The Parable of Sam and the Miraculous Orange Tree

Like everyone in Southern California, my parents hire gardeners who come to mow the lawn, etc.

Like almost everyone in Southern California, my parents have an orange tree growing in their yard.

Like a fair few people in Southern California, my parents have grandchildren: in their case, two fifteen year old boys, fraternal twins.  My sister, her husband, and their boys live only about eight blocks away from my parents, so visits to and from the grandsons are not rare.  Sometimes the visits have purpose and goal beyond familial loyalty and affection.  This is a story of one such visit by one of the grandsons.  (I’ll call him Sam.)

Recent rains in the region contributed to the prodigious growth of the orange tree.  I don’t know the variety, but they are juice oranges.  Noticing that the orange tree was getting too big for my parents’ small backyard, the gardeners told my parents, one recent week, that on their next visit they would prune and trim the tree.

Now, of late, the orange tree had been producing fruit at an ambitious rate.  And my parents, not wishing to lose any of their potential harvest, decided to check the tree for ripe fruit before the gardeners came back.  My father collected what he could from its lower branches.  But, alas, the tree had grown so tall that the fruit on the upper branches was out of his reach.  Now in his 80s, my father, wisely, does not decide to go and fetch a ladder when he encounters a situation like this.  Instead, he decides to summon a grandson.  I’ll call him Sam.  

Sam, who at the tender age of fifteen can safely negotiate ladders (along with surfboards, skateboards, and snowboards; so, really, what is a ladder to him?) was recruited to come over to my parents’ house in order to collect the oranges from the upper reaches of the tree.

Dutifully, Sam arrived and set up the ladder.  My parents trust him; they are not the overbearing types; they did not observe his every move from the kitchen window; they went about their business, as Sam went about his business.  And before long Sam returned to them with just a few oranges in his hands, which he handed over to Grandma and Grandpa.  “This is all there was,” he reported.  “Any other remaining oranges have been picked at by birds, and they aren’t worth taking.”  Very well.  And, thank you, Sam.  You are such a good and helpful grandson, and it is always a joy for you to be here.  Give your grandmother a kiss before you go.

Days later, the gardeners arrived with their clippers, their trimmers, and their blades and saws of various kinds.  A ladder was set up, as they prepared to trim and prune the orange tree.  Miracle of miracles, what should the gardeners discover in the branches of the orange tree, but many, many, well-ripened oranges, entirely un-molested by birds, ready to be picked, so they could be squeezed for their sweet and luscious juice!

“Mira!” Called the gardeners to one another and to my parents; for indeed there were many oranges to be picked.

My mother brought bags in which to place the oranges from the tree, which, mind you, only days before had been declared by the boy we’ll call Sam to be nearly fruitless (except for a few sad, picked-over remnants).

This is the estimated count my mother reported to me:  Each of the two gardeners was given a bag with a couple of dozen oranges in it.  My parents kept a bag with two dozen oranges in it.  They delivered to my sister (and her husband, and their two wonderful sons) a bag with two dozen oranges in it.  A dozen went to the next door neighbor.  A dozen went to friends across the street.  A dozen went to a friend of my Dad’s.  The final dozen went to friends around the corner.

That’s just shy of 150 oranges, from a tree that only days earlier had, to the teenage eye, appeared to be almost completely fruitless!  Now, these numbers have not been independently verified, but my mother is a reliable source, and not prone to exaggeration.  150 oranges in the tree!  What wonders doth the Lord perform!  (I won’t ask you for an Alleluia, but you know it’s called for!)

One of my signal observations about the New Testament is that nowhere within its scrolls, fragments, or pages of text, in any of the biblical languages, nor in its English translations, is there ever employed a word that means “success.”  Success is not a New Testament concept, and the writers of sacred writ, like its principal protagonist, do not ever promote a concept of success as important to their worldview or their spiritual priorities.  (How’s that for Good News?)

No, the measure of accomplishment, the measure of gain, the measure of blessing that Jesus holds up, again and again, is the measure of fruitfulness.   Ironically, this is not a call to be “fruitful” in the “biblical” sense... and to multiply.

“Those who abide in me, and I in them, bear much fruit,” we hear Jesus say.  He is the vine, we are the branches, and our work, our ministry, has a clear purpose and goal: it is to bear much fruit.  Indeed, every branch that bears fruit, God the Father prunes, in order to cause it to bear more fruit.  This is actually how grape vines and other fruit-bearing plants work, of course.

And what might that fruitfulness look like in real terms?

Fruitfulness among us, the branches, might look like acts of mercy and kindness. It might look like prayers offered, anthems sung, meals served, or hugs given.  It might look like miles walked, bread baked, or forgiveness offered or received.  It might look like children taught, windows washed, letters written.  It might look like a gift given to someone, or to the church, or a check written to a school I know.  It might look like time spent as a mentor, pro bono work done for someone in need, or a decision about what to do with those clothes you should really give away.  It might look like an hour of silence, attending a daily Mass, or reading the Scriptures at home.  It might look like a phone call placed, or a visit long delayed on which you finally embark.  It might look like a march of protest, or a night in jail for righteousness sake, or a bag lunch with a PB&J, or a cup of water.  There are too many species and varieties of fruitfulness to count, but you’ll know them when you see them.

Jesus said, “Those who abide in me, and I in them, bear much fruit.”  And so, the Parable of Sam and the Miraculous Orange Tree might, just might - what with its fruitfulness and all - resound with some themes of the Gospel of Jesus.

“Why,” I hear you asking, “why do you speak to us in parables?”

Here is why:  You probably fit into this parable one way or another.  There is an “orange tree” in your life somewhere - maybe an entire grove of them.  These are “trees” that have grown too tall, gotten out of hand, become unwieldy, etc.   And you have gotten everything from them that you can.  Certainly you have harvested everything that’s within reach.  And as far as you know, that’s all you’re going to get.

And maybe you are my parents in this parable.  Maybe you have neither the wherewithal nor the inclination to deal with the tree anymore, even though you like it very much.  But it now requires sufficient attention that either you will ignore it, or you will leave it to others to manage.

Maybe you are the gardeners in this parable.  Maybe you have skill and ability that can be brought to bear on the tree’s circumstances.  And maybe you do just that.  But still, neither the tree nor the oranges are yours.  And although you are absolutely essential to the story, you could easily find yourself left empty-handed.  (But thankfully, in this parable the gardeners do not leave empty handed!)

It’s possible that you, yourself, are the tree in this parable, and that you have begun to suspect that you have no fruit left to be offered, or that what you have is ruined and worthless.  You cannot see or imagine that you have any fruitfulness left in you.

More than likely, you are Sam in this parable, (believe it or not).  So, try to get in touch with your inner teenage boy.  Especially if the parable is not really about oranges, or work, or anything at which you strive for success; but especially if the parable is about faith, and what you have come to expect of your faith, and of your church, and maybe what you have come to expect of God.

You show up.  You are dutiful, maybe even prayerful and loving.  But you knew almost before you got here that there was not all that much in this project for you.  And so, you found exactly what you expected: not much, except a few mangled oranges that had been picked at by birds.

Were there actually more oranges in the branches when you looked?  Who knows!?!  If there were, you would not have been able to see them, anyway.  For, all you required of the encounter with the tree was to end the operation successfully; which you did.  It did not need to be fruitful.  You were never really looking for fruit anyway: you just wanted to get the job done - and it’s not the same thing.

And we have been trained for success (or failure), but not for fruitfulness.

But Jesus knows nothing of success (he is well familiar with failure though).  The only metric that Jesus uses is fruitfulness.  And although sometimes fruitfulness might look like success, more often, it will bear no resemblance to such a thing, about which Jesus knows and cares not a whit, anyway.

So, hear the parable of Sam and the Miraculous Orange Tree.  Maybe it’s about your soul.  Maybe it’s about your faith.  Maybe it’s about the church and her work in the world or in your life.  Maybe it’s about God in a world that seems ever more godless.

Is there really no more fruit to be found in the branches?  

Look again.  Ask for help.  If your help came from a teenage boy, maybe try another helper.

For, there is fruit to be found in the branches - far more fruit than you could even guess at.  And some of it is meant for you.  And the juice is luscious and sweet.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
2 May 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

How's That For Good News?

For hundreds and hundreds of years, biblical scholars regarded the Gospel according to Saint Mark as the least significant of the four Gospels, and hardly worthy of scholarly attention.  So many lines of identical text from the Gospels written by Matthew and Luke appear in Mark’s version that scholars concluded that the work of our patron saint was a late development, and that it was produced as a kind of abbreviation of the two other so-called synoptic Gospels.  Almost universally, for all those centuries, the Gospel according to St. Matthew was considered to be the oldest account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.  So entirely derivative was Mark’s Gospel thought to be that it was hardly even studied.

I will spare you even a few details of the area of biblical study known as source criticism - it’s easy enough to look up yourself.  Suffice it to say that it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a major shift in thought about how the Gospels were written posited that, in fact, Matthew was not the first evangelist, but Mark was, and that his account of the Gospel was, in all likelihood, written first; and that St. Matthew and St. Luke must have had St. Mark’s work in front of them while they wrote.  (St. John’s Gospel is a whole other story.  No time for that here, but it came later.)  This theory, which asserts the primacy of St. Mark’s writing, is by far the most strongly held consensus (though not universally) in biblical studies today.  The work of our patron saint is regarded by most as the first and oldest extant foundational text that tells the story of Jesus.

This morning we heard what is called the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel, which I hope left you feeling a little uncomfortable.  This longer ending of the work proclaims that the faithful followers of Jesus will be known by various signs: they will cast out demons, speak in tongues, handle deadly snakes, drink poison without effect, and perform miraculous healings.  All this, after having also proclaimed that, while the baptized will be saved, the unconverted will be condemned.  How’s that for good news?

Well, it’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?  But from the perspective of a progressive Episcopalian in a multi-cultural society, this ending to the story of Jesus and his followers is a bit uncomfortable.  

In her wisdom, the church provides the option to read today the beginning of St. Mark’s Gospel instead of this longer ending, since this longer ending leaves so many of us feeling a bit awkward, to say the least.  

It is, however, not an option today to simply read the shorter ending of Mark’s Gospel.  The shorter ending tells of the three women who discovered the empty tomb of Jesus, with the stone rolled away.  At the tomb, the women encounter an angel who tells them that Jesus is not there, “He is risen,” the angel says, “... go tell his disciples.”  And the last verse of the shorter ending of Mark’s Gospel says this, “So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  How’s that for good news?

The women said nothing to no one... because they were afraid.  …umm…Alleluia?!?  This account lacks a certain... verve, does it not?  It lacks a certain... energy.  It lacks a certain... excitement.  It lacks a certain…hopefulness.  It’s not what you would call inspirational.  “They were afraid!”  Yeah!…?

Early readers of this first Gospel may have found the ending to be what you might call wanting, when it came to a proclamation of the good news of the resurrection.  In a word, it didn’t preach!  And, remember, they didn’t have Matthew’s, or Luke’s, or John’s Gospels handy.  Mark’s was most likely the first.  His words were the foundation, the beginning of the tradition.  Nothing else to compare it to.  And when you get to the end of it, the last word you hear of the first witnesses of God’s most decisive act of salvation in the resurrection of Jesus is that they were afraid!  (Can I have an Alleluia?!?)  Well, it doesn’t really lend itself to Alleluias, does it?

So, the theory goes, that some clever and enthusiastic believer added a bit to the end of Mark’s work in order to make it good news-y, more gospel-y... in order to make it more plausible, frankly, as a proclamation of saving grace.  In order to make it preach!  They did not consider the possibility that liberal, well educated thinkers of the 21st century might conclude that the promise of snake handling would make the story less appealing, not more; less believable, not more; less plausible, not more.

And so, modern church leaders who make the decisions about what biblical texts we should read as we celebrate the church’s feasts, have decided that a proclamation about exorcisms, speaking in tongues, snake handling, poison drinking, and miraculous healings...  this particular proclamation of the resurrection need not be read aloud in places like Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, where this text might easily be found… off-putting.  After all, scholarly consensus agrees that this longer ending of Mark’s Gospel could not possibly have been actually written by St. Mark (whoever he was) - the content and style of the writing differ so vastly from the rest of the work that it’s clearly an add-on.

So, we are given the option today of reading the beginning of Saint Mark’s Gospel, instead of the ending.  The passage we could have read ends with these words, “... the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!”  How’s that for good news?  Not bad, right?  It preaches, does it not?

But I, your rector, have long had a soft spot for the longer ending of Saint Mark’s Gospel.  (And not because of the snake handling.)  I have long had a special place in my heart for the very last verse of the longer ending of Saint Mark’s Gospel, no matter who wrote it, no matter who added it on, no matter if it is  part of the original work of our patron saint, or not.  This is what it says in the last verse of the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel:  “And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.”

Never you mind about the signs (the snake handling, the tongues, the poison, etc.). But do take note - not only of the account that “they proclaimed the good news everywhere,” -  but also take note of the good word that “the Lord worked with them!”  Yes, let me say that again, “the Lord worked with them.”  You heard that, right?  The Lord worked with them!  Can I have an Alleluia now?

I mean, we are now more than a year into a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands, sickened millions, and disrupted every aspect of our lives.  Our churches have been closed, mind you - closed! -  shut up, doors locked, people told to stay away, children forbidden from singing - for more than a year, throughout this city.  Bold as we are on Locust Street, when we have been open, we have permitted as many as twenty of you, or sometimes forty, maybe even fifty of you to come to church (which seats 400).  And of course we have Zoomed… oh, have we Zoomed!

What I am saying is: it hasn’t been a year of much good news.  It has often felt as though, driven by caution, we Episcopalians (and others, too) might be a church proclaiming a message that’s been shaped by fear… as though we might be believers who hold fast to a Gospel that ends in fear.  And I have to tell you, as far as I am concerned, that does not preach!  (Not very easily, anyway.)

But I don’t need to cast out demons, I don’t need to speak in tongues, I don’t need to handle snakes, I don’t need to drink poison, and I don’t need to heal or be healed miraculously to find a Gospel that does preach, in the midst of the troubles and woes, the sorrows and the horrors, the failures and the sins of this world.

All I need is this: to know that the Lord is working with us, that the Lord is working with me and with you.  Yes, the Lord is working with us; just as the risen Lord worked with those first followers of Jesus, who found themselves looking into his empty tomb, and running away from it in fear.  And still, the Lord was working with them!  

How else do you account for the fact that we are here on Locust Street, two thousand years later, worshiping the risen Christ?!?  It’s not because Saint Mark was the first or the best teller of the story.  It’s because the Lord was working with them!

The Lord was working with them, and the Lord is working with us, too!  You know that, don’t you?  That the Lord is working with us?

As far as I’m concerned it’s the only plausible explanation of why we’re still here, worshiping God, saying our prayers, serving the hungry and the poor, teaching children to sing, and to pray, and to know that each and everyone of them (and all their friends who don’t come to church, too) each of them is a child of God, beloved of God, and nothing, not even this dread disease, not even miserable pandemic, not even this cruel virus will stop us, if the Lord is working with us.  How’s that for good news?  Does it preach?  Can I have an Alleluia now?

It sometimes feels that the church is more in touch with the fear at the shorter ending of Mark’s Gospel than with the confidence that the Lord is working with us that you encounter at the end of the longer ending.  And if it’s a challenge to get past the condemnation of those who are unbaptized; and to get through the exorcisms, the speaking in tongues, the snake handling, the poison, and the miraculous healing, to get to the part where the good news is proclaimed everywhere, and the Lord is known to be working with them, (with us), then I say, let’s work on getting past all the stuff that worries and troubles, and bothers us.  Let’s put it all in a chapel somewhere to pray about it later.  Let’s light a candle and let God deal with it. And let’s get on with the proclamation!  Let’s get on with the Lord working with us!  Let’s remember, every single day of our lives, that when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God, it was because, from there, he could work with us most powerfully.

But let us not be satisfied to let our faith cary us all the way to the empty tomb… all the way to Easter… and then run away in fear!  Let us have the courage to work through whatever challenges face us, confident that the Lord is working with us!  Let us be assured that, throned on high, the Lord is working with us!  Let us proclaim it everywhere with confidence and hope - that the Lord is working with us!  Let us not fear, even in the face of all the troubles that beset us, for the Lord is working with us!  Let us never forget that the Lord is working with us!

Can I have an Alleluia now?  Will that preach?  How’s that for good news?

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

The Whole Story

One of the remarkable aspects of the resurrection story in the gospel of Luke has to do with the sheer number of ways the risen Jesus appears to the disciples.  First the resurrection is revealed to women.  On the first day of the week at dawn, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “the other women with them” go to the tomb and find that the stone is rolled away, the body is gone, and “two men in dazzling clothes” stand beside them.  The women believe, and they tell the eleven and the rest of the disciples.  But no one believes them: “these words seemed to them an idle tale.”  Then Peter runs to the tomb, willing I guess to give their story some credence.  He sees the linen cloths in which the body had been wrapped, and he returns home amazed.

On that same day, Luke tells us, two dejected disciples walk to Emmaus, about seven miles away.  They are joined by Jesus in the guise of a stranger, and they tell him all about the great tragedy of the crucifixion and the strange news that the women had brought from the tomb.  On their long walk Jesus, still unknown to them, teaches them how to read the scriptures. He teaches them that Moses and the prophets say the Messiah has to suffer and die.  Then he breaks bread with them, and in that eucharistic moment they recognize him.  And at that moment he vanishes, and they acknowledge that all along that earlier walk they had felt their hearts burning as he spoke.  They return to Jerusalem, where they learn—it seems almost incidental in the story—that Jesus has appeared to Simon.

It’s then, while the disciples are speaking together about all that they have experienced and learned, that Jesus suddenly appears among them as a group.  That’s the gospel passage from Luke that we hear this morning.  Jesus appears to them, after so much else has already happened and they have begun to learn that he is risen from the dead.  But even then they are terrified and uncertain, and the best they can do is to imagine that they have seen a ghost.  But Jesus teaches them again, showing them his hands and feet so that they will know he is flesh and blood, though he can appear and disappear at will so we know his body is somehow transformed.  And then, apparently to help them grasp that he is really standing among them, he asks them for something to eat.  And then, in this second eucharistic moment, this shared meal with the risen Lord, Jesus again teaches the disciples that Moses and the prophets and the psalms had predicted his suffering and death and resurrection.  And he tells them that they are witnesses, and that “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” are to be preached in his name to all nations, presumably by them.

So yes, the sheer sprawl of this story is remarkable, and we have to try to take it all in if we are going to understand how Luke is shaping us to be the place where the resurrection happens and keeps happening, that is, to be the church.  

If we are the church, if we are the ones who live with and in this risen Jesus, if we are the ones who proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to the whole world in his name, Luke wants us to know how our lives are to be ordered.  And this resurrection story with all its moving parts is all by itself a short sermon about that very thing.  It doesn’t only tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, though crucially it does that.  It also tells us how we are going to live together as witnesses to the resurrection, how we are going to make room for that mystery to grow and deepen in us and in the world.  

Now I can’t speak for you but I’m guessing that you want that for yourselves as badly as I want that for myself.  We want to be real witnesses to the real resurrection and real members of the real body of Christ.  

So here is a beginning list of some of the instructions we are being given in this resurrection narrative.

First: Jesus rose from the dead.  This isn’t a poetic description of a spiritual experience.  He is eating fish with them.  Whatever we don’t understand, whatever we doubt, whatever we are afraid to believe because it makes us seem so foolish, Luke’s Jesus goes out of his way not to be some tricky apparition or purely spiritual manifestation.  He says he is flesh and bone.  If we are the church we are going to have to work to answer to that.  It’s not going to be easy for us but we have to answer to the reality of an empty tomb.

That said, the next instruction Luke gives us for being the church is that the resurrected Lord is not just going to appear and make us believers in an instant.  The women believed but were not heard, Peter had the wisdom to go see the tomb but that sounds like it left him with many questions.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus walked about seven miles with Jesus and still didn’t know him.  When they did recognize him he vanished from their sight.  Simon saw Jesus but that’s all we know about him.  When Jesus appeared to all the disciples together they thought he was a ghost.  If we are the church we are a community of people who love each other and bear with each other and pray together to be able to bear the presence of Jesus in our lives.  The story may be a mess—Luke’s is—but we will want to live every complicated bit of it.  

Which brings us to the next instruction: listen to the people nobody listens to.  That’s women, in Luke’s telling.  Two thousand years later the church has made some progress on that front but we know we aren’t done.  We can officially get women on the resurrection committee but that isn’t the end of the process.  We need to be drawn magnetically toward the people on the outside, over and over.  Toward the people with no access to vaccines.  Toward the people who are routinely subjected to excessive force by the police.  Toward the people whose deaths at the hands of a stranger with a gun have begun to seem normal to us.  To people whose spiritual journeys don’t interest us.  A church that witnesses to the resurrection is transformed inside and out because we know that when we meet our risen Lord he will be with those people first.  That’s who we’ll find him with early in the morning on the first day of the week.  If we are the church we will keep learning that and it will sink in more and more for us.

More instructions are waiting for us: we’ll learn what repentance and forgiveness are. We’ll actually practice repentance and forgiveness so that they are not just abstract ideas or sentiments for us.  We’ll be able to point to examples in our own lives.

We’ll also learn from Luke, if we are the church, that deep down at the core of all this new life, Jesus is playful.  Look at him tricking those disciples on the road to Emmaus.  Look at him appearing among them all of a sudden.  Look, he’s hungry.  He is not just teaching them about some new reality.  He is charming them into the heart of a mystery.  Could he charm us too?  Has he already? Don’t we want to know more about this?

Finally, though this list could go on for a long time, it seems clear that the church has already been given the gift of the presence of the risen Lord in the eucharist at the time Luke’s story is written.  Not once but twice Jesus appears among them to share a meal and interpret the scriptures with them.  In Emmaus he takes the bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them.  And then their eyes are opened.

What we say about Easter and what we do about Easter are at the core of who we are as the church.  That’s why Easter is secretly the hardest feast to celebrate.  That’s why we, and Luke’s disciples, have to keep celebrating it, keep hearing it, keep studying it.  That’s why on the Third Sunday of Easter we are still listening to the echoes of what happened on that morning.  

Is that difficult?  Is it fascinating?  Do we have questions?  Peace be with you.  That means we are the church. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
April 18, 2021
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia