Of Wrath and Rainbows

Nothing says “the wrath of God” quite like a flood.  And the floods we have seen covering parts of Texas and Louisiana as Hurricane Harvey came through have been enough to make you wonder about the power of God, and what it would be like to be required to endure the wrath of God.  It would be reassuring today to come to church and hear the story of the rainbow that Noah saw as the great flood receded in the aftermath of God’s wrath; and to be reminded that that wrath was replaced by a promise never to do such a thing again, and in fact to give a lasting sign of the covenant of love between God and humanity in the brilliant colors of the rainbow.  It’s worth remembering that promise and that covenant as we try to account for all the rain that’s fallen.

Few snippets of theological wisdom have worked their way into the modern consciousness with as much clarity and precision as the old trope that the God of the Old Testament is an angry, wrathful God, but the God of the New Testament (the God of Jesus) is a loving God.  This kind of hogwash is repeated over and over again as if there was the slightest grain of truth in it – which there is not.  It must make some Christians feel better to convince themselves that although the Scriptures report that God grew weary, impatient, frustrated, and angry with the children of Israel for their repeated backsliding, idolatry, sinfulness, and faithlessness, he harbors no such responses toward us – sprinkled, as we have been, in the waters of Baptism – when we engage in backsliding, idolatry, sinfulness, and faithlessness.

More to the point, however, some of us really believe, despite everything he tells us, that Jesus has brought with him a Pollyanna Gospel that has nothing but happy thoughts for us.  Learning from our great forebear Thomas Jefferson, we have omitted and forgotten whatever portions of the Gospel don’t sit easily with us, judging our own wisdom (with a little help from the sage of Monticello) to be superior to whatever wisdom of God has been enshrined by the Church in the Holy Scriptures.

It is jarring, therefore, to come across phrases in St. Paul’s great epistle to the Romans that don’t sit easily with our common expectations of the cheery God of the New Testament, to wit these words: “but leave room for the wrath of God.”  Admittedly, in this passage the words come in a highly specific context regarding God’s claim that vengeance is his and not yours, so you should leave well enough alone when your mind turns toward avenging yourself, your family, your friends, or your neighbors.  And the passage in which these highly contextualized words appears is one that most of us decided to ignore long before we arrived in church this morning: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… live in harmony, do not be haughty but associate with the lowly… do not repay anyone evil for evil… live peaceably with all….”  Insofar as we heed St. Paul’s advice at all, in our mouths these phrases may amount to the lip service we pay to our “loving” God, who can and will level no judgment toward us that could cause us any worry.

And yet, there remain those strange words: “leave room for the wrath of God.”  How could St. Paul have failed to see how misguided he was – still looking backward at the ancient, angry, Jewish God?  Doesn’t he know how outmoded his outlook is?  Our God is a loving God; we don’t need to leave room for the wrath of God, since we have no more of that in the world… do we?  Here we stand at the edge of a flood and we hear St. Paul tell us to “leave room for the wrath of God.”  Is he kidding us?

Everywhere we turn these days we are confronted by wrath.  If it’s not at home then it’s abroad.  If it’s not about missiles and nuclear war, then it’s about a war on drugs, or poverty, or cancer, or some other foe against whom we have decided that war is the only answer.  If it’s not the president, it’s the Congress.  And if it’s not them, then it’s a gaggle of Christian folk issuing “statements” about things they really don’t need to be making statements about.  There is always someone to be angry, and always someone to be angry with.  We have wrath enough to go around.  We don’t need the wrath of God any more than we needed a flood.

St. Paul knows that wrath is a sharp and a powerful weapon, and when he says to leave room for the wrath of God he is trying to take such a weapon out of our hands and leave it to God.  In this passage, he is not so much telling us what God is like, as reminding us what we are like: haughty, presumptuous, willing to repay evil for evil, disinclined toward peacefulness, full of curses, and thirsty for vengeance.  Wrathful.

Taking the weapon gingerly from our hand, Paul entreats us to let God handle that, especially as the flood waters are receding.  Paul knows how ready we are to expect the worst of God and the best of ourselves, but he also knows that the reverse has always been true: that we should expect the best of God and the worst of ourselves.  We’ll be surprised with much less frequency.

I don’t know what Jesus and Peter expected from each other.  But in the famous exchange we hear today, Peter gets a bit of the wrath of God: “Get thee behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me!”  It would have stung.  For Peter wanted only to advance the cause of Jesus.  But Peter here represents anyone and everyone who has ever suspected that he or she could show God how to do things a better way.  Suffering, death, and resurrection?  Peter must wonder.  No!  Let’s do it a better way!  Peter does not yet see how different Jesus’ kingdom is, how distinct is the power of love, or how purposeful is the wrath of God.  He does not know that Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness.

“Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.  For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”  Jesus had never heard of the Powerball.  Jesus never imagined the Dow above 20,000.  Jesus hadn’t anticipated Manhattan real estate being sold for $9,000 a square foot.  All the same, he knew what a fortune was.  He meant his question to be rhetorical, but it turns out that it is provocative: what would it profit me to gain the whole world…?  Jesus never thought in numbers as big as we do, all the same he knew.  We are deeply interested in what it might profit us to gain the whole world.

And yet the daily invitation of Jesus is to lose your life with him.  This is why we come to the altar every day in this church to remind ourselves that the path of righteousness leads through suffering, death, and resurrection.  This path looked problematic to Saint Peter, so you should expect it to look a little complicated to you and me, too.

I can’t possibly claim to understand the many and complex causes that led to a catastrophic hurricane like Hurricane Harvey.  I am prepared to accept that human pollution of our natural environment has contributed greatly to the occurrence of weather events such as this.  It is interesting to contemplate that one lens through which to view the national debate on climate change is a theological lens.  Floods, after all, have traditionally been thought of as “acts of God.”  But nowadays we are not so sure.  And many of us see our own hands at work in the clouds that gather and the rain that falls, and the heat that scorches, and the snow that melts.  Which is to say that many of us are willing to admit that we have been meddling in things that belong to God.  Thus has it ever been.

If we see things this way, we might hear Jesus hissing in our own ears this morning, “Get thee behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me!”  We might peruse the front pages of the papers and wonder what it would mean to leave room for the wrath of God.  Could God really do anything to us that’s worse than the things we’ve done to ourselves?

The headlines in this morning’s New York Times have replaced the news of the flood with news that “North Korea Says It Tested Hydrogen Bomb.”  If only the wrath of God was our only worry.

Jesus is among us in his church to tell us again that the path to righteousness leads through suffering, death, and resurrection.  But this covenant – that our pain is sanctified by his pain, that our death has been trampled by his death, and that our resurrection is assured by his resurrection is extremely difficult for us to hear, let alone to believe.  Mostly, we would rather hit the Lottery, or at least own a few hundred shares in Facebook.  We would like to exercise vengeance on our own.  We would like to claim all the wrath we want for our own.  We would like to do things our way.  We would like to skip the pain, the death, and even the resurrection – it’s just not our way.  We would like to set our minds not on divine things, but on human things.

I hear Jesus hissing in our ears, “Get thee behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me!”

And I wonder if anything less than the wrath of God will ever lead us to that path of righteousness that leads through suffering, death, and resurrection.  Speaking for myself, I would rather be led there by love, which I think is what St. Paul had in mind, too.

So, I’m watching as the waters of the flood recede.  I am looking to the heavens.  And I am praying for a rainbow.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

3 September 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Irrevocable Grace

When food editor Jonathan Gold of the LA Times sat down this past April to select the paper’s first restaurant of the year, he decided to do something bold. He didn't choose an elegant LA bistro where plates are crafted like landscapes, with pools of brightly colored sauces and shrub-like arrangements of carefully manicured microgreens. He didn't choose a hip up-and-coming foodie hotspot – you know, vegan Korean barbecue tapas where all of the food is local, organic, and brought into town on a burro. Instead, Gold chose a burger joint. And not just any burger joint, but a burger joint in the distinctly non-foodie LA location of Watts. 

The restaurant the Gold chose is called LocoL, spelled l-o-c-o-l. LocoL* is the brainchild of food truck wunderkind Roy Choi and Michelin-starred chef Daniel Patterson. The restaurant is their David-sized attempt to bring down the Goliath of the fast food industry. With LocoL, Choi and Patterson are bringing a chef’s eye and palate to fast food, creating dishes that people want to eat but with healthy, sustainable, ingredients. They believe, as their website says, “…that wholesomeness, deliciousness and affordability don't have to be mutually exclusive concepts in fast food,” and “…that fast food restaurants can truly empower the communities they currently underserve.”

Last weekend, I visited LocoL Watts as one of five Zoe Fellows from Saint Mark’s who had traveled to Los Angeles on a learning expedition. The Zoe Fellows, just to remind you, are five members of Saint Mark’s who are participating in a grant project with Princeton Theological Seminary to explore new ways of partnering in ministry with young adults in our community. This trip was an opportunity for us, along with teams from eleven other congregations, to explore the varied ways this kind of ministry can take place. And as a part of our exploration, two of us got to visit LocoL.

The first thing to know about LocoL is that the food is delicious. Our group sat in the LA sunshine sipping lemonade and eating burgers and fries and collard greens that tasted like heaven. As we enjoyed this wonderful, rich, real food, we met with one of the assistant managers, who talked about his life in Watts and why this restaurant is so important in his neighborhood.** He told us of his co-workers, many of whom were out of work before being hired for jobs for which they had little to no experience but who now, after being trained in the kitchen by Roy and Daniel, are cooking incredible food for the people in their own community. Our host also talked about the place of LocoL as a sanctuary in the heart of a neighborhood shaped by violence. There are any number of rival gangs operating within blocks of the restaurant, gangs made up of men and women who have pledged their lives to each other in violent desperation. In these lives, there is room for only one community; there is only the gang, a family forged in the fiercest brutality and bloodshed.

And yet. And yet, within the walls of LocoL, these opposing groups, these enemies, find a place where they can put aside their animosities, literally lay down their weapons, and simply inhabit the same space together. LocoL is a safe haven, a neutral zone, a place where all sides come together and eat. Gang members who would never walk on the same side of the street, let alone be in the same building, can sit together on the back patio under the LA sunshine, drink lemonade, chew on a burger with an artisanal bun and homemade ketchup, and, for just a few moments, forget that they have vowed to forever hate the person chewing on a burger at the opposite table. LocoL is a place all of the gangs see as their own, a place worth coming to, a sanctuary worth protecting.

Now LocoL didn't get to be this way just because of the food – the food is great, but savory, smoky collard greens does not a sanctuary make. No, this place is a safe haven, our host said, because “it provides something that we’re not used to having.” LocoL is “untouchable” because it offers the men and women of Watts a gift they are not used to getting. Because at LocoL, they are seen as people worthy of good things. At LocoL, they are recognized as those who have been broken and bruised by the society in which they live, that they are people, primarily people of color, who continue to be tragically underserved and underrepresented. Some of them have made bad decisions in response to the need and fear in their lives – who among us has not? – but at LocoL, all are welcomed in as family. LocoL offers the people of Watts something beautiful, something rich and real, made just for them, because they are a people who could really use some mercy in their lives. And so LocoL says to them, here, all of this is for you, so come, take and eat.

LocoL is a restaurant I think Paul would have appreciated. Because Paul too was dealing with rival communities – the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians in Rome, who were duking it out over who were the “real” Christians in the hood.      How much easier might it have been for Paul if there had been a LocoL in Rome where he could have delivered his message to them in person – sat down over a burger and fries and said to these people, C’mon, guys, do you really think that God has turned his back on these faithful Jews whom he has nurtured and loved and blessed all these years? Not a chance! But does that mean that there is no place for these new Gentiles that have recently moved into our neighborhood? Of course not! There is a place for all of you here. God built this Church for all you. God planned for this, offered up his Son that you might find a place where all are seen and welcomed and fed, where all are family.

And then Paul would have leaned over the half-eaten fries and looked into the eyes of these beautiful, broken people. And here in this place, he would have said, God sees what you need. God sees that what you most need is mercy. God knows that you are disobedient, that you have all been selfish and cruel and judgmental. God sees that you have all made bad decisions in response to need or fear, but my friends, listen, to me – this is good news. It is not the easiest truth to hear, for who among us likes to be reminded of their sin? And yet, in the middle of this seemingly bitter truth lies this delicious morsel of Grace: that this gift of God is irrevocable. God’s gift of extraordinary mercy is irrevocable. God’s gift of identity, of holy calling that invites us into a better way of being in the world is irrevocable. God’s gifts of forgiveness, grace, and love are irrevocable. There is nothing we can do to make God close up shop and move out of town – not then, in first-century Rome, and not now, in twenty-first century America.. The gifts of God are irrevocable.

If in these times we are called to find the courage and the footing to speak out in the name of the one we follow, if we are called to find the heart to reach out in the name of Jesus Christ to those who have been bruised and broken by this society in which we live, if in these times we are called to, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “maintain justice and do what is right,” as I know we are, then we must first see ourselves as recipients of that irrevocable Grace, how sweet the sound. We must see ourselves first as those in need of mercy, as those standing in the need of prayer. We must first “receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work,” so that we can “follow daily in the blessed steps of [our Savior’s] most holy life.” If we skip this step and start pointing fingers and casting blame, we risk finding ourselves walking with gangs shaped by pride and self-righteousness. But when we see ourselves as those most in need of God’s gift, when we can fall down at the feet of Jesus and ask for mercy, for a few crumbs of Grace, knowing that we are unworthy of it but that we will receive it nonetheless, then there is hope. Then there is hope that we can speak real truth born of real love, then there is hope that we can feed the hungry and comfort the frightened. Then there is hope, and we are in the right place, in the very heart of the place we were always meant to be, and that we will be able to speak a word into the world – a world of love and grace and justice, that will be itself irrevocable. Then we find ourselves deep within the very heart of Christ, where “all races meet, their ancient feuds forgetting, the whole round world complete, from sunrise to its setting.” May God be merciful to us and bless us.

*To learn more about LocoL, visit their website at www.welocol.com

**Unfortunately, our host's name is lost to me in the swirl of information deposited in my brain after four more days of such visits. His name I may have forgotten; his story remains.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

20 August 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

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