The Office of Sowing & Reaping

A sower went out to sow.  It was early, and the sun was just rising.  And his dreams from the night’s sleep were still fresh in his mind.  The sower had dreamed that a choir of birds, directed by a bright red cardinal, had gathered on branches in the trees around him, and sung to him.  The music was unfamiliar, but he knew where the words came from, the prophet Isaiah:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, 
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Then the birds flew off, all except the cardinal, who stayed perched on a branch, looking at the sower, and seeming to smile at him, though admittedly it is hard to tell when a cardinal is smiling.  But it was a dream, after all.

A rocky path with thorny bushes on either side led to the field that the sower had planned to sow.  Arriving at his field, the sower encountered, there on the path, a representative of the Office of Sowing and Reaping, wearing a face mask, and latex gloves, waiting for him.

The sower had a sack of seeds slung over his shoulder.  The man from the Sowing and Reaping had a clipboard in his hand.

“What’s your plan?” asked the guy from OSR.

“Gonna sow these seeds,” said the sower.  “Gonna reap the rewards, too, come harvest time.”

The man with the clipboard from OSR responded with a soft grunt, then said, “Let’s see what yer gonna do.”

The sower reached his right hand into the sack of seed, and drew out a handful of seed, little streams of seed flowing out between his fingers.

“Not so fast,” said the guy from Sowing and Reaping, tapping the clipboard.  “Guidelines here, for a time of pandemic.”

The OSR rep had a small sealed packed, about half the size of a packet of onion soup mix, clipped under the clip of his clipboard.  He unclipped it and handed it to the sower.  “There you go,” he said.

The sower tore open the top of the packet, and pulled out  a pair of tweezers, just the right size to grasp a single, small seed.  He gave the OSR guy a pained, quizzical look.

“One at a time,” the fed said.  “And six feet apart.”

The sower began to protest, but the OSR guy shushed him.  “It’s all here in the regs,” he said, tapping the clipboard.  “And no more than 25 in a field.”  His tone was not aggressive, just clear and uncompromising.

The sower felt his heart sink for a moment.  He reached into the seed bag with the tiny tweezers and pulled out a single seed, looked at it worriedly, and began to walk the last few steps from the stony path toward the freshly tilled, dark, loamy soil.

But the OSR guy stopped him.  “Did you wash those seeds?” he asked.

The sower’s jaw dropped, and he looked at the OSR guy with incredulity.

“Can’t sow seeds that haven’t been washed,” the guy said.  “Twice.”

The sower had never washed a seed before, but with a heavy sigh, he began to turn around on the stony path, in order to return to the shed and figure out a way to get this done and still get his seeds in the ground before the heat of the day.  But the OSR guy stopped him again, saying, “Can’t use those now; they might be contaminated.  Gotta dump em out.”

The sower was stunned.  This was his only bag of seeds, and he was depending on it to get him through the long, hot summer.  He could hardly believe what he was about to do, and he had no idea how he would survive if he did it.  But the look on the other man’s face told him that there were no other options.  “Right here?” asked the sower.

“Yes, here,” said the man from Sowing and Reaping.

So the sower, slowly and reluctantly took the seed bag from his shoulder, and turned it upside down, emptying the contents on the rocky path, and in the thorny bushes planted on the path and around the field to keep the rabbits out.

The guy from OSR held out the clipboard, and said, “Sign here.”  Then the official turned on his heel and headed on his way down the rocky path.

The sun had now risen, and the sower was feeling defeated.  There was no more seed in the shed. This had been his only bag of seed.  Of course, he didn’t want to spread disease.  But how could anyone grow anything in these circumstances?  As he turned to walk home, he noticed a bright red cardinal sitting in the lower branches of a nearby tree, but the details of his dream that night had already faded from his mind in the face of this disheartening encounter.  He walked the long walk home, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat on the porch, feeling lost and defeated, not knowing what to do, and ready to give up.

The cardinal had seen it all.  He, too, had been sent to the sower’s field that day, but not by the Office of Sowing and Reaping.  Sitting on his branch, he began to call to the other birds, with his high, forceful calls.  And within minutes, a small flock of a wide variety of birds had gathered: not only other cardinals, but starlings, and wrens, robins, and doves, bluejays, and even an owl, looking very sleepy indeed.

To this flock the cardinal spoke:

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “as you noticed, a large supply of seed has been abandoned here on the rocky path below me, and in the thorny bushes, and among the weeds.  To you, this situation appears to be a bonanza of good fortune, and I promise you that no one will leave here hungry.  But first, I have been sent as a messenger so that sowers everywhere will know that their sowing is not in vain, even when things seem hopeless.

“The sower who sows this field is at home right now, feeling sad, and ready to give up, wondering how he will survive.  He is questioning his faith not only in God but in his fellow man.  He is in a dark mood.

“Long ago, God saw how often such moods fall upon the children of men in the face of setbacks, disappointment, and struggle.  He sent a prophet to them to assure them that even in tough times, God is with them, and hope is not lost.

“Unlike birds, you see, men have a hard time seeing the hand of God at work in the world.  They are prone to doubt and disbelieving.  They find it easy to give up on God.  This sower, for instance, does not know that God’s purposes will be fulfilled, precisely because they are God’s purposes.  He suspects that what happens in that field, or in any field, is more or less up to him.  And while he would tell you that he does not believe that, he does, in fact, act as though it’s entirely up to him, and like he’s all alone in his work.

“But, for whatever reasons, God does not give up on his people.  And I have been sent from a special, secret office in the precincts of heaven to supervise a small but meaningful intervention today, for the sake of one sower, who, as I say, is home brooding about his misfortune at this very moment.

“You see the seed scattered before you.  Work with me, my friends, to sow this field.  All of us together, can accomplish the task in a trice.  And there is, as I say, more than enough seed here to sow the field, and then for all of us to feast with what remains on the rocky path.  In the Name of God, I ask, are you with me?”

A great flapping of wings brought with it a response as the birds all called out in their own songs, and it sounded for a moment like an orchestra tuning, in preparation for the music to come.  The birds descended on the scattered piles of seeds, and each according to his ability carried seeds with its beak or its talons from the rocky path to the dark, loamy soil, leaving long rows of seeds planted without any restrictions at all.  Before long, the entire field had been sown.  Just as the cardinal had promised, there was plenty of seed left lying there on the rocky path and in the bushes for the birds to feast, and then to depart feeling satisfied, singing as they went, and receiving a word of thanks from the cardinal.

Back at home, the sower had fallen into something of a depression.  He found it hard to get up out of bed.  Life seems to have no purpose or meaning, and he felt entirely alone in the world.  He stopped answering his phone, and hadn’t shaved in days.

But after a week or so, the cloud of depression lifted just enough for him to decide to go outside for a morning walk in the direction of the field he had planned to sow.  As he got closer, he noticed a lot of bird activity, and he figured, of course, they have come to eat the pile of discarded seed left scattered on the path and in the thorns.  But as he approached the field, his eyes seemed to be deceiving him.  Bright green shoots, in slightly uneven but unmistakeable rows, were sprouting up from the field.  The sower stood at the edge of the field with something more than amazement in his heart - yes, he was sure it was love that was filling his heart.  And that’s when the birds began to sing.

They were not, as you already know, birds of a feather.  They were starlings, and wrens, robins, and doves, bluejays, and even a sleepy owl, with a cardinal leading them all.  And although each bird sang its own call, each bird heard the others singing in its own language.  And the sower heard them singing in his language, as they warbled the words of the prophet:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, 
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Rain fell, and watered the seedlings, and the sun shone, and they grew.  Every day the sower would walk dow the rocky path to visit the field and watch it grow.  And every day a cardinal sat in the lower branches of a nearby tree, keeping watch.  And the man from the Office of Sowing and Reaping never returned, confident that he had done what was required.  And late that summer the sower harvested the grain.  It was a lean year, but it was a good year.

And the sower learned that although there are failures and setbacks, and sometimes you cannot see the way out of a problem, when God’s word goes forth from his mouth it does not return to him empty, but it accomplishes that which he purposes, and it succeeds in the thing for which he sent it.

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
12 July 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Playing Well with Others

Can you imagine a world without games? How boring that would be! When I was younger, I loved to play games and played much more frequently than I do now. I had my favorites: Candyland, Monopoly, Clue, Scattergories, Pictionary, and with a few of my friends, certain card games. Even though I don’t play games very often these days, when I’m with the right group of people, I’m all in for a game of charades or especially a word game. Here are a few things that we can say about games, whether for children or for adults:

Unless it’s a video game or solitaire, games are meant to be played with other people, not alone.
Games assume that everyone will play by the rules.

Games level the playing field in many ways, because some games are not based on skill or personal acumen but, instead, purely on chance inherent within the game.

Games require more than a little humility from participants. Chances are you will lose a game more than once, so you better get used to it.

And nobody wants to play with sore losers, because they take all the fun out of a game.

There are a lot of good life lessons we can learn from games, not the least of which is being fair to one another. To deal well with what life throws you, it’s helpful to know how to be a good sport. But I’m sure we all remember times when we have been less than fair in a game or been a bad sport. And we all probably know certain people we don’t enjoy playing games with because they don’t like to lose.

A scene of children playing games in the marketplace is an apt image that Jesus offers us when referring to the generation of people around him who seem incapable of receiving his ministry and his words. This generation is comprised of those who have also rejected the ministry of Jesus’ relative John the Baptist. Jesus frequently bemoans the fact that so many people just don’t understand him. Or worse yet, they don’t want to. Their hearts are hardened, their ears are stopped up, and their eyes cannot see who he really is. They’ve already made up their minds about who he is and what they need in their lives. They don’t want to play with Jesus.

We have to admit, Jesus is pretty fantastic at coming up with images to make a point. In the case of our Gospel lesson today, I think he has outdone himself. Imagine these petulant children sitting in two opposing groups in a marketplace. One group is piping joyful music on the flute, hoping that their fellow playmates will dance with them, but to no avail. The pipers then switch to mournful music, thinking that this will surely evoke a response from the other group. But again, nothing.

It seems that one group is adamantly refusing to play fair—in fact, refusing to play at all. Either they are just plain apathetic, bored, and uninterested, or something more sinister is afoot. And I suspect the latter.

Scripture doesn’t help us too much with details here, but let’s reflect a bit on the human condition and reach our own conclusions. I think that the stubborn group doesn’t have a clue about how to play games. They are sitting with arms crossed over their chests, even glaring at the other side. They don’t want to play to begin with. They are not interested in empathizing with the other side.

This might bring back some unpleasant memories of childhood, when you were on the outside of the group that always wanted to call the shots. I remember more than a few instances myself of trying to get people to go along with my idea, to play with me, but with no success.

My guess is that the group of children that is uninterested in playing with others is fickle, as well. They probably take the opposite viewpoint just to be contrary. You want to play happy wedding games, well, we want to play sad funeral ones. Oh, but you want to play funeral games. Well, then we definitely want to play wedding ones.

It might even seem like the lectionary itself is trying to play a tricky game with us this morning. We get three snippets of Scripture, with a gap between two parts. In one breath, Jesus is likening “this generation” to children who don’t play well with others. And in the next breath, he is thanking God for having “hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and [having] revealed them to infants.” So, the question is, are children meant to offer us a lesson in how not to behave, or are they exemplary models of simplicity and obedience?

If we press even further, does it seem as if God is playing some games with us, maybe not even playing fair? Just why would God hide things from anyone? Whatever did the wise and intelligent do for them to deserve this deprivation of knowledge from God? And if God deliberately keeps information from them, it certainly doesn’t seem like God is playing fair. This reeks of an unpleasant theology, where some are arbitrarily chosen, and the rest consigned to an ill fate, all on a whim. If we’re honest with ourselves, we must see that there is something disturbing in this notion of God making whimsical decisions, as if life is just some kind of unfair game.

But let’s step back and Google map out a bit, if you will. Because it seems that Jesus is telling us something else. Jesus is suggesting that the whole human race, from children to adults is sinfully oriented towards not wanting to play well with others, and that’s why the world doesn’t play well with him.

The scene of children in the marketplace acting out their petty grievances could be a page out of today’s newspaper, too. And in the modern example, grown, educated adults sit on opposite sides of rooms and refuse to hear one another out. Far too many adults are not willing to play by the rules, and a disconcerting number are poor losers when they don’t get their way.

On this holiday weekend, it’s tempting to look to the founding principles of liberty and freedom in this nation in order to have some hope in playing fair or playing by the rules. And to some extent, that hope should always remain with us and inspire our future. But in recent days, we have been uncomfortably reminded that America’s game was, in many ways from its inception, set up not to play fair with certain groups of people.

So, we are left turning back to God, because if we as Christians put our trust and hope in anyone to play by the rules and to play fair, it’s God. How, then, do we deal with a God who apparently hides certain things from the wise and intelligent? Is there, indeed, any place to which we can turn where things are fair?

At what point does the light bulb go on for us and do we realize that it’s, in fact, we who have been playing games and trying to set the rules and expecting God to play on our terms. When we finally see this, we might begin to understand that the game was unfairly rigged from the beginning, and this time, we’ve tried to set God up to lose, either unintentionally or intentionally.

Because if there’s one theme we can take from reading Scripture in the light of the Gospel, it’s that God always plays fair. And life is never just a game with God. It’s serious business because human souls are at stake. God lovingly formed and nurtured those beautiful souls, and God doesn’t play games with our souls. God saves them. God is always faithful, always true, always constant. God only seems unfair to us at times because we have been trying to play the game by our own fickle rules, and we usually don’t play well with others.

But hear what Jesus says at the end of our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus tells us one thing we can be sure of, and it’s this: God gives us rest from the arbitrary, unfair rules that we create for our games. But to gain such rest, we must be willing to learn from God. It’s not that God has some laundry list of capricious rules we must follow. It’s that God wants us to play well with others, indeed to play with God, and that means sacrificing our own distorted sense of what’s fair and unfair.

So what do we have to learn from Jesus, who shows us who God is? We have this to learn.

Come to Jesus, you who are weary of the petulance of the world, and he will give you rest.

Come to Jesus, you who are tired of the vacillating whims of the culture around you, and God will give you his stability.

Come to Jesus, you who wail but whom the world ignores, and God will mourn with you.

Come to Jesus, you who rejoice and want to dance with joy but who have no partner. God will dance with you.

Come to Jesus, all you who are tired of carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, and God will ease your burden.

Come to Jesus, all you who have been weighed down with oppression and injustice because this world does not play by the rules, and God will comfort you.

God does not hide things from us in order to play tricks with us. God’s ways, unfathomably fair and just, are hidden from us by our own actions, when we play by our own biased rules instead of learning from God. And the quest to know more than God and control our destiny and to be God, is a wearying exercise in futility.

But there is rest for us if we choose to accept Jesus’ gift. There is delectable rest from all the world’s capriciousness. There is rest from the tiresome petulance of those around us who don’t want to play with us, who want to sabotage the game, and who are sore losers.

Let us be different. May we learn and long to taste the sweet bliss of Jesus’ gentle and lowly presence, for he is ready to teach us how to truly know the Father. So let us go to Jesus, and he will show us by God’s grace how to play well with others.

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

The Sisters of the Perpetually Inside-Out Heart of Jesus

Somewhere in a secret drawer in his office, or in a carefully encrypted file on his computer, the Verger has possession of a very important document.  Subject to on-going interpretation and revision, it not only preserves the memory of the parish in particular ways, it also guides our daily activity.  Many hands have composed it over many years, and I have never actually seen the entire thing in one place at the same time.  The document is something we call The Customary.  A “customary” is a written account of the ways the liturgies are usually (or customarily) carried out in a given parish.  

Customaries are distinct from rubrics.  Rubrics are the instructions, printed in italics in the Book of Common Prayer these days, but once upon a time printed in red ink, whence comes the term “rubric,” which derives from a Latin word for “red.”  Rubrics are instructions that are understood to be required.  The rubrics state, for instance, that at the Mass, a priest is to hold or lay a hand upon the Bread while she recites Jesus’ words, “This is my Body.”  Likewise, the priest is to hold or lay a hand upon the chalice when saying “This is my Blood.”  But about genuflecting, ringing bells, swinging thuribles, vestments of different colors, kissing altars, or making the sign of the Cross, the Prayer Book has little if any mention.  These actions are all matters of the Customary - details about how a given community of faith puts into practice the liturgical actions over which they have discretion.  These actions, ornaments, and expressions of faith are not required by the church at large, but they are customary within a given community.

One of the distinctive aspects of the customary here at Saint Mark’s, for instance, is that at the High Mass the Sacred Ministers face east for the liturgy of the Word, but go around to the other side of the Altar to face the people throughout the prayer of consecration. It’s an uncommon practice in most of the rest of the church, but it’s entirely customary here. 

Over the past several months we have spent a lot of time at Saint Mark’s trying to produce something like a customary that keeps people mostly out of church, and forces you to keep your distance while you are here.  Working on the details of these protocols has been one of the least edifying exercises I have engaged in in 24 years of priesthood.  And, frankly, I have resented it.

The protocols for this Yellow Phase of the pandemic in Philadelphia limit to 25 the number of people who may attend any liturgy in this building, which can hold nearly 400.  The vast majority of the pews have been roped off to keep anyone from sitting in them; to ensure you keep your distance.  And of course, we have to repeat the instructions to discourage you from singing, although we are allowed to encourage you to hum behind your masks…. if you can call any such statement a word of encouragement.  This one has been especially hard, since it is customary here at Saint Mark’s to sing, when we can.  Why, the Ministry Residents and I have even taken to singing our grace before dinner every night.  It’s just port of the custom here.  So when we tell you to hum, but do not sing, it goes against the grain. 

There ought to be an order of nuns whose sole vocation is to run around with rulers slapping the knuckles of those who tie ropes around pews to keep people from sitting in them, or who devise ways not to open the front doors of the church, as we have had to do.  These nuns could pinch people in all the wrong places if they find anyone humming who could be singing.  They could do so with impunity, even righteous indignation.

If you go to our website you can find the entire nine-page document of protocols for our “return to limited public worship.”  These protocols have been worked out by the clergy and staff, following parish-wide consultation, with the approval of the bishop and the sanction of the Vestry.  They are important because they allow a few of you to be here this morning, and they begin to navigate a path out of our socially distanced isolation.  They indicate clearly, I hope, that we are playing by the rules at Saint Mark’s, and that we take this pandemic seriously, and more importantly, that we take the health and safety of each and every one of you seriously.

The protocols will be revised as circumstances change.  They could become more restrictive or less restrictive, depending on what happens.  They are what they are.  But, one thing these protocols must never become is customary.  The posture of restriction, distance, and closure that they represent is contrary to the mission of the church, and what they describe is a shut-in church, an inverted church.  To invert something is to turn it in the opposite direction.  We’d be tempted to to say that it’s to turn something inside-out.  But in this case, what it really means is to turn the church outside-in.

My order of nuns - let’s call them the Sisters of the Perpetually Inside-Out Heart of Jesus - could take as their founding warrant the entire 10th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, the end of which we heard today, when we heard Jesus say, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.”  The entire chapter relates Jesus’ missional instructions to the apostles when he sent them out.  Jesus’ most fundamental instructions to those first followers was that they were to turn their insides out: to share with the world the Good News of what he was doing in their lives and among their small community.  This Good News would never have spread if the apostles customarily turned their lives outside-in.  The church could only grow if its members lived inside-out lives, that shed the light of Christ in dark corners of the world.

Every young novice sister of the Order of the Perpetually Inside-Out Heart of Jesus should be required to read the 10th chapter of Matthew every day for a year.  And then, immediately after each novices’s daily reading she should be given a bowl containing a toothpaste tube the contents of which have been emptied into the bowl.  The novice sisters’ task, of course, is to put the toothpaste back into the tube. And the goal of every novice’s training and formation is to ensure that every sister fails at this task, and they eventually give up trying.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,” Jesus told his apostles.  But they couldn’t be welcomed unless they first went out.  And in sending them, Jesus was assuring them that he himself would be with them on every step of their inside-out lives, and that his mission is was inseparable from theirs.  Unless, of course, they turned themselves outside-in.

The church has suffered greatly in the past, no matter what her rules are, whenever she has allowed the things she customarily does to be turned outside-in.  An outside-in church obsesses about itself and its few members, and cares little for its neighbors, whom Jesus has called us to love.  An outside-in church shrinks and atrophies, forgetting how to use he most important muscles.  An outside-in church doesn’t even need to open its doors.

By contrast, an inside-out church is not content merely to open its doors, but carries the Gospel of Jesus with it - each member carrying it in her own marvelous way - to be shared with the world, so that in every word of welcome there is also a word of introduction to the One who turned our lives inside-out in the most beautiful way.

The customary of the Sisters of the Perpetually Inside-Out Heart of Jesus would be greatly challenged by the protocols of the Yellow Phase of the pandemic.  It is notoriously difficult to rap someone’s knuckles from a distance of six feet away.  Therefore, I have no doubt that their protocols during this awkward time in the life of the church must call for longer rulers.

Like the sisters, we are following our protocols during this time because it’s the only way to even begin to fulfill our mission.  But we know that these protocols will never become customary.  Jesus continues to call us to live inside-out lives.  His daily activity is to send us out, the way he sent out his first apostles, to shares good news, to do his work, and to extend and receive his welcome to all who want it.

The customary posture of the church, and of all he members, whether nuns of a questionable religious order, or members of a parish church in Philadelphia, must always be inside-out: facing the world with the light of Christ that he has planted deep within us, and which he calls us to share wherever, whenever, and however we can.

We will use these protocols as long as we have to.  But, I hope our lives will be swayed by the Sisters of the Perpetually Inside-Out Heart of Jesus.  For what we are doing right now can never be customary.  If it was, we would never be able to bring with us the greeting of Jesus to any who will welcome us when we turn our lives inside-out for the sake of his Good News of abundant life.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
28 June 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia