Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

                     …….Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or

                                      sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?......

Once upon a time in the long-ago 1970’s one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues was

an ethical system called Situation Ethics,  the premise of which was that if love was to be best served,

sometimes other moral principles and codes could be put aside. This ethical system was grounded in 

unconditional agape love,  the absolute law of love.  Situation  Ethics argued that if

other laws needed to be broken in order for universal agape love to be fully realized, the very love  

that Jesus taught in the two great commandments of the Gospels,  then so be it. In Situation

Ethics, the ends can justify the means, assuming, of course, that the “situation” is not intrinsically bad

or evil. Situation Ethics is among the purest systems of moral ambiguity but when we consider the

horrors of the sexual abuse of children and the silence of those institutions in which it occurs, moral

ambiguity is useless as a denominator.

On this last Sunday of the Church Year, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Church reveals its wisdom in

maintaining the rhythm of the Christian life of worship and preserving joyful anticipation and

expectations, very much in stark contrast to Situation Ethics. There is certainty and clarity,  all part

of the Good News, as are today’s readings in which, once again, we are shown  how to see ourselves and

our world in a deliberate and mindful way.  Matthew’s Gospel lets us ask the Lord, “when did

we see you?  “If we missed you, we didn’t mean to and if we encountered you and responded

accordingly, we are blessed.”  How remarkable it is that God allows those of us who are mindful as well

as those of us not mindful  to ask the same question.  And because the Gospel is a living conversation ,

we can chose the Grace that comes with our affirmation of Christ in those we welcome, feed,  clothe,

take care of, heal, protect  and cherish, or we can remain unaware that we have done anything wrong

and in our pretend ignorance hope for God’s mercy.    

The Gospel with its challenges was with us in the time of Situation Ethics just as it is

with us now. But oh, how different the times are: what was “situational” and morally ambiguous

in the 1970’s is not “situational” or morally ambiguous now. This is not to say that in our time we are

free from the hubris that comes from spiritual aridity or that we are not living in what Jean Vanier calls

a “mixture of light and darkness, of love and hate, of trust and of fear.” It is, though, to say that we are

clear and unambiguous about one thing--the perversity of the sexual abuse of children, especially when

it occurs in the protected confines of a religious or academic institution. We are quick to condemn the

unconscionable acts perpetrated by people who have every reason to know the evil of these acts, just as

we are quick to judge the corporate institutions as hypocritical, cruel, profoundly dishonest and

deceitful, arrogant, and even dysfunctional and toxic. If you’ve been reading the papers and listening to

the commentators about the human tragedy that has come to our Penn State University, the words I’ve

used to describe the circumstances and conditions of what has transpired there will seem familiar.  We

know that the adults involved in the sexual abuse of children, directly or indirectly, are moral cowards

who seek to protect themselves in the safe confines of their respective institution instead of asking

whether what they have done is right and just and not morally reprehensible. They are neither clever

nor wise, nor do they often practice what they say they believe.

So here we are standing firm in our righteous anger, knowing that we are justified in the integrity of our

judgment because we know the gravity of the evils committed.  This is a good, clean objective, no

moral-ambiguity, non situation-ethics position, right?  Wrong.  There are, in fact, some serious 

problems with which we have to wrestle.  First of all, the scripture readings today make very clear that

God’s judgment belongs to God, not to us. We have the right and the responsibility to render judgment 

but it is our own, not God’s.  Secondly, there is  the problem of what we believe is our righteous anger.

Maybe it is righteous, but maybe it isn’t. Either way, anger is always something of a risk, especially when

we remember that anger is one of the “seven deadly sins.”  Frederick Buechner reminds us of this risk when he says:  Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways [anger]is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Thirdly comes the most difficult challenge and that is what we do about forgiveness

without apparent repentance on the part of those involved with the crimes.  We are fortunate in that

WE do not have to see to it that these heinous  crimes carry punishment. They do and they will. This is

the human side. We are Christians and our path is different in that we have the law and spirit of the

Gospel  to guide us toward forgiveness.  But forgiveness is neither  simple nor easy, especially when

we see little or no repentance.  And while letting go of our anger is part of forgiveness, we have to

be mindful that in letting go of our righteous anger we don’t grant amnesty to the unrepentant. Again,

this is God’s work.

Matthew’s Gospel today shows us that we have the choice of doing or not doing, the choice of how to

lead our Christian lives, knowing full well the consequences of one choice or the other.  Not to forgive is

a choice but a costly one, like anger. Modern theologians and spiritual directors tell us that to hang on to

the wrongs is to feed a tumor in our inner lives, and thus feed on ourselves as our own prisoners.

So finally comes the act of true forgiveness. As Christians we know that forgiveness is the way of

the Gospel, a way of acknowledging how deeply flawed we are as human beings who can harm and hurt

one another and live in untruths and deceptions.  But because we are who we are we remember that

God began by forgiving us and giving us Christ, His son, in ransom. The Good News is that God invites us

to forgive as we are forgiven and to set ourselves free. This is the gift of our Faith and we experience it

again in its richness and fullness on this Sunday of Christ the King.

……for I was hungry and you gave me food , I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you took care of me …and I was a child and you protected me.

Amen.

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

20 November 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

I own a copy of a big book entitled  The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,173 Thoughts on the Business of Life.  Its headings run from A-Ability to Z-Zeal, and include under G- God and under T-Taxes. There are, in fact, 94 quotations about God and 70 quotations about taxes. The numerical superiority of the headings under God is reassuring and we can rest easy knowing that in the book God is ahead of taxes.  

The Forbes Book is meant to be Chamber of Commerce staple so  there is a lot of humor and light heartedness in the quotations.  For example, here’s one of the quotations on taxes, from G.K. Chesterton: “A citizen can hardly distinguish  between a tax and a fine, except that a fine is generally much lighter.” And here’s a quotation on God from Anonymous: “ God will provide the victuals, but He will not cook the dinner.  There are other equally light-hearted  and delightful quotations . For the most part, this massive collection of “business quotations” is an easy going book for an easy going audience. It is not a book with much hint of “gloom and doom” nor does it offer much of a reality check on every-day life as it really is.

The Forbes Book is not the kind of book Jesus and his disciples would pick up, much less read through, but we can imagine the Pharisees and Herodians might take some delight in it.  This may be because our book has nothing to offer by way of explanation and understanding of hard facts, for example, that our city, Philadelphia, “the birthplace of American democracy,” is the poorest big city in the United States  with 27% of its population including more than a third of its children, living below the poverty line. [46.2 million nationally] Nor will our treasury of delightful sayings help us explain and understand the appalling disparity between the rich and the poor in our country and the fact that, year- by-year, proportionally fewer people control  more and more of the country’s  wealth. 

So we come to this morning’s Gospel, and the tension between giving to God what is God’s and giving to the emperor what is the emperor’s.  We know the story here:  the Pharisees and Herodians are determined to trick Jesus, who is proving to be quite a nuisance, into incriminating himself so that they can get him arrested and out of the way . After their two-faced flattery of Him, the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. For us, this is a silly question: of course it is lawful—and required and right—to support the emperor—our government—because this is a legitimate way to care for each other and to support the welfare and social good of the entire community.  But for people under Mosaic Law, the question was a serious—and tricky—one.  

Jesus responds by acknowledging the trickery at hand and calls the Pharisees and Herodians hypocrites. To be called hypocrites by Jesus is not something anyone would wish for because, for Jesus, hypocrisy may be one of the worst transgressions. Hypocrisy is distortion and denial and dishonesty, all of which the Pharisees and Herodians are guilty of, as are we if we are not mindful of our Christian covenant.  The difference between us and the Pharisees and Herodians is that we truly know Jesus and that is why we are Christians and why we practice the Faith.  To be who and what we say we are means that we practice obedience as much as we practice generosity, compassion, justice, and fairness in everything that we do. Unlike those people trying to trick Jesus in order to destroy Him, we proclaim Jesus and practice His ways. Thus, we have chosen to resist poverty, hunger, and  injustice in the inequitable distribution of wealth. As mixed-up as some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters all over the country might seem, they could be seen as  expressing some of our own Christian sensibilities.

As Christians, we know there is something terribly wrong in our country, as the facts about Philadelphia as the poorest big city in America affirm.   We all have our own stories of adversity and crisis, yes. But we know from the Gospel, Jesus’s own story, that this is what is means to be alive and human.  Yet, as Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel , we ARE in fact responsible for one another through what we give to the Emperor and that not to pay the emperor can be to turn our backs on what we give to God.  

Unlike the Pharisees and Herodians, we don’t need to say how amazed we are at Jesus’s presence, justice,  compassion, wisdom  and goodness. We know all this and it is the Good News of the Gospel. But what is the Good News is often the Hard News of the Gospel. How do we manage this tension? Let’s try this:  what if each of us wanted  to add a new quotation to The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, one that included God, taxes, generosity, compassion, justice, and Faith?  Here’s my suggestion and it comes from a “comedian,” of all people, Stephen Colbert. It’s a zinger so get ready:  

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Amen.   

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

For 9:00am High Mass

Sunday, October 16, 2011 – Pentecost  18/Proper 24

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want…

     Perhaps . . . perhaps, it is unsettling for us to pray this 23^rd Psalm outside a funeral occasion? For many, the 23^rd Psalm is firmly associated with consolation offered in death. Mourners frequently request this Psalm to be read at loved ones’ funerals – so familiar, so comforting.

     Yet, here it appears in the middle of Eastertide, a season for celebrating new life. When we shake this Psalm loose from its funeral moorings, we hear affirmations of life right here and now.

    Life, right here and now! This is the key truth: life, right here and now – not only or just in the afterlife!

     Praying this Psalm today reminds me of the time when our sons were very young, David six years old, Andrew three.

   Bedtime: many of us know the special-ness of this evening ritual. In our family, when the baths were finished and the boys were in their ‘jammies’, robes and slippers, it was story time. Richard and I took turns reading from a favorite: “Father Fox’s Penny Rhymes”!

     Then, it was ‘up the wooden mountain’! On his shoulders, Richard carried Andrew and, I held David’s hand to the top of the stairs, then into their twin beds in their small back bedroom. We tucked each of the boys in, kissed each gently on his forehead and then I sat down on the edge of Andrew’s bed.

    Prayer time: David and Andrew looked forward to this time because I sang the 23^rd Psalm (sing Gelineau): “The Lord is my Shepherd, nothing shall I want, He leads me by safe paths, nothing shall I fear . . . . “ Our sons felt loved and safe, in the night time and the day time – still, they feel loved and safe.

     In that time of their growing up, and for all of us – (pause) and this is the particularly good news for us this day – Jesus is with us in the “here and now,” in us Jesus lives into the power of his death and resurrection, this morning and every morning and evening: God with us, here and now, offering rest in green pastures, guidance beside still waters, Jesus’ rod and staff provide protection, security.

    But! Notice! The metaphor changes in the final two verses: God suddenly becomes a generous host, preparing a table and anointing our heads with oil, things a shepherd would never do for the sheep! Nor would the shepherd allow the sheep into the house!

     Taken together, these two constellations of images point to the royalty of Jesus. Just as the human king of ancient Judah and Israel served as shepherd and host of his people, so God does in this Psalm, in the person of Jesus. . . . .

     One more picture: in 2001, I was a pilgrim to Iona, a tiny Island off the coast of Scotland, where Saint Columba landed in 563 CE, bringing Christianity from Ireland to Scotland. I prayed for five days in that re-built monastery church and wandered the small island by day, even to Columba’s landing site, where I picked up a large stone, loaded on to it all my sins and the sins of my parishioners and tossed it into the sea – all that sin washed away! Then I walked to Columba’s quiet retreat prayer place to pray Psalm 23.

Everywhere on that tiny one mile wide and three mile long island, a haven for hundreds of sheep – those sheep fed and watered freely – no fences, no one harmed them, all vehicles stopped for them on the pathways – certainly we all watched our footing! – and those sheep came when they were called! Sheep: loved, protected, so alive, just as Jesus says of us, for him.    

     So, for us to prayer this 23^rd Psalm this morning is to make an extreme faith statement with the very first verse: God is our shepherd, not any king or president or government or nation – not anyone else but God in Jesus do we trust with our very lives and well-being, here and now!

    Yes, we trust God in Jesus to protect, prepare, provide, not in some afterlife, but now! Like the Psalmist, we need no one else and certainly no other thing. We pray for grace to be dependent solely on the God who walks with us through deep valleys, who provides food and rest, who offers guidance in right paths.

     Remember that wonderful old hymn? “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own and the joy we share as we tarry there – none other has ever known.”

     In our consumer-oriented society, it is good for us to hear the simple but radical message of the

23^rd Psalm: God in Jesus is the only necessity of life.

    Friends, come to the Table prepared for us by The Lord of Life; with open hands and hearts receive Jesus’ gift of his very self – all for love, for protection, for life – here, now, always. Amen.

The Rev’d. Marie Z. Swayze

St. Mark’s Church, 9 AM Mass

15 May 2011



“Will not God vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Even so, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (St Luke) 

One of the many natural features of this country still known by a Native American name is a river called the Kanawha. On the north bank about halfway through that river, a city rose, with a large state capitol building much like the one in Washington. Staring at the capitol grounds, on the opposite bank of the Kanawha, stand four or five quiet hills: ancient hills which were once, of course, mountains. Among Europeans, pig ranchers settled there first, people who weren’t able to settle any closer to the city because of the nature of their work. Later, after the First World War there came professional families who found they could nestle themselves in those hills and feel comfortably distant from the city across the river, though the city itself is fairly quiet to begin with. On the ridge of one of those hills there's a Depression-era house, set back from a street much quieter than Locust. It has an angular, slate roofline, white painted brick walls, and windows hidden and hushed by tall vines. Nearly everything about the house makes you think it was built for quiet. 

It was indeed very quiet one night, two years after I’d left for college, when my Mom was awakened by a caller asking “Is this the parent of Paul Francke?” She learned that, 500 miles away in a very unquiet city of 3 million people, I had had a grand-mal seizure on the floor of an E.R. waiting room. It took 3 orderlies to hold me down, after which I went into what would be a three-day coma. My parents were not told why, or what were my chances, as no one knew. It was a good thing for me, during the days I spent in that coma, that we do not need to cry out to God day and night to earn his help or protection. 

I didn’t even believe in God at the time, and I suppose I couldn't have been more different as a comatose atheist from the widow in our Gospel reading (St Luke 18:1-8a). It was a good thing for me that God is not like the unjust judge in that story, and does not need to be annoyed into action. Nothing would have been less compelling to the unrighteous judge than if the righteous widow suddenly fell silent, unable to plead her case. (My silence, by the way, came from hyponatremia, an electrolyte imbalance that sometimes happens to runners.) Had God been like the unrighteous judge, he would have forgotten about me as soon as he could. And I stress all this because it's too easy to assume that Jesus, in his parables about 'authorities,' is always really talking about God. Jesus was an iconoclast, we should recall, so some of his teaching highlights simply the seediness of many people endowed with church or state authority.

It’s a good thing God is not like that the unjust judge, because that would also be a terrible model. This story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge in St Luke's Gospel is prefaced by an editorial comment not found in St Mark's apparently older telling of the story. Luke begins Mark's story with these new words: “And Jesus told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Certainly, these are signs of a peaceful spiritual life. But I wonder if Luke's editorial preface really takes in Jesus’ strong words at the end of this parable, the words which our lectionary cuts off: “even so," - that is, despite all this prayer - "will the Son of Man find faith on the Earth?” 

Even among those who pray day and night, Jesus questions their faith. For all our crying, is there meaning? Not necessarily, he suggests, and he continues to suggest this in other parables. When you and I are too weak, too forgetful, even too lost in comfort and peace to think of God, God is never lost. When my parents rushed five hundred miles to that hospital the night that I fell into a coma, it wasn’t because I kept prodding them to notice me; they came because they're my parents. Why would we expect less from God? I know it's hard, but why should those you and I care for expect any less of us?

We’re not always at that point in our relationships: there's one reason. We go through phases that lack that natural, implicit trust, perhaps because it's still building, or because we're not sure we want it built. Building faith, after all, takes vulnerability and can be awkward to say the least. But it can be much less awkward if we know what we really want, from ourselves and others, because only then can we know exactly what to say. So when you and I cry out as it were to our friends, to our families, or to God, what do we really want? What words, if any, are beneath our words? Am we asking for what we really want, and this thing you or I want, is it even good? Are you or I coming to prayer to return to God, to solemnize our thoughts, needs, and hopes for the world? Do you or I come to him to witness ourselves being forgiven and uplifted by the ground of our being? Or are we coming to prayer because we’re afraid there’s no other way God will remember us?

What we should be trying to say and have said to us is what the psalmist believes God says to him, in the 139th psalm. With our children, our spouse, our partner or friends, there's a closeness that implies knowledge, care, trust, and the desire to protect those things to the extent that the other will let us. We can cry to God day and night, but we may or may not mean anything. We can forget about him and try to live as though we'd never felt him at work in our lives. Or we can get it right: we can be ourselves, open about everything, committed to sorting out the things that need sorted. The strange thing is that in any of these cases, he's never exactly closer or further away: "If you ascend to heaven, I am there; if you make the grave your bed, I am there also; this is my body, this is my blood, no matter where you go, no matter what you say. I made your bones and filled you with my Spirit, in which you can be still and know that I am God, your God, even when you can no longer pray."  

by The Rev. Paul Francke