Saint Mark's Church

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.  (Zeph 3:16-17)

For most of her history, Israel has dreamt of Zion: a high place where God reigns, and where peace and prosperity, safety and happiness are the order of the day.  Christians inherited this dream from our Jewish ancestors.  We never forgot that we came from a people who were led by God to a Promised Land, a land said to be flowing with milk and honey.

So magnificent was the prospect of the American continent that it was easy for some of our more recent ancestors to imagine that this great land was, at last, the Promised Land of God.  Indeed, to travel across America – from its cities to its vast and varied wilderness – is to encounter a land that might well be blessed by God.  Many Americans have tended to think of our nation as a kind of Zion – an exalted place where God reigns, and where peace and prosperity, safety and happiness are the order of the day.

But we share with Israel – ancient and modern – the regular, painful awakening to our own delusion about this.  God is not in charge here.  Peace and prosperity are both elusive.  And safety and happiness slip easily from our grasp whenever we think we are holding them fast.  

The apparent foolishness of hoping for Zion is one thing that has contributed to the easy dismissal, these days, of religion and faith.  “See how all they hope for proves false and crumbles, time and time again,” say those who only believe that there is nothing to believe in.  And this can be a hard argument to counter, for it often appears to be accurate.  Zion is smoke and mirrors, a fantasy, like Oz – a manipulated but false promise that something beautiful lies at the other end of the yellow brick road.  Only fools, hopelessly stuck in a childish fairy tale, place their hope in such ideas.

It is, of course, true that Zion crumbles every time we think we have it in our grasp, that the Promised Land always lies just beyond the horizon, and sometimes the horizon seems very far away indeed.  As it does today, in the aftermath of the bloody slaughter of holy innocents in Connecticut two days ago.  If Zion was anywhere in sight before, we have lost it now; if ever it seemed within our grasp, it has proved to have been made of a kind of crystal that crumbles and melts at the merest touch of our fingers.

If Zion is the hope for peace and prosperity, safety and happiness, where is that hope today?  It is being readied for burial with the little bodies of twenty beautiful children.

What can we do but keep silent in the face of such sadness?

[Silence]

Somewhere beneath the rubble of our lives, are the foundations of Zion – the foundations of hope.  After the silence… eventually… when we are ready… comes the work of digging through the rubble of disaster to rebuild Zion, which is to say, to rebuild hope in our lives and in the lives, I pray, of those whose children or brothers, or sisters, or friends, or teachers, or students, were taken violently from them.

Every child is a Zion-in-miniature – a symbol of hope, of peace and prosperity, safety and happiness – and every child is just as fragile as the hope for Zion, just as susceptible to the wickednesses of every age, just as likely to crumble at our touch, especially when we treat so many children with a cruel indifference in our own day and age.  See how easily they crumble.  See how easily we destroy our own hope.  Zion crumbles. 

A voice says, “Cry.”  And I said, “What shall I cry?”  All flesh is grass, and its beauty is like the flower of the field.  Zion crumbles.

But a voice reminds us to dig through the rubble  - painful though it may be.  Yesterday that voice belonged to the parent of a murdered six-year-old girl, Robbie Parker, who, in expressing his grief, found the strength to offer his prayers and sympathy for the family of the man who killed his daughter.  As Zion crumbled all around him, he was already identifying the stones with which it would be rebuilt: stones of forgiveness, faith, and love.

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.

… [and] I will bring you home.

Sometimes the voice is all we have; a voice that says, “Cry!”

What shall we cry?

We might remind one another that while it may be deeply American to defend the right to bear arms, it is yet more deeply godly to burn with a desire to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.  And that means every kind of weapon, firearm, missile, and bomb: transformed in the heat of God’s forge.  For Zion cannot be built with the edge of a sword or the barrel of a gun.

How easily and how often Zion crumbles.

Since Friday, Zion has lain in smoking, bloody ruins in a school in Connecticut.

Who knows why God has made Zion so fragile, when we think we need a fortress?  Why is hope so easily killed?

A voice says, “Cry!”  And I said, “What shall I cry?”

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.

… [and] I will bring you home.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

16 December 2012

Saint Mark’s Church

2 days after the shooting of twenty children

and seven adults in Newtown, CT

What’s the best first sentence? You know, like “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” First sentences are important – they set the mood, set the tone, draw you in – but they’re also just kind of fun, even famous in their own right. The American Book Review has even created a list of the top 100 best first lines of all time. “Call me Ishmael” is number one, in case you’re curious. What’s your favorite? Okay, I know, you’re in church, so you’re all thinking that maybe you’d better go with  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” since God is listening and all, but let’s just assume that one for now. What about “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Or “Marley was dead: to begin with.” Or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Or “Mrs. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”*

There are, of course, tons of first lines to choose from, but I’ll bet that not one of you would pick “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” Now, true, this isn’t exactly the first line of Luke’s Gospel, but that line isn’t much better. “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Oy. That sets the tone for sure, although I’m not sure it really draws you in as much as it makes you imagine yourself in a post-lunch overly-warm lecture hall about to settle in for a long winter’s nap. But you shouldn’t give up on Luke too quickly, because even though he says (twice) that he’s planning on writing an “orderly account,” once he starts writing, he just can’t help himself – he ends up writing a musical. Everyone in his story just keeps breaking into song – Mary and Zechariah and the angel with the multitude of the heavenly host and Simeon…they’re all so full of joy and wonder that they’ve just gotta sing!

But now that Luke has gotten to chapter 3, it’s like he suddenly remembers what kind of story he’s supposed to be writing. Right! Right, an orderly account. Okay. Back to lecture. So, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, etc., etc., etc., But we must be careful here. Because Luke is not just setting the stage for the who, what, where, and when – he is also setting us up. Now most of us have heard this text so many times that we tend to gloss over the first part of it – right, a bunch of historical figures who may or may not appear later on in the story – and we’ve learned to expect the second part, – right, of course the word of God came to John, he is the John, after all, John the Baptizer, the voice in the wilderness, the one who proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Seems self-evident to me. But look again at what Luke sets up here – that in the time of emperors and governors and rulers and princes and principalities and priests and people of immense power, the word of God came not to them but to that guy – that kind of weird guy standing by a stream in the middle of the wilderness.

And the great question is – Why? Why choose that guy? Why would God choose John? Why would God choose John’s unlikely, ancient mother to give birth to him, an unlikely, awkward prophet, just so that God could put his powerful word into John’s unlikely, acerbic mouth. Why John, a nobody, instead of all of those other people who had more money, more power, more prestige, and could certainly have had more impact? We can’t say it’s because they were just inherently unsympathetic to God’s cause or unreceptive to God’s call – you just have to look at the story of the conversion of Paul to know that God is quite happy to find a way of working around that. So why John? Or for that matter, why Abraham? Why an old, old man to be the father of a great nation? Why slippery, shifty Jacob to build the foundation for the twelve tribes of Israel? Why stuttering Moses to be God’s mouthpiece before Pharaoh? Why Ruth? Why David? Why Mary? Why does God always seem to favor the most unlikely people to do his work in the world? If the first line of creation is that in the beginning God lovingly and carefully created heaven and earth, why in the world would he hand over the future of that world to such a bunch of misfits?

Well, first of all, it’s because God, the author of all, loves a good plot twist. God delights in surprises, delights in showing us redemption and grace in the most unexpected places. I imagine that it pleases God to no end to watch his people discover him by stumbling upon him, to see us jump with a start when he pops up in strange places. After all, this is the God of the burning bush, the God of Balaam’s talking donkey, the God who appeared to Elijah as a sound of silence. God loves a good surprise, not only because surprises bring us joy in a very particular way, but also because surprises help us to see how dependent we are on him, help us to find him; surprises help to draw us in. I certainly know this from my own life. How could a God who called me to ordained ministry from Saint Mark’s Church, then sent me to low-church Virginia Theological Seminary, and then called me back to Saint Mark’s be anything other than a God who revels in a good plot twist?

But even more important than God’s love of surprise is God’s love of us. God is an author who desperately wants his characters to know one another. Why choose an unlikely prophet? Because by choosing the unlikely, God shows us that to hear his word, we are going to have to really pay attention to each other, to be alert, to look and listen for his word at all times and in all places, because we never know when we just might hear it. If God only spoke to us through the most likely mouth, we might very well just stop noticing when those mouths were moving. But there can be no cheating here. We cannot assume that we’ll hear God in a particular place or from a particular person. We cannot assume that we’ll hear God speaking to us through the most powerful, the most prominent, or the most predictable. God’s choosing the unlikely reminds us to never, ever rule someone out as a potential messenger for the word of God – the man on the street corner who is shaking for his next fix but who reminds us as we pass by that we are blessed, the child who has just learned his words but who tells us that he likes being blessed at the altar because he can feel the angel wings beating around his head, the self-avowed atheist who unintentionally echoes the great commandment when he tells us that love is a force known best by our actions – even the woman who gazes back at us in the mirror. God is happy to send his word to the most unlikely among us if that means that we will have to pay better attention to one another, to learn to read one another better, to look – hard – for the Christ that lives within each one of us, and to love one another as we love ourselves.  

And this is Advent. To look for God in the most unlikely of places – in the wilderness, in a barren womb, in a manger. This is Advent. To wait and watch with eyes and hearts wide open and expectant, to look for the coming of Christ again and again and again, to stand together upon the height and to look to the east, where God will surely gather all of us misfits into one. This is Advent. To look for God’s holy surprise – his word in our mouths, his grace in our hearts, his strength in our hands, his Son in our story. So here is the best first line of this best first season. In the final year of the first term of Barack Obama, when Tom Corbett was governor of Pennsylvania and Michael Nutter mayor of Philadelphia, when Katherine Jefferts Schori was the presiding bishop and Charles Bennison finishing his tenure as Bishop of Pennsylvania, the word of God came to…who? You? Me? Your partner? Your father? The person sitting next to you in the pew? The person you’re going to stumble across when you step out of this church? May God finish writing that first sentence for you in a most wonderful and most surprising way.

*The first lines listed here are from, in order, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Star Wars by George Lucas, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, A Christmas Carol by Dickens, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

9 December 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

For most of the time I have lived in Philadelphia – more than ten years now – I have been aware of the presence of an unusual character who regularly passes through the neighborhood here.  I have no idea if he lives nearby, or if he is also seen and known in other parts of the city.  I can’t say I see him every day; but three or four times a week would not be unusual.  And sometimes I don’t see him; I only hear him, so I know he is nearby.  He is a trim, fit fellow of indeterminate age – he could be in his 50s, but he could be in his 60s – it’s hard to say.  He wears runner’s tights, with short, runner’s shorts over them, and usually high socks, as well.  I think he always has a cap on his head, and usually there is a set of small headphones over his cap, covering his ears.  Whether or not the headphones are connected to anything, I cannot say; it is not immediately apparent that they are.  And he has a small backpack on his back.  The colors of his close-fitting outfit are muted, not outrageous - blues and blacks and greys.  The get-up, which seldom changes very much, is not, I think, intended to draw attention to him.  Were it not for two distinct features of his ensemble, he could pass for any very fit but un-stylish, late-middle aged man devoted to his daily exercise.

But there are these two distinct features that render him remarkable.

First, he traverses around the neighborhood – and I can only surmise, around the entire city – on rollerblades.  Second, he carries with him a trumpet, upon which he occasionally blows short, loud blasts of a note or two, never an entire tune.  I am not at all sure he knows how to play the trumpet, although I have seen him carry one for years.  But he does know how to get a bit of noise out of the instrument.  And he rolls around the city sounding blasts from his trumpet, for no apparent reason.

Actually, I am being a little un-truthful in this description, for, in fact, a month or two ago, the rollerblading man gave up his trumpet in favor of a French horn, which appears a bit newer and shinier than the trumpet he once carried.  As was the case with the trumpet, one cannot say for certain that the man knows how to play the French horn.  One can only say that he does indeed know how to evince short, mellow blasts from the French horn, which almost evoke in the hearer’s mind hunting scenes in the Bavarian hills, but not quite.  I’m not sure what made the man forsake his trumpet in favor of the French horn.  I don’t think it’s the holidays, for I don’t ever recall noticing in years gone by seasonal adjustments in his orchestration or his repertoire.  And I wouldn’t venture an opinion to the question for which instrument the man demonstrates a keener aptitude.  And I must say that I have no idea what the man thinks or hopes he is accomplishing as he wheels his way through the streets of the city.

I wish I knew.

I wish I knew what dream or thought process or voice in his head compelled the man to don an outfit not unlike that of an Olympic bobsledder’s, with headphones either to drown out the sounds of the world, or to provide a soundtrack to his journeys, mount himself on wheels, a brass horn in his hand, and career around the city, blowing one-note fanfares as he goes.  And I wish I knew what made him change instruments.  Maybe the French horn was a gift!

I wonder if he is a religious man. I wonder if he is a Christian of some variety (for we come in many varieties).  I wonder if he reads the scriptures, and I wonder if he does, how does he read them?  I wonder if his get-up, and his skating circuits around the city are born of religious conviction.  I wonder if is his trumpet blasts – or more recently the blasts from his French horn – are meant to sound declarations for which he has no words, or which simply require the announcement of a brass section.  I wonder what he thinks he knows that I don’t know… if that’s why he does what he does.

Because I have nothing else to call him, and because it suits my purposes, I am going to call him Advent Man.  And because I have never had the opportunity to ask him, I am going to imagine what it is he believes.  I am going to imagine what he hears through his headphones, and what he sees in his dreams.  I am going to imagine what he carries in his little backpack.

I imagine that Advent Man lives in a state of perpetual preparedness - ready to go at a moment’s notice, ready to get wherever it is he’s going faster than the next guy, and ready to sound the alarm – whatever it may signify.  He is ready!  He is Advent Man, hear his horn!

I imagine that what Advent Man hears through his headphones may be the Gospel reading for today:  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  I imagine he hears these verses in pronounced by the voice of Sir Alec Guiness.

Or maybe it’s the voice of Morgan Freeman in his head:  “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Stand up!  Raise up your heads!

I imagine that inside Advent Man’s little backpack is some water and a few power bars – just enough to tide him over if he is caught unawares for a day or two.  And maybe a rain jacket and a nice warm fleece.

I imagine that Advent Man has dreams very much like yours and like mine, and if he ever dreams of God, he dreams that God loves him, and searches him out, because I imagine that Advent Man knows he is like a sheep without a shepherd.

I don’t imagine that Advent Man hears voices in his head, other than the ones reading the scriptures to him.  I imagine that he hears Betty White telling the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  And James Earl Jones telling the stories of John the Baptist (a particular hero of his, I would guess).

And I imagine that he hears Dame Maggie Smith reading Jeremiah:  “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’”  Wouldn’t you like to hear Maggie Smith deliver those lines?  I sure would!

“Stand up!  Raise your head!”  That I imagine, is the secret message of Advent Man’s horn-blowing: Stand up!  Raise your heads!

I imagine that Advent Man doesn’t know how to play either the trumpet or the French horn because he knows it doesn’t matter.  When the time comes, God will put the tune in his heart and the notes on his lips!  And in the meantime, his short blasts of warning are enough:  Stand up!  Raise your heads!  Your redemption is drawing near!

And here is Advent Man’s greatest secret – not that he knows when the Messiah will come again, but that he knows he is in need of redemption.  He knows he is broken, sinful, pig-headed, and selfish.  He knows he has done those things he ought not to have done, and left undone those things he ought to have done.  And he has spent time, roller-blading around this city, thinking about all these things, recalling his shortcomings, remembering his foolishness, repenting for his sins.  All that time on wheels has not led him to reflect on how awesome he is.  It has made him realize how much he needs God in his life, and how prone he is to push God away.

Does he race around the city, as he does, in order to keep the wind in his face, to dry the tears as he recalls his own sinfulness?  And do the tears turn joyful when he hears, somewhat surprisingly, these words again - “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,” – read by Oprah?  Who’s to account for the voices that proclaim the Gospel inside his head?  What’s important is that they grab his attention.  They get him out of bed every morning.  They loosen his fingers when they feel stiff, lacing up his rollerblades.  They remind him to raise his head, when he looks in the mirror, and to keep it raised throughout the day.  And they keep repeating the promise: your redemption is drawing near.  Your redemption is drawing near.  Your redemption is drawing near.

Advent is a time of warning and caution.  It is a call to repentance and a reminder of our human frailty, foolishness and selfishness.  But it is also a reminder of God’s promises.

Advent asks, why did you get up early to shop on Black Friday but you won’t get up to worship me?

Advent asks why you spent $1.5 billion on Cyber Monday and put $5 in the offering plate for God?

Advent asks what you mean when you call yourself a Christian?

Advent asks what it is you are hoping for?

Advent asks if you think you love God, are you ready to meet him?  Do you want to?

And Advent Man hears all these questions in his head – asked by the reasonable voice of Anderson Cooper, or sometime Walter Cronkite, because Advent Man is old enough to remember what Cronkite sounded like.

He hears all these questions in his head, and he cannot sit still or remain silent, even though he does not yet know where to go or what to say.  This is not stupid of Advent Man: this is faithful, which sometimes looks stupid to those who have no interest in a costly faith.

I imagine that Advent Man’s faith is a costly faith: it has cost him everything and boiled his life down to his simple outfit, and his jaunts through the city, and his one-note solos.  And I wonder, again, about why he switched from the trumpet to the French horn. I wonder if it’s because, occasionally, once in a very odd while, Advent man hears in his head the Gospel proclaimed by a voice that can be none other than God’s voice:  “Stand up!  Raise your head!  Your redemption is drawing near!”

Maybe to him, God’s voice sounded more like a French horn than a trumpet.

Or maybe it reminded him that the sound of the Gospel never grows stale, but rings out with new timbres and different tones, in new and different times.

I don’t know.  I can’t say.  I have no idea, in fact, if the man on rollerblades hears anything, or cares one fig for what people think when he blows his horn.  He might be carrying in his backpack nothing but a tuna fish sandwich and a Diet Coke, to munch on at lunch time, for all I know.  He might not hear any voices articulating the scriptures to him, and he might resent any comparison whatsoever to John the Baptist.  He and his dopey horn-blowing might mean nothing at all.

Which means that it may be the voice of God, proclaiming in my ears and yours, and in my heart and yours, and in this place when we gather:  Stand up!  Raise your heads!  Your redemption is drawing near.

Because I hear that ancient message proclaimed, and I pray you do too.

And I am reminded that I am broken, sinful, pig-headed, and selfish.  I know that I have done those things I ought not to have done, and left undone those things I ought to have done.  And so have you.  And sometimes I could use a strong breeze to dry the tears as I reflect on all these things.  But in Advent, my tears are turned to tears of joy, if I can just bend my ears and my heart to hear that proclamation carried somehow, mysteriously through the streets of the city:  Stand up!  Raise your head!  Your redemption is drawing near!  Your redemption is drawing near!  Your redemption is drawing near!

And the voice is unmistakable: it is the voice of Love.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Advent Sunday

2 December 2012