A True Welcome

The pineapple is thought to have originated not on the Dole Plantation in Hawaii, as you might imagine, but in South America, specifically in what is now Brazil. Its original name, ananas, comes from a South American language, and means “excellent fruit.” These excellent fruits were transported by travelers to neighboring lands where they were planted and came to flourish. Eventually the pineapple was discovered by European explorers who thought its skin resembled the spiky points of a pinecone while the fruit was a lot like…you guessed it…an apple. They also thought it was delicious. The pineapple was such a hit that European sea captains loaded up their ships with them and tried to get enough wind in their sails to carry them back to Holland or Spain or England before their sweet yellow insides began to rot. European botanists were consulted on how the pineapple might be grown outside of the tropics and imperial architects were hired to build hothouses and even something called a pineapple stove – all for the love these prickly sweet fruits.

By the 18th century, the pineapple had begun to take on a new identity. You see, stories told about pineapples said that the original explorers who had traveled to lands far and wide had noticed that the indigenous peoples who placed pineapples by their doors seemed to be the friendliest and most welcoming. The pineapples, it was thought, were a kind of native welcome mat. And its being a perfectly likeable kind of fruit, the pineapple began to be seen as a sign of welcome. It became, in fact, a symbol of extravagant hospitality – extravagant because in the 18th century, pineapples were enormously expensive. In colonial America, one pineapple is said to have cost as much as $8000 in today’s currency. Now I like a good Dole Whip as much as the next girl, but that is ridiculous. Those who couldn’t afford this caviar of fruits, had to make do with images of pineapples carved into welcome signs outside of taverns or inns or even churches – an early version of the Anglican Church welcomes you.

There was another option, though, for those who wanted to offer the pineapple of prodigious welcome but couldn’t quite afford it. Colonial dealers of produce used to rent out pineapples for a discounted price. That’s right, rented pineapples. Families that were slightly less wealthy could lease one of these luxurious fruits for a party or a formal dinner, show all of their friends or colleagues that they, too, could offer a welcome that generous, and then whisk it away before anyone got too friendly with a knife. The pineapple was then returned to the rent-a-fruit dealer, who resold it to someone who could afford not only to look at it but actually eat it as well. It was a case of American ingenuity at its…well…most American.

But what kind of welcome is it if the welcome disappears when the time has expired? What kind of welcome is it if the symbol of welcome is off-limits, if the welcome says please, come in, but don’t touch, don’t mess about, and definitely don’t sit down and eat? One has to wonder if these pineapple renters were seen as generous or as pitiable. Perhaps they would have more hospitable if they had bought some real apples and really let people really eat them. Better real food than a fake fruit, no matter how excellent.

When Jesus sends his disciples out into the world on their first real mission, he, too, is concerned about welcome. He is sending them out to proclaim the Good News, with little more than their faith and each other’s company – no staff, no bag, no extra tunic or spare pair of sandals. They are off to do something they have never done before and to do it on their own. And so he offers them words of assurance and inspiration as they look out upon the long road. He tells them not to worry if people ask them questions they cannot answer, for the Spirit will speak to them and give them words to say. He tells them not to be afraid if them are persecuted and handed over, for their Father in heaven knows every single hair of their heads. And he tells them, as he sees the doubt and the hope in their eyes, that they are worthy of this task. Yes, they are traveling without him; yes, they will be preaching and teaching without him, but this will be no second-class proclamation of the Gospel. They will carry Jesus Christ will them, in their hearts and upon their tongues, and so to welcome them is to welcome Christ himself. Because of the Gospel they proclaim, they are worthy of a true, generous welcome.

So…what kind of welcome do we offer for the Good News of Jesus Christ? Is our welcome real or fake? When we hear the Gospel proclaimed do we truly open ourselves up to it, let it fill us up, body and soul, or are we only really interested in how it looks but not so much in how it tastes or fuels our actions? When the Spirit speaks to us – in the words of scripture or the words of a stranger on the street, in the food offered at this altar or the food offered in our parish hall, in the feeling we have as a hymn soars around us or the feeling we have as we watch a boat of refugees floating in the Mediterranean – do we welcome the Spirit in, to stay a while? Do we welcome the Gospel when it is inconvenient, when it speaks at the wrong time, or comes from the wrong person, or seems to be just the wrong message? Do we offer a real welcome when it seems the Gospel might do that which is scariest of all, which is, of course, change us?

Change feels like the costliest part of a true Gospel welcome. Change is the $8000 pineapple, the thing we think we can’t possibly afford. What do you mean go out two by two to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ? What do you mean take no tunic and no extra sandals? What do you mean take a week’s vacation and travel to Honduras? What do you mean change jobs, run for office, go to seminary? What do you mean give away more of what I have? And what do you mean give away even more than that? What do you mean start exercising, stop drinking, start loving my body as a gift from God, even when I catch a glimpse of myself naked in the mirror? What do you mean get up earlier to pray? What do you mean risk looking like a fool by reaching out in love even if that love is rejected, what do you mean risk looking naïve by being unfailingly kind and loving rather than biting and superior, what do you mean risk speaking truth with love even to – and especially to – those in power? What do you mean open my heart, even if there is no guarantee I won’t get hurt? Oh, no – that cost is too high. Why don’t I just rent the Gospel instead?

Because if I’m just renting the Gospel, then I can be nice, no matter what anger or judgment might be rotting beneath my smile. I can love my neighbor in church on Sunday, but God help you if you cut me off in traffic or post something I don’t like on Twitter. I can use the Gospel to order my financial life, but not my sexual life. I can give money to organizations that work for justice and equality but ignore discrimination and meanness I see around me if they seem likely to get too messy. I can welcome the Gospel into my life, and then send it back when it starts to feel too costly. Anything more than that is simply too expensive.

But this, of course, is backwards thinking. For it is not the cost of the Gospel that is extravagant; what is extravagant is what God has given us, free of charge. The cost of change in our life is nothing in comparison with the gifts God has already given us, the changes he has already wrought in our lives, the welcome he has already provided for us, high upon the cross. The free gift of God, Paul tells us, is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Grace, forgiveness, salvation, mercy, compassion, love that never ends – these are the gifts that we have been given for free, not to mention the gifts of Creation, our own gifts and talents, the people God has placed in our lives, the Church. All of this is ours, simply because God has chosen us to love.

So listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. You can afford this Gospel. You can afford this extravagant generosity. Open up your hearts, fling wide the gates, and welcome the Gospel in. Invite it to sit down and stay a while, to lovingly mess about, to change you by making you more of the precious, excellent fruit you were made to be. Welcome the Gospel in to stay, a true welcome. And the king of glory shall come in.    

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

2 July 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Forgetting Any Other Home

Act II, Scene II, again: the Capulet’s orchard. You remember the set-up. Juliet is on her balcony; Romeo is below on the ground. Juliet has been called inside by her Nurse, but unable to tear herself away from Romeo, twice she slips back out to shower him with sweet “good nights” till they shall meet again.

Her second return to the balcony is unexpected; Romeo has begun to exit, as the stage directions make clear. But his beloved calls him back with a “Hist! Romeo. Hist!” The two confirm the time of their next meeting: “At the hour of nine.”

Melodramatically, Juliet says, “’tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.”

Romeo: “Let me stand here till thou remember it.”

Juliet: “I shall forget, to have thee stand there, remembering how I love thy company.”

Romeo: “And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget, forgetting any other home but this.”

I’ll still stay… forgetting any other home but this.

The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet impresses itself upon anyone who has ever wished not to have to leave the presence of someone he loves, someone she loves. We know what it feels like to stand there at the train station, watching as the train pulls away, waving with a forced smile to the beautiful face in the window as it passes by. Or to stand, as we used to be able to do, behind the big glass windows at the airport terminal and watch as the plane taxis to the runway and then soars into the sky, carrying our beloved away till… when? – ‘tis twenty years till then, no matter if it should be tomorrow at nine. “Parting,” as Juliet so famously says, “is such sweet sorrow.”

This morning we do a highly peculiar thing as we keep a somewhat peculiar feast of the church. When our regular worship comes to an end we will linger, like lovers reluctant to part. Following somewhat different stage directions, after walking with Jesus around the church, we will place him on his balcony, as it were: the monstrance on the altar. And then, piously, we will gaze at him, present with us in the way he promised to be, even to the end of the ages.

If you want to try to understand the peculiar ritual we will enact at the end of Mass today, you will do well to recall one of those partings in your own life, when you could hardly bear to tear yourself away from someone you love, even if the next time you would see your beloved was only hours away. For it is from this urgent love – the love that causes you to turn around for one more kiss, and then turn around again for another, that compels you to stand there and watch the train disappear along the tracks, or the plane turn into a speck in the sky – it is from this urgent love that the ritual of Benediction flows. Parting is such sweet sorrow, and we don’t want to say goodbye. I’ll still stay, we pray, forgetting any other home but this.

It is rare these days in the church to find a community that is willing to stake out so baldly, with the goofy piety of star-crossed lovers, its love for Jesus. We are willing to teach our kids that Jesus loves them, but we don’t always teach them how to love Jesus back. And, out of - what, a sense of propriety? – we don’t admit that it is possible to love Jesus this much, to want to stay and linger, forgetting why we called Jesus back, not giving a damn that we forgot, and then forgetting for a few moments any other home but this, as we stare up toward the golden rays of his Presence.

I suppose there may be other reasons to gather as the church. There may be other reasons to take on the name and identity of a Christian. There may be other reasons to give one’s self over to the church to be ordained to the priesthood. But I am not sure that any of those reasons is any better than this: that you love Jesus enough to stand there, wishing you did not have to leave his Presence, that you’ll still stay, forgetting any other home but this.

Earlier, on the balcony, after Juliet has assured Romeo of her love, (“I gave thee mine before thou didst request it.”) she goes on: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep: the more I give to thee, / the more I have, for both are infinite.

How brazen of Shakespeare to put such godly words into the mouth of mere Juliet. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep: the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” 

The dialogue translates nicely to our own circumstances, and, in fact, seems more true coming to us from the altar than from Juliet’s balcony, since only in Christ can bounty and love be truly infinite. But here, at this altar, the claim that is mere hyperbole on Juliet’s lips becomes deep truth from the mouth of God, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep: the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

And in the face of such bounty and such love – both truly infinite only here in Christ’s Presence – I find it hard to tear myself away, and I think I’d like still to stay, forgetting any other home but this.

Won’t you stay too?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

18 June 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Living the Trinity

The Holy Trinity is…what? How would you finish that sentence? The Holy Trinity is a great and profound mystery. The Holy Trinity is an unfathomable and eternal truth. The Holy Trinity is that thing that makes us Christians, the inspiration for some really great hymn writing, the subject of a sermon we have to listen to every year in June. The Holy Trinity is confusing as all heck, mind-blowingly complex, something to do with substance and self-giving and the serious answer to the question of which came first the Father or the Son. (The answer, of course, being both.) But I have a suggestion today for another phrase to describe the Holy Trinity, one that is somewhat counterintuitive. And that suggestion is this: the Holy Trinity is absolutely hilarious. Now I don’t mean the Trinity is laughable or silly – I just mean that our discussions of the Trinity can actually be quite funny.

Case in point: this past week, the verger, the rector, the organist and the associate rector were sitting around the office. Sounds like the most boring joke you’ve ever heard, but this is actually a true story. The verger, in his infinite attentiveness, asked the group if we should get flowers for today’s Mass, seeing as Trinity Sunday is kind of a special thing. I, in my infinite goofiness, suggested that if we were going to get flowers, we should purchase only three. And then the jokes started coming. Well, we should get three, but they should be the exact same kind of flowers so as to be made of the same substance. The rector suggested that they needed to be three flowers with one stem rather than three separate flowers, at which point the organist chimed with his request that the flowers needed to be exactly the same size and in precisely the same moment of bloom so as not to have any whiff of the Arian heresy. All the while, of course, the verger was sitting patiently by, waiting for us to exhaust our ridiculous flower/Trinity metaphors so that he could get the answer to his original question. Which was, as you can see, no.

So, you see, while the Trinity itself isn’t exactly hilarious, our explanations of the Trinity can be. The sentence “The Holy Trinity is like a (dot, dot, dot)” can lead to some really silly analogies, and once you start picking those analogies apart, things can get pretty giggly pretty fast. Don’t believe me? Go home and google “Saint Patrick’s Bad Analogies,” click on the cartoon that pops up, and enjoy. No, the Holy Trinity isn’t really like a shamrock, and it really isn’t like any of the other terrible ideas other people have come up with for what the Trinity is or how it works. But since we’re all just giving this unfathomable mystery our best shot, I think we might as well go ahead and laugh at ourselves a little when we get it really wrong.

Of all of the things that we often get really, really wrong about the Trinity, there is one thing I’ve never seen any jokes about. I think that this is because this error is so subtle that we can’t even see it to poke fun at it. The error is this: that the Holy Trinity is insider information. This is the idea we sometimes have that people outside the Church don’t know the Trinity, can’t see it, because the only way to really know the Trinity is to come to church, get baptized, then confirmed, go to Schola or adult forums, read some books, google “Arian heresy” and “modalism,” ask your priests impossible questions, and be sure to listen to endless sermons about the nature of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday. Then, and only then, you might begin to know the Trinity. Then and only then you might be able to see it, to notice it, to begin to learn what it is all about and what this great mystery actually accomplishes in the world.

Now at some level, of course, this makes sense. After all, if those of us in the Church have a difficult time seeing the Trinity clearly, how can we expect anyone else to? Of course those people out there have only the vaguest idea that we believe that God is three persons but also one, at which point they give up because who in the world knows what that actually means, and frankly, who cares. Of course they don’t know the Trinity – how could they without ever having heard any of those brilliant Trinity Sunday sermons?

But this idea, reasonable as it might sound, is actually quite wrong. The Holy Trinity is not insider information. The Holy Trinity is not something that we can know only when we’re baptized into this holy club and get our secret Jesus decoder ring. Because the Trinity is not just something we find in forums and classes and academic journals and tomes of systematic theology: the Trinity is something we find right here in our liturgy. The Trinity is something that shapes our worship, something we invoke from beginning to end of this public work of praise and prayer. Here, today, in this worship, we see that the Trinity is not just an intellectual puzzle. We Christians don’t just think about the Trinity; we actually put it to work.

We use the name of the Trinity to bless, the name of the Trinity to baptize, the name of the Trinity to proclaim forgiveness. It is the creative workings of the three persons of the Trinity that enable us to confess our faith. It is the majesty of the Trinity that stops us in our tracks and reminds us to bow down and take off our shoes, for this is holy ground. These actions are lived out publicly here in this liturgy – these blessings and baptisms, this forgiveness and confession, this bowing down before the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, this binding unto ourselves today the strong name of this Trinity.     But it is not just the public nature of this worship that makes the Trinity more than just insider information. It is also the fact that what we do here is what we walk out into the world. The actions of our worship color everything we do when we leave this place. And so nothing about our faith can be insider information. Every time we offer a blessing, the world sees the Trinity. Every time we speak of our baptisms, the world sees the Trinity. Every time we confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share in his eternal priesthood, the world sees the Trinity. Every time we offer our forgiveness, the world sees the Trinity. And every time we stop in our tracks to acknowledge the presence of the holy – in the profound gift that is the created world around us, in the beauty of a cantata or a collage or a carefully crafted word, in the pain and the joy we hear in another’s story, in the generosity we see in those who offer their lives to the service of others, in the bravery we see in those who speak TRUTH in a world that seems to reward only prevarication and posturing, in the seeming foolishness of those who proclaim hope in the face of death and despair, in the obedience we see in those continue to proclaim the Gospel, come whence it may, cost what it will – every time we stop and acknowledge that holiness by bowing down in the face of its wonder and mystery, the world sees the Trinity.

The world always sees the Trinity when you and I act like the disciples we’re called to be. And thanks be to The Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Because it is the Trinity that the world most desperately needs. The world needs a God who knows within God’s very being what it is to love and to be loved, to give and to receive. The world needs a God who both knows what it is to be human and what it is to raise that human from the dead. The world needs a God who both remains constant and righteous and also who sends the Spirit to move about amongst us, bringing new ideas of how we can live together in faith. And most of all, the world needs a God who defies our understanding, our limitations, and our expectations, who is and knows and can offer much more than we could ever ask or imagine.

That is the gift of what the world sees, the first thing they see, when you and I walk out from these doors today and live a life of self-giving love, of creation and redemption, of humility and openness. We cannot hide it, and why would we ever want to?  The idea is simply laughable. So go, live out this wondrous mystery, show the world what it means to be shaped the power of the Trinity. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, and all the world, now and forever more.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

11 June 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia