Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Late one recent night, I found myself staying up long past a reasonable hour to watch a broadcast of the 1967 film version of Camelot, with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave.  The film is every bit endearing as I recalled, but I’d forgotten how shot through with angst the story is: how obvious to everyone is the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot; how unwilling is Arthur to acknowledge the truth; how cruel he is to Pellinore, the old man who tries gently to urge Arthur to accept the truth; how desperate is the king’s fondness for Lancelot; how inevitable is Guinevere’s fate, considering Arthur’s pride in the rule of law; how wicked is Mordred’s Oedipal jealousy.  And all presented with a jaunty score of song after memorable song.

Because of the Kennedy appropriation of the idea of Camelot, “that once there was a spot/ for one brief shining moment/ known as Camelot,” I think we tend to recall the story of the musical as if it was as chirpy as its title song.  But really it’s a story full of conflict and pain.  And the characters are all deeply flawed.  (So, I guess the Kennedy comparison holds.)  By the end of the movie, Mordred has desecrated the Round Table, Guinevere has been rescued by Lancelot from burning at the stake in the nick of time, and Arthur is preparing to go to battle with Lancelot.  England is clearly headed for the Dark Ages.  It’s not what you would call a happy ending.

I wonder if the story of Camelot has any parallels with the Christian story.  At the center: our hero, whose commitment to justice was admirable, but ultimately the institution he built to advance the cause wasn’t up to the task.  The church, like the Round Table: a good idea, but ultimately susceptible to the foibles of both its enemies and its own flawed leaders.  Of course, both provide fodder for good musical numbers and colorful costumes with a certain medieval flair.  But does the church seem to be headed for any better an ending than the musical’s?  Or will all be wrack and ruin by the time we finally acknowledge what everyone else can see is going on around us?  And do we have anything more to hold out to the would-be believer than a story that might be nice if it was true, but that seems frayed at the edges and straining at the seams?  Perhaps there was one brief shining moment long ago when the Christian faith was full of promise: before the schisms, and the crusades, before the greed and power and corruption, before the scandal and abuse, before the willful ignorance, before the disregard for women, before the stultifying self-absorption, etc., etc.  But you can see what happened.

One wonders if Arthur had a bit of a messianic complex.  Did he think to himself, in the words of the Christ, “My kingdom is not of this world”?  Or was his problem that he didn’t realize that the ideals of Camelot could never survive in this world, that they had to be aspects of another dimension of reality?  To look at the other side of that coin, is Jesus as delusional as King Arthur, when he stands before Pilate and says, “My kingdom is not of this world.”?

And what use is either of them to us – Jesus or King Arthur – if their kingdoms are not of this world?  After all, we have to live in this world, we have to work and strive, and hope and suffer, and repair, and restore, and ruin, and recover, and heal, and fall sick again, and forget, then remember, and lose things, and find some of them, and break, and fix, and wander, and get lost, and discover, and guess, and invent, and disfigure, and design, and build, and burn, and assemble, and discard, and recycle, and fight, and resent, and forgive, and repent, and assist, and cook, and wash, and nap, and conquer, and overcome, and deceive, and risk, and give, and take, and coddle, and cajole, and swoon, and sing, and sew, and float, and swim, and love, and live, and die in this world – not in some magical fairytale land.  What good is it to us to tell us that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world?

Here’s what I think Jesus means by this, when he tells us his kingdom if not of this world.  It means that Jesus’ kingdom is not a fleeting thing, that lasts for one, brief, shining moment.  It means that Jesus’ kingdom is not a fantasy kingdom, where the climate must be perfect all the year, where winter is forbidden till December, and exits March the second on the dot.  It means that Jesus’ kingdom is not a kingdom of wishful thinking, where rain may never fall till after sundown, and by eight the morning fog must disappear.

Fantasy kingdoms are built in this world all the time, and they deliver only fantasy promises that, like a Broadway musical, bring momentary salve, but not real healing; a happy tune to hum, but not real hope; a call to arms, but not real justice; all the craziness of romance, but not real love; and illusions of resuscitation but not real life.  But the kingdom Jesus is talking about is a kingdom of real healing, real hope, real justice, real love, and real life.  It exists in dimensions beyond this world, but it is not inaccessible from this world.

How, then, does one get to Jesus’ kingdom?

There are really only two steps involved.  First, you follow Jesus.  Then you go where he sends you.

Now, following Jesus is not so easy.  To do so, you probably have to hear him call you, which is one reason to come to church – for here the call of Jesus is pronounced week after week as we proclaim the Good News of his ministry, and tell the story of his salvation.  Sometimes you have to stop and listen to hear Jesus calling.  You have to turn off your phone, take your earbuds out of your ears, shut off your iPod, and listen.  I’d call this praying – for listening is at least half of prayer.  Though it’s certainly possible that you could hear Jesus call while you are praising him: singing a hymn, or reciting a psalm, or raising your eyes to see him lifted high, as bells ring, during the Mass.

Then, if you listen to Jesus and follow him, eventually you are very likely to hear him tell you to go somewhere and do something.  Go ask for forgiveness where you have needed it for a long time.  Go help the hungry, the poor, the lonely, the sick, or the imprisoned.  Go help a child who the world is failing.  Go help a church that is struggling.  Go help someone whose life was turned upside down in a hurricane.  It’s hard to follow Jesus and never hear him tell you to get up and go somewhere and do something.

Now, these two steps, may not seem to take you very far, but the trick to the Christian life is in repeating these two simple steps over and over.  We have to stop and listen for Jesus over and over, because his voice is easily drowned out by the din of this world, and many people are actively trying to obscure the sound of it.  And we can’t follow Jesus unless we are listening to him.  And we have to go where Jesus sends us over and over, because mostly he sends us on small excursions that last an hour or two, or a half a day here and there, without interrupting every other aspect of our daily schedules.  So we repeat these two simple steps over and over: follow and go, follow and go, follow and go.  (If I was Lerner and Loewe, I’d write a song here.)

At the end of Camelot, as Arthur is about to take up the battle with Lancelot; he encounters a young boy named Tom, who tells the king that he wants to be a knight of the Round Table.  The boy’s naivete gives Arthur pause to reflect on what’s happened to his kingdom.  Despite his disappointment and his misgivings he has Tom kneel, and makes him a knight, commissioning him with a reprise of the title song of the show: “Don’t let it be forgot/ that once there was a spot/ for one brief shining moment/ that was known as Camelot.”

Long before I had any inkling about being a priest of God’s church, I wanted to be Tom.  I suppose I really wanted to be Richard Burton, but you have to start somewhere.  But now that I am older, I see how sad the story of Camelot is, and how hopeless the nostalgia it rests on.  Like all the Arthurian legend, it looks wistfully backward without any real hope of building Camelot in this world, because, after all, Camelot is the stuff of fantasy and musical theater.

But you and I have to live in this world.  We have to work and strive, and hope and suffer, and repair, and restore, and ruin, and recover, and heal, and fall sick again, and forget, then remember, and lose things, and find some of them, and break, and fix, and wander, and get lost, and discover, and guess, and invent, and disfigure, and design, and build, and burn, and assemble, and discard, and recycle, and fight, and resent, and forgive, and repent, and assist, and cook, and wash, and nap, and conquer, and overcome, and deceive, and risk, and give, and take, and coddle, and cajole, and swoon, and sing, and sew, and float, and swim, and love, and live, and die in this world – not in some magical fairytale land.

A fairytale land is what the church looks like, what the kingdom of God looks like, to those who are not willing to take those two simple steps: follow and go, follow and go.

But when we follow Jesus, listening to him, and then go where he sends us, doing the work he gives us, we find that we are already learning what it is like to live in his kingdom, where the hungry are fed, the poor are lifted from their poverty and given a decent education, the sick are cared for with compassion, where love sustains relationships despite many challenges, where justice is upheld, and where life does not end at the grave, as long as we are willing to follow and go, follow and go.

All these things are happening in God’s church, where his kingdom is being built even now.  All these things are real and true right now, in places where the saints of God follow and go, follow and go.  All these things are part of the life of this parish community, this church, this gathering.  This is no Camelot, we are just a parish church on Locust Street, in a city that struggles and fails to live up to its name.  But when we follow Jesus, listening carefully for his call, and the go where he sends us, we find that his kingdom, strangely not of this world, is nevertheless being built right here.

And so we rejoice in his kingship, and we crown him with honor and glory, we wave his banner on high.  And, God willing, we follow and go, follow and go; making the journey toward his kingdom which is not of this world, not remembered from one, brief, shining moment long ago, but is being built right here when we follow and go. 

And it’s enough to make you want to sing about it!

May God put the song of his kingdom on our lips, and in our hearts, and may he make us ever ready to follow him when he calls and to go wherever he sends us, in the service of Jesus Christ, our king.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

25 November 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

It is a mercy, really, that we don’t know his name. It is not always the case, as you know, that disciples who say silly things remain anonymous – just think of poor Peter, for example. But in this moment, the disciple who says the silly thing remains mercifully nameless. He and the other disciples are heading out of the temple in Jerusalem. They have spent the past several days there – listening to Jesus spar with the Sadducees; watching the rich come and go; noticing, at Jesus’ prompting, the generous giving of one poor widow woman. But now Jesus has gathered up his sheep and begun to lead them out of the temple gate. As they wind their way down the stairs of the temple mount, pushing through the hordes of Passover pilgrims, this one disciple can’t help but turn back. He looks up, way up, craning his neck to see the stones stacked seemingly into the very clouds. “Whew!” he whistles, his eyes wide. “What great stones you have!” he says, innocent as a lamb.

Now, to be honest, knowing what we know about Herod’s temple, this disciple’s awestruck appreciation isn’t actually that silly. The temple was, in fact, hugely impressive; it was designed to be hugely impressive; it was constructed to make everyone who saw it whistle in appreciation. The platform it was built upon was in and of itself an architectural marvel, with enormous foundation stones, some of which were as high as this nave and weighed over 400 tons. Herod’s temple in Jerusalem was one of the hallmarks of his reign, an outward sign of his vast wealth and his immense – and immensely dangerous – power. It is no wonder that this little disciple from a backwater in the Galilee gushed a bit over the building, even felt a sense of pride that this was his temple, the mercy seat of his God. The temple made its mark upon him; he was im-pressed, and he thought his teacher would be impressed, too.

So in the face of this disciple’s wide-eyed wonder, Jesus’ response must have felt like the bite of a big bad wolf. “Those great stones? All the better to deceive you with, my dear disciple. Do you see these great buildings? Soon, someone will huff and puff and blow even this stone house down.” This is a devastating declaration. Because the temple was much more than a source of wonder and pride for the children of Israel; it was a mark of their election, a sign of future hope. It had already been destroyed once but had risen from the ashes, a golden assurance to generations to come of the faithfulness of their God. The temple was the locus of God’s relationship to his people, the birthplace of a new kingdom, where the Messiah would come to help his people shed the shackles of their slavery to the godless wolves of Rome. If the temple were to fall, how could Israel be saved?

It’s no wonder, then, that the moment Jesus broke their journey with a stop on the Mount of Olives, the favored (and named) disciples cornered him and pressed him for more details. They must have been shocked and scared. Ever since their youth the ultimate importance of the temple had been impressed upon them; the mark of the meaning of this building pressed into their hearts.  All of their hopes on that temple were founded, a temple their Lord had just told them would most surely fall. How could God work without a temple? And when would all this happen? As they sat gazing across the Kidron Valley at the shining temple mount, they asked themselves desperately, knowing all this, what do we do now?

That temple did fall, of course, razed by Roman troops only forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But there are still plenty of temples for us to admire. And we are, after all, so easily impressed. Ever since our youth, the importance of these grand, worldly structures have been impressed upon us, and we almost can’t help but to place our hope upon their foundations. And so we find ourselves admiring the temples of wealth, of intelligence, of beauty or health or talent. We find that we have set our hope on the structures of human love, on a foundation of friendships that are sometimes frail and passion that is always fleeting. We find ourselves standing awestruck before the vision of a nation so pure in concept, so right in construct, that we imagine it will continue to be the vehicle for peace and justice in the world until time immemorial. We even find ourselves relying on the temple of the Church itself, impressed by its longevity and its righteous call to serve as the body of Christ in the world.

But today’s Gospel invites us to square our shoulders and to ask this difficult question: what if none of these temples last? A shocking question to be sure. What happens if we lose our wealth, if our mind is ravaged of dementia? What happens if our beauty fades, our bodies weaken, our talents dim? What happens if relationships fail, if love falls away or passion dies? What happens if our nation stumbles, overcome by political divisiveness, greed, or lust for power? And what happens if the Church as we know it fades away, just another vehicle for grace wrecked by all too human hands? What do we do then?

The tricky thing about this is that God can and does work through any and all of these things. All of them are gifts of God – our wealth, our hearts and minds, the gift of our bodies and our talents, the gift of human love, the gift of passion, the gift of a country that is founded on the ideals of freedom and equality, the gift of a Church that strives to preach the Gospel to all peoples and nations, the gift of a glorious, holy temple. But Jesus reminds us that we must not be overly impressed by any of these things, because all of these things fall. None of them is sure to last; all of them can be toppled to the ground so that not even one stone is left standing upon another. And while we might like to imagine that we can predict the way that God will use these gifts to work his will, that is not for us to decide. God will be what God will be. Temples fall. So knowing that, what do we do now?

When the temple of Jerusalem fell, indeed not one stone of the temple was left standing upon another. But there are still stones there. The Western Wall is all that is left – the remnant of one of the supporting walls for Herod’s great temple mount. There one can still see massive white stones, worn by thousands of years of rain and sun and the hands of millions of people who have traveled to Jerusalem only to fall on their knees in this holiest of places. They have stood with open mouths, craning their necks upward, awestruck by the palpable sense of God’s presence in this place, by the energy that emanates from the smooth face of the rocks and the cracks that pulse with prayers. These people, some of you among them, have not chosen to stand before these stones because they are impressed by their size, their age, or their architectural beauty. They have chosen to stand before these stones because they bear witness to the fact that when the temple falls, God is still there.

When the temple falls, God still reigns. When the temple falls, God is still at work. When the temple falls, and the wounded earth whips up superstorms and tsunamis; when the temple falls, and people struggle to find food to feed their families; when the temple falls, and rockets slice the air between Israel and Gaza; when the temple falls, and our most beloved dies, or our business fails, or our lover leaves us, or our mother no longer knows our name, God is still at work. God reigns even in the rubble; God is still sovereign even in the midst – or perhaps particularly in the midst – of suffering. We need not know how. And we need not distract ourselves with worry and predictions of when the next stone will hit the ground. What we need to do is watch and pray. “Beware that no one leads you astray,” Jesus tells his disciples. Beware of those voices sounding in your ears or inside your own heads that want to tell you that because one of these temples has fallen our world must surely end. These current sufferings are just the beginning of something new, the labor pains of a new creation groaning to be born. Let God worry about how that will happen. You just watch and pray, look for ongoing work of God in the world and trust that you will find it in the most beautiful and unexpected places. When you do this, when you let temples fall and begin to hope in things not seen, then your eyes will be opened wide enough to see that each breath is pregnant with possibility, each moment is an opportunity to witness what God is bearing into the world. Each moment will become an opportunity to be permanently and wonderfully impressed with the true wonders of this world – a tiny manger, a bloody cross, an empty tomb. Knowing this, what do we do now? Watch. Watch and pray. Look up, way up, to see what a great God we have. With this God at our right hand, we will not fall.

You may listen to Fr. Mullen's sermon here.

A widow haunts my dreams these days.  But she is not the widow of Zarephath who we heard about this morning, who although she was about to starve to death herself, fed the prophet Elijah her last morsels of food, and found that God supplied sustenance to keep her and her son and the prophet alive.  And she is not the widow who puts her two cents into the treasury – what we used to call the widow’s mite – who we heard about in Mark’s Gospel this morning.  Neither of these is the widow that haunts me.

She’s a widow about whom I have not told you before today, although I imagine that some of you have harbored suspicions about her, others have wondered, but been afraid to guess, afraid to hope.  You have thought it rude to wonder too much about her circumstances.  There is this widow, you see, who lived a simple life.  She’d been a widow so long that no one could even remember her husband; we just assumed she’d had one long ago, because she was always referred to as a “widow.”  She was never well-known.  You are struggling to remember her name, even now, but I think you know where she sat in church – nowhere obvious, always off on one of the side aisles.  She had not many friends, but she was a faithful church-goer.  And you would have supposed (if you stopped to suppose such things) that she was a faithful, if not extravagant, supporter of the church.  She made the kind of financial contribution that will be missed, but will not be a disastrous loss.  This makes sense, since you and I always believed that she had enough, but not too much, if you know what I mean.  We have heard about widows like this before: gentle, quiet, unassuming women in their communities.  Almost entirely un-remarkable while they are alive.  But in death their great secret is revealed – and it is always the same secret, although the details may vary.

Have you guessed who the widow is, yet?  Can you picture her in your mind’s eye?  Do you remember now if she sat on your side of the church or the other side?  Have you remembered her name?  Do you remember wondering if she was childless, too.  No heirs to consider.  Or was she?  Wasn’t there someone sitting next to her at Christmas and Easter?  A child, home for the holidays?  Or a nephew, a niece?  Maybe there was a family and they were just kept at bay?  Or stayed at bay of their own accord?  Hard to say.  Hard to know the details of the life of someone so private, so quiet, so nearly anonymous.

When she began to invade my dreams, I looked for stories about women like her, because I knew I had come across them before.  Here is what a simple search uncovered:

In the Pacific Northwest, in a coastal town in Washington state, a 98-year-old woman died, and directed that the small fortune of $4.5 million she had amassed all be spent to improve her little seaside town.

In Lake Lillian, Minnesota, a 97-year-old woman left in her will, the sum of about $6 million to be spent in her community of 238 people.  (That’s more than $25,000 per person, if they just divvied it up!)

In Lake Forest, Illinois, a 100-year-old woman died and left $7 million to her alma mater, a little, local college.

In Scotland, an 83-year-old spinster (as the Scots insisted on calling her) left 1.8 million pounds sterling the SPCA.

Back in California, a 96-year-old woman left $1.7 million to the Salvation Army.

Now do you remember the widow who has been so much on my mind?

We have all heard these stories.  And some of us have heard the stories that never make it into the papers – stories about churches just like Saint Mark’s that are the beneficiaries of the largesse of these secret millionaires, these little old ladies who have been preparing a surprise for their lucky churches.  What church doesn’t dream that such a secret millionaire will shower her generosity on it? 

When such a widow has been in your own midst, and on your mind, you start to wonder about her.  What made her the way she is?

Widows, of course, have been hurt by loss.  They are defined by something missing in their lives, by a relationship they once had but now they can only long for.  Widows have suffered.  They know something of pain and brokenness.  They know loneliness, too.  And they know what it is like to plead with God for mercy, to beg God to make things turn out differently, to fix something that is beyond their own ability to fix, even though they have fixed a great deal in their lives before.  Widows know what it feels like to be weak, and at the end of their rope.  They know what it feels like to run out of hope.  They know what it feels like to consider the possibility that God has deserted them, along with everybody else.  Widows know what it feels like to conclude that they must now get on with something – with life – on their own, without any help, with the possibility of much joy, without much hope of promise.  They know resignation, maybe despair.  Virtue is often attributed to widows – a characteristic they do not always think they deserve.  It is earned, I suppose, through acceptance, which is sometimes manifest in a kind of wisdom.

And some widows, apparently, are shrewd investors, or careful savers, or maybe just cheapskates – but by whatever means they reach a certain age with a certain fortune.  Some widows are these secret millionaires, who keep their wealth a secret, but whose generosity is eventually revealed.

Boy, do we love those widows!  Everyone dreams that such a widow inhabits their small town, their little college, or the church they belong to. 

Have you ever dreamt that such a widow was a part of the congregation here at Saint Mark’s?

And when you have noticed that there are things that need to be done, work you imagine we could accomplish – whether it’s tending to the buildings, or establishing new programs, or caring for the needy – have you hoped, as I have, that there was among us a secret millionaire: a widow whose name you don’t know, but who is probably sitting over there on the side aisle, under her hat or her veil, whose generosity will eventually provide for all that we need as a parish?

Oh, I have had those dreams!

I have wondered about one or two of you.  But, of course, the secret wealth was to be found where I least expected it.  I thought she had barely two nickels to rub together – two pennies, like the widow in the Gospel.  But how I underestimated her!

Have you guessed at the identity of the widow in our midst?

My friends, my dear ones, you know the widow yourselves, for you are the widow.

I know you lead a straightforward life; not a lot of extravagances.  Some of you feel un-known, or un-noticed; some of you want to stay that way.  You are not old, but you have lived enough of life to learn a thing or two.  Some of you have families, but it has been a long time since your kids were in church with you except on holidays.  You wonder if they will ever find their way back to the church.  You are a faithful church-goer – as faithful as you can be with all the other demands on your time.  And you are not here for recognition or attention; you simply don’t require them.  And you know pain and loss in your life, don’t you?  You know suffering, brokenness and loneliness.  You know what it is like to plead with God for mercy, to make things turn out differently – whatever it is that drove you to your knees.  You know what it feels like to be weak and at the end of your rope.  You know what it feels like to run out of hope.  Maybe you know what it feels like to suspect that God has deserted you.  Maybe you know resignation; maybe despair.  Maybe you know that people attribute virtues to you that you do not think you deserve.

So it’s not that things have always been peachy for you.  You know this, and I know it , too.  You are the widow.

But – I hear you objecting - you are not wealthy, you have enough, generally speaking, but not too much.  You cannot afford to be extravagant.  You are happy to put in your two pennies – even more – but let’s be reasonable; you are no secret millionaire.

Maybe, maybe not.  I have no way of knowing.  Nor does it especially matter to me.

For here is the truth that Jesus is getting at when he points to a widow with her two pennies as an example, for “she, out of her poverty has put in everything she had.”  The wealth of the church lies in the generosity of those who give, and most of us have more to give than we are prepared to.

Interestingly, Jesus does not pull the widow aside and offer her a seminar in estate planning – though I am sure this would have been useful to her.  But he praises her for her generosity in the here and now.   He does not eye her quietly as the potential donor of a planned gift – though I’m sure he would be glad to help her fill out the paperwork to establish a deferred annuity trust (as I would be glad to help any of you do).  But he celebrates her generosity in the moment.

Jesus and the widow know the same thing: that she can afford to give as much as she wants, because everything she has came from God and everything she is going to have comes from God.  And God will provide.  So, sometimes, you just have to feel free in giving it away.

Most of us are relatively stingy, we are the wrong kind of widow – the kinds who hoard it for another day, willing to be praised in death for our careful planning, but not willing to risk being generous in life.

Don’t get me wrong, God accepts both kinds of generosity (and several kinds of credit cards).  But let me ask you this – what is going on with these secret millionaires?  What are they waiting for?  They were never going to use the money for themselves anyway.  It’s only a kind of neurosis that leaves them so rich at the end of their lives.

It is, of course, a lovely thing to be able to leave a generous fortune to your town, your school, your favorite charity… even your church, when you die.  But how much better to also be giving while you are alive.

What a shame that the widows who were secret millionaires never knew the feeling that the widow of Zarephath knew, or the widow with her two pennies in the Gospel.  What a shame they never knew the lightness in your step that you get from giving; never knew how tall they’d stand despite the toll that age had taken on their bones and their stature.

What a shame to sleep on a proverbial mattress full of money, nursing the secret suspicion that God doesn’t care about you, and would never provide for you.

You and I are widows, whose lives have known loss and pain and misery. And by the grace of God we have also known healing and comfort and love.  Maybe we are secret millionaires, maybe not.  Maybe that remains to be seen.  Maybe we have plans to leave a small or a great fortune to the church – that’s OK, I’m not trying to talk you out of it!  But let’s not be the wrong kind of widows.  Let’s not let our planning for death out-do our generosity in life.

And let’s not assume that all will be well when some other widow leaves her fortune to the church.

For you have a fortune, too, maybe smaller than the person next to you, maybe not.  And I have a fortune, too, by the grace of God.  And we can do a lot better than putting two pennies in, but we can’t do any better than that wonderful, anonymous widow who put in everything she had, and then went back to her pew, over in one of the side aisles, and said her prayers quietly, and thanked God for all that he had given her, and determined that next week she’d be back to do the same again, because doing so she felt better, more fully alive, when she gave away more than anyone thought she could afford.  And after all, everything she had came from God, and everything she was going to have would come from God.  And God will provide.  Why not give a goodly portion of it back to the One who gave it to us in the first place?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 November 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia

A recent book, written by a professor at the Harvard Medical School, purports in its title to provide “Proof of Heaven.”  The author is an experienced and distinguished neurosurgeon who contracted a rare brain illness and fell into a coma for seven days.  I have not read the book, though I’d like to.  I have heard Dr. Eben Alexander talk about his experience in a radio interview, and I must say it is quite remarkable.  According to promotional material for the book, “While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.”

The material difference between Dr. Alexander’s book and another recent book, “Heaven is for Real,” is that the former was written by a neurosurgeon and the latter is the account of a four-year-old boy whose near-death experience is recounted by his father.

Let the reader understand that the neurosurgeon is supposed to have greater credibility than the four-year-old boy.  This seems an open question to me, and perhaps it will seem so to other people of faith, too.  After all, Jesus never said of neurosurgeons that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these, but I verge on digression.

The titles of both books seem to be answering questions that have not actually been on my mind.  Heaven is for Real?  Yes, thank you, I have been working with that assumption for quite a while.  Proof of Heaven was not something I was anxiously awaiting, nor would I have expected a considered treatment of such a thing to come from Harvard Medical School.

St. John the Divine received not a single degree from Harvard, nor is it widely suspected that he was in a coma when his vision of things to come was given to him.  We heard a bit of it tonight, particularly the tantalizing image of “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God….”  This image has captivated the Christian imagination for centuries.  Perhaps part of the reason it has a grip on us is that the old Jerusalem is such a mess – and a useful marker for all the countless other messes we human beings seem to make of things.  And yet we are not without hope for Jerusalem or for ourselves.

Jerusalem, the city that is holy to all three great monotheistic religions, is a place of division, disquiet, and discord.  It did not get this way overnight.  Centuries of warfare, hatred and distrust have contributed to this reality, and there is blame a-plenty to go around on every side.  The point is this: Jerusalem is no heaven.  It is, however, a place where God has chosen repeatedly to make himself known, even to allow his sacred Presence to rest there, where the Temple once stood, in a way that he would no where else rest.  Many of us believe that God’s Divine Presence rests there even now, mysteriously hidden behind the cracks between the stones that once provided the foundation for his holy Temple.

It has never occurred to me that someone might need to prove that God is to be found there by the Western Wall.  Either you believe it or you don’t.  Either you are on the way to believing it, or you are on the way to dismissing it.  Once you were a believer, now you are not.  Once you doubted, but now you believe.  These aspects of faith are not built on proof, and they surely do not require a near death experience of the kinds recounted in the books I mentioned.

Many of us have already come to know that life itself is a near death experience.  Life in this world is never very far from death.  It is a very recent idea – very much promoted, I suspect in places like Harvard Medical School – that life and death are any further away from other than arm’s length.  Most of our ancestors knew better than that.

For two nights of the year the church makes a special effort to re-assert this truth: that life in this world is a near-death experience.  Death comes to us all, and when it does, God has someplace to lead our souls.  I rejoice to think that an ivy league neurosurgeon is able to participate in this revelation – that has also been given to children not yet in kindergarten – that God has another life for us to live in a new Jerusalem where his Divine Presence is also to be found, perhaps more obviously than amongst the mortar and stone of the Western Wall of the old Jerusalem.  These two nights of the Christian year are meant to celebrate, on the one hand the saints whose holiness of life has been rewarded already and who rest in the nearer presence of God’s love in the heavenly regions.  And on the other hand, all the other souls, for whom we think there is work to be done before reaching their heavenly reward.  To my thinking, it is extremely helpful to think that God affords such opportunities to us, the work of his own fingers. He is creating a new Jerusalem for us to make our home; but some of us may get there faster and more easily than others!

In days gone by we used to think of these things in terms of gated communities.  Heaven, on the one hand, where Peter stood by the pearly gates.  And Purgatory, on the other hand, which was its own quite separate neighborhood, and which required a lot of upward mobility if you were ever to find your way out.  (The third option – which includes weeping and gnashing of teeth would seem to involve something more like a cage than a gate – but that’s another sermon.)

These days it seems unwise of many of us to speculate about how God has organized life in the New Jerusalem, which we are told has twelve gates, with walls built of jasper, and a river flowing through the middle of the street.  Organization has never seemed like one of God’s strong suits anyway.  Un-wiser, still to give up hope for such a city that lies beyond the grave, and beyond the end of time.

To the church’s way of thinking, these things require no proof, and are, in fact, un-provable.  So the saints themselves are proof enough – brothers and sisters in Christ who simply lived their lives in such a way as to lift our eyes to heaven and dream of a new Jerusalem.

What a shame it would be if we’d been waiting all this time for the testimony of a neurosurgeon who could attest to what we have known all along, to what the saints themselves point toward.

What a shame it would be if it had required such a brush with death to bring this news at last to the world.

Why should we have to fall into a coma in order to learn what the church long ago taught us: that God made us to be pilgrims who have someplace to go, not only in this life but in the life to come – a lesson the saints have always taught us?  We already know that life is a near-death experience.  Some of us know it better than others.  Some have had to live closer to death than others.

Why should we have to fall into a coma to dream of angels who guide us through the heavenly regions?

Dr. Alexander recounts that after a week of sickness that brought him near death, his eyes popped open, his life was restored, and he was given the gift of a vision of life bigger than he had heretofore imagined.  This story should sound familiar to nearly every Christian – for it is our story.  Some time after losing our innocence we discover that the world around us, or maybe the world inside our own minds, or maybe both, is dark and getting darker.  But our encounter with the living God awakes us from our descent into darkness and shows us a new life, a new reality – tantalizingly real, somehow apparent in this present tense, but not yet ours to claim. entirely. 

The vision of the new Jerusalem changes our lives even though we cannot yet emigrate there.  But the vision has shown us that there are enough gates for four-year-olds and neurosurgeons, and maybe even for Episcopal priests to enter in.  And although I don’t yet know the details, I give thanks for all the saints, who have lived their lives to show you and me the Way.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

All Saints’ Day 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Heaven has been much on my mind lately.  Last week we celebrated All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days – both of which invite the mind to consider heaven.  Yesterday we laid to rest a dear and holy member of this parish, whose death put me in mind of heaven.  So, thoughts of heaven have been very present to me this past week or so.

You might think that today’s Gospel reading is about heaven.  Today we hear Jesus responding to a question from a religious leader – which is the greatest commandment.  And Jesus gives an entirely uncontroversial answer.  He gives, in fact, the correct answer – for this was a question not of opinion, but of commitment to established biblical teaching.  The Jewish tradition already knew where in Torah the answer to this question was to be found – which is the greatest commandment.  It’s not even a hard question, it’s a little like asking what are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer; even if you don’t know how it continues, you could probably come up with “Our Father.”

An interesting thing happens in this little discussion between Jesus and the un-named scribe.  Since the scribe asked the question, you’d think it would be him who evaluated Jesus’ answer.  But in the matter of just a few sentences, St. Mark makes it clear that in fact, Jesus is now judging the reaction of the scribe, and judging it quite positively, since the scribe agrees with Jesus.  And Jesus says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

In the Gospels we often hear the terms “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” used interchangeably.  Because of this mix of terminology, it’s easy to reach the conclusion that Jesus is talking about that misty place beyond the clouds where we tell children people go after they die.  But this is not quite right.  When Jesus said to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” he was not telling him that death was imminent.  It’s more like he was telling him, “You’re getting warmer…”

You remember how we did this when we were kids and our brother or sister was looking for something that we’d hidden.  “You’re getting colder,” we’d say as they moved away from the concealed object.  “You’re getting warmer,” we’d tell them as they moved toward the closet where it was hidden, or under the sofa, or wherever.

Jesus’ ministry was always about the kingdom of God.  So many times in his encounters with religious leaders, he’d had to say to them, “You’re getting colder.”  But here, rehearsing the greatest commandment to love God and love your neighbor, and remembering its preeminence among all the other rules of Jewish law, it delights Jesus to say to the scribe, “You’re getting warmer, warmer, warmer… you’re boiling hot now!”

These days we have forgotten so much about the kingdom of God, we confuse it with heaven – and often think of it as nothing more than a great retirement community in the sky, where the food is better than average, and the weather is better than Florida.  But when we think this way, we are only getting colder.  Jesus is not teaching about what happens to us in the life to come, he is teaching about life in this world.  He is not talking about a reward that awaits us after death, he is talking about a way of living on this side of the grave.  And when we begin to suspect that this talk about the kingdom of God has something to do with how we live our lives in the here and now, then we are getting much warmer.  Remember that John the Baptist came proclaiming the kingdom of God, and Jesus did the same.  This was the message they both began with: the kingdom of God has come near.  But what does this mean?  What are we supposed to do about it?

These days the church cannot escape the temptation to speak of our work in terms of commerce.  We talk about church shopping, marketing, and we often say that we have to be clear about what kind of religion we are selling.  I don’t much like the analogies from which that language springs, but if we must borrow our language and thinking from commerce, then I think we’d do much better to think in terms of construction than selling.  (Oh, I know they are related, but work with me here.)  For we have been called to build up the kingdom of God in this world.  This is our mission and our daily concern in the church.  How can we build up the kingdom of God?

Please note that this is not a call to establish a theocratic state, nor an insistence that America is a Christian nation, nor an assertion of so-called biblical ethics, nor a demand that the Ten Commandments be hung on the walls of our courthouses.  In all these endeavors, I fear, we’d be getting colder.

There are two phases in building up the kingdom of God, but it’s OK if they happen out of sequence.  Phase One is to worship the one, true, and living God, that is, to love him with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.  Phase Two is to love your neighbor as yourself, which is to say, follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do for you.  When we do this, we are getting warmer.

You would not think these two phases would be hard to manage – especially since the order of them doesn’t much matter – begin with Phase Two and then move on to Phase One: it’s OK!  But the story of faith - for both Jews and Christians – has been a story of struggle to be attentive to these two phases of building up the kingdom of God.

I’m sometimes asked these days, about the state of health of the Episcopal Church – which has been rife with conflict, lawsuits, discord, and decline over the past few decades.  Will we survive?  Will the Anglican Communion, of which we are a part, also survive, since it, too, faces many struggles?

How can we answer these questions?  Who knows what will become of our institutions?  Not me.  These are tricky questions, that, I guess require tricky answers, which I sometimes feel able to take a stab at.  But there is a less tricky answer to be given in response to whether or not our church structures will survive and grow: that depends on how much we want to work to build up the kingdom of God.  Because the kingdom of God is very near you right now, and building it up is all about what we do in this life, not about what happens to us in the life to come.

It sometimes feels to us as though we ourselves or the church at large is getting colder about all this – moving further and further away from building up the kingdom of God.  And I think you know it when you feel it.  I tend to feel this way – as if we are getting colder – at committees, and meetings and councils of the church where talk is cheap and plentiful.  And I feel we are getting warmer whenever we are doing things that seem to echo with the great commandment to love God and love his neighbor.

Many of you know by know my recitation of the things we do that get us warmer:  when we are at prayer or worship, or our voices are raised in song; when we are caring for the homeless and the hungry; when we are taking old things and making them new, giving them new life; when we are feeding one another at our tables; when we are attentive to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and the dying.

This Parish was built to be a place that knew the kingdom of God was very near, not beckoning us beyond the grave.  It was built to be a place where people could get warmer, warmer, warmer, even boiling hot in their search for God.  And I pray that it will always be so.

Next week, I can promise you, when I stand in the pulpit, I will be talking about money – I have been reading ahead and I happen to know that the Gospel invites me to do so.  And besides, next Sunday is Commitment Sunday when we make our pledges of financial support to the Parish.  I am regularly encouraged – and there are times when I am sure that this encouragement is right – to follow the examples of professional fund raisers, since there is an entire industry of people out there who are trying to get you to give your money to various causes.  And there are times, when I think it is a good idea to take this advice, to follow the best practices of fund raising, so that we can be accountable and successful in what we do.

But more urgently, I am called to remind you of the kingdom of God, which we are asked to build up in the here and now.  This is holy work that you and I have been called to do, and we can only do it together.  It delights me to know that year after year we seem to be getting warmer and warmer as we work for the kingdom of God in this place, as we remember that it is not some distant cloudy land that we will wander through in robes of white when the last trumpet has sounded.  But the kingdom of God is near you – it is here, it is now.

Everything we do, we do for this kingdom, out of love for its king, who gave us every gift, and who lived and died for us and rose from the dead, that our lives might be shaped not by the forces of this world, but by the commandments of a greater kingdom, where we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all souls, all our strength, and all our mind.  This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, and on their foundations we are building the kingdom of God, by his grace!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 November 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia