The Year of the Lord's Favor

In the year 1790, an American artist named Samuel Jennings was living in London, and working in the circle of Benjamin West.  Only months earlier, in 1789, the United States Constitution had been ratified. I have every reason to believe that although he was living abroad, Jennings was a patriot.  It was now, seven years since the end of the War of Independence, and fifteen years since that war had begun.  At last, a government had been created, and the shape of what the United States would be, was coming into view.  Indeed, I suspect that to Jennings, and to many patriots of the day, 1790 may well have felt like the “year of the Lord’s favor,” to borrow the phrase from the prophet Isaiah. 

In London, Jennings learned that the library that Benjamin Franklin had founded nearly sixty years earlier was building a new home, at Fifth and Chestnut Streets, in the shadow of what we now call Independence Hall.  And the artist wrote to his father, asking him to make an offer to the directors of the Library Company of a painting he would make for them.  He suggested that suitable allegorical subjects for the painting would be one of the goddesses, Cleo, Calliope, or Minerva.  But Jennings felt that Minerva would probably be best, since, as “Goddess of Wisdom & all the Arts,” she is “The Presidentess of Learning, which seems to comprehend everything that can be desired.”*

Jennings received the following response to his suggestion:

“The Board have considered the three Subjects submitted to their Choice, and readily agree in giving a preference to that of Minerva; but as a more general latitude has been so politely granted, they take the liberty of suggesting an Idea of Substituting the figure of Liberty with her Cap and proper Insignia displaying the arts by some of the most striking Symbols of Painting, Architecture, Mechanics, Astronomy etc, whilst She appears in the attitude of placing on the top of a Pedestal, a pile of books, lettered with, Agriculture, Commerce, Philosophy, & Catalogue of Philadelphia Library.”**

As it happened, the leadership of the Library Company comprised not only men who instinctively understood product placement, but also a concentration of Quakers and others who were devoted abolitionists, and who saw an opportunity, as it were.  Their suggestions of the detail of the composition of the painting went on (with apologies for the anachronistic language that sounds hard to our modern ears):

They suggested that the painting should include, with Lady Liberty, “a broken chain under her feet, and in the distant background a Groupe of Negroes sitting on the Earth, or in some attitude expressive of Ease & Joy.”

Today the Library Company inhabits modern quarters at a new location, but the painting, in which Jennings closely followed the compositional suggestion of the directors, still hangs prominently in its reading room.  The painting is known by two different titles: most often as “Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences.”  But, secondarily (and again with apologies) as “The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks.”  It was given to the Library Company by the artist in 1792.

Let me acknowledge that the painting, by today’s standards, is problematic.  It would be hard to find a lily whiter than this Lady Liberty, who is porcelain-skinned, with blonde tresses, and draped in an ivory gown.  Even the liberty cap she displays on a slender pole - customarily red - is, in this image, white, to match her dress, her skin, and everything about her.  The black people in the foreground of the painting sit or kneel below Lady Liberty, at her feet, in supplicant, but eager, posture.  Before them lie the broken chains of their bondage, held firmly beneath one of Liberty’s milky white feet.  This lady puts the “p” in “maternalistic.”  She is, admittedly, a figure of her time.

But for her time, she was remarkable.  The Library Company owned not one piece of visual art until the moment it received this gift, which is possibly the earliest known pictorial expression of the abolitionist cause in either Britain or America.  I am reliably informed that the painting also includes the first depiction of a banjo in all of western art.  Remember that the year was 1792.  And although the imagery is woefully out of date in this century, by most measures it expressed a hope that was many decades ahead of its own time.  And we could reasonably ask whether or not that hope has yet been fulfilled.

When Jesus reached back to the words of the prophet Isaiah in order to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, he pronounced those few words that did then and still do echo so persistently through the ages:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free....”

Far from sounding anachronistic, these words sound entirely ahead of their time.  Of course, Isaiah was looking to God’s future when first he was given these words to write.  But when Jesus stands up to read them in the synagogue in his own home town, he then sits down to declare that “today this scripture has been fulfilled….”  But sitting here today, can’t we reasonably ask ourselves whether or not that hope has yet been fulfilled?

For one thing, the whole idea of the “Genius of America” has begun to feel somewhat anachronistic in the hands of our present leaders, as it must have now long felt to people of color in this nation.

And for another thing, the idea of the “year of the Lord’s favor” might sound to many ears, like so much of the scriptures: pleasantly anachronistic poetry without much heft or significance.

But to my ears, these words have not lost their promise.  They amount, I believe, to more than a painting whose imagery is out of date, even if its aspiration is somehow laudable.  And the recitation of these verses, in which we reach back in time, to remember when Jesus reached back in time, in order to express the reality of God’s future, make me wonder how it is that with all that we have been given, we can be so woefully behind God’s time; how it is that we continually hobble what God would set free.

And if I feel this way, how must it feel to those who are in so many ways still made to kneel in supplication before the feet of Liberty, now being told to wait for that which has always rightfully been theirs, even though the chains that kept them from it were supposedly broken long ago?

It is telling that when Jesus reaches into the scriptures to locate the charter for his ministry, he does not remind his congregation to love God and their neighbors, he does not settle for the Golden Rule.  Rather, he declares freedom to the oppressed as the sure sign of the year of the Lord’s favor.

People these days often think that faith is a thing of the past.  But as long as there are chains of bondage to be broken, those of us who call Jesus “Lord” have work to do.  And if we have to reach back in our faith to claim the promises of God’s future, so be it.  Sometimes faith is as simple as believing that freedom is coming.  That’s why in this country, oftentimes faith has been so much stronger among the people who in Jennings’ painting are kneeling in supplication, than it has been among the people who look like Lady Liberty.  Their faith has had to sustain the promise that freedom is coming.  Their faith has had to remind them that their chains have been loosed, since so many ways were devised to keep them in bondage anyway.  Their faith has had to supplement their supposed freedom, since so much has been done to prevent their Ease and Joy.

Year after year, Jesus walks into our midst to stand up and teach us.  And we sing, do we not, that he is our friend; that we want him among us; that he can consider this, our nation, as good as his own native soil, so much do we want to make this place his home.

So, he stands up, as he did in his own home town, and he reaches back in time to recite the timeless formula of God’s promise...

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  And he sits down.

And do we decide that we are not yet ready for the year of the Lord’s favor?  That we do not want to do what is required?  That we cannot accept his promises?

We do enjoy sitting here with our liberty cap at hand, where everything is ours.  But do we really want to share it?

And so we sit down, too, and wait for another year.

But the promise will not go away.  Jesus will be back to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.

And faith is believing that freedom is coming, and nothing can stop it.  

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
27 January 2019
Saint Mark’s Church Philadelphia

*Library Company of Philadelphia Minutes, Vol 3, April 1, 1790, “Extract of a Letter from Samuel Jennings, dated London, January 12, 1790”

**Library Company of Philadelphia Minutes, Vol 3, May 6, 1790

Do What He Tells You

It’s a well-known fact among undergraduate English majors that comedies end in marriage.  Or most traditional romantic comedies, anyway.  The old, classic, pattern is this: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.  There are millions of variations now, thank heavens, but in traditional comedy marriage equals the happy ending.  In fact, marriage means that we run out of story.  All the good characters live in a state we call “happily ever after,” but we never get much of a hint about what that’s going to mean.  They just get married and live happily ever after and the story is over.  Often a Shakespearean comedy will end with a dance or a celebration, as if to emphasize that the fulfillment of the marriage plot is a communal gathering in which everyone celebrates, everyone comes together to rejoice over, the union of two lovers.  The point of the story is to end up at a marriage feast.  Beyond that nothing matters.

Something similar happens in Bible.  Marriage and feasting in the Bible are used again and again as an image of the end of time, or the fulfillment of God’s plan for Israel.  Here are two examples from the prophet Isaiah:

For your Maker is your husband,
    the Lord of hosts is his name;
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
    the God of the whole earth he is called. (Isaiah 54:5)

For as a young man marries a young woman,
    so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
    so shall your God rejoice over you.  (Isaiah 62:5)

God’s plan, we’re told, will be fulfilled when God is wedded to the people of Israel, when God’s love for Israel will by God’s grace become mutual fidelity.  And that marriage will be celebrated in a feast of rich food that includes everyone, not just Israel.  Here’s what Isaiah prophesies in chapter 25:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
    a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
    of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  Isaiah 25:6

God will be satisfied when God’s work in Israel causes everyone to celebrate, when the doors are opened wide and the rich food and the fine wines flow unstintingly.  God marries Israel and Israel marries God.  The whole world rejoices.

A wedding feast is a particular kind of feast, isn’t it?  At a wedding feast we all get together to celebrate the fact that someone else is the recipient of deep and abiding love.  Two people are pledging their love for one another, but apart from the bride and groom everyone else goes to the wedding to celebrate a relationship that specifically excludes them.  Do you remember the awful wedding scene in When Harry Met Sally?  Harry and Sally’s best friends Marie and Jess are getting married, and Jess stands up to give a toast.  Here’s what he says:

Everybody could I have your attention please? I'd like to propose a toast to Harry and Sally. To Harry and Sally, if Marie or I had found either of them remotely attractive, we would not be here today.

Think about it: if those two marry each other, they aren’t going to marry you. 

But it’s the peculiar generosity of a wedding feast that nobody cares.  For once, we are thrilled that someone else has been chosen.  That doesn’t happen often in life, does it?  That we all get together to celebrate the fact that someone else is deeply loved and chosen?  It takes a wonderful kind of selflessness to celebrate a marriage.  That’s why the great feast of all people that celebrates what God has done on God’s holy mountain is a moment of pure, unthinkable grace.  Israel is rejoicing in God.  God is rejoicing in Israel.  All the peoples of the world are rejoicing in what God has done for Israel, happy just to be included in the feast.  No one is thinking selfishly.

In the gospels, Jesus talks about the big wedding party at the end of history, too.  In Luke 14 Jesus talks about a great banquet to which many are invited but very few will come.  Just before that he speaks of a wedding banquet at which all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.  In Matthew 22, the kingdom of heaven is said to be like a tumultuous, urgent marriage feast.  Because the guests won’t come to the party—in fact they kill the messengers who invite them—the king has their city burned down.  Even when some guests are finally brought in—the good as well as the bad, we are told—one man gets thrown out to weep in the darkness, just because he is not dressed properly. 

The kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is a wedding feast that marks the end of all things, but it’s a tough, life-or-death kind of invitation.  What you think makes you important will not matter at that feast.  Who you think you are is not what matters there.  It’s whether you will show up, humbly, respectfully, to celebrate.  God is the host and the groom.  God’s people are the bride.  It’s more than we can really explain. Our happy-ever-after depends on our willingness to honor God’s love, however God chooses to love.  God’s preferences matter now.  Ours don’t. 

But Jesus doesn’t just talk about wedding banquets.  In John’s gospel, Jesus goes to one. When Jesus and his mother show up as guests at a wedding feast in Cana, they themselves are oddly called to put aside their own senses of identity and enter into a rich, selfless, celebration.  Mary is few steps ahead of Jesus.  She notices that the host is running out of wine.  Jesus doesn’t care.  In fact, his response to his mother is alarmingly impersonal: “Woman, (you aren’t really supposed to refer to your mother as “woman,” then or now) what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Like some other women in John’s gospel, Mary doesn’t flinch when Jesus challenges her.  What she does, actually, is challenge him to be more like her.  She says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” But she is silently saying something to Jesus too.  By ignoring him and telling the servants to go ahead, she is sending Jesus a major message.  In silent mother language the message is this: “Look here Mr. Hotshot, I don’t care who you are or what you think your hour is supposed to be.  We’re at a wedding banquet.  The most human thing you can do is celebrate.  Wedding banquets are urgent invitations. The time is now. The kingdom of God is at hand.” She doesn’t care whether Jesus addresses her with the proper respect, and in her parental way she is teaching him the tough lesson that it doesn’t really matter who he is either. 

But her words turn out to be much more than a rebuke, because this is more than a social occasion.  Her words make the feast.  They make the fine wine flow for all the people gathered in what has now become a holy place. Now, this is THE great wedding feast.  Now, because Mary doesn’t care about her prerogatives and Jesus doesn’t care about his hour, they find themselves celebrating the end of all things, the point of all creation.  This is a mini-apocalypse, the moment when we drop what we think we care about and celebrate someone else’s love.  The wine pours out for all people at that feast.  Those who humble themselves are exalted.  Those who can celebrate what love does, whatever improbable thing it does, are celebrating the crazy destiny of all God’s creatures, the destiny of God’s creation: selfless love.

That wedding banquet at which most of the guests are too inebriated even to realize that they are drinking the finest, most miraculous wine last, is a sign of what God wants for all of God’s people in the end: a feast of self-forgetting.  A celebration of whatever love does, whatever Jesus tells us to do.  It may be tough, and chaotic, this feast for all people.  The wine will be Jesus’s own blood. Getting to that feast may involve dying to ourselves, but that’s the point of our stories, the endpoint of all our journeys. 

This morning we are gathered at a double feast.  The feast of the Eucharist is given to us from the high place of the altar, the wedding banquet that celebrates our unity with God and with each other in the self-forgetting love of Jesus.  But today we also have the great joy of celebrating a baptism.  Going down into that water of baptism, we say, is a dying with Jesus and a rising to new life in him.  Gathered around the font as we all are, we celebrate that God chose NAME. 

Do you taste the banquet?  The foretaste of heaven?  Rejoicing in the life of NAME, in God’s profound love for NAME, is a sip of the wine from our happy-ever-after party.  We’re at the feast that God provides for all people.  The questions we find tough every day: who’s in, who’s out, who is winning, who matters, what’s going to happen to me—we don’t care about them here.  We care about God and NAME.  Here is a moment of unthinkable grace.  And it’s our joy to welcome NAME to that great celebration.  NAME, whatever your journey will be, wherever you go, whoever accepts you or turns away from you, this is where you are headed.  This is the point  of your travels: a great feast, a feast of self-forgetting generosity and love.  NAME, in your own day, in your own hour, when the invitation comes, do whatever he tells you. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
20 January 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Expectation

It’s common to assume these days that we modern Americans have little in common with the people we hear about in the Bible - whether in the Old Testament or New.  And although I often like to take a contrary view, I have to admit that there may be more differences than similarities between the likes of you and me and the people about whom we read in the Scriptures.

Take the people who we hear about in just the first few chapters of Luke’s Gospel.  The very first group of people we encounter in Chapter 1 - “the whole assembly,” Luke calls them - are gathered at the Temple, outside, and they are doing something that I seldom see all of you do when you gather outside the church in the fairer weather.  No, they are not drinking coffee.  Luke tells us that “the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.”  Maybe we should try that some time! 

The next thing Luke shares with us about “the people” is a timeless experience that people everywhere have always had to endure: they are waiting.  Specifically they are waiting for Zechariah (who is in the sanctuary offering incense), and they are wondering “at his delay.” Perhaps they are tapping their feet, asking how much longer till services will be over.  So, there’s something they have in common with modern church-goers.

A bit later on, Elizabeth gives birth to John the Baptist, and we are told that her neighbors “rejoiced with her.”  But in no time at all, when Zechariah’s tongue was loosed and his angel-imposed silence was ended, we are told that “fear came over their neighbors.”  And in a most un-modern pattern of behavior, in the face of things they do not understand, all who heard about the events of the birth of John the Baptist “pondered” what they had heard, and attributed the occurrences to the hand of the Lord.

The next group of people we are told about in Luke’s Gospel are the shepherds, who are greeted by a band of singing angels that shines with the glory of the Lord.  And in the face of this spectacle, how do the shepherds react?  They do not grab their iPhones and start recording the angelic song.  But rather, Luke tells us that they are “terrified:” a normal and healthy reaction, by biblical standards, to the appearance of angels; but one that very few people these days who claim to have experienced angelic visitations ever seem to share.  But in ageless fashion, the recently terrified shepherds do run to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus, and then go around town telling everyone they find of the night’s unusual events.  And Luke reports that “all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

There’s a twelve year gap in Luke’s narrative between Jesus’ infancy and his childhood.  And in the sole episode of the Lord’s wonder years that Luke reports - when the twelve-year-old Jesus teaches in the Temple - he (Luke) includes the same description again of the people who heard him.  He tells us that they “were amazed.”

All of this background is preamble for today’s episode in Chapter 3 of Luke’s Gospel which tells of the ministry and proclamation of John the Baptist, who now occupies center stage.  Until this point, we have had two angelic announcements (one to Mary, and one to Zechariah); we have had two rather unusual, even miraculous births; we have two unexpected mothers; and two bemused husbands.  Admittedly there was only one band of singing angels, but that news came from shepherds, and can shepherds ever really be trusted?  And we have people who have witnessed these events who been praying, waiting, joyful, frightened, ponderous, terrified, and twice-amazed.  And years have gone by.  The  events of the past have been either dimmed or embellished over time.  Only one childhood story even survived of these two remarkable baby boys.

Now they are young men, and one of them has begun to make a name for himself.  Surprisingly (considering the singing angels) it is John whose notoriety has emerged.  It is John who has gathered a group of followers around him.  It is John who is preaching about the kingdom of God and of a baptism of repentance.  John is proclaiming the fulfillment of the old prophecies and issuing dire new ones.  John is clearly a man set apart.  John is living the life of a man anointed, or appointed - who can say?  John is drawing crowds to his riverside revivals.  John is baptizing those who come to him in the river.  It is John to whom the people flock to ask him, “What should we do?”

In his ministry, John appears to be poised on the cusp of something.  And in this electric moment, when politics are haywire, and religion is replete with untrustworthy leaders, St. Luke informs us again about the attitude of the people in a way that reminds me how unlike those sandal-shod biblical folk we modern people are.  He doesn’t tell us that they were praying, or waiting, or joyful, or frightened, or ponderous, or terrified, or even amazed.  No!  This is what Luke says.  He says that “the people were filled with expectation.”

Oh Lord, what must that be like?!?!  To be filled with expectation?!?!

Now, I could be wrong, but I believe that I hardly know a one of us here and now who is filled with expectation.  Oh, we are jittery about the stock markets, and our knickers are in a twist about the political gyrations of the moment...

... but who here is filled with expectation?  About God!?!  And about what God is going to do!?! Who here is even waiting anymore for justice to roll down like a river; or righteousness like an ever-flowing stream?!?!  Who is heeding the ancient and expectant call to prepare ye the way of the Lord!?!?!?

But these people...  these people we hear about in the olden days, they are “filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.”  You see, this was not an academic, dispassionate question that was somehow disconnected from the rest of their lives.  This was not a question they wanted to hear Anderson Cooper comment on, or Chris Wallace, or even Oprah.  No!  They were full of expectation, and they were questioning in their hearts, in the depths of their being, and with the sincerity of their prayers, whether John might be the Messiah - the One who had come to make them great again!  And they were full of expectation.

But John was not promising to make them great again.  He did not not even promise that the one who was coming would make them great again.  He only told them that the one who was coming was more powerful than he was, and that he (John) was not worthy to untie the thong of the sandal of the One who would be revealed.

And then…  …with all the people standing there, when all had been baptized, and Jesus had been baptized too... …and he (Jesus) was standing there, praying…  then… “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”  And then, no one was confused anymore about which of those two boys had been chosen.  Then no one was left uncertain about who was the One!  Certainly John knew, and said that he must decrease so that Jesus could increase.  No one was in doubt!

They would be disappointed that he would not make them great again.  Since his commandment to love one another, and since the salvation he wrought by his own appalling sacrifice bestows a greatness of an unexpected kind, not much sought after those days... and maybe not in these days, either.

But you and I have had time to get used to the idea of this savior.  We have been asked whether or not we believe that he came down from heaven for us and for our salvation.  We have been told that we will have to lose our lives if we want to save them.  We have heard him call us to take up our cross and follow him.  We have listened to the testimony of two millennia of faith that attest in a thousand thousand ways that he rose from death and ascended into heaven, and that from thence he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.  We have been shown that he is the king of glory, and we have been promised that he shall come to be our judge!  (Yes it’s as much a promise as a threat!)

And yet, somehow we manage to live our lives, go to church, and call ourselves Christians without ever learning to expect very much.  Indeed, very few of us are full of expectation when it comes to God.  And we have to ask ourselves, I think, what we are expecting so little from God?  Or maybe we have to ask ourselves if we are expecting anything at all?

One of the best reasons to come to church is because you are full of expectation - aware that God has something in store for you, someplace for you to go, something for you to do.  And the next best reason is because you have discovered that you aren’t expecting anything at all, except perhaps the next package from Amazon Prime.  You see, the folks at Amazon would prefer that your life revolve around your expectations of them, rather than your expectations of God.  God doesn’t require you to buy as many things.

But today.. … today God has called you here to fill you up with some expectation - whether your tank is nearly full or almost completely empty.  You did not know that the Jordan River flows down Locust Street, but it does!  Maybe you were questioning something in your hearts, and maybe you weren’t, but that’s OK.  For God has called you here to fill you up with expectation that he will bless you and that he will bless the whole world.

God called you here today to remind you that he came down from heaven for us and for our salvation.  

God called you to help you remember that if you want to save your life you are going to have to lose it for his sake.  God called you so you would remember that you will eventually have to take up your cross and follow Jesus.  

God called you so that you may encounter again the living testimony that Jesus rose from death and ascended into heaven, and that from thence he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.

God called you to show you that he is the king of glory, and that he shall come to be our judge!

God called you here to remind you that there is a river of grace flowing past this place, and on the banks of that river stands one still calling out to prepare ye the way of the Lord.

And in the midst of that river, still dripping with water, still praying, stands One upon whom the Holy Spirit is descending like a dove… and there is a voice still resounding in the heavens that calls out to the One who stands in the midst of the river that flows by us: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

And all this time we have just been sitting here, praying, and waiting, sometimes joyful, often frightened, seldom ponderous, now and then terrified, and very, very rarely amazed… but we weren’t expecting much at all… and now, this very moment, on a snowy day early in 2019, now it’s time for that to change!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
13 January 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia