Even Better

It is a little-known fact of biblical history that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were, in their hearts, profound optimists. They both were women who liked to look on the bright side, women for whom the chalice was always half full. So when they left their house in the dark hours before dawn on that first day of the week, both of them were trying, even after the events of two days before, even after a Sabbath spent weeping through their prayers, even after a second sleepless night of worry and fear – they were still trying to look on the bright side. They were trying to imagine the best thing that could happen that morning, even if the best was not particularly great.

Mary Magdalene’s thoughts went something like this, “At least the Sabbath is finally over. At least we know where they buried him. At least the other Mary is with me. And wouldn’t it be great if, when we get there, the guards are just gone? Then we would be able to prepare his body for burial as we should. If we can do our work in peace – that would be the best I could ask for.”

The other Mary was thinking this, “At least we’re out doing something. At least the two of us are here to check on his body and make sure no one has stolen it. At least we’re women, and no one will ever see us as a threat. And wouldn’t it be great if some of the disciples have come to see his body as well? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if John and Peter have managed to suck it up and come out of hiding for just a moment? Wouldn’t it also be wonderful if they finally remembered my full name instead of just ‘the other Mary’…but no! I’m trying to look on the bright side. I’m trying to imagine the best possible outcome of this trip – that the disciples will be there, that the guards will be kind and helpful, that we will be able to care for his body properly, and that someone, at some time, will call me Mary Bat-Jonah.* That would be the best I could ever hope for.”  

But when Mary Magdalene and Mary Bat-Jonah get to the tomb, of course, nothing is as they had hoped. There are no disciples waiting there to greet them; the guards are still there, menacing as ever; and the stone that sealed the tomb is still solidly in place. But then, in an instant, everything changes. Still nothing is as they’d hoped, but everything is much, much better. The earth trembles and an angel blazes down from heaven to roll away the stone. The guards pass out from fear – ha! – and the angel tells the two Marys that Jesus has risen. The tomb is empty; he is gone. Jesus is already on his way to Galilee; go and tell his disciples where he is, the angel commands, go and share the good news! And so the women run from the tomb, their hearts pounding with excitement, their eyes glistening with excitement and tears, their breath coming short in little giddy laughs. They run from the tomb, back down the road to Jerusalem to share this astonishing new bright side with their friends.

Can you imagine? they say to each other, panting as they run. Can you imagine their faces when we tell them? I can see them now, Mary Magdalene says. They’ll be all huddled in the dark, and when we come back so soon they’ll imagine that we’ll have had trouble. Mary Bat-Jonah tosses her head back and hoots with laughter. And then we’ll say that we’ve been to the tomb and he isn’t there…but there was an angel, Mary Magdalene interrupts her, who told us that Jesus is alive!  The women look at each other and grin, and that grin says it all: this is the best that they could ever hope for.

Except that it isn’t. Because suddenly, as they are running along the road, they look up, and Jesus is there, standing before them. He is not on his way back to Galilee, he is right there, arms wide to greet them. Their hearts leap in their chests, and they fall down at his feet, surprised by joy once more. Isn’t this a glorious moment? The Marys are already bursting with happiness, filled beyond their wildest imaginings with a kind of joy they have never felt before. They are flying back to Jerusalem on wings of pure delight, but even this miracle is not good enough. Our Lord cannot help himself; he cannot help but to meet them himself and to make this good, this great, even better. And in this moment, the Marys witness an important truth of this Easter morning, a truth that their story reveals also to us – that the best that we could ever hope for still falls far short of the best that God has given us. The best that we could ever hope for is still not all that God has in mind. God’s imaginings for us are far greater than our own; God’s bright side is far beyond even our sunniest, most optimistic dreams. God’s dreams are not the best that we could ever hope for. God’s dreams are always even better.

It’s so easy for us to miss the breadth and depth of God’s dreams for us. We imagine what the best we could hope for could be, and then we somehow convince ourselves that that must be what God hopes for too. If I could just get that job, if I could just get that boy, if I could just find more time, more money – if I could just stay healthy forever. But God’s imagination is bigger than all that. God’s grace, God’s generosity, God’s mercy and love are all exponentially greater – no, not exponentially – infinitely greater than our own. Whatever our hopes are, whatever our desires, whatever our best-case scenarios, God’s are always even better.

Now here’s just a little disclaimer – God’s even better is also usually a bit of a surprise. The two Marys might have been trying to imagine a scenario where the temple guards were kind and helpful, but please notice that God’s better idea was not for them to show up to find the guards smiling and rolling back the stone for them, calling them by their given names, picking them bouquets of fresh flowers, and offering to rub their tired feet. God’s dreams are better – truly better – than what we can imagine, which sometimes means that they look quite different. You don’t get the job you wanted, but that helps you to realize that maybe your true calling is to go back to school. You don’t get the boy back, but you find someone else, someone perfect for you, someone who unbeknownst to you is an incredible baker. You don’t get more money, but this helps you to see and serve those who have less than you do. You don’t find more time, but you find more meaning in your time. You don’t stay healthy forever, but in your weakness you find new clarity, an acceptance of others’ brokenness, and the capacity to let others care for you and love you as Christ commanded them.

This is why we pray every day that God’s will be done – not because our own will is always wrong, but because it is always limited. God’s will for us is far, far better than our own. My thoughts are not our thoughts, God says, neither are your ways my ways. And thanks be to Him! Because if our salvation were limited to the kinds of things that you or I could imagine, we would never have this night.

For we would never have been able to imagine a night like this. We would never have been able to imagine a night when darkness itself is vanquished by the eternal bright side of this holy fire. We would never have been able to imagine a night when wickedness is put to flight, when earth and heaven are joined and women and men are reconciled to God. We would never have been able to imagine a night when death is defeated, once for all. We would never have been able to imagine a night when the whole body of Christ is strengthened and expanded when we call two new members by their names in baptism. We would never have been able to imagine a night when we could proclaim with one voice, Alleluia! Christ is risen! Death is conquered, we are free! Love wins! We could have imagined for all our lives and never imagined the kind of Grace that is given to us on this holy night. For this is night when Christ is raised and we are raised up with him. This is the night of even better.

*I am as sure that this was not actually "the other Mary's" name as I am that she actually did have one.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

Easter Vigil 2018

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

A Crooked Death

On the evening of Saturday, August 12, 1911, a man named Zachariah Walker was heading home on a country road when he saw two strangers walking towards him. Walker had been at a bar all day, enjoying a hard-earned day off, and he was just drunk enough to think that it was a good time for a little prank. He drew a gun from his pocket, held it straight up in the air, and fired it twice. The men bolted, and Walker, chuckling to himself over his little joke, continued the walk home. Unfortunately for Walker, a man named Edgar Rice, who was a security guard at a nearby business, heard the gunshots, and came out to investigate. He accosted Walker on the road and, without any authority to do so, threatened to arrest him. Walker, made aggressive by fear and drink, in his own words, “got sassy” with Rice. The sass turned into an argument, and the argument turned into a fight, and the fight quickly turned deadly serious. Rice began clubbing Walker with his nightstick, and when Walker ripped the stick out of Rice’s hand, Rice drew his pistol and lunged. Walker shot first, firing two bullets into Rice, who immediately fell, dead.

Walker knew better than to wait around for the police, for he was black, and Rice was white, and this was 1911. He ran and hid out in a barn, hoping that he could stay out harm’s way until the search was called off. But the next morning, he was spotted by a boy who was out collecting eggs for breakfast. Walker was arrested, but not before trying to kill himself by shooting himself in the temple. The shot missed, and he arrived at the jail bleeding but very much alive. He was taken to the hospital, where a doctor operated on his face, removing the bullet and repairing his jaw. In a fog of anesthesia, Walker confessed to the killing but insisted that it was an act of self-defense. By this time, word had gotten out about not only the death of Rice but also Walker’s location, and a hostile crowd began to form in the street. The sheriff came out to address the crowd, but instead of trying to calm them down, he told them that Walker had bragged about the crime, never mentioning that Walker had claimed self-defense. The crowd erupted at this information, and cries of “Shoot him! Kill him! Lynch him!” began to explode into the night air. The sheriff left, leaving the crowd to do whatever it wanted to do, and in that instant, Walker’s fate was finally and tragically sealed.

The crowd rushed into the hospital, tore Walker from his hospital bed, and carried him to a field about a half-mile away. As they dragged him along, they cursed and beat him. The mob, some three thousand strong by now, made a makeshift pyre, lighted it, and threw Walker into the flames. Not once, not twice, but three times Walker tried to crawl out of the fire, and not once, not twice, but three times this crowd of men, women, and children, forced him back in, beating him with railroad ties, throwing a rope around his neck and hauling him back like an animal. He cried out to the crowd from the flames, “For God's sake, give a man a chance! I killed Rice in self-defense. Don't give me no crooked death because I'm not white.” But the people would not give him a chance, for God’s sake or anyone else’s. They let him burn, and they let him die, and then they collected souvenirs from the ashes.*

A crowd of curious townsfolk assembled at the lynching site the next morning

Lynching is but one rotten fruit of the twisted tree of racism that has grown up in this country. From the end of the Civil War until 1950, over 4000 men, women, and children were lynched – hanged, beaten to death, burned, or drowned – solely because they were black in a society where power was white. If our nation’s national sin is slavery, then lynching is an ugly, cancerous growth born of that sin, along with the forced failure of Reconstruction, the travesty of Jim Crow, the violent reaction to the Civil Rights movement, and the modern brutality of mass incarceration.

There are clear parallels between our nation’s lynching stories and the story of the Passion. They are, in many ways, the same story – an innocent victim is condemned, beaten, and killed for no other crime than being who he is; a crowd is made wild out of fear; the authorities exercise their power by choosing not to exercise their power; and in the end a body lies hanging on a tree, a strange fruit, a crooked death. At the same time, it may seem incongruous to focus on the sin of lynching on this Good Friday. It may seem inopportune to talk about lynching now, in a place such as this. It may seem inconsistent to draw attention to the systematic oppression of one people by another on a day when we speak about being drawn together to the foot of the cross. It may seem inappropriate to pile more violence upon the violence of the Passion, where our Lord is betrayed and beaten, battered by the mob’s anger and their cries of “Crucify him, crucify him!,” and finally killed in an agonizing death, where no one gave him a chance, for God’s sake or anyone else’s.

In his seminal work The Cross and the Lynching Tree, theologian James Cone argues that for Christians in this country to confront the ravages of racism that continue to poison our society, we must begin by acknowledging the link between the cross and the lynching tree. We – particularly we white American Christians – must be willing to hold both symbols together to remind us that the justice and redemption of the cross cannot be separated from the injustice and suffering of the world. We must be willing to humble ourselves before both the lynching tree and the cross, not just because the hope of the cross transforms the lynching tree, but also because the lynching tree transforms the cross. Cone writes, “…we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death. The lynching tree frees the cross form the false pieties of well-meaning Christians.”

So while it may seem incongruous or inappropriate to talk about the lynching tree on a Good Friday in Philadelphia in 2018, it is actually imperative. It is imperative because it is this symbol of our brokenness, of power run amok, of the perversion of justice, that helps us to see the depth of the sin from which Jesus’ death saved us. The lynching tree challenges us to see that the cross is not intended simply to comfort or inspire us. It does do that, just as it has comforted and inspired the millions of black Americans who have suffered the pain of racism in this country. But the cross is not just here to comfort us. The cross is also here to provoke us. The cross is here to “provoke us to love and good deeds,” as the author of Hebrews writes. The cross is the ultimate provocation, calling us forth, calling us out to look out for the least of these, to stand up for the abused and the neglected, to give voice to those who have suffered for far too long at the hands of those in power. If the cross does not provoke us to this kind of powerful, active love, then we are missing something of this Good Friday.

On April 26 of this year, the Equal Justice Initiative, under the leadership of Bryan Stephenson, author of our Lenten book Just Mercy, will open the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the nation’s first memorial to victims of lynching, in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is made of 800 columns, one for each county in the United States where the EJI has been able to accurately document a lynching. Outside the memorial proper, there will be another 800 columns, identical to those inside. The plan is for these columns to be taken back to the counties they represent and placed at a documented lynching site as a local memorial. One of these columns will be taken to the county where Zachariah Walker was lynched, which is not some county in the deep South, but Chester County, in the city of Coatesville, right here in our own diocese.

You and I are inheritors of hundreds of years of systemic racism in this country. Right here in Philadelphia, we are inheritors of the lynching era and prejudice, whether we want to be or not. We are inheritors of the world’s ancient bigotry, which seems to be getting worse, as in these days we watch the rise of anti-Semitism and hate crimes and the cruel bullying of those who are black or Muslim or trans or queer or an ethnic minority or some other other. We are inheritors of hatred, you and I. But we are also inheritors of this cross. We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. We are heirs of this great sacrifice and the love that shaped it, and today, in the shadow of this cross, we are asked to do something with it. Today, we are called forth to love as Christ first loved us, to love like this beautiful, crooked death, to love fiercely and fully, to love bravely in the face of brutality, to love those who are oppressed and afflicted and in anguish, to love in word and in deed, to love our neighbors and our enemies, to love those who are hard to love, to love those who are hard to see, to love in the name of our Lord Jesus, to love all in the shape of this holy cross. For our sake, God let his Son die this crooked death, to give us a chance to do just this, to be loved and to love wholly and freely. Come, let us bow down before the wood of this cross. Come, let us worship. Come, let us be provoked by this great love to our own love.  

*The details of this story come from the book Coatesville and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker by Dennis B. Downey and Raymond M. Hyser

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Good Friday 2018

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Remember Me

The most recent Pixar film, “Coco” tells the story of Miguel, a young Mexican boy who dreams of becoming a musician, but whose family has come to despise musicians, ever since his great-great grandfather left the family behind in search of stardom.  The entire story takes place on el Dia de los Muertos - the Day of the Dead - and unfolds as Miguel’s family is preparing the ofrenda, the altar covered in flowers, and foods, and symbols of familiar welcome for the dead ancestors who are being honored, and, according to tradition, who are to be welcomed back among the living this one night of the year.  At the center of the ofrenda there are photos of the beloved dead whose memories are being preserved, and whose visitation is being encouraged.   Miguel’s grandmother explains, “We've put their photos on the ofrenda so their spirits can cross over. That is very important! If we don't put them up, they can't come!....  We made all this food -- set out the things they loved in life.... We don't want their spirits to get lost. We want them to come....”*

Trying to escape the strictures of his family, who want him to become a shoe-maker rather than a musician, Miguel runs off in search of a guitar, as night falls.  And through a series of twists and unexpected turns, the boy finds himself in the Land of the Dead, still very much alive.  But he soon realizes that he is in danger of getting trapped forever on the wrong side of the marigold bridge that connects the living to the dead.

The boy discovers that he has only until sunrise to win a blessing from a departed ancestor in order to gain re-entry to the land of the living.  And he enlists the help of a dead man named Hector, who himself is unable to cross over to visit with the living on this Day of the Dead.  Hector explains to Miguel why his journey from the dead to visit the living is prevented: “this place runs on memories. When you're well-remembered, people put up your photo [on the ofrenda] and you get to cross the bridge and visit the living on Día de Muertos.  Unless you're me....  No one's ever put up my picture…”

As the story advances, Miguel discovers that an even worse fate awaits those who are forgotten amongst the living.  Hector tells him,  “when there's no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from [the Land of the Dead, too.  They] call it the ‘Final Death.’”  And Hector is in immanent danger of being forgotten altogether.

The fortunes of the living boy and the doomed man become entangled, and they establish an uneasy alliance to help each other cross back over the marigold bridge to the world of the living: the boy to resume his life, and the man to visit his now aged daughter, the only living soul who might remember him, and place his photo on an ofrenda to keep his memory alive.

So far you may have been wondering why I did not preach this sermon back in November, and borrow the details of the vestigial Aztec customs of el Dia de los Muertos by way of reflection on our own commemoration of the dead - saints and sinners alike. 

The leitmotif of the film is the power of memory to preserve our familial relationships and to connect us to the past.  It’s a theme that is summed up in the recurring song that you will surely be humming when you leave the theater, “Remember me.”  Sung both as a rousing production number and as a soothing lullabye the song takes on a variety of meanings:

“Remember me.
Though I have to say good-bye,
Remember me.
Don’t let it make you cry.
For even if I’m far away
I hold you in my heart.
I sing a secret song to you
each night we are apart.

Remember me.
Though I have to travel far,
remember me.
Each time you hear a sad guitar
know that I am with you
the only way that I can be.
Until you’re in my arms again,
remember me.”**

This song, written for animated figures to sing in a movie, does, in fact, echo important themes of the Christian religion.  But not the themes of All Saints Day or All Souls Day, which coincide with el Dia de los Muertos.  No, this song rings out with the echoes of Maundy Thursday, which is the night, por excelencia, of Christian memory, since it is the night when our Lord shares bread and wine with his disciples, by way of imparting to them (and to us) the gift of his immortal living Presence, and then tells them (and us) to “Remember me.”

from Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Do you hear an echo of that last night in the Upper Room in the details of this lovely movie, and in its signature song, as I do?  If we do, the movie invites us to consider what would have become of the Christian church without this Eucharistic gift to bring day by day to the ofrenda - to the altar where our hopes and needs meet God’s grace and mercy.  What would become of the church without the gift of this living memory of Jesus?  It was the gift on which the infant church was nourished, long before there was a Bible to read, or any scriptural tradition at all.  Before Paul wrote any of his letters (as attested to in First Corinthians), before the evangelists began to transcribe their notes, there was the tradition of this memory of this night, that was given as more than just a memory.  I’m not sure anyone ever sang it, but they should have.  They could have borrowed the tune, and even the words from Pixar: “Remember me.  Though I have to say goodbye, remember me.”

And there is a sense in which we gather tonight to listen to Jesus sing us a love song.  He gathers us at his altar, and it is he who makes the offering that matters, as he gives himself as a sacrifice for the sake of his love for us.  Having already washed our feet out of love, he now assures us that his love will endure for ever, as will his communion with his church.  And, knowing that it will be hard for us to follow in his Way after he is gone, he gives us the gift of a sacred memory that cannot ever die, with the simple instructions to “Do this, and remember me.”  Remember me.  Each time you hear these words, know that I am with you the only way that I can be.  Until you’re in my arms again, remember me.

On el Dia de los Muertos, I suppose you’d have to say that the Mexicans who set up their ofrendas in anticipation of visits from their dead ancestors are not relying on their memories in the usual, normal way, in order to recall with fondness  their family members of old.  They bring to that night the expectation of encountering the living presence of their departed loved ones, an expectation they learned from their ancient Aztec forebears.  And I suppose I’d have to say that, while I like the movie, I have my doubts (to say the least) about the possibility that the spirits of the dead cross over a marigold bridge to visit us once a year in November.

But tonight, we are not relying on our memories in the usual, normal way, in order to recall with fondness the loving acts of our spiritual ancestor of old.  No, we bring to this night (as we do to every Mass on every day of every year) the expectation of encountering the living Presence of Jesus.  The profound difference being that Jesus is not dead.  He was dead for three days, if you count days according Jewish custom, and if you allow for the fact that he died late on the first day, and rose early on the third day.  And so the living memory of Jesus is a different kind of memory altogether, than the feeble kinds of memories that we so easily lose.

The great challenge for Miguel (in the film), is that he must return before sunrise in order to reclaim the life that is his.  And his dead ancestors can do nothing for him but send him back whence he came.  And the best that he can do for Hector, is to bring back a photo of him to the land of the living, and place it on the ofrenda, and hang on to his memory a little while longer.  But the Final Death will come for him eventually, when enough generations have past, and memory fails, and the photo is lost, and the dead “dissolve into dust.”***  Didn’t we remind ourselves at the outset of Lent that we are dust, and to dust we shall return?

The challenge that lies before us is somewhat different, since Christ is alive, and since it is his grace, his power, his life from which all of us are given grace, and power, and life.   Tonight our challenge is to hear him sing his love song to us again and again; to hear him tell us to “Remember me,” as he gives us his Body and his Blood; and to take him in our hands, and to know that he is with us in the only way that he can be, until we rest in his arms again.  

But for now, to do this, and to remember him, and to know that he is here.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Maundy Thursday 2018

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

*All quotations from “Coco” Screenplay by Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich, produced by Disney Pixar, 2017

**Song by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert J. Lopez, for Walt Disney Music Company, 2017

***“Coco” screenplay, page 61