extra beauty—an extra Sunday in the week, almost. The Fernanda Guild prepares us a lovely reception. We steep ourselves in the beauty of holiness as though it could clarify something, as though observing this feast day were a way of observing—literally seeing—the truth of God’s ever-deepening presence in the world. In us. We gather to witness Mary’s story slipping out into the physical world and into our own lives.

This is our feast day, richly and abundantly, with sentiment and awe, with nostalgia and love, with hope and courage and gratitude. We won’t have the words, we won’t be present when Mary and Gabriel exchange their few remarks. Our translations will never be authoritative, our focus will never be adequate, our devotion will never be unproblematic. And the word will be made flesh and we will behold his glory in the world, full of grace and truth.

Precisely because this day is forever beyond us and yet forever within us, this is a day to celebrate our incarnate salvation. Let it be. Let it seem distant and surreal, warm and human, childlike and earth-shattering, all at once. Bring your roses, or hold them back. Meditate in silence or with sweet music. God is with us. God is in us. Nothing will be impossible with God.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

The Feast of the Annunciation 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

More Than a Meet Cute

The “meet cute” is a narrative device used primarily in movies that places two characters who are destined to fall in love in the same place for the first time. It is the moment when the love interests meet, usually in some charming, unexpected, or “cute” way. Here is the meet cute as described by a fictional film writer in the movie The Holiday: “Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men’s pajama department. And the man says to the salesman, ‘I just need bottoms.’ The woman says, ‘I just need a top.’ They look at each other, and that’s the meet cute.” That particular example is taken from the real 1938 film Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, but there are plenty of other meet cutes to choose from. There is the moment in Singin’ in the Rain when Gene Kelly jumps in Debbie Reynolds’ open-topped car, or when Katharine Hepburn lines up on Cary Grant’s golf ball in Bringing up Baby. It’s when Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes first lock eyes through the fish tank in Romeo + Juliet, when Hugh Grant spills orange juice all over Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, when Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan first shake hands in the moment When Harry Met Sally. The meet cute is when the star you’ve been following in the story finally meets the star you’ve been waiting to see, and the sparks, as they say, start flying.

It’s kind of like when a man, exhausted after a long journey in the hot sun, spots a well sitting quiet at the edge of town. He turns casually to his friends, or his followers, and suggests that they start off into the city to buy some food, while he heads heavily over to the well to sit for a moment and massage his dusty feet. He’s alone, waiting at the watering hole, when along comes a woman, also alone. She is prepared to go about her business as she would on any other day, but we can see that she is walking into a conversation that will change the rest of her days forever.

Their conversation, as all of these conversations do, starts simply enough: I’d like to buy those pajama bottoms, Isn’t that my golf ball, Give me a drink. But quickly, like all of these conversations do, the talk turns to matters more personal. She asks why he’s talking to her, he tells her that if she knew the answer to that question, she wouldn’t waste time asking it. He tells her he has water to give her that will change her life, and she tells him that she wants some. He tells her he knows of her past husbands and her present situation. She asks him to tell her who he is, and just as they get to this crucial moment – I am he – they are interrupted, as happens in all of these conversations. His disciples come, with eyes wide and mouths agape, letting their shocked faces do the talking while the woman backs out of the scene. She walks away, as in all of these meet cutes, with a quizzical smile on her face. And when she meets others along the way, all she can do is talk about him. I met a man, and such a man!

Now before you start thinking that I’ve become irrevocably irreverent, let me assure you that I’m not adding anything to the story that wasn’t already there in the writing. The well was a loaded setting for those who recorded this story in John’s Gospel. Walking up to a woman at a well was about as close to walking up to a woman at a bar as you can get. The well was where men of the scriptures went to get hitched to find a woman, to land a wife. It was at a well that Moses first saw Zipporah, that Abraham’s servant first found Rebecca for Isaac, where Jacob first spotted Rachel. Wells are hot spots for couples in the Bible, so when Jesus is sitting alone at Jacob’s well, and a lone woman walks up, well, then, you’re firmly within your rights to wonder if this encounter might be a meet cute.

But if this scene is supposed to recall the meet cutes of Bible days gone by, the casting is decidedly suspect. I mean, who is this woman? She’s a nobody – she’s worse than a nobody, she’s a Samaritan, part of that rebel tribe that lives on the wrong side of the tracks and worships on the wrong mountain. And she’s definitely not a star. Imagine a scene in a movie where Tom Hiddleston is sitting alone at a bar, pensively staring into his Scotch, and instead of Charlize Theron walking in, it’s say, oh, I don’t know, me. If you saw that scene in a movie, you would surely think to yourself, No, wait, this can’t possibly be the meet cute, because who’s that pale little person with the red hair? That woman simply won’t do.

And this Samaritan woman simply won’t do in so many ways. Not only is she from the wrong tribe, she’s also just the wrong type of girl. She isn’t a girl at all; she’s a woman, who’s married and lost five husbands, somehow, and who’s now living with a man who is not husband number six. She’s a woman on the wrong schedule, coming to the well at the wrong time of day, choosing to carry her heavy buckets under the hot noonday sun – alone – rather than face the rolling eyes and pursed lips of the other women in town, the ones who had their own meet cutes years ago, whose husbands did not die, or leave town, whose own lives may not have played out like a romantic comedy but who at least played by the rules.

This woman is simply not biblical meet cute material. Women at the well are supposed to have something to offer. They’re supposed to be able to offer a family, a home in exile, legitimacy, good blood lines, flocks and herds and, above all, children. This woman can give Jesus nothing – no wealth, no home, and certainly no children. As far as we can tell, she never even gives him the water he asks for. She has absolutely nothing to offer him except her presence and her questions. She has nothing to offer but herself.

But that is actually perfect. For this is no ordinary meeting with an ordinary man. This is a meeting with Jesus Christ, and he is looking for much more than a meet cute. Jesus is looking for much more than just a star, more than a picture-perfect person. Jesus is looking for a woman who is more than meet cute material; he is looking for a woman who is Gospel material. Jesus is looking for more than a person who can fall in love; he is looking for someone who can help others to fall in love too. Jesus is looking for a believer, a convert, an evangelist. And that makes this moment much, much more than a chance, charming encounter between two people. Because ultimately this moment in John’s Gospel places these two characters in the same place for the first time not so that they can fall in love, but so that we can. This meet cute is not so that these two people can find love that lasts a lifetime, but so that we can find love that lasts for all time. This meet cute is not so that these two people can find their soulmates, but so that we can find rest and peace and salvation for our souls. 

This meet cute is for us. Because our Lord knows that there are times in our lives when we feel completely unworthy to meet Jesus. We do not feel ready to encounter the presence of Christ in scripture or in worship, and when we do drag ourselves into prayer, we expect little from those moments. After all, who are we? We are nobodies, worse than nobodies, because we know what we’ve done in our lives with our bodies and souls and minds. But hear the promise of this Gospel moment – Jesus isn’t looking for a meet cute; Jesus is looking to meet you. Jesus is already madly in love with you; he is looking to meet you for your sake, for mine, so that our hearts will be sparked into greater love by the grace in his presence.

Jesus is looking to meet you. In fact, he already has. You have already met him by a spring of living water, already been embraced by him even though you had nothing to offer, already been seen and cherished by him in spite of everything you had ever done, already been sealed and marked as his own, forever. The great love story, the greatest of your life, has already begun. God has chosen you to love.

Which means that you have a story to tell, a love story, the greatest ever told. You have a story to tell, where you are made into a star, a believer, an evangelist, where you are the one leaving with a happy, quizzical smile on your face and telling everyone you see I have met a man, and what a man! Come and see. Come meet him, come back to meet him, fall in love again and again, for you are made worthy by his grace. And you are beautiful in his eyes, the star of his heart, the perfect match.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

19 March 2017

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The Gift

A few days before Christmas I was given a gift that was completely unexpected and greatly appreciated. It was not given to me by any of you! The gift was novel to me, and not only well intentioned, it was also well chosen: there’s no question I’d enjoy it. The gift was handed to me in a shopping bag, it was not wrapped; and I carried it home in that same shopping bag, into which also put some Christmas purchases I had made to give to others, and I set it down in the foyer of the Rectory, amid a number of other shopping bags. I know that I wrapped and gave away all the other contents of that bag, but the gift that was intended for me somehow disappeared. 

I don’t think anyone took it. I’m quite sure I didn’t give it to anyone else – wrapped or unwrapped – but I cannot for the life of me find it. One of two possibilities seems likely to me. Either the gift stayed in the bag and has been moved to the back of a closet somewhere, where eventually it will be discovered. Or, the gift stayed in the bag, and was un-noticed when, at some point, discarded Christmas wrappings, cards, catalogs, etc were added to the bag and sent to the trash, and it will never be seen again. What a shame it is that I have not only lost out on a gift that I am sure I would have enjoyed, but that I also cannot fully appreciate the kindness of the giver.

Of course, I can think of other gifts that are languishing elsewhere, in the back of closets or cupboards, or on a shelf somewhere, some even in the back of the freezer. And there are other gifts that have been lost, or broken, or misused, or eaten by the dog. I do not think of myself as an ungrateful person – quite the contrary, I feel extremely grateful to be the recipient of many gifts, in every sense of the word. But the thing about a gift is that once it has been given away, the giver has no control over it, no matter how generous and good a gift it was. The recipient is always free, and sometimes very likely, to lose, ruin, forget, or ignore the gift altogether. And there is nothing the giver can do about it.

I suppose the most famous, most frequently quoted verse of the entire New Testament may be John 3:16. It is the one verse that can be universally recognized just by its citation. I mean, if I mention Isaiah 7:14 to you, some of you will get the reference right away, but most of you will have to look it up. Not so, when it comes to John 3:16. In fact, if I handed out paper and pencils right now and asked you to write out the text of that verse, most of you would probably get pretty close, and if I let you make a group project of it, we could probably get an accurate translation in several languages and debate the merits of word choice.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Say what you will about this small text and all it signifies; without question, the text asserts that God’s Son is a gift that God has given. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” What is true of the gifts given to me, and the gifts I give to others, is also true of the gifts God gives to his people: the recipient is always free, and sometimes very likely, to lose, ruin, forget, or ignore the gift altogether. And I would add that the ability to quote the text is in no way correlative with the likelihood that one has kept track of the gift.

Just to be clear, the loss of the gift that I am referring to is not what happened on the Cross. No, no, no… I am talking about us - the church, and the world – we are the ones who have all too often lost, ruined, forgotten, or ignored the gift of God’s Son. At least I can say this assuredly of myself, and I suppose that if it is true of me, then it is also true of you.

The mechanics of the church do not necessarily turn into an engagement with Jesus, and it is notoriously easy to become caught up in the mechanics of the church without ever cherishing that most precious gift of God’s – his only Son. This may be especially so in a place like our parish community where the mechanisms of religion are ornamented and complex. What pretty vestments we have! It is entirely possible to take exquisite care of all our other gifts – the hardware and the software here - but still lose track of the gift of Jesus.

You have to wonder about a guy like Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, and therefore well acquainted with the mechanisms of religion. It was Nicodemus’s conversation that prompts Jesus to utter the words that would become John 3:16. What did Nicodemus make of the gift as he sat there face to face with him? St. John informs us of Nicodemus intervention at two subsequent moments – first, he sticks up for Jesus in a small way when the other Pharisees are beginning to condemn him; and later he brings spices to the grave to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. So it’s hard to say, frankly, what Nicodemus made of the gift of the Son of God, but it seems like he was trying, somehow, to accept that gift, and not to lose track of him. But Nicodemus can be forgiven for not knowing that he was a witness to the first utterance of John 3:16. After all, he did not know that he would be featured in John 3:1-15.

But we have had time to reflect on the gift; we have presumably built a church because of this gift; and it is the object and purpose of the church to cherish the gift of God’s Son in every conceivable way, never to lose track of him; and to share this gift with the world with a gracious generosity that befits the gift itself.

In the church we are regularly in danger of preaching only to the proverbial choir, which means that we are prone to want to tell ourselves only those things that we want to hear. If this is so, then we are also in danger of never reminding ourselves how easy it is to lose, ruin, forget, or ignore the gifts of God. And we can easily mistake the ready ability to quote John 3:16 for actually cherishing the gift of Jesus in our lives.

But Lent is a good time for a more honest assessment of things, which in this case means, I think, asking ourselves what we have done with this most precious gift of God’s – the gift of his Son. Unlike Nicodemus, we cannot go to him for a starlight chat. But we get to know Jesus in worship and in prayer, and we keep track of Jesus in our lives by serving others, by loving our neighbors as ourselves. It’s this pattern that shapes the ministry of this parish, precisely because this is how we establish and deepen our relationship to Jesus. And the pattern is demanding here because we know how easily we lose, ruin, forget, or ignore Jesus.

One of the ways we try to know Jesus better during Lent is walking the Way of the Cross every Friday evening. This year on Fridays we have been reading, at the Stations of the Cross, poems written by the girls of Our Little Roses orphanage in Honduras. Only one of these poems addresses God directly: a prose poem written by a girl named Aylin, who was sixteen years old when she wrote the poem. She has three older sisters and a younger brother. Aylin has in common with Nicodemus that she speaks with God in the nighttime. Her poem is called “Counting”:

“Every week, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second that I pass without my family it feels like a knife trying to get inside a rock. I am the knife and the rock is my life. So this is me, Aylin, and this is my difficult life without my family. Some people think that living in a home for girls like Our Little Roses is a big blessing. Yes, I say to those people, it is a great blessing but at the same time it is a curse. Every night I start thinking and talking to God in my prayers: “Why, God, why did my family leave me alone?” There is no answer. A lot of people see me with my sisters and my aunt, who is not really my aunt, and they think we are a happy group, but really all of us think the same thing that no one ever says: One day, will our mother come to visit us? It is ugly to know that everyone in this school is celebrating Mother’s Day. On this day, I feel ashamed to be me. But, God, listen to this: I am counting the time like people count the stars and I will keep counting until my mother comes. My sisters are graduating and soon I will go to college, too. When I graduate from college and when I am finally somebody in this world, God, I will go straight to Mexico where my mother lives and I will stare at her like I stare at the stars and with a voice that cracks like thunder I will say: i forgive you! But for now, God, I am here, in Our Little Roses, counting.”[i]

When I hear such emboldened anguish, I realize how careless it is of me to lose, ruin, forget, or ignore gifts I have been given, no matter how small. Still more careless ever to lose, ruin, forget, or ignore the gift of Jesus, who God sent into the world not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. The world is in need of love, and of salvation. God gave us his Son – he gave us his Son – for love, and for salvation. Yes, God gave us his Son, and like any gift, what we do with this most precious gift of love, is up to us.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

12 March 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] from Las Chavas, edited by Spencer Reece and Richard Blanco.  From the Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org).