Sermons from Saint Mark's
Entries from August 1, 2011 - August 31, 2011
The One Who Is
In 1979, the National Hurricane Center developed a system of naming hurricanes that continues to this day. The Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Name List, now managed by the World Meteorological Organization, is a series of six cycles of alternating men’s and women’s names, listed in alphabetical order from A–W (skipping the letter Q, thankfully). If a storm is particularly destructive, its name is retired from the list, and another name replaces it. Otherwise, the names continue to cycle in and out every six years. I’m not sure what it means that, in a cycle of only 126 names – some of which are quite unusual, like Joaquin, Sebastien with an “e,” and Cristobal – that both Sean and Erika (yes, spelled with a “k”) are included in the current six-year cycle. Sean is the “s” hurricane name for this year, actually, and Erika will cycle around again in 2015. Nice to know that the St. Mark’s clergy are well represented in the world of hurricane nomenclature.
Hurricanes had names before 1979, too, but the systems for creating those names varied. Before then, North American hurricanes were given only women’s names. (So glad they adjusted that!) And prior to 1953, hurricanes were given names based on the phonetic alphabet or even by the saints’ day that fell closest to the storm. But no matter the system, people have always made an effort to identify these storms by name rather than just by coordinates on a map. Part of this, of course, is that names are a lot easier to communicate than longitude and latitude, particularly if there is more than one storm at a time, but I imagine that there is another reason for this practice as well. Naming storms makes them seem a little more human and therefore just a bit more understandable. If we call a storm by a human name – Irene, say – then suddenly “she” can have feelings, she can “rage” and “unleash her fury,” and as terrifying as this rage and fury might be, at least it’s something we’ve seen before, something we’ve had some practice responding to. But imagine that this was Storm 9 blowing around outside; then suddenly we are surrounded by a powerful atmospheric disturbance – something impersonal, other, soulless, and that is terrifying in a completely different way. As strange as it may seem, these names can help us to get a handle on things, to fit these storms into our understanding of the world, perhaps even to imagine that we can somehow control them, or at least control our response to them.
“Then Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the People of Israel and I tell them, “The God of your fathers sent me to you”; and they ask me, “What is his name?” What do I tell them?’” Here we have Moses – he has come to the backside of the wilderness, followed the beacon of the burning bush to the Holy Ground where God abides, heard the voice of God calling his name, and been told that he is in the presence of “the God of [his] father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” He seems to have been thoroughly introduced. He knows who it is that he is talking with – knows it so acutely that he hides his face in terror.
And yet when God charges Moses to go into Egypt to collect His people from Pharaoh, Moses feels the need to ask for further clarification, further identification. Who am I, he asks again, who am I that you want me to go into Egypt? You are the one who goes with me, God responds. And what if the Hebrews want to know who you are? Moses asks. I know that we just met, but could you tell me your name again? What is it that Moses is up to here? Why does he need more than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the God of the entire arc of Israel’s history? What is the name that he is looking for?
The honest answer is that we’ll never really know. All that we can really know is that Moses is clearly trying to get out of his assignment. Perhaps he is just trying to prolong the conversation, put off the inevitable journey ahead of him. Perhaps he asks for God’s name because he’s afraid the Hebrew people will laugh at him when he arrives in Egypt. Perhaps he secretly hopes that God will refuse to give him His name, thus creating the perfect excuse for Moses to bow out of God’s plans. Or perhaps Moses is seeking God’s name because he hopes that knowing the proper name of Almighty God will afford him some control over the situation, give him some power that he clearly does not already have. After all, in ancient mythology, knowing someone’s proper name often means that you can claim a kind of authority over them. If you know the true name of a god or of a supernatural being, you can influence them, call upon them to act on your behalf, exert your control over their powers. Perhaps Moses really was that scared – and looking to name God in an attempt to get a handle on the situation, to gain some kind of control.
Whatever his reasons for asking for God’s name, Moses could have never anticipated the answer he would get. For God spoke to Moses this name, these holy, mysterious sounds, syllables that are so enigmatic that even today we aren’t entirely sure how to translate them. I AM WHO I AM, we sometimes say, or I will be what I will be, I am He-Who-Is, or I am being-there. The mysterious, powerful name of God whispers of the very depths of being itself; it refuses to be controlled or defined; even when shared it has such immense reality, such immense true-ness, that it cannot be diminished or mishandled. This name is very like the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters we sometimes speak as Yahweh, a name that is so revered, so holy, so other that even though it appears over 6500 times in the Hebrew Bible, it was traditionally said aloud only once a year, held on the lips of a high priest in the holy of holies on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. The One Who Is is a name that defies description and limitation; it is not a label but a verb. It is a powerful, terrible, mighty verb, one that reminds Moses – and us – that the one who calls is the very one who called all of heaven and earth into being, the one who continues to breathe life into the cosmos, that continues, always, to be.
And yet it is The One Who Is who promises to go with Moses to the land of Egypt. It is The One Who Is who promises to stand with Moses when he tells Pharaoh, Let my people go. It is The One Who Is who reminds Moses and the Israelites again and again that He is their God – the God of their ancestors, the God of their history, their present, and their future. This great, mysterious, terrifying Being of Beings is one who chooses to be with His people, for His people, even chooses to be one of His people, to save them and make their state of being holy in his own.
Like Moses, we are about to embark upon a long, challenging journey. Like Moses, we have been called by name by God, by The One Who Is, and sent into the world to bring God’s people home. We sit here at the backside of summer, looking ahead to the program year, at all of the ministries that we are about to undertake in earnest. And that view, let’s be honest, can be frightening – there is so much need in the world that it swirls about us like the winds of a storm – it can make us want to hide our faces, and ask, Who am I? Who am I to take on the poverty of Philadelphia? Who am I to feed the hungry here in Center City, to teach the students in Allegheny West? Who am I to try to free people from addiction, to care for the dying, to visit the prisoner? Who am I to travel to the halls of power and speak words of truth there – to say let my people, all of God’s people, be fully free, fully blessed, and fully known? Who am I? You are the one, God says, who goes with me. Say to those people who come here looking for food, rest, forgiveness, and joy, that you are the one who walks with The One Who Is. You carry with you the power of God’s own Name, because God’s name is a promise – a promise to be with us and for us, in fair and stormy weather, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs
28 August 2011
St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia
Humble and Unafraid
The book The Help is the story of a group of white women and their black maids in 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi. The world of The Help is one of rigid roles: the white women play bridge and organize fundraisers, while their black maids cook their food, clean their houses, and raise their children. The white women expect the black maids to keep their children clean and well-fed, and above all, out of their hair as they engage with their busy social lives.
Aibileen is a maid in the house of Elizabeth Leefolt, a woman who finds motherhood completely exasperating. Her two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, exhausts her, bothers her, and so again and again, she passes her off to Aibileen’s care. It is Aibileen who dresses Mae Mobley, Aibileen who plays with her and answers her questions about the world. And it is Aibileen who first notices that Mae Mobley is starting to see herself as her mother sees her – as a pest, as something irksome and irritating. Mae Mobley can only see herself as a “bad girl,” and this, of course, absolutely breaks Aibileen’s heart. So Aibileen decides to fight back in her own way – by offering Mae Mobley a kind of daily positive affirmation. Day after day she repeats these words – “You are a pretty girl, a good girl, a kind girl,” willing them to work their way into Mae Mobley’s heart, hoping that she will learn to see herself as beautiful and lovable, no matter what names her mother might call her.
Now this is just one side storyline in the book – and it may not appear in the movie at all, I haven’t seen it yet – but I remember it distinctly because I think it really rings true. For which one of us hasn’t seen a loved one beaten down and wanted to build them back up? We all have known people who believe all of the negative things the world tells them about themselves. We all have known people who have a difficult time seeing themselves as good, as beautiful, as worthy, who far more easily accept the cruel names that others call them. I would guess that most of us have felt this way ourselves from time to time. We know what it feels like to believe the worst about ourselves, and we know what it feels like to love people who cannot see all of the beauty that we see in them. We know what it feels like to have this kind of broken heart.
I think this must be part of the reason why listening to today’s Gospel is so difficult. Yes, I would imagine I’m not the only one who squirmed a little while listening to the story of this Canaanite woman. This story is hard to hear – first of all because this Jesus is difficult to look at. Not only does he completely ignore the cries of this Gentile woman, but when his disciples finally ask Jesus to do something about her, he tells them, essentially, that he’s off today. I’m not working up here – this isn’t my district, and these aren’t my people; my only clients are the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And then, when the woman quite literally throws herself at his feet and begs for his help, he throws a kind of racial slur in her face, the word that Jews sometimes used to describe a lowly Gentile – he calls her a dog.
Jesus calls her a dog. Ugh. That is certainly hard to hear, but it’s also hard to hear about how this woman seems to just sit there and take it. She just kneels there in the dirt and says Okay, I’m a dog, I’m a bad girl, and it breaks my heart to hear her say this. Now to be fair, she does use her wits to turn that slur back against Jesus, and we would be right to give her credit for her cleverness. Right, I’m a dog, she says, but even a lowly, miserable cur like me gets to eat the food that falls to the floor. Very smart…and effective, because when Jesus hears his own words handed back to him in this slightly different package – the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like a measure of yeast, like a tiny crumb – it changes him. He changes his mind, commends her “great faith,” and heals her daughter.
But to be honest there is a part of me that is less than satisfied with her response, clever as it is. Part of me wants her to jump to her feet and come right back at him. “Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?” I want her to ask. “Yes,” Jesus would reply. “Who is the dog?” “You are.” “I am. I am the dog. I am the dog.” (If you can name that movie to me later, you win a free cookie at coffee hour.) But seriously, there’s a part of me that wants her to fight back. I want her to say, “I may be a Gentile, but I’m not a dog. I am not a bad girl; I am good and kind, I am a beautiful woman who desperately loves her desperately sick daughter, and I am worthy of your love and of your care and of your respect.” Hah! I can see her in my mind, standing in Jesus’ face, hands on her hips, eyes flashing like fire.
But the Canaanite woman does not do this; instead she chooses to sit in the dust at Jesus’ feet and in her role as a less-than, as an other, as a dog. How can we understand her actions? Are they only a ploy to manipulate Jesus or does she really feel this way about herself? And if she is just being clever, then where is the “great faith” in that? No – the key to her great faith is found earlier in the reading, all the way back at the beginning of the story, in these words: “A Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.’” The woman calls him Lord, Son of David. She knows who Jesus is. She truly sees him, recognizes him as the Messiah. And so when she sits at his feet and accepts her role, she is not sitting at the feet of a mere man and allowing herself to be humiliated by him; she is sitting at the feet of God, and she allows herself to be humbled before him. She sits at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and says to him, I am not a bad girl, but compared to you, I am, actually utterly unworthy. Compared to your glory, I am a dog, a flea on a dog’s back. Compared to you, I am nothing…and yet I still hope for your mercy. I still am, sitting here, asking you to help me.
So it is not just her cleverness that helps to change Jesus’ mind; it is also her posture, her humility. For when Jesus looks down upon her, he sees his own self. He sees himself, who has “humbled himself and [become] obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” Yes, Christ knows humility; he knows what it is to know the dust, the humus of our being. And when he sees this humility mirrored back to him in the great faith of this unlikely woman, it opens his heart in ways even he never could have anticipated. He starts to see the edges of his mission field expanding; he begins to see this woman as sister and not other. And the next time he sends out his disciples, he will send them not just to the lost sheep of Israel, but to make disciples of all nations. And all because this one woman was unafraid to be utterly humble.
Humility is rather undervalued these days. In times of fear and unrest, it can be a scary thing to be humble – to admit that we might be wrong, that we don’t have all of the answers, that we might need some help, even from God. Too often, we wrongly equate being humble with being a doormat – with being weak or unsure of ourselves. In the wider Church, we have downplayed humility for years. We see so many broken people in our pews and in the world, all of the Mae Mobley’s out there and in here who feel unlovable, who have been called every name in the book because of their race or class or their sexual orientation or how they dress, and it breaks our hearts. And so sometimes we hesitate to ask ourselves or anyone else to humble themselves before God because we are afraid that it might take away our already fragile sense of dignity. We try to offer affirmations of our worth without falling on our knees, because to be that humble is just too scary.
But we at St. Mark’s know – and this Gospel reminds us – that to deny ourselves the experience of humbling ourselves before God is to deny ourselves a great gift. It is to deny ourselves the chance to discover who we really are and where our dignity really comes from; we are the daughters and sons of God, who are made worthy and made beautiful by an Almighty, All-Loving God. What a gift this holy, divine affirmation is – that God sees us as we truly are – as imperfect human beings – and chooses to love us anyway. What grace this is – that God knows us, knows that we are eternally incapable of earning God’s favor, and then pours that favor upon us anyway. It is only when we find the right role, when we place ourselves in the correct posture, humbly kneeling at the feet of the living Christ, that we can know and honor and love ourselves as beautiful, good, kind, imperfect, wonderfully beloved children of God. So be not afraid – come, kneel at this table, humble yourself before Him, and be healed.
Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs
14 August 2011
St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia
The Response
Some of you may remember that I am not, as we say, a “cradle Episcopalian.” I was raised a Christian Scientist. One of the hallmarks of Christian Science is that members read daily not only from the Bible, but also from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health. Now, Science and Health was first written in 1875 by the religion’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and although it went through hundreds of revisions by the time of her death, it always maintained its rather gilded Victorian literary style, with long, complicated sentences and an ornate, advanced vocabulary. Some of my earliest memories are of struggling to read aloud from this book, stumbling over phrases like “animal magnetism” and “infinite manifestation.” But it certainly helped my reading comprehension! As a little child, I could have easily told you the meaning of words like “omniscient” and “efficacious.” And it was because of this book that I first learned the meaning of the word “impetuous,” because it was used to describe your favorite disciple and mine, Peter.
Peter, the "impetuous disciple," he was called. I learned what impetuous meant not by looking it up in the dictionary, but by looking at what Peter did. Impetuous, I discovered, meant to act without thinking – to run off the edge of a boat with all of your clothes on, to lash out at your leader when he says something you don’t want to hear, and, of course, to step out onto the surface of the sea in the middle of a furious storm. To be impetuous is to be like Peter – impulsive, reactive, perhaps even a bit foolhardy.
At first glance, it would appear that today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew is the most extreme example of Peter and his impetuous nature. The disciples are asea in the middle of a storm, bashed and beaten by the waves and the winds, struggling to steer their boat to shore but making little headway against the violent weather. Suddenly, they see a figure walking towards them on the water. They are, understandably, terrified, and reach for the first explanation that comes to mind – this must be a ghost, a specter, something extra-ordinary. But then Jesus speaks, “Cheer up! It is I. I am – fear not!” And here is where the impetuous Peter shows up. He looks out across the water, sees Jesus standing on the surface of the waves, and decides, Hey – I want to try that too! So he jumps out of the boat and tries to walk to Jesus. But when he feels the water splashing against the hem of his robe and the rain slapping him across the face, his brain finally catches up with the rest of his body. What am I doing, he asks? He looks around, wild eyed in fear, and almost immediately begins to sink. And so he cries out for help, Jesus reaches out and catches him, and they both get into the boat as the wind stills and the waves calm.
As I said, at first glance, this story looks like just another tale of Peter leaping before he looks, another example of that hapless impulsivity that can make him such a charmingly irresistible figure. But take a second glance, look carefully at these verses, because there is one sentence here, one moment, that completely changes the tenor of this story. “Peter answered him, ‘Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’” Look what happens here in this one moment. Peter pauses. Command me to come to you, he says, say the word, and then I will step out. Peter seems unable to move without this word; he is stuck in the bow of the boat like in some nautical version of Simon Says. If we look carefully, we can see that here, in this moment, Peter actually does look before he leaps; he does think before acting. He waits for Jesus’ command, for that one word: come. This is not just another example of impetuous Peter. Here, in this moment, Jesus is the impetus, and Peter’s action the response.
Now why does this matter? Is it really so important to see Peter’s water-walking as a step of faithful response instead of just another impetuous leap? It is really so important, because it completely changes the way we see Peter. Suddenly, we see not just another knee-jerk reaction from an overly-excited disciple; we see brave, bold action from a disciple who is unafraid to risk his life, his all, to follow as his Lord commands. We see Peter as a man – a real man, instead of a mere caricature of himself – a man who desperately wants to follow in Jesus’ footsteps even when they take him into the middle of the wild, wild sea. It is only when we see that first step over the side of the boat as a faithful response to the call of Christ that we are able to let ourselves feel the very real terror that must have been raging inside of Peter’s heart, that we are able to recognize in this often impetuous disciple the mark of true courage, of faith in the face of real fear.
And if this change of perspective helps us to see Peter differently, then it also changes the way that we see ourselves. Because if this is a picture of faithful discipleship, and not just of an overly-zealous disciple, then this is exactly what we are supposed to be doing. We, too, are supposed to be stepping out of the boat. We, too, are required to be brave, to have true courage, to act out in faith despite our fears. We, too, are invited to step out of the comfort of our own lives right smack into the middle of the storm that is raging out there – a storm of fear, prejudice, hatred, judgment, blame, divisiveness, apathy, cynicism, and greed. There is scary stuff out there. We could so easily be swamped by any number of headlines – Climate of Fear! Wall Street Volatile! Brace for the Pain! Brutal Crackdowns in the Middle East! Flash mobs, church abuse, famine, starvation, climate change…wave after wave of truly terrifying stuff crashes against us every day, again and again, until we feel truly battered and bruised.
But the simple fact is that even in the midst of this mess, Christ calls. Jesus stands in the middle of the storm and speaks, a long list of imperatives, commands to which we are invited to be the response. Come. And pray and fast, yes, but also forgive, offer, visit, love. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Cast out demons. Step out of the boat. Do unto others as you would have them to unto you. Step out of the boat. You give them something to eat. Step out of the boat. Repent, follow me, keep my commandments. Eat, drink, do this for the remembrance of me. Step out of the boat. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Go and do likewise. Make disciples. Step out of the boat.
If you’re thinking that none of this is likely to be very easy, I think you’re probably right. Like Peter, we will have to screw our courage to the sticking point before offering the response that God requires. Because it’s one thing to say that your response is to invite your friends and like-minded neighbors to pray with you in a stadium in Houston, that’s fine, perhaps, but it is quite another thing to say that your response is to truly love one another as Christ has loved us. It’s another thing entirely to really love your neighbor as yourself, even when that neighbor thinks exactly the opposite of everything that you think and isn’t afraid to tell you about it. It’s another thing to make disciples of all people. To preach the Gospel…at work, or in the grocery store, or to our own families. To feed the hungry…in Philadelphia and in Somalia. To heal the sick who are dying from diseases caused by their poverty, to heal this sick world from the ravages of our consumerism. Sometimes it’s quite another thing just to love yourself.
So yes, you’re right – none of this is likely to be very easy. And we’ll probably start to sink. Peter did. And that is okay, because we are never, ever asked to offer this response alone. Christ is always present, standing in the center of the storm, speaking at surprising times and in extra-ordinary ways, calling us, beckoning, willing us to keep him in the center of our vision at all times. Christ is here, front and center each week as we cry together, “Lord, have mercy!” Christ is here each week reaching out his hand, ready to catch us in the cradle of this altar and lift us up into the stillness of heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ knows that the storm is scary. He knows our fear, our weakness; he knows how much easier it is to just sit in the boat with the rest of the world and wait for the storm to blow over. But he calls us anyway and waits for the response. Come. Step out of the boat.
Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs
7 August 2011
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia