Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

Several years ago, the BBC released an epic documentary series entitled “Planet Earth.” This production was the culmination of five years of extraordinarily intense work. Film crews traveled to the ends of the earth with high definition camera equipment in hand to record some of the rarest and most beautiful sights on the planet. They sat in blinds for months to capture the mating dance of a shy jungle bird, they weathered storms and ice to get just a few moments of footage of the rare snow leopard, they dangled out of helicopters to film enormous flocks of birds as they flashed and wheeled across the sky. The series is truly stunning stuff. Like everything that the BBC does, it is, in a word, brilliant.

One of the most memorable scenes for me was of a dark, lush South American rainforest. A giant tree has just crashed to the ground, ripping open a bright hole of sunlight in the thick canopy of the jungle, and what happens next is breathtaking. In seamless, fluid, time-lapse photography, the film shows us what the narrator calls the “race to the light.” Suddenly awakened by this shocking stream of sunlight, plants of all shapes and sizes start growing as fast as they possibly can, pushing up slender stems from the rich black earth, stretching and reaching as far as they can, wrapping long tendrils around tree trunks and pushing their fat leaves in the faces of other plants that are trying to grow just as fast as they are. It is an explosion of green, of plants yearning for the sun above their heads, longing to be the first green and growing thing to expand into that lone hole of light that beckons from above. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the growth stops. The hole is filled, the sun blocked out by all of the new growth, and the forest resumes its natural cycle of birth and death, of breathing out and breathing in.

It is a remarkable, stimulating, moving scene of Creation at work, a reminder that even with only the tiniest window of hope, even in a fierce plant-eat-plant world, growth happens. The conditions may be harsh, the moment of opportunity may be brief, but growth happens. We see this all the time in the city. Grass winds its way into the tiniest crack in the sidewalk and shoots up into the sun; flowers planted right on the sidewalk’s edge turn bright faces to the sky and hold on for dear life as they are whipped about by each passing truck; whole forests of majestic weeds tower in impossibly tight alleyways. With the smallest of opportunities, the narrowest of constraints, growth happens. And this, Jesus says, is just like the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is like a man who does only one little thing and then reaps a bumper crop of wheat. He scatters seed on the ground and then basically does nothing. He doesn’t hoe, he doesn’t water, he doesn’t fertilize or clear weeds or prune or pinch or run to Home Depot to get Turf Builder or Miracle Grow or some other Scott’s brand concoction. He just scatters the seed and waits. He sleeps, he rises, the sun goes up, the sun goes down, he breathes in, he breathes out…and growth happens. The seed becomes a sprout, and then the sprout becomes a stalk, and then the stalk begins to bear fruit until there is a full head of grain bursting and ready to be harvested. The man has no idea how. He has done just one small thing, and growth happens anyway. And this, we are told, is like the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is like the tiniest of seeds that grows into the heartiest of bushes. The mustard seed is so small that when it is cast into the ground it looks less planted and more swallowed up by the earth. The mustard seed is so small that Mark tells us it is the smallest of all seeds even though it really isn’t – but that’s his point. It’s so small it should be the smallest seed on the earth; it’s so fragile, so seemingly insignificant, and yet when it grows it becomes a full, vibrant, life-giving bush, where birds find home and safety and a place to sing their songs. This sanctuary begins with just one small thing, and growth happens anyway. And this, Jesus says, is just like the kingdom of God. 

The kingdom of God was ushered into this world as one, tiny, vulnerable, seemingly insignificant thing – an infant boy child born of a poor virgin in the backwater of Bethlehem. But this child sprouted and grew into a man, and began scattering seeds all over Judea – “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” “Your sins are forgiven you; rise up and walk.” “Do this in remembrance of me.” His disciples planted their own seeds in the offering of their teaching and their preaching and their very lives. Then Paul planted, Apollos watered, and Timothy and Barnabas and Lois and Phoebe strew their own seeds and by all of the saints through all of the years, God gave the growth. And so from this one God-made-man, this one moment, the kingdom of God has grown into a forest of mercy and love and truth. It towers around us now, with growth as majestic and as immovable as a mountain. The kingdom spreads out beneath us thick as a jungle, with green growing things of all shapes and smells, each succulent and bearing fruit. It runs to the very ends of the earth, so that each shrub and bush has room to fan out roots in rich earth, room to find a window of light open to the sun, room for birds to nest in its branches. The kingdom breathes in and breathes out all around us, night after night, day after day. The earth is filled with glory of God as the trees cover the forest and as the waters cover the sea.

And the kingdom is not finished growing. The final harvest has not yet come. You and I stand in a long line of saints and sowers, each of us charged to plant whatever seeds we have, no matter their size. There is room yet in the kingdom for what we have to give, for our own seeds of Gospel proclamation – what we do and what we don’t do; what we say and how we say it; who we choose to embrace and how; how we give of our time, how we spend our money, how we treat our bodies, how we care for Creation, how we  pray, how we reach out to one another, how we look to the poor and the lonely and the sick and the prisoner and the persecuted and the voiceless, how we “proclaim God’s truth with boldness and minister his justice with compassion.” These are the kinds of seeds that you and I can plant, and tiny or not, God will use them to grow a bush, a tree, a forest, a kingdom.

So it turns out, somewhat surprisingly, that today’s parables are not just about planting and growing. They are not just about size and production and harvest. They are also, most profoundly, about fear, about how you and I need have no fear for the kingdom of God or for our place in it. The kingdom will grow, because when God is involved, growth happens. We need not fear that our words are too silly, too insignificant, too small. We just need to plant them anyway, and let God grow them how he will. We need not fear that our ideas aren’t thriving and will never come to anything. We just need to wait and watch as the sower did, paying attention to them as they germinate in the darkness, noticing what they look like when they begin to sprout, and keeping a close eye on them when they begin to bear fruit. And we need not fear even when we see some part of the kingdom topple over, because each such fall leaves behind it a hole where the Son can pour through, an open space for new growth that sprouts and dances and bends into the light. We need not fear. Growth happens, for God gives the growth.

What would you do if you had no fear? What seeds would you plant if you had no fear that they would take root and grow? How would you live if you wholly trusted God to grow good things? Imagine what you would do, what you would say, who you would feed, what good news you would share if you had no fear – and then ask yourself why not? Why not grab your seeds and go? Go out into the city and plant your seeds with boldness. Keep watch for them to grow and bear fruit. And while you’re out there, take a good look at the kingdom of God that is already green and lush and growing all around you. And give thanks. Because it’s a wonderful, beautiful, grace-filled and glorious jungle out there. 

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 June 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

A few years before he took his own life, the American author, David Foster Wallace delivered a college commencement address that has since become rather famous.  In it he said this 

…in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.  There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.  If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough….  It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.  And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.[i]

Wallace went on to make an interesting claim:

…the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

Now, we could debate whether or not the question of sin is only semantics, here, but that’s a discussion for another day.  If you agree with Wallace, as I do, that “everybody worships,” then the only question is: What are you going to worship?  And the next question is: Are you going to worship the things that eat you alive: power, money, beauty, youth?  Or are you going to worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

Earlier in his speech, the writer had deployed a little parable-like story in service to his discussion:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace would go on to say that we are prone to miss the whole world around us, to fail to notice that we are swimming in water, or even to regard the most elemental realities of our lives and the world around us.  He said that it is easy for us to get trapped inside the “tiny skull-sized kingdoms” of our own heads.  And he foreshadowed his own death as he talked about the challenge of “making it to 30, or maybe even 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.”  The latter being a milestone he prevented himself from reaching, albeit, without the use of a firearm.

In the church, we are as prone as everyone else in the world to fall back on our default settings, to take things for granted, and to fail to understand something even as basic as the environment in which we live, the air we breath, the water through which we swim, the food we eat.

In the church we are as prone as everyone else to the temptation to worship the things that will eat us alive.  You have only to pick up the papers, or pay attention to the kinds of things that are happening in other denominations and our own at this very time to see that this is true.

In the church, we say that we are born in the water when we are baptized, but we then go quickly about the business of losing the memory and the meaning of that water.  Having once been dipped in pools of the stuff at our baptisms, that we say gave us new life and that promises us entry in to the life of the world to come, we can just as easily as the next fish turn to our neighbor in the pew and ask, “What the hell is water?”

No one will ever know why that hugely talented and thoughtful writer took his own life.  He was fighting severe depression.  And what can we do but surmise that he could find nothing worth worshiping in the world, and the water, so to speak, overwhelmed him.  In any case, I trust that God now cares for him and has shown him new light and new life.

Thank God, the water does not overwhelm most of us.  But it laps at our thighs and our buttocks; it creeps up to our armpits, and sometimes we find that we have to spit it out, as we fight to keep our heads above it.

So much in life gets ruined.  I found this to be true in the most mundane way not long ago when I wanted to make shortcakes for strawberry shortcake.  I reached up into my cupboard for the box of Bisquick – which is a blessing of untold measure in this world.  I opened the box and peeked inside, because I had a hunch that I was in for trouble – the box had been there, opened, for quite some time, since I last made shortbread or pancakes or anything else you make with Bisquick.

Sure enough, on examination, I could see that the Bisquick mix was speckled with the tiny black polka-dots of what are sometimes called flour beetles or weevils.  So the box had to be thrown out (which is a waste).  And it was a busy day; people were coming over to dinner, and I was running late, as usual.  The strawberries hadn’t even been washed and trimmed yet, but now I had to go out and get a new box of Bisquick.  And even though this was a mundane thing, it just made me think of how easily everything is ruined: all our plans, our schedules, and the cakes we mean to bake, so to speak.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the Bisquick.  The same thing has happened with rice, and with sugar at various points.  And, I have finally begun keeping the flour in an air-tight container, but who knows if that will actually work; the flour has gotten ruined before: it could happen again.

And of course, it’s not like it’s only the things in the cupboard.  It’s how easily everything else in life gets ruined.  I have my list; you have yours – lists of things that have gotten ruined in our lives.  Let’s not argue over whose list is longer.

Things fall apart, remember. 

And as long as things are falling apart and everything gets ruined, I am likely to rely on the default settings of the way I respond to the world around me.  Which means that I am likely to mistakenly believe that the Bisquick was important, and that my powerlessness to keep it bug-free, or to produce strawberry shortcake, apparently effortlessly at the end of the meal – that these were important too.  What am I worshiping here?  Betty Crocker?  Who knows?

But the truth remains that things pile up in life – things far more important than the Bisquick.  And as they do, they seem to press against your chest – or if you want to stick with the fish metaphor, against your gills, making it hard to breathe, hard to swim through the day to day waters of life.  And you could be forgiven for beginning to think the way the Israelites thought when they were wandering in the desert – Why has God put us here, if only to kill us slowly?  If only to starve us to death in the desert?

And if you happen to go to church, as everything gets ruined in the world, and as everything falls apart around you, and as you feel the pressure mounting against your chest, against your gills.  And it’s harder and harder to swim, and you are not sure why you have been put into the world, just to swim meaninglessly amongst all the other fish…

… if you happen to go to church you might find that you are in an antique building surrounded by antique people singing antique music to an antique God.  And should you be unlucky enough to be there for the sermon, you could be congratulated, in many cases, for choosing to snooze rather than walking out in protest or boredom.

But by God’s grace, maybe, just maybe, you would stay long enough to toddle up to the altar rail with all the other fish, and to open your puckered lips for the morsel of food that is distributed there.  And although the little wafer resembles fish food at least as much as it resembles bread, maybe, just maybe, you will hear the words that the priest says as he or she presses it into your hands or onto your tongue: “The Body of Christ.”  And maybe, by God’s grace, at that moment, everything else would fall away from your consciousness, and you would just hear those words echoing in your ears as your saliva and the wine begin to dissolve the dry wafer in your mouth.  And maybe it will occur to you that everybody worships.  And you will ask yourself what you have been worshiping.  And you will ask yourself whether or not you have been worshiping things that eat you alive.

And it’s not much in the way of mental gymnastics for you to begin to see that here you have found an object of worship who prefers to feed you than to eat you alive.  And to feed you with his own self – his own Body, his own Blood, which, though mysterious, strikes you as intimate, as loving, as somehow able to save you and at least some of the things that have been ruined, some of what’s fallen apart in the world.

And it might be the case that when you get up from your knees, and turn to make your way back to your pew, and the unremarkable taste and texture of the bread you just swallowed, the wine you just sipped is already disappearing… it might be that you begin to see the world ever so slightly differently.  It might be that you begin to think to yourself, “This is water, this is water,” as you become aware of the world around you in a new way, rejoicing to think that it is all somehow the work of God’s fingers – just as you are.  And it occurs to you how marvelous it is that there is something to worship – someone to worship – who will not eat you alive, but who prefers to feed you with his Body and Blood.

Because you know what it is like to be eaten alive in this world by all that invites you to chase after money and power and looks and youth.  But here, in this somewhat antique setting, you find a God who wants to feed you, and who wants to do it more or less for free.

He wants to nourish you: body and soul.  He wants to heal everything that is broken, bind up everything that has splintered, restore everything that is ruined, and fix everything that has fallen apart in your life.  For he knows what it is like to swim in this water.  He knows how easily everything is ruined.  And he knows that this is not how it was meant to be.  He wants to feed you with a food that cannot spoil, and to give you a life that cannot be taken away from you, even when your life on this earth comes to an end.

All of which sounds foolish if you are still determined to worship the things that will eat you alive, and go on living your life oblivious even to the water through which you swim.

Or, you could worship something that gives you the freedom, as Wallace put it, that “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”  All of which is pretty good description of a life fed by the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood.

This is water, this life you and I are living.  This is water.  This is water.  It can kill you, or it can give you life.  It can drown you, or it can quench your thirst.  Deciding what you worship plays a big role in determining which it’s going to be.

And you can decide to worship the things that will eat you alive.  People have been worshiping such gods for a long, long time.  Or you can decide to worship the God who feeds you with his own Body, as he makes all things new.

And you may begin to discover that the water is fine.  And then, you may begin to live.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water”, A Commencement Speech give at Kenyon College, 2005, published by Little Brown & Co., New York, 2009

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

As you approach what used to be called the Wailing Wall, at what was the base of the great Temple of Jerusalem, you encounter signs that address you thus:  “Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site of the Western Wall, where the Divine Presence always rests.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the worshipers.”

It’s easy to glean the wrong meaning from such a carefully worded injunction.  As with so much else in life, it’s easy to miss the point.  It’s easy to be put off by the enforced piety that doesn’t sit well with Americans.  It’s easy to ignore the sign altogether.  It’s easy to fixate on the demand for modesty, and to disregard the outrageous and daring claim contained in the white letters printed in a sans-serif font on a brown metal sign that bears the imprimatur of the un-named Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites.  It’s easy to overlook the possibility that you are about to tread very near the place where, in the words of the Rabbi, “the Divine Presence always rests.”   It’s easy to be distracted by the Orthodox men and boys with their long coats, their curls, their fringes, and their hats, and the gear they’ve brought with them to pray packed into a plastic kit, tucked under their arms as they make their way to the Wall.

How does one approach such a Wall; that marks the boundary of the place where the Divine Presence is said to have always dwelt?  How close does one get?  Is it safe to go right up to it?  Is it respectful to do so?  Does one touch the Wall?  Or kiss it? Or fall down on one’s face in front of it?   Have you brought a prayer scribbled onto a folded scrap of paper to nestle in its cracks?  Do you have a prayer ready in your heart?

You are nowhere near as well prepared to pray as the young IDF soldier who has produced Tefillin from somewhere, and has strapped one leather box to his head like a miner’s lamp, and is winding the other around his left arm seven times before beginning his prayers.

I walked up to the Wall, and I was very aware of my breathing.  It seemed wise to be cautious in one’s breathing in such precincts.  I stretched out my hand.  I reached for the Rock, and as my fingertips came into contact with it I closed my eyes, and checked my breathing, to slow it down a little.  I don’t remember what I prayed for – I suppose I prayed for peace.  I don’t know how long I stood there; it wasn’t very long.  The earth did not shake beneath my feet.  I opened my eyes, and in front of me I saw the Wall.  Just the Wall. Nothing else.

Why would anyone believe the Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites?  If the Divine Presence rests there, as it has for ever, why is that Presence not more evident?  Why is there only that Wall left standing, with its fanatic Orthodox believers davening before it?  Why must soldiers protect the resting place of God Almighty?  Why has peace not settled alongside the Divine Presence?  Why is there so little to see?

 I would have liked to see a vision like Isaiah’s.  I’d have liked to close my eyes, reach out my hand and discover that the rock has become supple in my fingertips: has taken on the texture of the hem of the robe of the Lord of hosts.  I’d have like to smell the scent of incense, and felt the wreaths of smoke winding past my face.  I’d have liked to have heard the suggestion, at least, of the sound of the beating of seraphic wings, and to have caught a hint of the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d have liked to have heard the voice of the Lord speaking to me as Isaiah did.  I’d have liked to have seen something as a I stood near the Divine Presence.  I’d have liked to have seen the Lord.  But I opened my eyes, and I saw the Wall.

Why is it so hard to see God?  Why was it that even Moses was only allowed to catch a glimpse of his sacred backside?  Why is it that in a world where faith is faltering, God delegates the announcement of his Divine Presence to whomever it is who happens to be the Rabbi of the Western Wall.  Why does he leave us to struggle with mysterious and complicated teachings about three persons in one God, as though we had to reconcile the identity issues of a pretty serious personality disorder?

In 1897, the African American artist Henry O. Tanner made his first trip to the Holy Land, financed by Rodman Wanamaker.  When he returned, he painted the scene that we heard described in the Gospel reading assigned for Trinity Sunday – the story of Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus by night.  Nearly thirty years later, Tanner would paint the scene again in a palate of more spectral blues as the influence of impressionism takes hold of his work.

In both versions of the scene, the meeting takes place on a rooftop terrace, and Tanner includes an important detail: the stairway to the roof is carefully located, and in both cases, the artist indicates that light is shining on the stairs.

Nothing about the paintings suggests that the importance of the stairway is as a point of egress for Nicodemus or for Jesus.  The feeling is given that the stairs are lit for the viewer: for you and for me.  This is to be our way up to the rooftop, whence we may eavesdrop on the sacred instruction taking place.

It is as though any of us could simply slip up the stairs to the rooftop and see the Lord.

Not long ago, I saw both paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Tanner had been a student.  As I think of them, I find myself fixated on the stairs in both paintings.  I allow myself to imagine that at the bottom of the stairs there might be a sign posted that would read something like this:

Dear Visitor, You are approaching the holy site where Nicodemus is visiting with Jesus; they have been talking here for a long time, and the Divine Presence does not seem prepared to leave any time soon.  Please make sure you are appropriately and modestly dressed so as not to cause harm to this holy place or to the feelings of the other visitors who are also spying from the top of the stairs.

How does one approach such a stairway?  How close to the top does one get?  Can you walk right out onto the terrace and join in the conversation with Nicodemus and Jesus?  Do you reach out to touch the Lord?  Do you fall on your face and kiss his feet?  Is your head covered?  Does it need to be 

I want to stare at Tanner’s paintings long enough to close my eyes and allow myself to creep up the lighted staircase and look and listen.  I want to feel the evening breeze in Jerusalem blow across my face.  I want to hear the words it carries reach my ears: “I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above….

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

I want to see what Tanner seems to have seen without ever having seen it.   I want to bring all the prayers I can remember with me up that staircase, and all the prayers I cannot remember.  I want to press a stack of them, scrawled on scraps of paper, into Jesus’ hand, and I want to implore him to answer them, or at least to answer the prayer for peace.  I want to feel the earth shift under my feet as I draw closer to him.  I want to hear the beat of seraphic wings, and the echo of the threefold angelic Sanctus.  I’d like to smell the certain odor of incense that hangs in the air in his nearer presence.  I want to be able to open my eyes and see the Lord, right there in front of me, in spectral but alive brushstrokes of blues.

But when I open my eyes, I find instead that I am in front of a brownstone wall.  And all I have in common with Tanner’s vision is Philadelphia.

And the cracks in the brownstone walls are not spaces to place prayers, but obvious signs of deferred maintenance.  And I am not on a rooftop in Jerusalem; I am right here with you in Saint Mark’s.

And I am stymied again by the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and wondering what in the world they can be saying about it in church over on the other side of the Square.

And I catch hint of the scent of incense in the air.  And I look up at you, who I see gathered here faithfully to pray.  And I think of the light burning on the staircase in the painting.  And of the sign: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence always rests.

And I look down at the small disk of bread in my hands.

And I look again at you, and these stone walls around us.

And I think that perhaps that when I opened my eyes I saw the Lord too.

I think we are on a lighted staircase.

I think the Divine Presence has always rested here too.

And I know these are mysteries too deep to fathom.

But I am becoming more and more certain that I saw the Lord in this place.  And I feel like I want to post a sign outside that begins something like this: Dear Visitor, you are approaching the site where the Divine Presence dwells…

But I suspect I should let the light speak for itself, and I should simply guard the stairs to make sure anyone who wishes may climb them.

And if you want to do so, I shall hold the door to the stairway open for you.  And as you walk by, you might ask me, “What’s up there?  What did you see?”

And I’ll smile, with Nicodemus and with Isaiah, and I’ll tell you: “I saw the Lord.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Trinity Sunday 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to Mother Erika's sermon here.

It is a tradition, in some Episcopal churches, to offer this morning’s lesson from Acts in a slightly unusual way. Because the reading tells of the disciples being inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak in many different tongues, some churches try to recreate this experience by having not just one reader for this lesson, but a whole string of readers, each of whom reads a verse or two in a language in which they are fluent. The effect, I’m sure, is to create a sense of the sound of that Pentecost morning in Palestine, to paint the aural landscape from a rich palate of sounds and inflections, to sound something like this:

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. Und es geschah schnell ein Brausen vom Himmel wie eines gewaltigen Windes und erfüllte das ganze Haus, da sie saßen. Au même moment, ils virent apparaître des sortes de langues qui ressemblaient à des flammèches. Cosí furono tutti ripieni di Spirito Santo e cominciarono a parlare in altre lingue, secondo che lo Spirito dava loro di esprimersi.

While I appreciate the intent behind these kinds of readings, there are two problems with this approach that are immediately apparent. The first is that most of the time, because of the people who read them, these verses are read in a smattering of European languages – French, Italian, German – languages whose aural colors are different than English, to be sure, but not from quite the same palate as the languages of the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. The sounds are not quite right. The greater problem, though, is that this experience is not quite right. The whole point of the disciples being gifted by the Holy Spirit to speak in different languages was so that all of the people, all of the visitors “from every nation under heaven” who were in town for the festival of Pentecost, could understand what was being said. The miracle was that everyone could understand everything, not that random people in the crowd could understand two verses in twenty. The upshot of all of this is that unless you’re someone who speaks every language known to man, as some of you undoubtedly do, the experience of these kinds of Pentecost readings is likely to be more confusing than clarifying.

In response to this concern, I’ve heard of a few churches who try a different approach. Instead of dividing up the reading into separate verses, one for each represented language, they have different people read the entire lesson in different languages – all at the same time. The lesson is read simultaneously by a whole gaggle of lectors, lined up at the front of the church and belting out these verses in their best Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese or Russian. This approach, while eliminating the problem of understanding only two verses in twenty, obviously comes with its own significant challenges, which are best summed up by a former parishioner of mine who, honestly confused by a church experience she had had while on vacation, asked me why this church had acted out the story of the Tower of Babel on Pentecost instead of the regular lections.

Now I don’t mean to make these approaches to this Pentecost reading seem overly silly, because they certainly aren’t intended that way. I do see what these churches are getting at. The day of Pentecost as we hear it described in Acts was, first and foremost, an experience – a banquet for the senses, something to be seen and felt and heard and touched. The rumble of rushing wind, the heat and light of those tongues of fire, the pure music of all of those lovely languages as they danced around the dazzled crowd. Pentecost is a day to be felt, known and understood not only with our minds but with our bodies. Pentecost is a big, larger-than-life festival day, a scene that we can easily imagine in epic, Cecil B. DeMille style, with apostles standing on majestic sets, booming forth their proclamation in hearty voices well-trained for the stage, with thousands of extras running to and fro with looks of bewildered joy on their faces and happy exclamations on their lips, with fanfares and flourishes and noise, noise, noise, noise. Pentecost is a celebration on a large scale, a loud, busy, grand and wonderful day.

But Pentecost is not just about the pomp of the circumstance. Pentecost is not just about the noise. Because the devout Jews who heard the disciples speaking in many tongues not only heard words in their own language; they actually heard the word of God. They heard what the disciples were saying, not just how they were saying it. They were able to listen past the wonder of the words themselves deep into the heart of their meaning, to hear the stories of God’s deeds of power in and by and through Jesus Christ. They not only heard; they understood. And if they understood, then they couldn’t have been just standing in place, straining to hear someone screaming at them in Mesopotamian from a far parapet; they must have followed the sound of familiarity, found the disciples who spoke their language, and gathered in tight to hear what he had to say. They must have huddled together, drawn up close, face to face, breath to breath, to hear and feel this Gospel message as near to them as it had ever been.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus promises his disciples that he will send them the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth. He says he will send them the Paraclete, a word sometimes translated as the Advocate or the Comforter. But the Greek word parakletos literally means “the one who is called alongside.” The Paraclete is the one pulled next to, the one drawn near, the one who comes up close. It is this particular gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offers us in his physical absence – not just the majesty and might of the swirling winds and fiery breath, but the intimacy of a companion, one who comes near, walks beside, and shares with.   

This has always been God’s way. For all of the smoke and fire with Moses on Mount Sinai, the flames that shot out of heaven and licked up the watery sacrifice on Elijah’s altar, the burning chariots that showed Elisha that he, too, would be a prophet, God has always also been a God of great intimacy – a personal God who speaks not only to His people but speaks to them one at a time, in their own language, who calls Moses’ own name out of a burning bush, who startles Balaam by speaking through the very donkey he is riding on, who offers Elijah the small voice of sheer silence. God has always drawn near to His people, pulled close, spoken to them persons to person.

And when the Son of God became flesh to redeem the world, he, too, spent his ministry drawing close. He spoke to the crowds, to be sure, but he also spoke to persons – to Zacchaeus and Matthias, to the Magdalene, to Nicodemus – one on one, drawing near, sharing space and breath, close and personal and intimate.

One of my professors at seminary once joked about how much easier it would have been if God had just waited until now to be made manifest. If God had just waited, he teased, he could have put Jesus Christ on CNN – the Sermon on the Mount could have been streamed live all over all the continents in every language known to woman, his healings could have been broadcast live and in HD. But then, my professor said seriously, this never actually could have happened. Because this is just not how the Son of God works. Even if he had walked the earth in our own age of lightning-fast communications, Christ still would have worked slowly, quietly, one on one, drawing close, coming alongside, and being near. 

This is how God works today, on this Pentecost. Yes, there is a feast, and yes we are celebrating, and yes we sing mighty hymns and think about the height and depth and breadth of the Holy Spirit’s life-giving and energizing work in the Church. But we also remember that aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who comes alongside you and speaks the Gospel – not just to all the multitudes where we might have to strain to hear the Good News – but right to you, in your ear, in the language that is easiest for you to hear – the language of Stravinsky, perhaps, or the language of shared prayer. The language of bended knee, the language of another’s face, the language of bread and wine. This is God’s promised gift – that he comes alongside us, wherever we are, whatever language we speak, and says, Lean in and listen. I am here, I am with you. When you are in church, at work, at school, on the streets, I am beside you. When you are kneeling in repentance, lying in weakness, standing in strength, dancing in joy, I am beside you. When you are comforting, exhorting, dreaming, prophesying, proclaiming, I am beside you. When you go into all the world, to the ends of the earth, to share and live and sing the Gospel message, I am always right beside you. So lean in close and listen, to the still, small voice – to that sound of Pentecost.       

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

The war still drags on in Afghanistan, no matter how many new restaurants open in Philadelphia, no matter how glorious the spring weather has been here, no matter how lovely each mass offered at Saint Mark’s may be.  For ten years, we have sent soldiers in our names to fight a grisly war in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, whence vicious armies have previously been sent home licking their wounds.

A few weeks ago, along a road that leads through an Afghan village where children were to be seen along the side of the road going about their day happily with their parents, a suicide bomber attacked a small American convoy of pickup trucks, after which waiting gunmen fired on the Marines who had been thrown or had jumped from their trucks. 

Except that one soldier, Master Sergeant Scott Pruitt, never left his truck: his injuries left him bleeding so much and so fast he did not survive the attack.

As it happens, in one of the trucks there was a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who wrote pointedly about the attack and who documented it with a series of photos.  In an interview about what happened, the reporter, Michael Phillips, talked about the difficulty of recording what actually took place:

“The world explodes,” he said.  “Some things I saw in my pictures, I don’t remember having seen.”  He goes on to say that “the pictures themselves are more solid than my memories of what happened.”[i]

In particular, Phillips tells of a photo that you can find in the slideshow that goes with his story.  In it, a Marine, Jewelie Hartshorne is seen taking aim at an enemy position; she kneels beside the mangled green pickup truck that has been hit by the bomber; and the body of Master Sergeant Pruitt, slumped forward as he bleeds to death, is clearly visible through the blasted-out, front, passenger-side window.[ii]

The reporter says that he cannot remember taking this photo, which I think is another way of saying he cannot remember seeing this happen.  He assumes he must have seen it, since, after all, it was his camera and he took all the photos.  But with only his own memory to resort to, it seems that Phillips would be unable to remember at least this one aspect of what happened, this one scene.  Without the photo, who’s to say that it did happen?  Who’s to say what else has been forgotten that was not captured by his camera?  And who’s to say that the images he did collect are what they appear to be?

Who is to say what really happens in the chaos of war?  Would the Afghanis whose children were on the street that day report it differently?  Where is the truth to be found?

Or as the question is found in the Gospel, on the lips of Pontius Pilate: What is truth?

As I ponder the mysterious nature of truth, I find myself fantasizing that I could somehow hack into the reporter’s camera, or his computer where I’m sure the images are stored.  And before he looked at all of them, before he’d published them and shared them with the world, I find myself imagining that I could go to work on the images with PhotoShop.  I think of the picture with Master Sergeant Pruitt slumped forward in the truck’s cab.  And I know that I could easily change this image.  I could push the Marine back in his seat so he could draw breath into his lungs.  I could replace the passenger seat window.  I could restore the mangled truck.  I could open its door and find the pool of blood at Pruitt’s feet, and I could erase it with a few clicks of the mouse.  I could mend the torn shreds of his uniform, and, so doing, mend the ruptured flesh beneath it.  I feel as though in doing so, I could place my cursor over his heart, and click and click and click and start his heart beating again.

I don’t feel the need to return everything to normal in the photo – this seems unrealistic to me.  But I do like the idea of going this far – far enough to save this one Marine.  And I imagine that I could do it without the reporter knowing it, so that when he turns on his computer and looks for the files, he will open this image up and see that Pruitt is not dead after all, and that he will soon be reunited with his two daughters.  And I feel as though I could make it so, since truth is hard to grasp, since even the man who took the photo cannot say for sure that he actually saw it happen.

Why should the photo get to decide what the truth is?  Why should the photo get to decide who lives and dies?  If the reporter who witnessed it cannot remember taking this photo, and relies on it to know what happened, why can’t we just change the image and thereby change the truth?

What is truth, after all?

As he was preparing to go to his own death, Jesus prayed a long prayer.  And in it we heard him say this morning a few things that stick out in my mind:

“While I was with them I guarded them….  I protected them….  I ask you to protect them from the evil one….  Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Your word is truth.  What does this mean?  And why should it matter?

It matters, because, as the reporter Michael Phillips said, “The world explodes.”

The world explodes all the time, all around us.  Sometimes the explosions are obvious – as in the roadside battlefields of Afghanistan.  But sometimes the explosions are a lot less obvious.  Sometimes only you know that the world is exploding.  Sometimes it is only your world that is exploding, but the explosion is no less disastrous for it.  The world explodes.

In the interview, Michael Phillips said this, “Your notebook or your camera is a filter between you and reality.  It allows you to do your job even as you should be running for cover.”  But actually, his notebook and his camera proved to be more than that.  They were also means by which he would try to know the truth of what happened that Saturday, April 28, in a small village in the Nimroz province of Afghanistan.  His photos would show him parts of the truth he would never have remembered on his own: things he had seen but not really witnessed without some other way to claim the vision as his own.  And the truth that those images impart is painful and heart-racing, and terrifying, and final.  I can let my imagination run wild, but it will not bring Scott Pruitt back to life; it will not give his daughters back their father.

We like to pretend that the truth is whatever is empirically verifiable in the world, whatever is replicable in the lab, whatever can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.  But actually we know that even these standards bring no guarantee of establishing the truth.  Clever as we are, we are notoriously inept at truth.

If I were to say that faith is something like a filter between you and the world that allows you to live your life even as you should be running for cover, you might say that by such a definition of faith I am admitting it is just a form of denial of the reality around me.  But if a reporter uses the very same phrases in reference to his notebook and his camera, then we’d say that they are tools in service of the truth.

But why should a camera get to decide who lives and who dies?  Why should that sad image be the final arbiter of life and death?  Why should its pixilated images get to spell out the truth?

I’d rather trust God to do these things.  I’d rather let his word speak the truth.

And God’s word has truth to speak into that image that the photographer cannot recall taking, just as it has truth to speak to you and me, and to two young girls who lost their father on April 28^th, and of course to their father as well.

It might sound something like this:

I formed you, my child, with my own hands; I made you out of clay and dust.  I shaped not only your limbs, but the intricate works that make you who you are: that send the blood running through your veins, the air running through your lungs, and the ideas running through your head. 

I made you in my own image.  And when you were made, then I leaned over my workbench and blew my own breath into your nostrils so that you would have life – a gift that only I can give.

I gave you talents, and looks, and limits, too.  I gave you being.  And I looked at you and saw that you were marvelously made, and that it was good.

I have loved you since before you were born, while I was creating you in the inward parts of your mother’s womb.  I have desired for you only joy; but I know the realities of the world into which I set you.  I know that you are a sheep in the midst of wolves.  This is the nature of my creation – it is complicated, too complicated for you to understand, but it does not mean I love you any less – knowing this is the beginning of wisdom.

I have sought to protect you always with my whole being.  I have been your Father; I sent you my Son; you have been given my Holy Spirit.  Like the creation I made, I am complicated too.  Does it surprise you that the Mind from which all things sprang is complicated?  That the Life from which all life comes is complicated?

Let me try to simplify it for you.  You cannot see what I see.  You look at death and you see an end.  I look at it and see a new beginning.  Which of us do you suppose is right?  Which of us can see on both sides of death?

Do you think you know the truth?  Do you think you have captured it in photographs of dead people?  What does this prove?  You cannot even remember taking the photos.  How could you know the truth on your own?

But I have sanctified you in the truth; my word is truth.

This means that I see what you cannot, but that I have given you the lens of faith to help you see the truth.

Mostly this means that I have helped you see beyond the veil of death, though the world explodes.

You hear people tell you that they can show you the truth all the time.  The truth, they say, in that silly, rhyming slogan, is that might makes right.  They don’t use the slogan any more but they live by it.

They tell you that this war is truly necessary.  They have told you that wars can truly be won.  They have told you that they would rather not do it this way, but they must for the sake of the truth.

These are lies.  But the picture has been so altered that they appear to be true.  And since you cannot remember that far back, you cannot see how drastically the picture has been changed.  You cannot remember what joy and peace and mercy were supposed to look like.  You believe them, but you doubt my word.  And the world explodes.

But I have sanctified you in the truth; my word is truth.

This means that what I see is true, not what you see.  This means that Scott Pruitt is dead to you, which makes sense, since you killed him.

But I have sanctified him, and thousands upon thousands of others like him; I have sanctified them in the truth; my word is truth.

And this is the truth from above: that he is dead to you, but alive to me; that he could not survive in the world that you have made of my creation, but he breathes new life in the world beyond the grave.

You search all the evidence you can for proof, and you can only prove that he is dead.  Which is exactly the wrong conclusion to reach, even though you killed him.

Because you thought your might was true, you can repeat the results over and over again, they have been reviewed by your peers, who approve, more or less of your ways, your experts will testify that the life had left his body, which was just too full of holes to go on living.  And this looks true to you.  Because the world explodes.

But I have sanctified him in the truth; my word is truth.  When you were done with him, I took him again into my hands, I breathed again into his bloody nostrils, I filled him again with the spirit of life that I intended for him from the moment of creation.

And he lives today with me, where he will be forever.  He is not dead; he is alive.  Even while the world hurtles ever more furiously toward death.

You think you know the truth, but I am telling you, you are only looking at the pictures.  You can only see what you think you can see.  But there is more.

And my word is truth.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

20 May 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] “Here and Now” on NPR, 18 May 2012, reported by Alex Ashlock,  

[ii] Phillips, Michael M, “Under Attack” in The Wall Street Journal, 12 May 2012