Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Father Kenworthy's sermon here.

Preached by Father Stuart Kenworthy

5 August 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

In the early 2000’s, researchers at Cornell University conducted an experiment about people’s eating habits. Participants were simply asked to eat a bowl of soup, and to stop eating when they felt full. Easy enough. The trick was that some of the bowls of soup were just bowls of soup, but some of the bowls were not. They were attached to a pump that continuously refilled the soup from the bottom without the eater being any the wiser. Picture the never-ending soup bowl lunch special at Olive Garden – just a lot sneakier. There was always soup in the bowl – the participants could eat and eat and eat, and the soup would never run out.  

And as you might have already guessed, the people sitting before the magical refilling soup bowls did just that – they ate, and ate, and ate. Across the board, the participants eating from the refilling bowls ate more than the other soup eaters, and they didn’t indicate that they felt stuffed or even that they noticed that they had eaten more than the bowl looked as if it would allow. They just ate and ate and ate. Who knows – they might have been content to continue eating into infinity if there had also been a magical refilling bread basket and a magical refilling glass of Chianti.

The question was…why? Why didn’t they notice how much they were eating? Why were they deceived by a ploy that, one would imagine, should have become evident about 15 or 20 spoonfuls in?     Well, apparently, contrary to what our mothers always told us, it’s actually hard for our eyes to be too big for our stomachs. If our eyes can be deceived into thinking we’re eating a “normal” sized meal, our stomachs will happily play along. We hear about this all the time in reports about the gradual growth in dinner plates and paper cups and portion sizes that has given us plates as big as manhole covers, 64 oz. gigantor gulps, and double supersized shovels-full-o’ French fries. And why are our stomachs so happy to oblige our big eyes? Well, according to some scientists, it’s because we are built for scarcity. Throughout history, generations of men and women have had to live on very, very little, and so when they were presented with a feast, their bodies basically told them, “Eat as much as you can, because you aren’t going to be seeing this much food again for a while.” And apparently, we are still programmed to do this. Even when most of us are able to eat three full meals a day, and when we live in a country with the highest obesity rate in history, we still imagine that we are built for scarcity. Our bodies live in fear that we won’t get enough food, and so we ignore our full stomachs and eat and eat and eat.

The world hears this and confidently nods its head. Yes, of course, that’s right; we are built for scarcity; we are bottomless pits of need. We have so many needs that a thoughtful man named Mazlow put them in a nice hierarchy for us so that we might know exactly what our needs are at any given time. If the world is our shepherd, it will tell us that we lack everything. There isn’t enough food to go around – not enough food for the poor in this city, for the families of famine in east Africa, or for the one hundred people around the world who have died from starvation since I began this sermon. There is drought, there is disorder and red tape and politics, and there just isn’t enough food to go around.

And it isn’t just food that we lack, the world whispers. We also lack money and love, meaning and connections. We lack safety and freedom and time. The need goes on and on. And when we start listening to that whispering, we can’t help but go a little crazy. We start slurping up anything and everything we can find while our brains tells us, “Grab this – it might help somehow someday.” We gorge ourselves on any soup we can find: food, power, information, guns, sex. We eat more calories than we can ever use in a day, we gobble up status updates and tweets like they’re real sustenance; we consume people and friendships, we guzzle gas and disposable plastics and Botox and firearms. We eat and eat and eat, all the while hearing the whispers: you are built for scarcity.

But this is a lie. For you and I are not built for scarcity, we are built for abundance. We are created, crafted and knit together, by a loving God who has made us to expect abundance. We are made first in God’s image, not just in the image of our hunt and gather ancestors. We are God’s children, and God gives us every good gift. God gives us the breath in our lungs, the voltage in our cells, the inspiration of our minds and the compassion of our hearts. This is not to say that there is not real need in the world or in our lives – but this need is an aberration, not the rule. The rule is that we are filled, all of us, with all of the fullness of God. And if we really listen to our hearts, we know that to be true. At our core, below the worry and fear, deep in our center where the truth speaks to us in the voice of the Holy Spirit, we know that God will give us our food in due season and satisfy the needs of every living creature.

Deep in our very beings, we know this, and yet we forget this again and again and again. We, like the disciples, look out at the hordes of people covered in need and we panic. Oh no, we think, there are people out there wasting away with need, people with no food, no job, no livelihood, no love, no family, no purpose, no security, no time. And we stand staring at them – or sometimes at ourselves in the mirror – and we feel paralyzed. But then, Jesus arrives. And “when he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’” He says this, John tells us, to test Philip, to see if Philip could remember in the face of the crowds what he – and they – were built for. He says this maybe with a little wink, knowing what he would do, hopeful that the disciples would know that too. But when they don’t, when instead they start talking about six months’ wages and the cheapest bread seller and where was the closest coinstar machine and did anyone have a living social discount, Jesus realizes that his guys will – again – need his help. And so when that famous second-born son, Andrew, shows Jesus the only food he’s been able to find – five barley loaves as dense and heavy as hockey pucks and two shriveled up dried fish – Jesus smiles. He tells the disciples to please show the people to their seats on the grass, gives God thanks for the food they are about to receive, and feeds the people. From a miraculous refilling bread basket. And the people eat and eat and eat, the very food of heaven, the bread of life, the abundance of grace. And then the disciples remember what they’re truly built for.

So it’s okay if we find ourselves swimming in a sense of lack, panicking because the waves of need seem to be ready to swamp our boat. It’s okay; we’re in good company. Like the disciples, we just need to be reminded that there is a way out of the storm; there is a way to silence the howling winds of the world. There is, in fact, only one way, and it’s the way the disciples learned and practiced over and over again. We look to Christ. We look out at the world and look to keep Christ at the center, Christ as the lodestone, so that no matter where our eyes may fall, no matter what the world might show us, no matter what fears and needs and lack we see, we first see Christ standing before us saying I AM. Fear not, I AM. I AM the bread of life. I AM the water of salvation. I AM the good shepherd, and therefore you shall lack nothing.

And the true miracle of this is that when we start living this way, the world changes. When we begin to live in the awareness of God’s abundance, when we claim ourselves as creatures built for that abundance, we begin to change the world in Christ’s name. In our food cupboard, we open our doors to the poor so that they can get their own bread and fishes and cereal and milk. On Saturday mornings, we offer our own miraculous bowls of refilling soup, with baskets of leftover bread that gets made into bread pudding. In our Vacation Music School, we give out the gift of music in this place to all of the children of the neighborhood. We offer a voice to the voiceless, comfort to those who mourn, connection and fellowship to the lonely. And in our worship, we invite people to come to this place to sit at table and be fed, again and again, day after day, week after week, to eat and eat and eat. And Christ standing before us, in this worship and in our ministry and mission, helps us to remember, helps us to listen to that voice deep in our guts, to his voice telling us what we are truly built for. And so sit down here and eat. And then put down your spoon and feed someone else. And together we will all eat and be most satisfied.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

29 July 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

There is hardly a more tantalizing figure in the whole of the Bible than that of Salome. The alluring young woman who dances for her stepfather the king and tricks him into giving her the head of John the Baptist on a platter has captivated the minds of painters and poets for centuries. Artists have drawn her again and again: dancing with long, flowing hair dressed in long, flowing veils; or smoldering with wily, wicked eyes; or gazing down at her gruesome prize with a strange, vacant smile. Authors and composers have written her either as a hapless innocent trapped by her scheming mother or as furious woman scorned, who lashes out at John the Baptist because he will not love her. Choreographers have fashioned their own versions of her infamous dance, usually with hearty helping of sensual looks from beneath lowered lashes and sultry poses in true Walk-Like-An-Egyptian fashion. Recently, she has even shown up as a character in the HBO series True Blood, where she is imagined as a centuries-old, supernatural creature of darkness. But whether portrayed as a victim or a viper…or a vampire…Salome has always been a siren, drawing our attention again and again, taking center stage and refusing to let us look anywhere else.

Salome is such an enticing figure that it is easy to forget that she is not the central character of this Gospel story. She really has only a supporting role; she is so unimportant, in fact, that Mark the Evangelist doesn’t even bother to get her name right, mistakenly calling her Herodias, which is actually her mother’s name. We know her real name, Salome, not from the Bible, but from the writings of the secular historian Josephus. Of course, we should cut Mark a little slack on the name issue, because the first-century Herodians have one of the most twisted and tangled family trees in history. Herodias is Herod the Great’s granddaughter, who first marries Herod the Great’s son, Herod Philip (who is, that’s right, her own uncle), and, then, upon Herod Philip’s death, remarries his brother, named Herod Antipas, who is also her uncle. Thank God Herodias herself thought a little outside the box when it came to baby names.

But her baby, her daughter, no matter her name and no matter how tantalizing her character might be, is not the central figure in this story. The main character here is not Salome, or her mother Herodias; it is not really even John the Baptist, despite the fact that part of the point of story is to explain John’s death. No, the lead character of this story is, somewhat surprisingly, Herod himself. The entire story centers on Herod – his perspective, his actions, his feelings. We hear that Herod is worried about this Jesus he’s been hearing so much about, guessing – wrongly – that he is some strangely recent reincarnation of John the Baptist, whom Herod himself has just had killed. We learn that Herod had actually liked listening to John the Baptist while he was alive, even if his words had confused and frightened him. We see that when John had denounced Herod’s pretzel of a family tree, Herod had tried to protect him from his own vengeful wife by throwing him in the relative safety of prison. We sense Herod’s insane desire for his stepdaughter and his intense frustration when he realized how he had been duped. Throughout this entire passage, it is Herod we come to know best, Herod’s perspective, Herod’s feelings, Herod’s actions. Herod is far, far from heroic, but he is the hero – the deeply flawed, deeply confused, deeply sinful hero – of this story.

But why in the world is this story so much about Herod? Why does Mark present this story from his point of view? Why not use John’s point of view – after all, he’s a character that we actually care about. Why not describe John’s long wait in the dark dampness of the prison, his prayers, his consolation, his courage in continuing to proclaim God’s truth to Herod’s power? Why tell us so much about Herod if he is such an anti-hero? The answer to this question, I believe, lies in the verses of Mark’s Gospel that bookend this story. Just before this passage, Mark describes Jesus’ calling of the twelve and sending them out in pairs to proclaim the message of repentance and to offer healing in his name. We learn that the disciples have gone out and preached the word of God, and that that word has been heard and has changed lives. And the verses that immediately follow the passage we heard today pick up this same thread, describing the disciples joyfully sharing the good news of all that they had done, telling their Lord Jesus how the word they had preached had changed the world.

But sandwiched right in the middle of these stories of powerful, effective discipleship, is the story of Herod, a man who hears the word and has absolutely no idea what to do with it, a man who perhaps could have been a disciple if he had just had the courage to open his heart and let the word in. Herod is a foil for faith, a negative image of all of the people who heard the word and actually listened. It isn’t as if Herod doesn’t know that John the Baptist is speaking the word of God. He knows that John is a holy man rightly dividing the word of truth, and yet he cannot – or will not – allow that word to break in to his own soul. He cannot – or will not – allow that word to change him. And so he does the only thing he can do – he takes that word and hides it away, locking it out of sight, where there is no risk that it might actually do something, might actually change him or his family or his world. Herod tries to force that word into a form of his own choosing, shaping it in his own image. He stuffs it into the darkness of a dungeon in the hopes that when it comes back into the light it might look more like he wants it to look and sound more like he wants it to sound. No matter how much his soul is drawn to this wild and wooly wilderness prophet, Herod can never really hear what John has to say. He never lets the word in; he never allows himself to be open enough to actually listen. And so his story ends in tragedy, with neighbor manipulating neighbor, with a beautiful, God-created body transmuted into an object of destruction, with deception, and death, and a body laid in a tomb with no hope of an Easter morning.

Imagine what it would have been like if the Herod’s story had been different. Imagine what it would have taken for Herod to hear the word and to risk real change. Imagine how he might have found the courage to say to John, “I hear you, but your words frighten me. Help me to live without fear; help me to repent, to change, to mold my life in the shape of your proclamation. Give me a word, and give me the power to let that word create in me a new life of repentance and forgiveness, of listening and of love, of power in weakness, of brothers and sisters in Christ, of a family shaped by the tree of the cross – a life where there is no more making an idol out of human flesh, no more trickery, confusion, and fear. Speak, John. Speak, prophet, for the servant of the living God is listening.”

Imagine what it would have taken for Herod to change, to let the Word change him. And now imagine what it might take for you to do the same thing. Imagine what it might take for you to let yourself be truly and forever changed. For you have heard the word this morning – you have heard it spoken and sung, proclaimed in your midst, and you will meet the Word made flesh at this altar. What would it be like to let that Word in and be changed?

We all know how easy it is to live like Herod, to hear the word and have no idea what to do with it because of our own stubbornness and fear. We all know how easy it is to try to stuff the word of God down into some private prison in our hearts and to bring it into the light only on Sundays, or when we are in pain, or when we already feel safe, or when we need something, or when we are surrounded by people who already agree with us. But this morning, God is inviting us into a still more excellent way – to let that word go free, to let that word truly reign in our hearts, to let that word shape every word we speak, every action we take, every emotion we feel – to let that word truly change us.

This is a bold thing to contemplate, to truly let the word of God in. It takes courage to listen, courage to let ourselves be molded to the shape of that word. It takes courage to change. But here is something that just might help: we are, in fact, already changed. We are already changed. This is the hope that we find in Christ – we are already changed; Christ’s death and resurrection have changed everything, God’s adopting us as heirs of Christ has changed everything, the Holy Spirit’s movement in the Church and in our own baptisms has already changed everything. We are already changed from now into everlasting life, and this is a change that we can believe in. So why not live like it? Why not let ourselves live in harmony with that truth? Why not fearlessly fling open the doors of our hearts and let the word of God really, truly, beautifully, wonderfully, miraculously change us? Why not give that word center stage and refuse to look anywhere else, and let that word dance?

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

15 July 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

The story is old of a boy, whose parents are killed in a plane crash.  The boy is taken in by his father’s elder brother and his wife, who love him as though he is their own son.  As an adolescent, the boy became bookish and nerdy, self-conscious about his limitations: his eyeglasses, his fear of heights, his clumsiness, and his lack of athletic ability.  The death of his parents haunted him, and the reticence of his aunt and uncle on the topic of the boy’s natural parents left him feeling guilty for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.  In a tragic twist of fate, the boy’s uncle is murdered in a robbery, making him a sort of orphan twice-over, and compounding his gnawing sense of guilt and inadequacy. 

Not far away, another boy’s life is similarly shaped by the death of his parents at gunpoint in a robbery.  This boy – a child of privilege - is raised by a trusted family friend.  As he grows up, he transforms the deep resentment he harbors about his parents’ murder into a conviction to avenge their death, and dreams of ways to turn his yearning for justice into action.  Despite his inherited wealth, he shares with the first boy, the deep sense of loss that is accompanied by a kind of survivor’s guilt, a child’s longing for his parents, and an inner wound that can never really be healed.

The boys’ stories are tragic and unique.  Their suffering and loss are not commonplace.  And yet their stories have been told and retold for decades, because they tap into a sense of loss, injustice, guilt, and despair that is shared by many others.  Their stories are also told because of how the boys channel that loss, injustice, guilt, and despair as they grow up; how they harness it to shape their adult lives, to become men of power with a mission to do good in the world.

We could imagine such children being ruined by their loss, by their fate.  We could imagine them wallowing in their grief and never learning to grow beyond it.  Or, we could imagine that their grief would shape them in other, twisted ways, and we would forgive them for it because of their suffering.

The boys’ stories are told because they are fundamentally stories of weakness – the unfair weakness of cruel loss, loneliness, and irrational guilt – and because almost everyone knows these feelings at some point in their lives.  The boys are archetypes of hopelessness transformed, of strength forged out of weakness, and of justice struggling to prevail in a world that seethes with corruption.

And you know who these boys grew up to become, because their stories became famous about fifty years or so ago, when they first were told.  And lately their stories have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, being re-told over and over again in new and ever-more dramatic ways so that new generations can tap into their message of weakness, guilt, and despair overcome by strength, resourcefulness and hope.

Do you recognize the stories of these two boys, whose names you know?  Do you know who they grew up to become?  The first boy’s name was Peter, the second was Bruce.  They grew up to become, respectively, Spiderman and Batman.  And this summer their stories are being re-told again with new cinematic sophistication, bringing new audiences in touch with these archetypes of weakness transformed.

There is a much older story of such weakness told in the New Testament, part of which we heard this morning when St. Paul tells us that a “messenger of Satan” was sent to torment him, to “keep [him] from being too elated.”  We don’t know how exactly the messenger of doom manifested itself to Paul – he only calls it a “thorn” in his flesh. But we know that it leaves him praying desperately for God’s help.  He wasn’t a boy at the time – he was already an adult – but I think he had something in common with those two other boys who must have lain in their childhood beds and prayed for their own thorns to be taken from their flesh, who must have begged God to give them their parents back, who must have stained their pillows with tears at the persistent thought of their own helplessness to save their parents, to protect them, and at the permanence and finality of their deaths.

The boys’ stories are so powerful because we all fear such tears, such weakness, such powerlessness, and we are all subject to them.  We all harbor a secret dread of the messenger of Satan who can ruin everything in our lives.  The death of a parent – the murder of a parent (or of a child) – is surely brought by such an awful messenger.

Superheroes like Spiderman and Batman represent one kind of hope – that something magnificent can be wrought from such loss.  Even if you are bookish, nerdy, clumsy, and afraid of heights, you could end up swinging from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of justice and all that’s right in the world, if only you are lucky enough to be bitten by the right spider!

But most of us are not so lucky.

Most of us are stuck with our normal, human limitations.  Most of us are not given super powers, and most of us are not as well funded as Bruce Wayne, most of us don’t even have an Alfred waiting to assist us as required!  Most of us are stuck with the limitations of our fears, our inadequacies, our guilts, and our losses.  Most of us are more like Saint Paul than we are like Batman or Spiderman.  Most of us pray for the thorn in our flesh to be taken away, and most of us know what it feels like when that prayer seems to go un-answered.

But here, Paul has something to say to us – a secret that neither Batman nor Spiderman knows.  For while he is clear that the thorn in his flesh – whatever it is – is never removed, he tells us that a very clear answer to his prayer was given to him.  He hears the voice of Jesus speak to him:  “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Now, you might say that St. Paul is one of the superheroes of the New Testament.  His story is perfectly suited to a comic book or graphic novel format.  He starts out with a career as a persecutor of the church, then he has a dramatic conversion complete with amazing visuals, he is taken in by a mysterious mentor to instruct and prepare him for his work, then his ministry carries him to the ends of the known world - with shipwrecks, prison breaks, heavenly visions, and all manner of excitement.  But, importantly, Paul is given no superpowers. In fact, he doesn’t even get a uniform or a cape.  Indeed, while he is earning his title of Apostleship, he is the recipient of the visits from the messenger of Satan.  His blessings are confounded by his own limitations.  The right spider does not bite him.  He has no inheritance to fund his work, and no Alfred to support him in it.

Paul has only his appeals to his Lord, only his prayers.  He yearns for strength where he finds only weakness, which he cannot overcome.  Perhaps he still harbors guilt about his persecutions.   He knows he is inadequate to the task at had.  So he prays and he prays and he prays.

And an answer, at last, is given to his prayer: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

And here, in a sense, is the Christian spider-bite.  Here is the secret that transforms our weakness into an unstoppable, super power: the amazing gift of grace that knows its perfection in weakness and that proved itself in the weakness of the death on the Cross, by which God proved that love conquers death, because it is willing to die for the sake of others and able to rise from the grave.

No one thought that Jesus was a superhero for very long.  His miracles seemed to run out when he was forced to carry his own Cross.  And even the good news of his resurrection was slow to spread.  He was supposed to be the Messiah but he did not conquer the Roman emperor, he didn’t even own a sword, he couldn’t muster an army, and was followed by sinners, tax-collectors, and women of questionable repute.

If Jesus is archetypal of anything, he is an archetype of weakness.  The persistent image of his collapsed, drained, and lifeless body still affixed to the instrument of its torture and death is put ever before our eyes, as if to say, “You think you suffer?  You think you have a thorn in your flesh?  You think you feel weak and helpless?  How do you think I feel?”

But this is not what he says to us when we feel weak – although he would be justified in saying it.  Instead he says, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

You are lonely and you feel unloved – my grace is sufficient for you.

You are sick and frightened about the future – my grace is sufficient for you.

You have lost your job and don’t know how you will survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

Your child is hurt and may not survive – my grace is sufficient for you.

War is raging all around you – my grace is sufficient for you.

What kind of an answer is that?!?!? you want to ask.  What is grace in the face of murder, in the face of a messenger from Satan!?!?!?  What is grace when I am still left feeling weak and helpless, and not so much as a spider web to swing from to lift me from my despair?

“My child,” the voice says, “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Here is the spider that bit tax collectors and sinners, that made Mary Magdalene a household name, and that transformed the vision of prisoners and slaves, who delighted to sing about it from the depth of their weakness, their powerlessness, their desperation.

You want to see power at work?  Look at the weakness of the Cross?  Has it not changed the world?

This is the marvelous message being touted at the moment by American nuns – who have deliberately chosen lives defined by the weakness of poverty, but who will not, cannot be silenced by bishops who live in palaces.  Christ’s grace is sufficient for them.  The power of their defiance – in the name of those who are too powerless to speak up for themselves – is as though they were rolling back their sleeves to show us the spider-bite of grace that makes them strong.

This, too, is the work being done at the only Episcopal school in the City of Philadelphia – a school whose only entrance requirement is that students be sufficiently poor.  We started this school because Christ’s grace is sufficient.

If you want to see heroes transformed by grace, come to the Saturday Soup Bowl where volunteers feed hungry people every Saturday morning in the Parish House.  There you will see that Christ’s grace is sufficient, because of the people who have been bitten, and delight to see God’s power in them perfected in weakness.

Go to the Welcome Center – a ministry for homeless people that we helped establish – and see how Christ’s grace is sufficient in the ministry of care and love there.

If you want to see Christ at work, look for weakness and you will find his power being perfected there – wherever people are willing to rely on his grace.  As St. Paul says, “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Chances are, you and I are not going to be bitten by a spider that gives us super powers.  Chances are that if we put on a spider suit, people will only laugh at us, and if we try to swing from rooftops, we will probably fall.  Chances are that you and I are not superheroes… even though we suffer the same sadnesses, doubts, griefs, injuries, injustices, indignities, sorrows, and weaknesses that everyone suffers.

I hope you never feel that you suffer something so horrible that it feels like it was brought to you by a messenger of Satan, but I know that life brings such sufferings to those who don’t deserve them.  And should that day come that you wish you could be a superhero, but discover that you are stuck being your same, old, limited, human self.  I hope you will look up at a Cross and see the Man of Sorrows hanging there, and take note of how weak and pathetic and lifeless he looks hanging there…

…and then remember how he changed the world when he came to save it.  Remember that his life could not be buried by the grave…

… and remember the sound of his voice reassuring you in your moment of pain and sorrow: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

8 July 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

Remember that Job, who was a blameless and upright man, had lost everything: his seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants to marauders.  And then his seven sons and three daughters were killed when, while they were eating and drinking together as a family at their eldest brothers’ home, the house collapsed and killed them all, leaving Job bereft.  Robbed of his wealth and his family, a storm at sea would have been a welcome distraction to Job.  The violent hailstorm that tore through Philadelphia the other night would have seemed like a bright moment beneath the dark skies of Job’s life.

Job, of course, is a stand-in for anyone who suffers – and especially for those whose afflictions are inexplicable and unfair.  His life is the embodiment of the ancient question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  And his story, as it is told in the Bible, resolutely refuses to provide an answer to that question.

Its climax comes when after sitting through the lengthy diatribes of his friends, Job hears the voice of God speak to him from the whirlwind, of God’s own awesome power, and knowledge, and wisdom.

“Where were you, little man,” God sneers,

“when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

and caused the dawn to know it place?

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?

Who has cleft a channel for the rain,

and a way for the thunderbolt?

Can you bind the chains of Pleiades,

of loose the cords of Orion?

Do you give the horse his might?

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,

and spreads his wings toward the south?

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up,

and makes his nest on high?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? 

He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

This is a response, of course, to the question of why bad things happen to good people, but it is no answer.

The story does tell us that Job was given seven new sons and three new daughters, and that he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.  The story does not tell us anything at all about the latter generations of Job, but I think we actually know a great deal about them.

I think we have been hearing about the children of the latter generations of Job in the news these past weeks.  I think some of them have been testifying in court, as they choke back tears, about their suffering at the hands of an abuser.

In another courtroom, we have been hearing about how the church failed to protect children in her care, and how her priests used them for their pleasure.

Elsewhere, there is a four year old child, who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, and whose parents are now numbering his days.

There is a man who is burying his father this weekend long before it was time to do so.

There are girls who are being sold into sexual slavery somewhere in the world today without any idea of the misery that awaits them.

There are mothers who cannot scrape together another enough food in the refugee camp to keep their children healthy and alive for another week.

There are families who are trying to plan right now for what it will be like when Dad is gone, and wondering if he will make it through the summer.

There are children who are being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, whose parents are trying to figure out how their lives have now been changed for ever.

There are families who have been counting the weeks of unemployment as they go by, and wondering what will happen when the checks stop coming but still there is no work.

There is a road in Virginia that a couple will not drive down, since it passes the tree that marks the spot where the ambulance took their son’s body away, when the tree would not yield to his car late one night.

There is an altar over there, vested with a quilt that reminds us of those taken from this parish before doctors knew how to treat AIDS.

There are bodies, or pieces of bodies, still being shipped in flag-draped boxes to an Air Force base not too far from here, from a war no one is very interested in anymore.

These are the latter generations of Job.  These are families who, not long ago, were just eating and drinking together, and whose lives collapsed around them, crushing them, robbing them of whatever joys they had.  It’s true that the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, but he gave no guarantees to his descendants.  And we are all the latter generations of Job: all contending with the same question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

It’s a good thing that Job never heard the story of Jesus calming the storm.

What is a storm on the Sea of Galilee to Job or to his latter generations?   How can the disciples who are with Jesus sound like anything but pathetic whingers to those who have experienced the sufferings of the latter generations of Job?  A strong swimmer could probably make it to shore from almost anywhere in the midst of that lake.

It is telling that nowhere in the Bible – not even in the one book of it that spends pages and pages and pages exploring the question – is the answer given to that old question: Why do bad things happen to good people?  There is only the whirlwind, and the voice that speaks from it: “Gird up your loins like a man: I will speak to you, and you shall answer me!”

I cannot tell if the winds that stir up the waters of Galilee come from that same whirlwind, but I suspect they do.  Even the breezes that fill the sails of the boats on the lake, I suppose, come from the same source – from the same Spirit who once brooded over the face of the waters that would eventually reveal the lake we often call a sea.  I know that a voice does not often speak from the whirlwind.  It’s own lingering winds speak in mostly softer tones now, even when the weather is rough, leaving so much more open to interpretation.  And leaving the big question still unanswered.  Responded to, but fundamentally unanswered.  God is unwilling to make his ways known to us in so many things, and certainly in this – one of the deepest and most confounding mysteries of life.

But something did change when the disciples found themselves frightened in the boat that day, when the windstorm arose, and still the Lord was dozing in the bow, and they shook him and accused him: “Don’t you care that the wind and waves are beating us, that we are soaked and taking on water?  Don’t you see how frightened we are, and don’t you care?

The wind was right there, and it was the perfect opportunity for him to use it as his own megaphone; to speak through it so that they could be sure not to miss a word he said.  He could have taught them a lesson that day and put them back in their places.  He surely knew the lines:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you entered into the springs of the sea,

or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Can you send forth lightnings,

that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?

Is the wild ox willing to serve you? 

Will he spend the night at your crib?

Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?”

Oh, he knew the lines, and could have recited them with authority from the prow of the boat.  What right had they to call on him, to accuse him of not caring?  Had they not yet guessed at his fate?  Had they no hint of his mission?  Did it never dawn on them that this would not end well for him?  Had they no faith?

But he did not use the wind for his voice, though it was his breath that gave the wind its life, its force, its power.  He did not rebuke them much at all.  He only challenged their fear.  And instead of speaking through the might wind, he spake to it:  “Peace.  Be still.”

These words still provided only a response to their fear; it was no answer to it.

We latter children of the latter generations of Job, know our fair share of fear and misery.  God has not yet put a stop to it.  God has not yet given us an answer as to why it happens thus.  But he has given us something new.  He has spoken differently with the wind, and his word brings new promise:  Peace.  Be still.

Bad things still happen to good people: this is as true as it has ever been.  The latter generations of Job, like our own, have known suffering and sadness and misery and pain.  But the wind no longer scolds us to keep us in our place.  Instead there is a new command given to the wind that so frightens us: Peace.  Be still.

And it has been so long since we knew stillness or peace, that this seems like a very odd response to our fears, and certainly no answer about all the bad things that happen to good people.

But we find that as prayers go, this one – built on his command to the wind and the waves – serves us well.  Peace.  Be still.  And we think that in the calm we find faith… which is exactly what we need, and is our rightful inheritance, as the latter generations of Job, who was a blameless and upright man, and whose fortunes were restored by the God who made him, and who never stopped loving him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 June 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia