Here am I

“Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  When Mary speaks those words, “Here am I,” she echoes the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures.  God called to Moses from the burning bush, and Moses answered “Here am I”(Ex. 3:4).  An angel of the Lord called to Abraham, and Abraham answered “Here am I” (Gen 22:11). God called Samuel and Samuel answered “Here am I” (1 Sam 3:4).  “Here am I, send me,” said the prophet Isaiah to the Lord (Is 6:8).  Mary’s response is a reporting for prophetic duty, according to the traditions of her people.  Here am I.  

In stepping up for her duty this way, Mary gives herself over to a universe of unknowns, trusting only in the word of God’s angel.  She is young and insignificant and unmarried.  In her village word of her pregnancy will spread quickly.  She would risk humiliation, the end of her engagement to Joseph, the pain of being his betrayer.  She might well risk becoming an outcast, living in poverty.  She might well face violence like the woman Jesus will one day rescue from stoning.  Even if all those around her are kind and understanding and they somehow rise to this occasion, pregnancy itself is a deadly risk.   She will become heavy and awkward, at best.  And even if, somehow, she is surrounded by people who accept that her child is the offspring of God, she will forever walk among her friends and family as the embodiment of God’s absolute strangeness.  From this moment on, no matter what, Mary will do the work of testifying that God is with us.  As we know, and as Simeon later tells her, she will pay a terrible price for that awareness.  A sword will pierce her heart.

Mary is not without questions.  To her “How can this be?” the angel says that she will be overshadowed by the power of the Most High.  He tells her that her cousin Elizabeth will also bear an impossible child.  And he tells her that nothing will be impossible with God.

“Here am I,” she says, and yes, ever since that day all of us Christians who walk so improbably alongside her might look upon her and think, “Well, here you are.”  Here you are with child, a strange and compelling figure for all we fear and all we hope for from God.  Here you are on intimate terms with the sheer unlikeliness of all God’s work among us.  Here you go about your daily work while bearing God’s unending glory and God’s limitless humility.  You, more than any of us, know that we will see our redeemer in our flesh, in these mortal bodies. 

You’ve received the angel, and now we struggle to receive you.  Yours is a legacy we desire and fear.  Yours is an example we are willing to paint in pictures and celebrate in song but not a one of us can know what you know.

So we struggle to receive you, to welcome you. And in that struggle we receive all that we are as the church, all that we might be, all that might be possible with us if nothing is impossible with God.  So it’s hard for us to do: to wrestle with the weight of that particular glory.  To welcome Mary and to accept that she is a figure for what we are.

I say that we walk with Mary in the sense that her life has been the life of the church, that as the bearer of Christ she has prefigured every life in which Christ is present.  The life of the church throughout history and the church throughout the world, but also specifically my life and yours.  The work of this parish.  The Mass at this altar.  Wherever Christ is borne.  We see our lives in Mary and we see again in this young girl the strangeness, the vulnerability, the absolute improbability, of the faith we live right here and now.  

It might help us, just now, to remember the difficulty of being Mary or even just walking alongside her.  It might help to be realistic about her, to remember that she is such an unlikely bearer of our salvation.  It might help to remember her as a vulnerable young girl who willingly accepts danger, shame, discomfort, humanity uneasily inhabited by the divine.  “Here am I,” she says.

In this moment we are waiting and watching while a virus overshadows great swathes of the life we are accustomed to living. We know that it is bad, and we aren’t sure how bad it might still be.  We know that school and work and home are all upended.  We are unsure about what happens next to the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.  We are not sure how close the virus will ultimately come to each one of us, but we see it coming near to many whom we love.  We see others sick and dying.  We or people we know are in deep mourning.  Loss is everywhere.

And again, as it has done continuously for two thousand years, the church asks us to accept Mary, carrying her heavy burden so awkwardly but with such hope.  How are we to live in these dark days?  How are we to see ourselves?  How are we to trust God?

We are to welcome young Mary, this awkward pregnant woman.  “Here am I,” she declares, and we are to take her in.  It’s our job to hear her strange experience and to accept it as prophetic.  It’s our job to understand the shame under which she labors and to see it transfigured into blessedness.  We are to trust her trust.  And in welcoming her we become like her.  We become the church: ready to carry the word of God, ready to be overshadowed by God, not without our questions but in the end ready to learn that nothing will be impossible with God. 

Receiving Mary as Mary received the angel, we may find ourselves so much more alive to the presence of God in this unpromising time.  When others mourn we may know God’s presence in our own words of comfort, or in the compassion that moves us silently.  We may see in mourning a reflection of the beauty of each human being.  Where we are told to see only restriction and isolation and masks, we may begin to see the outlines of heroic sacrifice for the greater good.  Where poverty and hunger are growing so too may our care for the poor and the hungry.  Where there is social destruction we may begin to see the chance for social transformation.  These are not quick fixes but they are marks of God’s presence, intimations of God’s grace.

“Here am I,” Mary says to the angel, and here we are, the ones with the power to care and to help and to keep our spirits strong and to pray and to see God where no one else does.  We have been trained by Mary to be the church.  She has trained us both by accepting what the angel says to her and by offering herself to us to be accepted.  Remember, you don’t just love Jesus, you also love the one who risked everything to bear him.  Her quiet readiness has shaped your heart.  The humility that let her face danger and shame and mystery is also yours, if you are willing to recognize what she did as a prophetic act in the most glorious sense of the word.  She carries a mystery in flesh and blood, God’s own life.  And though we may never fully understand what it is to be the church as she is the church, we are nevertheless in it with her.  

Stay in it with her.  Cherish her prophetic courage.  Commit yourself, as she did, to flesh and blood and danger and salvation.  “Here am I,” she says.  And here are we, so awkward, so improbable, and yet so full of grace. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
20 December 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

What's On The Label?

Not long ago, I discovered an unusual religious text that had actually been right in front of me for many years, but I’d never read it before.  Now, I am trying to make some sense of it.  Listen to a part of it: “Love is like a willful bird!  Do you want it?  It flies away!  Yet, when you least expect its bliss, it turns around and it is here to stay!”

Another portion: “Co-in-ci-dent-ally and yet oh-so-slow, sweet kisses whisper softly into waiting ears, arousing heavenly flames, that enlighten, renew, brilliant fires, blazing through dark, lonesome years!  For who else but God gave man this sensuous passion?!”

You are a community of well-educated, bright people, with broad religious curiosity; do you know where these texts come from?  Do you recognize them?  They are not obscure or difficult to find, although there are various versions of the texts.

This religious writing comes from the label of Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1Pure Castile Soap.  In this case, it is from the label of the Hemp Rose variety, with the rose colored label, which is most appropriate for Gaudete, the Third Sunday of Advent.  That label also includes the text of Kipling’s famous poem, “If,” along with the very slightly amended lyrics to “The Impossible Dream.”  So, let’s call it quirky?

The original Dr. Bronner was not actually a doctor, but emigrated from Germany in 1929.  When he started the soap company in 1948 he decided to use the labels on his soap to promote his idiosyncratic, universalist religious ideas.  Every one of the labels I looked at includes this brief credo: “In all we do let us be generous, fair & loving to Spaceship Earth and all its inhabitants.  For we’re ALL-ONE OR NONE!  ALL-ONE!”  Now, yes, there is a detail in that credo that gives me pause.  But I’m on board with the call to be generous, fair, and loving, and to be united in our humanity.

If you want to imagine what it felt like to be among the learned Jewish authorities, the priests and Levites, from Jerusalem questioning John the Baptist, you might start by getting your hands on a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s and reading the label.  With a bottle in front of me, I feel like I can relate to the priests and the Levites.  Generous, fair & loving: OK... but what is with the Spaceship Earth?  When I pose that question it’s not too much different from asking, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

I even found one direct biblical quotation on the classic, blue bottle of the Peppermint version of Dr. Bronner’s.  It was admittedly woven into a wordy message more particular to the Bronner enterprise, but still, it’s easily identifiable, from the First Epistle of St. John: “God is love.”

I hear you thinking, Sean, you have lost it.  How can you stand here and draw parallels between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the label of Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure Castile Soap?  And you are right: there are very significant differences.  Here’s one: every bottle of Dr. Bronner’s includes instructions on how to dilute  the soap, under the heading (in all caps) “DILUTE!  DILUTE!  OK!”  In fact, the 18 uses of this 18-in-1 soap are listed when you find the directions for  dilution (not all 18 are on the label).  The instructions tell you to dilute Dr. Bronner’s in order to wash your face, hair, body, floors, windows, dogs, and to brush your teeth, among other things.  So go ahead and dilute!  OK!

And here is an important distinction, because the Gospel of Jesus does not need to be watered down.  You can and should embrace the Gospel at full strength!  In his ministry, John the Baptist made only a few claims about the power and blessing that would come with the Messiah.  I don’t think you could find eighteen.  But those claims were undiluted.  In the Gospel today we are told that John “came to testify to the light” that the darkness cannot overcome.  The other  evangelists tell us that John came preaching repentance and forgiveness, and the coming of the kingdom of God.  The message of John the Baptist is not a message diluted, or in need of dilution, but a proclamation distilled to great strength and power and immediacy.  “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” 

I wonder if the need for divine intervention can possibly have felt as acute in first century Palestine as it feels now.  A pandemic virus is raging that, by the end of today, will have taken 300,000 lives from this nation alone.  The effects of climate change are becoming more and more obvious all around us, as is our stubborn indifference to it.  And in this nation, at such a difficult time, we have an effectively dysfunctional federal government.  And then, there are the failures and struggles, the  fissures and decline of the church.  All of these contribute to a growing sense of distress.  A prophet would be useful right now - not to compound that distress, but to bring comfort, healing, forgiveness, and hope.

You could look to the label of Dr. Bronner’s soap to find some comfort, healing forgiveness, and hope.  But you’d be better off relying on the soap just to keep you clean.

But I think John the Baptist might have envied Dr. Bronner’s acumen at message placement. Even today, I think John might like the idea that you could encounter his message every day in the shower or at the sink, or while you’re washing your dog.  Prominently displayed on every label of John the Baptist’s three-in-one products would be the prophetic words, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”

Portions of the prologue of the Fourth Gospel would be printed on the label: “There was man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.  The true light that enlightens every[one] was coming into the world.”  The text would be dense and direct.  “Among you stands one whom you do not know, even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie."  “I myself did not know him; but [now]... I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God."  Every label would remind users that “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,”  because what is more hopeful than repentance and forgiveness in a world that has done so much wrong?

Among the questions the priests and the Levites ask John the Baptist were these: “Who are you?…  What do you say about yourself?”  Wouldn’t it be great if he could have handed them a bottle of soap, and replied, “Read the label; it’s all there!”  And there it would be, in small, sans-serif print: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

For years I have known about Dr. Bronner’s.  It used to be something I used only when I went camping, because it was so multi-purpose.  But in these days of pandemic, I’ve had it around more because it’s so handy, so easy to find, so readily available.  And, of course, I don’t have to have read the long, wordy, quirky label, and I certainly don’t have to subscribe to the idea of “Spaceship Earth” (which is hard for me), or that we’re “ALL-ONE OR NONE!  ALL-ONE!” (which is easy for me), in order to know that actually Dr. Bronner’s 18-In-1 Pure Castile Soap does what it is supposed to do: it cleans.  You use it, and you find that it works.

Here’s something that Dr. Bronner’s and the Gospel do have in common.  You don’t have to know the text, or even be sure you believe in it, in order for it to work.  You take it for what it is, and you discover that it works.

You welcome the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness and you see that it brings you grace, mercy, and peace.  You open your eyes and your heart to the light, and you see that no darkness can overcome it.  You seek the kingdom of God, and you find that there are signs of it dawning, where hope, and healing, and beauty, and mercy, and wisdom are found.

It was the ministry of John the Baptist to be the first to make the Good News of Jesus handy, easy to find, and readily available.  He was the first real prophet of the new covenant of love that God was establishing with his people.  Strangely, I think he’d be entirely comfortable in the company of Dr. Bronner.  I think the two would have stories to tell one another and laugh, and cry.  I’m quite sure that John would shake his head with confusion at Bronner’s idea of the Spaceship Earth.  But they’d find enough to agree on.  They’d agree that we should all be generous, fair & loving to all people.  They’d agree that God is love.  I feel sure they’d agree that “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  And I think they’d both do everything they could to encourage us to do whatever we can to “make straight the way of the Lord.”

For the light is coming.  And love is coming too, like a willful bird!  Do you want it?  When you least expect its bliss, it turns around and it is here to stay!

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

Comfort

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

For some weeks now, as is appropriate for the season leading up to the Feast of the Incarnation, we have been hearing in the scriptures about the coming judgment of God.   In the second letter of Peter this morning we hear about the day of the Lord, and it sounds terrible.  The heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire.  The earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.  This terrible moment of disclosure implies judgment; what we keep hidden will be revealed.  We will be seen, in all our compromise and shortcoming.

The church tells us about the coming judgment of God at this time of year because we are preparing to meet Jesus.  And, as John the Baptist can tell us, meeting Jesus is something to get ready for.  “Repent!” he cries, and the people repent, turning to him for baptism and the confession of their sins.  “He’s coming,” John tells the people, “and if you think I’m a shocking figure, in my prophet clothes with my prophetic eating habits, just wait until you meet him! He is more powerful than I am.  I am not fit to untie the thong of his sandals.”

So the expectation is clear this morning. We will meet a figure who exposes us, judges us, changes our world: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

How is it, then, that we hear from Isaiah on this same morning, and in his telling there is comfort in the Lord’s arrival? 

Of course our readings are talking about distinct arrivals here: Isaiah’s moment in the history of Israel, the beginning of the earthly ministry of Jesus, and the second coming.  But the whole point of our lectionary today is to draw connections between these moments of God’s breaking in, to teach us to see the coming of Jesus now, as we observe this season of Advent, through the lenses of Isaiah and of apocalypse and of the ministry of John the Baptist.  

And so, putting all of that together, we are asked to combine comfort and judgment this morning.  They are strange bedfellows.  Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid being judged.  But here comes the Lord, bringing comfort as he judges.  If we are going to prepare to meet him we might need to meditate on judgment.  Most of us need a little help with that.

So let’s try a thought experiment.  Let’s make a list--something like a litany--of comforts we may experience when the day of the Lord draws near, when we accept the judgment of God.  

Maybe we will be free on that day.  Maybe we will drop the pretense of perfection. Jesus might steal it from us like a thief. Maybe the burden of false superiority will be lifted. We might find ourselves speaking nothing but the truth. It might seem pointless to us to attempt to make a good impression.

It’s possible that, having begun to speak the truth, we will find ourselves acknowledging persecution. We go to great lengths to cover up the injustice of the way we live.  On the day of the Lord, though, it looks like we will be able to face what is true.  It might be possible to contemplate forms of change that are unthinkable to us right now.

Everything we’ve stolen, materially, emotionally, intellectually, will be returned to its rightful owner.  We won’t need it anyway.

We might surrender the lesser comforts of this life, knowing that God alone can give us peace and joy.  Our addictions and our almost-addictions will cease to compel us.  No more struggle.  Whatever that substance is, or that relationship, or that feeling we crave, it will return to its rightful place as one of God’s gifts.  It will stop torturing us in the name of short-term gratification.

No more dishonest comfort.
No more false hope.
We won't have to pretend that we, all by ourselves, can be the solution to another person’s pain.
We won’t have to pretend that we have a plan or know what God’s plan is.
Speaking the truth will be enough.

We will be honest about our need for comfort.
We will drop the pride that keeps us from asking God and others for the help they can give.
It won’t feel like a worthwhile bargain anymore to trade our emotional depth for stoic endurance.  We’ll have nothing to gain from “holding it all together” in ways that are untrue.

We won’t try to be God anymore, to make ourselves a false God in the place of the one we need.
That fear underneath us--that God isn’t with us--will fall away.

We will name our own experiences with confidence. Suffering will be suffering. We won’t hide from our losses anymore.  We’ll simply mourn them.  We’ll meet Jesus in our mourning instead of holding him at arm’s length. 

It will no longer surprise us that our worlds can be turned upside down by a virus.  It won’t surprise us that we are like grass that withers and fades.  We’ll be able to acknowledge our vulnerability and get down to caring for one another in earnest.  All that work we do to pretend this isn’t happening?  We’ll be free to do something else.

We’ll be free to have compassion for the sad state of our public life and our institutions.  Our need to blame someone for what we have become will slip away.  Enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy--not to mention media coverage--will be freed up for positive action.  Think of the time we’ll find in the day when we are not anxiously searching online for the roots of our present crisis.  The roots of our crisis are obvious.  On the day of the Lord we can admit that.

We won’t even need to judge ourselves.  “The earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”  That work of evaluation will fall away from us.  We can stop mentally separating the sheep from the goats everywhere we go.  We can stop worrying about which we are.

If we can admit that we are not invincible, we will no longer need the possessions and prestige that hold us prisoner.  That whole debt will be cancelled, and we will learn what else we can do with the great creation in which God has placed us.  Our world of human owning may dissolve but in exchange we will receive the earth and the sky and the seas.  Nothing will come between us and the desire to honor what God has made.  No lie about who we have to be.

Judgment scares us.  Of course.  All our lives judgment has been waiting for us in ways large and small.  It has almost inevitably been wielded by people whose motives were less than godlike.  It has usually meant separation from the people we love.  If we fail, we lose them.  That’s the way we think. The unskillful use of judgment has harmed us, every one of us.  

But the judgement of God is the sign that God is with us. 

And so on the day of the Lord--I pray it may be today--with fear and hope, we ask:

Come, Lord, and be our judge. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson.
6 December 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia