The Book of Life

Philadelphia, it has to be admitted, is a clubby sort of a city - at least our part of town is.  The Racquet Club (where you can play the exceedingly rare sport of Court Tennis) is around the corner.  The Acorn Club is down the street.  The Locust Club used to be across the street from us, until it merged with the Union League, which is only a few blocks from here. The oldest social club in the nation is on the other side of Broad Broad Street: the Philadelphia Club.  The building that is now the Lanesborough, on our corner, was built to be the University Club.  Property this parish used to own on 18th and Locust is now occupied by a building that was built to be the Philadelphia Athletic Club.  The Rittenhouse Club closed down decades ago.  Thank God the Orpheus Club is still going strong.  And there were more.

Clubs, of course, are defined by who is in and who is out.  And at most clubs - whether country clubs, or golf clubs, or city clubs, each member is assigned a number, so that the billing department can keep track of members’ accounts.  When you sit down to eat, or order a drink at the bar, or play a round of golf, you sign your chit and you scrawl your name and your number in the designated place.  And the bill arrives at the end of the month.

The story is told of a distinguished, and maybe somewhat snooty, old men’s club in a city, possibly in London.  It was a club with a very small membership.  The staff at the club prided themselves on knowing all the members by name, and they would greet members by name at the door, in the halls, at the bar, etc.  A newly elected member, on the younger side, perhaps not strictly speaking from just the right sort of family, and not much acquainted with the ancient club, because his father and grandfather had not been members there, was, upon his election to the membership rolls, being introduced by the Manager to the club’s customs and practices.  When all the amenities had been pointed out - the squash courts, the steam room, the members-only bar, the smoking room, and the wine cellar - the young new member asked a question of the Manager, whose duty it was to provide this introductory session.  “And do I have a number?” the young new member asked.

The Manager replied, “Oh, yes, you have a number, but you don’t need to know it.”

Sometimes we hear in Scriptures of those who will be in and those who will be out, when it comes to the kingdom of heaven.  In fact, we heard a hint of it in the reading from Daniel: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

You will find similar warnings in Jesus’ own teaching in the New Testament.  And it has been a preoccupation of the church over the centuries, to ponder who will be in and who will be out in the kingdom of heaven, in the life that awaits us on the other side of the grave, in the new city that God will establish in peace when the cares and disasters of this world have at last melted away.  Who will awake to everlasting life, and who will find themselves consigned to everlasting contempt?  Who will be in and who will be out?

There has never been a time that this equation wasn’t considered in economic terms, at least in some people’s minds, almost as though the kingdom of heaven is the best club of all.  The well-to-do - who see themselves as blessed by God, and who others see that way too - are often presumed to have an express ride to heaven, or at least access to the preferred members’ lounge on the way.  Jesus actually confused his disciples when he told them that it would be difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.  They were astounded, in fact, and asked him, “Then who can be saved?”  The commonly accepted ideas for who must be in and who would be out were upended by Christ’s teaching, when he asserted over and over again that the first would be last and the last would be first.  Take up your cross, and follow Jesus, but don’t look back, lest you be consigned to outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Since today is Commitment Sunday for us, when I am to offer my most effective encouragement to you to give generously for the work and mission of the Gospel in this place, it is tempting to want to describe to you the benefits of membership in whatever elite segment of God’s people it is that you may be able to join, if only you will give enough.  I am, after all, in some sense of the word, a Manager (or a Steward), who is to point the way to the kingdom, to describe to you its benefits, to explain to you why getting in is so good for you, and why being left out is so bad.

Seldom, in this explanation, would I normally turn to the Book of Daniel, and certainly not to the latter sections of it, which describe the somewhat complicated apocalyptic visions of Daniel.  But we have been asked to pause by these few verses that mention a “time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence,” and I feel that pausing here makes at least a little bit of sense, considering the times we live in.

It would be so easy if I could tell you that your generosity to Saint Mark’s will bring you blessings in heaven, and will, in fact, assure you of deliverance from times of anguish.  But you already know that I cannot tell you such a thing, and I hope you know that I would never try to impress upon you such lies.  But still we are paused here by Daniel’s vision, and we are told that Michael the archangel, the great protector of the people, will arise amid the anguish of God’s people.

We can assume that Jesus had paused before this same vision, and that perhaps he remembered it when he warned his followers that there will be wars and rumors of wars; that nation will rise against nation; that there will be earthquakes in various places; and famines; and that charlatans would come with false promises to lead many astray.

And here in Daniel’s convoluted, confusing, and often confounding vision is a promise that comes, brought to us by way of the Archangel Michael: “But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book…. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

The natural question that follows, of course, is to wonder what this book is, whether it is kept up to date,  and how to make sure that your name is written in it.  This question is akin, I propose, to the question that the young new club member asked of the Manager, “And do I have a number?”  Implied in the question is the thought that if I know my number I can make sure my account is in order.  And if I can make sure my account is in order then I am in control, I can pay my bills, and all will be well.  And this is, in fact the way the world works, the way that clubs work, and the way that billing departments work.

But there was an odd graciousness in the reply that the young new member was given by the Manager to his question, that implies the possibility of another kind of operation.  “Oh, yes, you have a number, but you don’t need to know it.”  It was a graciousness that actually exceeds the capacity of any club, since in the end, every member will still be receiving a bill.

But the cost of our salvation was paid long before you or I arrived at Saint Mark’s.  And  the grace of God has no limits.  You don’t need to know your number because by his sacrifice, Christ has assured that your name will be found in the Book of Life.  Christ died for you; Christ rose for you; and Christ will come again for you because Christ made you, Christ loves you, and Christ will not let you perish.  Oh, yes, you have a number, but you don’t need to know it.

If there is a Book somewhere in the courts of the Lord, and if scribes are carefully scanning it to keep track of who is in and who is out, to be mindful of who will be delivered from anguish, then Jesus wants you to know, I feel certain, that your name is to be found there in that book.  No amount of giving will put your name in that book, and no amount of giving can improve your number, if there happens to be a number by your name or mine.

And God has not called us here into a community of faith and love and service, in order to frighten us, or threaten us, or to extort us on the way to salvation.  No, he has called us here to speak to us of his love, and to assure us that his people will be delivered: everyone who is found written in the book.  Yes, you have a number, but you don’t need to know it.

And because the church is not a club, and because salvation is a gift, not a reward, there is no bill for the blessings you may find here - which is not to say that they don’t come at a cost.  But the giving is up to you.  There are amenities here, if you consider the benefits of a loving and prayerful community of worship and service to be counted as amenities.  And there are amenities in the kingdom of heaven, if you consider the benefits of a society of peace, justice, and love to be counted as amenities.

And God wants you to know that you are a part of this community.  God wants you to know that he intends his kingdom of peace, justice, and love for you.  God wants you to know that your name is written in the Book of Life.  You will not be sent a bill.  The giving is entirely up to you.  And God wants you to know that yes, your name is in the Book.  And yes, you have a number, but you don’t need to know it.  For such is the graciousness of God’s love.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
18 November 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Two Coins and a Lot of Hope

To many, it must seem like a foolish endeavor, nay, an impossible task, surely doomed to fail. Although this undertaking has an end goal, there is no rigid plan, and there are no guaranteed resources to ensure success. This enterprise belongs to a traveling horde of people possessed of a wild hope—a hope that holds redemption at its very heart. It is a hope that both in spite of and because of the wildest of dreams something can change for the better.

This wandering group of people left their home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 12. San Pedro Sula is, of course, a place that we at Saint Mark’s know well through our involvement with Our Little Roses Orphanage, and I imagine that those who’ve been to San Pedro Sula understand why this caravan of Hondurans are leaving their native land. They no longer want to be held captive to ubiquitous violence, in which the most innocent of persons can be swept up by corrupt political forces. They no longer want to be devoured by the gaping chasm created by the ever-widening polarization of rich and poor. They no longer want to live day after day figuring out how to make ends meet financially or receive proper health care. The time has come for this brave group of people to take a chance in hope. It is said that, for many of them, their faith in God requires nothing less.

          And yet, I suspect, that to those sitting comfortably in homes with adequate utilities, in peaceful neighborhoods into which the sounds of violence rarely intrude, the growing caravan of Central Americans must seem to be undertaking a futile mission. In the hearts of those reading about the Central Americans in the New York Times over steaming cups of hot coffee, I’m sure that much empathy is aroused. I’m sure that many well-intentioned readers are moved at the plight of desperate folk seeking a better future. I’m sure that any person with a conscience and moral compass will feel their heart break at why these courageous souls are trekking thousands of miles to an uncertain destination. And still, for practical realists, there must be the inevitable conclusion that this foolhardy endeavor will simply not end well.

After all, the numbers just don’t add up. Statistically, the migrant caravan is a doomed venture. There is no concrete plan for life beyond the border. There is the likelihood of being abruptly turned away at the end of a long and arduous expedition. There is no certainty of food and provisions along the way. Many of these nomadic peoples have inadequate shoes for the journey. They are hardly able to carry any clothes with them. The outcome, frankly, looks dire.

But this does not seem to be the viewpoint of those traveling in the caravan. They might not have two coins to their name, but they are possessed of an overabundance of hope. In their heart of hearts, these impoverished and oppressed people are willing to set out for an uncertain future thousands of grueling miles down the road, banking everything, even their lives, on the dream that their lives can be different, that they might taste in this earthly life a bit of that glorious victory already achieved in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But we know that the long-robed cynics, those who devour hope, those who have money to throw into the treasuries of this world and who are good at predicting whether the numbers will ensure success, these skeptical humans must attribute the hope and faith of the migrant travelers to desperation. Only desperation would cause such impoverished people to throw their last two coins at the border of an uncertain future. Surely, the first-century crowd in Jerusalem must have thought the same when they saw the poor widow casting two worthless coins into the treasury coffers. While members of the crowd contributed their own loud, clanging pieces of metal, they must have felt a condescending pity for that poor widow who was foolish enough to hand over two small coins. As if taken in by a smarmy televangelist leeching dollars from gullible TV viewers, this widow had been taken in by her own weak desperation. Of course, it was acceptable for the crowd possessed of means to part with some of their change, but how foolish for this silly person with no name, no status, and no quantifiable future to waste two meager coins on maintaining the Temple treasury! What possible good could it do?

But as it usually happens in the Gospels, the crowd in their superficial displays of generosity, and the scribes prancing around in their ostentatious robes, have missed the point. It is the poor widow who has chosen the better part, for she has chosen to give based on hope. This poor widow has not given up the possibility that her gift might make a difference. In the end, the point is not really about the money. The rich crowd gives because giving feels good and buttresses their own sense of self-worth. But this poor widow, well, we really don’t know why she gives, other than that she offers something of herself—everything she has, indeed, her whole life—in the hope that God can work something good. We don’t know what she is contributing towards. And there is little reason to believe that the treasury would ever benefit her. But it’s really not about the money. It’s about a heart yearning to throw itself at the mercy of God in hope.

Like the poor widow, those travelers in the migrant caravan from Honduras are the unnamed individuals in this world whose futures have been brutally swept away by the flowing robes of the privileged. They are the ones whose quiet, pleading voices have been drowned out by the clanging of money exchanged in the places of power. These people have been systematically demeaned because of greed, insensitivity, and practical skepticism. But at the end of the day, the truly rich of this world are the poor widows and the traveling Central Americans, who have no carefully constructed, practical plans for their futures. They are rich because in their material poverty, their hearts have been opened to hope in the treasury of God’s grace.

If only we could learn something of the reckless abandon of the poor in spirit. For when there is a dearth of material possessions, it often becomes evident that God’s kingdom is built on the eternal gift of hope, not on numbers, budgets, graphs, and financial statements. If only we could heed the examples of those who are not afraid, in their faith in God, to throw hope wildly into the confused winds of the world. Real faith assumes that two small copper coins can, in the mysterious working of God’s radical grace, play some part in changing the world.

We know, though, that reality is yet a bit more nuanced. Budgets are, in fact, necessary. Numbers are, in some sense, important. And we are indeed called to be responsible stewards of our material gifts. We know that material gifts and investments can play their part in bringing the Gospel into the world, for we need money to do that much-needed Gospel work. Yet ultimately the numbers are meaningless and the money itself is dormant unless we, like the poor widow and the migrant Central Americans, can dream and hope with abandon, trusting fully in God’s power to work miracles with ever so little means.

Because any vision for participating in God’s kingdom in this world will perish if we are mired in practicality and skepticism. A caravan headed towards a potentially closed border is utter folly, so it seems to the practical mind. And two small copper coins thrown by a destitute woman into a vast coffer to fund who-knows-what seems completely insensible. But no one ever said that being Christian meant being sensible. Who would ever imagine the salvation of the world in the ignominious death of a humble Galilean man? Who would call sensible a Gospel that reverses the stubborn values of this world? Who would ever tie themselves to a belief system that finds its core tenet in an empty tomb?

And yet, that is what we are as Christians. We are foolish in the eyes of the world, because that is God’s wisdom. We are insensible in our hope for a different future. We are reckless in casting our dreams and hopes before the throne of God with confidence that something miraculous can happen. It is our bounden duty to pray and move to action in the hope that one day the nameless of this world, like the poor widow and the anonymous hordes of migrant Central Americans, will inherit names. It is our bounden duty to believe that the oppressed with quiet voices will one day be fully heard over the din of greed and wealth. It is our duty to be reckless in our own initiatives for change so that no matter how seemingly small the offering or how foolish the undertaking, God can use it all to redeem what is broken, precisely because he has already done it in Christ. Our hope is not in the human-made systems of this world that have become our distorted idols; our hope is in God’s grace and power working through those systems.

If we can see past our human desire for certainty, if we can look past the statistical assurances of success, and if we can be a bit foolhardy in our hope in what is, as of yet, unseen to us, anything is possible. On the surface, it seems that the poor widow has literally nothing that the systems of this world can use in their noisy, hollow operations. But she possesses everything that God can use. And lest we look condescendingly at those impoverished migrants who are reckless in their faith in God, we should consider this: two small copper coins cast in blind hope at the border to freedom just might end up on the other side.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin

11 November 2018

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Simon, Jude, You, and Me

The Prayer Book allows, but does not necessarily encourage us to keep the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude today.  To be honest, I am a little less than enthusiastic about our saints this morning, neither of whom provides a deeply inspiring model for the Christian life, if only because neither is a figure about whom much is known.

St. Simon, is often called “the zealot,” and it remains a question whether this moniker was a description of his personality or of his religious and political leanings.  If it is an indication of the latter, and he was aligned with a Jewish religious party that was looking for a militarily empowered messiah who would drive out the Romans from Palestine and usher in a new day of freedom for his people, well, then, Simon must have been deeply disappointed in Jesus.

St. Jude is famously known as the patron saint of lost causes, or causes despaired of, as it’s sometimes put.  But, in a nice bit of irony, no one seems to know precisely why.

More than once recently I have found myself wondering whether or not the church is a lost cause.  From child-abuse, to declining attendance, to a general malaise in many quarters, to the often horrific preaching that you can hear in churches large and small alike; we are not living in a golden age of the church.

It makes me wonder if I should have learned to write code, and gotten into the games business.  My head is still spinning from reading an article in The New Yorker last spring in which I learned about the video game Fortnite.  As of that writing, the game had been downloaded more than sixty million times, and on more than one occasion more than three million people have been known to be playing the game at the same time on line.  That sounds kind of  like religion to me.  It’s certainly a way to spend your Sunday morning.  In an effort to understand the appeal of such a thing, I found myself, looking up the difference between a first-person-shooter video game, and a third-person-shooter video game.  I had assumed I could deduce the distinction from the language, and that it must have to do with who is doing the shooting.  But I was wrong.  I should have known that my assumption made no sense.  For, who would play a game in which someone else is doing the shooting?

Who is doing the shooting, of course, has itself become a thematic question of American life.  Last week we were supplied with the answer to the question, “Who is sending the packages?”  But before a new week even began to unfold, we found ourselves confronted with another shooter, this one firing into a synagogue in Pittsburgh yesterday morning.  

We may have banished from our collective consciousness the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan (disasters of our own making that have yet to come to an end).  But we cannot altogether muffle the sound of gunfire when it is so widespread across this nation.  We should all learn how to sing the mourners Kaddish: we will need it again.

Hungry for a morsel of Good News, we roll into church this morning to hear Jesus saying this, “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.”  This is not the kind of feel-good Gospel I am hoping for on a morning like this.  I want Beatitudes.  I want love to be kind and patient.  I want St. Francis preaching to the birds!  But we walk in to Simon and to Jude, and to this: “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.”  Is this Jesus’ way of saying, “haters gotta hate”?  Couldn’t we leave that for another time?  How about never?

I allow myself to reflect on these shooters who saunter into synagogues or churches armed to the teeth, or who perch from a luxury suite in a hotel with an arsenal at the ready, and I am distracted for a moment by my own perverse reflection on the sheer cowardice of these men, (for they are always men (or boys)).  And I have to stop and ask myself, what would I prefer - brave mass shooters?  And I hear an echo of an ancient word.  What would I prefer - brave zealots?

It is possible, I suppose, that St. Simon, the zealot, had been stockpiling swords and staves and clubs in a shed behind his mother’s house.  Perhaps it was Simon who supplied the sword to St. Peter that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Peter, in a zealous rage to protect his Lord and Master, cut off the right ear of the High Priest’s slave - an injury that Jesus immediately healed.  In any case, Simon’s zealotry would, of its own, amount to nothing.

Perhaps Simon is the id to Jude’s ego (albeit a somewhat deflated ego).  Beaten back by the real troubles of the world, it’s enough for Jude to follow, and to be remembered, even if it is for what might have looked like a lost cause.  I wonder if they remembered, those two, what Jesus had said, “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.”

From where I stand, it seems not far-fetched to say that the world today more or less hates Jesus, at least the world I walk through, and read about every day.  There may be places where the world does not hate Jesus, but these places are far from here.

To bolster this view, I note that the news told me the other day that the world made more billionaires last year than ever before.  If there is one thing the world absolutely does not need it is billionaires.  What good comes of a society that is adept at minting billionaires?  And yet, it is the socio-economic accomplishment of our age.  A world that is adept at making billionaires can only ever hate Jesus, because you can never make the needles big enough, or the camels small enough for a billionaire.  As far as I can tell, Bruce Wayne and Gerry Lenfest were the only two billionaires who could handle their money.  And of the two, only Gerry Lenfest gave most of his money away.

I wonder if Saints Simon and Jude both figured out that the world hated them for following Jesus.  The world would have hated Simon precisely because his zealotry amounted to nothing.  What a waste, in the world’s eyes, of all that good weaponry.  And the world would have hated Jude because of his refusal to abandon a cause despaired of - the lost cause of Jesus, whose disciples would mostly abandon him the closer he got to the Cross, where Jesus knew he must go to show his love for the world, and to make his perfect sacrifice of love.

In some sense, I suppose, the church could try to be the best possible combination of Simon and Jude.  For we are called to be zealous for the Cross, which, to many, looks precisely like a cause despaired of. What is the point of endlessly celebrating the execution of your messiah?

Here it might be useful to remember a little sacramental theology.  For to us, the Cross is nothing to despair of.  It represents the triumph of life over death, of good over evil, of light over darkness, and of love over hate.  For it was on the Cross that Jesus died.  It was on the Cross that Christ gave his Body and his Blood for the salvation of the world.  It was on the Cross that Jesus began the work of salvation whose effect would be known in his resurrection - the rising of the crucified Christ from the grave, which is the victory of hope over despair.

Remember that a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of some invisible gift of God’s grace.  And every day in this church we are called to a one-on-one encounter with the Body and Blood of the risen Christ - God’s assurance to us that the gift of salvation - which seems invisible to us, maybe even unlikely to us in this hate-filled world - that this gift of salvation, this victory of life over death, good over evil, light over darkness, love over hate is for real.  That’s why we come here time after time.  And that’s why, it ought to send shivers down our spines when we hear Jesus say that the world hates us because it hates him too, hated him first, in fact.  Because the world deals in death; the world deals in evil; the world deals in darkness; the world deals in hatred, every single day.  Thus the world amasses its fortunes.

But Jesus has already won the victory over death.  Jesus has already won the victory of evil.  Jesus has already won the victory over darkness.  Jesus has already won the victory over hate.  And he keeps asking us to live our lives as if we knew this.  And he keeps giving himself to us - Body and Blood - to remind us of the Truth that we cannot see, but that is no less true for being invisible.

I fear that the shooter in the Pittsburgh synagogue might claim to be a Christian.  Not only could such a claim not be remotely true in any sense, it must also be stated that any such person, who could gun down the innocent in the midst of their prayer and their worship, must be assumed to hate Jesus.

Maybe we will not be able to learn to love Jesus until we can be honest about all the ways the world hates Jesus.  Maybe we will not be able to learn to love Jesus until we learn to accept the the world will hate us too, when we do.  Maybe we will even need to learn to give up on our dreams of some day becoming a billionaire, which has never been documented to lead anyone to love Jesus more.  Or am I the only one here who has ever fantasized about that many zeros?

We need a sign, in this world of ours, that life will triumph over death, that good will triumph over evil, that light will triumph over darkness, that love will triumph over hate.  Thank God we’ve got one.

Take.  Eat.  Do this in remembrance of him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
28 October 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia