Chance is a Fool's Name for Fate

Chance is a Fool's Name for Fate

Mother Johnson

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If you love old movies, I hope you haven’t missed the 1934 classic “The Gay Divorcee.”  No, now that I think about it, there is almost no chance that you have missed this particular film.  It features the songs “Night and Day” and “The Continental,” not to mention “Let’s Knock Knees,” and it stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and very importantly, the great Edward Everett-Horton.  I won’t even try to summarize the plot. Let’s just say that in the process of trying to end her unhappy marriage, Ginger Rogers falls in with a kind of professional marriage-wrecker named Rodolfo Tonetti.  Tonetti, played by Erik Rhodes, is a foppish, foolish, stage Italian. There is a lot of unfortunate cultural work being done in the representation of an Italian man here, but I’m going to have to gloss over that a bit this morning in order to focus on one of the film’s funniest running jokes.  

Here’s the joke: Tonetti has a secret password, or sentence, that he is supposed to use in order to pull off the stunt that will allow Ginger Rogers to end up with Fred Astaire.  At the key moment, Tonetti is supposed to say “Chance is a fool’s name for Fate.” Of course he is too foppish and bumbling to get that right, so the film is full of instances in which he tries to speak the magic sentence at what he hopes is the right time, and fails wonderfully.  “Give me a name for chance and I am a fool,” he says to the wrong person. “Chances are that fate is foolish,” he opines hopefully so someone else. In a conversation with one rather worldly woman, he tries again, hoping it’s time to use the secret password: “Fate is a foolish thing to take chances with,” he says.  To which she replies, “So are you.” Poor man, he just can’t get it right. It’s “Chance is a fool’s name for Fate.” That’s the magic sentence.

Poor Rodolfo Tonetti bumbles his way through “The Gay Divorcee” as proof that fate really does intend for Fred and Ginger to end up together forever.  He’s a walking sign that despite all the obstacles, and although human beings are clueless, there is a destiny that will unite lovers, especially when they are fabulous dancers like Fred and Ginger.  Tonetti may not quite be able to say so, but chance occurrences in this comic film are indeed underwritten by comic destiny. It’s a comedy. Desires will be fulfilled. By chance, Fred meets Ginger. Then Fred loses Ginger.  By chance, Fred gets Ginger back. But you know and I know that chance is a fool’s name for fate. Fred and Ginger were bound to happen.

There is no particular reason to believe that the disciples in this morning’s gospel were much more insightful or spiritually attuned than Rodolfo Tonetti when they met Jesus.  Let’s imagine that, all their lives, they thought they had been supposed to know the secret password for unlocking everything they desired: justice, nearness to God, peace, lives filled with joy and gratitude, the destiny of all creation to live in harmony and fulfillment.  Let’s say they were in a story in which they were fated to pair up with God in a cosmic dance, and they knew it, but they were nervous about making it happen. They knew—and John the Baptist had recently reminded them—that there would be a decisive encounter sometime in their lives with salvation.  And so there they were, on the banks of the Jordan River. Jesus had passed by the day before, silently, but if their hearts were stirred by his presence on that occasion they had nevertheless failed to take the opportunity to speak the magic words. And then there he was again the next day, a little less mysterious this time, a little more approachable, slowing down on his walk to give them a second chance, and I can feel the dryness in their throats and the pounding of their hearts as Jesus speaks what might very well have been the signal they were expecting: “What are you looking for?” he asks.  

OK, maybe that’s not a secret sign from Jesus.  Maybe they weren’t actually expecting a special handshake or a password when salvation met them in person.  But it’s some kind of moment of truth. It’s some kind of moment in which you want to have the right answer.  Fate, after all, is a foolish thing to take chances with. So when Jesus looks right at them and asks “What are you looking for?” I can feel how disappointing it must have been for the disciples to find themselves nervously shuffling around and coughing, trying to figure out the magic response they are somehow supposed to know, and coming up only with the rather off-topic, “Where are you staying?”  

I can imagine them silently castigating themselves for the response.  “That’s all I can think of to say?” they must be wondering. “He’s going to think we are looking for a Motel 6.  What do I actually want from him?  What’s the magic right thing to want?”  All this time, maybe like you and me, the disciples have imagined that when God spoke to them they would be quick to respond, light on their feet, masters of the moment—but here they are in front of Jesus and they are able only to express a vague desire to be around him.  As Rudolfo Tonetti would say, “Give me a name for chance, and I am a fool.”

But this is a better story than “The Gay Divorcee.”  No, the disciples don’t have a magic password. No, when Jesus asks them what they are looking for, they can’t exactly name it.  Isn’t that always the way? When you pray, do you really know what you are praying for? Wouldn’t you be happy enough just to know that you might be somewhere near where Jesus can be found?  Which one of us knows what it is that Jesus wants to give us or say to us when we slip out to Mass on a weekday morning, or to Confession on a Saturday? Why did you start volunteering at the Saturday Soup Bowl?  What are you looking for when you open the Bible? What does it mean to you to pray the Rosary? Today is the first day of adult Confirmation classes in our parish for this year, and though I know I’m going to hear some beautiful reasons for all of us to be in the process together, I bet there isn’t a single one of us, myself included, who can say what it really means to be confirmed or received or baptized.  We have a million words for what we ask of Jesus but we don’t exactly have the secret password we might want. There may not be one specific thing we can name that is the key to our desires or the heart of our spirituality or the hallmark of our relationship with God.   

And Jesus, who is himself the Word of God, knows that it’s enough for us to be somewhere in his presence.  “Come and see,” he says. Come and see.  

Do you notice that he answers them in language that is as off-center as their halting question?  Where are you staying? “Come and see” sounds pretty definite, but the joke is on the disciples. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.  The Logos has pitched his tent among us but he is an itinerant figure and the disciples are in for a very long journey if they want to see his mysterious home.  Sure, they will be able to stay with him that day and for a good deal longer than that, but ultimately when they go looking for him they will find an empty tomb that leads them to more journeying.  And then his ascension to a place called heaven.

 Maybe all our lives we are awaiting a decisive encounter with the Lord, the Logos, and maybe the Lord knows exactly what to do with our bumbling formulas and our failed magic passwords.  Maybe Jesus knows that when we come here seeking something, or when we journey out there in a quest for him, what we are looking for is exactly what we cannot name. Maybe Jesus knows and can help us to understand that just following him, just travelling in the atmosphere of possibility that surrounds him, is more than enough.  Our efforts to unlock salvation are all mistakes. Our sense of what it means to be called is comically limited. Our notion of a destiny that draws us to God in Christ is wonderful but if we think we can map out our decisive moments we are deeply mistaken. Much of the work God does in us is invisible to us. Often we will have only the vaguest intimation of prayer or the will of God or the opening of our own hearts. 

I don’t know that Jesus would quote Rudolfo Tonetti but I like to imagine that he would.  I like to imagine that he could speak a word to us that would allow us to drop our expectations, surrender our limited notions of our spiritual destiny or our calling or our fate.  “Fate,” as Rudolfo might say, “is a foolish thing. Take a chance.”

 Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
19 January 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street

Crossing Jordan

Crossing Jordan

Father Mullen

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The Jordan River

The standard question to ask  today, when we gather to commemorate the baptism of Jesus by John is, Why?  Why was Jesus baptized by John?  John was calling people to repentance, and to ready themselves for Jesus’ coming.   But what does Jesus have to repent for?  And why should he prepare for himself?  He is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, the Word incarnate.  Yes, he is like us in every way - except without sin.  So why his baptism?  John, himself, announces that “one who is more powerful than I is coming after me....  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!”  It’s baptism into Jesus’ life  - with the Holy Spirit and fire - that interests me.  But that was not what John was offering, and even he knew it.  So why would Jesus go to John to receive John’s lesser baptism?

It’s an interesting and not an unimportant question.  But today, at least, it’s not the question that leads me to any useful conclusion.  Today, I find the various answers to the question “Why?” noteworthy, but without anything very helpful to tell me, or for me to tell you.  When I probe that question I end up pretty much in the same place I was in before; nothing is new for me, or, I suspect, for you.

And what’s the point of coming to church if nothing is going to be new when you leave here?  We tell these stories about Jesus, we recount his life and his teaching, his miracles, his saving death and his resurrection, for a reason... and the reason is because we hope and we pray that we will be shown something new, given something new that will change us or the world around us.  Something ought to be better after the Gospel has done its work on us, even if it’s only a little bit better.  And what I have found is that asking why Jesus was baptized by John doesn’t really change anything - at least not for me.

But there is a question for which today’s Gospel reading provides a ready and an easy answer that has the capacity, the potential, and even the likelihood of effecting some change in my life and in yours.  And it may sound silly to you because the question is so simple and the answer is even simpler.  But I don’t mind sounding silly, and I love an easy answer.

So, here’s the question that I think might matter for us today.  Where did Jesus get baptized by John?  Now, this is an open book question.  You can go ahead and look.  But chances are, you already know.  Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan.  That was easy!

Theses days, you can go to the Jordan River and they will tell you exactly where they think John baptized Jesus.  I’m not so worried about that.  It’s not the specific coordinates of the location that matter.  What matters is that it’s the Jordan River.

Now, you already know everything I’m going to tell you; I’m just going to try to stitch some pieces together for you.

You already know that Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, chased by Pharaoh’s army, through the Red Sea, which parted in two for Moses and his gang when they went across, and then came crashing down on the chariots of the Egyptians when thy came racing through in hot pursuit.

You already know how Moses led those Hebrew people through the desert, wandering for forty years.  And, I mean, look, you could have found your way out of the desert in forty years if you’d wanted to… or God could have gotten them out of there!

But God must have wanted them wandering.  God must have wanted them grumbling.  God must have wanted them tempted to go back to the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks and the garlic that they had left behind in Egypt.  God must have wanted them hungry.  And God must have wanted them thirsty.  God must have wanted to feed them with quails, and he must have wanted to give them water from a rock.  And God must have wanted to feed them with manna - with bread from heaven!

God had a lot to do.  And what did the Hebrew people have to do?  Not very much.  They had time to spare since they were no longer slaves.

But all that wandering made them realize something, even as they remembered that they were no longer slaves.  All that wandering made them realize that they were also not yet free.  They had been led out of slavery, but they were not yet free.  God wanted his children to know that although they were no longer slaves, they were also not yet free.  That’s must be why God let them wander for so very, very long in the desert, when any normal group of people would have found their way out years sooner.  But God had something for them to do.

God needed them to know that they were lost.  God also needed them to know that they would happily run to their tents, when things looked bad, and gather up their earrings and their bracelets and melt down the gold to make a calf that they could worship… those unreliable children of God, who run after false gods at the first sign of trouble.

All this time, Moses is complaining to God.  “Lord,” he says, “your people are a stiff-necked people.  They are a fickle people, and their faith is weak.  And I am not half the man you need in a job like this, could we please get on with it!?!” 

And God said, “Easy does it, Moses,” or something to that effect.  Easy does it.

You already know that all that while, Moses had been promised by God that God would lead them out of captivity, and out of their wanderings, and into the land he had promised to Abraham - a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that would be theirs, where they could make their home, and be at peace.  You know this.  And for forty years, Moses kept reminding them: milk and honey, milk and honey.

And you know that God told Moses that he (Moses) would not, himself, get to enjoy the reward of arrival in the Promised Land.  But that’s a story for another time.  Poor, old Moses died after God showed him the Promised Land from the top of Mount Nebo.  Moses died with a song of blessings on his lips.  But he never made it to that Promised Land.

Then, God appointed Joshua to lead his children after Moses died.  And Joshua led them into the Promised Land.  And the first thing they had to do to get there was to cross the River Jordan, which was running high because of recent rains.  They were carrying the ark of the covenant with them, and when the priests who were carrying the ark of the covenant stepped into the Jordan, the waters on one side of them were cut off, and the waters on the other side were held back.  And they were able to walk across the river, with the waters parted that way for them.  Remind you of anything?

And the priests stood there in the middle of the river bed, with the waters held back in a heap.  And the people of Israel filed past them, as the priests stood there in the river, holding aloft the ark of the covenant, until every last man, woman, and child had walked across the dry bed of the River Jordan and into the Promised Land.

Here we are, all these ages later.  And we are nowhere near the River Jordan.  But I have to tell you, I hardly know a person these days who is not lost - at least some of the time - and I include myself in that number.  I hardly know a person who hasn’t suffered, or isn’t lonely, or anxious, or trapped in their own lies, or longing for peace, or vexed by injustice, or shackled to anger, or haunted by the past, or stymied by an uncertain future, or exhausted by pain, or deluded by greed, or frightened, or bored, or self-loathing, or timid, or over-compensating, or grieving.  Nearly everyone I know is lost or broken in at least some small way.  And I wonder if Moses’ people felt like this when they were wandering.

And I remember that Moses had to keep reminding them: “God is doing something here.  God is leading us somewhere.  Don’t give up.  Put down that golden calf.  Eat your manna.  Hang in there a little longer, you stiff-necked people!  God is not done with us yet”  And I remember that God needed to teach his people that they were not yet free, even though they had been brought out of slavery by his mighty arm.

And I wonder if God is trying to teach us this lesson too - that we are not yet free, not in any meaningful sense of the word, not free as God wants us to be.  And I wish and I pray that God would please get on with it!

And then I wonder if we even know where we are going.  I wonder if we believe in a Promised Land anymore.  And I wonder how we think we will get there if we have stopped even wondering where or what it is.  How would we know if we had even passed by anywhere near the Promised Land flowing with the milk and honey of God’s loving kindness?  How would we know if we ever got close?  How would we even remember that we are supposed to be heading there?

And then I think to myself, that that’s it: that’s why Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan.  Because Jesus came with a new covenant, and a new promise, in order to show us the Way.  And his ministry begins with a stop at the Jordan River, where John stands in the middle of the river, just like one of those priests carrying the ark.  Except that the waters have not parted, and John is holding Jesus by the hand.

This scene is supposed to remind us that God has someplace for us to go.  It’s supposed to remind us that we are not yet free, but that we can be, and we will be if we follow Jesus.  And that journey is always going to lead us through the water.  The Jordan River flows through the most surprising places.  Sometimes, even right here, down Locust Street.

And Jesus is standing there by John, so that he can wave to us... to remind us…. “Over here!” He’s calling to us, as we are led in every other conceivable direction.  “You’ve got to cross the river, but don’t worry, I’ve already crossed it, and the water is fine.”

The archaeological evidence for the wandering of Moses and his people in the Sinai Desert for forty years is actually slim to none.  It is not clear that God actually put his people through such an unpleasant test.  What seems clear to me is that God must have known that here in the 21st century, so many of us would be lost, wandering, and largely without anything that truly resembles hope.  And we would not yet be free.  God must have known that we would need a narrative planted deep in our psyches that assures us that we have someplace to go.

And God must have known that would be lost, wandering, grumbling, hungry, thirsty, unreliable, ready to chase after false gods.  God must have known that we would be a stiff-necked people.  God must have own that we would need to be shown the Way.  And how easily we would forget his covenant of love.  Which, I think is why he sent his Son Jesus to meet with John, there on the banks of the River Jordan, calling to anyone who comes by: “Over here!”  Reminding us, simply by virtue of where they are, that we are not yet free, but that we can be and we will be… if we will follow him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
12 January 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street

A Lesson from Joseph

A Lesson from Joseph

Father Babin

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What if every trip you took was mapped out as the crow flies? If you ask me, it’s not much fun having to change planes when traveling anywhere. I’d much prefer a non-stop flight, except that these days, finding a reasonably priced non-stop flight to your destination of choice can be a futile enterprise. Depending on where you’re headed, if you want to avoid spending a fortune on plane fare, the flight path might look something like this: fly from Philadelphia to Dallas, with a three hour layover, and then board another flight (if that flight happens to be on time) and head back in the direction you came from. Finally, you land in Memphis and usually arrive much later than you ever should have, if only you’d not been so cheap in trying to avoid the non-stop flight that was the first option you saw online.

How satisfying it is to chance upon an economical non-stop flight, especially overseas. When you’re on the plane looking at that little TV monitor on the back of the seat in front of you, the flight path from Philadelphia to Istanbul is a beautiful curved line, a gentle parabola. The route may not exactly be as the crow flies, but it seems pretty close to it. You know precisely where you’re going, and you know how long it will take.

The pristine curved line of the international non-stop flight path surely beats the sinuous paths that Google Maps coughs up in its quest to avoid the latest road closure (inevitably on Chestnut Street). It turns out that you can apparently calculate a distance as the crow flies on Google maps. You may not actually be able to travel anywhere as such, but the charted path on a map is visually quite satisfying, in my opinion.

What might not be so satisfying to the efficient, economical, and geometrically precise eye of a modern traveler is the route of the Holy Family from Bethlehem to Nazareth, at least as St. Matthew describes it. Try drawing it on a map. As the crow flies, using the nifty feature on Google Maps, the distance from Bethlehem to Nazareth is about seventy miles. But we know from St. Matthew’s account that Mary and Joseph’s trip with the baby Jesus was much more than seventy miles.

In order to avoid the wrath of Herod, an angel of the Lord directs them via a significant detour to Egypt, a minimum of 200 miles southwest of Bethlehem, as the crow flies. Theologically speaking, this also seems like a curious diversion. After all, it was out of Egypt that God had brought his chosen people by the hand of Moses, from slavery to freedom, from death to life. And now, God seems to be leading the Savior of world back into the land from which beloved Israel had once been so happy to escape.

It’s not clear how long Mary, Joseph, and Jesus sojourned in Egypt, living as fearful refugees escaping the cruel mania of Herod’s paranoia. And although we have the hindsight of crow’s path vision and know that Nazareth was the final destination of the Holy Family, I imagine it was certainly less than clear to the two young parents where they would finally end up with their newborn child.

But I also imagine that as faithful Jews living in exile in Egypt, Mary and Joseph’s eventual call to get up and go to the land of Israel, after Herod’s death, must have been a welcome one. Would that great holy city of Jerusalem be their final destination?

But St. Matthew tells us that the ultimate destination for the Holy Family was not even close to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. Herod’s legacy of cruelty had been bequeathed to his son Archelaus, and so Judea could not be the permanent home for Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Child.

Have you ever wondered how Joseph felt, already uprooted from the home in Bethlehem, exiled as a homeless refugee to Egypt, and now being told to travel to Judea, and then being told that there was yet more traveling to do? I would bet that many of us would have been angry, confused, and weary. And yet all we are told about good Joseph is that he listened to the messages he received from God, trusted them, got up, and time and again led his family onward. And St. Matthew clearly implies, that all along, Nazareth was where God had intended for the Holy Family to be, because Jesus was to “be called a Nazorean.” As the crow flies, the journey was really from Bethlehem to Nazareth.

St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth starts with a meandering genealogy and culminates in the Holy Family’s zigzagging travels, and in some sense, it defies the conventional clean version of the Christmas story.  The condensed version, suitable for a cute pageant with sheep and angels, is a beautiful narrative of a family experiencing a special birth in Bethlehem, with an unspoken footnote on the Egyptian exile, and then living happily in Nazareth when the coast is clear. But if we literally draw the Holy Family’s route on a map, we find something much more complicated.

For the modern mind, capable of visualizing everything as the crow flies, does it raise questions for you? For starters, was it really necessary to direct the family hundreds of miles off course to Egypt, to a land fraught with traumatic memories of bondage to cruel Pharaoh, only then to uproot them, change plans once again, and ultimately drop them off in Nazareth, where we are told they belonged all along? And in the midst of this serpentine journey with its confusion, ambiguity, and anxiety, there was a massacre of innocent children, which thankfully the Christ child escaped through God’s suggested detours. But the lectionary blithely skipped over that this morning.

How are we to make sense of this? Was there no way for the God of heaven and earth with his infinite mercy and compassion to direct the Holy Family from Bethlehem as the crow flies to safety in Nazareth or even to some other closer location out of Herod’s evil grasp? Was there no way to prevent infanticide and the Holy Family’s troubles along the way and the years of seemingly wasted time on the road? Was there no way for God to ensure that Herod didn’t become such a monster in the first place?

In rebuttal, you might argue that God writes straight with crooked lines, but what does that tell us about God? Is God incapable of writing with straight lines and paving a way as the crow flies? For it could seem that a God who perpetually writes with crooked lines is a master manipulator and the joke is on us.

But for once, instead of metaphorically zooming out on Google Maps, I wonder if it might behoove us to zoom in for a minute, and if we zoom in on the journey of the Holy Family, we might learn a thing or two from Joseph. And by taking a lead from Joseph, we might gain a clearer picture of the God who we trust is with us in the most intimate possible way, who St. Matthew tells us is “God with us.”

Joseph, as St. Matthew portrays him, is the model of pure obedience. And while of course, the blessed mother Mary is as well, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, we zoom in on Joseph. And Joseph has the potential to reveal just how countercultural true obedience is. We in the year 2020, with our fancy modern gadgets and Google Maps and built-in car navigation devices and beautifully curved flight paths have perhaps zoomed out so much on the world in which we live that we have lost sight of what it means to say with conviction that God is with us.

I’m sure that Joseph knew the detour to Egypt was off the crow’s path, even if he didn’t know exactly where he was being led in the end. I’m sure the Holy Family’s years of wandering, like the Israelites in the desert, were confusing and frustrating. And unlike God’s grumbling people in the desert, complaining of hunger while the meat was still stuck in their teeth, all we are told about Joseph suggests that his response to God’s multiple calls was to get up and go and do what God was telling him to do. It seems that Joseph never second-guessed the routes that God was revealing to him, and if he did, he ultimately listened to God.

But to more jaded, skeptical ears that are quick to find fault with God, Joseph seems like a prehistoric fool. If only he’d had the sophistication of Google Maps to see how God was playing with him. If only he’d had enough gumption and sense of self-dignity to stand up for what was most convenient for him instead of being flung around on a map of the Far East. If only he’d been wise enough to second guess Google Maps and follow the path he instinctively knew was best for him. In this way of thinking, obedience reeks of naiveté.

But Joseph, it seems, possessed an unusual spiritual gift of trust and understanding, one zoomed in on the present moment and less on how the crow might fly. And Joseph’s gift of obedience is one we might benefit from reclaiming in an overly critical world. God isn’t deliberately writing with crooked lines when he could have drawn straight ones. God isn’t revealed as powerless because life’s paths are not as the crow flies. God isn’t saving only the Christ Child while causing other innocent newborns to be slaughtered. No, God’s heart is breaking over human sin, even as God weeps over the contemporary massacres of innocents. And God is journeying with us in the tragic detours that are part of the jagged topography of a broken world.

Although he may seem to be hidden at times, God is always with us, in the sojourns in Egypt and in the ceaseless packing up and moving on that happens as part of life. God is there—is here—waiting for us, like Joseph, to discover his voice, gently directing us on our way.

And God is also right with us, refusing to be an old or a modern Herod who bulldozes his way through human history to achieve his objectives. God is not working his purposes out wholesale like a maniacal despot who slaughters everyone in his path. God is much, much more sophisticated and loving and gentle in his providence. And this is where God’s power lies. God is there, leading us and guiding us precisely in the detour roads of uncertainty, befuddlement, and tragedy. And although he may not directly have paved those side roads, he nonetheless travels on them with us. God refuses to lead us as the crow flies, because that is not truly a “God with us” but rather a puppeteer for whom we are the puppets.

I admit that, although I have a modern penchant for beautifully curved flight paths, for non-stop flights, and for second guessing Google Maps, my heart knows, as I hope yours does, too, that flying off the crow’s path is where I most fully discern the presence of God in my life. God is with us, starting at birth in Bethlehem, in all our Egyptian exiles, then by way of Nazareth in the prime of our lives, and ultimately in Jerusalem, in our final hours. And lest we think that our modern hearts can second-guess how God is with us on our winding paths of life, we might learn a thing or two from Joseph.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
5 January 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia