A Wandering Aramean Was My Father

A wandering Aramean was my father;  and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.  And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the LORD the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, O LORD, hast given me. (Deut 26:5-10)

A wandering Aramean was my father.

A certain fascination prevails these days with genetic antecedents and genealogical research.  It’s a fascination that, I have to admit, mostly eludes me.  When I go to Ireland and they hear my name, they tell me it’s so common I could be from anywhere.  Little do they know that I am more Slovak than Irish, but I remain satisfied that my parents did not name me after my maternal grandfather, Andrishku.

It may seem strange to begin Lent with talk of family trees.  But you can read the account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert as a paternity test administered by the devil, who begins it all by challenging, “if you are the Son of God.”  So it seems like safe ground to tread.

You might wonder why on a day like today we don’t hear the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden - of that first trespass that turned the faucet on and left it running.  If it was the church’s intention to ask us to wallow in our sins all day long, and rub our noses in it, then such a reading might be a good idea.  But contrary to much conventional wisdom, the church’s best and true intention is not to berate us about our sins (not even on the first Sunday in Lent) but to show us the way of hope.

From where we are, she could have followed a number of breadcrumb trails back in time.  One of them would have led to a rainbow.  But the trail she follows traces a line back to Abraham, who was called by God to leave everything behind and go where he was led, with the promise that God would make of him a great nation.  Then Abraham’s faith was tested, when he was commanded to do the unthinkable and sacrifice his Son, Isaac.  Abraham passed the test.  Isaac lived, and he begat two sons Esau and Jacob.  Their complicated relationship is a story for another day.  Isaac bestowed his blessing on his son Jacob, saying, “May God almighty bless you and make you fruitful... that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien - land that God gave to Abraham.”  And Jacob dreamed of God’s blessing, and of heaven, and eventually he wrestled with God, and God gave Jacob a new name: he called him Israel.  Israel then carried the blessing of his father Isaac, who carried the blessing of his father Abraham, who had entered into a covenant with God, that God would give to Abraham and his descendants all the land from “the river of Egypt to the... river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kennizites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

Record keeping, topographical maps, and geological surveys being what they were in those days, the specificity of the real estate was what you might call imprecise, despite the apparent detail.

By the time Moses led the children of Israel through the desert, the lands of the Kennites, the Kennizites, the Kadmonites, the Rephaim, and the Girgashites, had already dropped off the list.  But a new designation appeared that had not been included with the description provided to Abraham.  The land to which God’s children were being led by Moses was now said to be a land flowing with milk and honey (Ex 13).

I contend that the precise address, coordinates, and exact location of the real estate in question had already begun to matter less than the nature of the landscape.  And what’s so important about the landscape isn’t so much its ability to support either cows or bees, but rather, the view.  And what’s so important about the view is that it originates in God’s eyes, not ours; it’s a matter of God’s vision, not ours; it’s a question of God’s promise, which becomes our hope.  (I mean, that is, if you allow for the possibility that when Moses was speaking to the children of Israel in ancient times, he was also speaking to Episcopalians in the 21st century - which I do!)

A wandering Aramean was my father... 

How can 21st century Episcopalians read these words aloud with a straight face?  How can we claim any share of the ancestral heritage of our Jewish forebears?  How can we dream about the land from the river of Egypt to the... river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kennizites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites?  And what about the view of a land that’s flowing with milk and honey?

Christians can never rightfully be settlers on land that belongs to others.  Certainly, we could never rightfully lay claim to New Jersey, let alone the land between the Wadi El-Arish and the Euphrates.  But we do not have to give up on the view that looks out onto a land flowing with milk and honey.  It is to such a vision that God is calling us today.  Our bondage was never the bondage of slavery in Egypt, but our sins, our selfishness, and the ways we have turned way from God - all these have treated us harshly, our sins have  afflicted us, our trespasses and our selfishness have laid upon us hard bondage that we sometimes feel we cannot escape.

But we might still cry to the Lord, the God of our fathers, when we realize what has become of us.  And the LORD will hear our voice.  He sees our affliction and our oppression.  And he is still able to deliver us with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, to bring us into a land, so to speak, flowing with milk and honey.

For in that land God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  In that land, God’s reign will be established.  In that land God’s justice will prevail.  In that land, God’s hope will be proclaimed to the poor, the forgotten, the dispossessed, the alien, and the lost.  In that land the injuries of this life will be mended, illnesses healed, memories restored, relationships reconciled.   In that land our selfishness will be subjugated by God’s bounty.  In that land God’s peace will prevail upon us, so that we can at last beat our swords into plowshares.  In that land light shines in the darkness, and death is conquered by the power of divine life.  That is what is meant by a land that is a land flowing with milk and honey.  And it is our Promised Land.  We  don’t need to bother about the precise address, the coordinates, and the exact location of the real estate in question, since all that matters far less than the nature of the landscape, and far less than the view.

Like so many journeys, Lent begins with a reminder of where we have come from, precisely so we can reassure ourselves of where we are going.  Why else bother unburdening ourselves of all the extra baggage of our past, of our sins?  If we don’t have someplace else to go?  If God is not calling us to something better, something holier, something everlasting?  Why bother at all, if milk and honey don’t flow freely where we are going?

The call to repentance is a call to turn around.  And when we do, we can look back and remember where we came from, we remember who we are, and we remember where we were going.

A wandering Aramean was our father, and he went down into a strange land and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.  But our sins have treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage.  Then we cried to the LORD the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the LORD brought us out of our misery with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he is bringing us into a new place, which is no place, really, and he is giving us this land, which has no precise address, no coordinates, and no exact location.  But it is a land flowing with milk and honey: the milk of God’s love, and the honey of his mercy, which is to say that it is a land with an expansive view of hope.  

A wandering Aramean was our father.  And we remember who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

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

To Care and Not to Care

It is as sure as the sun will rise that every year on Ash Wednesday the lectionary presents us with the same passage from the Gospel according to Matthew. It is difficult not to identify with the hypocrites who disfigure their faces while fasting, especially when on this holy day we participate in our own act of facial disfigurement. And frankly, it might not be inappropriate to wonder whether there is a deliberately humorous irony in the choice of this particular reading for today.

What we hear from Matthew’s Gospel seems obvious enough. Do not be hypocritical—or perhaps a better rendering is “do not put on pretenses.” Tend to the heart rather than fixating on appearances. Do good works because Christian discipleship requires nothing less, not to gain favor in the eyes of others. Go about your pious activities quietly; your heavenly Father knows what you are doing, and that’s all that counts.

But as sure as the sun will rise and as sure as our bellies are full of naughty foods stored up for the Lenten fast, we will walk out of this church building tonight with black crosses smeared on our foreheads even though we have heard Jesus’s own words to his disciples to wash their faces when fasting. And the more scrupulous among us may be bothered by all of this.

I wonder, though, if we feel a tad hypocritical not because we actually believe that Scripture has prohibited us from putting ashes on our foreheads. Instead, I wonder, do we feel hypocritical because the seeming disparity between ritual and Scripture in the Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us of the disparity between what we profess with our lips and what we do in reality?

Do we feel duplicitous in coming to the throne of God, year after year on this holy day to repent when we know that before long, we will stumble over ourselves yet again? The hand that traces the sign of the cross over our bodies will be the same hand that inevitably wrongs a neighbor. The forehead that bears the blatant reminder of our own mortality will be the head once again held high in arrogance. The lips that receive the gift of Christ in his Body and Blood will be the same lips that slander another person.

Yes, as sure as the sun will rise and as sure as we are handed the same Gospel passage each Ash Wednesday, we have to admit that the apostle Paul was onto something in his letter to the Romans when he said that “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

 If we’re honest, this humanity business can seem like a cycle of despair, weighed down with our mortality and frailty. This evening, especially, we honor our desire to make a clean start of things, and still we know that our human nature will get in the way of the best-laid plans. Is there any way out of this mess?

If it were not gloomy old Ash Wednesday, we might be tempted to laugh, to laugh at the ritual absurdity of imposing ashes minutes after hearing a passage that seems to speak against it. We might be tempted to laugh at a God who, time and again, is merciful enough to forgive penitent humans who are constantly getting things wrong.

And maybe we should laugh. Maybe laughing at ourselves in all our fallibility is exactly what we are called to do on Ash Wednesday. Because when we take ourselves too seriously we fail to grasp that we are but dust. Humility demands recognizing our tie to the dust of the earth from which we were formed. Pride masquerades as false humility, unable to accept that God indeed hates nothing he has made. And knowing that we are but dust, can we laugh at the incomprehensibility of God’s mercy, like Sarah did when God promised her a child in her old age? Can we laugh in joy at a God who constantly forgives us, in spite of our mortal vacillation between good and bad intentions?

Living in all our human frailty before God’s limitless compassion is living in a place of limbo, where we accept that we are sinners and yet are forgiven, that we are redeemed and still in need of redemption, and that we are fragile human flesh nevertheless created for goodness in the image of God.

But in the best efforts to make amends this Lent, do we find that we are still looking for our reward? In the zeal to be the exemplary Christian and to get it right this year, do we navigate the waters precariously between the rocks of over-scrupulosity and not taking ourselves seriously enough?

It is about this human predicament that T.S. Eliot wrote so eloquently in his poem “Ash-Wednesday.” As he puts it, we are “wavering between the profit and the loss/In this brief transit where the dreams cross/The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.” It is a twilight of angst and confusion, of wanting and not wanting, of desiring God and not desiring God. It is a twilight of sinning and turning back to God in repentance. It is a twilight of knowing we will mess up again and still we brazenly and persistently ask for God’s help not to do so.

In this place of transit “where the dreams cross,” we can only offer to God a prayer—again from Eliot’s poem—to “Teach us to care and not to care.” In our prayer, we long for a peaceful resting in God’s eternal graciousness, where our left hand does not know what our right hand is doing, even among the laughable perils of this earthly life. We pray that when we sound our trumpets and disfigure our faces and find ourselves worrying about the peccadilloes of piety, we might care a little bit less. We might care a little bit less so that we fully trust what God has promised, that Christ has won the victory and nothing we do can earn that reward. It has already been generously given.

In this place of transit “where the dreams cross,” we also pray that we might care a bit more when the apathy of life weighs us down and when we have given up hope that God can act and raise us up from despair. When our complacency bids us think that we have already received our earthly reward and need not turn again to God, we might pray to care a bit more. We pray that we might care enough to store up treasures in heaven rather than in the midst of decay and decomposition.

This place of transit, “wavering between the profit and the loss,” “where the dreams cross,” is where we give alms, pray, fast, and store up heavenly treasures not because we desire a reward but because we are fueled with thanksgiving for the certainty of God’s gift of mercy.

We look in the mirror at our disfigured faces on Ash Wednesday and we see the sober reminder of our mortality traced on our foreheads. It is an admonition to take ourselves a bit more lightly, that it is not all about us, even in our heartfelt postures of repentance. As we orient ourselves to God’s rising sun in the east, shining on our lives to announce his unceasing compassion, we pray to know when we should care and when we should not care. And precisely “where the dreams cross” in this mortal life between birth and dying we find ourselves at the foot of the cross in repentance.

We remember that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return, but even more so, that Christ is able to raise up that dust to new life. We can chuckle at ourselves and take ourselves ever so lightly knowing that all our foolish ways, all our overly pious strivings, all our self-consumption can be redeemed by Christ if we give ourselves to him. Our desiccated hearts and dried-up bones, tense with self-importance, can yet live and be clothed with flesh again in resurrected glory.

Mark my word: as sure as the sun will rise, next year on Ash Wednesday we will be handed the same Gospel passage. And we might find ourselves feeling a bit hypocritical and confused by all this irony. But as sure as the sun will rise and while we continue to live in this temporal place “where the dreams cross,” God’s faithfulness and goodness will always be as new as the morning and waiting for us. Yes, we will wander, and we will be privy to the changes and chances of this earthly life, but God looks on us on and laughs, winking at our sins, and beckoning us into his arms of mercy. And that’s as sure as the sun will rise.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
March 6, 2019, Ash Wednesday
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself!

It seems to me that one of the things my mother always discouraged in her children when we were growing up was the temptation to feel sorry for ourselves.  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I feel I can remember her saying to us, even though I could not swear that she ever uttered these words to my brother, or sister, or me.  It is the type of warning that you would only issue to a child (or an adult) about whom the tendency seemed both immanent and a little dangerous, or at least unhelpful.  No one wants a pouting, sulking kid around the house, who is accomplishing nothing for anyone by feeling sorry for himself.  

But, of course, anyone who’s ever tried it (as all of us have) knows that feeling sorry for yourself - since it’s deeply indulgent - somehow makes you feel better.  It’s you against the world, and you are oh so right, and the world is deeply, astonishingly, cruelly wrong.

Ash Wednesday flirts with the idea of inviting us to feel sorry for ourselves.  Take this smudge of ash, and account for all your sins, acknowledge your fault, own your mortality, and remember that you are but dust and to dust you shall return.  I can feel my lower lip pushing out a bit into a pout, just thinking about it.  Left to our own devices with these thoughts, Ash Wednesday could easily become a pity party that includes the world’s smallest violin playing just for you.

But if even my mother knows what a bad idea that is, I think it is safe to say that God knows, too; and that God is not asking us to feel sorry for ourselves today.  God has not called you here on Ash Wednesday in order to give you reasons to feel guilty, ashamed, rotten, or bad about yourself.  And God most certainly does not want you to wallow in self-pity.  There is no place in the Bible that anyone’s mother tells them to “stop feeling sorry for themselves,” but there ought to be.

After admonishing her children not to feel sorry for themselves (if she ever did), I am sure my mother would have followed up with a directive that I know she gave us all the time: “Go outside and play!”  The rationale for this instruction might sometimes be appended to it with a small flourish, “… and get out of my hair!”  After all, something had happened that made us want to feel sorry for ourselves.  Some infraction of the rules, betrayal of trust, failure of responsibility, infringement of another’s rights or space, or act of sheer stupidity for which we been called out, caught, and possibly punished, left our lower lips adopting that well-known position, and our hearts slumping beneath a cloud of self-pity.

It would not be unusual to arrive in church on Ash Wednesday, aware of some more recent infraction of the rules, betrayal of trust, failure of responsibility, infringement of another’s rights, or act of sheer stupidity that’s weighing on your conscience.  Personally, I don’t have to wait for Ash Wednesday every year for such awareness in my own life.  And if God has not called us here to invite us into a self-induced pity party, than perhaps (if I may compare God to my mother, and vice versa), perhaps there is some other directive that we need to follow, akin to the instructions to “go outside and play!”

In our case today, God welcomes the admission that we have done wrong, and that we have been wrong.  But I think the message of the Gospel is to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and instead to decide to do something about it.  When we were children it was usually enough to simply go outside and play.  This was the something we needed to so to snap out of our funk, and to mend whatever broken relationship (often with a sibling) needed repair.  As adults, we may need to find more sophisticated ways to do something about the sins that we recall today.   But the first thing to do is to bring them honestly and humbly before God, and attend to God’s loving response.

Sometimes forgiveness includes the injunction to stop feeling sorry for yourself, and to go outside and do something about it.  Before the end of the day, when you wipe these ashes from your brow, and begin to forget about the infraction, the betrayal, the failure, the infringement, or the stupidity, will you listen carefully for God?  Will you hear how much God loves you when he tells you to stop feeling sorry for yourself, and instructs you to go do something about whatever it is that weighs you down?

Nothing will please God more, than to see you and me actually do something about our sins, and to get out of his hair.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Ash Wednesday 2019

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia