The Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle

Toward the back of the Prayer Book, in a section marked “Historical Documents,” you will find a vestige of the Reformation: The Articles of Religion, which should, at no point in your life trouble you very much at all, unless some day you happen to find that they come in handy when you are preparing a sermon.  Among the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, there is Article XXVIII - Of the Lord’s Supper.  And the last line of that somewhat schoolmarm-ish pronouncement says this: “The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.”  To clarify: that statement was not written by anyone at Saint Mark’s.

As an assertion of fact, Article XXVIII is undeniably correct. Although the details of the institution of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, will be found in four different locations in the New Testament, nowhere in scripture does our Lord provide for the reservation, exposition, procession, or adoration of his real and sacred Presence - his Body and Blood, hidden beneath forms of Bread and the Wine - in the Blessed Sacrament: all of which are practices we keep in this parish.

A lawyer might point out that Article XXVIII does not prohibit the reservation, carrying about, lifting up, or even worshiping of the sacramental stuff of Christ.  The decree (if you want to call it that) which has no force in the church, anyway, simply says that Christ didn’t instruct us to do any of that.  True enough.  Here at Saint Mark’s, we are bold to do so anyway.  What can I say?

The somewhat Puritan spirit behind Article XXVIII finds the possibility of the entirely objective Real Presence of Jesus in the forms of Bread and Wine - affronting, and too open to the possibility of mischief.  To some minds, that contrary spirit has seen the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament as something akin to locking Jesus up in a golden cupboard.  As if we could keep the Lord of the Universe contained under lock and key.

The young French Carmelite nun of the nineteenth century, Therese of Lisieux, now a saint of the church, was unimpeded by Article XXVIII, and spent many hours in prayerful contemplation before a Tabernacle, wherein the Blessed Sacrament was reserved.  There she encountered Jesus in rich and imaginative imagery.  Surprisingly, she, too, provides an image of Jesus as a prisoner.  Listen to what she wrote: “The Divine Prisoner of the tabernacle awaits the visit and the gratitude of his creatures who abandon him! He knocks at the door of our heart to make of it a tabernacle where he can rest.”

The Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle.  This beautifully inverted vision sees Jesus as a prisoner, not because we can effectively keep the sacramental forms of his Presence locked up, but because, in every place and every way that Jesus can be found, we can (and do) very effectively keep him locked out of our hearts, with practically no effort whatsoever.  The Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle is a prisoner there, not because there is a lock on the door of the Tabernacle, but because there are bars on the doors of our hearts.  And so very, very often we keep Jesus locked out of our lives, our love, our hearts; consigning him to stay, instead, in his place, safe from anywhere he might perturb our lives.

On March 15, 2020, the great key to the Fiske Doors, that swing on their glorious hinges, was turned in the lock to keep those doors shut, as they mostly have been locked for more than a year now, (even when we have been able to have limited congregations inside the church).

On that same day, the small key, on its red tassel, that fits in the lock of the golden door of the Tabernacle at the High Altar was also employed, to open that little door and bring forth the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s living Presence, so that we could place the sacred Host, in its monstrance, here on the Altar.  There, we asked Jesus to stand as guardian, sentinel, friend, and savior: a constant and obvious reminder of his Presence with us; and as a sign of our prayers of our own deep need, and desire, and helplessness.  We did not trouble ourselves about Article XXVIII.  We begged the Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle to move as freely among us as he pleased, and to do as much healing work as he possibly could.

Something else happened that day, too.  When we opened the Tabernacle door to bring out the Blessed Sacrament, this whole, entire building became a Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament, behind the locked, red Fiske Doors, wherein Christ the Divine Prisoner, awaited the visit and the gratitude of his creatures.  Every day, whether we knew it or not, as we (and the rest of the world) walked past those locked doors, Christ was knocking at the doors of our hearts, hoping to find in any who would have him, among all those who passed by, a tabernacle wherein he could rest.  This brownstone church became a kind of nesting Tabernacle: a big tabernacle with a red door, enclosing another, smaller tabernacle inside of it with a golden door.

But it turns out that there was more.  Late in June, we were able to open the west doors of the church to allow for limited congregations.  And once the people of God were able to take their place in here (albeit with unwelcome constraints as to how many could be here at once), we determined that it was alright to return the Blessed Sacrament, that had been perpetually exposed during those months of uncertain and anguished prayer, to its normal place of reservation, (so irksome to Article XXVIII).  For on that Sunday in June, when a way for the people of God to return to their rightful place within the church, the living Body of Christ could again be constituted here, as we learned to worship God -  masked, sanitized, and keeping our distance, but still joined together, and nestled within his tabernacle.

Still, for the past year, the constraints of the pandemic have put the church in the unusual position of telling people that when it comes to Communion you might have to be spiritual but not religious.  The reformers who so worried about reserving, carrying about, lifting up, or worshiping the Lord in his sacramental Presence were worried about religion that might not be good for one’s spirit - and God knows, there is plenty of bad religion out there.

Maundy Thursday provides an unusually heavy dose of religion, and it is very good religion indeed, if you ask me.  It reminds us who the Divine Prisoner of the Tabernacle is (Jesus), and why he came to be with us (to teach us to love one another, and to save us from sin and death), and where he can reliably be found (wherever the church takes bread, and blesses it, and breaks it, and shares it in his Name, by the power of the Holy Spirit).

And on this night of all nights, when we remember that even his friends forsook  him and fled, we are bold to carry that Bread about, and to lift it up, to reserve on its own altar of repose, and to worship there the One who is really present beneath the ordinary form of so simple a thing as Bread.

And so, he goes to the garden.  There, the Divine Prisoner of the tabernacle awaits the visit and the gratitude of his creatures who abandon him. He knocks at the door of our hearts to make of them tabernacles where he can rest.  

And if we will have him, as a church we become a tabernacle of nested tabernacles, enclosed behind those great red doors, with that Divine Prisoner who, alone, can make us free!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Maundy Thursday, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Salvager

There may be some irony, since Passover began last night, that traffic at the Red Sea is backed up.  Most maps that try to show where the Israelites would have made their escape from Pharaoh’s army by crossing the Red Sea, as Moses heeded God’s word and held the waters back, place that event not far from where a mammoth cargo ship is currently blocking all passage through the Suez Canal.  You can see satellite images that show the logjam of other cargo ships sitting there at the north end of the Red Sea, waiting for some resolution to this crisis.  Moses would have had a hard time finding a path across the Red Sea last night.

As an image for our time, maybe the photos of the Ever Given cargo ship, stuck for days now in the Suez Canal carry a kind of poetic force, in that these images seem to say a lot in a compact space.  There the behemoth sits, a prisoner of its own immensity, blocking traffic on both sides of the canal.  The ship is a feat of engineering, trapped within another feat of engineering.  It will take a feat of engineering to get her out.  Deus ex machina.  Or, with any luck, a high tide.  Deus ex natura.  Part of the ironic perfection of the plight of the Ever Given is the way the ship so completely blocks the canal,  how total is her obstruction.  That she is immense and hulking, making tug boats and bulldozers look puny and ineffective, adds to the poetry of the images.  The Rubik’s cube piles of shipping containers, holding all that stuff that we are supposed to be buying has its own ironic poetry.  So, too, the huge, white, block letters on her side hopefully spelling out “EVERGREEN.”

The New York Times reports, without a hint of irony, that the possibility that human error contributed to what’s taking place on the Suez Canal right now.  And the question remains: how will the ship be freed?

It puts me in mind not only of the story of the exodus, but of another story we don’t much read from the Bible these days: the story of the Tower of Babel, which purports to be a story about language.  The Lord says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down, and confuse their language....” (Gen 11:6-7)

But the story is really about much more than language.  The story is about power and wisdom.  Having made us in his own image, God knew all along what we’d be capable of.  Perhaps he also knew that our power would surpass our wisdom.   It perplexes us to this day that God could think that it might not be a good idea for us to have god-like power.  This, I think, is why the story is seldom told these days.  We disagree with its premise.  

One way of reading the story of the Tower of Babel is to see God preventing us from gaining access to a place that we are not wise enough to inhabit.  Or maybe God just wanted heaven for himself.  Having given us paradise, only to see that go badly, maybe God thought setting some limits seemed like a good idea.  Maybe God prevented the building of the tower in order to save the builders from themselves.  There’s no villain in the story, after all - no devil causing mischief - so what’s the problem here?  We can hardly imagine that we might need to be saved from our own selves.  The scriptures suggest that this failure of imagination could be a problem for us.

The cargo ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal is a tower of Babel on its side.  The grounding of the Ever Given is the perfect disaster of self-deception, because it is a horizontal disaster, not a vertical one.  And there appears to be no devil in this story; just a gust of wind; not so much as a drunken sailor to wonder what to do with.  Unfolding on a horizontal plane, the failure of this tower to accomplish its purpose can appear comical rather than tragic.  Comedy in this case is tragedy on its side: there is nothing to topple, nothing to collapse, nothing to come tumbling down in a heap of ash.  We remember what that looks like, and it is painful even to allude to it.  After all, almost nothing we propose to do is impossible for us.  We build towers high as we like.  Our journeys into space would make the Babel-ites jealous.  We edit genes.  And if we should happen to obstruct the path to our own salvation, well, that might just be the cost of doing business.

Of course, it is unlikely that a band of Israelites led by a man named Moses ever actually fled from Egypt, with the armies of Pharaoh in hot pursuit; or that by the power of the Almighty, Moses held back the waters of the Red Sea with a strong east wind.  This story is symbolic.  And what is symbolism in the face of the international shipping industry?

Some of those who saw Jesus hanging on the Cross, looked at him there and mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.  Let [him] come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”  They could not imagine that they might need to be saved from their own selves.  On the one hand they can see no divine purpose in the Cross; on the other hand, they see no folly in their own ways. 

There is almost never much traffic at the foot of the Cross.  A few gawkers; a few faithful women, an old man, ready to donate his grave.  No one expected much to come from the Cross - only grief and sorrow, not hope and love.  But we preach Christ crucified, because time and time again we find that we are the greatest threat to our own well-being, our own happiness, our own salvation.  And the Cross marks the path to salvation that no one seems able to obstruct: the path of love made perfect in sacrifice.

Unfortunately, Jesus is not the solution to the current crisis in the Suez Canal.  At the moment, we are told, the most likely solution is eighteen inches of water that they hope will come with a seasonal tide tomorrow.  There’s a lot riding on that high tide.

Most days, my job is to pronounce unambiguously the Good News of God’s saving work in the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ.  Palm Sunday invites us to see how easily we deceive ourselves; how quickly we turn from singing Hosanna to calling for blood.  And this day presents us with the opportunity to consider how effectively we obstruct the paths that God prepares for our salvation; and to ask, how will we be freed?

It may be that we cannot be ready to see what Christ is doing for us on the Cross if we have not realized how trapped we are, and that in many, many ways, we are the cause of our own predicament.  Maybe it’s important, from time to time, to arrive at the shores of the Red Sea, and find the waters obstructed, unavailable for crossing, the east wind having done its work already, to bring about this horizontal disaster.  Maybe then, when we realize that we have power that exceeds our wisdom, we will be able to look for the wisdom of the Cross, which looks like foolishness to so many.

Of course, we will continue to build towers, including horizontal ones that float.  We will continue to try to prove that nothing that we propose to do will be impossible for us.  And we will continue to exercise power that exceeds our wisdom.

The experts who are now working to free the ship from its plight work in a highly specialized industry, and the name for their work is apt.  They are called “salvagers,” and their work is to rescue those who have been wrecked at sea.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Palm Sunday 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Overshadowed Mary

“The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’”  (Luke 1:34)

The birth narrative of Jesus is susceptible to a considered feminist critique.  And naturally any such examination would look carefully at Mary.  Within that larger narrative, the story of the Annunciation brings some issues clearly into view.

Mary’s first words in response to the angelic greeting reveal the controlling patriarchal bent of the entire presentation: “How can this be,” Mary asks the angel, “since I know not a man?”  The biblical audience, of course, knew that whatever the task might be (even if it wasn’t producing offspring), if it was to be meaningful, a man would be required.  And St. Luke has put that same presumption right on Mary’s lips.  How can this (or anything) be... without a man?

Things get worse when the angel responds.  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” says Gabriel, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”  

Why must the accomplishment of God’s will require the overshadowing of a woman?  I am not asking this question, tongue-in-cheek; and it is, perhaps, the central question of this critique.  If the Gospel of Jesus is the truth; if it brings freedom; if it is renewal and reconciliation, then it cannot come at the expense of a woman - not any woman, and certainly not this woman.  And when I look up synonyms for “overshadow,” what I find is not encouraging: eclipse, dwarf, cloud, darken, obscure, dim, outshine, dominate, shade.  Is this the effect of the power of the Most High on Mary?  To eclipse, darken, obscure, outshine, and dominate her?  How like a man!

Since the biblical texts themselves, surely were produced by peoples and cultures that were fundamentally patriarchal in their outlook, we should not be surprised to find that the texts read that way.  But still, this text is sacred.  This story is sacred.  Shouldn’t it hold up to scrutiny?  If it’s good news, won’t something about this Annunciation story need to transcend the circumstances of its origins?  It won’t surprise you to hear that I think the story does just that.

We could start, not incidentally, with the androgyny of angels.  Or, to put it another way, we could take notice that Gabriel, like all angels, is gender-fluid.  The text does not tell us this, but the tradition does, and I think we should trust the tradition on this point.  I don’t know what pronouns angels use, but I strongly suspect that we should not take the answer for granted.

Turning to Mary, we should take note of an incredibly important detail that St. Luke provides us in his text.  He tells us that Mary, who was perplexed by the angel’s greeting, takes the time to “ponder what sort of greeting this might be.” 

Consider that seldom in the Bible do we find someone at a crucial moment taking time to think, perhaps to pray, to discern what God might actually be doing.  Except where Jesus himself is concerned, the Bible does not actually provide many examples of holy contemplation at decisive moments of faith and salvation.  David does not conduct a cost-benefit analysis of fighting Goliath, let alone a spiritual exercise.  Quite the contrary, in the Bible, people are given messages in their dreams to act upon right away (like Joseph), or words or instructions in visions (like the prophets), or flashes of insight (like Solomon), or somewhat heavy-handed divine coercion (like Jonah or Zechariah).  

But Mary, only Mary, takes her time, time to ponder what God is doing, while the angel waits for her.  We often assume that Mary uses this time to decide how she will respond, of her own free will, without coercion or cajoling, to the greeting of the angel.  And I think we might be correct in this assumption.  I pray that we are.  For much depends on the freedom of Mary’s choice.

Reaching a bit beyond the Annunciation (but foreshadowed here by the angel’s news that Mary’s cousin is also with child), we see Mary visiting Elizabeth, in whose presence the Mother of our Lord will soon sing Magnificat, “the longest set of words placed on the lips of any woman in the whole New Testament.”*

The feminist theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, points out that during that visitation, while Mary “is in the embrace of her cousin Elizabeth; Zechariah has been struck dumb; the house is now women’s space, and [the women] fill it with a prophetic language of faith.”  Women’s space, women’s voices, women’s songs, women’s prayers, women’s wisdom, and women’s bodies all have their own dignity, beauty, and honor, even in the landscape of the biblical era, even in the pages of the Bible - especially in the company of Jesus.

By no means do these few observations of mine amount to a full response to the feminist critique of the birth narrative of Jesus.  But I hope that we can begin to see that there is more at work in this story than the particular cultural mores of its author or its age.

But still there is the important matter of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, which at first glance, looks like such an obvious infringement on Mary’s personhood.  “The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you....”  Does this mean that the power of the Most High will eclipse, dwarf, cloud, darken, obscure, dim, outshine, dominate, and cast shade over the lovely and loving figure of Mary?  And if it does, who cares how much time she has been given to think about it?

The word for “overshadow” that St. Luke uses here is only very rarely used in the New Testament, and only one other time in the Gospels, when St. Mark describes the scene with Peter and James and John on the mount of the Transfiguration, as Jesus stands there, radiating light in the company of Moses and Elijah, and, St. Mark tells us, “a cloud overshadowed them.  And from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved….’”  This overshadowing cloud is not a cloud of eclipse, darkness, obfuscation, or domination.  This is a cloud of light, brightness, revelation, clarity, and illumination.  It is the cloud of God’s living Presence, wherein only few eyes have squinted to see the nearness of that Presence, only few ears have heard the timbre of that voice, and only few bodies have felt the closeness of the dew of God’s love in the mists of God’s own divine touch.

The Psalmist imagined being sheltered beneath the shadow of God’s wings, almost unable to imagine any place safer to be.  And when Mary is overshadowed by the power of the Most High, there is no place safer, no place holier, no place less violating than the damp warmth of that cloud, where Mary is embraced for the highest purposes of Love, as no one else in the history of the universe has been thus embraced, thus loved, thus overshadowed.  

No wonder that when Mary has decided what her answer to the angel will be, she is emboldened to speak in the idiom of creation, echoing the words of the creator under whose shadow she will soon be held, and who called the creation into being just by saying, “Let it be.”  What other lips could ever utter such a thing, and accomplish anything by it?  But when Mary speaks these creative words, “Let it be with me according to thy word,” in all her wonderful womanliness, do not the morning stars sing again together, and all the heavenly beings shout again for joy?

No wonder the catholic tradition gets carried away when trying earnestly to come to grips with the mystery of God’s love, and Mary’s remarkable role in the story of that love.  For no other creature has ever been overshadowed like this: so thoroughly and completely enfolded in the divine embrace, so entirely involved in the divine work, so perfectly welcomed into the divine household.

No wonder that once she finally found herself face to face with Elizabeth - with someone she could actually tell about it - no wonder she sang!

No wonder we find ourselves, here, beneath the shelter of God’s wings, praying that God might somehow, some way, some day overshadow us, too!

No wonder, the angel’s greeting has become code for the prayer for the thing that is beyond praying for, beyond hoping for, and so unlikely to come to pass as to be considered ridiculous, although we hope with all our hearts that it just might happen:

Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee!  Hail, Mary; hail, Mary; hail, Mary, full of grace!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Feast of the Annunciation, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

*Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet,” in America magazine, 17 June, 2000

The Lady Chapel at Saint Mark’s