Not Even a Week's Notice

Outside Willoughby’s Coffee House in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, you might be surprised to hear words from Shakespeare delivered in stunning elocution. A quick pop-in for a cup of joe at a local coffee house doesn’t always yield a professional-quality performance of 16th century English poetry. But in this case, it is one of the free ancillary benefits of patronizing Willoughby’s. Well, the performance might be free, but often, you will be asked for a bit of money in exchange for a private performance of verse.

Which is all rather unexpected, because there’s no stage set outside Willoughby’s Coffee House. There’s no sign announcing public performances of Shakespeare. There’s no real connection between Willoughby’s and the performance at all. There’s just an all-too-common sight in downtown New Haven of a woman, who appears to be homeless, standing on a street corner. But rather unusually, this homeless woman recites some of the most striking words in the English language with the finesse and calculated nuance of a trained orator. They call her the Shakespeare Lady, and she’s known all over town.

Meet Margaret Holloway, a 1980 graduate of the Yale Drama School. It was there that she rubbed shoulders with fellow students Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver. Like many local legends, her past is somewhat ambiguous. A native of Georgia and daughter of a minister, she eventually ended up at Yale Drama School, graduating in the early 1980s. But by that time, she was already suffering from schizophrenia. Holloway claims that she was the victim of an act of violence, which left her prey to mental illness. Whatever the case, wracked by hallucinations and addicted to drugs, she ended up on the streets of the city whose elite university awarded her a master’s degree.

Those New Haven streets even became her movie set, when her story was featured in a fifteen-minute documentary entitled God Didn’t Give Me a Week’s Notice. This gifted woman, broken by mental illness and victim of faulty social structures, embodies the town versus gown tension of a city like New Haven. This thespian who once wore the town’s coveted gown, now shows forth the troubling burdens of this complicated town. Margaret Holloway is living proof that it doesn’t take much for life’s blessings to become life’s woes. Such is the precarious nature of modern life in the United States. Such is the precarious nature of life in general. So many people are without a week’s notice of moving from fortune to misfortune.

To those like Margaret Holloway, who find the rug of life ripped out from under their feet without even a week’s notice, Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain is good news. It proclaims a great reversal of the world’s values: high becomes low, rich becomes poor, laughing becomes weeping. You get the picture. It is said that preachers often have one sermon reiterated time and time again. And if Luke the Evangelist had one sermon, it would be this great reversal. We hear it in the Magnificat. We heard it several weeks ago in Jesus’s words uttered in the synagogue in Nazareth. Luke is deeply concerned about the least of these, and Luke is deeply hopeful that in Christ himself, God is working a reversal of all the world’s inequalities.

Only a cold-hearted person could hear without elation Jesus’s promise that God intends to smooth out the world’s distorted values. And so compassion for those who are struggling leads to service and action: providing for those who don’t have money to provide for themselves, addressing food insecurity with free meals, praying for the persecuted. Many yearn to provide consolation to those who are downcast. Many want to be a part of the solution, to immerse themselves in God’s great act of blessing to all who are suffering. And what a good thing that is! If one is blessed, it is natural to want to work with God to bless others.

The problem is that Luke doesn’t stop with the blessings. The solution isn’t as simple as the blessed ones helping those experiencing woes. To reduce Luke’s gospel to a simple dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots is to miss something crucial, lumping people either into the blessing category or into the woe garbage pit. And where are we in all this? Where are those who can’t be caricatured as the inordinately fortunate or the extremely unfortunate?

Let me explain. And I want to return to the story of Margaret Holloway. To the average Yale student walking into Willoughby’s Coffee House, Margaret Holloway must be a disturbing sight, if they know anything about her background. Her vividly pronounced highbrow words must convict in an eerie kind of way, a woe to one who seems blessed: you, yes, even you, the current recipient of a world-class education in one of this country’s most revered institutions could be a stone’s throw away from poverty, homelessness, and mental suffering.

And isn’t this the case with us as well? Isn’t each of us just a tiny step away from misfortune, with blessings quickly morphing into woes, without even a week’s notice? Doesn’t the second person you of Luke’s version of the Beatitudes suggest that all of us, whether we are currently experiencing blessings or woes, share a common humanity?

Unlike some of the other evangelists, Luke doesn’t do theology from above, high in the sky with theoretical theological concepts. Luke does theology from below, down on the level place with humanity in its muck and mire. Luke’s blessings are not just about those people who are poor or hungry or weeping. They’re not just about those people who are hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed for the sake of Christ. And the woes are not just about those people who worship ceaselessly at the altar of mammon or who waste food or who are always happy. They’re about us. To really understand the blessings and the woes, we must realize that Jesus looked at his disciples, as Jesus looks at us, and says you. Not some vague third person addressee. These words are addressed to you and to me.

If our blessings can quickly become woes, especially if we consider ourselves blessed, our future might look bleak. But that future is only bleak when we see a black and white contrast between the perpetually blessed and the desperate ones cursed with woes. Luke seems to be offering a different perspective, one where the woes of others are a clarion call to see that we are all in this together. And if we begin to see that, we can begin to hope for the future, just as those people in the crowd reached out to touch Jesus, desperately longing for healing. The healing of the blessings according to Luke occurs within a shared humanity, on a level plane, with Jesus at its center.

This future transformed by God’s grace lies in the “will be” of the great reversal. It’s not about punishing the wealthy or taking away food from those who have it or inflicting mourning on those who rejoice. It’s about God’s Holy Spirit moving within a community of people, enabling them to share one another’s burdens and strive together towards a reordered future. In that future, the evil discrepancies between those who live on top of the world and those who struggle in the trenches are canceled out.

In this “will be” future, there are people in the middle, between the extremes, who can relate to both blessing and woe. In this new world, well-meaning folk don’t extend their hands in service to the dispossessed as if they know best how to cure and heal those people themselves. They reach out with God at their backs, in humility. In this new world, outreach is not condescension from an exalted mountain to provide charity to those on the plain. Like Jesus, we who are aching to serve descend the mountain and stand on level ground with the rest of humanity, acknowledging that blessings and woes are shared property, a given fact of being a child of God in a fallen world.

And in that recognition, one reaches out to another human being in self-giving love, in gratitude for one’s own blessings and aware that with not even a week’s notice one’s own life could be very, very different.

I imagine that New Haven’s Shakespeare Lady has played Ophelia from Hamlet, announcing “O, woe is me!” on numerous occasions right there in front of Willoughby’s Coffee House. In the eloquent language of one of history’s greatest wordsmiths, this woman cries out, stuck in the morass of an inadequate social system and failed by many. She cries out, with a thin piece of sheepskin as the collective turf and shared humanity between her and her fellow Yalies. There it is: a vivid reminder that we are all inheritors of blessings and woes, and all can change on a dime, without even a week’s notice.

 Preached by Father Kyle Babin
17 February 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Frightened, Fishless, Failures

“St. Peter’s fish”

If I was advising St. Luke on the presentation of his version of the call of the first disciples, I’d suggest  that before we find Jesus standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, he should give us a little backstory.  We’d see that the two boats at the shore of the lake are old, worn out, leaky tubs that have to be bailed out regularly just to keep them afloat.  We’d see that the nets the men are fishing with are more hole than net, patched with string, and just barely holding together.  We’d see that the fishermen, who indeed were fishing all night, have brought practically no bait with them.  And we’d be shown that perhaps the reason these men passed the night without catching any fish at all is because, although they were short on bait, they had brought plenty of beer with them.  And smokes, too.  Come morning, they’d be tired, and they’d be dirty, and they’d be unshaven, and they’d stink of alcohol and old fish that somebody else caught.  But they hadn’t caught any fish because they aren’t very good fishermen, and they aren’t even trying to be.  Their girlfriends or their boyfriends (or both) would have left them.  They’d be feeling sorry for themselves.  And they’d generally be a mess.

Believe me when I tell you that no one else was going to write about these guys and assign them their place in history, let alone in scripture, if St. Luke and the other evangelists had not done so.

You think I am making all of this up.  But actually, I think St. Luke has left clues in his text, that back up my backstory.

We know the nets are junk, because they fail at the very thing they are intended for: catching fish.  They start to break once fish are actually being collected in them.

We know the boats are junk, because you can’t actually sink a boat by filling it with fish - even a lot of fish - unless that boat is already pretty compromised.  And yet, that’s exactly what happens to these boats when they start to fill with fish: they begin to sink.

And we know that Simon is a loser, because at the first sign that something good is happening in his life he, a) tries to stop it from happening; and b) reveals his guilty conscience: a conscience that we have every reason to believe is guilty for good reason.

And we know that James and John are losers too, because they are partners with this guy, Simon, with whom they have just spent the night getting drunk and high out on the lake, and not one of them could catch a single fish.

We can guess that even St. Luke thinks that Simon is a loser (at least at this stage of his life) because, as a writer, he (Luke) can’t even wait to start calling Simon by his new name, Peter, which he (Luke) doesn’t even tell us is Simon’s new name until the next chapter.

And we can assume that even Jesus knows what losers these three are (or at least Simon), since he has to tell Simon not to be afraid, even though there isn’t an angel in sight.  And usually, the assurance to “fear not” is only found in the scriptures when there are angels around.

So, what you have are lousy boats, filled with lousy nets, manned by a lousy trio of lousy men.  There’s your backstory: frightened, fishless, failures.

The backstory is important because it’s important that we see what Jesus does to the lives of these men.  And it’s important that we understand that Jesus’ recruiting technique is unconventional.  And it’s important that we realize that Jesus doesn’t call them because of their skills, or their talents, or their good looks, or their charm.  Jesus doesn’t call them because they have the right stuff.  They do not have the right stuff.  They’ve got nothing, and they bring nothing.  And Jesus provides no indication at all as to why he calls these men, except, perhaps, that they are available, with nothing else to do but sober up.

It’s a trope of modern life that nothing and no one is what it seems to be; that public success often hides deep private failure; and that the facade of prosperity often masks deep dysfunction and unhappiness.  But our frightened, fishless, failures are not presented to us with any such pretense.  They are exactly what they appear to be, and we are allowed to see them for what they are.  And what they are does not amount to much.

See how different the dynamics of this part of the story are from St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, only a few chapters ago.  The evangelist took pains to describe the angelic visitations that precede Jesus’ birth, and foretell his identity.  Simple shepherds can see that this child is holy.  And the testimonies of Simeon and Anna are presented to reaffirm the case.  St. Luke knows how to make the point that a person is special, anointed, chosen by God.

But here, at the shore of the lake of Gennesaret, the three men who will become the innermost circle of Jesus’ confidants and friends, to whom will be revealed mysteries that the rest of the disciples will have to read about later... these men are presented to us as they are, with no embellishment whatsoever: frightened, fishless, failures.

We are meant to relate.

Remember that these verses are not a parable.  This is just the story of how Jesus called his disciples.  But in many ways this episode of the story of salvation is a perfect parable for our times, for the church today.  All around us on the shore of our lake are aging boats that have seen far better days.  I could show you a few holes in our own boat too, and where we keep the bailing buckets.  The church is no longer a place where the world expects to find people of much consequence.  Perhaps in the pews there might be a few of you, but among the clergy you won’t find many.  This is not false modesty, I’m just saying this is the way it is.

We have proved ourselves, in the church, not only to be inadequate at the metaphor (we don’t catch any fish); we are actually also inept at the very thing Jesus called his disciples to do: fish for people.  I have statistics to back up this assertion, and believe me when I say that the statistics are more depressing than any sermon could be.  I will grant you that we may not have been out all night getting drunk.  We may not even be losers, and I certainly don’t want to attach that label to anyone.  But as the church around us gets smaller and smaller, and less and less effective at her mission, it might be time to admit that the church is seen by many as delusional if we think we are an institution of any consequence, when what we really are is frightened, fishless, failures.  Yes, we are meant to relate to these men who are clearly inadequate to the mission that lies before them, even though they don’t know it yet.  But we can see it, and we are meant to relate.

If I am correct that this passage of Luke’s Gospel is a parable for our time, however, it would be important not to miss the point.

The conventional way to bring this sermon home would be to point out how wonderful was the unlikely draught of fish that the men caught with Jesus in the boat, when they did what he said and put out into the deep water.  Bring Jesus into the boat with you, and see how many fish you catch: hallelujah!  I have preached such a sermon before, I am certain.  I don’t object to this conventional reading of the story.  But if this passage of the Gospel really is a parable for our time, the draught of fish cannot be its point.  You can tell that St. Luke does not see it as the point of the story, since the fish fill up the boat in verse 6 - halfway through the story, which ends at verse 11.  No, Luke has not yet made his point in verse 6, and if we conclude that he has, then we will be missing the real point.  It’s so much easier that way, though.  Easier to decide that the point of the story is to ask Jesus into my boat.  In that case, not only has my boat just shot up in value, but also, everything that improves from then on is mine: my catch of the day, my partnerships, my business, my profits, and my bottom line.  Everything is still mine, and on my terms!  What could be better?

Manifestly, that cannot be the point of the story, which is still only at its mid-point, when everything is still essentially the same as it was before.  For although circumstances have changed, nothing about Simon, or James, or John has yet changed.  So the draught of fish cannot be the point of the story, in verse 6.

No, this story is headed unstoppably to verse 11, where St. Luke tells us this: “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”

They left everything and followed him.  And if we understand that this has been the point of the story, then we realize that the consequence of the story is not that some fishermen caught a lot of fish - no!  The consequence of the story is that the lives of these three men have already been changed by following Jesus.  And now they will follow him as he goes on to teach and to preach about the kingdom; to heal and to forgive as signs that the kingdom is near; and then to suffer and die and rise again in order to seal the victory of that kingdom.

The consequence of the calling of the disciples is not what happens in the boat; it’s what happens on the way with Jesus, when you let go of what prevented it, and you decide to follow Jesus.  And if that was the point of the story for Peter, and James, and John, (who, after all, left behind that enormous catch of fish for Zebedee to deal with and profit from), then it is also the point of the story for us.  It’s not what happens in the boat; it’s what happens on the way, when we follow Jesus.

Two conclusions seem clear, if we read St. Luke’s account of the calling of these disciples as a parable for our time.  

First, when we relate to the fishermen who are inadequate to the task, then so be it.  Is our boat the worse for wear?  Are there holes in it, and does it leak?  Have the nets seen better days?  And are we, ourselves, less than perhaps we could be?  Are we sometimes frightened?  Haven’t we known failure?  Do we clearly lack the right stuff?  OK.  Then we are in the company of saints who have gone before us, and our feet will nicely fit in the footsteps of the apostles who first followed Jesus, who doesn’t call because you are good enough, or smart enough, of holy enough.  Jesus just calls.

Second, it is too light a thing to suppose that God has called us here to tell us that we could fill this boat with fish if only we’d rely on him.  I mean, it’s true, but it’s only verse 6!

God is calling us because God calls.  God calls, and he beckons us to follow, most often where we would not otherwise choose to go.  And often, he asks us to leave something behind in the process.

God is calling us to follow Jesus because to do so is to follow Truth and Justice and Righteousness in a world that is quickly forgetting what any of those words mean.

God is calling us to follow Jesus because in a world that is trying to get us to buy everything, the only god worth believing in is the One who frees you to leave everything aside.

God is calling us to follow Jesus because we are all headed toward death, and rather than perfect the various arts of avoiding death, Jesus wants us to know that he has conquered death for us, so there is nothing to fear.

God is calling us to follow Jesus because he sees how much and how often we resemble those frightened, fishless, failures he first called, even when we would never admit such a thing.

God is calling us to follow Jesus, because only by following him does the path to his Cross unfold.  Only by following him does the path lead us to his tomb.  And only by following him do our footsteps find the way to his resurrection life, which he has promised to share with us.  And God knows that if we will follow Jesus we need not be frightened, we will never be fishless again, and we cannot fail… if we will let him lead us.

If all St. Luke expected of us when we read this story was that we’d decide it would be a good idea to ask Jesus into our boats so we could catch more fish, then he’d have gone into the church consulting business.  But St. Luke is an evangelist.  He wanted us to hear the saving word of God’s truth.  He wanted us to forget about our own boats, leave them behind, and follow Jesus.    So St. Luke doesn’t end the story at verse 6, since verse 6 gets you nothing but a boat full of fish.  But if you go all the way to verse 11, and follow Jesus, you’ll get a life that never stops being renewed by his grace and love.

And he wants us to know that God has always called where the boats are leaky, and nets are ripped, and the fishermen are not necessarily all that good at what they do, and might still be a little hung over.

God calls.  And from frightened, fishless, failures, God builds a church of astonishing beauty, and power, and mercy, and love, that can easily remember who we used to be, but who now rejoice to leave every that hinders us behind, and follow Jesus, take up the Cross, and bask in his glory!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
10 February 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Competing Loyalties

I imagine that most of us would consider loyalty to be a positive thing. We all want loyal friends and loyal spouses and partners. We want loyal leaders in the organizations to which we belong. We want loyal family members and loyal pets. And we are conditioned to display loyalty ourselves, too. God, of course, is deserving of our loyalty. Friends depend on our loyalty in return for theirs. Businesses expect loyalty from consumers. If loyalty to country morphs into treason, well, the penalty is dire. Some of us might be thinking particularly of loyalty on this day, when I gather there is an important game scheduled for this evening. While loyalty levels in this city might not be quite as high as last year, perhaps, for lack of a better choice, you’ve settled on a team to root for. There’s always some team to which you can lend your support. Because loyalty, after all, is basically a good thing, isn’t it?

And so it’s not surprising that the citizens of Nazareth hoped for at least a little loyalty from Jesus, the local boy. This son of Joseph, who had gained quite a following outside of his hometown, has returned to his synagogue. As we heard in last week’s Gospel, which continues in today’s reading, Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah and announces something amazing to all gathered. The poor will be recipients of his good news. Captives will be released. The blind will recover their sight. The oppressed will go free. It is the year of the Lord’s favor. On top of that, Jesus proclaims that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s hopeful words. Could it get any better than this for little old Nazareth?

If you were a resident of that town and were blind or were feeling a bit oppressed by the Roman government or knew someone who was unjustly imprisoned wouldn’t you have hung on every word that Jesus uttered in that synagogue? Scripture tells us that this is exactly what happened. The eyes of all who heard him were riveted on Jesus, and they were amazed at his gracious words. It certainly didn’t seem unreasonable for this hometown notable to offer some special favor to his fellow citizens. Can’t you hear the unspoken expectations of those listening to Jesus? “Jesus, we raised you in this town.” “Jesus, we nurtured you in this synagogue.” “Jesus, you are one of us.” Do something for us. Now.

But Jesus utterly disappoints. He draws on imagery from Israel’s Scriptures to remind his fellow townspeople that even Elijah, in days of old, was not sent by God to one of the myriad number of needy widows in Israel. He was sent instead to a widow in Sidon, in forbidden Gentile country. Similarly, the prophet Elisha was directed not to an Israelite leper but to a Gentile one. In the presence of hometown folk, in the company of those who expected some allegiance from him in return for having raised him up and for being one of them, Jesus announces that God has sent him to work wonders not in his hometown but in other places. God has other plans. This is not Nazareth’s lucky day. Jesus is bringing God’s good news to all people, even to those who were anathema to the residents of Nazareth.

So can you blame Jesus’s townsfolk for being enraged? Would it have hurt Jesus to work even some small act of favor in his hometown? Couldn’t he have been just a bit more devoted to his own clan? After all, we’ve already established that loyalty is virtuous, a basic characteristic of a well-ordered society and community.

Or have we? Because how can loyalty be virtuous when devotion to one group, cause, or view has become an idol that is at odds with God’s unfathomable purposes in the world? When Jesus makes his proclamation in the synagogue, the residents of Nazareth have already convinced themselves that they are the intended recipients of God’s favor. They have it all figured out. Since Jesus is one of them, he will do something for them. They are thus befuddled and angered when they hear that Gentiles—outsiders, those not like them—are to be blessed by God. And because they cannot cope with their disappointed expectations, they revolt and attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff.

 Doesn’t this sound familiar? It doesn’t take too much mental stamina to look at history or to look around us today and see people being thrown off cliffs because they have challenged or are challenging anticipated loyalties. Whether recognized prophets of history or contemporary people who simply want to speak a word of truth, it’s no news flash that truth aligned with God’s desires is often what people don’t want to hear because it pushes the limits of their worldview or of their pride. And when confronted with such provocative truth, there usually is a fork in the road: follow God or follow the idols of our loyalties.

Ultimately, loyalties, whether rightly directed or misdirected, bring a sense of comfort, don’t they? The familiar becomes the expected, and the expected becomes what we worship. The end result is fear, fear that if we betray our loyalties we will lose out, we will be alone, or we will face an uncertain, unfamiliar future. It’s much easier to stick with the idols of our misshapen loyalties because at least they’re convenient.

Unyielding loyalty to party membership frequently supersedes loyalty towards realizing the Gospel in the world, which requires its own loyal hands to work for justice, peace, and the dignity of every single person, regardless of what they look like or what they believe or where they come from. Is it too much to imagine that God might ask us to transcend human-created loyalties in order to do his will in the world? Is it too much to imagine that God’s favor might be extended to people who don’t share the same loyalties as we do? Humans are pretty good at limiting God’s power and are not so good at trusting that God can do far more than we can ask or imagine.

Devotion to a particular religion or denomination might even surpass devotion to God, because what a religion or denomination represents can mistakenly become the image of God in people’s minds. Outside the Church, earthly leaders demand unswerving loyalty to the extent that should you question a decision made or an action taken, you might be thrown off a cliff. And the supposedly faithful friend who writes you off because you question the morality of a deed done or left undone has misunderstood what loyalty is all about.

The lingering question, a question acutely present in our current state of affairs in this country or across the globe, is whether God’s voice of truth can continue to be heard in a world wracked by misshapen fidelities. Have warped loyalties squeezed out any chance of human loyalty to God’s word? Must every prophet of God or every speaker of truth be thrown off a cliff or assassinated or deprived of a voice? The situation seems to be one of great despair until we recognize that there is a profound difference between God’s loyalty to us and the loyalty we often demand of God. While we play quid pro quo with God, we forget that God doesn’t work that way. We are the recipients of God’s gracious favor even though we fall short on our faithfulness to God time and time again. God is faithful. And even when it seems like there is no room for God’s word of truth to get through to us because everyone is throwing prophets off cliffs, God’s gracious favor passes through the midst of it all and goes on its way to reach willing ears, hungry for some truth.

For however much we barter with God, and however tempting it is to expect that God’s loyal response to our prayers will result in special favor on our own terms, God slips past the limits we attempt to impose on him. God reaches those who need him, even if those people are beyond what we could ever have anticipated. And God reaches us, too, in the process.

Though God’s people build walls as they close ranks out of blind allegiance and fear, God’s word breaks through the cracks to reach those who especially need to encounter his blessing. Because the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and can pierce its way through the calcified hardness of human hearts.

Thank God that he doesn’t seek out only the places we want him to seek out. Thank God that he doesn’t occupy only the turf of the hometowns of our hearts, or of our particular parishes or of our particular civic organizations or of our particular country. God knows whom he needs to reach, and God will do so. For the question is not whether God is loyal to us but where our loyalties lie.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
3 February 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia