Saint Mark's Church

For the past five weeks, some of us here at Saint Mark’s have been participating in a wonderful and somewhat unique Lenten program: Lenten yoga. Each Friday, after Evening Prayer and Stations of the Cross, we faithful few would make our way upstairs to the choir room, which had been transformed into a makeshift yoga studio. There, under the expert guidance of Diana Fisher, we learned to pay attention to our own bodies, to think about them differently and to engage them in new ways, trying things like stretching out through our inner ankles, lifting our ears towards the ceiling, and relaxing our tongues. Diana always encouraged us to do only what our bodies could do. Stretch only as far as you can, she’d say, and if you feel yourself collapsing, come out of the position. She never encouraged us to push our bodies; instead she encouraged us to really listen to them. Does the stretch feel forced? Okay – come out of it, realign your body, inhale, and try again. Does the stretch feel good? Great – hold it for a few more breaths.

What a gift this practice was. And what a gift that our choir room has not one mirror in it. Not one. So we never had to worry about what we looked like – we could lunge, bend, and twist away without a care in the world.  I like to imagine that sometimes we looked just beautiful, that there were moments when we found that perfect balance, breathing in wondrous alignment, looking just like a print ad for Lululemon. But there were lots of times, I’m sure, when we looked completely ridiculous. We’d end up turned the wrong way, knees and elbows all angles, butt sticking up like a flag in the air. We’d stretch up and our tummies would pop out of the bottom of our shirts, or we’d look down and find one of our legs shaking uncontrollably. We’d lie on the floor and come up dusty, we’d take off our socks and find our toes covered in fuzz, we’d let out a breath and unintentionally grunt. But all of that was actually just fine, because all of that is just what bodies do, and our yoga practice was about learning to let our bodies do what they do, to let our bodies speak to us, and to utterly enjoy ourselves in the process.

Most of us don’t spend too much time just letting our bodies speak, letting our bodies do the marvelous things that they do. We spend more time thinking about how our bodies look than about what they do. The luxury that most of us have of not worrying about where our next meal will come from or whether or not our legs will work today can mean that we sometimes think about our bodies only in terms of appearance. Even when we are ill and we find our bodies suddenly spinning out of control like an engine stuck in high gear, we still often spend all of our time trying to change our bodies rather than trying to listen to our bodies. In our anxiety about how we look or even at times how we feel, we can forget that our bodies are not just some external shell for us to play with or manipulate; our bodies are us. And our bodies have beautiful, important, holy things to say.

Jesus, of course, knew this and lived this deeply. His embodied-ness was the very core of who he was – God made flesh, the eternal Word incarnate. Jesus often used his body, not just his words, to do his ministry, to say something important to the world. He touched lepers, he spread clay on the eyes of a blind man, he stretched out a hand to those once-dead, he knelt to pray, he wept real tears – and these are just the examples that the evangelists took the time to tell us about. Surely he also put a reassuring hand on an unsteady shoulder, tousled the hair of children underfoot, held a newborn baby up to his cheek, gave hugs, always using his body to say you are seen and loved, and all without a single word.

There is no greater example of this than the tender event we remember tonight, the moment when during his last meal with his disciples, Jesus gets up from the table, removes his outer robe, wraps a towel around his waist, and squats down to the ground to wash their weary, worn, filthy feet. He pours water over sore insteps and in between tired toes, he scrubs dirt off of rough heels and dries tender soles, trying not to tickle too much. By these simple, humble, intimate actions, Jesus speaks volumes before he utters a single word. With his body, he teaches this new commandment even before he says love one another as I have loved you.

It is important for us to remember that the footwashing here is not just a metaphor. As singularly significant as Jesus words are here, we cannot forgot that his body is speaking too. After all, Jesus could have just sat the disciples down and lectured them about love, but he didn’t. He could have taught them this new commandment in words as bright and engaging as a parable, but he didn’t. Instead, Jesus used his body to speak, to reach out and touch, connect, purify, bless, heal, sanctify, satisfy. This action was the love itself – not just an image of the love, not just a metaphor about the love, not just a concrete example of the love to help his disciples remember his point, but the love itself, live and in the flesh, real, embodied, and sacramental.

Holy Week is a time of profound embodiment. Over the coming days, you and I will enter into this sacred time not just with our minds, but with and in and through our bodies. We will kneel and stand and genuflect, we will prostrate ourselves before the cross and sit still in the silence of a garden. We will kiss and bow and look up to heaven and in all of this, be reminded, again and again, that our faith is not solely an intellectual exercise. Our faith is not just a journey of the mind. Of course our minds are important, of course we use our reason and our imaginations to help our faith to grow, but such growth is never divorced from the worship and work of our bodies, from what our bodies are meant to just do, from what our bodies have to say to us and to the world.

Now in a moment, you will be invited to walk up here to the crossing to have your foot washed, to sit down in a chair, take off your shoe and your sock and to put your beautiful, imperfect foot – yes, that’s right, your foot, with the sock lint between your toes, the ugly little nail on your baby toe, and the wintery, rough skin on your heel – into my beautiful, imperfect hands, with my pale skin and my uneven nails and my slightly swollen knuckles. Now you certainly don’t have to do this. You’re welcome to just use your imagination. Truly, no one will think any less of you, and you certainly won’t be any less of a Christian, if you choose to stay in your pew. But just for a moment, realign yourself, take a breath, and ask yourself – what if Jesus was right? What if the actual act of having your feet washed has something to tell you that merely imagining just can’t? What if being washed in this way really does mean that you, like Peter, will have a share with Jesus? What if Christ has something profound to say to you here, and longs to use your body to do it?

Now maybe you’re sitting there thinking that all of this is just a ploy to get more of you up here for the footwashing. Which might be a little bit true. But only a little bit. Because far more important is the truth that how you listen to your body matters, because Christ is still speaking to your body through his. He says to us, Take eat, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And then he stops speaking to you merely in words and speaks to you body to body. He speaks to you in the cool feel of the host on your palm, or the slight sweetness as it melts on your tongue. He speaks to you in the golden muskiness of the wine as it fills your mouth. Christ’s body continues to speak, again and again, calling us to listen and to speak with our bodies in our own ways – to actually touch someone who is in pain, to bend down to help someone up, to hold someone who weeps, to wash and to feed and to walk with and to stand up for. So sit with your body in your pews. Feel the wood beneath you, holding you up. Feel your breath flow in and out. And listen for Christ’s body as it speaks in you. This might feel like a bit of a stretch. Does the stretch feel forced? Okay – come out of it, realign your body, inhale, and try again. Does the stretch feel good? Great – hold it for a few more breaths.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Maundy Thursday, 28 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

In the late 1950’s, the poet Richard Wilbur was approached by the composer Richard Winslow to write a poem that he could set for an upcoming Christmas concert at Wesleyan University. Wilbur, who was a relative newcomer on the poetry scene at that time but who would eventually become the Poet Laureate of the United States, accepted the invitation, put pen to paper, and wrote a poem that he called A Christmas Hymn. In his recounting of this story, Wilbur says that his friend Winslow set this new poem for solo voice and harpsichord in a style that reminded him, the poet recalls with a grin, of John Cage. For all of the non-John Cage fans or scholars out there in the congregation, this means that the music was probably not particularly warm and fuzzy, and it was not, apparently, exactly what Wilbur himself had in mind.

But in the early 1980’s, the organist, composer and General Theological Seminary professor David Hurd found the poem A Christmas Hymn and took Wilbur at his word, setting the text as a hymn. He named his new hymn tune after Lily Rogers, his choir director when he was a boy soprano at Saint Gabriel’s Church on Long Island, a woman whose middle name was Andújar. Hurd’s hymn, which is quite warm and fuzzy with plush harmonies and gently rocking rhythms, quickly found its way into The Hymnal 1982. You can find it right in front of you – Hymn 104, familiarly known as “A stable lamp is lighted.”

Now if you were to look up “A stable lamp is lighted,” which you’re welcome to do now or after communion, when we will sing it together, you will notice that, true to the poem’s original title, this hymn is found in the Christmas section of the hymnal, wedged right between “A child is born in Bethlehem” and “God rest you merry, gentlemen.” And you may wonder why we, sitting here with palms in our hands, ox-blood vestments on our shoulders, and Holy Week on our mind, are delving into the Christmas hymns. As if there weren’t enough options in the Lent and Holy Week sections to keep us flush in hymns from now until next Sunday. So why Christmas in March? Now for some of you, this hymn is like an dear old friend, and you know that the reason we sing this Christmas Eve hymn on Palm Sunday is because of the hymn’s gently rocking refrain. For Wilbur took this refrain for his poem not from the story of a manger with shepherds and angels, but from the story of a procession with cloaks and a colt.

The poem’s refrain comes from the moment in today’s Gospel when Jesus silences the Pharisees who are anxious about the noise level of the crowd by telling them that even if these crowds were silent, “the stones would shout out.” These stones are the crux of Wilbur’s poetry, the heartbeat pulsing at the center of each verse, where “every stone shall cry, and every stone shall cry.” Wilbur knew the truth of today’s liturgy: that what is true at the end is also true at the beginning, that the Passion and the Palms and the Incarnation are one story, and that this story and these stones have something to tell us.

“A stable lamp is lighted/Whose glow shall wake the sky;/The stars shall bend their voices,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry,/And straw like gold shall shine;/A barn shall harbor heaven,/A stall become a shrine.” First, Christmas, where the gentle rocking is the rocking of a woman, a girl, really, cradling her miracle of a son in her humble, holy arms. In his presence, the cold cave is transformed, the straw shining like gold in the lamplight, the stars sending their heavenly voices down past the angels singing peace on earth, goodwill toward men, down, down to touch the place where heaven and earth are met together in this boy child. In his presence, every stone shall cry out with quiet wonder, the hewn-out stone of the manger where his tiny body is laid to rest on a blanket of straw, the stone of the cave walls that hold the holy family close and safe, the stones of the shepherds’ fields and of all of Creation that welcome this newborn child home to the world that he himself has made.

“This child through David’s city/Shall ride in triumph by;/The palm shall strew its branches,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry;/Though heavy, dull, and dumb,/And lie within the roadway/To pave his kingdom come.” This child, a man really, now winds his way from Bethany to Jerusalem, down a hill and up again, rocking back and forth on the broad, swayed back of a donkey. And in his presence, children with their mothers, old men and their sons, the broken and the whole, the weary and the zealous, all strew his path with smiles and shouts and robes and a riot of spiky branches. In his presence, every stone shall cry out with utter joy, the stones on the hillsides that shine green in the sun, the stones in the road that bends through the valley, the stones of the city wall that cause this man to weep with the desire to open his arms up wide, wide enough to wrap up the whole city, wide enough to hold the world in his saving embrace.   

“Yet he shall be forsaken,/And yielded up to die;/The sky shall groan and darken,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry,/For stony hearts of men:/God’s blood upon the spearhead,/God’s love refused again.” God’s love refused, the love that has been made flesh, this man, a victim, really, now handed over, his embrace utterly rejected, outstretched arms smacked away and pinned down with nails to an old wooden cross. And when he is raised up high on that cross, the women who have followed him faithfully sink to the ground, rocking to and fro in each other’s arms, keening and wailing and waiting for their teacher, their friend, their son die. And when he does, the heavens that once sang in their courses sag and droop in disbelief at what Creation has done to the Creator. And in the presence of this, every stone shall cry out in pain, the stones of Golgotha that are broken and bloodied by so much suffering and death, the stones of fear and hatred that sit in the place of men’s souls, the stones of grief that mark the loss, the death, the end.

“But now, as at the ending,/The low is lifted high;/The stars shall bend their voices,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry/in Praises of the Child/By whose descent among us/The worlds are reconciled.” This reconciling Child, a man, a victim, a Savior, really, has shown us through his cross and Passion that this end has always been, from the very beginning, from that birth which led to death which led to life, the rocking forward from incarnation to passion to resurrection. Now the songs of the stars are of peace on earth and peace in heaven, of two worlds made one, once and for all. And in the presence of this song, every stone shall cry out with love, the stones of the tomb ringing with emptiness, the stone that was rejected now made the chief cornerstone, the stone of Death, so heavy, dull, and dumb, lifted away and polished so that it shines like the sun.

But we get ahead of ourselves, speaking of those Sunday morning stones. They will come in due time. For today, hear what the words of this poem and the music of this hymn have to say, that there is no stone that cannot sing. There is no stone that cannot be softened, enlivened, shaped to shout God’s purposes – not the stones of the manger, not the stones underfoot on the Jerusalem road, not the stones looming on the hill of crucifixion, not the stones waiting at the tomb, not the stone that calcified around Judas’ heart, not the stone that set up shop where Peter’s courage used to be, not the stone of the centurion’s unforgiving authority. There is no stone that God cannot soften, encourage, cajole to cry out that Jesus Christ is Lord. So if there are places in you that are hardened by fear or by sorrow, do not fear. If there are places in you that resist Christ’s offer of transformation, be of good cheer. And this week, may you find yourself singing. For here, in the presence of this child, man, victim, Savior, even the stones will shout out. Every stone shall cry. Perhaps even you and me.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Palm Sunday, 24 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Two people: one man and one woman, both with gifts worth a small fortune. They take up these gifts and use them to excess, pouring them out lavishly, spreading them around so that all is spent. At the end, nothing is left – not one drop remains. Last week it was the parable of a man, a son who wants his inheritance even though his father is still alive. Please, father, he says, can’t you just pretend that you are dead already and give me what I’m owed? And the father, remarkably, agrees, giving his son half of his wealth, wealth that the son then wastes utterly on stuff and nonsense. This week it is the story of a woman, a sister, who takes a pound of burial oil and pours it over the feet of her honored dinner guest until a fog of pungent perfume hangs in the air and a year’s wages lie in a slippery puddle on the floor. Last week it was the parable of the prodigal son. This week – the story of prodigal sister?  

But no, there’s something about that word “prodigal” that doesn’t seem quite right. True, there are some similarities between the sister and the son, but their stories feel so different. The son’s waste comes from pure selfishness, while the sister’s comes from selfless generosity. The son ends up desperate and lonely and hungry enough to eat pig slop, never a good thing, while the sister is defended and affirmed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which is always a plus. We know that we’re meant to disapprove of the son’s actions while heartily approve those of the sister. So could we really use the same word to describe them both?

Now it cannot be denied that the sister’s actions do seem to match up pretty well with the textbook definition of the word “prodigal.” Her exhausting an entire bottle of nard on one man’s feet could certainly be described as “wasteful or recklessly lavish.” This is, of course, exactly what has Judas tsking and twitching in the corner. Spikenard, at least in its pure form, is expensive, and Judas is all too happy to do the calculations in his head – one pound of nard, at the current market value, with tax and the vendor’s markup – why, this oil’s worth 300 denarii! That’s a year’s wages, he thinks, an entire year’s wages that I could have used to line my pockets – I mean, that we could have used to feed the poor, or something.

It seems a perfectly reasonable argument, and a perfectly good reason to call Mary a prodigal sister. But of course, Mary isn’t interested in being reasonable; she wants to be expansive, over-the-top – Mary wants to be the extravagant sister. Extravagant. Which of course also means wasteful, but somehow it just feels better. And there is, in fact, more to this word “extravagant” than just wastefulness – just as there is more to Mary’s story than just how much she paid for the nard.  The word “extravagant” comes from two Latin roots: “extra” meaning “outside of” and “vagari” meaning “to wander.” Interesting, isn’t it, that a word that has come to mean merely wasteful was born out of words that suggest something that travels outside the bounds, something that goes beyond the limits, pushes beyond worldly common sense.

And Mary’s extravagance is about being outside the bounds in far more profound ways that than simply the high cost of oil. To get at the heart of this kind of extravagance, we must start with the extravagance of the smell. Not to put too fine a point on it, but spikenard stinketh. Fans of nard will say that it smells earthy or musk, but others compare it to the sharp reek of goats or, of all things, the funky tang of feet. And it’s strong – it’s eye-wateringly, mouth-puckeringly pungent. The release of that much oil into what was presumably a small space would have made even the most determinedly polite guest put down her pita and wonder how long she could get away with holding her breath. When Mary fearlessly unleashes this scent into the room, she is showing true extravagance, making a gesture that is uncomfortably outside the bounds, that dares her guests to complain, to ask why. Why nard? And why now?

But the extravagance, the outside-the-bounds-ness, of nard is not limited to its pungency. Because the scent of nard is not just strong; it is also the scent of death. Nard was primarily used as an oil for anointing the dead, a strong perfume that was mixed with other spices to ward off the smell of decay. So not only does Mary fill the room with a smell that could have choked a horse – and may have even smelled like one – she also fills the room with the smell of death. And in that room sits Lazarus, her newly-resurrected brother, who had lain in that same smell for four still days. There sits Martha, her sister, who had of course been the one to go to the market to buy the nard for his burial. Death, the smell of death, the memory of death, is all around. This is too much, Mary, we want to say, too much money spent, too much smell to handle, too many memories to endure, too much fear of what has happened and what is to come. This is truly outside the bounds – Mary, how can you wish to take us there?

But Mary does want to take us there, because it is there that she shows us the true core of her extravagance – not the money, or the smell, or even the memories and allusions, but the true extravagance of Mary’s great faith. Mary knows that Jesus’ being in Bethany is dangerous. She knows Jesus’ predictions about his arrest and crucifixion; she knows that the chief priests and Pharisees have ordered the people to turn Jesus in. She knows what they all face in these six short days before the Passover – and yet…and yet she does not flinch. She doesn’t pretend that everything is business as usual, she doesn’t hide away in fear or try to sell her nard to finance Jesus’ getaway caravan – she faces the fact of Jesus’ impending suffering and death and does not look away. The authorities are hunting Jesus? Of course they are. They seek his life? Of course. They want him dead? Fine. He will be dead, he’s almost dead already. And so she takes the oil that she had been saving for his burial and instead chooses to anoint him right then. She anoints him as he is, a man with a living body that is about to be pierced, a man with beautiful, weary feet that are about to be nailed to a tree, a man who said I am resurrection and I am life and then called Lazarus out of his own spicy tomb. She anoints him without fear, for she knows that Death cannot conquer this man, that Death cannot conquer period. She has seen herself how those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy, and she is ready to sing. This is the heart of Mary’s extravagance, that she has a depth of faith to conjure up the specter of Death only to laugh in its face. This is faith that is truly beyond the bounds, that is utterly and beautifully extravagant.          

What if you and I were to take these last two weeks of Lent and live extravagantly? Not with Guinness and shamrock shakes and Irish potatoes, but with faith? What if we were to intentionally live outside the bounds that the world places on things like compassion and mercy, inclusion and hospitality? What if we were to love extravagantly, even our enemies, even ourselves, even those people whose political perspectives, we think, just stink to high heaven? What if we were to worship extravagantly, coming to church not once or twice but five days in a row during the long walk of Holy Week? What if we were to serve extravagantly, at the soup bowl or with the altar guild or at the Saint James School, or serve your housebound neighbor downstairs, or the homeless woman who hangs out on your stoop, or refugees on the other side of the world? What if we were to give extravagantly, or forgive extravagantly? What if we were to sing extravagantly? What if we were to speak the truth with love extravagantly? What if we were to rest extravagantly, remembering the gift of Sabbath and keeping that day holy, holy, holy? And what if we were to trust extravagantly, to believe the extravagant claims that we make here – that Death has no dominion, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, that God is doing a new thing, and that those who go out weeping will come in again with joy? What if we were to live utterly extravagantly, knowing, trusting that God will not see this gift as a waste. For this living may be outside the bounds of human expectations, but it is never outside the bounds of the expansive, holy, beautiful, wondrous kingdom of God. So go – be extravagant. Be an extravagant daughter, an extravagant son of God; pour out all that you have in the name of a truly extravagant God who gave his only begotten Son that you and I may have life and have it abundantly. So go, live it extravagantly.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” And how many of you when you heard that thought, “Aww!” Aww! We heard that at our wedding, or at our daughter’s wedding, or our grandson’s blessing ceremony. How many of you heard this text and found yourselves picturing white lace and black tuxedos, imagining the scent of pale roses, remembering the smiles of your own wedding day? Love is patient and kind; it bears all things, believes, hopes, endures all things. Love never ends, because it’s stitched into a needlepoint with your wedding date and hanging in your kitchen.

All of which is lovely. Because the text is lovely and what it says about love is lovely and so why not have it read at a lovely occasion like a wedding. But hearing it today, in the context of a regular, green, ordinary Mass, we are reminded that this text is much more than merely lovely. This iconic passage, this beautiful Ode to Love, longs to lead to a much deeper place. It wasn’t intended to inspire a sense of “Aww” as much as a sense of “Oh!”

Remember that Paul is writing to a group of contentious Christians in Corinth who have been doing nothing quite so well as fighting with each other about who Abba likes best and whose gifts matter most. He has already reminded this factious bunch that they need to start functioning as a whole, like a body does, that a preacher can’t lord it over someone who speaks in tongues any more than an ear can lord it over a pinky toe. Their gifts must work together for the kingdom. And besides, Paul tells them, there are even greater gifts to be had, the gifts of faith, hope, and love. These are gifts anyone and everyone can have in equal measure, and without these gifts, especially the gift of love, all of the other spiritual gifts aren’t worth the paper to wrap them in.

And just in case there is still someone sitting out there in the crowd who remains convinced that her gift of healing actually is far grander than her sister-in-law’s gift of teaching because after all how hard is it to teach and her sister-in-law isn’t that good at it anyway, Paul provides some practical, and pointed, illustrations. Even though he rather generously uses the first person throughout this passage, there are implied parentheticals all over the place. If I speak in the tongues or mortals and angels, but do not have love (like, say, all y’all over there), I sound brash and ugly. Love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant…or rude. (Ahem. Stephanus.) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (hairy eyeball to the ladies in the back row).

So in light of the general grumpiness in Corinth, it’s pretty safe to say that 1^st Corinthians 13 isn’t just a love song intended to conjure up the warm-n-fuzzies; it is a manual to check bad behavior. Paul doesn’t want the Corinthians to hear this passage and say aww! isn’t love sweet – he wants them to say oh! We’ve got to get down to business loving for real: loving with patience and generosity, no matter who we are dealing with; loving in right action, no matter what we are feeling; loving by bearing, believing, enduring for the good of all, for the good of the Church and of the Gospel. Oh! And for Paul, if that oh! is a little bit of a surprise, if it’s a little bit of a shock, that’s okay. Because Paul clearly feels that the oh! of a shock is more than worth it if it leads to more love. 

Jesus feels this way too – that’s the only way to explain what looks at first glance like some very unloving behavior from our Lord in his hometown synagogue. Remember that Jesus has just returned to Nazareth after ministering throughout the Galilee. He has gone to the synagogue and read a powerful passage of redemption from the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when the eyes of the people fall on him, looking for an interpretation, a word, an insight, he powerfully grafts himself into the text: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And the people are impressed. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Unlike the crowds in Matthew and Mark’s version of this story, who are immediately offended by what they see as Jesus’s ridiculous presumption, the crowds in Luke are quite pleased. They are proud of this local boy made good. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they cluck one to another. And then the trouble begins. Aww. Look at Jesus, all grown up. I remember when he was knee high to a locust. I remember when he used to follow Mary around holding on to her skirts. Do you remember the time he and little James chased each other right into the mikvah? And now he’s the Messiah! Aww. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t he wonderful? And isn’t it wonderful that we already know every little thing about him?

And right here is where Jesus gets a little testy. He pushes back, and he pushes back hard. He actually goes so far as to put words in the crowd’s mouth, forecasting demands they haven’t even made yet, predicting that no prophet can be accepted in his hometown, reminding them of prophets before him who overlooked their neighborhood crowd to offer grace and healing to outsiders – to a widow and a leper, both Gentiles. The crowd is hurt by these barbs, deeply hurt, a hurt that quickly turns to fury. They lash out at Jesus, sweeping him out of the synagogue, so desperate to throw their hometown hero down that they find themselves raging at the top of a cliff before they realize that he’s disappeared.

And really, who could blame them? They thought they were on Jesus’ side. They offered him acceptance; they offered affection, even love, or so they thought. Why the harsh words about how un-special they are? Why couldn’t Jesus have just said, “Well, thank you all very much. I’m so glad that you approve. By the way, there’s a lot more to come about the whole mission-to-the-Gentiles thing, but for now I’m just thankful for your support.” Where is the all-bearing, all-enduring love here?

But Jesus is not looking for Aww, he is looking for Oh! He does not wish for the people to blithely and unthinkingly accept his assertions about himself; he loves them too much for that. And he does not want them to assume that they understand every little thing about him; he loves his Father too much for that. He is the Son of God, and he will not be tamed; he will not be hemmed in, labeled, or limited. You think you understand my mission, he says, and you are charmed by it. Will you be so charmed when I tell you that my mission is not only to you, that, like Elijah and Elisha before me, I will gather in the Gentiles and fold them into the flock? Will you be so charmed when I challenge you to see a bigger picture of what God’s kingdom looks like, when I invite you to live in a much, much, much larger tent? Don’t be charmed by me; be changed by me! I don’t want just Aww – I want Oh!

Oh! is transformation; it is revelation and redemption. Oh! checks our bad behavior, keeps us from putting God in a box of our own making. Oh! is the wildness of the Holy Spirit breaking in to show us something new, something big, something beautifully and achingly true. It is the reminder of the promise that God has done, will do, and is doing something new in your life, in my life, in the life of the church, right now. That new thing may be surprising. It may even be shocking. But that only means that it will really and truly of God, who always offers us more than we could ask for or imagine.

And that is love, is it not? That nudge, that challenge, that blinding new truth is the voice of the truest true love, the love that precedes all of our loving, the love that bears all and believes all. This is love on God’s terms, a love that demands our all and rejoices in the truth, a love that pushes us to know Christ more fully, to have the humility to know what we don’t know, and to offer love ourselves with a clarity of vision and a strength of purpose that is about far more than simply being nice. So if you find yourself in your life, in your prayer or study, in your worship or ministry, in your joys or in your sorrows, if you find yourself saying oh! – know that is a great gift of God. That is what love sounds like.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

3 February 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The journey looked like this. Three Kings, lounging on cool satin pillows in the sultry Persian air, observe a star. Together, they watch as it arcs across the sky towards lands unknown. They look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and purposefully process out of the room, padding away on soft, slippered feet. They pack for travel, one gold, one frankincense, one myrrh. Their trunks filled with gifts and robes and telescopes, they mount their sturdiest camels and set out across the sands towards the West. For weeks, months, they travel through the wilderness in a stately parade, gently rocking on the backs of their beasts, stopping only to check their coordinates or to rest in rustic towns where their appearance provokes quiet wonder and the offering of the people’s finest food and drink, their softest beds, their cleanest hay.

The Kings break their journey in Jerusalem and seek out Herod. They deign to dine with this Roman toady some silly men have begun to call “the Great.” He flatters them, fills them with dates and roast lamb and fine wine. He wants information from them; they know this. “Go and search diligently for the child;” he purrs, “and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” But they need no encouragement. They would never be anything less than diligent, and they know without saying a word to each other that they will never pass this way again, never share their star-child with this petulant, petty fool.

They move along, quiet now, serenely watching the star as it settles over a tiny, dark cave on a moonlit winter’s night, where a tiny babe is the only Word that is spoken. Here they kneel in a row, each removing turban or feathered hat or jeweled scarf and placing their gifts before this long-expected child, this babe of their searching, born, king of the Jews. That night they rest easy, fulfilled and happy, and when they all dream a dream of warning, they look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and leave for their own country by another road.

Maybe.

Or maybe the journey looked like this. Three kings, or maybe they weren’t kings, maybe they were just wise men…and why three? Maybe four or five or six, maybe there was Caspar and Melchior and Balthasar…and Cornelius and Bilbo and Eliot. So *some* magi have been watching the skies every night for months. This is what they do – they’re wise men, after all. Suddenly Melchior sees something in the heavens that he’s never seen before: a star – a great, bright, blaze of a star – starting in the East and moving across the sky. He’s excited, he’s like a dog with a bone, panting as he tells the others that he wants to go chase it. At which point there is a great deal of eye-rolling and groaning. Caspar reminds Melchior that this wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten something wrong – remember that time he’d predicted the end of the world? Balthasar sighs and immediately begins double checking Melchior’s math. (He never was very good with fractions.) Cornelius just crosses his arms and says no way, he isn’t going anywhere, he has a concert coming up that he cannot miss. Eliot protests that they’ll have a “cold coming of it,” that it’s “just the worst time of the year/For a journey, and such a long journey:/The ways deep and the weather sharp,/ The very dead of winter."* But Bilbo tells Eliot to stop waxing so poetical and turns to Melchior with a star in his eyes – yes! yes! a star! let us wish upon it, let us follow it, let us have an adventure!

It takes a while, of course, to convince the rest to go along. This must portend something wondrous, Melchior keeps saying, and there is this tale, this ancient tale from Hebrew prophets of a boy born to save the world. What if this star marks his coming? We wouldn’t want to miss that, would we? And it’ll be fun…so one by one, they nod their heads grudgingly, plan their gifts and pack their trunks. Eliot says goodbye to “The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,/And the silken girls bringing sherbet,” Cornelius hurries back inside at the last minute for some extra staff paper, they all scramble up atop their stupid, stinking camels, and the journey has begun.

And it is a real slog. The desert winds blow sand in their eyes, the nights are freezing cold, the days are blistering hot. The clouds cover the skies so that there are no stars at all. They get lost, they get hungry and blistery and gruuumpy. Cornelius won’t shut up about the concert and eats all of the stuffed dates and dried apricots and bitter chocolate they had brought along as gifts. Caspar is silent and Balthasar is nervous and Eliot won’t stop going on about “the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly/ And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.”* But still they slouch on.**

Finally, after weeks of stumbling and griping, they all see where they must be headed – Jerusalem, the star of the West. They wind their way to Herod’s door and say, Help? Where is the child? they ask. When Herod looks at them blankly, they push on. He must be here, they say, we’ve followed this star for months and we darn well mean to pay this child homage. But Herod is confused, and angry, and ranting, until finally one of his scribes remembers Micah – that old prophet Micah, who once said that a ruler would come forth from, not Jerusalem, but Bethlehem of all places. Bethlehem? Herod can’t believe it, but he thinks, What can it hurt to send these magi on to check it out? Go to Bethlehem, he growls, look for this magical Messiah baby, and let me know if you find him. Let me know where you find him. (Cue evil laugh here.)

And so the magi are suddenly back up on their stupid, stinking camels, and traveling – again – down an unknown road – again. Now they are all quiet, too tired to care, too exhausted to worry about where they are going or why Herod was so jumpy or what they’re going to give this baby since they forgot to pick up an extra gift in Jerusalem. They are so tired they hardly notice when the star stops. They stumble off their camels – with overwhelming joy –  and into the house where they find a wide-eyed girl of a mother holding a baby boy. She tells them stories of shepherds and angels while they slump to the ground before him, offering him the gifts not already eaten. Cornelius offers to sing his newest melody, Bilbo tells the child a great tale of their adventure, and Eliot promises a poem. They each pay him homage, this wisp of a child, and suddenly they feel the hard ground shift beneath their knees. Somehow, everything has changed. They stand and leave the holy family and head back out into the night, and they know, now they know, that the journey has really just begun. It stretches out before them, not just around Herod and back to their home but all the way to Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee, and Bethany and Jerusalem and Golgatha and a tiny, dark tomb. Eliot asks, “Were we lead all that way for/Birth or Death?”* The others shrug their shoulders, quiet, but peaceful now. Perhaps “the end of all our exploring,” Caspar says, “will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”*** Eliot jots that line down for remembering. And then they journey on.

And isn’t this what our journeys look like. Much as we might like to imagine that our journey to find the Christ will always be a journey on a straight path, a journey of confidence and reassurance and knowledge, with a clear destination in mind, with an inspired beginning and a profound end and evenly-spaced steps along the way, our journeys of discipleship are rarely like that. They are far more interesting. We may begin grudgingly, haltingly. We may need a nudge or a push to get started at all. Or we may start off inspired but find the terrain difficult and stumble. We may get lost, grumpy, lose track of our own gifts along the way. We may meet people who treat us with disdain, who bluster or mock or send us packing. And we may arrive at a particular place and think that we’ve really, you know, arrived, only to discover that what we find there only encourages us to keep seeking just a little further on down the road, just over that hill, around that bend.

But if we are willing to keep walking, we will find that this messy, complicated journey is rich with life. The bends in the road help us to practice our faith, the encounters along the way help us to practice loving neighbors, the stops and starts help us to practice Sabbath and prayer. Even the Herods can be transformed into guiding forces and by the grace of God end up pointing us in the right direction. This kind of journey changes us. This journey brings us to our knees and brings us to ourselves. This journey breaks us open so that when we find the Christ child we will be open to what he has to teach us, to the new life he has to offer us. This is what the journey looks like. For why take a journey if it isn’t going to take you anywhere at all? So if your journey looks more like the second version of the wise men’s journey, know that you are on the right path. You are on the path where God is with you. So journey on.

*From T. S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi

**After W. B. Yeats' The Second Coming

***From T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

6 January 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia