Saint Mark's Church

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe….  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.  (1 Cor. 1: 21, 25)

The avant-garde composer John Cage once famously said, “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.”  Today, this kind of self-contradictory nonsense doesn’t seem like the domain of progressive musicians or artists, it seems, to many, like the domain of the church, who many suspect has nothing to say, but has been saying it loudly, nonetheless, for two millennia.  Or, more poignantly, perhaps those who can either forgive the church, or at least be dismissive of her, attribute this attitude to God: that he has nothing to say, and he is saying it.   This would explain nicely the disconcerting silence so many people find at the other end of their prayers.

Perhaps Cage knew this feeling, too.  He once described a conversation he had with his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg:

“After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, ‘In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.’ I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, ‘In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.’

To some, this, too, sounds like a description of religious life, a life of prayer, a life of going to church, Sunday after Sunday: beating our heads against a profoundly unyielding wall.

I regularly encounter people who, with the best intentions, want to engage me on the topic of religion, or of God (these are, of course, not the same thing).  Such encounters with sympathetically minded people usually present me with an opportunity to unfold the wisdom of God in a well-crafted short answer.  And you would think, that since I am supposed to talk about religion and about God for a living I would have such pithy presentations on the wisdom of God and of his church at the ready to be deployed in elevators, at bars, or dinner parties.  But I have very few of such packets of powdered chicken soup for the soul waiting to be reconstituted in my day-to-day encounters.  And sometimes this is a disappointment to me, and no doubt to the sympathetic soul on the other side of the conversation.  I suppose it ends up seeming as though I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

It is not convenient to proclaim Christ crucified.  If the message of the Cross is foolishness to much of the world, it is not always crystal-clear to those of us who believe, either.  Nor is it immediately self-evident that Jesus’ teaching that it is the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, or those who are persecuted who are blessed.  If this is God’s wisdom then no wonder many would rather dream of becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs.

It is hard to be a believer if you are reluctant to embrace the foolishness of God.  His foolishness began in the beginning, when he created this magnificent universe, and a garden with a man and a woman in it, and told them to enjoy Paradise, with the exception of one famous tree.  (This, of course, is not how it actually happened, it is just our foolish way of describing God’s foolishness.)  It certainly looks like foolishness to have chosen an old man and an old woman to be the patriarch and matriarch of your chosen people, who, by the way, do not yet exist.  It looks like foolishness to allow those people, once they have come into being, to be enslaved.  It looks like foolishness to choose as their leader an incompetent speaker, who happens also to be a murderer.  Shall I go on to describe the foolishness of God?  Do you want to talk about David, his great king, who was also a fool of epic proportions?

And those examples come only from Act One.  We have not the time to chart the foolishness that unfolds in Act Two, beginning with a poor Jewish girl and leading quickly to a manger and eventually to the grand foolishness of Calvary.

And in the midst of it, this foolish teaching:

Blessed are the poor in spirit;

blessed are those who mourn;

blessed are the meek;

blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness;

blessed are the merciful;

blessed are the pure in heart;

blessed are the peacemakers;

blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

blessed are you when people revile you.

What foolishness!

I sometimes wish that there were a sort of pocket guide to all this foolishness: a secret manual that they would give you in seminary, a kind of key to turn in the lock, or lens to look through and see how it all makes sense, to see God’s wisdom for what it is, to hear that God has something to say and he is saying it loud and clear!  I see on the shelves of the bookstores many attempts to convert the foolishness of God into the wisdom of this world, all more or less good for you than chicken soup, I guess.  But none wiser than the foolishness of God.

Back to John Cage, who told this story:

“There was an international conference of philosophers in Hawaii on the subject of reality.  For three days, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki said nothing.  Finally the chairman turned to him and asked, ‘Dr. Suzuki, would you say this table around which we are sitting is real?’  Suzuki raised his head and said, ‘Yes.’  The chairman asked him in what sense Suzuki thought the table was real.  Suzuki said, ‘In every sense.’”

Such is the wisdom of this world: we can as easily become confused about the existence of a table as we can about the existence of God.  We know, for instance that money can’t buy happiness, but we have no intention of giving up trying to do so.  We love to suggest that the pen is mightier than the sword, but we will never spend more on pens than we do on swords. And we listen to people all day long who have nothing to say, but they don’t know it, and they keep on saying it anyway, and we keep on listening.

At least John Cage knew had had nothing to say before he said it.  I, myself, have never been very interested in Cage’s music, never found it engaging, never wanted to sit through 4 minutes and 33 seconds of ambient noise and nothing else at his suggestion, so I suppose it suits me well that he has nothing to say.

I am old enough to have been required to memorize a few things in my schooling.  Did you have to memorize this:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

creeps in this petty pace from day to day

to the last syllable of recorded time,

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools

the way to dusty death.  Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

and then is heard no more: it is a tale

told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.  (Macbeth, Act 5, Sc 5)

Poor Macbeth.  If life boils down to nothing, then why say nothing so eloquently?  Why beat your head against the wall, even if you do it in iambic pentameter?

You and I gather at a table week by week; for some of us, day by day.  You are largely silent as I natter on, saying what I will, whether or not I have something to say.  I suppose from time to time you must wonder if I do.  But let me ask you, what do you think about the table at which we gather?  Is it real?  What do you think about the bread and the wine we put there?  What do you think about the words I say, to which you add your ‘Amens’?  Is it tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?  Is it so much foolishness, as it seems to more and more of the world to be?

Let me give you some more of John Cage.  This is what he said:

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful … is why do I think it’s not beautiful?  And very shortly you discover that there’s no reason.  If we can conquer that dislike, or begin to like what we did dislike, then the world is more open.”

I have never liked John Cage’s music, never been much willing to even call it ‘music’ because it has seemed so foolish to me, compared to, say, the brilliant wisdom of a Bach fugue.  I have always thought that it is not beautiful.  I have been all too ready to agree that he has nothing to say, and it has just bothered me that he keeps saying it.  Perhaps you know people who make you feel this way.  But I would like the world to be more open.  And I think Cage may be right, that if we can conquer dislike (that is born of nothing really, no reason), if we can begin to like what we did dislike, then the world does seem more open.  Then the world does begin to seem like a place where the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted may truly be blessed.

And in a world that is willing to bleed and die for nothing but tribe, or class, or power, or oil, or money, or whatever other reasons we have invoked to justify the rivers of blood that flow through human history – if this reasoning is what passes for wisdom, then I would prefer to trust in the foolishness of God who sent his Son to bleed and die for me and for you, even though it is not always clear what that means, not always clear why that particular narrative of bloodshed is so beautiful.

When it seems to me as though God has nothing to say, when it seems as though faith, believing, holding fast to the hope of the Gospel may be an obstacle, like a wall through which I cannot pass, as it sometimes does seem to me, because of the foolishness of it all.  Then I hope I may be willing to devote my life to beating my head against this wall.  Because in something like 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, I think I can hear on the other side of that wall something that sounds like a Word that God has for me, something God has to say, though he has for so long seemed to say nothing at all.  And I ask myself, as I prepare to beat my head against that wall one more time, What does the Lord require of me but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with my God?

And that is something worth saying.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

30 January 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Some time in the mid 1760s a Christian missionary named Samuel Kirkland began to live and preach among the Oneida tribe of Native Americans in upstate New York.  By many accounts Kirkland became close friends with the Oneida chief, Skenandoah.  It was, in part, this friendship that eventually convinced the Oneida to side with the colonist rebels in the Revolutionary War, and Skenandoah was said to have become a friend of George Washington’s, among others.  After the war, however, the Oneida were displaced from their land, and ultimately granted 6 million acres, effectively creating the first Indian reservation.  Legend attributes an epitaph to Skenandoah who is said to have lived to be over 100: “I am an aged hemlock; the winds of an hundred winters have whistled through my branches.  I am dead at the top.  The generation to which I belonged have run away and left me.”

Some of you know that after he sold his share of the restaurant and the catering business Bruce turned his hand to writing a libretto for an opera.  The libretto, I discovered from Bruce’s brother David, dealt with Skenandoah and the Oneida people.  I know that Bruce brought his laptop to the hospital and had books there that he was using to research the Oneida as he worked away at the story.

I am not surprised that Bruce was attracted to the story of a people who would ultimately be displaced from their homes; as many of you know, Bruce had a deeply held and abiding concern for refugees.  And I am not surprised that he would be attracted to the story of a Christian missionary who managed to befriend rather than alienate a noble indigenous people.  Bruce knew, of course, that this was not always the case; that the church was not always to be found on the compassionate side of complicated relationships.  He would have been glad to celebrate the friendship between Kirkland and Skenandoah, I think.  And I can’t say for certain which of the two he would have personally identified with more readily, though I suspect it would be Skenandoah.  And I suspect it would have made an absolutely wonderful libretto!

Bruce was a little disappointed in me because of my failure to appreciate opera.  Not long ago he suggested that I at least try attending an HD simulcast from the Met – a suggestion I successfully resisted.  But I realize that Bruce’s love of opera was just one aspect of his larger appreciation of beauty.  He once led a giving campaign here at Saint Mark’s in which he urged us to adopt Mother Teresa’s slogan that we do something beautiful for God.

Bruce loved beauty; he saw God wherever he found beauty, I think, and he believed, I know, that it was both a duty and a delight to offer beauty back to God.  You could see this in so many aspects of his life: he thought you could take what was given to you and make something beautiful: this business, those ingredients, these words, that pile of hops and malt and barley.  You are going to make something out of it; why not make something beautiful.

He tried to make a beautiful marriage with a beautiful woman, but when that didn’t work, he and Beatrice eventually found a way to make a really quite beautiful reconciliation.  In fact, the first time I ever met Beatrice was on a Christmas Eve at midnight mass when I met Bruce at the door with both Beatrice and Jim – all three of them smiling!

Unlike Skenandoah, Bruce did not even get close to a hundred winters in this life.  When he was diagnosed with Leukemia, he said to me that perhaps we should talk about a memorial service.  His chemo had not yet even begun, and I assured him that we would have time in the weeks and months ahead to talk about that, never dreaming how wrong I’d be.

In the hospital Bruce often had friends and family visiting.  His brother David, was as vigilant, loyal, and devoted a brother as any man could want.  Beatrice was often there, massaging Bruce’s feet.  I did not often have time alone with Bruce.

But on one occasion when we were alone he told me about something that had happened the night before.  He’d been awakened by screams from a woman in a room several doors away from his: tortured, anguished screams, he said, that you knew came from someone in agony.  Nurses came to her aid, and maybe doctors, he didn’t know, but he was aware that efforts were being made to help, to give this woman relief, but still she screamed.  Of course there was nothing Bruce could do: he could neither shut the screams out of his ears nor help to bring relief to the woman in pain.  But he suddenly had a thought, he told me, that he should pray for the woman, and so he did.  And when he began to pray, the woman’s screams subsided, and eventually fell silent.

One more time that night, the episode repeated itself: Bruce was awakened by the screams, the medical staff did their work to no avail, and Bruce then offered his prayers for the woman, whose screaming stopped.

As I listened to this somehow beautiful account of a night full of pain, I knew that Bruce wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it – since he is not prone to a superstitious take on religion.  I suggested to him that maybe the gift of his prayers was not entirely intended for the woman’s benefit, maybe the real gift was in the assurance to him that his prayers were heard, and attended to in ways he could never foresee or imagine.

If this is true of Bruce’s prayers, as I am sure that it is, then it is also true of yours and mine.  God hears our prayers.  We think we are praying for one thing, but God knows what is needed, and what will happen, and sometimes he answers our prayers in ways that we cannot foresee and cannot even imagine.  God hears our prayers of grief at the loss of Bruce.  He hears our prayers of worry at what becomes of him, of all of us, after death.  God holds us all in the palm of his hand.  He will not let us become refugees in death; he does not drive us from this life to languish in nothingness or darkness or worse; he does not confine us to the bleak reservation of the grave.

God hears our prayers, and he has answers we cannot imagine in the many mansions of his house.  And if he hears our prayers, if he hears Bruce’s prayers, we can be certain of at least one thing: in one of those rooms there is good beer being served.

Let us now offer our prayers for Bruce, as we commend him to God’s care.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Requiem for J. Bruce Nichols, Jr.

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

29 January 2011

In the forty years between 1860 and 1900 attendance here at Saint Mark’s increased more than five-fold, out-pacing by a significant measure the rate of growth of either the Episcopal Church in general, or the population of Philadelphia.  One wonders if the clergy of this parish stood on the street corners and pulled people inside!  But of course, this was an even more fashionable neighborhood then than it is now, and this is Philadelphia, and we have always been an Episcopal church – these are not the ingredients that make for clergy standing outside yelling to bring people in!  I, myself, do something like that only once a year: on Christmas Eve, which is the one night a year that I can safely bet that most people walking by late at night on Locust Street are heading to church!  And even on that holy night, I do not borrow my script from John the Baptist and announce to those I encounter: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  I want to bring them, after all, not scare them away!

It’s very hard for us to believe that John’s message somehow had good effect, because we can’t imagine that it would work on us.  Why is he talking about the Lamb of God?  And if Jesus is so terrific, why doesn’t John drop what he is doing and follow Jesus himself, rather than staying on his street corner to take up his rant day after day?

In the Gospel this morning we are told that this is how Jesus’ disciples first began to follow him: they heard from John the Baptist, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, then, without even talking with Jesus, they start walking behind him, following where he leads, until eventually Jesus stops, turns around, and asks them that basic question: “What are you looking for?”

I wonder how closely that pattern matches the paths any of us took to get to faith in Jesus.  At first glance, there may seem to be little resemblance here to your spiritual journey or mine – but maybe that’s mostly because the costumes are so different.  When I think about it, I realize that I had been hearing about Jesus my whole life (even singing every Sunday that he is the Lamb of God) before I realized that I was basically just walking behind him without ever really having talked with him (spiritually speaking).  Eventually my life reached a point that I began to ask myself basic questions about what I was doing, who I was, and those questions could have been summed up by asking, What are you looking for?

I was, at the time, a young staff member for a US Senator.  Most of my peers were dreaming and planning for law school or business school and the rewards and challenges that follow, or they were plotting a shift to some other way to make lots of money.  I suppose they may have been responding to the same questions; I don’t really know.  Of course, you can go to church your whole life and still avoid such questions.  You can go to church your whole life and never know what you are looking for, too.

If you read the text of John’s Gospel closely, you might suspect that there is evidence that the first disciples were Episcopalians.  Here’s why: after walking behind Jesus and being confronted at last by his probing question, “What are you looking for?” the disciples respond by asking Jesus this: “What hotel are you staying in?”  Not only do they artfully duck the question of what they are looking for, they avoid asking the much more interesting question that could have serious implications for them, “Where are you going?”  Yes, they could easily have been Episcopalians: much more interested in where they could park themselves than in where their faith might take them!

But the question does find its way to us after all these centuries, What are you looking for?  And what remains to be seen is whether or not we have grown up enough to engage this question with Jesus, whether or not we want to try to tell Jesus honestly and openly what we are looking for.  Or do we still prefer to deflect the question and ask him where he is staying?  To be fair to those first disciples, the Passover was approaching and they may have intended their inquiry to discover where Jesus would spend the holy days, so they could be with him.  But let’s assume, for our own purposes, that the disciples deflect the question because they don’t know the answer, don’t know what they are looking for.

Do you know what you are looking for?

Studies tell us that religious convictions in America are strong, that the vast majority of our neighbors consider themselves not only spiritual but religious.  But studies also tell us that the vast majority of younger people do not know the religious traditions of their own families, cannot rehearse the basic stories of faith, don’t even know the cast of characters.  How could they know what they are looking for?  And what would they make of the news that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  How could that possibly mean anything?

As it happens, in Jesus’ day, the ancient Jewish ritual of slaughtering a lamb for the Passover and taking some of the blood to smear it on the doorposts of the house had been lost to the average Jewish household, and was now practiced, on their behalf, by the priests, who, I suppose, also enjoyed the best cuts of the lamb when it was roasted with oil and herbs.  (Priests, it has to be said, have a long history of keeping the best stuff for themselves.)  So the men who gathered to hear to the forceful preaching of John the Baptist knew that if Passover was coming visitors would need a place to stay.  This much they knew – but they did not know, they had forgotten that a lamb was needed.  It was no longer their job to remember about such things.

Urged on by something in the words of John the Baptist that they did not understand, but felt, the best those men could do was to fall in step behind this strange rabbi and quietly follow him, maybe just to see where he would go.  How arresting it must have been when Jesus spins around on his heel and looks them in the eye and asks them, I think with a smile on his face, “What are you looking for?”

Despite a strong religious feeling in our country, many religious institutions – many churches – are emptier and emptier each year.  I don’t know if this congregation has shrink five-fold in the last 110 years, but I know we are smaller than we once were.

Are there fewer people who are ready and willing to be confronted by the question: What are you looking for?  It would seem not.  But we may have forgotten about the need for a lamb – and maybe this is in part because priests have been too willing to do it ourselves, to think that it isn’t so important that you remember the need for a lamb.

The world has plenty of cruelty, wickedness, and sin.  At the moment we are keenly aware of this because of the shootings in Tucson last week.  But we know that there is much to be delivered from closer to home, as well, even within our own hearts.

I pray that it will be part of the ministry of the priests of this parish to teach anyone with ears to hear about the need for a lamb, and never to keep the best parts for ourselves.

I pray that we will all remember that John the Baptist never gave up his ministry of proclaiming Jesus until he was thrown in prison and killed.  And that we will be bold enough to take the good news out into the streets when we are able, and declare it to the people.

I pray that we will remember ourselves and show others that it is enough to follow behind Jesus quietly for a while, maybe without much talking to him or knowing why you are there.

And I pray that this will always be a place where people find that in their pews during a prayer, or even a sermon, or while serving at the altar, or ladling out soup, or tutoring at Saint James the Less, or visiting a friend who is sick, or greeting someone at the door, or sharing a favorite dish at a pot-luck supper, or singing with the choir, or a hundred other ways we discover Jesus turning on his heel to ask us, “What are you looking for?”

And rather than deflecting the question, I pray that every one of us, and many more who we do not yet know, will learn the answer that the disciples might also have learned from the Psalmist, and say to Jesus when he calls us, “Behold, I come.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

15 January 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Since about mid-August Leo, my cat, has been hiding behind the sofa in the Parlour on the second floor of the Rectory.  This is the fourth time he has found himself a hiding place since he was brought to me from the streets as a kitten – about one every year of his life.  He has lived under a window seat, behind a different sofa on the third floor, under my bed, briefly in a closet, and now behind the sofa in the Parlour.  Leo’s life is ruled by fear, given real shape in the form of my two Labrador Retrievers, Baxter and Ozzie, whose enthusiasm to befriend the cat and play with him, Leo mistakes for threats to his person.  To borrow the image from the Gospel story this morning of the flight of the Holy Family (Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus) out of Bethlehem, Leo is in Egypt.  His most recent flight came in the aftermath of a visit from my two five-year old nephews, who shared a room with Leo.  Their exuberant presence drove him into the closet for four days, but eventually he sought sanctuary on a different story of the house.  It took me several days to locate him in his new Egypt, and then to move his food and water and litter box, so that he could establish himself in that new land.

I would like to think that angels speak to Leo in his dreams, and that his movements are the result, as they were for Joseph, of his confidence in God.  But if that were so, Leo might take flight with the conviction that God cares for him, and has a plan in mind for the universe and even for every kitten under heaven.  But I am certain that Leo has no faith in what we used to call God’s Providence – the certainty that somehow, mysteriously, God is guiding all things by his divine, gracious, and merciful will.  But Leo has no trust in God, no confidence in God, no faith in God.  Leo flees from one Egypt to the next and never gets to Nazareth to grow up and let God’s plan unfold – in which he would learn to be brave enough to spar with Labradors, and in his spare time, sit in my lap or bask in the sunshine on the window sill.

If, on one of his flights to one of his Egypts, Leo were to stop at a resort on the Dead Sea he might learn a funny irony: the Dead Sea is so called because it is so salty nothing can live in it,  but it is also so buoyant as a result of its high salt content that it is almost impossible to drown in it.  Dive in and you will feel yourself pushed up, almost as if by a strong set of arms that will not let you sink.  It is a remarkable feeling, I can tell you.  Or at least, Leo might, on one of his journeys to Egypt, have allowed himself a dip in the Mediterranean, and reminded himself that if you just lie back and relax in the water you will float, but if you are tense and thrash about, you will struggle to stay above water.  But when Leo gazes across the sea to Egypt he never believes he can float – he is sure he will drown.  So he always travels by land, and always at night.

So much for Leo, poor thing.  But the story of the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt is not told as an exercise in kitten welfare, it is told for you and for me, who have been known to flee in fear to our own Egypts.  Angels are not often instructing most of us in our dreams, so it remains a question of faith and confidence and conviction about God’s love and care how we respond when we find ourselves fleeing in fear.  Can you at least identify with Leo a little bit?  Do you know what it feels like to want to hide behind the sofa?  I do.

If the angels are not sent to give us instructions, though, it remains to be seen whether we will model our lives on Leo’s and stay there behind the sofa, until the next threat comes along and we go in search of a new Egypt.  How tiresome this life must be, moving from one exile to another, and never finding the way to Nazareth where we can finally grow up!  Joseph had his angels to bolster the faith that was given to him in his dreams.  It’s not that he was without fear; it’s not that the way was easy, or that the outcome was guaranteed, or that there would be no challenge, no sadness, no losses on the way.  It’s just that Joseph trusted that God was leading him and his little family in the way they had to go, and so he would not let himself be paralyzed by fear, even though there was ample cause to be frightened.

If angels are not sent to you and to me, then we can at least rely on Joseph’s angels, since we have been given the story.  There will always be times in our lives that fear comes creeping or storming into the room.  Now what?  You can take flight, like Leo, and only ever make it from one Egypt to the next.  But will you ever get to Nazareth?  Will you or the child Jesus you have in your care ever grow up?  Another way of asking this is to ask, do you believe that God is guiding you and the whole universe by his divine hand – no matter how remotely?  Do you believe there is a reason to get to Nazareth, that there is something to grow up into?

So many people these days have given up on the idea that God has a desire for the universe, a direction for our lives, a meaning to bestow on us, and a hope the points beyond our fears.  And I understand why it has become harder in the world today to place our trust in God, to see the promise of his providential will.  But I also see that the alternative to trusting in God, is to flee from one Egypt to the next, and maybe never to make it to Nazareth.

But if we follow Joseph and his little family, it may be that we could find a place to live on the same street, and learn to play with the boy next door, who has had such a harrowing and frightening childhood (even after that amazing encounter with sages from the east!), and we would learn from an early age to call Jesus our friend, which is what he calls us, as he teaches us to trust in the divine providence of his Father so that, “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe!”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

2 January 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia