Measure Twice; Cut Once

In Christian iconography, the principal symbol of St. Thomas is the carpenter’s square: a tool of his trade - usually depicted together with a spear: the instrument of his martyrdom.  The saint is widely said to have been the apostle to India, and tradition holds that he put his carpentry skills to work building churches on the sub-continent.  One particular legend holds that the apostle was commissioned by an Indian king to build a palace, and was given a large sum of money to use for that purpose, while the king was away.  But St. Thomas never even began to build the palace; instead he gave all the money away to the poor.  On his return home, the king was enraged and had St. Thomas thrown in prison, but Thomas eventually managed to convert the king and win his own release, and carry on with his mission.

There’s an irony, that Thomas’s identifying symbol - the carpenter’s square - is a tool that went un-used in one of his most noteworthy exploits.  There’s also a certain irony that this specific tool - the carpenter’s square, which is used to ensure that a right angle is true, a cut is straight and accurate; a tool used to make sure you get something right, to build your building straight, and true, and strong - this tool is the symbol of the most famous “doubter” of the church, who is often thought of as the one who got it wrong.   

It puts me in mind of the old carpenter’s adage, “measure twice; cut once.”  You measure twice, so that you only have to cut once.  You check your work.  If what you are cutting is too long, well, the second cut will easily correct the error.  But if what you cut is too short, then you have wasted material, and have to start with another piece of wood.  Better to measure twice; cut once.

The circumstances of Thomas’s doubting were that he was absent on Easter Day when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, who had all gathered together in a house.  But Thomas “was not with them when Jesus came,” according to St. John.

Why wasn’t Thomas there with the others?  I suppose it’s possible that he had already given up on the company of the Twelve, and had gone off to find work.  It’s a full week after Easter before Jesus appears to them all again, and confronts Thomas about his doubt (“Do not doubt, but believe”).  Had Thomas returned to a week of work; a week of measuring twice, and cutting once, making sure that he got it right, that his corners were square, and that his cuts were true?

No wonder that one day during that week, when he ran into the others and they told him that they had seen the Lord, he said that he would not believe unless he saw some proof.  Maybe Thomas had spent that week of work not just doubting the resurrection, but questioning everything: his friendship with the Twelve, his confidence in Jesus, his hope that something big and new was about to happen because of Jesus, and his dream that his own life was about to be transformed as a result.  Better to get back to work, put your head back on straight, buckle down, and get back to the real world.  Better to measure twice and cut once.  

Maybe that was the problem.  Maybe he had dropped everything and followed Jesus, as the others had, without measuring twice.  What do fishermen know about measuring twice?  But a carpenter should have known better, even when following another carpenter... especially when following another carpenter.  Measure twice; cut once.  But Thomas hadn’t measured twice.  He had simply and swiftly cast his lot in with Jesus, like the rest of them.  

St. John’s depiction of St. Thomas as the lone doubting disciple marks him out as the exception, not only among the Twelve, and the other disciples on that first Easter, but also the exception for the whole church.  The message about Thomas - explicitly on Jesus’ lips - is that you should not be like him.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  And, of course, if the church was going to grow back then, and if the church is to exist and grow today, many of us must believe who have not seen the prints of the nails in Jesus’ hands, or placed our hands in his side.

But many of us who are not carpenters have still internalized some version of the carpenter’s adage, “measure twice; cut once.”  We don’t want to make a mistake.  We don’t want to be wrong.  The carpenter’s square is a tool for getting it right, after all: for marking an angle true and square.  Should faith be based anything less?

Unfortunately, a lot that might have been said between Jesus and Thomas was left either un-said or un-recorded.  I hope that there is more that was said between the two than the short conversation St. John relates.  And based on the tradition of prodigious evangelism that Thomas carried out, I suppose that, in fact, he and Jesus might have spoken with each other at length at some point after their initial reunion.

If nothing else, I suspect that Jesus had a conversation with Thomas that went something like this:

“My friend, I see that you have been working again, that you have taken up your tools and that you are laboring as we both once did in a trade we both know.  Your labor is good and honest.  You can work with your hands, and this is very useful.  Indeed, you will need these skills and your tools for the work that lies ahead of you, about which you cannot at the moment possibly imagine.

“You are going out into the world where many people will have heard about me, but have never seen me.  You are going out into the world in which the powers-that-be are actively trying to bury the story about me, since burying me did not bring about the result they desired.  You are going out into the world in which people do not really want to know the truth, but they will argue about me because, they say, you have no proof.  No one you meet will be able to place her fingers into the prints of the nails in my hands.   No one you meet will be able to place his hand in the wound in my side.  You will ask them to believe what they cannot see for themselves.

“You do not know yet how powerful your witness will be; but I know.  You do not know how many people will believe because of you; but I know.  You do not know that, although your carpenter’s tools will prove important to your work, they are not in fact, the most important tools you will need, and sometimes they will go entirely un-used.

“I know, I know that now that you have seen me, you are all praise, all belief, all faithfulness.  But only days ago, you demanded proof.  You needed to see, and to feel, and to touch.  Only days ago you refused to believe because you did not see what the others saw.

“But Thomas, from here on out, nearly every other believer is going to be like you, not like the others: they will not have seen, and yet, you will persuade them to believe.  Your example will become the rule, not the exception.  The pattern of your faith will be come the norm.  And people must know and hear, dear friend, that believing is not a function of seeing; faith is not a function of proof.  There is nothing to measure, and nothing to cut.  You have been reaching for the wrong tools.

“For faith is a gift, dear Thomas.  And it is a gift that has been given to you.  The only question now is whether or not you will accept the gift of faith, whether or not you will use the gift of faith, whether or not you will trust the gift of faith.  What is so for you will be so for every other person you meet, outside the Twelve.  You will have one thing to offer, one thing to teach: that faith is a gift that anyone can accept.  And that when you do accept it, your life changes, you become more than you ever dreamed you could be, and you go further than you ever thought you could go, and the old gifts you had been given, like the old tools you possessed, can be used for new and wonderful purposes.  Faith is a gift, dear friend, and it is a gift that has been given to you.  And your faith is the gift by which you will build something that is true, and square, and strong.  So the gift of your faith is a gift you must accept, a gift you must embrace, and gift you must use.

“How can this be?  Since your faith seems weak and insufficient to the task?  Remember that all things are possible with God.  And you, dear doubting Thomas, you will bring blessings to many who have not seen and yet will believe.”

The legacy of St. Thomas was not to go about teaching people to measure twice; cut once.  It was to show that faith is a gift that anyone can accept, even if you stumble, and get it wrong the first time.  If you get it wrong, you don’t have to worry about making a second cut if your first cut was too long, or about creating costly waste by cutting too short.

You just accept the gift, maybe little by little, maybe all at once.  You accept the gift; and you believe.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
11 April 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Resurrection

This is a true and relatively unremarkable story that I nevertheless hope is worth sharing on Easter morning.

Yesterday was a lovely, ordinary, early spring day in Philadelphia.  I was on my way to Trader Joe’s just after 8, to buy some racks of lamb I’d noticed they had earlier in the week.  Felix was with me, and we were walking west on Market Street beneath the crisp, blue sky, when I happened to glance across the street and noticed a person lying in the street, more or less in front of bus shelter.

Now, one of the painful realities of life in Center City Philadelphia, is that you encounter your neighbors - other human beings - stretched out on the sidewalk in some state of want more often than you should.  It happens often enough that the sight of a prone body on the ground is not an immediate signal that help should be summoned.  To make such a statement from the pulpit sounds amazing and sad, but I offer it as both a confession and an assertion of the state of affairs in our city.

There’s a spot by steps to the coffee shop down the street that is warmed by a vent, and so, is often occupied at night and in the mornings by a person lying down before its warmth.  There are manhole covers at 18th and Walnut that provide warm spots where persons may often be found stretched out on the sidewalk.  More than one tired body regularly finds a resting place here in our our garden where there are a few reasonably safe and sheltered spots to lie down for the night.  So, to see a person lying on the ground here in the city does not raise an instant alarm.

But the person I saw yesterday morning wasn’t on the sidewalk.  They were in the street.  I did not see how the person came to be lying there.  I noticed no commotion.  I did not hear the person cry out.  I did not detect any movement from the person.  I noticed, from across the street, that the person was missing one shoe, and I had already noted that the morning was more than chilly: it was cold.  What I’m trying to tell you is that it took a few long moments for me to calculate whether or not this was a situation where my help was needed and possibly wanted.

Two details caused me to cross the street and check.  First, the missing shoe, which I noticed was actually just a couple of yards away from the person, on the sidewalk.  Second, the fact that this person was not lying down on the sidewalk, but in the street, where a bus might pull up.  Cars were, in fact, driving past.  Perhaps, I thought, a Good Samaritan was, indeed, required.

Let me assure you that the story gets no more dramatic than this.  A woman had tripped and fallen into the street, losing her left shoe in the process.  When I reached her, I asked the obvious: Do you need help?

Yes! she needed help!  She’d tripped, and injured her shoulder; she was afraid it was broken, and she couldn’t get up.  Up close, I could see that the woman was in pain, and either frightened or unable to move.  Probably both.  And cold.  I knelt beside her to reassure her as I dialed 911.  I asked her her name (Rashida) and I told her mine.  And I repeated that everything would be alright, the ambulance would be there in no time.  And it was, in less than two minutes.  And they put Rashida’s shoe on her foot, and they helped her up.  And I collected her keys and her phone, that had fallen to the street, and handed them to the EMT.  And off they went to the hospital.

Obviously this is no heroic tale.  It’s the kind of thing that happens in the city.  Absolutely the only noteworthy aspect of this story for me was the calculus I had to do to decide to cross the street.  You understand that the calculation was not whether or not I wanted to help someone in distress - I’d like to think I’d have leapt over traffic if I’d seen Rashida fall.  The question wasn’t even whether or not that person lying there in the street needed help.  Of course she needed help!  The person on the manhole cover needs help.  The person sleeping in the garden needs help.  But such is the state of our social contract in America that in such cases, very often help is not available, help is not offered, and also very often help is not accepted.  For me, yesterday morning, the calculation was this:  does that person lying in the street want help... and is there anything that I can do to provide it?

A few minutes after the ambulance carried Rashida off, I was inside Trader Joe’s discovering that they did not, in fact, have any racks of lamb, not even first thing in the morning.  “We’ll have them tomorrow,” they told me.

“That’s what they told me yesterday, too,” I said.  And as Felix and I walked back home, lamb-less, I couldn’t have cared less that I was still without a crucial ingredient for Easter dinner.  I was just glad that I had decided to cross that street to help that person lying there.  And I knew that there was a decent chance that I might not have done so.  Because I might have thought that it was just one more shoeless person lying facedown in the street.  (Again, it sounds a little sick to say such a thing: I know.)

Now, I don’t want to make too much of this little episode.  And I certainly don’t want to portray myself as an unsung hero because I bothered to cross the street and help someone who’d tripped and fallen.  Remember, the point of telling you the story is that I might very easily have run the calculation differently in my head, and failed to cross the street.

Here’s another simple story I want to tell you.  This one isn’t my story, it’s the story of an old and dear friend of mine who happened to be at a meeting at Trinity, Wall Street, just blocks away from the World Trade Center, on the morning of September 11, 2001.  The details are worth knowing, some time, of my friend’s escape (if I can call it that) from Ground Zero, and then her swift return there within days (a day?) in order to serve the firemen, and policemen, and EMTs, and the workmen, and the family members, and co-workers, and the coroners, and the grief-stricken, and the horrified, and the mourning, and the bereft, and anyone at all who had reason to be there at that ash-covered, apocalyptic site; but I won’t rehearse that all here with you now.

I want to share with you an observation that someone else shared with my friend, as the first spring after 9/11 approached - and therefore the first Easter.  There, at Ground Zero that spring, they looked up and saw that there was still debris from the fallen towers, and from the offices and business that once inhabited those buildings, strewn in the branches of the trees, after all those months.  (Paper, fabric, metal?  I don’t know: it was debris.). And how it weighed their hearts, as they tried and tried to bring some love and mercy into those devastated streets, and into the lives of those who had to be there... how it pained them to see the wreckage of that act of murderous cruelty still hanging in the branches of the trees, even as the trees were budding with spring’s new green.  How it made them wonder if we would all ever recover from this collective injury; if there was a way out of the pain and suffering that had hung in the air there, and floated like ash across the globe, and was, perhaps, even still caught in the branches of the trees.

But then, someone noticed the chirping of birds.  And when the birds were observed more closely, they were seen to be busy making nests.  And to make their nests, the birds, as it happens, were collecting bits and pieces of that dreadful debris that hung in the trees, and using the debris of 9/11 in order to build nests for themselves, where, as the Psalmist says, they may lay their young.

That the birds might take the wreckage of death and destruction and use it to build nests for their young seemed to perfectly encapsulate the Easter Gospel that God’s gift of life triumphs over death, and that it always will.  And there, under those boughs still hung with the debris of death, resurrection began to seem possible.

We have a tendency to see the Resurrection as something, on the one hand, that happened a long time ago in history; or, on the other hand, as some future hope that lies beyond a set of pearly gates in heaven.  But the tendency to see the Resurrection in either the distant past or the distant future that means that we have a lot of trouble with resurrection in the here and now.  And if we are going to see the power of the Resurrection in the here and now, we need to see it at work, not only for the birds, but in our own lives, too.  The birds don’t need a savior; but we do.

And the church is surprisingly inept at proclaiming the Good News that resurrection happens all the time: that between the memory of Jesus’ resurrection in the past, and the hope of some general resurrection of the dead in the future, there is resurrection life unfolding all around us, where that which had been cast down is being raised up, that which had grown old is being made new, and where that which had been left for dead is given new life in the here and now!

Now, look: Rashida, had not been left for dead.  I know that.  (I’m back on Market Street, now, on the way to Trader Joe’s.) But, you know, not every body that’s lying on the street gets up and makes it to safety... and especially not every black body.

Some version of the calculation I described, in determining whether or not to cross the street yesterday morning, takes place all the time, including in situations that are a lot more fraught than the situation I encountered yesterday morning.  And the mere juxtaposition at the moment, of a white man on his knee in the street beside a black person in trouble is, at this moment in time, complicated, fraught, and by no means a sign that points to something good. 

So, the resurrection moment wasn’t to be found in anything I did to bring aid to Rashida yesterday morning.

And the resurrection moment wasn’t when the EMTs arrived and took her to the hospital.

The resurrection moment was when God moved me to cross the street, to overcome the several forces that might easily have kept me on my side of the street.

The resurrection moment came when it was clear that I would not pass by on the other side; so that some small fragment of good could come between two people who might easily have always been on opposite sides of the street from one another.

Or maybe the resurrection moment came when I left Trader Joe’s empty handed, but realized that my errand had been fruitful anyway.

Just to be perfectly clear: the way I see it, I was the one receiving the gift of resurrection in these moments, since God was teaching me how to live beyond my own selfishness.  Someone was going to help Rashida yesterday morning, I assume.  The only question for me was: would it be me.  And I am telling you that the answer could have very easily been, No.

My friend from New York recently urged me to consider what there might be of the wreckage of the past year of pandemic that might yet prove to be transforming, life-giving.  She was asking what debris there might be, so to speak, caught in the branches of the trees from which nests might yet be built.

My God, it’s been an awful year!  But maybe, just maybe, from all the terrible-ness of this year, some of us are learning to look for resurrection, to expect resurrection, to believe in resurrection, which might just mean that we are learning how to calculate the way we respond to our neighbors - being ever more ready to do so with mercy, care, and love.  Which is precisely what Jesus taught us to do, before he showed us with his own life exactly what resurrection looks like.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Easter Day, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

What It Means

Years ago, in my student days, I had a work-study job at the Newman Center, the Roman Catholic Campus Ministry, at Berkeley.  I was a Roman Catholic then, and I loved working there.  My job was mostly to answer phones, and mostly those calls were about what time Mass would be held and who was celebrating.  

But one day as I sat at the receptionist’s desk, someone called and asked “What does it mean that Jesus died for our sins?”  

Now the Newman Center in Berkeley was a bastion of liberal Catholicism.  It was feminist and gay-friendly even then, in the middle of the culture wars of the 1980’s.  We were located about a block away from People’s Park.  We had liturgical dance.  There was something in the tone of the caller that suggested to me that his was no friendly inquiry, much less a genuine question.  It felt like a test.  It felt like some kind of challenge.

And I gave an answer that has stayed with me all these decades later.  I remember it so well.  In fact I tell this story often, so pardon me if you have heard it before.  “What does it mean that Jesus died for our sins?” the caller asked.  And I said, “Please hold while I find a priest to take your call.”  

Now it’s true that my job was funded by a work-study grant and I was not allowed to do actual religious work in that position.  Still, I think about that encounter from time to time and I wish that I had been a better witness to the love of Jesus.  If the caller’s question really was a test designed to demonstrate that liberal Catholics were not serious Christians, I’m pretty sure I gave that caller exactly the answer he thought he was going to get.

And thus the awkward irony of my standing before you today.  I know some terrific priests now, as I did then, but this isn’t a good time to put you on hold and ask one of them to speak for me.  

How would I answer that caller now?  Would I remind him that there is not one single answer to the question?  Would I point out that each of the four gospels gives us a slightly different answer and that Christian tradition has never really settled on one approach?  Maybe.

I might also tell that caller that the answer is not given in the abstract, in a brief exchange over the phone.  It isn’t good material for a quiz or a survey.  If we want to know what it means that Jesus died for our sins, we need flesh and blood specifics.  

The specific flesh and blood reality before us this Good Friday is the story of the passion of Christ in the Gospel of John, the gospel we just heard.  John’s gospel is not quick, it’s not easy, it’s not transparent.  But in John’s gospel Jesus shines out.  Jesus transforms the darkness.  Jesus transforms us.  The world is sinister and clouded in this version of the crucifixion but Jesus is as clear as day.

It’s the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem.  That’s a celebration of deliverance from tyranny and oppression.  But the oppressor is also present.  Pontius Pilate is doing what he can to consolidate his authority, to keep the heavy hand of Rome in place over the people of Israel.  The religious authorities, and in some ways the people themselves—including the disciples, including Peter--are all casting about to figure out how to hold onto whatever power they have.  They are trying to find a way to neutralize Jesus without drawing down the brute force that Pilate has at his disposal.  They are all figuring out who they are in relation to who Jesus is and what Rome requires.  

The situation here is so murky, in fact, that we have learned to turn the whole story into a condemnation of Jews.  We have followed Rome in isolating and oppressing Israel.  Every time we hear the expression “the Jews” in this story, we should remind ourselves that Jesus is a Jew, this gospel is written for Jews, and the Jewish people are in no way being dismissed as “Christ-killers.”  Mostly the term “the Jews” in John seems to refer to religious authority figures, not to the Jewish people.  But let’s go a step further: the message of this crucifixion story is that we all participate together in shutting God out. There is no superior stance possible.  Nobody in this story can really face who Jesus is, the presence of God among us.  

And it’s precisely in that murky situation, where everyone is implicated and nobody lives up to the challenge of witnessing to Christ, that Jesus’s death on the cross makes all the difference. 

Let me share something with you.  For a long time I thought that John’s gospel painted Jesus as some kind of unfeeling superhero.  When Jesus says things like “I can lay my life down and I can pick it up” I feel like he is far from me, far from my humanity.  I can empathize more with the Jesus of the other gospels who say they are afraid, who ask that the cup pass from them.

But this year, this Good Friday—how I wish I had that caller on the phone this morning!—this year the clarity and direction of Jesus in the midst of all the sham, complicity, and self-dealing of this world means everything to me.  It means life. 

It means Jesus has a special connection to us in moments like the one we are in, when senseless death is all around, and when we don’t know where or how to stand.  It means that he willingly.  Whatever he may mean to us, we mean everything to him.

John’s Jesus specifically wants to enter into just the kind of world we inhabit.  John’s Jesus has a special desire to save those of us who are lost in complicity and fear and hypocrisy and double-dealing.  He came for this, for us, for the world in which George Floyd is killed on the street while onlookers plead with the authorities to show human compassion.  For the powerlessness and grief those onlookers feel.  For the complicity in which I am trapped.

John’s Jesus, that word of God made flesh, came for us not only to die as the least among us, but to be raised from the dead, to lift us up to him and with him, to ascend to heaven, to strengthen us.  To give us power to become the children of God.  We who have had to watch friends and family die from a virus without being able to trust that we could pull together and do our best to prevent those deaths.  We behold him, full of grace and truth, determined to dwell among us. To show us that in him death is not the victor.

And maybe the greatest news of all is this.  In the middle of a world in which everyone—everyone!—is jockeying to hold onto some kind of power, Jesus who is all power, without whom nothing was made that is made, Jesus the Word of God made flesh, simply lets all of it go.  Jesus refuses to hold on to anything the world can give him.  He slips through the world’s fingers.  Rome is nothing to him and he is content to be nothing to Rome.  But we are everything to him.

What does it mean that Jesus died for our sins?  It means--this morning, in this location and time--it means that nothing the world wants to give us can entrap us.  It means that “meaning” in the world’s terms, significance in the world’s terms, is never going to lift us up or tie us down.  It means that we are free to be the children of God.  We are free.  The knee on the neck, the sorrow of the powerless onlooker, the frustration and despair of quarantine and death: we are free from all of them.  We are strong in him.  He is strong in us. 

I may not have all the words yet, and you may not either.  I pray more words will be given to us.  But together, in him, nothing can stop us from living into his truth.  As boldly as may be.  

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
Good Friday, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia