Seek My Face

The truth is that Moses had always wanted to know what his face looked like. Not just his ordinary face, I mean, he knew what that looked like. He was a boy born by the water, the baby in the basket, the adopted son of an Egyptian princess whose house was filled with polished brass and pools aplenty that reflected Moses’s face back to him whenever he felt like looking. No, this longing came later, long after his childhood in royal palaces, after his flight into the wilderness and his encounter with the burning bush and his return to Egypt with a rod of power in his hand and the words of God in his mouth. This was later, in the wilderness, after the Red Sea had nestled back down between its banks and the Israelites were on their way to the land flowing with milk and honey. It was then that Moses began to wonder what exactly his face looked like.

He had just climbed Mount Sinai, sat down in the presence of the living God and stayed a while. He had heard God’s voice speak to him, felt God’s presence with him, even seen a tiny bit of God’s own self as God passed by the mountain. True, the tiny bit he had seen had been of God’s back, and true, God had told him that he, Moses, could not yet see God’s face, but what he had seen was enough for him to feel steeped in the presence of the Almighty, wrung out and still dripping with holiness. And when he came down the mountain, he was bursting with excitement to share what he had seen and heard. Not just the commandments that God had given him (again) but the feeling of being that close to eternity. He could hardly wait to talk to Joshua and Miriam, to tell them what it had been like to feel the earth rumble beneath his feet and not be able to tell where the rumbling stopped and the voice of God began. He wanted to share everything with them, to open the moment wide and let them in so that they too could be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

But when he arrived in the camp, he was greeted not with grateful embraces and eager questions but with bewildered stares and furrowed brows. Moses, the people said – your face. Moses touched his face and felt nothing. Your face, look at your face. And how do I look at my own face, he said, impatient to know what they were on about. Your face is shining. Moses put his palm on his cheek; it felt warm now, glowing with the first flicker of frustration. No, he said, it must be the light of the sun, or the sweat glistening on my brow. And anyway, I have more important things to tell you. He started to speak, to tell them all that the Lord had shared with him. But the people could barely listen. They couldn’t get past the glow coming from Moses’s skin; they were disturbed and they were distracted, and so he borrowed a veil from his sister Miriam and tied it over his face. The people relaxed and went back to their lives, and Moses went back to his tent, perplexed and wondering. Why were his people so afraid? Why could they not listen, not look? And it was then that he started to wonder just what his face looked like.

He never really found out. Oh, he had continued to step into God’s presence. And he had continued to come down the mountain shining like the sun, but he had never seen what his face looked like when he did. There were no reflecting pools in the wilderness, no place where he might find his reflection gazing back at him. And so Moses had gone to his dusty grave with this longing unsatisfied, still wondering, after all those years, what his face had actually looked like.

And so it seemed right and good that he found himself here, on this other holy mountain, standing before the very Son of God, who face was now transformed and glowing. It seemed right and good that he should be here to witness the transfiguring love of God. He saw Jesus’ face and recognized in it the divine light that he could now see face to face. As always, it dazzled and delighted him. But when he looked down the mountain, what he saw there utterly amazed him. Because there he saw Peter, James and John, that perpetual triumvirate of inspiration and struggle, looking directly at Jesus’ face. Moses saw them gazing right into the face of their teacher. They were not shielding their eyes. They did not look away. They were exhausted, even Moses could see that, but they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, looking with wonder at each beam of light that shone from his face. They were transfixed, drinking it all in, and Moses was moved by their presence. He saw in them a special kind of faithfulness, these disciples who could gaze upon that glory and keep their eyes wide open.

And so while Moses stood on the mountaintop and spoke to Jesus about his future – about the brutality and the glory that they all knew awaited him – he kept one eye on the disciples, watching them watching Jesus. What a thing, he thought. What a thing to be standing in the very presence of God and to not flinch. His heart swelled with love and gratitude, and he smiled as he thought of the stories those men would tell when they went down the mountain. How they might tell the other disciples what it felt like to be in the very presence of God, what it felt like to bear witness to the truth.

Moses was still watching carefully when Peter rose to his feet and began to speak. It is good for us to be here, he said. Let us build three dwelling-places, one for each of you. And as he heard these words, Moses smiled with a surge of understanding and compassion. For he knew this feeling well. After all, he and his people had built their own shelter for the Almighty in the wilderness. But Moses could now see what this faithful disciple could not – that there was no need for such shelter anymore. Now, there was no need for a veil, no need for a barrier, for now everything was different. Do you not see, he thought to himself? This is the Son. This is God made flesh so that you can taste and touch and see. This same God who once covered me in the cleft of a rock and showed me only a bit of his back has now humbled himself, limited himself, taken on human flesh just for this reason – so that you can look upon him without shelter, so that you can look upon him full in the face, so that you can see his glory revealed and not be afraid.

And just as Moses was about to open his mouth to say these things, he felt the ground begin to tremble. A cloud of thick darkness began to swirl and descend upon the mountaintop, and Moses’s smile deepened. He heard the sound of the rumbling grow into a sound he knew so very well, the very voice of the Almighty, speaking the very same words that had been ringing in his own heart. This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!

There is no need for shelter now. There is no need for self-protection. Listen to him. Look upon him. Do not shield yourself from what is here, for what is here is for you. This light is for you, to give you courage in the darkness, to illuminate your own words and actions. This light is for you, to burn away all the fear that causes you to bury your head in the sand, to build walls between yourselves and others, to boast and battle and blame. This light is for you, to shine into this world with such clarity, such boldness, that you can see the path of compassion and generosity and humility that leads through this wilderness to the milk and honey of my kingdom. This light is for you, so that you can see your own beautiful face, the person I created you to be.

Look. The fullness of God is made flesh for you, given for you. So do not be afraid. Come, seek his face. Find his presence here in this bread and this wine. “Be attentive to this holy presence as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” Look upon him with eyes and minds and hearts wide open. Listen to his words rumbling in your heart. Gather the strength you need here from this altar to go down the mountain, your own face shining with the presence of Christ that dwells within you richly. Let your light so shine before others that they see God’s own glory, let your life be a spotless mirror of the wondrous workings of God. Come, seek His face, and then show asdfyour face to the world. No need to wonder what it looks like. For it is your beautiful face, and it looks like love.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Shine like the Sun

My dog Ozzie is nearly eight years old, and has lived his entire life in the Rectory next door, where there is a section of flooring, in a corridor between the dining room and the kitchen, that’s covered in a dark brown 1950s linoleum.  Ozzie has never once in his life crossed that section of the floor without pausing warily at its threshold, looking dubiously down at it as though crocodiles might lurk beneath its surface, and then scurrying across the three feet or so of flooring to safety on the other side.

I am quite certain that nothing bad has ever happened to Ozzie on that small section of dark brown linoleum floor; no disaster ever befell him there; he was never attacked by anything; the floor never collapsed beneath him; nothing ever fell on him from above in that spot; nor am I aware of anything that could have caused him fright there.  But he approaches that three-foot width of floor with unfailing trepidation, as though it might open up beneath him, and he’d be swallowed up into the bowels of Hell, or at least crocodiles.

Dogs not only have great intuition, they also have a heightened awareness, especially because of their excellent senses of smell and hearing.  Maybe Ozzie knows something that I don’t know.  The fact that for the nearly eight years of his life Ozzie has never suffered molestation, disaster, or fury of any kind in that location, this has not prevented him from treating that small expanse of linoleum as though just beneath it roils a cauldron of danger.  And this attitude of his seems silly to me, and somehow beyond explanation.  Unless, as I say, Ozzie knows something that I don’t.

It strikes me that hearing Jesus’ parable today could be to many of us somewhat akin to witnessing Ozzie’s strange caution at the verge of the little section of brown linoleum floor: it is a warning of danger that we are not at all sure really exists.  To find this passage of the Gospel compelling you have to believe that there are forces of evil at work in the world, on the one hand, and that God, in his own good time, will send his angelic army to defeat those forces of evil.  It is to believe that evil will be punished and that righteousness will be rewarded, and that it matters which side you are on.  I am not absolutely certain that many people today in America find this way of seeing things all that convincing.

For one thing, Jesus is expressing a highly dualistic view of things, in which the wheat and the weeds can be easily distinguished, the one separated from the other.  But we are prone to see things more on a spectrum.  And we know that weedy people have their wheat-ish moments, and that the wheat-ies are not always as healthy as they seem to be.

But more pointedly, isn’t it hard for many people today to swallow this business about the “children of the evil one,” and the “devil,” and the angelic reapers of righteousness?  Who, these days, believes in the hellish “furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

On the other hand, who of us is really expecting to “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father”?  Doesn’t it seem presumptuous, knowing, as we do, that most of are somewhere on the spectrum between the wheat and the weeds, and not so many of us are near enough one of the ends of that spectrum, to feel confident in what lies ahead, should a day of judgment ever come?

But what if Jesus knows something we don’t know?

And what if the point of the story isn’t the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, but the shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father?

More than once I have flippantly said that if dogs don’t go to heaven I am not interested.  Inasmuch as there exist in the world dogs who can detect cancer with their noses, dogs who can find truffles in the earth, dogs who can give warning to oncoming epileptic seizure or diabetic shock, and dogs who can find their way home from miles and miles away, I assume that dogs go to heaven.  And I am willing to allow for the possibility that Ozzie is alert to realities that I cannot detect; although I still tread confidently over the patch of dark brown linoleum between the dining room and the kitchen.  And if I am willing to concede this greater intuition, and possibly even knowledge to Ozzie, why would I be reluctant to allow for the same possibility in Jesus?  Why is it so hard to believe that the Son of God knows more than I know, more than we know?

Every dog owner has had the experience of being awakened in the night by the barking of the dog in alarm for some unidentifiable reason.  “Shhhhshhh,” we say, “It’s nothing.”  Because to us it is nothing – nothing close enough to bother us or disrupt our sleep.  But the truth of the matter is that it wasn’t nothing: it was something the dog heard but we can’t.  Have we started to treat Jesus and his Gospel the same way?  “Shhhshhh.” we say to Jesus, “it’s nothing,” when we hear the Gospel nag us or bark at us about the possibility that we could be led down the wrong path by the powers of evil.  After all, don’t we know better than that?  It’s not as if money, or power, or sex, or addiction, or fame, or selfishness, or any number of other things could lead us down the wrong path, after all, is it?  We’re all on a spectrum; how can there be evil ones or devils to lead us astray; let alone hosts of angels to reap a harvest of the righteous?  Leave all that to the “Left Behind-ers.”  And we’ll get on with things here on the spectrum.  Because we can hardly imagine that Jesus knows something that we don’t know.

We find it so easy to “shush” the Gospel that we never even consider the possibility that the thing Jesus knows that we don’t is that “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”  And we find it hard to believe that we might be among the righteous, since, after all, we are only somewhere on the spectrum between weeds and wheat.

I suspect that Ozzie is untroubled by these uncertainties.  He is aware of the powers of darkness and evil in ways that I cannot even comprehend.  And I allow for the possibility that he is prepared by God to be among those who shine like the sun, wagging his tail all the while.  Which is to say, that we could learn something from a dog, who like all dogs, is admittedly somewhere on the spectrum between “Good Boy!” and “Bad Dog!”  We could learn that no matter where on the spectrum of righteousness we may be, God is calling us to move a little further toward the Son.  God is calling us to be aware that there are powers of evil in this world that can and will do us harm, and that we should beware those powers, resist them, avoid them, fight against them, and by all means do not fall into their traps, for traps have been set!

And, more poignantly, God is calling us to cultivate our place along the spectrum of the righteous like a good crop of wheat, which takes work.  Move, when you can, further along the spectrum of righteousness by living more for others than for yourself; by learning to give generously in all kinds of ways; by bringing joy and blessing into places that are beset by darkness and curses; by raising your voice to the glory of God rather than to your own praise and self-congratulation.  In other words, by being a little bit more like a Labrador.  For God means for you and for me to be counted among the wheat, among the righteous; which is to say that God means for you and for me to shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.  Which I know is hard to believe, but it has the great benefit of being true!  Let anyone with ears listen!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

23 July 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Telling a Story

My grandfather spoke with a rich Irish accent and he smoked a pipe. He was aware, I think, that he made a striking figure in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the seventies, and he used that awareness to good effect. He was self-consciously a figure for the “old country” in our more modern world. And he had ways of making sure that we kept some part of the old country in our own identities. Once in a while, for instance, in the middle of an after-school game of Liverpool Rummy with us grandchildren, he would put down his pipe and lean an elbow on the table and regale us with some Irish narrations. One of his favorites went like this:

“It was a stormy night at sea, and the lads asked me to tell them a story. So I told them the following tale:

‘It was a stormy night at sea, and the lads asked me to tell them a story, so I told them the following tale:

‘It was a stormy night at sea….’’”

You get it, right? It’s Irish mise-en-abyme, a story about telling a story about telling a story about telling a story. It never ends. The story never starts. The story is always about the moment of storytelling, the anticipation of a good tale, the breathlessness of the fictional “lads” who waited to hear. And waited, and waited. As we waited, at first, until we understood the joke.

My grandfather never seemed more Irish to me than when he was telling us this infinitely-deferred story, and it never stopped being fun to hear, even though we knew how it went. My grandfather would deepen his voice and exaggerate his Irish brogue, and though I knew he had never been a sea-captain—he was manager of a drug store--I could have sworn in that moment that he was a figure from some great sea-faring novel. Everything romantic about being Irish was contained in that joke, including a knowing wink about making fun of everything romantic about being Irish. Just at the moment that my grandfather seemed like an exotic foreigner, that is, I felt that I was part of the land from which he came, because I knew the story that could never be told. That story that had no end and no beginning was my story, as familiar to me as a game of cards and a glass of lemonade on a hot afternoon.

This rather peculiar memory of mine keeps coming back as I ponder the parable that Jesus tells us this morning. It’s not a stormy night at sea, exactly, but Jesus does have a crowd gathering around him on the beach, waiting to hear him speak. He moves away from them a bit, gets into a boat, and begins to speak to them in parables. The first parable he tells, it turns out, is about telling a parable. Telling a parable, preaching the word of God, he says, is like being a farmer who goes out to sow seeds. Some of the seeds fall on good soil, and some of them don’t. In fact, it sounds like most of the seeds fall in places that will prevent them from bearing fruit. They will fall on pathways and in shallow places and where weeds will crowd them out. It sounds like about one seed in four might land in a good place. Not very encouraging odds. You wonder why Jesus would even speak, if almost nobody is going to hear what he has to say and really understand it, really put it to good use.

It seems that the best stories are the ones that never fully arrive, never fully yield up their meanings to us. The stories that save us are the stories that always elude our grasp, always remain mysterious. Hamlet, famously, remains compelling because no one is really sure why the tragic prince does what he does. But Hamlet doesn’t save anyone, not even an English major. Jesus, the Word of God, saves us. In Jesus, God speaks a word to us that is salvific in part because the riches of that word will never fully arrive in our understanding. A seed will be planted, and our life-long struggle will be to do our best to hear that word, let that seed germinate and grow. We will struggle to avoid hearing in a shallow way. We will struggle to avoid having the word of God garbled and choked by the cares of the world. We will struggle to avoid being too hard and too burned out and too trampled upon to let the word of God dwell in us richly. But we will see that when we do hear and learn and understand, and when the word of God bears fruit in us, that fruitfulness itself will be all the more mysterious. If we hear and understand, the word of God will yield thirty or sixty or a hundred-fold, and that too will be beyond our comprehension. Understanding God’s word means being witness to a power and grace we ultimately don’t understand, all over again. We are carried forward through our lives of faith by a desire to hear a word whose meaning is always about to be revealed to us, but never in completion.

And the elusiveness of that beautiful word is ultimately our great joy. The meaning of the word of God will never be exhausted. There will never be a last word. We will never tire of hearing that there is more to understand, a tale yet to be told. It will always be a stormy night at sea, and we will always be breathless with anticipation as the height and breadth and depth of what God has in store for us promise to reveal themselves.

Many decades after my grandfather’s Irish accent was stilled by death, I can turn to a sibling or to a cousin or to someone who knows me well, someone with whom I’ve shared his jokes—all of you, now—and I can speak just the first line of his little performance piece: “It was a stormy night at sea.” And the pleasure of that joke comes rushing back, the joy of sharing the irony of the story that never happens, the sound, the voice, the feeling of belonging, even in exile, to the old country.

That’s some of what a parable does when Jesus tells it. His stories are perfectly familiar--what could be more normal than sowing seeds?--and yet they are imbued with the mysterious and enchanting accent of a homeland we haven’t seen. They tell us something about where we come from and where we are headed, where we belong. But that place of belonging will never be property we own.

Your heritage is in the heart of God’s unfathomable love. In this life, it will be the punch line that never gets fully delivered, the tale that never unfolds fully. And in the next, when the tale is fully told, it will turn out to be a story that never ends, and our joy will be to hear word after word spoken to us of love and beauty and forgiveness and healing. As familiar as a seed that is planted and grows, but as mysterious as the process of growth itself.

In a moment, we will stand together and chant the words of the Nicene Creed. It has often been remarked that the creed is a story. It’s the bare outline of a story of creation and salvation. Most of us know it very well, almost to the point of boredom. But if we heard it correctly and came to appreciate our own power to recite it, we would begin to understand that we are speaking the words of a tale that has no ending—the life of the world to come. We would hear that we are telling a tale about where we come from, the Father who made heaven and earth, all that is, seen and unseen. We would hear the accent of our homeland, and know that the sense of being unfulfilled and in exile is crucial to our identity as followers of Jesus.

It is our glory on this earth to trace out the logic of the story of our redemption. What we hear from Jesus as a parable, we repeat as the story of our faith, halting and incomplete though it may be.

“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth,” says the Lord. “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” And so we have come to believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. We have learned to acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And we have begun to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Preached by Mtr. Nora Johnson

July 16, 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia