Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

In case you haven’t noticed, in the Episcopal Church, we have a real thing for nicknaming Sundays. Last week, the second Sunday of Easter, we often call “Low Sunday,” and next week is “Good Shepherd Sunday.” We have Laetare Sunday in Lent and Gaudete Sunday in Advent. And then there’s Septuagesima Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday – even the lesser well-known Quasimodo Sunday. (Ask me about that one after the Mass if you’re curious).

This week we celebrate Déjà vu Sunday. Déjà vu is taken from the French phrase that means “already seen.” It was coined by a 19^th century psychic researcher named Émile Boirac to describe the phenomenon of experiencing something that seems eerily familiar, something that you remember, but you can’t possibly remember, something that…okay. You’re right. I cannot tell a lie; there is no Déjà vu Sunday. (There is a Quasimodo Sunday, though, I promise you.) But if there were ever going to be a Déjà vu Sunday, this would be it. Because as you stood there a minute ago listening to the proclamation of the Gospel, wasn’t there a little voice in your head saying, “Something like this has happened before…this Gospel seems weirdly familiar…”? Something like this has happened before, like, last week, when we heard John’s Gospel telling almost the exact same story. The disciples are shut up in a room, hiding, or regrouping, or something, and Jesus appears among them and says, “Peace be with you.” They are astounded and amazed, and so Jesus shows them his wounds to prove that he is, in fact, their Lord – the same Jesus Christ who was crucified, dead, and buried. Same Jesus Christ; same story. There are some differences, of course. Thomas is noticeably, noisily absent from the group in John’s telling of the story, but in Luke, everyone seems to be present and accounted for. And Jesus is hungrier in the Gospel of Luke, taking time to eat a piece of fish, reminding the disciples of other times they have watched him enjoy his food – sitting by the sea of Galilee, breaking the loaves and the fishes, offering his body and his blood.

But for the most part, these two Gospel stories are remarkably similar. So similar, in fact, that it’s a little surprising that the Church asks that we hear them two weeks in a row. Could you imagine doing that at other times of the year? Coming into church in July and hearing the story of Jesus’ calming of the stormy sea from the Gospel of Matthew, and then the next week hearing the same story from Mark, the next week from Luke? That could be quite interesting, actually, but the Church lectionary doesn’t usually behave that way – except for these weeks in Eastertide when the readings repeat themselves a bit. And so two full weeks after Easter Day, we find ourselves back at Easter evening with the disciples who are just hearing the remarkable, ridiculous news of the resurrection.

Now, there may be a little part of us that feels ready to move on. Where does the story go from here – what happens next? When do we get to hear about the breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, when will Jesus ascend into heaven, when does that great Holy Spirit dive down on the disciples? What’s next? But the very purposeful repetitiveness of today’s Gospel reminds us, invites us, encourages us to linger a moment. Today’s Gospel asks you – and me – if we would be willing to linger in Easter one moment longer – not just in the stories and celebrations of Easter Day, but in the very presence of the risen Christ.

This is such a timely invitation. Because this concept of lingering doesn’t always come easily for us, and at this is a time of year, lingering can be a particular challenge. In the past couple of weeks, I have heard countless people say to me, “If I can just make it until….” Sometimes this is about being hassled and worn out and tired. If I can just make it through these exams, if I can just get this project finished at work, if we can just finish painting the house, if I can just get to the end of the fiscal year. But sometimes this feeling is about being in a particularly difficult and stressful season of our lives. If I can just get my mother safely settled in a home, if I can just get this second opinion, if he can just find a job, if we can just hang on until summer…. We in the church are not exempt from this way of thinking, of course. If I can just get through Corpus Christi, if we can just make it through this current budget cycle…. If we can just make it past fill-in-the-blank, then…what? Then, we imagine, we’ll have time, and peace, then we can breathe in and linger all we want. But now? Right now we don’t have the time or space to be still and know that God is God.

Of course, we know that this is a kind of magical thinking. We know that there will almost always be something else over the horizon, some other task or tension that will run up on us all in a rush and consume as much time as anything we’re involved with now. There is a natural up and down and back and forth to these cycles, of course, but we know that the ebb quickly turns into a flow, and we’ll find ourselves once again flooded out and wishing for that still, small isle of peace that we can see just out there, if we could only get to it.

But look again at the Gospel for this week – and last week, for that matter. Look at how and when Jesus chooses to show up. He doesn’t wait until the disciples have waded through all of their fears and doubts and panic to make an appearance. No, he shows up right in the middle of the storm of their anxiety, when they’re all whipped up like a sea squall about the rumors of the resurrection. Right in the midst of that foaming tempest – wham! – Jesus appears, breathes “Peace be with you” and the waves are still. He invites the disciples to take a breath, to linger with him as he shows them his wounds, picks the bones from the flaky flesh of a freshly-broiled fish, and opens the scriptures for them page by page, like petals.

And that Jesus, who was the same Jesus who was crucified, dead, and buried, is the same Jesus who is present here in Word and Sacrament and in this people gathered together. Jesus is the same now as he was then; he steps right in the middle of your whirlwind and whispers “Peace be with you.” He invites you to take a breath, to linger with him, to take real time to sit and be still, to chew over the scriptures with him until they taste sweet as honey in your mouth, to savor the taste of his meat and drink. He invites you to linger in Easter each and every Sunday at the weekly celebration of his resurrection, to sit and to sing and to pray and to take eat and to proceed in peace. But Christ also invites you to do this every day, every moment. Right in the middle of your life – ebbing or flowing, stormy or still – he invites you to take a breath, to see, to notice, and to linger a moment with the love that is all around you.

This takes practice, of course. Even if you aren’t feeling particularly overworked or overly stressed right now, the truth is that this lingering always takes effort and attention and commitment. But don’t worry – Christ is happy to stay with you as you figure out what this lingering will look like for you. Maybe it will be silent, contemplative prayer. Maybe it will be the slow, prayerful study of scripture. Or maybe it will be taking time to really listen to what your co-worker is telling you about her child’s report card. Maybe it will be really looking at the person who sits outside the steps of this church asking for money. Maybe it will be paying attention to the earth, stopping and smelling the flowers, noticing the beauty of spring that reminds us that, in the words of Joan Chittister, “hope rages, hope rages, hope rages in this world.”

This kind of practice, this cultivation of a still heart, is what Easter Christians are asked to do every day – to linger long enough that we can open our eyes to see all of Christ’s redeeming work. How else can we possibly be a witness to the good news if we haven’t really seen it ourselves?  Of course this isn’t always easy – sometimes the waves crash against us and we feel as if we’ll never reach the shore. But these waters cannot quench the love of Christ, neither can the floods drown out his speaking, Peace, peace, peace. 

So right now, take a breath. Practice some Easter lingering.  Practice resisting the temptation to rush along to the next part of your story, to look only over the horizon at the oasis of calm that you imagine there. Practice opening the eyes of your heart. Look here. Taste this. “This flower,” writes Thomas Merton, “this light, this moment, this silence – the Lord is here. Best because the flower is itself, and the silence is itself, and I am myself.” Peace be with you. Here. Now.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

22 April 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

They had planned it all so carefully. How could they not have planned it all so carefully – the women didn’t have anything else to do on that grim, gray Sabbath. And going over in their minds exactly what they had to do as soon as the sun went down prevented them from going over anything else in their minds. Thoughts of spices – Which to buy? How many pounds? And which oils would they need? – crowded out the sounds and the smells of the betrayal and the beatings and the blood. Thoughts of which vendors might be open when the Sabbath had passed helped to push out the memories of those Roman soldiers playing a pavement game for Jesus’ robe while Jesus himself hung painfully exposed and drowning in his own weight. Thoughts and plans gave them a sense of purpose, gave them enough rhythm to keep their broken hearts beating, kept them just busy enough that there was hardly any chance that they would remember the stillness – that horrifying stillness – just after Jesus breathed his last…and just before his mother cried out as if a sword had pierced her own soul too. They had planned so carefully. It was just what they did as women, as disciples. It was just what they did to keep the tears away.

And so when the sun set they were off, walking quickly to the market, faces wrapped in their shawls to avoid pestering questions and pity-filled glances. They bought what they needed, not even needing to haggle over the price, as the man who sold them the spices was doubly generous, charging them very little and also never, not once, meeting their eyes, or asking how they were, or saying that he was sorry. Thank God. They had no time for sorry, no time to think about how they were. They had a plan, the Marys and Salome. They had a plan and nowhere in that plan did it say, “Now the women who loved Jesus, who gave up everything to follow him, who knew the ring of his laugh and the power of his presence, now these women fall to pieces.” No, there was no time, no room for that. They had work to do.            

They didn’t sleep that night. How could they, with all of their plans whipping around in their minds. When the solid blackness outside their windows finally began to soften to gray, they arose, dressed, and, without a word, hoisted all of their purchases onto their shoulders and began to walk, step by step, to the tomb. Along the way, they worried with each other about the one part of the plan that they had not been able to work out: the stone. There was that giant disc of a stone rolled into a slot to cover the open doorway. It was mammoth, heavy enough to keep out animals…and, they feared, three slight women. But there was nothing to be done about it; they would just have to figure it out when they got there.

By the time they arrived at the tomb, the sun had just begun to kiss the tips of the grass with silver light. The place looked so different than it had on Friday afternoon. The hot, dry dust had stilled, the air felt cool and damp, and the world was entirely hushed. And the stone, the giant stumbling block of the stone, had been rolled back already, the entrance to the tomb stood open, quiet and inviting. Without a word, they set down their packs and stepped into the cool chamber, so new and clean...and so empty. No body. No blood. No plan. Just a young man, sitting in a white robe and speaking to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus. But he has risen. Look at the floor, you see that he is no longer here. He is already gone, gone ahead to the Galilee. Women, go, and tell his disciples what you have seen and heard here.”

They look at the young man, dazzling in his white cloth and white smile. They look at the floor, bare except for a linen shroud tossed aside into the corner, and look at each other with wide eyes. Then they look at their carefully planned purchases sitting in packs outside the door, and they realize their mistake. For all of their thinking, all of their organizing yesterday in the darkness of the Sabbath, they had forgotten something critical. They forgot that Jesus had told them that this would happen – that he would be killed, and that he would be raised on the third day. In all of their planning, they had never once imagined that he might actually have been speaking the truth. They had never planned that they might not find him here, and so they have brought entirely the wrong thing. They have brought only their sorrow when they should have brought their hope. They have brought spices to anoint the dead when they should have brought walking shoes to follow the living, to run after the risen Jesus wherever he would lead them.

I wonder if this is part of why they ran away. Maybe it was not so much because the young man scared them; after all, in this story there is no appearance like lightning, no rumble of earthquake. No, there was just this – just a man telling them that Jesus had risen, and the simple truth that they were utterly unprepared for that. They had had no idea what had been coming. Jesus had actually been raised from the dead. He was actually the Messiah, the anointed one of God. The world had actually changed. He was risen; the resurrection was true! And trembling and astonishment came upon the women, and they fled, and they said not a thing to anyone, because this truth was simply terrifying.

Now we know that the women must have said something eventually – the Gospel of Mark was written down, after all, by a community of disciples whose whole lives had changed because of the resurrection. Mark even provides us with some alternate endings to his book, sort of the director’s cut of the Gospel, where Jesus appears to the disciples and tells them how to live their faith in this post-resurrection world. But the oldest ending of Mark is this one, where the women are shaken to their core and run away. Which means that the oldest editions of Mark’s Gospel thought that this ending had something to teach us, something to show us that could help us to live out our own lives more fully and more faithfully.

Here is the question that I think this shorter ending of Mark asks: what are you and I planning for? Are we planning for a world in which Christ is palpable and present, or are we planning for a world where he feels mostly absent? Do we expect to find Christ risen and thriving and moving ahead of us, or do we imagine that actually, he might be dead? When we leave this church building tonight, do we expect to find traces of his presence everywhere, shining imprints of where he has been, blessings he has bestowed, healings he has offered? Or do we imagine that at some point the glory of this night will wear off, that when the incense has washed out of our clothes and the traces of wax have been peeled off of our fingertips, we will once again find ourselves looking at an empty world where Christ has little to do with our day-to-day living?       

You can see why it makes so much sense that the women ran away afraid. Because the idea that something real happened in that tomb, the idea that something that true, that powerful, that generous had happened was – at first, at least – a little more than they could handle, just as the idea that something that true, that real, and that generous is present in our own lives can also be more than we can handle. Sometimes it’s just easier to plan as if Christ won’t be there. You know what this feels like. We’ve all done it. We wake up, stretch, breathe in, and imagine our day as if our own power and planning can make the whole thing happen. We work hard to accept that there are just some things we have to handle on our own. We pray, of course, and invite God to abide in our busy minds, but when he doesn’t always show up at the time or in the way that we want him too, we aren’t entirely surprised. We accept; we sit in the darkness of our own lives and fill up our minds and hearts with thoughts and plans that help us to feel like we can actually be in control, that our thoughts and plans are actually the most important thing that we do.

But these holy women remind you and me not to sell ourselves – or our God – so short. There is grace to be had in this world. We reaffirm this every time we take communion, every time we welcome a new sister in Christ like we welcomed little Stephanie this evening. This is the truth – the tomb is empty, and the world is full. So let’s be ready. Let’s bring our walking shoes, bring our hopes and our expectations; let’s plan on finding Christ when we are in this place and when we leave this place, let’s look for where he might lead us, where he might have gone before us, the ways he has invited us to follow him. Let’s plan to find Christ in our lives and in our society, and then let’s be sure to bring the right stuff with us to follow him – our hearts and souls and minds, our love, our hope, our new life in him.  

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Great Vigil of Easter, April 7, 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

It had been a long Lent. By the time the people gathered together in the church on Good Friday, they were ready. They had been made ready by weeks of prayer and fasting, by weeks of self-examination and denial, by weeks of scripture and sermons that had finally, finally, led them to this place – to the tiny garden on the side of a hill where Jesus sat in the darkness among an ominous tangle of olive trees. It was here, in this garden, that the people finally were able to pick up the Passion, to hear the story that was the culmination of their long Lenten journey.

But it was more than just the mere telling of the Passion that these people hungered for. Because these were not just any people, and this was not just any Lent. This was Lent in Leipzig in 1724, and these people had gathered for Vespers in the Lutheran Church of St. Nicholas to hear the new St. John Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. They hadn’t heard any instrumental music in church since the season of Lent had begun, and for these people, who were used to a weekly diet of carefully crafted cantatas, the time when they were forced to abstain from these orchestral delights always felt terribly bleak and barren. 1724 was Bach’s very first Lenten season in Leipzig, so there must have been more than a little curiosity about what this feisty and brilliant composer might offer the congregation this year. Had they gotten their money’s worth? Would this new Passion work? – and by that I mean, would Bach’s setting of the St. John Passion help them to truly join Jesus in that garden, to enter fully – mind, body, and soul – into this story that they had waited so long to hear?

It is clear from listening to the St. John Passion that Bach knew exactly what the people expected of him and of this particular piece. The Bach scholar Michael Marissen has written that Bach’s role in Leipzig is best described as a kind of “musical preacher,” and it is this preaching, this active and very personal engagement with the Passion, that is so compelling in the St. John. Bach not only set the entire Passion according to St. John (in German, of course), he also carefully placed other poetic texts within the narrative to help connect the listener to the action. Bach’s goal, clearly, was not just for you to hear the story but for you to get inside it, to live it – to imagine what it was like in the garden or at Gabbatha or on Golgotha, and to experience an emotional and a spiritual response to what happened there. The whole point of the Passion was to feel something – to feel the cries of Crucifixion from the crowd, to feel the tenderness as Jesus gave Mary and the disciple John into each other’s care, and – most importantly – to feel how our own wretched brokenness made this sacrifice necessary in the first place.

Let me give you an example. At the beginning of the Passion, when Jesus is being questioned by the high priests, one of the servants strikes Jesus with his hand after an answer that he deems to be disrespectful. Here Bach pauses the action and interjects a chorale, a hymn. At the beginning of this chorale, the choir is indignant, singing, “Who was it who hit you this way, Lord? Who treated you so badly – you haven’t done anything wrong!” But then the singers realize the painful answer: they are to blame – “It is I, I and my many, many sins, who have caused this misery for you.” The singers, and, by proxy, the congregation, can no longer simply stand outside the story looking in. With this one masterful stroke, Bach has placed the people on the inside. They are now a part of the action, they are a part of the cause; they are truly viewing the story from the inside out. And so faced with their facts of their own complicity in the suffering of Jesus, how can they not feel something?

Even if you didn’t hear the Bach St. John Passion performed here last weekend or study it with us over the past five weeks in our Sunday forums, even if you’ve never heard of this piece in your life, I’m guessing that you can imagine what this deep emotional connection to the Passion text feels like. Because this is exactly what we experience here on Good Friday, in this liturgy. We enter into this bleak and barren space, stripped of anything that sets it apart as holy, we watch the sacred ministers prostrate themselves before the altar, we hear ancient texts set to ancient tunes – all of which is intended to position us squarely within the events of this day, to help us find our place here, and tie us to that first Good Friday thousands of years ago. We have just knelt in silence as we reached back through the centuries to that horrible empty moment when Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, breathed out all of the air in his battered lungs and was still. In a few moments we will take the last few steps of our Lenten journey as we walk to the very foot of the cross, bend ourselves before the holy weight that hangs upon it, and kiss the feet of the figure who took it up for all of humankind.

More than almost any other service of the church year, the liturgies of Good Friday are intended to make us not just think about something but feel something. When we look at the wounds and the bruises that this suffering servant has borne for us, we are invited to feel something. When we cry out with the psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” we are invited to feel something. When we live the long, dusty walk to the cross; when we hear the mocking, the scourging, the shame; when we wonder if there is any sorrow like our sorrow; we should feel something.

But if we go out of this church on this day satisfied with the fact that we have felt something, we leave this liturgy unfulfilled. If this day is for us just about feeling sad, or empty, or overwhelmed and humbled, then we have left something out. Good Friday cannot just be about the way we feel; it cannot be just for us, because our Lord’s sacrifice was not just for you and me and for the faithful few who remained at the foot of the Cross, but for the whole world. Today must also, then, be about those who are out there and how we connect with them. Good Friday cannot be just about what we feel; it must also be about what we do.

What will we do? What will we do in response to this Good Friday? As we hear about the prisoner Jesus, mocked and tortured by his captors, what will we do for prisoners here in our country, or for prisoners of conscience around the globe? As we hear about a religious community divided against itself, what will we do for the Church here and in the world? As we hear about a Roman government corrupted by cruelty and unchecked power, what will we do for our own government to help it maintain an open heart to the world and to its own people? As we hear about an angry mob of powerless and manipulated people, what we will do for the oppressed around the world? What will we do for those who are persecuted for their faith? What will we do for those who have no faith, who are betrayers or who are betrayed, who suffer loss and mourn? What does Good Friday encourage us to do in response to how it makes us feel?

This question, and our response to this question, is at the heart of this holy day. Good Friday, of course, does offer us a powerful emotional experience, but the power of this is day is not just that it allows you and me to imagine what it was like on Golgotha in the first century on the first day of Passover but that, in the words of the author of Hebrews, this day “provokes us to love and good deeds.” Our emotional response to the story of Christ’s Passion can actually strengthen our ministry if the way we feel on this day breaks our hearts open to love more freely and more fully – to love God and our neighbors as ourselves, and to love one another as Christ has loved us – by doing acts of service and mercy in his name.

This may feel like a tall order. There is so much that can be done – where do we start? Well, starting where Bach did is always a good idea. Bach began each new composition by writing “Jesu juva” at the top of the score – Jesus help me. Jesus, help us to feel something in this liturgy today, and help us to imagine how you might use that feeling to accomplish something in us. On this Good Friday, help us to be moved, not just emotionally, but moved out into the world to strengthen the Church, to feed the hungry, to heal the brokenhearted. From your cross, from the tomb, Jesus, help us. And to God alone be the glory.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Good Friday, April 6, 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, and the people flinch. They have heard enough from this insistent prophet Jeremiah to know that whatever is coming cannot be good. They have heard, day after day, that God’s great reckoning has come upon them because of their chronic unfaithfulness. They have heard God call them degenerate and false, wild, perverse; they have even heard the word whore. They have heard God tell them that He will smash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel, that He will “bring such disaster” upon them that the “ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.” They have cried, “Peace, Peace!” but there is no peace, and terror is all around. The days are surely coming, they think, when…what? When you will utterly forsake us? When you will finally wipe us from the earth? When you will leave us to fend for ourselves while you go find another nation to bless, another people to call chosen? The days are surely coming, says the Lord, but the people already know how that sentence will end. For they have heard the hardest words of disappointment and judgment, and they have taken them to heart. Nothing good can possibly be coming.

The days are surely coming, we hear, and we, too, flinch. For we have seen enough of the terrors of this world to worry that whatever is coming cannot be good. We have heard, day after day, that there is to be a reckoning upon us because of our waste and our arrogance. We have heard that Creation itself is spinning out of control because of our abuse, that this vibrant, vulnerable planet will burn and storm and rage more and more. We have heard that our best days as a nation are behind us, that the great American experiment will fall victim to terrorism, or greed, or an ever-widening and aggressive polarity. We have heard that we can no longer hope that future generations will live better than we do, that the rich will only grow richer and the poor poorer. We have even heard that the Church is dying, that one day the seduction of secularism and the drain of our busy, busy, busy-ness will simply prove too much, and that on some Sunday in the not-too-distant future this church will offer its last Mass, whisper its last prayers, and close its beautiful red doors forever. Peace, we cry, but there is no peace, and terror is all around. The days are surely coming, we hear, when…what? When the planet finally becomes uninhabitable? When the United States is shattered like a piece of pottery? When the Church stumbles, finally falls, never to rise again? The days are surely coming, we hear, but we can already imagine how that sentence might end. For we hear the threats of the world, and it is so easy to take them to heart and imagine that nothing good can possibly be coming.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, and at first the people flinch. But then the Lord continues to speak: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will do something new, when I will reach out to you again, my own people, heart of my heart, and rescue you. This time, there will be no tablets of stone that you can break into pieces; no, this time, I will engrave my promises upon your very souls. This time I will plant my own righteousness deep within you so that you cannot, finally, forget me, so that even when you turn away from me you will take me with you in your own hearts. This time, I will make my words so shine within you that you will only have to gaze upon each other to see my promise. Yes, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will do this new and wondrous thing for you.

How remarkable this is – that “The days are surely coming” turn out to be words of blessing, not of condemnation. After everything that His people have put Him through, God chooses them again. They have broken His covenant, but He will not destroy them. They have betrayed Him, but He will not forsake them. Instead He chooses to do something different, to offer himself to them in a new way so that they cannot be lost to Him forever. He will not walk away; He refuses to give them up, for he is God, and God’s righteousness is not like our righteousness, His mercy is not like our mercy.

And what you and I cannot forget, what we must never forget, is that God has not changed. The God who offered Himself to an old man named Abraham and made of him a people, the God who rescued that people by the hand of a man named Moses, the God who remained faithful to that people through forty years of whining and wavering in the wilderness, the God who showed loyalty to that people even when its kings rose to great power and fell in great disgrace – the God who touched the lips of the boy-prophet Jeremiah and sent him to speak words meant to shock this people to their senses and then chose them again even when those words did little good – this God does not change. This God remains true, righteous, and merciful, yesterday and today and forever. This God, our God, will not walk away, refuses to give us up.  

The world wants us to forget this. The world wants us to think that things have changed, that God is dead, that our problems now are too modern and too grand for our ancient faith, that religion is so co-opted by politics or weakened by scandal that it has little hope to offer anymore. The world wants us to listen to the words of doom spoken by prophets and madmen alike and to take them to heart, to worry that the days that are surely coming will be filled only with destruction. Even in the Church, perhaps particularly in the Church, the world wants to trap us in a web of woe, discourage us from our mission with words of death and darkness. But these are not the words to take to our hearts. God has already written words of hope and forgiveness there, words of renewed covenant and never-failing love, of trust and mercy and constancy. These words are already etched deep within ourselves; all we need do is look to our hearts to find them.

The question is, when the world comes shrieking its curses and threats, can we act like we believe what we find there? Can we not only treasure the promise of God in our hearts but sing it out with our voices and dance it with our feet? When we hear the hardest words of judgment, the direst predictions of doom, can we shout our hope to the rooftops, can we shine that light which we know to be in us into the path of all those who walk in darkness? Can we paint a vision of what we know the days that are surely coming really look like, can we help to finish that sentence when others flinch in fear at what the future holds – tell them with faith that the days are surely coming when the Church will grow and thrive and do its work, when all of Creation will be made new, when all people will be reconciled one to another, when peace and justice will reign? Can we live like we believe the words written in our hearts?

Of course we can.  Not because of our own strength or because of any rosy-eyed optimism, but God’s great gift has made it possible. In these latter days of Lent, the days are surely coming when we will hear the story of this great gift again, the gift of this new covenant, written in the spirit of his only and eternal Son, sketched into our world with bread and wine, with water and blood, with iron and the hard wood of the cross. We will hear hard and beautiful words of how our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and died in order to bear much fruit, how God transformed the barren wood of the cross into a glorious spring of eternal life. We will take to heart the story of how God looked down upon His people, broken and sinful and lost, and chose us, called us to work for His kingdom, where there will always be good news for the poor, release for the captives and recovery of sight for the blind. These words have already been fulfilled in your hearing; these words have already been written on the walls of your heart. This kingdom has come and is coming. These blessed, glorious days will surely, surely come.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

25 March 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Grieb's sermon here.

Preached by the Rev. Dr. A. Katherine Grieb

18 March 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia