Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

I have always loved to read. Indeed, I have been a bookworm from my mother’s womb, a trait I inherited honestly from both my parents, who were never, ever without something to read. I was reading on my own by the age of three and devouring chapter books by the time I started Kindergarten. So when I entered middle school, of course, I decided that it was time to write my own novel. Longhand. With a Papermate erasable pen. I can’t remember the subject matter, although I have a vague recollection that it had something to do with a long-abandoned cottage in the woods that was tangled in the vines of an overgrown garden…and in my own florid, overwrought prose. But in my ten-year-old mind, the more adjectives, the better. What tripped me up was the dialogue. I felt pressure, for some reason, to place an adverb after every single line. How else would the readers (of which I imagined there would be many) know what the speakers were thinking and feeling? So line after line of the text ended with phrases like, “…she said, sadly,” “he said, bravely,” “she said, happily, simperingly, fabulously, tearfully, frustratedly…” and on and on and on. I remember my mother – my loving, patient, wonderful mother – reading my first draft and suggesting that, perhaps, there wasn’t a need for quite so many descriptors. But without my adverbs, I was lost. What to do? So my first great novel languished in its notebook and was eventually lost to time. And oh, how I wish I had that notebook now!

There is a decided lack of adverbs in scripture. Remember that the earliest texts of Holy Scripture were stamped letter by letter into clay or scribed onto paper that was both rare and expensive. So every letter, every word mattered. And apparently the writers of scripture did not feel the need, as I did, to provide an emotional context for every single statement, or, for that matter, for many at all. The Bible doesn’t offer us many phrases like, “…Moses said, petulantly,” or “Jesus told his disciples, exhaustedly.” There is little verbiage about the emotional state of speakers in scripture, even in the Gospels. Very occasionally, the Gospel writers will provide us with a clue as to Jesus’ emotional state – he weeps, he loves, he is amazed, he is moved with compassion, or pity. Mark’s Gospel offers more descriptors than any of the other three – Jesus looks at the Pharisees “with anger,” he sighs “deep in his spirit” when asked for a sign, he is “indignant” when the disciples try to prevent the little children from coming to him. But for the most part, we are left to imagine what Jesus was feeling in any given moment. When he spoke words to the disciples, or the Pharisees, or the centurion, or the woman with the hemorrhage, was he smiling? Frowning? Laughing? Outraged? Most often, we just don’t know.

But today’s Gospel has long been seen as a clear example of Jesus’ anger and indignation boiling over. For centuries, people have imagined him striding into the outer court of the Temple, disciples in tow, spoiling for a fight. As he had suspected, he finds not a serene and holy gathering of God’s people making their way into the inner courts to offer their yearly Passover sacrifices, but a wholly tangled mess – animal-sellers hawking their wares, the incessant buzzing of bargaining in the air, queues of anxious pilgrims all knotted up in a jumble by the trade tables where corrupt moneychangers sit at tables, inscrutable and hidden by piles of coins – and always the braying and bleating of cattle and sheep and doves, oh my. Faced with this frenetic scene, Jesus stands alone with clenched fists, furious to see this Saturday-at-the-Philadelphia-Flower-Show, Target-on-Black-Friday, McGillan’s-on-Saint-Patrick’s-Day kind of mob scene in this most sacred place. And so he grabs a whip and goes nuts – flailing the animals and the animal sellers alike, kicking over tables, hurling fistfuls of coins into the air, spinning and shoving until finally he stands alone in the middle of the court, his whip dangling at his side, panting and covered in sweat and dust and pigeon feathers.

And this is a completely fair picture of what this scene may have looked like. I have no doubt that Jesus experienced anger, and this moment known as the “Scourging of the Temple” may be the best example we have of Jesus’ letting loose some of his long pent-up frustration. But without that long stream of repetitive adverbs, is it possible that there is another way to look at this story?

The Scourging of the Temple is one of really only three stories that appear in all four Gospels. But John, as is John’s wont, treats this story very differently than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. First of all, in John’s Gospel, this story takes place right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. There is no long build-up to this event in John, so there is no sense of stifled frustration with the religious authorities after a Gospel’s-worth of confrontations and arguments. Secondly, it is only in John’s Gospel, in fact, that Jesus uses a whip. But notice what the text says here, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.” This was no handy whip that Jesus seized on an impulse; this was a whip that Jesus made himself, wove together out of reeds or grass, to help him get the animals up and out of the court. And finally, we can see that Jesus’ core complaint is different in John’s Gospel. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus is full of righteous indignation. He accuses the moneychangers of corruption, of cheating the pilgrims who needed to trade their Roman coins for temple shekels, which were the only coins that could be used to pay the required temple tax. But here in John, there is no fiery accusation of robbery, only the command to stop making the house of his Father into a house of trade.

And so what if we pictured the scene this way – Jesus enters the Temple courts on Passover because he is a faithful Jew. As he ascends the Temple mount he feels at the root of his being the sympathetic vibration between his body, where the fullness of God dwells, and the innermost room in the Temple, the Holy of Holies, where the fullness of God dwells. He knows a deep consonance between the place where he stands and the body he stands in; he knows that he is the place where God’s love will be most powerfully contained. He knows what he has to offer to the world, he knows the sacrifice he will make for the people who press in all around him…and yet no one else knows it. No one else can even see him through the maze of people and sheep and never-ending queues. What to do? Clear out the court, he says. He braids a cord to help him control the animals and sends them on their way. But that doesn’t grab the attention of the people who are afraid of losing their place in line, so he knocks over the tables so that there is no longer anything to be in line for. And only then does he stand in the middle, his impromptu cattle prod hanging at his side, his face intense and earnest – stop what you are doing, he says. Look up from your queue, look at me, for I am the temple of the full, final sacrifice, I am the temple that will be raised up in three days. No queue, no buying and selling, no trading necessary here.

Seen this way, this Gospel story is not only a Scourging but also, importantly, a Cleansing. A cleansing of the Temple – a clearing of the way so that all of the people could see with unobstructed view and undistracted attention the invitation that stood before them. See me. Follow me. Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem was the coming of something new and astounding, something that required space and attention. And His coming into our lives means precisely the same thing. Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple put it this way: “His coming means a purge. So it is always, not less with the shrine of our hearts than with the Jewish Temple.” Jesus’ coming clears away those things that distract us, drives out those things that get in the way of our truly seeing Him, unclutters our hearts so that Christ may be enthroned there. What is it that blocks your view? Fear? Busy-ness? Over-scrupulousness or anxiety? Judgment, of others or of yourself? Are you reticent to forgive or be forgiven? Do material things get in the way of remembering that it is the Lord who is your strength and your redeemer? Do the great commandments of God seem like walls that are impossible to scale instead of hand-holds that help you love God and your neighbor? What stands between you and Christ? And are you prepared to have it cleared out? Because our Lord Jesus Christ has come, is coming, and will come again; he stands ready to cleanse you, body and soul. He stands here, at this altar, now, offering your heart a good old-fashioned spring scourging. “Take these things out of here,” he says to you, “Stop making the shrine of your heart anything less than fully my own.” What to do, what to do? Say yes, Christ says. Yes, we say, finally, humbly, thankfully.                                          

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

11 March 2012

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Am I the only one who is always a bit taken aback by this Gospel reading on Ash Wednesday?  Am I the only one who hears this text and wonders about what it is I’m actually doing here in this service and in this season – wonders if Jesus is pleased with the way I’m planning for Lent, what Jesus thinks about my walking around Center City with ashes on my forehead? Am I the only one who feels a bit chastened by these words – “beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven”?

The first time I attended an Ash Wednesday service was only eleven years ago, and it was actually here at Saint Mark’s. I was new to the Episcopal Church, new to mainstream Christianity in general, and definitely new to Lent. I’ll never forget looking at myself in the mirror, at the smudge of ash across my forehead and the little flakes that had fallen into my eyebrows and onto my nose; I’ll never forget the feeling of deep belonging that came along with this reflection; I looked like, and felt like, a real, live Christian. As I walked around the city that night, I couldn’t help but notice others, strangers with the same sooty mark, and I was so filled with joy that I wanted to rush up to them and hug them and say, You! You are a Christian! I am a Christian too! (For the record, I did not actually do this.)

In subsequent years, I’ve continued to find the sight of so many Christians walking around in public with their faith pressed into their foreheads to be very moving, even joyful. And I’ve always appreciated the opportunity to talk with friends about what we might give up for Lent, about what practices we’re thinking of taking on. I’ve loved moments like the year I turned on the ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption” and saw Tony Reali, the man the show’s hosts call “stat boy,” sitting proudly in the studio with his suit and his ashes on. I liked that his piety was right out there for everyone to see, and I liked the idea that mine was too.

But year after year on Ash Wednesday, I hear the words “whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets,” and “when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others,” and I have to wonder if I’m doing this right. Should I keep my Lenten disciplines secret? Should I not tell anyone if I decide to give up diet Coke or chocolate or meat? Should I hide the fact that I’m getting up early to pray or reading scripture instead of watching television? Should I wipe the ashes off of my forehead as I walk out of the church so that no one can see that I’ve worshipped in church on this day of fasting? I’ve known people – faithful, wonderful people – who have done any and all of these things; perhaps some of you might even do the same.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that of course Jesus is right. Anything that we do to put our Lenten piety on display, to show off how hard we’re working or how holy we are, isn’t of much use to God or anyone else. If Lent is about showing off, then it isn’t about anything at all. But I think, at the risk of sounding like I’m “correcting” the Gospel, that there might be more to this Gospel story as we hear it in this time and in this place. I wonder if it’s possible that we, the Church, couldn’t do with a few more public acts of sincere piety.

Not to overstate the obvious, but in Jesus’ time, almost everything first-century Jews would have done would have been influenced by their faith. They would have said prayers as they rose in the morning, more prayers when they ate, left home, began their work. They would’ve had blessings for plowing a new field, blessings for the harvest, for marriage and new babies and deaths. Their days and weeks and seasons and years would have been shaped by thousands of little acts of their faith, some private, but many of them public – acts of piety that were shared by everyone else in their community. So the question in first century Palestine was not whether or not your acts of piety were public, because much of the time that decision wasn’t up to you. The question was whether or not your acts of piety were sincere, whether or not the state of your interior faith matched the quality of your exterior acts.

But in our time, thousands of years later, our faith is often less about what we do in the public square and more about what we do in our own homes or in our own heads. Christians, especially Episcopalians, just don’t display our faith much. When was the last time you said grace – in public – in a swanky Center City restaurant – out loud – before the appetizer course? When was the last time you prayed publicly before you began your work day, before you started a meeting, or when you sat down as a department to look at financial statements? How often do you share in communal acts of faith with your neighborhood, your friends at school, or your work colleagues? Now some of this, granted, is shaped by the multicultural, pluralistic society in which we live, but some of it is shaped by our own discomfort. We pray, of course, but we often don’t pray out loud (even within our families). We come to church, of course, but do we always tell people that for us Sunday worship takes priority over soccer games or brunch or vacation time? And speaking of our time, how do we obey that pesky fourth commandment about honoring Sabbath time and keeping it holy? Do we say, “I can’t come to the company picnic because that’s my Sabbath time,” or do we just let that one slide?

Now I get it; it’s risky to wear our faith on our foreheads. It takes courage to step out on the street and say yes, that’s right, I am a follower of Christ. But if we aren’t willing to do that, who is going to do it for us? If we aren’t willing to claim our faith publicly, it will just become easier for society to push us to the margins, and we will no reason to act surprised when our Church shrinks and shrinks, and evangelism becomes harder and harder, and people wonder more and more where the fix is going to come from.

Now, of course, none of this is a surprise to the living Christ. And I think that this idea of reclaiming our public piety is, actually, consonant with the Gospel message for today. Because for all of his words of warning, Jesus did fully expect his disciples to live out their faith in the public sphere. Jesus expected his followers to speak about their faith, to use Gospel language, to make life decisions based on their understanding of their relationship with God and their neighbors…and to be explicit about the reasoning behind those decisions. So maybe in first-century Palestine the problem was not so much doing public acts of piety but doing them in a humble, authentic, God-focused way. And in twenty-first century Philadelphia the problem is not so much showing off our faith but letting it shine through into our public works and acts. Same coin, different side. And so maybe, just maybe, it is time to take some of our prayer, some of our fasting, some of our alms-giving, some of our piety, out into the light and practice it in public.

Perhaps it is time to say out loud to this secular, material, spiritual-but-not-religious world, Yes! I am a Christian, even though you think I am outdated, naive, superstitious, and irrelevant. Yes! I am a Christian, even when that means that you’re going to lump me in with everyone else who uses that word, even those who support and advocate for that which I absolutely despise. Yes! I fast. Yes! I give alms. Yes! I pray. And yes! I wear my faith on my forehead, even when you can’t see it, in the shape of a cross where in my baptism I was sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. And yes! I struggle always to be humble and authentic and God-focused, but that is just part of the deal, part of this day, which is messy and challenging, and rewarding and perplexing and glorious and wonderful. Yes! I am a Christian…and won't you be a Christian too?   

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Ash Wednesday 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

There are a few movies that I will watch every single time they show up on television. There’s The Shawshank Redemption, one of my all-time favorites; The Mummy, which is a little embarrassing to admit; and Forest Gump, which has been popping up on TNT the past few Saturday nights. I must’ve seen this movie a dozen times, sometimes in bits and pieces, but I still find it hard to turn off. It’s just too much fun, watching Forest as he journeys through life, unintentionally inspiring greatness in the world around him with his simple acts of love and courage.

The scene I happened to catch the last time I watched the movie was when the young Forest is being picked on by a pack of bullies, who hurl rocks and insults at his sweet, simple head. You know this part – it’s the “Run, Forest, run!” moment. For most of the movie, we’ve watched Forest stumbling around in leg braces, marching straight-legged and lock-kneed in his “magic shoes.” So when we see him try to sprint down the lane away from the bullies, we can guess it isn’t going to be pretty. But then, suddenly, a miracle happens. Forest’s strides, awkward at first, begin to get longer and longer and longer until the braces just fall off his legs. He’s running (“like the wind blows,” he says) flying down the lane, leaving a trail of broken metal in his wake. He’s suddenly and surprisingly whole, strong, healed.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all healing happened that way? One minute we’re hobbling around in our braces, being told that we are so crooked we’ll never be made straight, and the next we’re running as fast as our happy feet can carry us. In one moment, everything is fixed and soothed, our souls and bodies are made strong and sure. One minute – one grand moment in the sun accompanied by a soaring musical score and the assurance that “from that day on, if [we are] going somewhere, [we will be] running!”

Wouldn’t it be nice, Naaman thought, if that’s exactly what Elisha could offer him? One moment, one crystalline flash when everything would be made right. The thought of that one miracle moment was really the only thing that was keeping him going. Because no journey he had ever taken had been as difficult as this one. He had been on tough journeys before, journeys into enemy territory with little food and less water, journeys shaded with his own fear and confusion, journeys home after a defeat when the wounded howled in pain and the missing dead’s footsteps were hauntingly absent.

But none of these had been like the journey he was on today, where each step was one of pain and forced humility. He carried with him the vivid memory of when this journey began, that first moment when he had removed his battle armor to find a little patch of red, spotty skin.  At first, he’d told himself that it was just the heat, that the sweat on the inside of his elbow had made his skin grow inflamed and itchy. But then the patch had spread up his arm and down his chest, setting his skin on fire. He hadn’t been able to hide it from his wife or himself any longer. Naaman was a leper.

And so, like a good soldier, he asked himself how he could fight this thing. And he’d been shocked to realize that he had absolutely no idea; he had no strategy, no plan of attack. He was as helpless as a child. It had only been when his wife’s servant – a captured Israelite slave, of all people – told him about a prophet in her country who could heal him that he knew what to do next. He needed to get to this man. And so he dragged his leprous body into the court of the king and begged on his knees for the king to let him go. And the king had said yes, of course, but Naaman still bore with him that feeling of utter helplessness, a feeling that didn’t sit well on the shoulders of the fierce man of war he thought himself to be.

The journey was long and hard. His leprosy made the heat and dust of travel excruciating, and his shame was nearly unbearable. The Israelite king’s dramatic, hysterical reaction to his presence had only made things worse. But now, now, Naaman had been summoned to Elisha’s home. Now the great warrior was on his way to share his one important moment with the great prophet. And what a moment it would be. Naaman had spent most of the journey imagining what the prophet might do. He’d heard some of the stories of this wild man – how he’d purified water using only salt, how he’d made oil and food miraculously replenish themselves. There was even a story that he had brought a young boy back from the dead by stretching out on top of him. What would Naaman’s moment be like? Would Elisha call the whole town together, burn incense, sing songs? Would there be special clothes he had to wear, a special poultice for his skin?  Would he have to suffer? Naaman felt sure he could handle anything – any pain, any exertion, any test of skill or strength, if only this moment would make his skin smooth, his body sound and ready to run.

And so Naaman pulls up outside of Elisha’s house with his entourage, his heart thumping in his chest. As he sits there waiting hopefully, a servant leans out the door, drying a pot with an old cloth. “He says to go take a bath. Anywhere will do – you can just go down to the Jordan if you want.” And Naaman is furious. What happened to his miracle moment bathed in sunshine and scored with trumpets and tympani? Just go take a bath?! He is ready to pack up his chariots and go home, until his faithful – and patient! – servants convince him to just give it a try.

What does Naaman’s great moment of healing look like? Well, here is how the Book of Kings describes it: “He went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.” He simply stood in the river all alone, running a wet cloth over the sore patches on his body, wondering at first what in the world he was doing, then wondering if he looked like a fool, then wondering what kind of a God it was that this prophet served, then wondering why his skin didn’t seem to burn as much anymore, then wondering why it seemed that that one patch on his shoulder seemed lighter than a few minutes ago, then wondering how it was that he was standing, naked and wet and healed and whole.

Naaman never got his one, single miracle moment. He never played that one spectacular scene when the braces came flying off, when the shackles of his illness burst from his body with cinematic flourish. There wasn’t just one moment: Naaman was healed in pieces. There were many, little moments – the moment he accepted that he was ill, the moment he asked for help, the moment he listened to the words of a simple slave girl, the moment he approached his king for mercy, the moment he persevered despite the protests of the king of Israel, the moment he chose to listen to his servants and just give it a try. There were seven moments in the river Jordan. His healing had started a long time ago; his whole journey had been about healing. God had actually always been with him, helping him in stages, healing him in pieces.

Naaman never got his one, single miracle moment, and the truth is that we might not either. And sometimes this is incredibly frustrating, because when you are shattered by illness, shackled by anger or grief, or shamed by abuse or neglect, you want healing and you want it now. But just because we have to take one more step before the braces come off, just because we need one more dip in the Jordan, does not mean that we are forsaken. God did not forsake Naaman, and God will not forsake us either. Sometimes we’re just healed in pieces. Sometimes our whole journey is about healing, full of many moments when God reaches out a hand to guide and soothe and make whole. And if we string those moments together, they might stretch across the darkness of our fear and doubt; if we look back on those moments we might see that we’re more healed and whole than we realized. And maybe, just maybe, if we can notice and remember these many little moments, we’ll hear trumpets sound and tympani roll…and look down and find ourselves running!

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

12 February 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Takacs' sermon here.

This is a peaceful place. This space, right here, within these magnificent, dark walls, is a place of peace. You don’t have to be a mystic or a great spiritual guru to feel that this is a holy place; in fact, this is often the first thing that people say when they see the church for the first time. It’s so beautiful in here; it’s so peaceful. I feel God here, I feel safe here. When you step into the nave and hear the gentle thump and shudder of the doors as they shut behind you, you can feel a presence in here with you, and suddenly the traffic and the noise and the busy-ness of the world seem a million miles away.  And you know that the presence you feel is the very presence of the Almighty, made palpable by the patina of prayers that have been spoken and sung here for a hundred and sixty years, prayers that have soaked into the wood and the mortar, prayers that make the very stones themselves seem to hum with life. This is the holy space T. S. Eliot speaks of in his poem Little Gidding, when he reminds us: “You are not here to verify,/Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity/Or carry report. You are here to kneel/Where prayer has been valid.” You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid, where holiness has been beautiful, where people have known peace.

And isn’t that exactly what we long for? To know a place of peace? We come to this place because it is a refuge, because the state of our lives often leaves us seeking sanctuary. We live, many of us, in a constant state of war; we are at war with our schedules, at war with the incessant barrage of information that assaults our brains. We are at war with our waistlines, our bank accounts, our impulses. We are at war with those voices in our head that tell us we will never be good enough, that we are no longer useful, that we are unloved, unworthy, and alone. We war against cancer, against unemployment, against wrinkles, aging, death.

And in those moments when we are blessed enough to find a grace-filled way to calm the chaos in our lives, we are always reminded that there is still plenty of chaos in the rest of the world. There are protesters slaughtered in Syria, gay men murdered in Uganda, children starving in Somalia, innocents shot in Philadelphia. There is a 22% unemployment rate in Spain, the constant threat of riots in Greece, a vitriolic election process in America. There is certainly enough turmoil in this world to make us yearn desperately for a place where we can feel God’s mighty arm wrapped around us, holding us and keeping us safe. There is enough cruelty and injustice and anguish in the world to make all of us cry out to the Lord, in the words of today’s collect, “Almighty God, in our time grant us your peace.” In our time, please God, grant us your peace, and in the meantime, give us this place where prayer has been valid and peace is present.

I wonder if that is what this poor, sick, desperate man from Capernaum felt when he entered the synagogue on that Sabbath morning. He must have lived a life of torture, tormented every moment of every day, exhausted by the effort of continuously fighting off the voices of those evil spirits that fed like parasites on his soul. Was it only in the synagogue that he was able to find some peace? Was it only when he stepped out of the sun into the cool, dark building, only when he heard the shuffle of his own sandals on the sandy stone floor, that those voices finally became muffled and still? Why else was he there, if not to find some measure of calm, to feel God’s arms wrapped around him, to sit for a few moments in the eye of the raging storm of his life?

But into this place of peace walks a new rabbi, accompanied by four shiny new disciples, fresh-faced and following. And instead of the predictable, pedantic words of the scribes, this new teacher, this Jesus, offers words of power, words spoken with real authority, that amaze and astound his listeners. And the peace that our poor, bedeviled man had been trying to wrap around himself like a blanket is suddenly and completely shredded. The dark voices within him that had always lain dormant in the shade of the synagogue suddenly erupt in protest, howling out of his mouth with words that are not his own: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” His peace is shattered; the chaos of his life has returned with the sudden ferocity of a storm whipping up across the Sea of Galilee. He finds himself not wrapped in the protective arms of God but facing down the fist of this Jesus of Nazareth, whose arm stretches out against the devils who dare to speak his name. “Be silent!” Jesus commands, or, more accurately, “Shut up! Put a muzzle on it. And come. Out. Of. Him.” And this poor, fraught man, who had come to the synagogue only to find some measure of peace, is suddenly in the middle of a war, as the powers of good and evil battle in his very body, as he feels the demons torn out of him, screaming their pain and frustration out of his mouth, sending him into convulsions as they fight to keep their hooks in him.     

And then, just as quickly as they had risen up, the spirits are gone. And the crowds are amazed at what they have seen, not least of all the man, who lies panting in a pool of sweat on the ground. Mark doesn’t tell us so, but I imagine people in the crowd helping him up, brushing him off, getting him a glass of cool water to drink. How do you feel? they ask him. Are they really gone? And looking up into the powerful, joyful, radiant face of Christ, the man whispers his answer hoarsely through a rough throat. Yes, he says. They are gone, and I feel…I feel…peace.

Do you think it’s possible that this is what God wants for us too? That part of the peace that we are offered in this place is not just a moment of reprieve from the voices of pain, anger, and fear that whisper war in our hearts but also the strength to face those destructive voices and be wholly rid of them? Do you think it’s possible that the peace God wants to give us is more rich, more complicated, more lasting than an occasional breath of calm? Do you think that maybe God loves us, loves you, too much to offer you anything less than real, transformative peace?

After reading this Gospel story, I do think so. As much as we love the idea of peace without risk, of a calm that effortlessly soaks into our souls like water seeping into cracks in the sidewalk, the truth is that peace is more work than that. Finding our peace involves facing down those dark voices that battle within us and telling them once and for all that they are unwelcome. And those voices will not go quietly. They will cry out again and again, fight us fiercely until we are thoroughly worn out. But we face these voices standing alongside Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, who speaks for us when we have no voice, who stretches out his arm against the dark forces of this world when we have no strength and heals us when we think we are beyond all hope. Those voices that tell us that we are unlovable or good for nothing, that tempt us to eat more than we need or drink more than we should, that try to convince us that injustice will always reign on the earth, that tell us to be afraid, always to be afraid – those voices will be grow more and more muted until they are finally muzzled forever. For we have this promise: that the peace of Christ is ours to claim; it is our inheritance, the peace that passes all understanding, the peace that only the Son of God can give. This peace is an active, life-changing, real, redeeming force in the world that rebukes the powers of darkness and bathes all people in light.

So in this holy place, pray for that kind of peace. Pray for that kind of transformation, for you and for the world. Pray that God will call you here and send you out into the world in that peace, and grant you strength and courage to love and serve Him with gladness and singleness of heart. And carry with you this beautiful poetry from our own Hymnal: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. And yet we pray for but one thing – the marvelous peace of God.” 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

29 January 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Takacs' sermon here.

Picture the scene. A Sunday morning at Saint Mark’s. 11:00 Choral High Mass. Ushers are helping people to find their seats, handing out leaflets, and welcoming newcomers. The congregation is settling into pews or scanning ahead to see who is preaching today or bent in prayer after shuffling a red kneeler across the floor. The candles are lit; the organ begins to play. Altar servers are gliding about the chancel, in that amazing, unique way that says, “I’m going as fast as I possibly can, but I will darn well look dignified while I do it.” Then the servers disappear, the prelude rolls into the Introit, a breath!, and the first hymn. The congregation stands and opens their mouths wide in joyful song, the choir and altar party and clergy process in – and the Mass is underway.

But just as soon as it’s begun, you notice something different. After the opening acclamation, the Celebrant chants, “There is one Body and one Spirit….” Ah-hah!, you think. A baptism today. I wondered why the pews seemed so full. Come to think of it, the church is really full – really, really full. Bursting at the seams, in fact. What a joyful occasion, you think, I love baptisms. They’re so beautiful, so tender, so sweet. And so you travel through the liturgy of the word, listening to the readings, reminding yourself – again – to let someone know that you’d like to become a lector, praying the psalm as the choir sings, rising for the Gospel, attentively following the sermon, getting lost in the middle, finding the preacher again when she gets near the end, and then – finally! – the altar party stands, the choir begins to sing Palestrina’s Sicut cervus (which you now know so well that you like to sing along quietly under your breath) and the baptism has begun.

When the baptizands and their families gather with the priests at the back of the church, it looks like half the congregation is trying to squeeze back there. The crowds turn into more of a mob as they try to find their spots, and you find yourself worrying about the safety of Father Mullen – but he eventually emerges from the fray and all is right with the world again. When all has settled down and the candidates begin to be presented by name, you realize why there is such a crowd – there are twelve people to be baptized today. Twelve! Amazing! What are they doing in that confirmation class these days? After all the names are read and the promises are made, the candidates make their renunciations and affirmations, prayers are sung, the water is blessed, and the baptisms finally begin.

And for a while, all is going quite well. The candidates are processing up to the font in order, receiving the baptism with water and anointing with oil and a baptismal candle. But then you notice that after they are baptized, the candidates seem to be a little dazed. One of them has wandered up the North aisle and seems transfixed by the stained glass window of Jesus walking on water. Another has started some kind of davening in the soft space, rocking and muttering under his breath while holding a little stuffed lion. And yet another has marched straight down the center aisle and is smiling up at the rood beam with his arms extended. You think to yourself that all of this is starting to get a little unseemly when suddenly, from the font, you hear a strange, alien sound. The man who has just been baptized is standing on the step, his hair dripping wet, and, well, he’s moaning. Or talking or rapping or scatting or something, you really can’t tell…and as soon as he starts to make noise all heaven breaks loose. The davening man begins to sing, the window man is now rocking back and forth, a woman has jumped up on a back pew, pointed at the congregation and belted out, “Hear, O people, repent and return to the Lord!” Another woman has begun witnessing earnestly to the people seated by the St. John’s altar, and yet another has run up into the choir yelling, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, the kingdom of heaven is like a fugue.” All of the newly baptized are dancing and singing, lighting every candle they can find, praying and prophesying and speaking in tongues. All is finally brought to order again when the Master of Ceremonies, who just happens to be Dan Devlin, calmly approaches each new prophet and quietly reminds them of their place in line, which they, of course, are happy to find if only because he asked them to.

It sounds crazy. It sounds absurd. It sounds like it could never happen and that Erika was a little giddy when she was writing her sermon this week. But this is exactly what is described in our reading from Acts today. Twelve disciples, living in Ephesus, meet up with Paul. When he asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptized, they answer him that no, they don’t even know what a Holy Spirit is. They were baptized with the baptism of John, a baptism of repentance and preparation for the one who is to come. But, Paul says, the one who is to come has already come, and gone, and come again, and when he ascended into heaven he promised the disciples that they would receive a comforter, the Holy Spirit who would come upon them and bless their preaching and their healing, offer strength and consolation for the journey. Well, give us this baptism, these twelve disciples say, and “when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”

So why does my little scene seem so crazy to us? The Bible is full of stories of baptisms gone wild – impulsive baptisms in an obliging stream; baptisms of dozens, hundreds, thousands, after a particularly dynamic sermon. And in today’s Gospel, in Jesus’ own baptism, “the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove” and the voice of God thundering from the clouds. But you and I have rarely seen a wild baptism like this. Most of the baptisms I have seen or performed have been quite orderly, some even stately, and the wildest they’ve ever gotten is when an infant thinks that the water is too hot or too cold and decides to test out his lung power. No wonder we’re tempted to think of baptism as something domestic, as merely a “rite of initiation” meant to be witnessed by family and friends and followed up with fluffy white cake.

Now I have nothing against family and friends and fluffy white cake. And baptism is the rite of initiation in the Church. But it is so much bigger than that, so much more powerful, so much wilder than anything we could ever contain in a small marble font. Any invocation of the Holy Spirit is bound to get wild, but baptism particularly so because of the astonishing promises of the baptismal covenant. In our baptisms, we promised, or someone promised on our behalf, to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers; to persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves; and to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. These are the promises that we made; this is covenant that we entered into. They’re crazy; they’re impossible – we’ll never, ever be able to keep them all all the time. But, remember, we never promised to do these things alone – we promised to do them only with God’s help.

It is God’s help that makes the wildness of these promises something creative and life-giving instead of fantastical. And this help is found most powerfully here, in the Mass itself. Each week, in this liturgy, we enact these promises and remind ourselves of what they feel like. We learn the apostles’ teaching through the Holy Word of Scripture, break bread and pray; we confess our sins; we proclaim the Gospel and hear sermons that hope to share the Good News; we seek Christ in all persons by gazing into their eyes and offering them his peace; we love our neighbors and effect peace and justice through our prayers and thanksgivings; and we respect each human being by kneeling shoulder to shoulder to receive the bread and the wine. The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor compares this facet of our worship to strength training – a workout that helps us to be fit and ready to run when we enter the mission field.  

And in our worship, we are reminded, too, that this covenant has never been one-sided. God has also made promises – to be faithful to us, to be present in the body and blood, to “raise us to a new life in grace” day after day after day. And God keeps his promises. Without his righteousness, made manifest in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we would be utterly lost. The wildness we would face then would be utter chaos with no hope and only the rule of Death. But that is not the life into which we have been baptized. Our baptisms had power, have power, the power of this holy covenant that, when lived out by you and me, transforms the world. So keep this covenant, or if you have not been baptized, seek it out. Embrace the wildness of these promises; practice them together here week after week. And then listen for that mighty voice of God proclaiming again and again that You are my son, my daughter, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. And do you know what the really wild thing is? He really means it.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

8 January 2012 - The Baptism of our Lord

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia