Saint Mark's Church

Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  And this is true of the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son.

The beginning: There was a man who had two sons.  Everything is fine.  Life is grand.  What could be nicer?  That’s the beginning.

The middle: The younger son gets Dad to give him his share of the inheritance so he can go off in search of adventure.  He does so without any consideration of the tax implications, which, in and of itself is foolhardy, but so be it.  He wastes his money on what the biblical writer calls “dissolute living;” I’ll call it booze, drugs, and probably women, but it could have been men – who knows?  He ends up envying the pigs their feed as he tries to scrape by in his poverty.  That’s the middle.

The end: Younger son decides to go home to Father, fearful that he will be chastised for his foolishness, which, of course, is deserving of chastisement.  But Father welcomes Son home without shame or blame, kills the fatted calf for a feast, and rejoices that his Son who once was lost has now been found.  That’s the end.

Beginning; middle; end – like most stories.

Life is made up of a bunch of stories that mostly have beginnings and middles and ends.  The hard part is that we live mostly in the middle of the stories.  And as the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates, the middle is a hard place to live.

Let us forget about the Prodigal Son, himself, for a moment, for it is easy to color in the details of his dissolute life.  If you can’t do it on your own, there are reality shows on TV that will offer suggestions, or try the Harold and Kumar films, or Pulp Fiction, or the new film whose TV advertisements speak for themselves: 21 and Over.  Dissolute living is not a thing of the past.  But as I say, let us put aside the dissolute living, because that is only one middle of this story; there is another one.

The other middle of the story is taking place back at the homestead of the Prodigal Son, where his father and his brother – as well as his mother and his sister, no doubt – are worried sick.  This is the other middle of the story.

For a while he stayed in touch with them.  There were postcards, occasional phone calls, and although Mom and Dad didn’t follow him on Facebook, the other two children could give updates as they followed his progress around various Mediterranean hotspots.  Admittedly the photos he posted were sometimes worrisome – evidence of dissolute living, you might say.  But the greater worry came when he stopped calling, stopped writing, stopped posting anything on Facebook at all. He even stopped asking for more money.  This is the middle of the story.

Who knows what a mess the Prodigal Son made of himself?  Who knows how many mornings he woke up without knowing where he was – sometimes in a strange bed, sometimes in a gutter, or an alley, or under a fig tree, once in a while in a jail cell.  Who knows just exactly what he was using to ruin his mind and his body with – was it just tequila?  Or was there coke too?  Or meth?  Had he tried heroin yet?  Who knows what risks he put himself in – borrowing money, or stealing it?  In the bedroom?  With his “new friends”?

His parents didn’t know.  Neither did his sister.  Nor his brother.   They could only guess why he head disappeared; why he had lost everything.  But don’t you think they worried?  Don’t you think they sent emissaries to track him down?  Don’t you think they called his old friends to see if they had heard from him?  Don’t you think they waited by the phone for it to ring with word from the cops, or the hospital, or the morgue?

This was the middle of the story.  Sometimes the middle of the story isn’t our own misery – sometimes it is the misery of someone else we love.  Sometimes that person lives in the middle of the story for a long, long time.  The middles of many stories last far longer than the middle of the parable of the Prodigal Son.  And so does the misery.

But the middle of the story is where we live most of the time.  Maybe it’s a prodigal son or a prodigal brother or sister.  Maybe it’s the illness of someone you love, that hasn’t been properly diagnosed, or that won’t get better, or won’t heal.   Maybe it’s cancer that has come back.

Maybe it’s the dementia of your parent or spouse – who used to be so funny, so bright, so loving; who used to be the light of your life; who used to be so easy to love; and who now hardly knows you; but with whom there is nothing else especially wrong, so you know that the middle of this particular story, at this particular stage of life, is likely to go on and on and on for a while.

It’s not really your story, but you have to live through it, and it becomes a part of your story, as you navigate the fear and the sadness and the guilt of it all.  Was there something you should have done?  Something you shouldn’t have done?  Is there anything you can do now?  Have you exhausted all possibilities?  Gotten every second opinion you could?  Can you really trust this diagnosis?  Shouldn’t there be something you can do?  Should you have consulted a lawyer?  Should you have spent more money on a better lawyer?  A detective?  A doctor?  A psychic?

Don’t you think the Prodigal Son’s father thought these things?  Don’t you think his mother did?

His sister would lie awake at night and fixate on a plan.  She imagined building a pigeon coop on the roof of the house, and keeping homing pigeons there.  She imagined making copies of that photo she liked so much of her brother at the family reunion that time, when his smile was so relaxed, and he looked like nothing could ever be wrong.  She dreamt of rolling those copied photos up into little scrolls, with her contact information written on the back of them with an indelible Sharpie, and attaching them to the little legs of the pigeons with tiny rubber bands.  She imagined sending flocks of homing pigeons out over the deserts and toward the sea, across the entire Mediterranean world:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? 

PLEASE CALL IF YOU HAVE. 

PLEASE SEND HIM HOME. 

PLEASE TELL HIM WE LOVE HIM

AND WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET HIM BACK!

This is living in the middle of the story.

His brother, unable to fathom what would cause his otherwise terrific younger brother to go off the deep end, found himself hoping – yes hoping  - that maybe it was a brain tumor, because that at least would explain it; at least you could cut that out and try to fix him.  This is living in the middle of the story.  Living in the middle of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is not much fun – but many of us have lived there.  Maybe you are living there now.

There is another parable to reach for when you are stuck in the middle of the Prodigal Son: it is the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  You have to go to your bookshelf, or look under the bed, or search through your Kindle to find it, because you know it is there somewhere but you can’t remember where you put it.  It was just ten verses back in Luke’s Gospel, but it already takes a force of will to remember it: “Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

And you think to yourself, “What on earth is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to drop everything and go in search of my child, my brother, my friend?  Am I supposed to give up my job, leave the kids with the neighbors, liquidate my 401-k to go on a wild goose chase?

And if you stop, long enough to think, long enough to be quiet, long enough to listen, you might hear a voice telling you to slow down, and remember, that the parable is not meant to give you instructions; it’s meant to teach you something about God.

Oh.  And what is that?

When you are in the middle of the parable of the Prodigal Son, God is in the middle of the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  He is searching and scouring and sending his angels like swarms of pigeons to find the one you love – the one he loves.  God has not given up in the middle of this story – even though the Prodigal Son couldn’t care less about God.  God’s arms are always long enough to reach down and scoop up the lost, but such is the reality of the way he made us that he requires us to reach up too, and grab for him, just a little.

And you know that damn Prodigal Son is stubborn.  You know he thinks he can take care of himself.  You know he has always wanted to live life on his own terms.  You think he is going to reach up for God at the first opportunity?  And do you think the tequila or the coke, or the meth, or the heroin, or the “new friends” are going to let him do it so easily?

But you need to know that God is searching, swooping, reaching, for that lost child, and has been from the moment he left home.

This is called faith: the conviction of something you cannot see – that God is at work in the long, horrible middles of the stories that hurt so much: at work for the Prodigal Son, at work for his worrying father and his terrified mother, for his determined sister, and his frustrated brother, who cannot do anything to help because he has to stay home and take care of the farm!  For all of them: God is at work; and believing that is what we call faith!

But remember that the parables do not tell us much about what we should do during the middle of the story – they are not meant to; they are meant to teach us about God.  They are meant to teach us that God searches tirelessly for the lost – not because he cannot find them, but because they insist on running and hiding, but he will not stop pursuing them.  And they are meant to teach us that when we are tempted to give up hope in the middle of the story, we should reconsider and stick with it.  Because God is not giving up, nor is he ever unwilling to throw his arms wide open when that bedraggled Prodigal Son is at last able to reach out for God’s hand, and end his misery, and crawl home.  God will not turn his back when the lost child crawls home, and his love will not be withheld, nor his blessing.

All of which is meant to be a salve for the pain and difficulty of living in the middle of the story – where we still so often find ourselves.  Because it’s true that despite our best efforts, we are sometimes helpless in this world – completely unable to do the thing that we would most like to do for ourselves or for the ones we love.  Which is when we have to rely on God the most, and when it is helpful to remember that God’s Son told these stories – with perfectly ordinary beginnings; and with difficult, painful, miserable middles…

… and endings for which the term “happy” seems too cheap, and too unlikely.  Let’s say the stories have a good ending.  Let’s say God’s goodness prevails in the end.  Let’s count on it.  Indeed, let’s believe it, while we live through the middle of the story.

In fact, let’s keep the best robe hanging by the door, and a fatted calf on hand, and a ring and sandals.  Let’s be confident and faithful in the good ending that God is preparing for every long and difficult and painful middle of every story,

In fact, let’s learn to stand ready, with our arms open and our lips pursed for the kiss of welcome – for this, Jesus tells us, is how God is poised to receive all those who have strayed from his ways like lost sheep and followed too much the devices and desires of their own hearts.

But never mind that, says God, for he who is lost will be found, by the grace of God, all who are counted for dead will be made alive again, when the middle of our story leads to God’s good ending.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

10 March 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Back in the 1950s, psychologists conducted an experiment involving students from two Ivy League colleges.  They showed students films of controversial referees’ calls in a football game and they asked the students what they thought of the validity of the calls, with the benefit of the filmed evidence right in front of them.  What the researchers found was that the visual evidence made very little difference whatsoever to the opinions of those in the study.  Students tended to think that officiating calls favoring their own school were good, even if the evidence pretty clearly suggested otherwise.  Which group they belonged to was more important in forming their opinions than what actually happened on the field.  Social scientists call this tendency “motivated reasoning,” that is, the tendency to conform one’s assessment of information based more on one’s own particular goals and biases than on the actual facts.

Motivated reasoning has been popping up a lot lately as people try to explain the culture of political discourse in this country, where party affiliation or particular point of view – on both sides of the aisle – tend to influence individuals’ thinking more than a dispassionate assessment of the facts.  All very interesting, but not my point this morning.

Motivated Reasoning seems to come into play quite a lot in the area of religion.  For instance, many people see motivated reasoning at work in the opinions of devoutly religious people who refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence of evolution.  One’s religious affiliation and the conviction of one’s established beliefs are stronger motivators than the actual facts.  Also interesting, but still not my point.

We are gathered here today as a bunch of more or less sophisticated Episcopalians who more or less regard ourselves as quite above that kind of small-mindedness.  We are able to hold in comfortable tension the possibilities that God is Lord of the universe and Creator of all, and that the earth is several billions of years old, and that the fossil record shows that our human species evolved from less sophisticated, less upright species.  But this, too, is not my point.

My point is this: that as more or less sophisticated, and (dare I say it?) liberal Episcopalians, our sense of ourselves as sinners is often somewhat under-developed.  We prefer to leave the focus on sin to catholic nuns, and various brands of Baptists and other exotic species of Christians.  Between the guilt-ridden, old-school nuns; and the Bible thumping, accusing firebrands, sin, we figure, is well accounted for elsewhere.

Not often will you wander into an Episcopal church and hear a sermon expounding the horrors to which sin will inevitably lead.  Not often is the name “sinner” to be found on the lips of the Episcopal clergy, and less often directed at any of our parishioners.  Not often are we invited to carefully consider our sins in HD, 3-D, full color, with the expectation that we might confess our sin, repent of it, and begin to lead a more godly, righteous, and sober life, as the old, and seldom-used prayer says.

Indeed, we Episcopalians tend to think pretty well of ourselves.  We look in the mirror and we like what we see.  We evaluate ourselves, and find not too much wanting.  A royal wedding every now and then allows us to feel quite pleased with ourselves.  The follies of other denominations help us hold on to our own self-satisfied outlook.  Our reasonable religion is not incapable of a certain smugness that we sometimes wear with an air of superiority.  Asked to evaluate ourselves and examine our consciences, we do not break a sweat, for we are, in a way, inclined to think that old joke about using the wrong fork at the dinner table is, in fact, the worst kind of sin an Episcopalian could commit.

Along comes Lent, and we are asked to call ourselves names that we do not think fit us very well: “miserable sinners.”  We are asked to grovel before God, praying: “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.  Spare us, good Lord.  Good Lord, deliver us.”  We can tolerate these indignities, if we dress up nicely and sing them to music of the English Renaissance – but only just.  And generally speaking we do not believe these things we have sung about ourselves this morning.  The ritual pleases us because it allows us to recite the words we know we are required to say without actually having to invest too much in meaning them.  And over brunch we can discuss whether or not the altos really sang their part correctly all the way through.  How very Downton Abbey of us.

If we stop to reason about ourselves at all, it is a motivated reasoning that has reached all the best conclusions, and leads us to think that really God is quite lucky to have us on his side.  All this, despite an impressive array of evidence that all is not so well with us, either as individuals or as a group.

Nationally, our church is often defined by division, and has been engrossed with endless law suits.

In our own diocese, we have been consumed by conflict and the question of which side of various issues we line up on.

And in our own individual lives, does the evidence really point to an absence of sin?  To a bad fit for the name, “Sinner?”

Have we mended our strained relationship with our brother, or parents, or maybe our first spouse?

Have we done a fair assessment of our habits and given up the ones that don’t do us much good – the food, the booze, the drugs, the cigarettes, the sex, the laziness?

When we ask what it would mean to really be faithful to God, do we honestly think we measure up very well?

When we consider whether we have treated others as we would wish to be treated by them, are we also including the homeless and the hungry, those in prison, and folks who generally don’t look like us?

When we look at where and how we spend our money, does it not occur to us that perhaps we could have done better?  Much better?

And these questions represent only the first pass at the most obvious possibilities.

A fair assessment of our sins – of those areas of our lives where we come up short – will, in most cases, give us plenty to think about.  And yet, by brunch time we will have stopped thinking about it, and will have put on again the armor of complacency that leads us safely back into the world, where we must never let on that we are even familiar with the word “sin” – except as a suitable punch-line for witty repartee.

Lent, however, is an exercise in a new Motivated Reasoning, for it is an effort to motivate us to consider a new reasoning about ourselves.  It is an effort to be more critical of ourselves, more discerning in our self-evaluation, more demanding in our expectations of ourselves.

Even those of you whose low self-esteem may be your worst sin, and who certainly do not need to identify more to dislike about yourselves can benefit from discovering a new Motivated Reasoning. 

But so many of us have gotten so accustomed to thinking so well of ourselves, that it can be hard to take seriously the consideration of our sin: those things we have done which we ought not to have done, and those things left undone which we ought to have done.

Give me a pencil and piece of paper, and a few minutes on my own, and I could come up with a list for myself that is much, much longer than the Great Litany.  But of course, such an exercise is seldom required of us, not even of me.

If the psychologists are right, however, even a great deal of evidence that I amass on my own reflection is unlikely to sway me to consider my own sin, so fast do I cling to my dearly held estimation of myself.

I suppose one reason we might have adopted this kind of motivated reasoning is the unappealing suspicion that God is an angry master, just waiting to scold us.  To reflect on our sins is to invite the possibility of an ugly response from God:  “AHAAAA! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE A SNOT-NOSED SINNER WITH A RECORD AS LONG AS YOUR ARM!  AND AT LAST YOU HAVE ADMITTED IT!”

But this is a deeply misguided suspicion for Christians, who will struggle to find hints of such invective in the story of Jesus, and his ministry, his teaching, and his saving death.  It is true that Jesus found fault with the self-righteous, whose motivated reasoning prevented them for seeing themselves for who and what they really were.  But he was known to be gentle, kind, generous, and forgiving to those whose sin was widely known.

When we finally have the nerve to find new motivation, and new reasoning, and confess our faults to God, we discover that he has not been waiting to punish us; he has been waiting to forgive us.  “Pish posh,” God says, “I’ve seen a lot worse than that.”

So here we are in Lent.  This morning we have tried on the name, “miserable sinner.”  Does it not fit pretty well, at least some of the time?  I can certainly find it in my size.

We have practiced, just a little, these apparently debasing prayers: “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.  Spare us, good Lord.  Good Lord, deliver us.”  But do we find that we are not actually debased by them, rather, we are beginning to have a more honest conversation with God?

The real problem with our old reasoning, our old motivation, was that it left us very much the same people at the end of the day as we were at the beginning.  But the Motivated Reasoning of Lent is meant to change us, and to bring us into a new and happier life with God and with our neighbors.

But you know what they say: admitting you have a problem is the first step toward solving it.  Maybe if we could admit that we really are miserable sinners that would be the first step toward leading a new life, with our sin left behind, forgiven by God?

Now, that would be good news!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

17 February 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Perhaps, like me, you have a drawer somewhere in which you have stashed a pile of gift certificates and gift cards that thoughtful people have given to you, but that you have never gotten around to using.  A few years ago, I designated a single drawer as the destination for my gift cards and gift certificates, because I knew how prone I was to lose track of them and leave them un-used and un-spent.  By keeping track of the cards, I hoped I’d do a better job of actually using them in the way the givers intended me to do.  But like a significant percentage of others who receive such generous gifts, I remain often careless and forgetful about these gifts.  A quick inspection this morning revealed cards or certificates for L.L. Bean, American Express, and a kitchen shop in South Philadelphia.  I could not bring myself to look at the dates on these cards to determine how long they have been in the drawer.

In the business world these cards, I am told, are referred to as “stored value products.”  The question remains for whom the value is being stored – the recipient or the issuer?  Estimates are that as much as $8 billion worth of gift cards go un-spent every year.  As one business writer says, companies love gift cards, because “they receive payment in advance for products they may or may not ever have to deliver.”  From the giver’s point of view, once he or she has paid for the card and handed it over, it’s out of his or her hands, and the recipient is free to do whatever he or she likes with the gift.[i]

It occurs to me that the ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday are something like a gift certificate or a gift card: they are gifts given to us out of the love and generosity of the giver, but a great many of us are unlikely ever to use this gift.  For the gift of the ashes, and the reminder that we are from dust and to dust we shall return is a gift of stored value.  By this gift God is calling us each to repentance, to a new relationship with him and with each other.  God is asking us to use this act of humility – receiving this sign of mortality – as a chance for a new life, to turn our backs on the foolishnesses and faults that have become our personal trademarks.  I have my trademark foolishnesses, you can be sure, and I suppose you have yours.

But the question remains, for whom is the value stored?  Will we use this opportunity, this Lent, to really make room for the clean heart we are asking God to install in our lives?  Or will we walk away from Ash Wednesday in more or less the same way we walk away from any other Wednesday, washing the smudge from our foreheads in more or less the same way we would deposit a gift card in a designated and forgotten drawer, leaving God with the gift of his grace and forgiveness still in his open hand, looking like a pile of so many ashes?

God is making a promise of hope and repair, of forgiveness and love.  The payment, we are assured, has already been made; the gifts are ours to accept, or not.  But because it can be complicated for us to accept hope and repair, forgiveness and love, usually a little work is required on our part, a little effort to make it clear these are gifts we really want.  And once the gift has been given, the recipient is free to do whatever he or she likes with it.  God does not compel us to accept his grace.

Here’s the kind of work it takes to claim the gift:

You fall to your knees in a prayer of repentance or thanksgiving.

You open your heart to God’s love.

You turn from the things you do that are hurting yourself or others, and you start to do things another way.

You seek forgiveness from one you have wronged.

You offer forgiveness to one from whom you have been withholding it.

You help someone in need, recognizing their need may be greater than yours.

Because we are sinners, these apparently simple acts are often difficult and complicated for us to accomplish.  Because we are sinners these ashes are like gift certificates that may never be used, left in the drawer of your heart to grow old and forgotten, even though they will never expire.

But the truth is that God has no end of mercy and forgiveness and love, just like this world has no end of ashes.

God will not soon run out of grace, not ever.  God is willing to extend his offer of grace to you as long as you are alive to hear it. 

God is not about to stop breathing down your neck, if you will let him get close enough.

God is not about to withhold his gifts from you.

God is not short on what you need to change your life, or what I need to change mine.

And tonight God is giving you the gift in the form of a little smudge of ash on your forehead.  He does it other ways on other days.  His gifts of love have stored value, which, on second thought, have no worth to him, since God is love.  So the value must be being stored for you and for me, waiting for us to claim it, to use it, to take it: the gift of his mercy, his forgiveness, his love, meant for you, and for me.

We’ve been given a great gift this night.  And the only question that really remains is:  What ever shall we do with it?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Ash Wednesday 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Donna L. Montaldo, “Retailers Clean Up On Holiday Gift Cards,”  About.com Guide

Each morning while hiking this summer in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, my group of three would gather to cook oatmeal over our little camp stoves, and gradually pack up camp in order to get back on the trail.  One particular morning, my two friends asked me if I had happened to awaken in the night and step out of my tent.  No, I said, I had not. 

Too bad, they told me, it was the starriest night they had ever seen: the night sky ablaze with a vast quilt of brightly dancing starlight that was broad and deep and entrancing.  Never seen anything like it, they said.  It was the kind of night you’d remember for ever, they told me, the kind of night that could change your life, the kind of image you’d bring to mind when everything in the world seemed dark and you needed to remember that there is light in the world, there is hope.  That’s the kind of beautiful night it was, they said.

Wow, I said, I wish I’d seen that.  But I’d slept right through it.

There were other starry nights on our three-week hiking journey, but none compared, they assured me, to that night by Thousand Island Lake, in the shadow of Banner Peak, when the sky glistened and the stars dazzled.  I imagine it was the kind of night that left you certain that there is a Power in the universe that pulses with light and heat, and leaves you grateful, not only to be a part of such a complex creation, but also to have had a peek at the Power that seems so often hidden in the world.  But I can only imagine, because, of course, I never actually saw the exquisite sky that night.  I was wrapped snugly in my sleeping bag, glad to be off my feet and deep in a happy sleep that left me ignorant of the Power that shone so brightly above me, just outside my tent.

That morning we packed up our things, as I say, and moved on.  Maybe I’ll revisit that spot again some day, but the chances are slim.  It had taken a week of walking to get there, mostly uphill, and it’s not exactly on the way to anywhere else.  And who knows if the stars will be shining so brightly there again?  There are other places where the night sky shines brilliantly, I know.  But something tells me that the sight I missed is not easily replicated.  In any case, that night is gone, and its particular brilliance lost to me, except in my imagination, and through the report of my friends. 

I am at least glad to know that my two friends saw the sky that night.  I am glad they told me about it.  I am glad to know that the stars in the heavens still have the power to grab our attention and make us take note; to sing silently of the Power that made them and set the planets in their courses, and stirred the currents of the seas.

But I have to admit that I am a little envious of my two friends, in a childish way.  Even after we grow up we tend to be childish about these things – these experiences we hear of someone else’s, but we don’t get to enjoy ourselves.  We don’t necessarily whine to others about it, but inside we whine, which means we are more or less whining to God.  How come Matt and Tom got to see the stars that night but I didn’t?  You know what it feels like.

On that chilly morning that I learned I had slept while the stars blazed above me in a silent symphony, it never occurred to me to doubt the report of my friends or to suggest that they were making it up, or that it had been less fabulous than they recounted.  It only seemed to me as though, because of the gossamer shell of my tent, I had missed seeing the display of Power that transfigured that night for my friends.

I wonder if it was like that when Peter and James and John came down from the mountain with Jesus after he was transfigured – glowing with white light, and the source of his astounding Power somehow more evident than usual, inescapably on display for the three friends who happened to be on the mountain with him, even though sleep was close at hand.

St. Luke tells us that they didn’t tell anyone about it at first.  But they must have eventually decided to break their silence and tell the others about the amazing transfiguration they witnessed.  And what did the others make of it when they heard the story?  Did they doubt the veracity of this amazing sight?  Did they wonder if it was made up, or at best exaggerated?  Did they begin to come up with possible explanations, like, maybe the sun was behind Jesus, and it was low in the sky, and it kind of created a glow around him?

Or did they just think to themselves, Wow, I wish I’d seen that.

And did they wonder about the various gossamer barriers of their lives that might have prevented them from seeing it, might have prevented them from getting closer to Jesus.  And did it occur to them that they might all have been at home sleeping at just the time Peter and James and John were fighting sleep and staying awake to see this wondrous sight?

Wow!  Would have been great to be there and see that!

Of course, they had sensed the Power of Jesus.  Of course, they knew he was different.  Of course they could tell that everything was changing, much had already changed.  But to see him transfigured…!  What would that have meant to them?  To peer into the bright light of the Power and see him shine!

Wow, I wish I’d seen that!

This morning we awaken, and we are told this story about the Power of the universe alight in this man Jesus, about whom we have been hearing all our lives.  And it suggests to me a choice:

When we hear this story, we can dismiss it, as the kind of thing that sprang from the over-active imaginations of men with ulterior motives in an ancient and more gullible time – and there are plenty of people who would explain this story that way.

Or we can think to ourselves, Wow, I wish I’d seen that.

In which case it might occur to us that we have been sleeping through a lot of life, paying only a very little attention, and only too happy for the kinds of gossamer shrouds we wrap ourselves in, that prevent us from over seeing the Power of the universe that pulses with light and heat.

Mostly these barriers (like my tent) have only one purpose – to make us comfortable.

But, you know, you have to get up out of your tent in the dark of night if you want to see the galaxy twinkle.

That moment on the mountaintop, with Jesus shining and transfigured, is gone, just like that night in the Sierra Nevadas.  We are not likely to pass that way again.  But I am so glad we have ancient friends to tell us the story, to remind us of the time they saw the Power of the universe possess this One Man, who would give his life for us, and change everything for us!

And it hardly occurs to me at all to believe that it didn’t happen just the way the Scriptures say – although I cant imagine why or how it did happen.  But, wow, do I ever wish I’d seen that!

And it makes me glad to be here with you, to tell the story, and to hear it again.  It makes me eager to fight the waking sleep that so often beckons us to sleep walk through life.  It makes me want to give up the comforts of my tent and sleep under the open skies, so to speak, lest I should miss some night of wonder, some enchanted evening when the Power of the universe is on display, its light and heat transfiguring the Presence of a Man whose name, I realize I know.

For if the universe is filled with Power, if there is transfiguring grace that changes everything, bringing to fruition God’s providence and hope, then its name is Jesus.  And I pray I won’t be asleep when next his Power lights up the sky with a glory unlike any other power the world has ever known.

And if I am, then I hope at least one of you will tell me about it!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

10 February 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Ezra and Nehemiah were never friends.  They came back to Jerusalem under separate steam when the Persians conquered the Babylonians and the people of Israel were allowed to return to their old home.  It’s not at all clear that they ever knew each other.  And they probably thought that their work had nothing to do with the other’s.  Nehemiah’s work was to rebuild, and Ezra’s work was to remember.  And Nehemiah’s mother always thought that her son got the short end of the stick  - what with second billing in the Bible: Ezra…  and Nehemiah.  Nehemiah was the politician, the leader, the do-er of things.  His job was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which had been destroyed during the Babylonian occupation

Rebuilding Jerusalem is a noble, if a thankless, job.  It is always about more than meets the eye – for Jerusalem is God’s own city.  And when Nehemiah went back to rebuild its walls, he also went to prepare the city for the return of God’s people to their home, to his home.  And he accomplished his mission in 52 days – that’s how long Scripture tells us it took Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  An impressive accomplishment.

It must have been hard to move back to the city after 60 or 70 years of exile.  The names of the streets had been changed.  None of the same old places were still there – so much had been destroyed.  The city was an empty, burned-out shell.  It was impossible to find a decent bagel.  You move back to Jerusalem, but you never really lived there before – your grandparents did.  But who wants to pick up where his grandparents left off?  You’d gotten used to life in Babylon.  Maybe you’d met a nice girl there, a local girl.  Your grandparents told the stories of deportation, and it was horrible, yes.  But they’d been tough old birds.  They made the best of it, and made a life in Babylon, in what was, after all, a pretty amazing city.  Yes, it was a hardship to be driven from one end of the Fertile Crescent to the other, but moving back would be no picnic either.

And move back to what?  Jerusalem was no Babylon.  It had fallen apart at the hands of various marauders.  Was there work there?  Who knew?  But there was the Temple to consider.  That’s what Papa always said.  The Temple, the Temple, the Temple.  God was in Jerusalem.  Not that God wasn’t with them in Babylon – but he wasn’t at home there.  “How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?” Papa asked, as if the answer was self-evident.

So when Cyrus the Great invaded and routed the Babylonians there was cause for rejoicing.  Cyrus decreed that the Jews were free to go back, free to rebuild their old city, and its famous Temple.  And Nehemiah was a talented, capable man.  52 days – he was proud of that.  52 days to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  But now Jerusalem was like a ghost town.  Walls, yes, but what about the rest of it?  What about its soul?

Sixty years doesn’t seem like such a long time – only a couple of generations or so.  But you can forget a lot in sixty years.  Things that had seemed so important in Jerusalem faded from memory in Babylon, without the shadow of the Temple to protect their memory.  As Israel was forced to wander away from Jerusalem, their minds and their hearts wandered too.  And it’s not like wandering hadn’t been a part of the Jews’ story.  Didn’t Abraham and Sarah wander?  Didn’t Moses wander?  Doesn’t the Bible tell us that sometimes God tells people to get up and go – and he doesn’t always tell you where you are going.  And you pack things when you leave that maybe you don’t unpack right away when you get wherever you are going – wherever God is leading you.

Does God’s law move with you when you are driven out of God’s own city and carried into exile, where you must – under pain of real punishment – learn to follow the new laws?  You couldn’t bring one set of dishes with you, let along two – keeping kosher was not so important as keeping alive.  So you adapted, you followed local customs – what choice did you have?  And if you forgot the details, you could be forgiven, couldn’t you?  God understood, didn’t he?

But Ezra’s job was to remember.  The boxes with the sacred scrolls that others left packed-up in Babylon had all been carefully un-packed in Ezra’s house.  These he studied, as if by remembering the law he could remember Jerusalem – even though that city was the vaguest memory to him.  But remembering was his job as a priest.

Remembering is a harder job than you think.  Not a lot of glamour in remembering – even less so in reminding others, when the time comes, of lessons that had been easy to forget.

Ezra re-packed his scrolls, when he journeyed back to Jerusalem.  He wrapped them carefully in their embroidered covers, and tied them with silken cords, and placed them in their boxes to be transported back to Jerusalem, whence they had come, those generations ago.  For what did the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem stand for if not the call to remembrance?  Why had the walls been rebuilt if not to define again the boundaries of God’s own city, wherein God’s law must be remembered.  Nehemiah did his job; Ezra must do his, too, standing on a platform in the square by the Water Gate, unfurling the words of the law for the people to hear and remember.  This was coming home.  And soon there would be the Temple again, built again from the force of memory – the memory that this is God’s house, God’s home.

They say that everything is cyclical, and maybe that’s true.  There is a cycle in the life of faith that seems to require regular rebuilding and remembering.  And although these seem like different kinds of work – as they seemed to be for Ezra and Nehemiah – they are part of the same process.  For, if Jerusalem is easily ruined, and if God’s Temple is easily torn down, then what else is safe?  Nothing.  And being a part of the community of faith, being part of the chosen people, doesn’t guarantee you much – except that probably at some point you will have to rebuild and remember.

There was a time when the Episcopal Church was called the Republican Party at prayer.  Those were the days!  In those days, we sometimes thought like a party that assumed we would enjoy a permanent place of privilege.  If George Washington had been an Episcopalian, how could anything ever go wrong?   Nothing would ever have to be rebuilt or remembered!

But it seems that our walls do crumble, and our communities do forget, and I could take you on a tour of Episcopal churches that are hardly more than empty shells, and where the Word of God, if it is ever read, rings hollow against the abandoned or nearly abandoned stone walls.

Has the church been driven in to exile?  If so, where has she gone, and when will she return?

Whatever exile the church is enduring is nothing compared to the exile so many people feel in their hearts – where they know God is supposed to dwell.  Many, many people of faith, however, feel as though they have been somehow set adrift, wandering from one exile to another, wondering why God is so hard to find, why his transforming work can be so little in evidence.

We live in a world of spiritual exile, anxiety, and fear.  How can we sing the Lord’s song in so strange a land?  And what can we do but learn to adapt, to get along, following whatever rules seem to govern the world in which we live?  After all, Babylon is a very handsome city, not a bad place to live, when you get right down to it.  And we suffer from a great misfortune: there is no edict ordering us home, no king sending us back whence we came.  No benevolent power is pushing us back toward a holy city.  We cannot even be sure where the walls are that we should be rebuilding, or what the laws are that we should be reading in the square until the remembrance of it brings us to tears.

But Jesus comes among us.  Something awakens when he walks in. 

There is a scroll – we hardly even know which one it is (ours are still packed up in our boxes).  But he knows.  Deliberately he opens the scroll to the place he wants.  He remembers.  And now he remembers for us: 

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me

to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year

of the Lord's favor."

We have to remember and rebuild.  These things are cyclical.  And although they seem like different kinds of work, they are part of the same process: rebuilding and remembering.

Are you poor?

Are you a prisoner of something, someone?

Have you lost your sight?

Are you oppressed and unable to break free?

You are like a holy city, whose walls have crumbled, and whose laws have been forgotten.  We are all like this.  If Jerusalem can crumble, so can we.

You need to remember and rebuild

There is always the Temple to consider  - the Temple, the Temple, the Temple – which God has now constructed in your heart.  Within your very body, he has made a Temple for his Holy Spirit.  Remember and rebuild.

Do not make the mistake of dismissing the work of Ezra and Nehemiah as boring, ancient history.  Everything is cyclical, and they were doing this work back when it was seriously hard to do: rebuilding and remembering.

Are you poor, a prisoner, blind, oppressed?  Do you suspect that time has already passed you by, and you have not much hope?

Can you hear the voice of the One who is reading from the scroll?  It sounds like hammers repairing stone walls, to me.

Can you hear the law of God’s love being proclaimed somewhere in the square?  Do you remember now?  Do you feel like you can be rebuilt?

Rejoice and do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!

Rejoice!  Rebuild!  Remember!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 January 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia