Saint Mark's Church

The story of Martha and Mary has always seemed to me like something of a homiletic minefield. I am made uncomfortable, first, by the gender roles in the passage, by the fact that the men are being waited on by the women; and then I am made uncomfortable by the men, who are eating or about to eat, telling the woman who has just produced a meal, that her sister, who sits listening “has chosen the better part.” It seems to me to be that most Anglican of sins, impoliteness.

There are other reasons that I am uncomfortable with the story of Martha and Mary. The story seems to me to be on one level a story about different personalities, different ways of being in the world. And those personality differences can be seen in Christian theology and spirituality: the divide between action and contemplation, between deep involvement with the world, and deep silence within the cell. There are examples of these differences: St. Francis within the world, and desert monasticism, far removed from it. St. Theresa of Avila planting monasteries and scolding kings, and Dame Julian of Norwich, walled into her cell, with her prayer holding the world upon its axis. Indeed, some people of faith struggle deeply with both the Martha and the Mary within them: torn between activity and silence.

So doubtless, there are personality differences at play in the Gospel this morning and who am I to decide which personality is better, which way of being in the world closer?

And of course, through time the story of Martha and Mary has been used to justify all sorts of nonsense: prelates and monastics lazying about, while growing fat and wealthy on the backs of the poor, active people, who haven't chosen the better part but are required to sustain those who have.

But I think the main reason that I am uncomfortable with this story is that it is a story that is massively colored by gender.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a mother and she said whenever she read this story, especially around the holidays, she always feels the story with a special intensity. Because she would go to church, and hear again the message, told to her by men, to keep one's priorities straight during the holiday season, like Mary, and so she would spend large amounts of time feeling guilty if she was being Martha-like, and worrying about food making it to the table, etc. On the other hand, she felt guilty because the societal expectation was that she make everything perfect for her family, the perfect turkey and stuffing, the perfect presents, that she give them a perfect holiday experience, and so she felt damned if she did, and damned if she didn't. She was either failing religiously or failing her family.

And she was telling me this story, it struck me suddenly that part of the energy of this story of Martha and Mary has to do specifically with being a woman. I would never have imagined being caught in that kind of catch-22 that my friend was. And I thought, what if you tried to translate this story into maleness? It just doesn't really translate. If you were to retell this story about two brothers, one sitting at the feet of Jesus and one not, one who is active and one who is contemplative, it isn't the same story, it doesn't have the same emotional charge that it does when you tell the story about women and service.

And so I am uncomfortable with the passage because the role of gender seems quite significant. This is a passage that has a great deal to do with being a woman, with negotiating one's role as a woman in the world, with coming to grips with patriarchy and societal expectations. And I am loathe to attempt to interpret a passage that is so linked to being a woman, lest I fall into that perennial error of the clergy: speaking with authority about things that one has neither experienced nor understood.

This is most certainly a loaded story. It is a complex story, and in reading and understanding it as loaded and complex, I am not alone. This story has a lively history of interpretation throughout the life of the Church.

The standard interpretation of this story would suggest that Mary has chosen the important thing, listening to Jesus, whereas Martha has mistaken service as a substitute for sitting at the feet of the master. Of course, the history of the Church is in part a history of the failure to understand this story, because for most of its history, the Church has told women to be Marthas and not Marys.

But the fact that this story is colored massively with gender does not mean that it is a story only for women. There is, I think, a great deal to be gained from this story whoever you are, because we all live to some extent under the kind of societal and cultural expectations that both Martha and Mary do.

When I read this complex story, I always like to read it with one of the slightly sharp stories of the desert fathers next to it. Here's one of the sayings of the desert monastics about this story:

A brother came to visit Abba Silvanus at Mount Sinai. When he saw the brothers working hard, he said to the old man: Do not work for the food that perishes. For Mary has chosen the good part. Then the old man called his disciple: Zachary, give this brother a book and put him in an empty cell. Now, when it was three o'clock, the brother kept looking out the door, to see whether someone would come to call him for the meal. But nobody called him, so he got up, went to see the old man, and asked: Abba, didn't the brothers eat today? The old man said: Of course we did. Then he said: Why didn't you call me? The old man replied: You are a spiritual person and do not need that kind of food, but since we are earthly, we want to eat, and that's why we work. Indeed, you have chosen the good part, reading all day long, and not wanting to eat earthly food. When the brother heard this, he repented and said: Forgive me, Abba. Then the old man said to him: Mary certainly needed Martha, and it is really by Martha's help that Mary is praised.

And I wonder if that doesn't give us a better way into the passage, rather then simply saying it is more important to learn then to help. The saying speaks to the interrelatedness of Martha and Mary, and despite their tension, the way that Martha allows Mary to be herself, and the way that Mary gives meaning to Martha.

The implication, I think, is that Martha and Mary need each other desperately. Martha needs Mary to keep reminding her that there are contemplative things out there. Because of course, for the Marthas, for the helpers, the easiest thing in the world is to get too involved in helping, too focused on the helping, and not the reason one is helping.

The temptation of Mary, I always like to think of as the “surfer” temptation. Mary just wants to hang loose, to ride the wave of this “like totally amazing teaching”. She just wants to be in this moment, with her rabbi sharing his amazing new teaching, and Mary seems relatively devoid of the sense that the table doesn't lay itself, the food doesn't cook itself, and that even surfers must eat, and learners, and contemplatives.

The aspect of the gloss by the desert fathers that I love so much is the humility that comes through it. Mary indeed may have chosen the better part, but here for us “goats”, those of us who aren't lucky to be sheep, we need to worry about the lesser parts, the things like food and clothing. Mary may have chosen the better part, but we are all of us Marthas.

And so, instead of finding this passage to be only for women, or a source of guilt, of wondering if I've got my priorities straight, when I read about Martha and Mary, I always think: “Maybe Mary has chosen the greater part, but here below, I need to worry about things like food and clothing. Someday, maybe, I'll get my priorities together enough to be Mary-like, but until then, I'm in good company with Abba Silvanus and his brothers, with all the Marthas throughout the ages who have thought about food and clothing, who have lived under societal or cultural or familial expectations. Someday, I may get myself together enough to sit at the feet of my rabbi, and listen to his teaching. But for now, I'm going to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, and trust that even if is isn't the better part, my work will still serve my God.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

18 July 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Attempts continue, down in the Gulf of Mexico, to contain the oil spill and to stop the flow of oil from the ocean floor. Attempts are also being continued by BP to cover their corporate behinds. It is not a pretty picture, all around. Images of dead or dying birds, fish and other animals are interspersed with images of weary-looking PR wonks attempting somehow to spin the worse ecological disaster in this nation's history, a disaster brought about by corporate neglect if not malfeasance.

And the real question, as it always is in matters like this, is economic. Who will pay what, to clean up, to make restitution, to pay for what has happened?

Already swimming in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are the legal sharks who smell the blood in the water, and BP is, I am certain, already planning to mount a massive legal defense to limit as fully as possible their liability for the accident and its ecological implications.

The news stories are constant, about the effects of the spill on tourism and the local economy. The oil spill, in short, is almost entirely viewed in terms of money.

Which is generally when I admit my inherent skepticism of the ability of economic transactions or economic language to deal with the complexity of the Gulf Oil spill, the ethical problems of a corporation like BP or indeed the problems of a society that allows for the rape and pillage of the earth for economic reasons. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a ringing indictment of the inability of our society to think or speak correctly. Our language and rhetoric is not sufficient unto the day, or the past nearly sixty days. And it is a disaster of our own making.

Which is why it is interesting that in the Hebrew Scriptures this morning we have a story that is both economic and ecological. It is a story about land and about a conspiracy to take that land from an individual. Naboth refuses to sell his land because he understands it to be his “ancestral inheritance.” He belongs somehow to this specific piece of land, that his ancestors owned and farmed, and there is not a price that can be put on it, per se. Which puts King Ahab, who desires the land, into a bit of a funk. The powerful and the wealthy for time immemorial have always wanted what they cannot obtain easily or buy, and Ahab is no different. His wife Jezebel colludes with the powerful in Naboth's city to falsely accuse him, and execute him to obtain what he will not sell. And, so Elijah the prophet is sent to Ahab with this message “Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you.”

Which seems like a strange passage to couple in the lectionary with a Gospel passage about forgiveness. There seems to be little forgiveness in the words of the prophet Elijah. And yet, I'm interested not by the contrast of the stories, but by the fact that they both use economic terms. Because you have “sold yourself” says Elijah, and Jesus speaks about debts.

Debt is the metaphor that Jesus uses in the Gospel this morning to deal with forgiveness. The greater the debt forgiven, the larger the gratefulness. Which makes perfect sense in a common-sensical way. And I have no problem applying this to my own life: the greater someone sins against me, or more likely, the greater that I sin against them, the more gratefulness is entailed when forgiveness is given. It is when one starts to talk about systems and corporations and governments that things get a little more complicated. Is there, in fact, the possibility of forgiveness for BP or for Goldman Sachs for causing world-wide economic chaos or for economic systems that destroy people and the earth?

I wonder if that condemnation of Elijah isn't somehow prescient in our own day? It is not a far stretch for me, to read this sentence as a condemnation not just of Ahab, Jezebel and the powerful who enter into a conspiracy with them, but as a kind of condemnation which rings down throughout time: because you have sold yourself to do evil, I will bring disaster.

It would be easy, I suppose, to go the Pat Robertson route and point to the oil spill as a punishment from God, but that's not really how I roll, and I doubt you'd find it very convincing. Or it would be tempting to use that sentence to ring the changes on BP as an evil corporation. But the reality is that BP is only symptomatic, BP is only the current whipping boy, and tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now, there will be a new whipping boy for us to point the finger towards (and away from us) and say “You've sold yourself to evil.”

The reality is that we live in a culture, in a world where debt is the fundamental way of life. Debt, but not gratefulness or forgiveness. I was amused recently to read that Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has warned that “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path,” which is, I think, a dour economist's way of saying “this is a mad house, sell and move to China.” Don't however, move to Greece or Japan, both of which face the kind of debt that as an economic layperson, I find quite unfathomable. How does an entire economic area like the European Union simply implode seemingly overnight? And we've all heard the statistics on individual debt and interest only mortgages in this country, and felt the pinch which has resulted.

Our debt is not simply the “lack of money” kind of debt, it is the debt of borrowing against the future, against the planet. BP is symptomatic not simply of the kind of economic greed which is our own, writ large into a corporation, but of a willingness to refuse to think about the costs beyond our own day, to make a quick buck despite the unsustainability of a system or process, symptomatic of a kind of alienation from creation that allows us to mortgage the future not simply of the human race, but of the whole creation, for money.

The oil spill is an indicator of how deeply sinful, we are as a society, how deep the roots of that sin reach, into the whole structure of our lives and culture, and into our language and speech and thought; and all the ways that we are complicit with BP and Goldman Sachs and all those robber barons in the rape of the earth, and in an economic system that is simply madness. The spill in the Gulf is an indicator of how desperately we need to have our overwhelming and massive debts forgiven.

The wonder of the passage from the Gospels this morning is that it doesn't matter what the woman has done. It doesn't matter how she's sinned. It doesn't matter that the culture she lives in is certainly to blame for some of that sin. It doesn't matter. What matters is that she is contrite, she is sad. She can't possibly pay her debts, which are many, and so she is forgiven without regard to the magnitude of her sins.

I asked earlier if there was forgiveness for BP, and I think that is somehow a pressing question. Not because I think BP is laboring under a heavy load of guilt, but because if BP is somehow symptomatic, then the ability of BP to obtain forgiveness is somehow about my ability to be forgiven. And this unnamed woman, who washed Jesus with tears and anointed him with ointment tells us that there is somehow, somewhere, forgiveness for us, for our complicity in our society, for our final responsibility for a world in which a corporation like BP can exist, for the inability of our language to speak or think correctly, and for our own individual and collective sins and brokenness.

But the message of that forgiveness comes with a warning. The forgiveness that Jesus gives this woman is because she is aware of her sin, and contrite. The Pharisees on the other hand are not aware of their sin, just hers. They are looking for sin in other people, not in themselves.

The oil spill is not a chance for us to point out BP and say “You are evil,” but for us to realize our sinfulness, and to weep maybe a little, and ask that our debts be forgiven, many or few, individual or communal, by the only One who is able to forgive with such munificence and graciousness, God living and true. In the name of that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

There is a phenomenon in American culture that I cannot understand. The fascination, the energy, the money, the vitriol, all of which are expended on professional sports teams.

What would someone who think who had no experience of professional sports, about the energy that fans burn up on their favorites? They might think that it was a deeply important matter, instead of a game for amusement.

I have come to see this obsession with sports as a function of one of the truisms of human behavior: that we define ourselves in large measure by identification with a group, a franchise, a culture, a clan or a family. It is desperately important to us to belong, to have some roots, I suppose belonging goes some distance to assuaging some of the loneliness which is part of being trapped in our own bodies and heads.

And so fans identify themselves with the Yankees, or the Cowboys, or the Flyers, as a way of belonging. Sports of course, are a lighter example of this identification and belonging, but there are far darker and more dangerous examples of it. Because one of the corollaries of belonging to a culture or group is that groups are often defined over and against other groups. We not only like to belong to a group, but one of the ways that we know we belong to a group is that we don't belong to that other group. There are a plethora of examples of this throughout history: the English and the Irish, (in fact, the English and almost everyone else whom they colonized), the Tutsis and Hutus, Jews and Palestinians, whites and blacks; we define who we are by defining who we are not.

In scientific terms these differences are negligible, of course. The genetic differences between “races” are to all extents and purposes, so minute as to be invisible. Indeed, “race” turns out to be one of those ways that we define ourselves, that we identify and belong.

The question of belonging and group identification has been very much in the news lately, as a state in which I used to live, Arizona, has voted for what I think of as a draconian law designed to discourage illegal immigration. What the law is saying is: we are Americans, they are not. We belong, they do not.

But it is not just Arizona, of course. The Church is involved in a massive debate about who belongs, who is inside the pale and who is not. The debate is about many things: who has legitimate claims to the faith of Augustine, Becket, Cranmer, and Ramsey; who has political power, money and property; whether women and gay persons belong as ordained persons in the Church; in short, who belongs in the Anglican Communion, and who does not, who belongs as the true descendant of the Church of England in these United States.

This is one of the ways that we do business as humans, we locate ourselves in the world, we define the boundaries that give us belonging, and we defend them.

But that way of doing business is alien to the Christian faith. Although it sometimes seems as if becoming a member of the Church is to become a member of yet another exclusive group, one might even say a rapidly shrinking, exclusive gathering, the Gospel this morning teaches us otherwise: the vows of baptism make us members of a body that brooks no boundaries, for all are one in Christ, as Christ is one with God. And this oneness, never quite realized but always underlying the life of the Church begins in the Gospel this morning, as Jesus prays for that nascent little ragtag band of disciples, that they will be one.

The message is that becoming a member of the body of Christ overwhelms all other artificial cultural barriers which separate, and makes us one with as diverse and ragtag a group of people as were those early disciples.

I was talking recently to someone who was here at St. Mark's years ago, and this is the story he told me. A former priest here, wandered into a potluck gathering, very much like we had this past Thursday after the Feast of the Ascension, and this priest wondered out loud where else you would find so unusual and diverse a gathering of people. The only possibility that he could come up with was an air raid shelter.

Look at the body of Christ's people, gathered in this place. People of deep faith, people who would like to have faith, all sorts of ethnic, racial, economic, and other diversities.

Multiply that by all the churches that have been and will be, by all the people that will gather in them, by all who will be united at the altars where Christ will be present from the beginning of the ragtag Church until the Last Trump and you get a sense of the diversity, the absolute mad unity of the life of the Church, which is Christ's body, to which we are called in the magnificent light of his resurrection. And imagine how ragamuffin a band is gathered, mystically, when we become one in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and with all that great multitude that none can number.

Which is why, though I shy away from politics in the pulpit, matters like Arizona's immigration law, civil rights, war and peace, genocide, health care, ecology, and economics are not simply political matters, but inherently religious ones.

In the Church, we are called into massive diverse fellowship which brooks no political boundaries. God calls Republicans and Democrats, Whigs, Tories, Liberal Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Ulster Orange men and Sinn Fein; everyone into the unseen unity of oneness with each other in God.

But that does not mean that simply everything is compatible with the vision of oneness that is part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I or anyone can believe whatever we want about any political matter, but that does not mean that such a belief is compatible with the duty that I owe to my brothers and sisters in Christ, with whom I am one. If we are one in Christ, then I have specific duties and obligations to my brothers and sisters who come from south of the Arizona/Mexico border, or those who are called to ordained ministry who are women or gay people, or those who believe that schism is their only alternative, because we are one with each other, and will be together not just in this haphazard gathering that is the Church temporal, but forever.

C.S. Lewis once preached these words and they speak to the unity of the Body of Christ:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, (shall we insert sports franchises), arts, civilisations--these are mortal... But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

If all are one in Christ, my actions and your actions always occur against the backdrop that is the oneness of that Body, and the excuses of political, or tribal, or family allegiance do not quell the responsibilities that I have to the whole Body, to the immortals we meet everyday. My actions can heal or wound that Body, seen or unseen.

Which means that we are none of us absolved either from the necessity of struggling to understand and work for political ends which are consonant with the Gospel (which affect the real lives of immortal people that we are united to in Christ), or from the hard, hard work of being one in Christ with people who it is very, very difficult to be one with. That is the kind of “shirt of flame” that oneness in Christ binds us to.

Yesterday, the Diocese of Los Angeles consecrated two bishops suffragon. They were the 16^th and 17^th women to be consecrated as bishops in the Episcopal Church, (the 1044^th and 1045^th bishops in the American succession), but what has garnered so much news is that one of them, Mary Glasspool, is openly gay and has lived for the past 19 years in a committed relationship with another woman.

The election and the consent process by which the Episcopal Church has agreed to now-Bishop Glasspool's consecration, has garnered the usual baleful predictions about the end of the Anglican Communion and the departure of the Episcopal Church from the historic faith.

And, whenever I hear that noise, from the conservative side of the aisle, my knee-jerk inclination is to say “You know what? You don't like it? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Good riddance!”

But, of course, I owe my beloved brothers and sisters so much more than that. We are one in Christ, whether they like it, or even believe it, and whether I like it or agree with it.

It is a madness, of course, to gather all of us crazy people of faith throughout time into one body. By doing this God is operating with what Dorothy Sayers used to call “His usual outrageous lack of scruple.” But as is often the case with God's lack of scruple, who are we to complain?

So, brothers and sisters, let us glory in the ridiculousness of being one in Christ! Come conservative breakaway Anglicans, come right wing Republican lawmakers in Arizona, come Yankees fans, come terrorists, and people of all colors and strips, come with me to the Supper of the Lamb. It matters not that I cannot understand you and have terrible trouble loving you. I'm sure I'm not that easy to love either. But we are one in Christ. God in his glory and wonder has made us one.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

Easter VII

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

To be a Christian is to be an alien in foreign land, or to be, at least, between the times. To never feel at home, to know that there are two time frames, two realities present: the seen and the unseen, that which we know by sight and that which we know by faith; eternity and our swiftly changing world.

Since I spent some formative time studying the spirituality of the Eastern Church, I like to think of these two different realities using the metaphor of icons. Icons often have the heavy golden backdrop, which symbolizes the uncreated Divine light. And the heavy, solemn figures are meant to represent the eternal, immortal figures of saints and angels, as they are upon that other shore, and in that uncreated light.

The effect and the theory is very much that icons are windows, through which the eternal comes close to the temporal, and through which we stare at the mighty figures of the faith and through which they stare back at us.

As we go through the liturgical year, we wander, I think, between those two poles, between the unseen reality of eternity, in which Christ is risen, ascended, and King, and the seen reality of our lives, which often feel very much as if Christ's death was meaningless, faith foolish, and evil very much in the ascendancy.

I think that is why living in liturgical time sometimes feels disjointed to me. There are times when the Church is very much in the stream of earthly time, and there are times when we live in moments of eternity. In Lent and ordinary time we are rooted in the temporal, in the sense of our sinfulness and coming deaths, or in the ordinary life and teachings of Jesus, but there are moments like Eastertide when we live very much upon that other shore, in time that is not our time, when we live in the joy of the risen Christ, that joy that is ours always, whether or not we can see through the veil that shrouds it sometimes. Those moments when we live in the reality of Christ's victory.

As we go through the year with Christ, and celebrate the moments in his life that have import for us, there are some moments when the two different realities, the two different frames get remarkably close to each other, and a window seems to open and we get for an instant, a vision of the mighty and eternal.

The Ascension is just such a feast, I think, and I always feel that way about the Feast of the Transfiguration as well. These moments when we are given a vision of Jesus, not just as the rabbi and Messiah, or even as the Incarnate Word of God walking among us, but as this figure of unbelievable majesty and power eternally glorious.

But it is always slightly confusing to come to terms with those moments when eternity comes near. Often, I feel as if I'm in deep waters, playing a game whose rules have suddenly changed, when Jesus sails up into heaven, or becomes illuminated like some kind of human light bulb. Because the question always becomes, “What does it mean?” I don't have trouble finding meaning in Jesus' healing the sick, or raising the dead, or in teaching the love of God and neighbors. But what does it mean that Jesus ascended. The Church has long held it as momentous, as a great feast of the Church, but what does it mean? What does it mean in the life of Jesus, and what does it mean in the lives of those of us who apprehend him by faith, although he is hid from our sight?

I'm not sure that I can answer either of those questions satisfactorily, but there are several things that occur to me. One of the directions that the Ascension makes my mind wander in is in terms of the resurrected Jesus. I wonder if the Ascension isn't an indicator of how different the resurrected Jesus was, physically.

During Eastertide we've seen the disciples fail to recognize him again and again; we've seen him appear suddenly to the disciples, despite locked door. We've seen him skip around Palestine appearing here, there everywhere. There is clearly something about Jesus risen that is massively different and changed. His body is not like ours, because he has risen glorious from the tomb. He is present to the disciples, but not as he has been.

And yet even resurrected, Jesus is linked to a time and a place. He is changed, but still with his disciples at specific times and places. His wounds are still there, and he eats and walks with them.

I wonder if the collect for today doesn't help to explain to the meaning and importance of the Ascension for us. “Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things...”

I like to think then, that the Ascension is the moment and perhaps the symbol of the transformation when Christ, even in his resurrected body, moves from being bounded by time and place, and becomes universal, becomes present to all time and all creation.

And that, I think, is the answer to the question of why it matters. Because in many ways the Ascension might feel otherwise like an leaving, like a loss, like being abandoned. We might be tempted to say “Those lucky few disciples got to know him, but now he's gone to some castle in the sky, and I don't get to experience him or know him.”

Christ is ascended and the glory of his very being has gone out into all the world and into all history, and somehow because he is less present to us, face to face, somehow he is more present, more available, more powerful in his might and majesty.

Somehow, because he is ascended, he is present everywhere, on innumerable altars, in hearts throughout the world and times; in prisons and mines, in boardrooms and courtrooms, in tents and shanty towns, to the super wealthy and the abject poor; everywhere and every when, Christ fills all things, redeems all things, sanctifies and blesses all things, draws all things into his resurrected life, and into the very life of the Triune God.

Which is good to remember here, near the end of Eastertide, when we shift back into the life of ordinary time, and the veil that blocks out eternity comes down again.

Christ is ascended and he fills all things with his glory and majesty. He will come again in glory, and is with us unto the ages of the ages.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

The Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

There are certain things that, if you learn them early in life, they seem to leave an indelible mark. Those who grew up in the Depression for instance, like my grandmother, who despite forty or fifty years of plenty, has never been quite able to root out the, um, thriftiness, shall we say, when it comes to issues of money. I would certainly never say, “penny pinching” or “cheap” within a mile of my grandmother, but those words have occasionally crossed my mind.

In the same way, in my youth, I was exposed to a product, a yeast product, and have never been able to quite get away from it, and yet I understand that some people find the idea of it noxious, its scent horrible, its taste excruciating, the sight of it something to avoid. I am speaking here of Marmite, that most famous of British exports, short of the Beetles, the British Empire and Anglicanism. Now the cynic might say that the only reason that I like Marmite is because the yeast in it comes from a certain famous brewer in Burton-on-Trent, who brews one of my favorite beers. Those who are not of the elect, who fail to appreciate Marmite appropriately, can certainly say some very cruel things. I met a gentleman in England once, who was from the American South, who described Marmite as “toxic waste in a bottle.” But those of the Marmite persuasion understand the panacea that it is: powerful flavor for the mouth, health for mind and body, strength for arm and a sign of identification with that most significant and sublime of cultures: England. Unfortunately, not everyone is as advanced as I am: Those who love Marmite swear by it, those who do not, swear at it. There is no middle ground, no via media when it comes to Marmite.

There are, of course, lots of things in our lives which are as polarized as love or hatred of Marmite. In American culture today, this polarization runs most clearly as the demarcation between two very voluble extremes. One can only be pro-choice or pro-life; one can be either pro- or anti-gay marriage. One is either pro-drilling or pro-planet.

The way that one recognizes these extremes as issues in the culture wars is by a certain logical inconsistency. To be on the political right in America is to be pro-life as long as one is talking about the unborn, pro-death penalty when it comes to criminals, and agnostic when it comes to the deaths caused by ecological destruction, or poverty except in as much as either interferes with our economy or our American way of life.

And the left doesn't fare significantly better. To be on the left side of the political spectrum in America is to protect free speech (as long as I agree with it), to react against and stereotype those who feel strong emotions about flag and country, or simply fail to live on the coasts, and to scream about the destruction of the planet without worrying about the destruction of lives and livelihood that can result from the closure of coal mines and power plants, tobacco farms, and automotive plants.

And surely no one believes that the Church is in a much better state. Indeed, in the way that the church so often operates, we have simply baptized the wide-ranging debates and rhetoric of our cultures and transformed them into the political and ecclesiastical debates of our day. Which is not to say that the debates of our day are not significant and important, but that in the rhetoric which is flung to and fro between Fort Worth and New York, or the United States and Uganda, there is a great deal which is not actually about human sexuality or the role of women, which is instead about power, and culture, and a difference in linguistic and philosophical frameworks which we cannot truly ever escape. One either, in other words, loves Marmite or hates it.

But after all, you are not simply here to hear me share of my wisdom on the cultural or ecclesiastical debates of the day. You are here to hear me talk about the Gospel, and I started with Marmite, and with things that we have learned and the debates in our church because there seems to me to be an analogy here. I think of this polarization when I think about Thomas. The standard simplistic modern gloss on the passage is to think of it in terms of our own modern alienation from faith and myth, to think of Thomas as the post-Enlightenment skeptic, who is looking for tangible, scientific evidence of the resurrection, before he will make an intellectual assent to Jesus' being raised from the dead. But that is simply a projection of our own modern schizophrenia: of the false dichotomy that we tend to draw between science and faith, and of the modern understanding of belief as an intellectual process that one needs to flog oneself into.

The reality of the passage is more complicated, of course. The way we know that the passage is more complicated is that Thomas has already seen signs and wonders. He's not just your average skeptic, because he says “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He has lived with and followed Jesus for a couple of years now. He's seen healings and signs and wonders. He may have had a draught or two of miraculous wine. He's not suddenly developed a scientific conscience. Oh no, something else is playing out in this story about Thomas and the Twelve and I have a sense that it is about defensiveness and about feeling hurt. In fact, I have a sense about Thomas generally: that he's sensitive, that when he goes for something, it is 110%, that he makes decisions like falling down a well, and that he gave his heart and soul to something, namely Jesus the Messiah, and he's been pretty bruised by the recent unpleasantness.

Even when his friends and companions in the roller-coaster ride that has been the past week in Jerusalem are telling him that they've seen the risen Jesus, Thomas isn't budging. Oh, he may hide behind the veil of skepticism, that’s the easy way, isn’t it? Who has ever heard of a dead person returning to life? But in reality I’m guessing that Thomas is simply hurt.

The importance of the Gospel this morning is not whether we resonate with Thomas and his defensiveness, or his espoused skepticism, or whether we resonate with the other apostles, but whether we recognize the graciousness of Jesus, to Thomas, to the apostles, to all of us wherever we fall in the polarizations of our lives. Because Jesus comes to the other apostles wherever they are, and he comes to Thomas under the terms that Thomas sets and he comes to all of us, whatever terms we may set for him.

The importance of the passage is not that Thomas should flog himself into belief, or feel guilty for his guardedness, nor that we should feel guilt in moments of doubt, but that Jesus still comes to Thomas and to us. Thomas doesn’t need to have it right, he doesn’t need to prepare himself to receive Jesus – because Jesus is already there, standing before him, showing his wounds.

It is a very human heresy that says we need to be in the right place to receive God's grace. There is no right place, there is no place at all, other than the one that we all find ourselves in: entrenched, guarded like Thomas, hackles up, and God comes to us on our own terms, and bids us see his own woundedness, and yet believe.

Which brings me back to Marmite and the culture wars and everything in our lives that is loved and hated.

Jesus comes to all of us, regardless of where we are. Jesus comes to us, whether we are convinced of the prophetic nature of the election of a certain suffragon in Los Angeles or not; whether we are certain liberal or curmudgeonly conservative, whether we are a garrulous curate or the entrenched bête noire of said curate. Whether we are any of the various ways that we are polarized in life, Jesus comes to all of us and bids us not to doubt but believe.

Believe that God comes even to the liberals and the conservatives; believe that God will bring about his purposes in the messy machinations of the frail Church, believe even that our guarded and defended entrenchments are not the final reality and truth.

Jesus comes to us wherever we are and asks us to believe that those who love Marmite and those who hate it will sit down together, one day, at the Supper of the Lamb. To believe that the judgment of God is not cruel and only for those whom we deem meet for it, but kind and universal, and that in that judgment we will come to be open to judgment and because we are open to God's gentle judgment, we are open also to his grace. For we are none of us, arrived, none of us home, none of us certain. We are all entrenched like Thomas or fled like the other apostles and still Christ comes into our lives, and shows us his very really wounds, and asks us to believe that in his resurrected glory, he is able to bring about unforeseen redemption in our individual lives, in the life of our culture, and in the life of our Church. 

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

11 April 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia