Saint Mark's Church

Moses saw that the people had broken loose. (Ex 32:25)


Translations of the 25th verse of the 32nd chapter of Exodus (which comes a few paragraphs after our reading this morning) are wonderful.  Moses has come down from the mountain where God has given him the tablets of the law.  The first item on those tablets – the very first item – says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  You shall have no other gods before me.”

So Moses is carrying this weighty message with him and comes down from what would have been a pretty intense experience: receiving the law of God.  He has left his little brother in charge.  He is tired, but excited.  He has been standing quite close to the presence of the living God.  And what does he find but a party: dancing and singing, and God-knows what else, all around another god – a graven image, no less – the second item mentioned on the tablets!  If Aaron had been trying, he could not have gotten it more wrong.  Maybe he was trying.  Sibling rivalry gone bad.

And the Scriptures say something like this: “Moses saw that the people had broken loose.”  But here is where the translations are interesting.  The King James Version says that the people “were naked,” as though nothing worse could be said of them.  Modern translations often say that they were “running wild,” or that the people got “out of control and made fools of themselves.”  All of these translations might be right, for all I know.  But I like the Revised Standard Version that we started with: the people had broken loose.

The had broken loose from their moorings, I guess, and anything could happen.  This was especially bad, considering the context, since Moses was bringing them the law, which was supposed to provide them with a certain moral and religious compass.  “I am the Lord your God… no other gods before me,” and we will certainly not be having any graven images!

Oh, how the people had broken loose!

Throughout much of the Hebrew Scriptures we find a preoccupation with establishing the primacy of God, of YAHWEH.  It could be said that of all sins the failure to remember that YAHWEH is their God is the greatest one.  When the Israelites are called a “stiff-necked” people it is often because they have turned from God and dallied with idols.  The judges and kings and prophets of Israel are called upon to keep the people in line: to remember that their God is an awesome God (as a popular praise song puts it).  The Psalmist often recounts how the people test God as again and again they go on sinning.

Throughout the Scriptures we encounter this concern that God should assert his rights over his people, because, after all, they need to be safe-guarded from their own foolishness.  They are “prone to wander” as one of our hymns puts it.  Which means they are prone to prefer a God they can make with their own gold (which is where the calf came from), one they can put away in a drawer or a cupboard when they are done with it.  God’s children – who he freed from slavery -  are in danger of breaking loose from their own freedom: running wild, even naked in the streets.  They are likely to get out of control and make fools of themselves.  And they are likely to do so at the worst possible moment: graven images left right out in the open where big brother will see it.

It strikes me that what we see throughout the early Scriptures is the depiction of a co-dependent relationship between God and his children.  According to one definition, co-dependent people “form or maintain relationships that are one-sided.”  They have “low self-esteem and look for anything outside themselves to make them feel better.”  They have a tendency to enter into relationship s with people [or gods?] who are emotionally unavailable.”  The condition is often called “relationship addiction” since both parties tend to go back to one another over and over, despite a strong tendency to make one another miserable.

And one wonders, has God become the enabler of our co-dependency?  Or is he a co-dependent God himself?  The history recounted in the Scriptures suggests as much.  Over and over our dysfunction plays itself out along the same patterns.  Are we simply addicted to this God who controls us with his insistence of our shamefulness?  Who looks at us in our nakedness and tells us we look ridiculous (or just fat)?  Who pushes as away from him with his remoteness and his rules (you can eat from any tree but one – as though we were going to leave the forbidden fruit on the branch under those circumstances!)?

This is how the relationship strikes a lot of people I know.  Like the children of Israel, you and I are foolish, co-dependents who keep running back to a controlling, over-bearing God who shames us with his insistence on our sinfulness.  Many of our friends see this and wonder why we have not been able to give up this addiction – especially since we finally live in an era when so much help is available!  We can sleep in on Sundays, there is brunch to be had!  Most likely, there is medication available for us if we need it.  And haven’t we learned that we can be good people, with a reasonable moral compass without some god making us feel bad all the time?!

And then we hear Jesus tell this parable: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.'”

This is his explanation for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.  In Biblical terms, these are the very people who have obviously broken loose, run wild, gotten out of control and made fools of themselves.  These are those who are standing naked before God; and so we might expect to hear God’s Son take the old familiar, co-dependent line: you look ridiculous, stupid, hopeless… and you certainly look fat.

But Jesus does not seem to want to enable this co-dependency.  Jesus feels no need to shame those who he knows are sinners.  Jesus probably doesn’t even think they look fat.  He thinks they look lost, and they need someone to go after them and find them.

“What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?  And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.'  Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

There is joy before the angels of God when on sinner repents, when one of us who is lost gets found!

My brothers and sisters, we have a strong tendency to get lost.  Maybe it’s because we don’t pay attention, or maybe we have a bad sense of direction, or maybe it’s because we live in a very confusing world where it unusually easy to get lost.  Maybe our sense of direction is not as good as we think it is.  And maybe we have gotten used to adapting; deciding that this is where we really wanted to end up anyway – no matter where this happens to be.  We have a strong, strong tendency to get lost, it goes hand in hand with our tendency to break loose, which is why Jesus sometimes sees in us a likeness with sheep.

And Jesus reminds us that God his Father (and ours) has an un-erring tendency to seek us out, to find us, to want to lay us on his shoulders and bring us home.

Like Father, like Son: Jesus comes to us to remind us that when we are lost, he is looking for us, searching, sweeping, calling us by name.

Do you remember how easy it was for Aaron to get the people to give him their jewelry and melt the gold?  All he had to do was ask.  And it seemed to him that the graven image of the calf just leapt out of the fire on its own.  So easy to do!  So easy to break loose and get lost!

And now we have gold and silver, we have steel and iron that we can shape into our idols, we have titanium, and other precious materials.  We have weapons-grade plutonium.  We have poppy-fields of heroin.  We have clear-cut rain forests of old-growth trees.  We have hedge funds of unimaginable wealth. And we have rivers of oil.  How easily all these fascinating, wonderful, pleasurable thing seem to leap out when we toss these things into the furnace of our industry!  How easily new idols are fashioned.  How easily we break loose.  How easily we become lost.

And, of course, it is not just a male thing to be reluctant to admit that we are lost.  It is a human thing.  And is it so deeply ingrained that we would prefer to be co-dependent?  Would we prefer to be told that we are ridiculous, stupid, inadequate, or just fat?  Is this preferable to us to admitting we are lost?

Long, long ago we humans broke loose.  We did it, I guess, because we discovered that God would let us do it; that the tethers that attach us to him are flimsy by design.

We are as ready to break loose from the tethers of God’s care for us as we ever were.  And we have learned to make much more sophisticated idols than the golden calf, much more dangerous ones, too.

And considering all we have done, and all the harm we could still do, it is understandable that we don’t wish to be found.  It makes sense that we suppose God will react with the same fierce anger that would possess us.  We assume that he will judge us the way we would judge ourselves: ridiculous, out-of-control, foolish, and fat.

But instead, he sweeps us from our feet and lifts us onto his shoulders, and clucks or sighs as the sound of angels rejoicing is heard, and he carries us home, knowing full well that tomorrow we may well get lost again.  But still he puts us on his shoulders and carries us home rejoicing, and carries us home, and carries us home, and carries us home.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
16 September 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost…?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, `This man began to build, and was not able to finish.' (Luke 14:27-28)


Despite a positive review in the New Yorker, I cannot actually recommend that you go to see the teen-oriented film, Superbad, mostly because you would never forgive me.  You are a Ritz-Five, opera–going, ballet-loving, orchestra-subscribing crowd.  Many of you would never make it past the vulgar language of the first few scenes of the film without storming out of the theatre wondering if I had gone completely mad.  You are grown-ups!  You would be shocked, appalled, offended.  

I was charmed.  

But allow me to share with you the basic idea of the film.  Two teenage boys, Evan and Seth, are about to graduate from high school.  They have managed to get themselves invited to a party hosted by one of the hottest and most popular girls in school, on the promise that they will be able to procure alcohol for said party.  The boys, however, are clueless.  Evan is gangly and awkward and painfully earnest.   Seth is pudgy, with an awful, curly mop of hair, and possessed by his hormones.  The two boys desperately want to be “superbad,” (meaning good).  They are breathless to lose at least some measure of their innocence with the fairer sex, but a great gulf is fixed between them and the girls they so admire.   

Alcohol seems to them to be their only hope.  If only they can provide it, and if only the girls get drunk enough, the boys hope to make it at least to first base – if only by mistake - as the drinks make the girls careless.  But Evan and Seth are woefully and obviously underage.  They have promised booze, but they have none.  And their innocence remains in tact as the film launches into their journey to procure some liquor – any liquor at all.

Strangely, this seems to be exactly the kind of thing Jesus is warning about in today’s Gospel reading.  Don’t set out to do something unless you are quite sure you have what it takes to finish the job.  But from the earliest moments of Superbad it is quite clear that these boys don’t have what it takes to achieve their ambitious goals.  They are doomed to remain innocent, their virginity firmly in tact in every conceivable sense.

If only we outgrew such adolescent quandaries!  But alas, we often seem doomed to repeat them.  In the church we are so beset by our own anxieties these days that one wonders what will become of us.  We have dreams (do we not?) of being “superbad” (by which I mean good).  We see around us the vestiges of an era when the church could do what she liked and stand tall about it.  We remember the stories of missions and schools and the expanding empire of Christendom.  But today these memories seem to be like hormones mocking us (as in adolescent boys) for wanting to be something we cannot be.  The pews are not full, people walk right by our doors and ignore us, we cannot do the things we think we ought to be doing, we cannot afford the things we think we ought to be able to afford.  And neither can most of our neighboring churches.

And what’s worst, religion is mocked in the public square.  Jesus and his Cross are fashion accessories at best (and ironic ones, at that).  The height to which the steeple of this church once soared is now belittled in nearly every sense of the word.  The churches are of full of scandal.  Our own Anglican church is in constant crisis at the diocesan, national and international levels.  There is bickering, legal maneuvering and name-calling.

How did we become teenagers again?  Not children, but apparently not grown up yet either?  How did we get stuck here again in this adolescent angst?  And we wonder, will the day ever come?  Will we ever get there?  And of course the question occurs to us, (doesn’t it?): Do we have what it takes to finish what once was begun?  Can we even finish our own little piece of it (whatever it is), here on Locust Street?  

“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”

If you really want to feel like a teenager again, try to pretend that I am your father or your mother telling you this:  “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”  Does this make you want to shrug?  Or grunt non-commitally?  What are we to do with this teaching from Jesus.  Does he honestly expect us to take up our cross?  Does he really want us to be prepared to be at enmity with those we love?  Does he expect us to give our things away – truly?  What can we possibly do in the face of this kind of teaching but shrug and walk away, as though we didn’t really hear it?

The answer is that Jesus expects us to grow up.  He expects us not to be ruled by our passions for things: for clothes and cars and real estate, or for status, or power.  He expects us to be more than teenage bundles of hormones desperately grasping for the things we hope will make us “superbad.”   Jesus expects us to live not for ourselves, but for others.  And the cross he asks us to take up is the pry-bar that pulls us away from our selfishness and opens our eyes to the others around us.  Our cross is anything that helps us do this: whether it’s feeding the hungry on Saturday mornings, or visiting someone when they need us, or picking up the phone to check on a friend.  Your children can certainly be your cross (don’t they sometimes feel like it) as they demand more of you than can possibly be reasonable.  And your parents may play the same role at the other end of life.  And the list goes on.  We take up our cross bit by bit as we learn to live our lives less for ourselves.  

And the question is, have we started something that we can finish?  Do we have what it takes to grow up into what Saint Paul calls the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ?  Can we really live outside of ourselves, or we will constantly be longing to return to that juvenile time when someone took care of us?

In the film (which, of course, you will never see: I recommend you never see it!) the boys, Evan and Seth, discover that they, of course, have set out on the wrong journey.  They had set out to try to satisfy their hormonal rages, which cannot be achieved with booze or sex.  They begin to discover that the only journey that they can finish is the journey of growing up: learning to care about one another, and to respect the girls, who are, indeed, out of their league, but oddly responsive to displays of inner dignity, rather than false machismo.  The boys find out that they will never get anywhere unless they begin to learn to live beyond the immediate cruelty of their passionate self-obsession.  And they begin to find that within themselves they have had what it takes to make this journey all along.

And it is good news to discover that you may just have what it takes, after all.  It is good news to find out in the midst of teenage angst that God has bestowed you with more than you knew.  It is good news to realize that once you stop obsessing about yourself you become a much better person.  And if this is true for teenagers (boys and girls alike), then I suspect that it is also true for the church: that when we live beyond the immediate cruelty of our self-obsession we do much better.  That is, when we allow the Cross to pry us from our selfish concerns, we find out that we are more than we ever knew.  And when we have the Cross, we have everything it takes to complete what we have begun.

Here at Saint Mark’s, the work of discipleship was taken up 160 years ago.  And it looks to me, as I observe what those men and women built just with stones and glass and wood, that our predecessors were deeply confident that God had given them everything they needed to undertake any journey, to achieve any goal for the sake of Christ.  They probably could never have imagined the kind of angst that can grip the church these days.  And I doubt they could fathom the puzzling state of the Christian religion in this country and around the world today.

Nevertheless, we have been given here at this marvelous place, what you might call a “superbad” legacy – by which I mean extraordinarily good – that was left to us by men and women who were grown-up in their faith.  We are invited, at the foot of the Cross that is the very center of this place, to learn to live beyond ourselves, to discover that we have what it takes and have had it all along, to be more than we ever knew we could be, and to share this good news with anyone and everyone who will listen.

It’s not actually all that complicated – no more complicated than growing up.  And when we begin to do it - to live in love, beyond the immediate cruelty of passionate self-obsession, living instead for others – we discover that the life of a disciple, lived in Christ, guided by his Cross, this life is “superbad,” which means it is very, very good.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
9 September 2007
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

Many eastern cultures, we are told, maintain rather clear and strict customs about seating placements, to this very day.  Where you sit in a room or at a table says a lot, in these cultures, about who you are.

We subscribe to more democratic seating principles in this country, occasionally taking the trouble to alternate boy, girl, boy, girl.  Only at wedding receptions and White House functions do Americans concern themselves with more involved seating arrangements, and even then our seating charts often tell us more about who gets along with whom than who is who.  

Jesus lived in a society a bit more attentive to who is who.  So when he tells a story about the seating at a marriage feast, the punch line is not going to be about who got stuck sitting next to Aunt Martha.  When Jesus tells a story about the seating at a marriage feast, he is going to tell us something about who is who.

“Do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited.”  This will cause what the Australians call a kerfuffle, as the host has to come and tell you to get out of your seat and give it to the one who deserves it.  “But when you are invited, go and sit at the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’”

Friend, go up higher.  I have always thought this is one of the loveliest phrases in Scripture in its graceful simplicity.  I sometimes imagine that Jesus wants to teach us to say it to one another, when really he is trying to teach us where to sit so that we might be the ones being addressed by this invitation: Friend, go up higher.

Jesus’ teaching here is simple, but hard for us to hear, since we are so accustomed to simply sitting wherever we choose.  Jesus is teaching about humility, which we tend to mistake for low self-esteem.  And Episcopalians are not geared for low-self esteem.  In our confusion about the two, it can sometimes seem that we are not geared for humility either.

It’s interesting to note that while Jesus lived during a time when there were ritualized ways of demonstrating humility (the sprinkling of ashes on one’s forehead, for instance) we find no record of his practice of these rituals.  In fact, we have much evidence that he regarded such ritual humility with suspicion.  He preferred the real thing.  Jesus’ humility was lived out day by day, in the company he kept, the style of his dress, I suppose, and in his manners.  So it is no surprise that he should teach his disciples to show their humility not in some ritualized way, but in their manners, even in which seat they should choose at a banquet.

Sometimes it’s reassuring to discover that there is Good News to be found in something as simple as good manners.  But of course Jesus’ idea of good manners is different from our own.  Jesus is not advocating mere self-deprecation, and he is not providing an unorthodox strategy to get the best seat in the end.  He is suggesting that we take the lowest seat, because the lowest seat is also closest to the door, closest to those who have not been invited at all.

And so he says to the man who invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or your rich neighbors….  But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  What kind of manners are these?  Talking to his host this way?  And are we to extrapolate a practice for ourselves here too?  Does he mean for us to invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to our parties, even to church?

Yes, I believe Jesus does mean this, though most of us, myself included, are a long way from being ready to learn it, let alone live this lesson in radical hospitality.

The lesson is, however, part and parcel of the suggestion that we should take the lowest seat, the one nearest the door, closest to those who have not been invited.  Because we know, of course, that that is exactly where Jesus would wind up: rejected, driven out of town to his execution, abandoned by those who said they’d follow him.  And from his dismal point of view on the Cross, you can be sure Jesus knows who is who.

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”  He could have been talking about himself, who would know utter humility and who would be raised to undreamt of exaltation.  But could he be talking about you or about me?  Do we have the kind of humility in us that Jesus asks of us?  The secret is, of course, that it requires a healthy self-esteem to take the lowest seat.

And it takes a healthy self-esteem to choose to live with real humility, rather than just ritualize it.  It takes someone who knows themselves, who knows who’s who, to sit near enough the door that you can hear the groaning of the poor, the off-beat gait of the maimed, the lame, the tapping of the blind.  This is where Jesus wants us.  Because he knows how easy it is for us, in our splendid lives, to forget all about them, to mistake them for somebody else, to forget that we are all children of the same Father.  And Jesus wants us to know who’s who.  He wants us near the door so that we can do something about those left waiting outside.

In one of the gospels we hear Jesus’ followers worrying about just how much humility they can bear.  Peter speaks on their behalf, saying, “Lord, we have left everything and followed you.  What then shall we have?”  What shall we have?  Isn’t this a familiar question?

Jesus tells Peter that he and the others will sit on thrones to judge the tribes of Israel, which, frankly, was not what Peter had in mind, I think.  And he ends by repeating one of his favorite sound bites: the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Which is a lot like saying that he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

So let’s just say we try taking the lower seat.  Let’s say we are open to this life of humility.  What then shall we have?  We’ll have two things.  First, we’ll have the healthy self-esteem that come of knowing not only who is who but who we are.  And this is a good thing.  And second, we will be in the right place, at the right time to hear that lovely invitation: Friend, go up higher.  And that will be a good place to be.

And perhaps, if we have been sitting near enough the door to chat (when it’s open) with the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, perhaps when the invitation comes to us, Friend, go up higher, perhaps we might be bold enough to bring our new friends with us, who never dreamt of being given such an excellent seat.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
2 September 2007
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia