Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The legend is told of a secret chamber located somewhere deep beneath Saint Mark’s: somewhere deeper than the tomb that holds the mortal remains of Fernanda Wanamaker, deeper than the tunnels the PATCO trains run through under Locust Street, deeper than the underground river that is said to flow beneath 16^th street.  The entrance to the secret chamber is buried now, somewhere underneath the dirt floor of the eastern end of the Undercroft, directly beneath the choir stalls or the altar.  It is a chamber that has a sort of magical property: you could bring things there that were stuck or locked or jammed in such a way that they would no longer open, and you could say a simple, one-word prayer, and they’d be open-able.  A box that was locked and the key had been lost, a watch whose mechanism had gotten jammed, a jar that couldn’t be opened, a briefcase with a lock whose combination had been forgotten.  These are the sorts of things that were carried gently through the secret narrow passage, down the dark stairs, to the dimly lit chamber, that is said to be bare, with only a single candle to be lit inside it.  The Victorians had a lot more little locks on things than we do, they used little boxes to hold all kinds of things, and mechanical objects were more prone to failure and harder to replace than ours, so this was a useful secret chamber back in the day.  But even more remarkable things were said to happen in the chamber.

It is said that once a star choirboy, whose voice was damaged from an illness of some sort, so that he could barely speak, let alone sing, was escorted down past the columns of the Undercroft, led to the narrow entrance, given the single candle to light, told the prayer he had to recite, and sent down the long passage, deep below the church, and when he came back his voice was restored, and he was given a solo to sing the following Sunday.  It is also told that a priest of the parish, who was spurned by a woman he’d hoped to marry, went down to the secret passage to utter the prayer, but that strangely his broken heart was never mended.

Maybe it was with the construction of the Lady Chapel in 1900 that the entrance to the secret chamber was mistakenly covered over.  Maybe with the turn of the century, and with industrial advances, there were fewer things that needed to be unlocked, or the things that needed to be fixed were all too big to fit through the passageway and carried into the secret chamber.  Maybe the whole story was just made up, and there never was a secret chamber where you could bring the locked, the stuck, the broken, the failed, and have them unlocked, un-tuck, repaired or restored.  But even in our modern age, when watches don’t have any moving parts, when we tend not to lock things up in little boxes, etc, it’s nice to think that there could be a place where a child who has lost his voice could be sent, and he would return with a song on his lips.

I suppose that in this city of study and science, surrounded as we are by medical schools, it became a matter of ridiculous superstition to carry a broken music box (for instance) into a secret chamber and recite a special prayer by the light of a single candle, let alone to send a sick or injured child into such a place and hope for some mysterious healing, some other-worldly repair.  Better to send your sick children to Penn or to Jefferson, or eventually to CHOP.  So, if the entrance to the secret chamber was covered up, it seemed to be no great loss, I suppose, by the turn of the century.  The name of the broken-hearted priest had been forgotten already.  And the choirboy whose voice was restored had grown up and moved away, his identity lost in the shadows of memory.

It is said, however, that the chamber is still there, somewhere deep beneath us, and that a single candlestick stands inside it, waiting to hold its single candle, whose flame will flicker when the prayer – which has never been a secret – is uttered, should anyone ever find the lost entrance and venture down into the secret chamber.  The prayer, as I said, is simple, and never was a secret, which is counter-intuitive, because it’s the sort of incantation that you’d think would be the most tightly guarded secret of the chamber.  But it is taken from the lines of the portion of Saint Mark’s Gospel we heard this morning, and the church has known it, pronounced it openly all around the world for centuries.  It is the oddly lovely word that Jesus spoke after he put his fingers into a deaf man’s ears, and touched his tongue, since his speech was deeply imperfect. 

You remember that Saint Mark tells us first Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed.  These details are not incidental; they reveal the work of a triune God as the Son looks up to God the Father, and animates the Spirit with his breath.  And then he speaks the ancient Aramaic word: Ephphatha.

It’s not surprising, really, that as the world readied itself for a new century – that would turn out to be a bloody, warring century of enormous change and upheaval – that the thought of a secret chamber where little things could be fixed or unlocked or opened seemed foolishly fanciful.  But I wonder if something more was lost when the entrance to the secret chamber beneath Saint Mark’s was covered up and lost.  I wonder if, as the world entered the 20^th century, it wasn’t just the secret chamber that was lost, but also the kind of faith that believed you could utter a simple prayer and it would be answered unambiguously. 

I suspect the priest with the broken heart was the first person to lose that faith – at least the first one whose story we can tell.  I suspect it seemed absurd to him as he carried his candle down the passageway and placed it in its candlestick, and he stood there in a small, damp chamber, and pronounced the funny word, “Ephphatha.”  I suspect he sighed, but that his sigh was different from the sigh that Jesus sighed when he first uttered that word.  I suspect the broken-hearted priest’s sigh was a sigh of resignation, hopelessness, and despair.  Jesus used his sigh as a pre-amble to the prayer.  But the sigh of the broken-hearted priest contained the answer to his own prayer – nothing.

By the time the entrance to the secret chamber was lost, many people throughout the whole church had learned to thus mis-translate the sigh, and had stopped uttering the prayer altogether.  And so the 20^th century became a century during which the church so often sighed her own self-fulfilling sighs, and nothing happened.

Very, very seldom these days, I come across something small that I would like to have fixed or unlocked or opened, and that I suspect I could have carried through the entrance to the passageway to the secret chamber beneath Saint Mark’s.  And I sometimes sigh to think that the entrance to the passageway is lost forever, and maybe the story never was true anyway.

But much more often I stand at the altar, or I sit in my place during Morning or Evening Prayer and I think about all the big things that are broken or locked or stuck shut.  I think about a child’s illness, or a parishioner’s surgery, or the person who is almost surely going to lose his job and will have a hard time finding another.  I think about my friends who have gone to war, I think about the kids at Saint James School and the violence that is a part of their lives in a neighborhood with the highest murder rate in the city.  I think about the people we feed at the soup kitchen every Saturday, and about the people I walk by on the street every day who are in need, but have no wherewithal to find ways to have their needs met.  I think about the folks we worked with in Honduras, who live with so little, and about families of children being treated at CHOP who sometimes find their way here just to light a single candle as a prayer.  I think about the people I know who are getting older and whose lives are diminishing as their hearts and their minds deteriorate.  And I think about the funerals I have done for souls too young to be resting yet in peace, if you ask me.  I think about all these things in my prayers, and more, and it seems to me that there is so much in the world that is broken or locked or stuck shut.  There is so much that needs fixing, so much that has been silenced, so much that has been repressed, so many voices that need to be found again, and so many hearts that have been broken.

And I wonder why the secret chamber is necessary anymore.  I wonder if there ever really was a secret to that chamber, since the prayer itself never was a secret, and since almost nothing is easier than sighing, and if you mis-translate a sigh, you can always just try it again.  I wonder if it matters that the secret chamber is now lost to us, and if maybe, the reason its entrance was covered up was because the work of fixing, unlocking, opening, had outgrown the confines of its little passageway.

I wonder if it isn’t the case that the work God once supposedly did in the bowels of a dark and secret chamber is now meant to be practiced out in the open, right here, where anyone who cares to can come, where candles flicker in every corner, and all you need to do is learn to say the ancient prayer; “Ephphatha.”

I wonder if what was lost wasn’t so much the secret chamber, as the recognition of how stopped-up we have become: how hard it is for us to hear in this noisy world, and how difficult it is to say anything meaningful or intelligible, how closed-off we are from our neighbors, how unavailable to those who we should be loving, how tiny and self-centered our lives have become.

And I find no reason to regret the loss of the secret chamber, or to start digging to see if I can find again its entrance.  Instead, I find the prayer on my lips, and the desire and need to practice saying it, “Ephphatah.”  Be opened.

And I realize that it’s not the secret chamber that has gone missing, it’s the faith that Jesus can unlock the things that need to be unlocked, that Jesus can open that which has been stopped up, that Jesus can give voice to words that have been stuck in our throats, that Jesus can help us hear things we were never able to hear before, that Jesus can fix the things that are broken in our lives, that Jesus can bring healing to the thousand hurts of our lives.

I want to learn to sigh.  I want to learn to sigh the way Jesus did – not out of boredom or frustration, but with the knowledge and confidence that every breath we take carries the strength and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

I want to look in a mirror and practice saying the word to the person I know who needs it most, “Ephphatha.”  Be opened.  I want to know how it feels, up here, out in the open – not in some dark, secret chamber – to say with confidence and faith, “Be opened!  Ephphatha!”

Because I want you to learn how to say it too.  I want you to sigh with me – to sigh with Jesus – and to feel the stirring of the Holy Spirit with his breath.  I want you to say the prayer for yourselves and for the world – for everything that is tightly shut, closed off, repressed, buried, and left for dead or ruined or broken: Ephphatha!  Be opened!  Because the power of Jesus to heal, the power of Jesus to unlock, the power of Jesus to open that which is now closed has not been lost, it is not buried in a lost chamber, or in the mists of ages past.

You only need to learn his prayer, and to believe, and to be patient, for he does not always work so fast as he did all those years ago when he could just stick his fingers in your ears, and touch your tongue.  Nowadays, for reasons unknown, he is so often slower to do the work that once he would do in an instant.  But he looks down from heaven when we look up.  And still he sighs, when you and I sigh.  And still he prays, when you and I pray, “Ephphatha.  Be opened!”  And still he opens all that was closed in us before, and promises that there is still more that will be opened to us, here in this world, and in the world to come.

 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

9 September 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A baker, as any half-witted dolt knows,

adds yeast to his dough, and waits as it grows.

For yeast is alive - it’s a single-celled critter -

warm water awakes it; gets the yeast all a-twitter.

It feasts on the sugars that are there in the flour;

and having thus eaten, discovers new power,

that’s impressive and all, but not very classy:

for the dough starts to rise when the yeast gets all gassy.

It’s what happens when yeast in the dough can ferment;

and results in light airy loaves, not cement.

 

Now there once was a baker, back in long-ago times:

a good decent man, who’d committed no crimes.

He baked tasty bread: it was light, it was crusty.

His ingredients were good, and his oven was trusty.

He also baked cookies and cupcakes and pies,

which required him early each morning to rise.

The first thing he did every morning was throw

salt, flour, and water, and yeast into dough.

Then using his very own hands he would knead

the dough, prompting yeast on the flour to feed.

 

His customers knew that his bread was first rate,

he sold out of it early, they knew not to be late.

They loved to awaken with its scent in the air,

and to hear the good baker lift his voice up in prayer,

for the baker was known as a man who loved God.

There were many who thought it was not at all odd

that his bread was the best you could locate for miles,

since the baker enjoyed from his God many smiles.

It made sense that such good bread, all crusty and yeasty,

was baked by a man many thought of as priest-y.

 

He was known to be good to the poor and the needy,

when a helper was needed, he would always be speedy

to offer whatever could make a wrong right,

or to find a solution, whatever the plight.

He was gen’rous and regularly gave away money,

and his humor, some said, turned a cloudy day sunny.

He was kind to the elders, cared for cats and for dogs,

and to keep himself fit, he went daily for jogs.

The body’s the temple of the spirit, he knew,

and he thanked the Almighty for every breath that he drew.

 

Early one morning, long before dawn,

He finished his mixing, his kneading, so on,

And he turned to his prayers while the yeast did its thing,

he gave thanks to the Lord for the blessings he’d bring

to the day that as yet had not hardly begun,

as he did every day till th’ dough’s rising was done.

Then he turned to the dough, and removed the damp towel

that covered it, and he looked down with a scowl.

For the dough had not risen, it was flaccid and flat,

where it should have plumped up like the crown of a hat.

 

But there was the dough, just as flat as a griddle,

which posed to the baker what you might call a riddle.

This was odd, this was strange, this was certainly weird,

and it could be an omen of the sort to be feared.

Why’d the dough not arisen?  Why’d the yeast not awoken?

Was the magic that once worked in the bakery now broken?

It’s mystical how the dough rises for bread;

it gives life to ingredients that look like they’re dead.

But they’re not, as you see when the dough gets puffed up,

and is baked into bread on which you and I sup.

 

And the baker, you see, had always regarded

rising dough as a sign that God had bombarded

the world with his blessings, and his people with grace,

and felt almost holy, he felt God’s embrace,

as the yeast did its work on the water and flour

by the baker in his bakery, of a wee morning hour.

It was almost as though it was meant as a sign

that although it was dark, the sun would still shine,

although there were troubles all over the earth,

there was still such a thing that you might call new birth.

 

The clock was still ticking, for time marches on,

but still the new dough was as flat as a lawn.

There would be no fresh bread from the oven that day;

he put a sign in the window and he started to pray.

He checked his supplies, and the temp in the room,

and he prayed that tomorrow the yeast, it would bloom.

He spent the day quietly and he slept well that night,

and he woke in the morning without too much fright;

and he mixed up his dough in its great big dough bowl,

but when the time came it was flat as a Sole.

 

This pattern continued for days and for days,

the yeast was not working throughout this whole phase;

the dough should have risen, and taken new shape,

but instead, day by day, it was flat as a crepe.

The baker of course began to despair,

and thought it must be something wrong in the air.

But he never stopped praying to his God and his Lord,

though he felt that his spirit once higher had soared.

He began baking quick breads, and muffins and matzoh,

but he couldn’t quite bring himself to start making pasta.

 

His neighbors and customers all now assumed

that the baker, for reasons unknown, must be doomed.

Weeks had gone by since he’d baked any bread;

he was pushing his chocolate chip cookies instead;

which were good, but it really just wasn’t the same;

they were not, you recall, what gave the baker his fame.

And people would sigh, as they passed by his place,

and remembered the bread, back before the disgrace

of this failure, that no one could quite understand,

least of all not the baker, who this shame must withstand.

 

For it seemed that the God he had every day prayed to

had somehow, despite all those prayers, not been swayed to

shower his blessings upon the good baker,

as if God now supposed that the man was a faker:

that his faith was not real, and his prayers were cheap,

and that people should see he was really a creep.

But the truth of the matter was not all that easy,

although his flat dough still left him quite queasy;

every morning although his dough would not rise,

the baker still sang out his pray’rs to the skies.

 

Then one day came a rumor about a new preacher:

a worker of wonders, and quite a good teacher,

who was said to be talking a lot about bread,

how he was the Bread of the living, not the dead.

He said that his Body was Bread, his Blood wine –

which is quite a hard teaching, not that tough to malign.

“I am the Bread of Life,” said this guy,

which as a lesson for some, might be hard to apply,

unless you’re a baker whose dough will not rise,

who’s been praying for grace to pour down from the skies.

 

In which case, a miracle-worker who speaks

about bread and new life, and who hangs out with freaks,

seems like a promising person to find;

like maybe he’d help a guy out of a bind:

like the baker’s, who frankly was now feeling cursed,

like his faith was akin to an un-quenchéd thirst.

So the baker set out to find this new teacher,

determined to discover if baking bread was a feature

of this man who so easily riled the High Priest,

but maybe knew something unique about yeast.

 

The baker, despite all reports of demise,

continued to pray for dough that would rise.

Every day in his bakery, he’d mix and he’d knead,

and he’d pray for what now’d be a miracle indeed.

Every day in his bakery, there’d be somewhere that dough,

that the baker was praying and praying would grow.

It was there on the day he went to find the great man,

it was there as if it was part of a plan,

to invite Jesus in to sit by the fire,

and then show him the dough: flat as a tire.

 

The baker found Jesus, heard what he had to say,

on how to live better, how to follow the Way.

About bread, it is true, Jesus went on and on;

enough for a chapter in the Gospel of John.

In his presence the baker began to feel warmed,

as if something brand new in his soul had been formed.

It was like Jesus’ teaching was yeast, his soul flour;

and the yeast had awakened a kind of new power,

as though everything that he once knew about bread

was now being instilled in his own soul instead.

 

He begged Jesus to come with him that very day,

and to see the day’s dough, like a fallen soufflé.

For he felt he had learned a new lesson in life,

he felt that there might be an end to his strife.

And Jesus went with him as far as the store,

but he paused with the baker, outside of the door,

and he told him again, he said, “I am the Bread,

and he who consumes me will never be dead.”

He instructed the baker to always believe,

and promised a blessing that soon he’d receive.

 

The baker who’d thought bread alone was the way

to make a good living, as long as he’d pray,

was now looking diff’rently at the whole thing,

as though in his heart he had crowned Jesus king.

He entered his bakery and he sniffed at the air,

for an odor was lingering that hadn’t been there

for weeks; it was something like yeast, he felt sure;

he smelled it as soon as he walked in the door.

And to his amazement, his certain surprising,

was the dough in its bowl, and today it was rising.

 

Now, yeast may be simple, made of only one cell,

it may not know much but it knows one thing well:

it knows that when people assume that you’re dead,

there’s new life within you, there’s real hope instead.

It takes just a small bit of water for God

to do in your life what you may think is odd:

to take the ingredients of life, though they’re plain,

and awaken new power, new life to attain.

It’s as though with the water, the yeast is baptized,

and just like old Laz’rus, the dough starts to rise.

 

The baker, you see, had needed to know

what only the yeast, it would seem, could him show.

The yeast has this gift, that it always is giving,

of knowing the One who’s the Bread of the living.

So next time you’re shoving some bread in your face,

remember this story, and all of God’s grace.

Remember the flour, the yeast, and the dough,

and how it refused, every morning, to grow.

Remember the baker, remember his faith;

and remember these words, which the Lord Jesus saith:

 

“I am the Bread who’s come down from heaven;

I am your hope, and I am your leaven.

He who partakes of me will never die,

and on this assurance you can rely.

When life seems uncertain, your seas are all tossed,

you begin to suspect that all hope has been lost,

your dough will not rise, so to speak, it stays flat,

as flat as a pancake, a pizza, a mat,

Remember the baker, who thought he was through,

and remember my words, and believe they are true.”

 

 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

26 August 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

 

 

Scientists tell us that using a powerful telescope array from the South Pole they have been able to detect, or see, the oldest light in the universe - about 14 billion years old.  Much as I want to explain to you how it is possible to see the light of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, I find I am unable to do it.  It is not my field.  I have looked up resources that purport to put the explanation in layman’s terms, and I would happily regurgitate those explanations to you.  But even they are beyond me.  Nevertheless, I find it entirely plausible that we have looked up at the sky and seen – insofar as we can see light that is not actually visible to our eyes – or at least recorded the presence of light that originated nearly 14 billion years ago.  And I delight to think that such is the rigor of the human intellectual endeavor and that such is the liveliness of human imagination that we could achieve such a thing.  Moses had to climb a mountain just to see the Promised Land toward which he had been journeying for forty years, and into which he would never step foot.  But we can glance up from our lap-tops and look backwards for 14 billion years, and take pictures of it.

I trust that it pleases God in some measure to allow us such a vantage point; that he is ready to allow us to view secrets that were long tucked away in secret corners of his attic, unavailable to the prying eyes of older generations.  God has left the keys for us to find, in order to unlock the doors of the ancient chambers of time and space, and allowed us to rummage through the boxes there, to piece together pictures of the Beginning – or at least as close as we can get to the Beginning – wherein he has always promised he could be found.  The scientists say we can now see up to just about 380,000 years away from the Beginning – which they seem to think is pretty close, though it still sounds far away to me.

I am told that Religion and Science are supposed to rumble about the Beginning: stark disagreement is supposed to define our posture toward one another.  But about at least one thing most of us agree: there is nothing for us to remember about the Beginning; none of us was there; it would be a matter of time before humans came on the scene.  So when we look back at the Beginning of time – or as close as we can get to it – we are seeing something, recording something, we have never seen before.  It did not shape our human experience, it is not a part of our corporate memory, there are no human shadows to be found dancing in the light of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Back on earth, when the Rectory was built in 1893, it was the only building in the Saint Mark’s cluster of buildings on Locust Street that was built with a flat roof.  This piece of information seems incidental until you realize what easy access one has to the roof of the Rectory.  Using only the power of one’s imagination, you can carry up to the rooftop there a special kind of telescopic array that allows you to look up into the sky and see back in time.

This project I have undertaken on a lovely summer’s night – for it takes almost no time at all to build even the most sophisticated telescope from one’s imagination, and the materials are remarkably easy to carry up the stairs.  Such a telescope – the kind you build with your imagination – cannot reliably detect the light of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – not in a way suitable for publication in peer-reviewed journals, anyway.  But it can look back to almost any point in time, if you want it to.  And being a church telescope means that its lenses have been ground and shaped by a certain memory.  It’s more sensitive to light at certain places on the spectrum.  We see images more clearly with such a telescope that shaped our corporate memory, with identifiable human shadows, in the shape of figures we can name, dancing in the light of the stars.  And it is a beautiful thing to go up to the Rectory roof on a clear summer’s night and to stare through the imaginary telescope into the distant past of history and to listen.  For with this telescope you can hear, as well as see – it was easy enough to build it that way in my imagination: all the parts were free!

Not long ago, I was up there, looking and listening; turning the dials to see what I could pick up from the past.  And I heard this question from ages past: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  And I knew immediately who it was they were talking about, since I’d come across this conversation before in the scriptures.  And standing there on the rooftop, I realized how immediately the question translated to the present moment, how equally perplexing – maybe even more so – that question seems today as it did all those centuries ago, and how it might confuse people who pass by the church if they ever stop to wonder what it is we do in here.

How can this man give us his flesh to eat?  It seems a perfectly reasonable question.  Early Christians were looked at with significant suspicion, since they seemed to be talking like cannibals.  But they were not cannibals.  They were good Jewish boys and girls who mostly kept kosher in the earliest days.  Which made the question all the more poignant: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?  And do we need a whole new set of dishes for it?

How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

What they discovered was this: that Jesus was not inviting them to go at him with knives and forks.  Rather, he was opening up to them one of the secrets of God’s mysterious love.  He was allowing them to enter into a new chamber of God’s life, where they had never been before.  They discovered that it pleased God to allow them a new vantage point from which to see his work of salvation: reclining by his Son at a table, praying with him in a garden, walking with him toward the Cross, weeping with his mother at his death, and waiting for his resurrection.

“I am the living Bread,” Jesus said.  But they did not yet know what they were seeing, what they were hearing.  They had not yet seen all that we have seen.  Until he sat at table with them and broke the bread and blessed the cup; until he told them to wait with him while he prayed; until he challenged them to take up their own cross; until he hung and died on his Cross; until he rose from the grave, and made himself known to them in the breaking of the bread.  All these were pieces of a puzzle they put together, as God slowly widened the aperture of their vision, and let more light into the lens, and helped them see, and let them cast their own shadows, their own questions on the image that we can peer into from the telescope on the roof of the Rectory.

And what about us?  How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

Well, what’s the matter with you?  Do you really need a flat roof and a Rectory?  Can’t you do this with me now?  Can’t you focus with me the lens that’s hidden up in the steeple of this church and points toward God?  Can’t you find the knobs to turn in your mind’s eye, so you can see what’s detected there?  Can’t you adjust them to look back at his supper with disciples?  Can’t you hear him say, “This is my Body.  This is my Blood.  Take, eat.  Do this in remembrance of me”?

Do you believe that we are able to look back at the origins of the universe and see light that is 14 billion years old, but we can’t look back and remember what this means?  Do you believe God made our vision so dim, our imaginations so dull?  Do you think the light they are looking at from their telescopes is just a memory of light that is 14 billion years old, and not the real thing?  And do you think the words we hear when they echo to us from only two thousand years ago are really just a memory and not the real thing?  You don’t think he had another kind of remembrance in mind?  You don’t think he knew we’d be able to see 14 billion years into the past some day?

I love to go up to my rooftop observatory and look up into the present and see the past hurtling toward me, fast as light, and hear the ancient words, and know they are alive.  I love to lengthen to the focus of my telescopic array and look further back in time to the very Beginning, which I can do with the greatest of ease, listening for the clear sound of the beating of wings over water that was the only sound to be heard in the Beginning, and then a voice that seems to be saying, “I will be who I will be.”

I am strengthened by the knowledge that there are real telescopes that can see almost as far as my telescope can see, telescopes that can see light that originated 14 billion years ago.

But I can see a light that is older still, a light that was there in the Beginning. 

And it takes only an adjustment of the lens to see that light take shape, as he is born of a human mother.  And then I can hear, from my rooftop, the man that that child became offer his Body and his Blood for me.

And when I wonder, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?  I have only to look up with they eyes of my heart, to see where past and present hurtle toward one another at the speed of light.  And I remember how it is that God gives us signs to help us see the work he does secretly and silently, so that we will know we have been fed.  And we don’t have to wonder how he can give us his flesh to eat: we have only to open our mouths, and believe.

 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

19 August 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The story is old of a boy, whose parents are killed in a plane crash.  The boy is taken in by his father’s elder brother and his wife, who love him as though he is their own son.  As an adolescent, the boy became bookish and nerdy, self-conscious about his limitations: his eyeglasses, his fear of heights, his clumsiness, and his lack of athletic ability.  The death of his parents haunted him, and the reticence of his aunt and uncle on the topic of the boy’s natural parents left him feeling guilty for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.  In a tragic twist of fate, the boy’s uncle is murdered in a robbery, making him a sort of orphan twice-over, and compounding his gnawing sense of guilt and inadequacy. 

Not far away, another boy’s life is similarly shaped by the death of his parents at gunpoint in a robbery.  This boy – a child of privilege - is raised by a trusted family friend.  As he grows up, he transforms the deep resentment he harbors about his parents’ murder into a conviction to avenge their death, and dreams of ways to turn his yearning for justice into action.  Despite his inherited wealth, he shares with the first boy, the deep sense of loss that is accompanied by a kind of survivor’s guilt, a child’s longing for his parents, and an inner wound that can never really be healed.

The boys’ stories are tragic and unique.  Their suffering and loss are not commonplace.  And yet their stories have been told and retold for decades, because they tap into a sense of loss, injustice, guilt, and despair that is shared by many others.  Their stories are also told because of how the boys channel that loss, injustice, guilt, and despair as they grow up; how they harness it to shape their adult lives, to become men of power with a mission to do good in the world.

We could imagine such children being ruined by their loss, by their fate.  We could imagine them wallowing in their grief and never learning to grow beyond it.  Or, we could imagine that their grief would shape them in other, twisted ways, and we would forgive them for it because of their suffering.

The boys’ stories are told because they are fundamentally stories of weakness – the unfair weakness of cruel loss, loneliness, and irrational guilt – and because almost everyone knows these feelings at some point in their lives.  The boys are archetypes of hopelessness transformed, of strength forged out of weakness, and of justice struggling to prevail in a world that seethes with corruption.

And you know who these boys grew up to become, because their stories became famous about fifty years or so ago, when they first were told.  And lately their stories have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, being re-told over and over again in new and ever-more dramatic ways so that new generations can tap into their message of weakness, guilt, and despair overcome by strength, resourcefulness and hope.

Do you recognize the stories of these two boys, whose names you know?  Do you know who they grew up to become?  The first boy’s name was Peter, the second was Bruce.  They grew up to become, respectively, Spiderman and Batman.  And this summer their stories are being re-told again with new cinematic sophistication, bringing new audiences in touch with these archetypes of weakness transformed.

There is a much older story of such weakness told in the New Testament, part of which we heard this morning when St. Paul tells us that a “messenger of Satan” was sent to torment him, to “keep [him] from being too elated.”  We don’t know how exactly the messenger of doom manifested itself to Paul – he only calls it a “thorn” in his flesh. But we know that it leaves him praying desperately for God’s help.  He wasn’t a boy at the time – he was already an adult – but I think he had something in common with those two other boys who must have lain in their childhood beds and prayed for their own thorns to be taken from their flesh, who must have begged God to give them their parents back, who must have stained their pillows with tears at the persistent thought of their own helplessness to save their parents, to protect them, and at the permanence and finality of their deaths.

The boys’ stories are so powerful because we all fear such tears, such weakness, such powerlessness, and we are all subject to them.  We all harbor a secret dread of the messenger of Satan who can ruin everything in our lives.  The death of a parent – the murder of a parent (or of a child) – is surely brought by such an awful messenger.

Superheroes like Spiderman and Batman represent one kind of hope – that something magnificent can be wrought from such loss.  Even if you are bookish, nerdy, clumsy, and afraid of heights, you could end up swinging from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of justice and all that’s right in the world, if only you are lucky enough to be bitten by the right spider!

But most of us are not so lucky.

Most of us are stuck with our normal, human limitations.  Most of us are not given super powers, and most of us are not as well funded as Bruce Wayne, most of us don’t even have an Alfred waiting to assist us as required!  Most of us are stuck with the limitations of our fears, our inadequacies, our guilts, and our losses.  Most of us are more like Saint Paul than we are like Batman or Spiderman.  Most of us pray for the thorn in our flesh to be taken away, and most of us know what it feels like when that prayer seems to go un-answered.

But here, Paul has something to say to us – a secret that neither Batman nor Spiderman knows.  For while he is clear that the thorn in his flesh – whatever it is – is never removed, he tells us that a very clear answer to his prayer was given to him.  He hears the voice of Jesus speak to him:  “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Now, you might say that St. Paul is one of the superheroes of the New Testament.  His story is perfectly suited to a comic book or graphic novel format.  He starts out with a career as a persecutor of the church, then he has a dramatic conversion complete with amazing visuals, he is taken in by a mysterious mentor to instruct and prepare him for his work, then his ministry carries him to the ends of the known world - with shipwrecks, prison breaks, heavenly visions, and all manner of excitement.  But, importantly, Paul is given no superpowers. In fact, he doesn’t even get a uniform or a cape.  Indeed, while he is earning his title of Apostleship, he is the recipient of the visits from the messenger of Satan.  His blessings are confounded by his own limitations.  The right spider does not bite him.  He has no inheritance to fund his work, and no Alfred to support him in it.

Paul has only his appeals to his Lord, only his prayers.  He yearns for strength where he finds only weakness, which he cannot overcome.  Perhaps he still harbors guilt about his persecutions.   He knows he is inadequate to the task at had.  So he prays and he prays and he prays.

And an answer, at last, is given to his prayer: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

And here, in a sense, is the Christian spider-bite.  Here is the secret that transforms our weakness into an unstoppable, super power: the amazing gift of grace that knows its perfection in weakness and that proved itself in the weakness of the death on the Cross, by which God proved that love conquers death, because it is willing to die for the sake of others and able to rise from the grave.

No one thought that Jesus was a superhero for very long.  His miracles seemed to run out when he was forced to carry his own Cross.  And even the good news of his resurrection was slow to spread.  He was supposed to be the Messiah but he did not conquer the Roman emperor, he didn’t even own a sword, he couldn’t muster an army, and was followed by sinners, tax-collectors, and women of questionable repute.

If Jesus is archetypal of anything, he is an archetype of weakness.  The persistent image of his collapsed, drained, and lifeless body still affixed to the instrument of its torture and death is put ever before our eyes, as if to say, “You think you suffer?  You think you have a thorn in your flesh?  You think you feel weak and helpless?  How do you think I feel?”

But this is not what he says to us when we feel weak – although he would be justified in saying it.  Instead he says, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

You are lonely and you feel unloved – my grace is sufficient for you.

You are sick and frightened about the future – my grace is sufficient for you.

You have lost your job and don’t know how you will survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

Your child is hurt and may not survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

War is raging all around you – my grace is sufficient for you.

What kind of an answer is that?!?!? you want to ask.  What is grace in the face of murder, in the face of a messenger from Satan!?!?!?  What is grace when I am still left feeling weak and helpless, and not so much as a spider web to swing from to lift me from my despair?

“My child,” the voice says, “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Here is the spider that bit tax collectors and sinners, that made Mary Magdalene a household name, and that transformed the vision of prisoners and slaves, who delighted to sing about it from the depth of their weakness, their powerlessness, their desperation.

You want to see power at work?  Look at the weakness of the Cross?  Has it not changed the world?

This is the marvelous message being touted at the moment by American nuns – who have deliberately chosen lives defined by the weakness of poverty, but who will not, cannot be silenced by bishops who live in palaces.  Christ’s grace is sufficient for them.  The power of their defiance – in the name of those who are too powerless to speak up for themselves – is as though they were rolling back their sleeves to show us the spider-bite of grace that makes them strong.

This, too, is the work being done at the only Episcopal school in the City of Philadelphia – a school whose only entrance requirement is that students be sufficiently poor.  We started this school because Christ’s grace is sufficient.

If you want to see heroes transformed by grace, come to the Saturday Soup Bowl where volunteers feed hungry people every Saturday morning in the Parish House.  There you will see that Christ’s grace is sufficient, because of the people who have been bitten, and delight to see God’s power in them perfected in weakness.

Go to the Welcome Center – a ministry for homeless people that we helped establish – and see how Christ’s grace is sufficient in the ministry of care and love there.

If you want to see Christ at work, look for weakness and you will find his power being perfected there – wherever people are willing to rely on his grace.  As St. Paul says, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Chances are, you and I are not going to be bitten by a spider that gives us super powers.  Chances are that if we put on a spider suit, people will only laugh at us, and if we try to swing from rooftops, we will probably fall.  Chances are that you and I are not superheroes… even though we suffer the same sadnesses, doubts, griefs, injuries, injustices, indignities, sorrows, and weaknesses that everyone suffers.

I hope you never feel that you suffer something so horrible that it feels like it was brought to you by a messenger of Satan, but I know that life brings such sufferings to those who don’t deserve them.  And should that day come that you wish you could be a superhero, but discover that you are stuck being your same, old, limited, human self.  I hope you will look up at a Cross and see the Man of Sorrows hanging there, and take note of how weak and pathetic and lifeless he looks hanging there…

…and then remember how he changed the world when he came to save it.  Remember that his life could not be buried by the grave…

… and remember the sound of his voice reassuring you in your moment of pain and sorrow: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

8 July 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

Remember that Job, who was a blameless and upright man, had lost everything: his seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants to marauders.  And then his seven sons and three daughters were killed when, while they were eating and drinking together as a family at their eldest brothers’ home, the house collapsed and killed them all, leaving Job bereft.  Robbed of his wealth and his family, a storm at sea would have been a welcome distraction to Job.  The violent hailstorm that tore through Philadelphia the other night would have seemed like a bright moment beneath the dark skies of Job’s life.

Job, of course, is a stand-in for anyone who suffers – and especially for those whose afflictions are inexplicable and unfair.  His life is the embodiment of the ancient question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  And his story, as it is told in the Bible, resolutely refuses to provide an answer to that question.

Its climax comes when after sitting through the lengthy diatribes of his friends, Job hears the voice of God speak to him from the whirlwind, of God’s own awesome power, and knowledge, and wisdom.

“Where were you, little man,” God sneers,

“when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

and caused the dawn to know it place?

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?

Who has cleft a channel for the rain,

and a way for the thunderbolt?

Can you bind the chains of Pleiades,

of loose the cords of Orion?

Do you give the horse his might?

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,

and spreads his wings toward the south?

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up,

and makes his nest on high?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? 

He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

This is a response, of course, to the question of why bad things happen to good people, but it is no answer.

The story does tell us that Job was given seven new sons and three new daughters, and that he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.  The story does not tell us anything at all about the latter generations of Job, but I think we actually know a great deal about them.

I think we have been hearing about the children of the latter generations of Job in the news these past weeks.  I think some of them have been testifying in court, as they choke back tears, about their suffering at the hands of an abuser.

In another courtroom, we have been hearing about how the church failed to protect children in her care, and how her priests used them for their pleasure.

Elsewhere, there is a four year old child, who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, and whose parents are now numbering his days.

There is a man who is burying his father this weekend long before it was time to do so.

There are girls who are being sold into sexual slavery somewhere in the world today without any idea of the misery that awaits them.

There are mothers who cannot scrape together another enough food in the refugee camp to keep their children healthy and alive for another week.

There are families who are trying to plan right now for what it will be like when Dad is gone, and wondering if he will make it through the summer.

There are children who are being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, whose parents are trying to figure out how their lives have now been changed for ever.

There are families who have been counting the weeks of unemployment as they go by, and wondering what will happen when the checks stop coming but still there is no work.

There is a road in Virginia that a couple will not drive down, since it passes the tree that marks the spot where the ambulance took their son’s body away, when the tree would not yield to his car late one night.

There is an altar over there, vested with a quilt that reminds us of those taken from this parish before doctors knew how to treat AIDS.

There are bodies, or pieces of bodies, still being shipped in flag-draped boxes to an Air Force base not too far from here, from a war no one is very interested in anymore.

These are the latter generations of Job.  These are families who, not long ago, were just eating and drinking together, and whose lives collapsed around them, crushing them, robbing them of whatever joys they had.  It’s true that the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, but he gave no guarantees to his descendants.  And we are all the latter generations of Job: all contending with the same question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

What is a storm on the Sea of Galilee to Job or to his latter generations?   How can the disciples who are with Jesus sound like anything but pathetic whingers to those who have experienced the sufferings of the latter generations of Job?  A strong swimmer could probably make it to shore from almost anywhere in the midst of that lake.

It is telling that nowhere in the Bible – not even in the one book of it that spends pages and pages and pages exploring the question – is the answer given to that old question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  There is only the whirlwind, and the voice that speaks from it: “Gird up your loins like a man: I will speak to you, and you shall answer me!”

I cannot tell if the winds that stir up the waters of Galilee come from that same whirlwind, but I suspect they do.  Even the breezes that fill the sails of the boats on the lake, I suppose, come from the same source – from the same Spirit who once brooded over the face of the waters that would eventually reveal the lake we often call a sea.  I know that a voice does not often speak from the whirlwind.  It’s own lingering winds speak in mostly softer tones now, even when the weather is rough, leaving so much more open to interpretation.  And leaving the big question still unanswered.  Responded to, but fundamentally unanswered.  God is unwilling to make his ways known to us in so many things, and certainly in this – one of the deepest and most confounding mysteries of life.

But something did change when the disciples found themselves frightened in the boat that day, when the windstorm arose, and still the Lord was dozing in the bow, and they shook him and accused him: “Don’t you care that the wind and waves are beating us, that we are soaked and taking on water?  Don’t you see how frightened we are, and don’t you care?

The wind was right there, and it was the perfect opportunity for him to use it as his own megaphone; to speak through it so that they could be sure not to miss a word he said.  He could have taught them a lesson that day and put them back in their places.  He surely knew the lines:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Can you send forth lightnings,

that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?

Is the wild ox willing to serve you? 

Will he spend the night at your crib?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?”

Oh, he knew the lines, and could have recited them with authority from the prow of the boat.  What right had they to call on him, to accuse him of not caring?  Had they not yet guessed at his fate?  Had they no hint of his mission?  Did it never dawn on them that this would not end well for him?  Had they no faith?

But he did not use the wind for his voice, though it was his breath that gave the wind its life, its force, its power.  He did not rebuke them much at all.  He only challenged their fear.  And instead of speaking through the might wind, he spake to it:  “Peace.  Be still.”

These words still provided only a response to their fear; it was no answer to it.

We latter children of the latter generations of Job, know our fair share of fear and misery.  God has not yet put a stop to it.  God has not yet given us an answer as to why it happens thus.  But he has given us something new.  He has spoken differently with the wind, and his word brings new promise:  Peace.  Be still.

Bad things still happen to good people: this is as true as it has ever been.  The latter generations of Job, like our own, have known suffering and sadness and misery and pain.  But the wind no longer scolds us to keep us in our place.  Instead there is a new command given to the wind that so frightens us: Peace.  Be still.

And it has been so long since we knew stillness or peace, that this seems like a very odd response to our fears, and certainly no answer about all the bad things that happen to good people.

But we find that as prayers go, this one – built on his command to the wind and the waves – serves us well.  Peace.  Be still.  And we think that in the calm we find faith… which is exactly what we need, and is our rightful inheritance, as the latter generations of Job, who was a blameless and upright man, and whose fortunes were restored by the God who made him, and who never stopped loving him.

 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 June 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia