Death and Taxes

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend in which he described the state of this new nation that he had helped to form just over a decade before. In the letter, he was particularly intent on reporting on how these new United States were faring under their very new Constitution. The upshot, according to Franklin, was so far, so good. The Constitution, he wrote, “has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. It wasn’t the first time this expression had ever been written, but it was the first time it had been written by someone so famous, and so for all of the intervening years, this quotation has had Franklin’s name all over it. Nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.

It’s a rather cynical turn of phrase, don’t you think? Clever, but grim. We use it to try to make ourselves feel better by reminding ourselves that at least we’re all in the same boat, even if that boat is expensive and capsizing. We use it when we don’t get the job we were promised, when our team loses to an underdog, when we get our heart broken by the person we thought was the one. We say it with a sigh and resigned smile. Well, nothing is certain, right?, we shrug. Except DEATH – which is, admittedly, a dark thing to bring up when you’re already feeling pretty discouraged – and taxes – which is the part that’s supposed to make you laugh. Or laugh and wince. Or just wince. As I said, a rather cynical turn of phrase.

It’s a turn of phrase that I imagine has been uttered for a lot longer than two hundred and some odd years. I mean, really, how could this phrase not have been originally coined by some ancient Judean who was feeling a little salty about the Roman occupation? Can’t you just picture a particularly cantankerous native of Galilee, shrugging and shaking his head while talking to a neighbor who’s a bit down on his luck? So, my friend, that wonderful wine you were hoping to make, from the vineyard that you had prepared so carefully with the perfectly cleared ground and the grand shady trees and the brand-new watchtower – you say that instead of being wonderful the wine turned out to be as sour as vinegar? Well, you know what they say, the crusty Galilean would say, throwing a glance over his shoulder to the Roman soldier loitering behind him, nothing is certain except death and taxes.

For the women who arrived at the tomb in those grey grainy hours just before dawn, nothing was certain except death. Just a few days before, they had known, deep in their hearts, that the man they had followed was the Messiah. They had been absolutely sure of it. They wouldn’t have followed him if they hadn’t known that the words he spoke were the truth, that he was the one of whom prophets had spoken. He was the one they had been waiting for, since the Garden and the Red Sea, through the wilderness and the exile, in their hunger and their thirst, in their joy and in their pain. He was the one, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. They had been so certain.

But then they saw him arrested and tried. They watched him beaten and nailed to the cross. They heard his last words and his last breath; they witnessed his death. And in that moment, everything they had thought was solid and true simply crumbled away like the ground beneath their feet. Nothing was certain anymore. Nothing except death.

And perhaps taxes, too. I can imagine the women on their way to the tomb, clucking together over the irony that at least they wouldn’t have to worry about coming to harm in the early morning darkness. After all, the Romans had made sure to station a couple of guards at Jesus’ tomb for the duration of the Sabbath. So good to see their taxes put to such good use, Mary Magdalene would say, with an epic eye roll. Death and taxes, the other Mary would say. Death and taxes. Nothing is certain but death and taxes.

But then…well, you know the story. The earthquake and the rolling stone, the angel and the lightning, those resented Roman guards collapsing in fear and the unexpected voice telling them not to be afraid, and finally the sight they could never have imagined even in the most desperate dark hours of the past three days – their Lord, standing before them, alive, and well, and telling them to go tell the others to go into Galilee where they, too, would meet him. In the face of this astounding new truth, what else was there to do but fall down and worship? What else was there to do but to smile and laugh and shake their heads and hold on to his blessed wounded feet and know that once they had been in the darkness but now they had seen the light. Their Lord, who was dead, was now alive. Of this they were certain.

And on this night, we too proclaim this great good news. We were once in the darkness, but now we see the light. Christ, who was dead, is now alive. Nothing is certain but death and taxes? Bah, humbug! Here we are, on April 15, 2017, and it seems that death and taxes are both on hold! Oh death, where is your sting, oh taxes, where is your victory? Well, your taxes are actually due on Tuesday, but death – ? Death is conquered, we are free. Of course death still is, and death with a little “d” will come for each of us, but tonight we proclaim with certainty that this is no longer anything to fear. Death no longer has the last word. Because Death with a capital “d” is no more.

This is why, tonight, when we’re presented with a grim turn of phrase like Did you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death, our response is simply Hallelujah! And when we hear that we have been united with him in a death like his we say Hallelujah! And when we hear that we – and Phoebe and Joshua – have been buried with him by baptism into death, we say Hallelujah! Because this night confirms for us that these turns of phrase are not grim at all. There is no room for grimness or hopelessness or cynicism after this night. For we no longer have anything to fear, not even death. When we are baptized with Christ into a death like his, we will also walk with him in his resurrection. We know this. We proclaim it. We celebrate it. The life Christ lives is for all of us, and Death has no more dominion. Nothing is certain except Death is dead.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Because there is something else that is absolutely certain. And I don’t mean your taxes. Yes, we do have to render unto Caesar on Tuesday, but I’m talking about something else, something much more. There is one other certainty in what we proclaim this night. And that certainty is love. What is most certain, what we know is most true, deep in our hearts, is that all of this was done for love. This death was for love. This resurrection was for love. This appearance to these wonderful women, this instruction to go into Galilee, this promise that he would appear again, was for love. The holiness of this fire, this water, this baptism, these new Christians – all for love. All was and is and will forever be for love. Hallelujah.

So, you holy people on this holy night, do not fear. This night truly “has an appearance that promises permanency,” the permanency of eternal life in the glory of God the Father. And on this night, this can be said to be certain: death is no more, Christ is risen, and all, for certain, for love.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Great Vigil of Easter, 15 April 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Death in the Afternoon

Las Ventas in Madrid.

In November of 1567 Pope Pius V issued a papal bull that forbade Catholic Christians from sponsoring, or watching, or participating in bullfights, on pain of excommunication, and denying the privilege of Christian burial to any person killed in a bullfight.[i]

Writing centuries later, Ernest Hemingway acknowledged that “from a modern moral point of view, that is a Christian point of view, the whole bullfight is indefensible.”[ii]  But this admission did not prevent Hemingway from launching an extended defense of the sport, which he insisted is actually more art than sport, and “the only art in which the artist is in danger of death.”[iii]  Nor did the papal edict prevent bullfighting from continuing to be enjoyed by peasants and nobles alike all across Spain, that most Catholic of nations, even to this very day; subsequent popes having weakened the force of Pius V’s ruling, anyway.

Hemingway felt that the bullfights offered a unique opportunity, as “the only place where you could go to see life and death, i.e. violent death now that the wars were over.”[iv]  As a writer, Hemingway believed he had to encounter life and death, even violent death, in order to write meaningfully about them.  Who am I to argue with him?

I happened to find myself in Madrid nearly a year ago during the Feria de San Isidro, in the month of May, when on nearly every night of the month a bullfight takes place at the bullring, Las Ventas, in Madrid.  And because matters of life and death are of interest to me, too, I went one night to the corrida, to see the bullfights, since I am not beholden to papal authority.  There are many fascinating details to report about the bullfights, most of which I must leave aside today.  Today I have interest only marginally in the toreros, the bullfighters, and more especially in the toros, the bulls.

Hemingway will tell you that “the bravery of the bull is the primal root of the whole Spanish bullfight.  The bravery of a truly brave bull is something unearthly and unbelievable.”[v]  But truthfully, Hemingway is more interested in bullfighters than in bulls, and more enthralled by the men than the animals when it comes to matters of life and death.  For it is in the person of the bullfighter that that great American writer found the crux of life and death.  The bullfighter, he wrote, “is performing a work of art and he is playing with death, bringing it closer, closer, closer, to himself, a death that you know is in the horns [of the bull…. The bullfighter] gives a feeling of his immortality, and, as you watch it, it becomes yours.  Then when it belongs to both of you, he proves it with the sword.”[vi]

Of course, on Good Friday, my interest is of life and death and immortality.  It is my job today to write about these things – even about violent death – and to speak to you about them.  And I am, of course, interested when a writer as famous as Hemingway, so renowned an observer of the world and of life and of death, turns his eye and his pen to the matter of immortality.  Maybe he has something to show us, in shedding light on the gifts of the bullfighter, about the ministry of that one Man whose death unlocked the door to true immortality.

Hemingway went to hundreds, maybe thousands of bullfights; I have been to one, but I believe I may have seen enough.  There in the center of the sandy ring is the bull: strong, and brave, and noble in his power and his beauty.  It is important to remember that the bull has done nothing wrong; indeed, he has been sent here for this, has been bred and raised for this one purpose, to be killed by a matador in a ring.  The bull has been conditioned to fight by having been limited in his exposure to humans throughout his lifetime.  He is meant to be aware of the threat in the ring as soon as he arrives there.

First, the picadors confront him on horseback, piercing him with their lances, drawing the first blood from the bull, and weakening him.  Next, come the banderilleros, who jab their barbed banderillas into his flesh.  There is more blood now, and a weaker bull, too.

This doesn’t take long.  Now the bull is bleeding; you can see his neck and back and sides stained red.  His powerful neck has been weakened, and his head is carried lower now.  The Spanish call this state “aplomado.”  “When he is aplomado,” Hemingway writes, “he has been made heavy, he is like lead; he has usually lost his wind… he no longer carries his head high… he has obviously been beaten… but he is still supremely dangerous.”[vii]  And then the matador – the word literally means “the one who kills” – goes to it with his sword, and kills the bull.

Blood my come from the bull’s mouth if the killing is not clean.  He will fall to his front knees for a moment, and then, faster than seems possible, and with an almost comic stiffness, the bull will keel over onto his side, dead as can be.  One of the matador’s assistants will jab a blade into the animal’s brainstem to make sure.  An ear may be cut off, as a prize for the bullfighter – or two ears if the performance is deemed especially good.  Then a team of mules will drag the carcass of the bull out of the ring to be butchered, its meat put to good use.

If there is anything in a bullfight that comes close to connecting the observer to immortality, Hemingway is quite wrong that it could be the bullfighter, at least by any Christian reckoning.  Because every bullfight already includes a figure who is easily identified with sacrifice: and that is the bull, who has done nothing wrong, but who will be antagonized, bloodied, and inevitably killed to satisfy some bloodlust of ours that lies deep in the human psyche or soul, I guess.

On almost any given night in May, six bulls will fulfill this bloodthirst in Las Ventas in Madrid.  But today, on Good Friday, there is only one sacrifice that matters, there is only one bloodied body that has been made aplomado, heavy, like lead.  He has lost his wind, he no longer carries his head high; he has obviously been beaten.  But he is still supremely dangerous (per se), because his power is made perfect in weakness – and this is Jesus.  Sitting there at the bullring in Madrid, watching the blood pour down the innocent animal’s side, it seemed so obvious.  Jesus is the bull, and the bull is Jesus: born for and sent to us for this one purpose.  He has done nothing wrong; but here he hangs bleeding.

Hemingway may have the contours of the narrative right, but it’s the characters he has mixed up.  For us, it is Jesus who is performing a work of art, playing with death, bringing it closer, closer, closer, to himself, a death that you know is in the thorns and in the nails, and in the torturous suffocation that comes of hanging on the Cross itself.  It is real and actual death, and it comes to Jesus just as surely as it does to the bull, a final jab in his side to make sure the job is finished.

Nearly all of human history is a chronicle of the power of conquest through the shedding of blood.  And it has been the hope of many men that the most successful matador (the one who kills) will become, somehow, invincible.  But the truth is found in only this one chapter of history, on a sandy ring of ground beneath a Cross, where the One who is killed becomes the unmistakable victor, as the sun darkens and the earth quakes.  And Christ passes through death on the way to immortality, to everlasting life, because he knows that we must do so too.  There is no path from this life to the next that does not lead through death.  And Jesus came to lead the way, which is more about love than about bravery, more about service than about power, more about humility than about greatness.

Mistaken though Hemingway may be about the parallels between a bullfight and the story of Christian salvation, he has nevertheless provided language that helps us beautifully to encapsulate the drama and the meaning of Good Friday.  But in our case, it applies not to the one who kills, but to the One who is killed:

Jesus is, in fact, “bringing [death] closer, closer, closer to himself, a death that you know is in the [Cross….  And here, on the Cross, Jesus] gives [you] a feeling of his immortality, and, as you watch it, it becomes yours.  Then when it belongs to both of you, he proves it.”

Watching from afar, you see this thing unfold, as death draws closer, closer, closer.  But do you also feel the immortality that is being poured out with the blood that drips on the sandy ground?  Has it become yours?  Can you see his saving death, and the immortality it points to, and believe, and know that it belongs to both of you – to him and to you? 

Yes, immortality belongs to him and to you and to me.  And now that you have seen him die, are you ready for him to prove it, and to rise?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Good Friday, 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] “Super prohibitione agitationis Taurorum & Ferarum” (“An injunction forbidding bullfights and similar sports with wild animals”), commonly referred to as “De Salute Gregis Dominici,” 1 November, 1567

[ii] Hemingway, Ernest, “Death in the Afternoon,” New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932, p. 1

[iii] Ibid. p. 91

[iv] Ibid. p. 2

[v] Ibid, p. 113

[vi] Ibid. p. 213

[vii] Ibid. p. 147

The Truth of This Very Night

I was recently contacted by a local journalist, who wanted to write an article about whether truth was dead. She was a terrific person to talk to, but I have to admit that I approached the conversation with some dread. I couldn’t help but be mindful that in the eyes of the larger public, Christians, and maybe clergy in particular, have what is sometimes a well-earned reputation for being purveyors of fake news. We are seemingly quick to proclaim that “love wins,” seemingly quick to minimize the evil in which we are complicit, seemingly glib about the aching questions that accompany the experience of human suffering and vulnerability. We may sometimes seem willing to claim the Easter victory without showing any real sign that we have been willing to carry the cross.

So in preparing for that conversation I experienced, not for the first time, the need to review what it is about our collective lives of faith that might help us to retain a fundamental commitment to honesty. And the answer was, “this.” By the grace of God, if we are given the ability to use it so, this is a powerful corrective to our own mendacity. This very night. This liturgy, with which we begin the sacred Triduum. This evening, which stands out liturgically for at least three things: the washing of the feet, or “Mandatum,” the stripping of the altar, and the vigil before the Blessed Sacrament at the altar of repose.

When Jesus washed the feet of his beloved disciples, he offered care and hospitality for their sheer humanity. For the useless, honest, embarrassing, mortal dust that clung to their feet, and to his, and to ours. For the weight our feet bear, the miles we walk, the blisters we rub, the actual endurance it takes to measure out every step of the pathway we are on. Our feet are signs of where we have really been. And so very few among us actually enjoy removing our shoes at Mass on a solemn evening like this. It’s very unlikely that we can come to the front of the church and take our seat and have our feet washed without embarrassment, or without feeling a twinge of the deeper need that keep us searching for the love of God. It’s awkward to acknowledge that it takes real humility for clergy to get down on the ground and pick up a towel and move from chair to chair.

But that’s what we do tonight. We force our worship out of its normal constraints. We let it become more physical than is really comfortable for us. We become more candid than we really want to be. Because Jesus has welcomed our humanity, assumed our humanity, nurtured our humanity, and commanded us, if we want to be his disciples, to do this for one another, out of love.

Is truth dead? Or are we increasingly unwilling to acknowledge that we are human beings who need the care of a loving God? And how better to acknowledge that truth than in the sight of our bare feet, all of us together in need of washing? We make this bold acknowledgement--we uncover our feet, tonight—at a Eucharistic banquet. This is a night in which we commemorate the very institution of the Eucharist, and on this very night we are asked to acknowledge the ungainly feet we have been standing on, all our lives.  

Why should our deep experience of candor happen at a banquet? Let me suggest that real honesty can only happen in the context of a banquet. All our lives, while we stand and walk on those ungainly feet, we are also imagining that we might really be much greater than we are. We can’t be honest about our own needs and limitations, and so we cook up a fantasy version of ourselves and our place in the world, and we go through life promoting it. We hoard our little supply of self-esteem, hiding what we are from others and from ourselves. And we tell lies. It doesn’t take long before we become full participants in the kind of world you see around us, a gilded world in which truth has somehow become too costly for us to bother with. Education, journalism, the arts, history, science, environmentalism, feeding the hungry: they all become too expensive because we have a fantasy about our personal greatness that we want to maintain at all costs. We have extravagant lies to tell about who we are, and so we have no generosity with which to entertain truth.

And to this hoarding, selfish, humanity, filled with a fear of shortages and shortcomings, Jesus says, “Come and eat. Sit at my table. I will pay the price of my own life to feed you. Receive my body and my blood. If you are my disciples you must learn to do this for one another and for the world.” Jesus does not fear our hunger. He does not shun us. He does not protect himself from suffering at our hands. We, his betrayers, are his welcome guests. He washes our ungainly feet and he feeds our ungainly, self-protecting bodies and souls. Is truth dead, or have we failed to accept that we are guests at the table of our creator? Are we living in untruths and half-truths because we fear that we can never be or have enough within us to face reality? Tonight we come to the table with whatever humility we can muster, to be filled, and to be nudged toward a selfless honesty.

And on this very night, Jesus gives us another gift: the chance to follow him on his own path of self-giving. Just as he has seen our feet, we are blessed to accompany him in his hour of anguish. “Come to the garden and wait with me,” he says to the disciples, and tonight we do our best to accept that invitation, too. We will follow him in the Eucharist, to the altar of repose, and we will do our best to remain with the unbearable truth of his sacrifice. We will pray in silence, with gratitude. We won’t last there forever, we won’t be heroes of prayer, our own shortcomings will be ever before us, but we will offer our thanks and do what we can to stay present before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. We will not fear, tonight, to gaze upon the mystery of a God who chooses the shocking path of crucifixion and the incongruous form of bread in order to be with us.

And, this very night, we will endure the stripping of the altar. Bit by bit, candle by candle, vessel by vessel, we will witness the stripping away of all the signs we use to connote what is holy. We will acknowledge together this night that the language of our worship, the physical manifestation of our reverence, will never give full expression to the mystery of God’s presence among us, to the mystery of the death and resurrection of our Lord. Just as we have peeled away the shoes and socks that hide our feet, so will we peel away the linens that cover our altar of bare stone. And we will not be afraid of this stripping away.

The warmth of tonight’s banquet will still cling to the emptied sanctuary. Bathed in that generous abundance, we will not hesitate to acknowledge emptiness. Washed by our gracious host, we will not fear to acknowledge dust. Loved beyond measure, we will learn, bit by bit, prayer by prayer, year by year, to stop counting the cost of following God on a path of truth. May God bless us as we worship this night, and may our hearts be transformed so that we may follow our God with humble, contrite, and gladdening hearts.

Preached by Mtr. Nora Johnson

Maundy Thursday 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia