Saint Mark's Church

It is time that I made a confession to you all: namely, that I have almost never taken a bus in the city of Philadelphia.    I would like to explain this pattern of avoidance on a phobia of large, long, loud vehicles, but I cannot.  It is not because I decry mass transit – because I feel perfectly happy to travel on the Broad Street subway line or the High Speed line to New Jersey.  It is true that I have always felt more comfortable on rail-bound mass transit, for its carefully illustrated maps and certain stops, and the assurance that once on rails, you cannot do very much to get lost.  Buses, I have suspected, could leave me almost anywhere, without the benefit of being able to simply cross over to the other side of the tracks and go back the other way, as you can on a subway or a train.

But the darker truth is even worse than this assessment.  For, over time, in a city whose mass transit system consists mostly of buses, I have begun to see myself as someone who simply does not take buses.  I notice people standing and waiting at the bus shelters and I think them quaint.  I hear people tell me of their arrival by bus from what I think of as distant neighborhoods, and I think them adventurous.  I am led to believe that many schoolchildren in this city make their way to and from their daily schooling on city buses at the city’s expense, and I find this extraordinary.

To be honest with you I must confess to a certain snobbery that I have been heretofore unwilling to reveal to you, when it comes to buses.  They are all fine and well for those who can bear to wait for them, for the adventurous, and for school children, and even for the elderly, to whom, I am told, they cost practically nothing to ride.  But I am someone who simply does not ride buses, not that there is anything wrong with it.

Bus routes have come to mind, however, over these past weeks as I have walked with a good number of you the Way of the Cross – or as we used to say more frequently, the Stations of the Cross – each Friday during Lent.  Our little stations – the small plaques you see affixed to the walls with Roman numerals over them – are quite extraordinary.  They are far too small for this building; I think they are even smaller than the size of a bus-stop sign on the street, but close enough to make me think of those signs.  They are hand painted enamel from Limoges, a city quite famous for the art form.  They are not ancient, I think.  If you were to go take a close look at them, you would see that they are quite brightly colored, with lots of iridescent greens and blues and gold accents, although from where you sit they probably appear quite dark and feature-less.  They are full of detail: in the sixth station the cloth with which Veronica has wiped Jesus’ face bears the mirror image of his visage, Turin-like.  By all means, do stop and have a closer look at them after Mass today.

There are fourteen Stations – following the pattern established by the Franciscans in the Holy Land in the 14^th century.  These are like fourteen stops on a bus route through the church.  For most of the year the bus does not even run.  But during these weeks of Lent it has been running quite regularly, leaving at 5:45 or so every Friday and arriving at the foot of the rood – the great cross that hangs above us all - about 45 minutes later.

This bus follows the route of Jesus’ Passion, which we have just sung.  It actually bypasses most of the courtroom drama, and instead begins only when it is absolutely beyond question that Jesus will be making his way to the Cross.

The bus stops several times to pick people up.  Simon of Cyrene gets on and finds himself carrying Jesus’ Cross.  The women of Jerusalem – some of them at least – climb on board, while others wave and weep from the side of the road.

Mary, Jesus’ mother, must be on board, for she is to be found with Jesus at several of the stops.  But she cannot get too close because he is surrounded, of course, by his Roman guards, the centurion, who one expects ride for free.  No doubt the two thieves who will be crucified with Jesus are on there too.

Lurking in the back of the bus may be Peter, certainly John is there, but we cannot be sure how many of Jesus’ other disciples.

And the question that every Palm Sunday poses to everyone who listens to the Passion, who sees this bus coming, watches it begin to pass by, is this: Will you and I get on this bus?

Jesus told his friends that if they really wanted to be his disciples they would have to take up their cross and follow him.  The may not have been absolutely certain what he meant by that, but we have the benefit of better vision.  We know that it means we have to get on the bus that goes to Calvary with him.  Which is to say that to be a follower of Jesus is to choose a hard path, a path that will make demands of you and of me.  It is a path that does not avoid pain, indignity, embarrassment, or failure, because these are unavoidable realities in any life.

It is a path in which justice seems to be perverted from the outset, but which will, eventually set the only true judge on his bench.

It is a path where stumbling and falling, will happen not once or twice, but over and over again.

Strangers will be pressed into work they did not ask for and are not ready for on this path.

Women provide a powerful, if almost silent witness to faith along this path, where men are noticeably absent.

And a bus runs along this path, centuries after Jesus’ blood, sweat and tears were spilled along it, inviting us to take up our cross and follow.

But the truth is that I am not the only one who has begun to see himself as someone who does not ride buses.  This bus to Calvary has fewer and fewer riders every year it seems, even among those of us who are perfectly happy to watch it go by.  It would be too easy to attribute this declining ridership to a phobia of some sort, or to uncertainty about where the route goes, what the fare is, how many stops there are, etc.  Oh, there might be a certain snobbery at work – but this particular bus is really quite nice to ride in, even if the seats are hard (at least we now have brand new kneelers).

And it is not a fear of getting lost that prevents people from riding this bus, because the truth is that we all know exactly where it goes: to the bloody scene of death that marks a turning point for humanity and in our lives, when we confront not only the cruelty of humanity and our own complicity in it, but also the power of darkness, the inevitability of death, and our own convictions about God’s ability and willingness to do something about any of it.

Is this a bus we want to be on? 

The last few stops do not look much like places we want to be: Jesus is being stripped and nailed to the Cross at stops 10 and 11.  Then at stop 12, he is executed and dies.  At the next stop the gruesome scene becomes morose as his body is taken down from the Cross and embraced by his mother.  The last stop, 14, is the site of his burial in a borrowed grave.

This is a hard route to follow.  The church has followed it over the centuries because it is an honest route that has room for everyone, no matter how dismal his or her own condition, no matter how tragic your own story.  There is room on the bus for failures, and stumblers, the unprepared, the depressed, for those whose lament for the dead has not ended.  There is space for every kind of suffering and injustice and indignity.

There is room on the bus for you and for me.

And, of course, the bus has a secret that is not very well hidden.  For it seems to be on an endless loop of sadness, returning again to the same awful stops, the same scenes of misfortune and unhappiness, of despair and hopelessness.  The last stop, after all, is a grave.  But it is that grave which hides the secret: that things do not end here in this vale of tears at Calvary, and no one would ever choose to ride this bus if this was where it really ended.

But that secret is obscured to the proud, the overly self-confident, the snobbish, those who put their trust in riches, and all those who generally see themselves as the types who simply do not ride buses.

Standing in front of the Cross, beholding its sadness and its frightful power, is never about taking a bus to nowhere, and certainly never about going only so far as this bus seems to go: to the grave.  It is about riding into the dark mystery of God’s love for all his children – even and especially the neediest and least promising of us.  It is about refusing to get off the bus at the last stop, at this last hour.  Or maybe it is more about just falling asleep from exhaustion or guilt or despair as the bus nears its last stop.  About not caring if you don’t get off here, and end up riding around another loop…

… but discovering that while you have slept, the route has taken a turn, and there is darkness that looks like it could last for three days or more.  But here you are on the bus, tired, half asleep and resigned now to go wherever it will go.  And hoping for dawn.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Palm Sunday, 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Most couples who come to me to talk about getting married are not looking for advice.  They want to talk about the ceremony – at least the brides do; the grooms are often not sure they want to talk to a priest at all.  But the church requires me to spend some time with every couple I marry, and I would want to do so even if it wasn’t required.  In addition to talking about the ceremony, I always ask couples a series of questions that fall under the heading “Questions Couples Should Ask Before They Marry – Or Wish They Had”.  These questions include asking if they have discussed children, whether their ideas of saving and spending money are in sync, and whether or not they will have a TV in the bedroom.

But there is a topic not covered in the questions that I feel it is important to discuss, and which compels me to give to the couple the only piece of advice that I give about marriage.  The topic is forgiveness.

I know couples whose basic position about forgiveness is this: that they can forgive the other almost anything, except….  The “except” is big: a line in the sand that must not be crossed.  And if a couple has thought about this (although I suspect that many don’t really think about it until after the wedding day) that exception is one thing and one thing only: infidelity.

As I said, most couples don’t come to me looking for advice, and I am not inclined to give it about marriage.  But on the topic of forgiveness, I am not inclined to keep silent.

And although love-besotted brides and grooms probably pay me little mind when they hear me say it, my advice to them is to begin their married life with no line in the sand; no exception established in either’s mind from the outset for which forgiveness could not be sought and offered in return.  Not even if there is infidelity.  No exceptions at all.  This is not to say that I believe there are never circumstances in which a marriage could and should rightly end in divorce, sad though that would be.  I am only saying that couples should not begin their married lives knowing that there is something the marriage could not survive, for lack of forgiveness.

My rationale for this piece of advice is found in what I believe and know about God: that there is no exception to God’s forgiveness.  And that even in the simple prayer Jesus taught us to pray we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and I think husbands and wives and partners ought to mean that when they say it – or at least try.

Brides and grooms-to-be have to sit and listen to my only piece of advice, which is premised on a lesson about God.  But almost no one else has to hear it – except of course a captive congregation who finds themselves sitting through a sermon!  And you may or may not need to hear advice about forgiving your spouse, your partner, your friend, or perhaps your enemy.  But if you are anything like me, you do need to be reminded the lesson about God.  Because many of us have somehow absorbed the idea that ours is a God who has drawn lines in the sand.  Our shorthand for this is to remember that we once heard it said that God is an angry and a jealous God.

To us, this sounds like a God who has all kinds of boundaries that may not, must not, cannot be crossed, or else….  And indeed we have lots of images of such an angry and jealous God who fills the skies with thunder clouds and lightning bolts as he prepares to wreak his vengeance on those who cross him.

But today Jesus has advice for those of us who believe this about God.

"A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.  So he said to the gardener, 'See here!  For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.  Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'  He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"

If I could only take one parable of the Scriptures with me to a desert island this would be it.  Because the fig tree, of course, is me (or you, if you care to put yourself in the story).  It requires no real stretch of my imagination to see that I have not been the person I could be; that I have not done all that I could with the gifts God’s given me; that in so many ways I have failed to bear the fruit of good works and kindness and love that God has made me for and calls me to.

Maybe you could say this about yourself as well.  The season of Lent is in some measure given to us to reflect on the ways we resemble the fig tree in this parable.  Notice that we do not even have to get to the things we have done wrong (although I believe we are free to remember those) it is enough to think about what we have failed to do – those things we have left undone, as we say.  Have I been faithful to God in prayer?  Have I been merciful to those who need my help?  Generous to those who deserve my largesse?  Kind to those who seek my fellowship?  Have I been available to those who need me and can rightly lay claim to that need?  Have I been gracious to those who just happen to find themselves in my sphere? 

Sometimes we have such low expectations of ourselves that we do pretty well by these measures, until we begin to expand our focus and see more of the world around us, the people we normally ignore, or have already shut out, those beyond the immediate company of our family and friends.  But God’s expectations of us are not low at all.  He has always called his people to be welcoming to strangers; to care for those who are needy not because we know them, but just because they are in need; to love not only those whom it’s easy for us to like, but even to love our enemies.  If this is the kind of fruit we are to bear in our lives, how are we doing?

Now, in the cartoon version of life that has become the common picture for many these days, I am supposed to rail at you from the pulpit about your many failings in these ways.  I am supposed to encourage your shame, identify you as sinners, affix a scarlet letter to your clothes, condemn you to a life of guilt, and threaten you with the fires of hell.  In this cartoon world, dour nuns wield stiff rulers to whack children’s hands; hypocritical priests hurl accusations at the innocent, suffering poor; and a greedy church takes from you what you can ill afford to give in order to fill her hallways with extravagance.  And no doubt the church has been guilty of all these cartoon crimes at one time or another.

But there is still the matter of the fig tree, which has failed to bear fruit year after year.  No one has guilted the fig tree about anything.  No one berated it in Catholic school when it was young.  No one took from it what was rightfully the tree’s and deprived it the chance to produce figs.  The tree was just planted and left to grow and do what fig trees do: to grow figs, which are sweet and wonderful and delicious.

But year after year the tree gives no figs.

The owner of the tree remembers that he heard once that ours is an angry and a jealous God; and he remembers too that he is made in God’s image (his is a selective memory).  A fig tree ought to produce figs; its owner has every right to expect them, he thinks.  What is the point of a fig-less fig tree, after all?  So cut that tree down and teach it a lesson – a lesson that will no doubt be noticed by all the other fig trees too!  Where is that ax?

But there is also a gardener – or at least someone who we think is the gardener, though he looks a little familiar to me, come to think of it.  This gardener is not the type to draw lines in the sand.  Is he disappointed by a fig tree that bears no figs?  Perhaps.  Is prepared to give up on it and cut it down?  No, he is not.  Does he believe a good strong dose of guilt or haranguing, or the threat of eternal damnation will induce the tree to grow figs?  It would appear not.

But the gardener has a pile of manure – which is neither expensive or exotic.  And he has time.  And he has a way with the owner of the tree.  “Sir,” he says, “let it alone one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.  If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not…” well, you know….

In my cartoon world, on my desert island, where this is the only parable I have to tell, it is told over and over, year after year.  The exasperated owner remembers that this is the third, no fourth, no fifth, no twentieth year in a row he has had this conversation with the gardener.  But always he relents, neither as angry or as jealous as he had at first seemed.

And in my cartoon world, there is an endless supply of manure to be heaped on this fig tree by the gardener, to help it grow, help it thrive, help it bear much fruit.

And of course in my cartoon world, I am the fig tree, peering out from beneath my leafy, but so far fig-less branches.  And I have heard the demands of the owner year after year, I have remembered that he sounds so much like a jealous and an angry God, but I notice that he always heeds the gardener.  And I am grateful that there is a pile of manure for me, because it is so hard to draw a line in a pile of manure, to define the limits of what the gardener will tolerate, what he will put up with, what he will forgive.  Indeed, to me, he seems to have no limit, no line that cannot be crossed.  He seems to me to have nothing but patience and plenty of manure to try to keep me humble, and to coax my limbs to finally bring forth fruit, and offer the first figs to him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

7 March 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia