A Low Place

Valley of Gehenna

The woman says she is haunted above all by the callous laughter of the boys whom she alleges assaulted her when she was young.  She is haunted by their laughter and by the ease with which she could have been killed, her breath stopped as a mere by-product of a drunken, fumbled, offense.

Gehenna is haunted by child sacrifice.  It’s near Jerusalem, a valley in which, in the days of the kingdom of Judah, some of the kings had sacrificed their children to the god Moloch.  By the time of Jesus the name of this valley, Gehenna, conjured up a kind of hell.

The committee’s hearing was said to be hell by one distinguished senator.

The next morning, when the elevator doors opened, another senator was haunted by the voices of two women who charged him with sacrificing them.  “You’re telling me right now that what happened to me doesn’t matter.  Look at me when I’m talking to you.  You’re telling me I don’t matter.”

Apparently if we cause one of the little ones to stumble, we will be better off drowning with a millstone around our necks, sinking down to the bottom of the sea.

Apparently, in this matter of harming the little ones, if our hand is what makes us offend, we would be better off amputating that hand.

Apparently, if our eye is what makes us do harm to the vulnerable, we would be better off poking out that eye.

The alternative is Gehenna.  Hell.   Keep what belongs to you, what’s rightly yours—the hand, the eye—but live in an unrelenting hell.

Apparently, if we gave even a glass of water to a little one in the name of Christ, we would be richly rewarded.

Grown women are not little children. 

Grown women may consider themselves to be authoritative professionals who do not cry in front of powerful committees.  Grown women do not implore senators to listen to the story about the hand over the mouth, the fear of accidental death.  Grown women do not point to the slander in the yearbook after so many years have passed.

Last week, in the gospel, Jesus picked up a little child, and he told his disciples to become like that child.  Vulnerable.  Susceptible to the callous indifference of others. 

Grown women should be able to understand that without corroborating evidence our system of justice cannot render a verdict about the story of the hand over the mouth, the fumbling with the bathing suit.

Grown women should understand that it is not a priority to find evidence, corroborating or otherwise, at this late date.

Gehenna is a valley near the capitol, Jerusalem, in which the vulnerable have been sacrificed to a worldly god.  

This week, in the gospel, Jesus is still holding that child.  It’s still that same conversation about becoming one of the little ones who believe.

How can, how should, a grown woman become like a child?  Under what circumstances?  To justify her speech?

Was she ever like a child, if innocence was denied her as a child?  If the hand had always been waiting to cover her mouth? 

Or if innocence itself is what made her a target?  How then?  If her whole body offends, what can she amputate to avoid that hell?

What part of such a body would be hers to give away?  The hand?  A gift from her father to her groom.  In marriage.

How shall she become a true disciple?  In what sense shall she now put herself last?

Is discipleship for the invulnerable?

Do the powerful disavow their power to become followers of Jesus? 

What should she then disavow?

Near the capitol there is a valley, Gehenna, a depression in the earth.  It is indistinguishable from hell.  It is where the most vulnerable have been sacrificed.  It would be better to do without almost anything in life rather than to find oneself in that depression.   

There is a kingdom in which the falsely accused and the naively trusting and the indifferent and the cynical, the powerless and the guilty, are all invited to live again, dine from the same table, eat the bread and drink the wine.

In that kingdom there is no fake spectacle of justice staged by the desperate at the expense of the weak.

That kingdom is to be sharply distinguished from the party at which drunkenness allows for impunity. 

That party, the drunken one with the loud music in the room upstairs, is apparently a safe space for the already protected, those who have the money and the connections to allow them a moment’s pleasing oblivion, without consequence.

What happens there stays there.

The powerless cannot attend that party, even when they are already in the room.  The powerless will never be present at that gathering.  Oblivion is simply not granted to the weak without severe consequences. 

But then there never really was a safe space in all of that drunken kingdom, not even for the king.  Divine oblivion was always secretly a cheap consolation prize.  In the end it was only beer, and the heir to the throne was only a boy who fumbled in a back room to gratify a desire he could never clearly name.  Eventually the fumbling itself may have been forgotten. 

He may not even have been the one.

That hand that covered the mouth.  It may never have been his to begin with.

So many afternoons and evenings sacrificed to an earthly god whose promises were so vague.  No calendar can tell them all.

There is a valley outside the capitol haunted by the ghostly souls of little ones who were never considered worth protecting in the first place.  It would be better to go without almost anything in this life than to find oneself in that low place.

Talking Too Much About Jesus

The sounds of drumming and chanting, and the sight of a golden processional cross recently caught my interest of an evening as Ozzie and I strolled through Rittenhouse Square.  A group of worshipers from a nearby church of another denomination had gathered in the Square to bear public witness to their faith.  To be honest, it felt a little like being in a foreign land.  To begin with, such religious expression is not often part of the landscape in the Square.  Also, these Christians, who I assumed from their music mostly shared a common heritage, maybe from someplace in the Middle East, were dancing and singing, and seemed completely at ease with these public displays of religion.  As I say, these were not Episcopalians.

The group had naturally gathered in circle, and when the music ended, a young man came to the center of the circle.  Ozzie and I stood off beside a tree and listened in.  The young man began to share his testimony of a life of frustration, unhappiness, and misguided choices.  I take it from what he said that he’d had a difficult childhood.  He’d been lost, without even knowing it, but when he found Christ his life turned around.  This is actually a common story: it writes itself, really.  You might call it a cliché: I once was lost, but now I’m found.

Anyway, I sort of got the gist of the story, and it brought a smile to my face.  But I spend a lot of time in church (and so does Ozzie), and so we turned to go on our way.  As we did, we passed by a young mother and her two young children who were making the same decision as we were, but I guess for different reasons.  For I heard the mother say to her kids, “OK, you guys, let’s go.  This guy is talking too much about Jesus.”  My heart sank a little.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the young mother and her kids are already committed in their faith, and that it’s a faith that has nothing to do with Jesus.  OK, I understand that.  But I am going to guess, that, actually, any talk of religion would have been a bit too much for them - no matter what their background.  And from this moment forward, I am no longer really referring to that particular woman, and her particular children, I am asking you to use their anonymity to allow them to serve as stand-ins for a thousand people at that moment who might have said the same exact thing to their children, their friends, their spouse, their siblings, or to any passerby: “OK, let’s go.  This guy is talking too much about Jesus.”

Talking too much about Jesus is perceived in many quarters of America as a foolish thing at best, or a dangerous thing at worst.  Jesus, after all, has been assigned as the poster-boy for all manner of campaigns.  Jesus hates gay people.  Jesus is against a woman’s control over her body.  Jesus is probably suspicious of women in general.  Jesus hates communists.  Jesus was a communist.  Jesus is against immigration reform.  Jesus is the reason for immigration reform.  Jesus doesn’t want you to drink, or dance, or have fun in general.  Jesus wants your money.  Jesus wants you to get rich.  Jesus wants the rich to be taxed more. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Wherever there is a lot of talk about Jesus, not all of it is helpful.  But I have to tell you, that although his delivery lacked style, I’d have a hard time objecting to the message I thought I heard from the guy bearing testimony in the Square. I once was lost and now I am found: and it’s Jesus who brought me home.  What’s so bad about that?  I know a lot of people who need to hear this message.  In fact, I need to hear this message over and over again; because the world is big, and complicated, and vicious, and it is way too easy to get repeatedly lost.  It’s good to remember that we can be lost, but then found.  And it’s good to know that Jesus is always going to be looking for us.

In the passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel this morning, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  In the church, we refer to this important sequence as the Paschal Mystery: the mysterious and saving expression of God’s love in the suffering, death, and resurrection of his Son.  Saint Mark tells us something very important about how the disciples received that teaching.  He writes, “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”

Now, it’s not unreasonable that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying.  He was talking about the mystery and the power of God’s love in ways that they had never heard of before.  The story of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus is well-known to us.  But to them it must have sounded like a bit of craziness.  But the issue here isn’t only that they didn’t understand, it’s also that they were afraid to ask him.

It’s telling to see what Saint Mark reports takes place next among the disciples, in the aftermath of their anxious incomprehension of Jesus’ teaching.  They begin to argue about who among them is the greatest.  I’d call this over-compensation.  We don’t have any idea what you are talking about, Jesus, so we are just going to spend some time nattering about which of us is the greatest.  The greatest at what, exactly, we might ask.  Missing the point?

We should not for a moment think that the church has learned too many lessons from this little episode, enshrined, as it is, in holy writ. In the face of their confusion, instead of turning to Jesus, or even talking about him, the disciples avoid Jesus and talk about themselves.  Interesting.  I’d contend that the church repeats this pattern over and over in our larger collective life.  We do not understand Jesus, and we are afraid to turn to him and ask him.  So, instead, we talk about ourselves.  And if we don’t understand Jesus, and if we don’t want to turn to him and talk with him, how in the world can we expect others to understand him, or to want to turn to him and get to know who he is?

You might call this situation a quandary.  The disciples did.  Jesus asked them to tell him what they were talking about, but they were embarrassed and ashamed of themselves, so they said nothing.  We can assume that their silence spoke for itself.  It did not help much when Jesus delivered one of his pithy paradoxical watchwords: “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Say what?

I see a kind of parallel between what happened among the disciples when Jesus was a bit too much for them, and what happened in Rittenhouse Square for that mother and her children.

In both situations, Jesus was just a bit too much for everyone involved.  And so the answer was to get away from Jesus and make it about us!  Too much Jesus, not enough us!  Or, to put it another way, me first, Jesus, me first.  Well, we already know what Jesus has to say about that.

Trying to show what he means by teaching that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, Jesus finds a child who happens to be hanging around nearby - some kid, I suppose, who had just been dawdling on the perimeter of the discussion in the house where they had gathered - maybe one of the neighbors’ kids who’d come over to play and found all these adults in the way.  Jesus calls the kid over and has her sit by him, his arms around her.  “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Which brings me back to Rittenhouse Square.  I wonder what those children in Rittenhouse Square would have made of the young man telling his story if they’d been allowed to listen.  Would they have thought ill of him?  Would they have thanked him for trusting them with something that was difficult to share?  Would they have picked a flower for him and given it to him, as their way of telling him they are glad his life is happier now?

And I wonder what would have happened if Jesus had stepped out from the circle gathered there, and called those kids over to him.  Interestingly, Jesus would not, it seems, have insisted that the conversation have centered on him.  He’d have been happy to let it be about the children, especially the smallest, or the neediest, or the weakest of the kids - the least and the last of them.  I think Jesus might have explained to the kids that the adults don’t really understand him, and are afraid to ask.

But you understand, don’t you, children, what it means to be promised that you won’t always be last, even though it seems you are ignored, unimportant, and in the way?  You understand the promise that some day you won’t be last, some day you’ll be first in the heart of God.

And I pray that we all understand why, for us, there can never be such a thing as talking too much about Jesus.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
23 September 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Flash

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. (James 3:1)

Because my parents believed strongly that their children should have opportunities that were never available to them when they were young, they allowed me to go to a tiny boarding school in the middle of New York City when I was ten years old.  It may be the most generous gift - among many generous gifts - that my parents ever gave me.

M. et Mme. Thibault

All of the boys in the little middle school I attended in mid-town Manhattan began French classes during the first week of school in Fifth Grade.  This was 1977.  The method of instruction was auditory, using a series of slides to provide visual cues to help us understand the words that our teacher spoke.  The Internet has helped me to remember that the materials were published as “Voix et Images de France.”  I have no idea if the method was cutting-edge or already out of date at the time, nor what its pedagogical virtues may or may not be in this day and age.  But it left an impression on me, and I was able to test out of my language requirement by the time I got to college.

Lessons began with an kind of cartoon image of a man who could have been a French Ward Cleaver.  “Voila Monsieur Thibault.”  Next his wife, “Voilà Madame Thibault.”

As the weeks progressed, so did the sophistication of our sentences.  Because of the effortless and natural rhythm of the sentence, we boys were tickled pink, I remember, by the phrase, “Voilà les fenêtres de son appartement.”  Some day I shall be in an emergency in a Fench-speaking country, and the only thing I’ll be able to do is point out the windows of the apartment of a fictional couple in Paris.

Our French teacher’s name was Mr. Flashman, but everyone called him “Flash.”  I haven’t the faintest idea what his heritage is, but he has what I think of as a Gallic nose - prominent, with a broad sort of bump or bend midway along the bridge of the nose.  And his voice sounded then, as it still does, very much as though it resonates all through that substantial nose.

Flash read (and still does read) the New York Times with a thoroughness and devotion unmatched by anyone I have ever known.  He is an aesthete if ever there was one.  I probably first heard the names Baryshnikov, Maria Callas, and Tommy Tune from him.  He loved the theater, and on Saturday mornings he would go stand on line at the TKTS booth in Duffy Square to get tickets for boys who had signed up that morning to go see the 1:00 matinee.  I remember The Wiz, and Sweeney Todd, and Evita, Amadeus, Children of a Lesser God, and more.

Flash was a runner in those days, and we would see him leaving the school in his running shorts and shoes to jog in Central Park, setting a good example for as, as we headed out with other teachers to play soccer, or softball, or capture the flag on the rocks and fields of the park, or to go sledding in the winter snow.

Like every other teacher at the school - whom we called “masters” - Flash ate his meals with us.  Every master had his own table, and we boys rotated around to different teachers’ tables on a weekly basis.  Manners were an important part of school life, and they were emphasized (not to say enforced) in the Dining Room at all times.  Table conversation included everyone, and it was always lively at Flash’s table, as I recall.  

Flash could be something of a disciplinarian, and we boys learned that we’d be happier if we stayed on the right side of the rules, where Flash was concerned.  But he could also laugh at a child’s joke, or encourage you to try harder than you thought you cared to bother.

Because we were children growing up in New York City, we walked around the city in a double line of boys, each boy walking beside his partner - whether we were going to church or to the park.  Flash’s signature move, when we crossed Sixth Avenue at 55th or 54th Streets, was to place himself in the middle of the street between the line of cars (behind him) as the double-line of boys filed past him, with his arms outstretched, simultaneously urging us on, and just daring any driver behind him to try to threaten our safety.  No driver in his right mind would have done so.

I reminisce like this because of the injunction we heard in the Epistle of St. James, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

It’s joy for me to tell you about my middle school French teacher, who remains a friend to this day, and whom I visit regularly when I am in Southern California, where he retired.  I could write a profile of every one of my middle school teachers, and of many of my prep school teachers in the years that followed.  And of a few of my college professors, including the English professor who had our entire class to dinner at his home so we could taste his version of Boeuf en Daube from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse - a book I can barely recall, although I remember the stew vividly, and the wine we drank with it.  And, of course my seminary professors - one of whom you know came to be the Curate here with me before leaving us to become a bishop!

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters...

Jesus, of course, was a teacher.  They called him, “Rabbi.”

And here with us today we have teachers from St. James School - that leafy triangle of learning and love on Clearfield Street that began eight years ago because of the bold faith of this parish.

If not many should be come teachers, it remains a fact that some should, indeed, become teachers.  No teacher worth the title is ever really only an instructor in his or her subject.  But in some places teachers are there for their students not only in the classroom, but also at the table, on the field, in the pews, by the stage door, and when you’re sick, or frightened, or confused, or in trouble, as well as when you want to jump for joy!

The teachers and staff of St. James school are just such teachers, fully deserving of the title.  Together they have built a school community that is caring, supporting, strengthening, and loving.  Children learn there.  And they learn because of a dedicated, and very gifted corps of teachers for whom it is my great pleasure to stand here and thank God.

We say that at St. James School we are concerned about the whole child - and although this sounds like a statement of policy, it more accurately describes the attitude and commitment of the teachers and staff, who begin every day ready to care for the whole child; every child; body, mind and soul.  Which is why our teachers are not only in the classroom with our students; they are also at the dining table, in church, visiting at home, helping after school, on the basketball court, in the school nurse’s office, applying to high schools, and now visiting colleges, as the first class that ever graduated from St. James begins that exciting process.

And I have no doubt that some day in the future - maybe not in a church, but who knows? - St. James alumni will stand before groups of people, for one reason or another, recounting the life lessons they learned from their teachers at St. James School, just as I delight to tell you about Flash.

I discovered, when I went to try to learn to speak some Spanish at the age of 49, that the effort knocked right out of my head nearly every French word or phrase I had ever learned.  Except, of course, Voilà les fenêtres de son appartement.

But the older I get, the more I realize that it was never really Flash’s first responsibility to teach me or any of us to speak French.  It was his first responsibility to teach me and all of the boys to be good: to be kind, respectful, and honest.  These lessons were only strengthened because our school was part and parcel of a community of faith - a church, in which the praise of God’s Name prompts the love and care of God’s children, in a virtuous cycle that, God willing, will go on to repeat it self for many generations.  Another way of putting it is to say that our teacher’s first job was to teach us the Gospel, although I am sure this would have come as a surprise to several of my old teachers, but not to Flash.  But the Gospel requires context - Jesus called it “good soil.”  And the teachers in a Christian school are the tillers of soil and the waterers, pruners, and protectors of plants; who convey every day, and often without words, the faith, strength, forgiveness, and hope of the transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ.

St. James School is, part and parcel, a community of faith.  It has been shaped by the Gospel of love.  Its teachers and staff are indeed the tillers of soil, and waterers, pruners, and protectors of plants.  They bear witness, every day, to the faith, strength, forgiveness, and hope that are at the heart of the Christian life, and that are meant to transform all of our lives.

In a day and age in America where so many people have no idea who Jesus is, or what he teaches, or why any right-minded person would link his or her life to the Name of Jesus, St. James School bears testimony every day to the Gospel of transformation that has its effect on everyone there, be they teacher, student, staff, volunteer, donor, or Sunday worshiper.  Because the truth of the Gospel is that Jesus takes the broken lives of every single one of us, and restores us to the beauty for which we were made.  That’s just who Jesus is.

Having been given the extraordinary gift, not only of parents who cared about me enough to let me go away to school at an early age, but also the gift of a school community that nurtured me, taught me, fed me, and shaped me in faith, I give thanks that St. James School is taking up that same work.

I hear the precaution in the Epistle that not many should be teachers, because of the weight of responsibility given to them, and because of the risk to those entrusted to their care if they fall short of that responsibility.  But I thank God that if not many should be teachers, some, indeed, should be: like all of you who teach and work at St. James School.  You should be teachers, and thank God you are!

And I thank God, thanks to Flash, and to many others of my teachers, that when the day comes, and I am called to stand before my Lord, and I am required to answer to him, if he should ask me, as he asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”  I will be able to answer in more than one language.  I may well answer in French, and if I do, it will probably sound like this: Voilà les fenêtres de son appartement.  

And Jesus will know exactly what I mean, which is to say that I will mean, “I know who you are, my Lord; you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
16 September 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia