On the Water

Our gospel this morning is wonderfully simple in terms of plot.  The disciples are in the boat, there is a storm.  Jesus walks across the water to them and Peter asks to be commanded to join him.  Peter notices the wind, and sinks.  Jesus saves him.  

It doesn’t take long to tell the story and it’s not hard to get some inspiration out of it, though the exact nature of that inspiration might be open to discussion.  It might be “Don’t put Jesus to the test by asking to perform a miracle.”  It might be “Step out in faith.”  Maybe what we take from this story is “Don’t take your eyes off Jesus or you’ll fall.”  It may be “Jesus can do more than you can ask or imagine.”   It might just be “Jesus is God and you aren’t.”  

All good and well.  All simple enough.  There may be contradictory “messages” that emerge from this story but all the different messages, even when they conflict, are patently true and important.  We get it.

But in each of these messages, with all their clarity, there is something lacking.  Something a little bit deceptive.  The clarity obscures something.  That something is chaos.  

There’s the chaos of the storm, the fear the disciples feel about being on their own in such rough water.  There’s the chaos of the darkness and the abandonment by Jesus, who has after all sent them out to drown while he prays alone on a mountain.  But then when Jesus appears, that’s hardly reassuring, because he is so strange.  The disciples think he is a ghost or an apparition.  They don’t just see him on the water and start rejoicing.  He has to reassure them, teach them something about who he is.  

But then there is chaos in Peter’s heart, too.  One moment he recoils from Jesus as from a ghost, and the next moment, just to test whether it’s really Jesus, he asks this frightening apparition to command him to step out on the waters.  And that works, but the next minute he realizes that it’s windy, and in his confusion he seems to think that it’s the weather that makes all the difference here, not relative density.  So he notices the wind, and he falls in.  And then the moment after that he is back in the boat, worshipping Jesus.  Chaos.  

I wonder where, in all that tumult, Peter got the idea of being commanded by Jesus.  Did you notice?  He doesn’t just ask Jesus to let him take a walk on the waves, nor does he positively declare that he’s going to jump out of the boat and take a stroll.  No, he says to Jesus, “Command me to come to you.”  In fact, he asks for that command as a reassuring sign that Jesus is who he says he is: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  

Chaos, darkness, storm, water, command.  We’ve seen these elements before, and they suggest a much more complicated story than the simple one we often tell about this passage: “In the beginning,” the Book of Genesis tells us, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen.1:1-2).  This is the primordial condition, the chaos, over which God spoke those first words of creation, that first command: “Let there be light.”  And from this chaos God named day and night and proclaimed it good.  

And these waters of chaos have always held a special place in the stories of God’s people.  Noah’s flood, and his salvation, are like a second telling of that ancient tale.  The crossing of the Red Sea is another version, as God’s people are able to pass through the formless void of the water into freedom.  Again, after their wandering, the Israelites pass over the Jordan river to enter the promised land, created as Israel in a new Eden.  And of course when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, he descends down into that watery void, emerging to hear a voice from God, creating again, not just day and night but salvation, redemption of a fallen creation: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” the voice says as the Spirit descends.  “Let there be light,” God said as that ancient wind blew over the waters.  God saw that it was good, and God named it.  That creating, commanding voice of God.  

Is it possible that chaos itself stirred Peter to want to be commanded into a new being by the voice of Jesus?  There is that storm on the Sea of Galilee, in the darkness, with the wind blowing. Peter thinks maybe he sees Jesus, and he listens for that primordial command.  “Take me with you!” he asks.  “Make me be with you as you transform the chaos.  Make me different.  Change everything.”  

If this were just a story about Peter’s desire to follow Jesus into those stormy waters of creation, it would be important.  But it’s about much more than Peter.  It’s about you and me.  Because we’ve heard that same call.  As Saint Paul tells us, in baptism we die and rise with Christ.  In baptism there is a new creation.  In our baptisms, we have discerned something shadowy coming toward us from the primordial waters.  We’ve called out to him: “Bring us where you are.”  We’ve plunged down with him, into the Jordan, or the Red Sea, or the Flood, or the formless void, down into death and confusion.  Down into matter.  Down into the virus and the fear and the hunger and the struggle.  Down into the racism and the violence.  Plunged down with Jesus.  Where the destruction is. [1]  With him we’ve gone where chaos goes, where it rages: “If that’s you out there in the elements, Lord, speak the word and let me go where you go.”  

And in baptism we emerge with him to hear the sound of the Spirit proclaiming “This is my child whom I love.”  We are named in baptism, recreated, brought into a new home, delivered out of slavery, saved.  

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”   And in Peter’s life, in his day, or rather in his darkest night, when the stormy waters surrounded him and the wind was against him, Peter called out not just for an end to the storm but for the sound of the original creative command of God.  Chaos responds to the voice of God.  Chaos responds to the Spirit’s touch.  Chaos is dry land for Jesus, a sure foothold.  For us, chaos is the beginning of a story of creation.

If we want to hear God calling to us, calling us into being, remaking us, making of us a creation, now is our chance.  Now when the waters are rising and the fever is raging and old things are being cast down.  That shape we can barely see, coming toward us—that’s Jesus.  That’s the invitation to plunge in.  That’s the promise of rebirth.  That’s the promise of our baptism.

Jesus has shaped us, maybe from our earliest days, before we could know why we were being baptized, Jesus has formed us as people in his image.  

I think the early Christians who told and retold this story knew something powerful about being recreated by Jesus.  I think that’s why they preserved this story for us, why they kept the sacrament of baptism, why they developed the language of sacraments at all.  Because they knew that in the swirling waters they met Jesus, down where he was meeting all of creation.  They knew that when he walked toward them, master of the waves, he trailed in his wake all of salvation history, all the dying and rising.  They knew that somewhere in chaos was the call.  

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
9 August 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[1]  Rowan Williams has written powerfully on this subject, and his work is inspiration here.

The Mysterious Quails of Rittenhouse Square

Here’s an experience most of us have had one time or another.  Probably it’s happened at a wedding reception, but it could have been at a restaurant.  You’re sitting at the table, and the salad plates have been cleared. The bread basket is coming around, and a waiter appears at your elbow with a plate that is set before you.  You look at it, and you see that the dish is not what you ordered.  So, before the waiter can get away, you look up politely, and say, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t order the beef, I ordered the fish.”  Not to worry.  Chances are the person next to you is having a similar conversation, except that he ordered the beef, not the fish.  In a trice, the plates are switched and you go on with your meal. Not a big deal.

Now, just hold on to the memory of that very common and un-troubling occurrence.  And remember that the meal goes on, and everyone has a good time.  The bride and groom dance beautifully, and the night is every bit as much of a blessing as it was supposed to be.  It was simply not a big deal that the dish that was brought to you at the outset was not what you ordered.  Remember that.

Now I want you to try to remember something that you know from long ago.  You were not there, but you have heard about it in church.  When the children of Israel were in the desert... after God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, after he led them across the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army nipping at their heels… after the bitter water at Marah was made sweet, and then God led his children to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees… and after the people got hungry, and God told Moses that he would send bread from heaven… because the children of Israel had been complaining… they had been forgetting what it was like to be slaves in Egypt… and they had been starting to convince themselves that they’d been better off back then, as slaves… God did, indeed send down bread from heaven.  He sent manna in sufficient quantity to feed all his people.

But do you remember what else God did?  Do you remember what else God sent?  Yes?  God sent quails.  That’s right, quails.  He told Moses to tell the people that they would have meat at twilight and bread in the morning, and “then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”  (Ex. 16:12)  I’m told that every spring quails migrate across the Red Sea on the way to Europe.  So maybe it was no big deal for God.  But to his children, whose journey was only just beginning, you’d think it would be big.

The point of the story, of course, is that God feeds his hungry people.  Make it a bigger point: God gives his people what they need.  Even bigger: when God’s people are in trouble, God comes to their aid, God brings plenty where there is little, quenches thirst in the desert, fills bellies that are hungry, has mercy in the face of distress, rescues those who are oppressed.  God saves!  And often, he starts by sending food.

St. Matthew already knew all this, of course, when he set down the story of the feeding of the five thousand.  His material may have been new, but his theme was old: God saves, and often he begins by sending food.  Jesus had compassion on the crowd that followed him.  Not only did he heal the sick, but when it got late and the disciples wanted to send everyone home, Jesus thought that maybe it would be better to send food.  “You give them something to eat,” he said to his disciples.  They didn’t know yet that it’s not about the food, that the real message is that God sends help, that God saves.  But they did get the idea that God sends food, even when it seems like there is no food to be had.  God sends healing.  God sends blessing.  God saves his people when they are in need of saving.

Now, here’s a strange bit of local news.  About a week ago, quails appeared in Rittenhouse Square.  The quails were brought to my attention when my dogs were cavorting with a group of their friends, and a fellow dog-owner pointed them out: three brownish birds that were clearly not pigeons, foraging in the bushes.  None of the dogs took much notice.  (So much for Labradors.)

Every day last week, I asked someone else about the quails, trying to find out where they came from.  Two theories prevailed: that the quails had escaped from a live poultry market, or that some misguided naturalist had introduced them into the Square.

One day, I saw a young woman sitting on a bench with a quail in her hands.  It was larger than a softball.  Its wings had been clipped, and it seemed un-troubled to be held by a human.  But the woman could not explain how the quail came to be in the Square, she was simply enjoying holding it.

I kept asking around, and the same two theories were offered, but no one seemed to know how they got there.

On Friday afternoon, I saw a young boy, maybe eleven years old, chase a quail and catch it.  (Kids these days.)

But it turned out that the boy’s mother was not far away, carrying a cage by a handle.  She kept quails in the Northeast, for the eggs, she said, and had heard about the quails in the Square.  They are easy prey for anything from squirrels to cats or dogs, she said.  She was surprised they had lasted this long, and she had come to rescue them.  She had six quails in her cage, and her son had two more in his sights. Who was I to object?

And, so, the mystery of the quails of Rittenhouse Square came to an end without an explanation.

Every day I recite prayers at this altar that are enough to break your heart.  Of course, there are the prayers about which you know the whole story: the virus, the unemployed, the deaths, and the daily, endless prayer for peace.  And then there are the prayers that you (and often I) know nothing, or only a little, about - names of people we pray for.  And the stories behind many of those prayers would break your hearts if you knew them, would break my heart if I knew them all.  They’re stories of sickness, and cruelty, and bad luck, and failure, and hunger, and thirst, and injustice, and pain, and suffering.  And although we never say our prayers quite this way here at Saint Mark’s, often those prayers amount to a cry: “Dear God, send help!  Send healing, send forgiveness, send mercy, send some angel to fix this thing, send a blessing, because we really need it.  Send justice, O God.  Send peace, please, and send it fast!  Send reconciliation.  And send a soothing balm to ease the many tensions that are pulling us apart.  And, yes, Lord, while you’re at it, send food!”

You can bet that every one of the five thousand people gathered that day with Jesus had a cry like that in her heart.  Why do you think they followed him?  They needed healing, forgiveness, mercy, something broken to be fixed, or a blessing.  They needed justice that had been denied, and, of course they needed peace, reconciliation, and a soothing balm.  “Dear God,” they might have prayed, “send help!  At the very least, send food?”

I have been thinking about how very acute is the need for God to attend to our prayers, to send help, to save us; how the need for God’s aid (and of course for salvation) seems so immediate at the present moment.  Maybe it’s always like this, but I’ve been around for a while, and somehow the need seems greater just now, the urgency seems to have crept up a notch or two.  And the prayer comes fast to my heart:  “Dear God, send help, at the very least, send food!”

And I saw those quails in Rittenhouse Square.  And I thought about how God sent quails to feed his hungry children in the wilderness.  And I thought (and I think I actually said this to God), “Oh Lord, yes, I want you to answer my prayers, but I didn’t order the quail.”

And do you know that the children of Israel said more or less the same thing in the wilderness.  Oh, yes, Lord, they said, we asked for your help, but we didn’t order the manna.  We didn’t order the quail.  And don’t you think that those five thousand people probably responded in more or less the same way when the disciples came around with baskets of plenty?  “Oh, thanks, but I didn’t order the bread or the fish.”

No, you didn’t, but God is giving it to you anyway.  God is feeding you anyway.  God is blessing you anyway.  God is sending help.  Do you want it or not?

I don’t know what a few misplaced quails were doing in Rittenhouse Square last week.  But if they can serve in any way as a sign that God is at work to send help and to save us, then I will take it.  And why shouldn’t we see a sign in the presence of those quails?  Every day I read an article, or a talk to a person about some aspect of our troubles that we could make better, if we were willing to.  Or about the hope that is to be found even in times of pain and suffering.  Every day I read in the scriptures the promises of God to lead us through our worst moments, across a wilderness of confusion and frustration, and into a Promised Land.

Since I was a child I could have told you how many people Jesus fed, when there was nothing to eat but five loaves and two fish.  And I could have told you how many baskets of left-overs there were when he was finished feeding them.  No, they didn’t order the bread and the fish.  But God gave it to them because they needed something to eat, and he wasn’t about to let them go hungry!

No, I didn’t order the quail.  But I surely needed something; I surely needed a sign that God isn’t going to let us all go wanting.  I needed a sign that God is working on justice, that God is working on forgiveness, that God is working on reconciliation, that God is working on feeding people who are a lot hungrier than I am, and that God is going to show us some mercy in the midst of a whole lot of trouble!

I didn’t order the quail.  But I have prayed, like so many others for all of history “Dear Lord, send help!”

And late in July of 2020, in the middle of Philadelphia, in Rittenhouse Square, God sent quails, maybe as a sign that we will not go wanting, that we will have meat at twilight, just as every morning he gives us bread from heaven, right here at this altar.  Every day God blesses us, and leads us closer to our salvation, and there are baskets left over; there is more than enough of God’s grace for everyone.  Every day God sends help.

Dear Lord, please don’t stop.  We didn’t order the quails, but we’ll take what you’re giving us.  Keep sending your help.  We need it so badly.  Come quickly, and save us!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
2 August 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Rittenhouse Square

Heeding the Fine Print

If you’re anything like me, you might not always be very diligent at reading the fine print. If it’s something really momentous like a rental agreement or a job contract, I’m more inclined to wade through the minutiae of technical language before signing on the dotted line. But here’s a true confession: I can’t tell you how many times I have hurriedly and mindlessly clicked the little box on my computer screen that said, “Yes, I agree to all the above terms and conditions,” without having read any of it.

You might regret being so hasty in agreeing to all the terms and conditions when it turns out that there was one crucial sentence in four-point font that comes back to haunt you later. The incredibly low interest rate goes up drastically after a few months, and if only you’d heeded the fine print, you wouldn’t have been caught off guard.

But when it’s just a matter of uploading software updates to your computer or signing up for a new email account, it’s tempting to be less careful in heeding the fine print. Who wants to spend an extra fifteen minutes reading all those boring details? So, without a second thought, we check that box, “Yes, I have read and agree to all the terms and conditions stated therein.”

I admit that I’m somewhat skeptical about the disciples’ response to Jesus’ query in today’s Gospel. Jesus has just rattled off five similes about the kingdom of heaven. These are the shortest parables we get from Jesus, and because of their brevity, they remain, at least to my mind, somewhat elusive.

After all, this is the nature of parables, isn’t it? They don’t provide clarity; they stimulate imaginative thought. Jesus seems to be offering us an abstruse mosaic that depicts the kingdom of heaven, instead of one crystalline picture. He suggests what God’s kingdom is like, not what it is. No single image can encapsulate the wonder of this dominion. If we reduced it to one simile, we’d be all the poorer for it.

But let’s return to the disciples. After Jesus offers five holy similes about the kingdom of heaven, he asks them if they have understood all this. Jesus packs a lot into a few verses. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. And the disciples’ reply is simple: yes. Really? Come on, disciples, did you really get all that? It’s reminiscent of the overwhelmed student trying to absorb a heady lecture from an unintelligible professor. Just nod and pretend that you understand it all.

Even given the likelihood that the disciples had more inside knowledge of Jesus’ words than we do, does it frustrate, perhaps even annoy, you that the disciples so glibly answer yes? Or did they simply check the box after letting the fine print go in one ear and out the other? Did they rashly agree to the terms and conditions without fully understanding them? Did they even realize they’d signed up for anything in the first place?

Based on later Scriptural evidence, it may be that the disciples just thought they understood the terms and conditions. A look at the disciples’ later behavior in the Gospels suggests that they didn’t fully understand all the fine print of Jesus’ speech. These disciples in their weakness were all too ready to accept the greatness of the kingdom of heaven without any other qualifiers. Some seven chapters later in Matthew’s Gospel, the mother of James and John asks Jesus to grant seats to her sons in his kingdom, one at his right and one at his left. Jesus responds that whoever wishes to be great must be a servant, and whoever wishes to be first must be a slave.[1]

The disciples’ quick affirmative to understanding Jesus’s parables is later countered by Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus on the eve of his death. Judas betrays Jesus. And the disciples couldn’t even stay awake with him as his death drew nigh.         

And what about us? While we might be all too willing to affirm that we understand Jesus’s description of the kingdom of heaven, have we truly comprehended the fine print behind it? It’s not difficult to find hope in Jesus’ words. The mustard seed parable reminds us that God values the small things in life, and with minute quantities, God can work wonders. The image of yeast allows us to trust that the small actions we undertake in the name of Christ can, in God’s marvelous providence, actually make a difference. And the kingdom of heaven is of great value like a treasure. It also resembles a fine pearl. It is precious and beautiful, and we like things that are precious and beautiful. And finally, at some point, God will sift through what’s in his kingdom and keep only the good. Why would we want anything to do with the bad?

But this is all still very much on the surface. There is yet some fine print behind Jesus’ words. It is so fine that we have to read carefully behind the text. After all, it’s easy enough to find encouragement without reading what’s in the small font, and then reply that, like the disciples, yes, we do understand all of this.

There is a glittering allure behind the images that Jesus offers us. And I can’t help but wonder if we find them hopeful because, without the clarifying fine print, they seem to feed our distorted notions of hope. It’s a secular hope that has wandered far from that which God truly offers us.

We imagine a tiny seed growing into the largest of trees, the biggest of trees in the neighborhood, the greatest tree in the world, a tree so mammoth that it only reinforces pride in our handwork of planting the seeds. We picture grains of yeast multiplying and multiplying, yielding bigger and bigger loaves of bread. These loaves of bread are huge, the best bread we’ve ever baked. We love the idea of treasure, of finally discovering a trove of riches we’ve always longed for. We are entranced by the dazzling beauty of the pearl of great price; it looks rather stunning on a necklace. And in that great fishing net, we are all too happy for the bad seeds to be thrown out, those people we abhor and wish to distance ourselves from.

Now add to this the voices of our world that constantly tell us that we need to be something big. And great is not enough. We must be greater, the greatest. Some of us are told that our voices are too humble or gentle to be heard or say anything of importance. Some are told that their education is too small for them to be of worth to society. Many are warned that their checking accounts have too little money in them to have a good life. And if you have too little, then perhaps you haven’t worked hard enough. And the more blasphemous, accusing voices say that your faith is too small for you to be in God’s good favor.

And so the news that God looks with compassion, mercy, and love on the small things of this world, calls them very good, and gives them growth is powerful. But it’s not all there is to the story. There is fine print that we have not yet heeded, even though we have said, yes, Lord, we understand all the terms and conditions.

We should be grateful that God has no desire to make things or us great just for the sake of being grand. If we heed the fine print, we need not fear a gotcha situation like the technical language that usually catches us off guard and spells bad news. Behind the fine print of the Gospel, there is a healing message that will bless and grace not just our own lives, but the lives of all people.

Let’s take a look at the fine print of Jesus’ parables. The mustard seed, that smallest of seeds, does not just become the greatest of trees. It becomes the greatest of trees so that the birds of the air can find shelter. Those tiny, tiny grains of yeast when mixed with flour don’t just make the most delicious loaves of bread. They make dough rise and expand so that beautiful bread can be baked and given to nourish bodies that are hungry. The treasure hidden in a field is not some miser’s horde that will collect dust until the miser dies. It is treasure that gives its owner joy and causes that owner to give up everything else, because great value doesn’t reside in many possessions. The fine pearl is of such beauty that even one small pearl is worth forsaking all other material things, because richness doesn’t consist in having much. And that big fishing net isn’t intended just for catching the largest number of fish. The image is meant to inspire discernment, so that through patient sifting, the choicest fish are kept.

Very little discernment is required to amass a fortune or to try to be the best in whatever you’re doing. But much discernment is required in making choices so that we can play our part in witnessing the greatness of God’s kingdom.

If we’re really honest, we probably don’t fully understand Jesus’ somewhat enigmatic parables. That’s okay, and pat yourself on the back for having the necessary humility to say so. But if we read the fine print and permit the Holy Spirit working within us to give us eyes of discernment, these parables will tell us something about who we are to become. We are to think more about the greatness that God alone can bring. For that to happen, humility is a term and condition. To find eternal treasure we are to give up much. To have big hearts, we are to have tiny egos. Finding greatness is not about us. It’s about a greatness that enfolds the very least of these.

The point is not for each of us to hope that God will make us or our human projects great, but instead for God to use us to provide greatly for others. If we’re going to check that box and say yes to the terms and conditions with some degree of truthfulness, we must read the fine print. And that fine print tells us in no uncertain terms that we must lose our life to find it, and to experience the glory of God, we must be servants. For if we lose our lives for the sake of the Gospel, we will find life. But more importantly, others who have little will find life, too.

So Jesus asks us now, have you understood all this? But before we answer the question, let’s read the fine print. And then, and only then, can we honestly say yes to the greatness of God, who makes all things new.

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

[1] Matthew 20:26-27