Saint Mark's Church

You may listen to this sermon here.

Here beginneth the first sentence of the second chapter of a book you may have read, or at least you have very probably heard of before:

“Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.”  Here endeth the reading.

The job market being what it is, the well-known book, What Color is My Parachute? is still going strong, with a new edition out every year, more than 40 years after the first edition.  This job-hunting book charts an unusual course, because it doesn’t just give advice about how to tailor your resumé for this job or that one, and it doesn’t just give you strategies for putting in a strong interview; it gives advice about you, and about your life.  For instance, the very first section of the book is called “How To Find Hope.”  And the last section of the book is all about trusting God.

In between, there are lots of lists of questions and exercises meant to help you take stock of yourself.  At the center of the book is what the author, Richard Bolles, calls “The Flower Exercise” in which you conduct an extensive self-inventory, so you can know yourself better, not only so you can present yourself more effectively to a prospective employer, but so that you can find a job for which you are actually well suited, and in which you might actually be happy.  A little later in the book, there is an exercise that asks you to take ten blank sheets of paper and spread them before you, and write at the top of each page, “Who Am I?” so that you can fill in the space on all ten pages.

As it happens, the situations that Bolles imagines in the first sentences of the second chapter of his good book are the very types of situations that trouble most of us – even people who consider themselves Christians, even people who come to church.  Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next with your life.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

What do you do if you are in one of those situations (or some other one that I have not imagined out loud) and you land in church on Commitment Sunday – that Sunday when I am supposed to talk to you about money, when I am supposed to encourage you to give, when I am likely to try to persuade you to give more money to the church than you were prepared to give?  You are in trouble, aren’t you?  You are wondering How To Find Hope, but I am wondering How To Find Money.  Maybe I am wondering How To Find Money In Your Checkbook.  Perhaps you should come back another day.  Perhaps you are just unlucky.

I have the Gospel on my side, after all.  You heard the parable of the talents entrusted by a man to his slaves: five to one of them; two to another; and to another, one talent.  You know where the story goes: everyone is expected to make more with what’s been given.  At the very least, earn a little interest; better yet, make a shrewd investment; whatever you do, do not bury your talent in the dirt.  And I am absolutely certain that it would be A-OK to use this story to talk to you about money and about how much of it you give; that may very well be why Jesus told it so long ago, so that you and I could have a conversation about why you don’t give enough money to the church, as I’m pretty sure you don’t (neither do I, for that matter).

But what if we didn’t use this story this morning to talk about How To Find Money?  What if we used it instead to talk about How To Find Hope?  What if the hidden question in today’s Gospel is really this:  What Color Is Your Talent?

Because, like Richard Bolles, who wants to help you in your job search, but thinks you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well; I want to help you in your search for God, but I worry that you do not know yourself well enough to do it very well.  I suspect strongly that you do not know what color is your talent; you have not realized all the gifts that God has given you; and you certainly have not found all the ways to use those gifts for your own happiness and for God’s glory.  I suspect this about you, because I also suspect it about myself.  And I can assure you that every word I ever preach to you, I am really preaching to myself.

And I also suspect it because I know enough of you well enough to see that you are selling yourselves short as children of God.  I perceive that you have taken your talents, at least some of them, and buried them in the dirt.  And I know that this is a shame.

Allow me to borrow a little more from What Color Is My Parachute.  In the section on How To Find Hope, we learn that “Hope requires that, in every situation, we have at least two alternatives.”  This makes sense, since having only one choice in life, often leaves us feeling boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless.  And if it is easy to feel this way in a job search, it is also easy to feel this way in your search for God; it’s easy to feel this way about your spiritual life; it’s easy to feel this way about being in church: boxed-in, trapped, dead-ended, hopeless. 

How many of you have children or siblings or close friends who have felt precisely this way about their search for God in church, and have opted instead of continuing, to simply give up?  You mean I have to stand here and sing these hymns?  I have to believe this creed?  I have to show up at this hour and fall to my knees at these appointed moments?  I have to admit I’m a sinner?  I have to put money in that silver plate as it passes by?  This is my only option for finding God and staying with him?  No thank you!

The people I know who are furthest along on their journeys with God know full well that the journey doesn’t begin and end in the pew, because sometimes faith from the pew isn’t enough, leaves them feeling empty, unchallenged, unmoved, doesn’t provide enough spiritual calories, or provoke enough transformation.  So these people find alternative ways to engage their desire to be with God, while still keeping the Pew Option open, probably even showing up week by week, or day by day to keep the Pew Option on the table.

But they are also volunteering at St. James School to tutor a kid who needs help; or volunteering in the office to help us keep this parish running like the well-oiled machine we are; or making soup to feed to hungry people on Saturdays; or digging in the garden; or packing groceries for our Food Cupboard clients; or studying the Bible on Wednesday nights; or keeping a discipline of prayer at home; or going to yoga class to find strength and space for contemplation; or visiting a monastery for a day or two of silent retreat; or travelling to a far-off place to help people in need.

People who are really advancing in their relationship with God are very often doing so because they have found ways outside of the pew to make those advances.  And they discover that when they are in church the prayers and hymns, the Bread and the Wine, the kneeling and standing, the creeds and the scriptures, all have more meaning, all point to a bit more hope, because this Pew Option is now only one of the ways that God is being revealed in their lives.

Borrowing again from Parachute, I see there is a chapter entitled, “Attitudes Necessary for Survival.”  This seems like a good idea.  Let’s see what they are:

1)    Find something that it is within your power to change.

2)    Assume that nothing that worked before will work now, because the world is a different place than it used to be.

3)    Believe that nothing is meaningless.

Again, what works in job hunting would appear also to apply to God hunting.

Remember that the search for God is always about growth and change.  God wants you to grow, which requires you to change.  He wants you and me to move beyond our limitations, to turn from the things we do to trip ourselves up, to learn to be stronger, more loving, more wise.  Most of this change will come from God – he expects to do most of the work – but some of it must come from you.  God seeks our partnership in the process of transformation, because otherwise it is just magic, and magic transformations don’t last very long.  Real, life-changing transformations require a bit of effort on our part, so we have to look for something that it is within our power to change.

Many people learn more about religion in their childhood than at any other time of their lives, and then are surprised when their Sunday School religion is not robust enough to sustain them in their adult lives, as though you and the world you live in have not changed at all.  Assume for a moment that what worked for you as a child is not enough religion to sustain you.  Assume that you require more and different input, that you need to know more than that Jesus Loves Me.  This means that you may need to go about the practice of religion more often and differently: seeking new, more intense outlets for religious expression; discovering more than one alternative.  I promise you that you do not need to find another church in order to do that.  Whether Saint Mark’s is your home or some other church is, you will find, in most decent churches, avenues to explore your faith that you have never tried before, all under the same roof.  Maybe you should try one of them?

Can you believe in your search for God that nothing is meaningless?  Can you believe that the gifts God gave you – no matter how varied or limited you regard them to be – are all important to God and useful for the building up of his kingdom?  Do you realize that it takes no skill more advanced than ladling out a bowl of soup, or filling a basket with bread, or stuffing envelopes in the office, or greeting a person at the church door to make a difference in this world?  Do you realize that in fact, the kingdom of God depends on these apparently meaningless acts?

Listen, it is as if a man went on a journey, and has entrusted you with some of his talents, as he has entrusted some to the person next to you.  What are you to do? 

You could begin by taking ten sheets of blank paper and writing at the top of them, “Who Am I?” and then filling in all the blank space on those ten sheets of paper.  At the very least you should ask yourself why God has given you the things God has given you?  What are you supposed to do with all that God has given you?  Who are you?

If you think that Christian stewardship is all about money, that is like concluding that a job search, is all about your resumé.  Well… money may be a crucial, required ingredient to building up God’s kingdom, but it’s not the whole story.

And what I know about the Christian life is that those who live it most deeply, most thoroughly, most fully, are the ones who share their talents and their money most freely.  Look around you, and you will realize this too.

And I also know that you could all empty your bank accounts into Saint Mark’s coffers this very morning, leaving nothing for yourselves, in acts of radical offering, and we would still be no closer to the kingdom of God.  Because if the only talents you give are your green ones, then you might as well have buried them in the dirt.

Who are you?  What color is your talent?

Is it blue as the sky, because your mind is always at work dreaming up good ideas that need a community in which to be realized?

Is it silver as a fine table setting, because you have a gift for hospitality?

Is it black and white because you have a way with words?

Is it four-color because you have a way with images?

Is it brown as the soil because you love to be in the garden?

Is it waxen as a candle because you are ready to serve God at the altar in the beauty of holiness?

Is it white as a chorister’s surplice because you are ready to lift your voice in song?

Is it pink as…  well, of course there are some people here who talents are pink – thanks be to God!

Is it red as blood because you are a healer who is ready to bind up wounds?

Is it black as a chalkboard because you are a teacher who loves to help others grow?

Is it golden as a doubloon because you know that money is actually one of the easiest things to give away?

What color is your talent?  And are your prepared to turn it into something more?  Are you ready to Find Hope?

Christian stewardship is about How To Find Hope, because it encourages us to see new alternatives, especially to the old, tired ways we have been doing things, wasting our energy, forgetting to use our gifts, and throwing our money at things that amount to nothing.

Maybe you’re not unemployed.  Maybe you’re just adrift, bored, puzzled.  You’re at some crossroads in your life; you can’t stand your job, or you have a new handicap, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce.  Or you’ve just lost an important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.

And maybe you are wondering How To Find Hope.

Maybe you need to make a pledge to dig up the talents you have buried in the dirt and make them grow into something new.

Maybe you need to discover what color is your talent.

Maybe you need to answer this question: Who am I?

Because the truth is that you yourself are the talent that Jesus is begging you not to bury in the dirt.  Your gifts and skills and charms, your weaknesses and quirks, your strengths and abilities, your history and your future, and yes, even your money, which you have gained by using all your talents. 

Everything about you is what Jesus is asking you to offer him, to see the amazing choices you can make in building up his kingdom.  So you can measure every ounce of your value, your worth; you can assess fully the complicated tincture of the color of your talent; so that finally you will know How To Find Hope!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

13 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to this sermon here:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord.... 

It is darkness, not light;

  as if someone fled from a lion,

  and was met by a bear.  (Amos 5:18-19)

The yard around St. Paul’s Cathedral in London has been occupied for the past several weeks by an encampment of protesters, similar to the camp that has sprung up around City Hall, here in Philadelphia.  The occupiers, who are a grubby group, by and large, have posted signs in London declaring that “Capitalism is crisis,” warning, “Rich beware, your days are numbered,” and of course, proclaiming that “We are the 99%.”  The legitimacy of the protest has been questioned by some because, late at night, thermal imaging suggests that many of the tents are unoccupied, leading some to suspect that the protesters prefer to go home to their warm, comfy beds, than to actually occupy – 24/7 – a segment of the City of London.  I’m sure I don’t know.

I do know that the leadership of Saint Paul’s, working hand-in-glove with the leadership of the City, deemed the protesters to be the greatest threat to the cathedral since the German bombs of World War II, prompting them to close the cathedral for nearly a week, before the embarrassment of such prissy precaution forced the resignation of the Dean and the re-opening of Christopher Wren’s famous landmark, whose neo-classical design I have always thought more suitable for banks than churches, anyway.  (But I digress.)

I have walked among the pitched tents at City Hall, a few blocks from here, and I must say I found the whole thing underwhelming.  There is almost nothing attractive to be found there; it does not lend the appearance of youthful idealism to the city, or even resurgent hippie-ness.  The only person I ran into whom I knew was a homeless woman who has never been on the winning side of her ongoing struggle with drug addiction, sad to say.  There was not much to inspire the heart as I walked through the encampment, but for just that reason, you had to be impressed that people were continuing to stick it out in what is anything but a utopian environment.

I have a theory that may be crazy.  My theory is this: most people want to be rich.  In America we are supposed to take this for granted, but as Christians we seldom talk about it; this is problematic.  In my Bible I keep stumbling upon this question on the lips of Jesus: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?"  This rhetorical question is in line with Jesus' teaching that if you want to gain your life you have to lose it; if you want to be first you need to put yourself last; that you should let someone else take the more prominent seat at a dinner; that to be his disciple you must take up your cross (which is almost never pleasant) and follow him. Although we read this stuff in church, none of this really sounds like a good idea to most of us who profess to be Christians.  To the question, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his life?" Our implied answer is, "I'm not sure, but I'd be very interested in finding out." That is to say, I would rather be rich than follow your teachings, O Lord of the Universe.

So my theory is that most people want to be rich, or at least they think they want to be rich.  In America you can get fabulously, stinking, obscenely rich, and, what's more, you can make sure everyone knows how rich you are, which is part of the benefit of being rich.

I sometimes find myself wondering about the kind of wealth that has been amassed by certain people in this country.  I mean, after a few billion, what's the point, I'd say, in my warped way.   Until I remember that people have a thirst for power as well as money, and in our world money = power.  So even though you can't really do much more with, say, $10 billion than you could with, say, $5 billion, if you have $10 billion you are de facto twice as powerful as some schlub with only $5 billion, which, if you are in Russia, or China, or maybe even America, is important, because, well, it's better to be powerful than weak.

(I will not introduce here St. Paul's astounding revelation from the voice of Christ that his (ie Christ's) power is made perfect in weakness, because most Christians prefer to ignore this mysterious and counter-intuitive teaching, so why shouldn't I?)

Back when we had stunted imaginations, so many Americans thought the best they could do in the way of riches was to, say, own a house with a dishwasher, and a second car, and not be embarrassed by the way your kid looked in the clothes you dressed him or her in to go to school. Let's put this in shorthand - most people's imagination of richness extended only so far as being better off than their (very-likely immigrant) parents, and maybe not getting killed in a war (that would be good too, a sort of bonus, but that’s another sermon).

But time marches on and does its amazing thing. Here are some of the things time did in America.  Time watched the quality of public education (which had been a key to accomplishing the aforementioned goals of prosperity) decline dramatically, especially in urban areas; time watched manufacturing in America disappear; time watched saving in America turn into borrowing in America.

And time watched the so-called wisdom of the so-called markets decide that it was wise to create markets in which you didn't have to do anything but come up with new and convoluted ideas of how to get money to make money on its own, on paper, without the hassle of actually, like, making or doing or producing and selling something. This seemed like an especially good idea to people's whose bonuses (on which they got taxed at a lower rate than their much smaller salary) would be, shall we say, astronomically big at the end of the year, as long as paper kept making money, on paper. Yippee!

Now, what could be better than sitting back and getting rich because some of my money, on paper, made me some more money, on paper?  If compensation tells you anything, almost nothing could be better than this - not healing the sick, not teaching your kids how to read, not even defending you in court. The huge rise in financiers' compensation is a direct reflection of how much we, as a society, value this alchemy - the ability to make money with money on paper - more than we value nearly any other skill.

Remember, after all, most people want to be rich, want to "gain the whole world."  And we have created this society in which we put on display anyone who is able to get rich - we call this celebrity, which is no longer confined to movie stars, now it's also ballplayers (even if they don't win) and talk show hosts, and, lottery winners, and their counterparts: reality show stars, which is really just winning another kind of lottery.  The ne plus ultra, of this cultural lottery is, of course, winning American Idol, which allows you to become rich and famous in the span of one short TV season - yippee!  This is what we want to be: American Idols: rich and famous - fast!

Now, we know that some people work hard to get pretty rich, but we also know that some people just get lucky (sorry Winkelvoss twins, some people don’t). This is why I know what an IPO is - because implanted in my mind is the distant notion that I (who have no business ever getting involved in an IPO) could get rich if only I was in early on the right Initial Public Offering of stock.

All this is to say that we have decided that not only is there nothing wrong with being fabulously rich (sorry, French revolutionaries, you can keep your liberté, egalité and fraternité), we have decided that democracy rightly leads to the possibility that anyone at all has the right to do what they want in the pursuit of wealth; that, in fact, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are only second-rate stand-ins for money.

Put it another way, we actually believe that money does buy happiness, and we are looking for some serious happiness therapy.

Put it another way: most of us would very much like to know what it would profit us to gain the whole world, please, but with as little effort and in as little time as possible.

Now, because of this not-so-latent desire to be rich, and the expectation that it is somehow reasonable to think that I could be fabulously rich without being born to money, working especially hard, or selling all my organs, I have taken my pitchfork out of the garage and buried it deep in the backyard somewhere.  It's true that once my forebears would have grabbed their pitchforks and stormed a castle, (or a gated community, or an Upper East Side town house, or Bryn Mawr) to demand, say, a honest day's pay for an honest day's work, to see to it that a sick child got decent medical treatment, or to defend the small plot of land they had to till in order to harvest enough tubers to get through the winter.  But no one wants an American Idol with a menacing pitchfork in his hand, so many of us have buried those implements of outrage in the backyard.

Meanwhile, we are distracted by the shiny things we can easily afford at Wal-Mart despite that fact that our wages have not increased meaningfully in 30 years.  We don't care, we’re waiting for the IPO, or the lottery, or American Idol!  And while we wait we have a big-screen TVs!  And the most wonderful processed foods!  Life may not be perfect but our needs are met almost as quickly as we are told what they are!

By now you surely think I am crazy, that I have lost it.  But we are living in a nation in which I hear people vociferously arguing against their best interests all the time, in which people foolishly think that corporations, in the end, will represent the best interests of the people, but the government, in the end, can't possibly be interested in the best interests of the people.  And this, in the city where the entire bold and beautiful idea of American democratic government was hatched!  But somehow we have been convinced by the narrative that the marketplace cares about our well-being.  Maybe because of how much I love my iPhone, which seems to be meeting my needs so beautifully, as long as my needs are not, say, nutrition or healthcare or education.

And so, although every indication around us shows that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle is a lot further away from the top than it used to be, but not so far away from the bottom, we live in a society where people who hope to be rich deride the grubby people who may or may not be sleeping in their tents as they wage a protest against this widening gap between those have and those who have not.

But I still wonder if there is wisdom in the ancient question that Jesus asked: "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but forfeit his life?"  It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I suspect there are a whole lot of people trying to discover the answer, or at the very least wishing they could.

Which is why the prophet Amos warned that the day of Lord might not be so pleasant, as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear, which is, I suspect, how the leaders of St. Paul’s Cathedral felt when they realized what they’d done by closing their doors, and seeking ways to evict the protesters.  It has been deeply gratifying to read in the papers, how the tide has shifted at St. Paul’s in London; to see the church remember that power and wealth have no currency in the kingdom of God, where justice will some day roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.  And to recognize that dis-organized, inarticulate, grubby, sometimes misguided, and perhaps even inclined-to-sleep-in-their-own-beds-at-home as the Occupy protesters may be, they are a reminder that our secret longings to be rich will not prevail against God’s desire for justice and righteousness – which have most often been at enmity with the amassing of great wealth.

And the real question for the church is this: when we encounter the possibility that justice is beginning to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream, are we willing to get wet?  Or will we head for higher ground so we can keep our money dry?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 November 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

In September of 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, made a short film and posted it on the internet. The video isn’t particularly beautiful or well-produced; it’s just a head-on, somewhat grainy shot of the couple sitting in a booth in a noisy restaurant. But this little home movie started a revolution. In the video, Dan and Terry talk about growing up as gay men, about how excruciating it was to be bullied, and beat up by their school peers, about how difficult it was to be rejected by their families. Then they talk about their lives now –about how they found each other, how they found acceptance from each other’s families, how they found a beautiful son to adopt as their own, how they found themselves living lives that were and are full of love. It is a heartening story. But the truly revolutionary thing about all this is not what they were talking about, but who they were talking to. Dan and Terry made this video specifically for people they had never met – young people in the GLBT community, so many of whom find themselves depressed or even suicidal because of constant and merciless ridicule and abuse. Dan and Terry made their video to offer hope to these teens; they wanted to tell these young people – indeed, all people – that life will not always be so hard, that they can and will find support and love, that it gets better. And their simple video was so powerful that other people wanted to reach out and make their own, and soon Dan and Terry had so many videos that they had to start hosting them on their own website – and a movement was born.

If you haven’t been to the “It Gets Better” website, I invite you (grown-ups) to check it out. There are thousands of videos there from people all over the world, each with the same message – that no matter what you are suffering right now, no matter why you’re being excluded or teased or tormented, it gets better. Some of the people in the videos are gay, some straight, some are celebrities, politicians, or religious leaders. President Obama made a video, as did Bishop Gene Robinson, as did General Motors and the Phillies and even Kermit the Frog, who describes with detailed vulnerability the moment he finally realized that he was green. 

But the most powerful videos, I think, are the ones created by ordinary folks. These are people who just set up a video camera at home and talked about their lives – moments of struggle, moments of grace, moments when they thought they could no longer go on, and then the moments that made them grateful that they had decided to live. There is rarely anything particularly new or earthshattering in these videos. The people in them do not tell you how things are going to get better, and they certainly don’t say that things won’t sometimes get worse. They are just people, sitting down and telling their stories, painting a picture of the world as it can be, sharing a vision of the world as it should be. They smile, they laugh, and they offer hope and reassurance that the current moment is not the end of the story. Again and again they say, it gets better.

In the 5^th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus sits down in front of his disciples and tells a story. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. With these powerfully comforting words, Jesus paints a picture of the world as it will be, a vision of the kingdom of God as it truly is. He offers hope and reassurance to all of his followers that no matter what they might be suffering right now, no matter how difficult things may be, it will not always be thus. Follow him; it gets better. The kingdom of heaven awaits them, where they will be richly rewarded.

But notice that Jesus does not tell his followers that they will be blessed. You will be blessed when you’re hungry because you will be filled. You will – eventually – be blessed when you show mercy or make peace. No, for Jesus and his followers, the blessing happens now. Jesus’ disciples are blessed now, in the present, why? Because they know what the future looks like. They have seen Christ’s vision of the kingdom of heaven, where all are comforted and fed and called children of God, and just seeing this vision, just hearing this story, blesses them now. They see what is to come and so they know that the present moment is not the end of the story. Jesus’ mountaintop proclamations change the disciples’ lives now; they are already blessed, because they know that it gets better.

Telling the story of the future matters. Bearing witness to the promise that it gets better is one of the greatest gifts that we human beings can give one another. And this is not only because that witness reassures us that our lives will be better in that far-off, great gettin’-up mornin’, not only because the hope of future happiness helps us to suffer through our lives in a grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it kind of way, but because the gift of that promise blesses us now. Dan Savage knows that. He knows that hearing stories of hope can change lives now. And Jesus, of course, knows that too. The great difference is, of course, that Jesus can tell us how things are going to get better. Through his own incarnation, death, and resurrection, Jesus shows us the way. All we need do is look. Jesus makes things better, no matter who we are, no matter how we’ve suffered, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how dark the world might seem. It all gets better, because Christ makes it so.

This is what we celebrate here on this All Saints’ Day – that there is more to this life than simply the here and now. This great Feast of the Church reminds us again of what our future looks like in the kingdom of God. In this feast, we recollect all of the Saints who have come before, all of those holy women and men who have been through the great gift and ordeal of life. We recall their stories of rejoicing and suffering and loving and enduring. And we reaffirm that all of those Saints still are, that they now sit before the throne of God, worshipping him day and night, that they hunger no more and thirst no more, and that God has wiped away every tear from their eyes. And in this remembering, in this recollection, in this recalling and reaffirmation, we recognize that we are all made one, past, present, and future, Saints in heaven and on earth, “knit together into the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.” Thank God for the gift of this story, for the hopeful witness of the Saints. Thank God that we know their stories and that in those stories we hear the Saints saying to us again and again, It gets better.        

But thanking God is not enough. Being grateful is not enough. Because you and I also have a story to tell. We have a picture to paint, a vision to share that the world desperately needs to hear. Our story is the greatest gift that we can offer to another human being. For we know what glories the future holds – the hungry will be fed, the dead will be raised, the meek will inherit the earth, and there will be peace like a river. We lift up our voices to heaven and sing that lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia. What better gift could we offer to the world than the chance to know the wonders of the kingdom of heaven, to sing as one with those who shine in glory, to see this great vision glorious. So celebrate with us – sing these hymns and come to the altar and embrace this hope and be changed…now. And then sit down and share this story with someone else. Tell them of your life, tell them of your hope, tell them how tonight we sing with joy because we know that not only will it get better, it already is.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

1 November 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

You may listen to this sermon here:

When I was a very little girl, my parents bought me a Cinderella costume for Halloween. I loved Cinderella; she was (and still is) my favorite Disney princess. I remember sitting and staring at the picture on the box – Cinderella on the night of the ball, standing in a shimmering silvery-blue gown with satin opera gloves, her hair swept up in an elegant twist and held in place with a wide black ribbon. I couldn’t wait to slide those long gloves up over my elbows and to feel the swing of that wondrously full, silky-smooth skirt. I can remember wondering how this box was going to help my hair to look like that, but I was sure that once it was opened, all would be made clear.

But this was the 1970’s, and if you were around in the 70’s, you know what’s coming next. When I opened the box, I found not a beautiful ball gown with reams of luxurious fabric – I found a plastic sheath with a picture of Cinderella printed on the front. And there was no stylish Cinderella up-do – there was a plastic mask with a black band and yellow hair painted on the top. You know those masks – the ones with the elastic band that always snapped and popped you in the ear, the masks that made it hard to breathe and made your face so hot you had to take them off halfway through your trick-or-treating. So, sadly, I was not the picture of elegance I had hoped to be that year; I just walked around in my plastic tube, my face red and sweaty behind that smiling Cinderella mask.

This, of course, is the time of year for masks of all kinds. Some of them are bejeweled and beautiful, some of them are gritty and realistic, but most of them are just frightening. My silly plastic Cinderella face notwithstanding, most Halloween masks are intended to scare the pants off of our friends and neighbors. Certainly the most famous Halloween masks are the most terrifying ones – the melting spectre masks from the movie Scream, the ghostly white guise of Michael Myers, Jason’s hockey mask, even the sinister smile of Guy Fawkes in V for Vendetta. And then, of course, there is the most disturbing of all mask scenes, from the latest Batman movie, when the late Heath Ledger as the Joker takes off his creepy clown mask to reveal…his own creepy clown face. In his case, the mask didn’t conceal anything, except for the fact that the dark mask and the dark face were exactly the same.

I wonder if you noticed the dark masks in today’s Gospel reading.  They aren’t the masks of monsters or villains, but they are menacing all the same. They are easier to spot in the verses that immediately follow today’s reading, where Jesus proclaims woe to the Pharisees, woe to those who do not do as they say, woe to the hypocrites. Here are the dark masks, the masks of the hypocrites. The Greek word hypocrite that Jesus speaks here was a term used primarily to describe masked stage actors; it comes from two Greek roots that together mean, essentially, under-distinguished or less-than-sorted. A hypocrite was one whose identity was difficult to distinguish because of intentional deception. In the case of these ancient Greek actors, of course, the deception was harmless, a part of the evening’s entertainment, and the more complete the deception, the better.

But the Pharisees’ deception is different; the Pharisees’ masks are real trickery, hidden and harmful. Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites because while they say the right things, they do not do the right things. They do not act as they teach; they do not practice what they preach. They may preach the good news of binding up the brokenhearted and proclaiming liberty to the captives, but then they “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear” and lay the bruising weight of an over-scrupulous legalism upon the shoulders of their followers. They may teach that the law of the Lord is one that is written in the heart, but then they make the fringes of their prayer shawls long and their prayer ostentatious. And the Pharisees may say, “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God,” but then they walk right up to the head of the table, to the seats of honor in the synagogue, trying to draw as many admiring looks as possible along the way. They say one thing and do another; they are hypocrites. They wear the mask of piety, the mask of humility, the mask of faithful, God-loving, commandment-following Jews, but under that mask their faces are red and sweating with the effort of trying to inhale as much stuff, as many accolades, as they possibly can. They wear masks as they preach the word of God, which is truly terrifying.

What is even more terrifying is the thought that we might do the same thing. There is, as I’m sure you know, ample evidence that the world out there thinks that this is exactly what we Christians do. For example, in 2007, the Barna group conducted a survey of young people, aged 16–29, about their perceptions of Christianity in America. The results were staggering. Within the portion of the survey group who self-identified as non-Christian, 85% stated that they perceived Christians as being fundamentally hypocritical. 85%. Well, but those are non-Christians, we say, the number must be different among believers. It is, it’s lower – only 50%. So 85% of young people who aren’t Christian think we’re hypocrites, and fully half of young people who are Christian still think we’re hypocrites…and I know that this survey is four years old, and I know that survey data can be manipulated, but look around you. There are thousands of 16-29 year-olds in Philadelphia. Where are they? Some of you are here, and I thank God for you as I do for all of you Gen-Xers and Boomers and others. But there is space in our pews, there is room in our budget for more Christians here; we need people from all of these generations at St. Mark’s as much as they need the Gospel that we proclaim. But if this survey is even close in showing us the depth of the world’s spiritual malaise and cynicism about Christianity, how do we convince that world that we’re for real? If those who are not here yet see us as hypocrites, if all that they see are masks, how do we show them who we really are?

I think that there is only really one way to do this, and it isn’t to try to convince them – or, frankly, to convince ourselves – that we don’t have masks on at all. I don’t think it does much good to say to those who are not here yet, “Hey, come on in, we look exactly like you!” Because we don’t. I mean, look at us. We wear instruments of Roman torture around our necks, we kneel and bow and genuflect and sing in a culture that sees none of that as particularly normal, we appear to the world as a community shaped not by what we know or how much we have but by who we love. Some of us even wear long fringes. We do not look like the world. We do wear a kind of mask, we do put on a Christian identity here in our liturgy, in our prayers, when we recite the creeds, when we renew our baptismal vows, when we take, eat and drink this all of you. But these are not the dark masks of the hypocrite. They are not masks intended to deceive or to conceal.  Because unlike the Pharisees, we not only look different, we are different. What we have to do, what we must do, is show the world that our masks and our faces look exactly the same.

So then here is the question for Saint Mark’s today – if we were to take off our masks, what would we look like underneath? For example, if we were to take off the bejeweled, beautiful mask of our liturgy, would we still look the same? When we leave this sacred space, do we carry with us a deep honor and reverence for the stuff of the world around us, do we still bow our heads before the holy in our ordinary and genuflect before Christ in each other? Or if we were to take off the gritty, realistic mask of our service in this place and around the world, would we still look the same? When we leave the soup bowl or the food cupboard or St. James the Less, do we still live generously in the rest of our lives, giving of our time, our money, our prayers – are we still dedicated to the kind of concern and advocacy for those who carry heavy burdens in this world? Beneath the masks of our liturgy, our service, our prayer, our adoration, our giving, our learning, do we look the same? Do we let these faces of Christianity shape what we look like on the inside?

This is our labor and toil, brothers and sisters – this is our ministry – to let the masks of our faith so shape who we are within that we can live a life worthy of God, and represent Christ to the world. This is what will bring those who are searching for God through our doors; this is what Christ passionately desires of us – that we go and do as we say here, that we go and practice what we preach here, that our faces shine with the same light of truth that is engraved upon our hearts.  It is, of course, only by the gift of God that we can do this, and so we pray in the words of our last hymn that Christ will “make thy Church, dear Savior, a lamp of purest gold, to bear before the nations thy true light as of old; O teach thy wandering pilgrims by this their path to trace, till, clouds and darkness ended, they see thee face to face.”

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

30 October 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

I own a copy of a big book entitled  The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,173 Thoughts on the Business of Life.  Its headings run from A-Ability to Z-Zeal, and include under G- God and under T-Taxes. There are, in fact, 94 quotations about God and 70 quotations about taxes. The numerical superiority of the headings under God is reassuring and we can rest easy knowing that in the book God is ahead of taxes.  

The Forbes Book is meant to be Chamber of Commerce staple so  there is a lot of humor and light heartedness in the quotations.  For example, here’s one of the quotations on taxes, from G.K. Chesterton: “A citizen can hardly distinguish  between a tax and a fine, except that a fine is generally much lighter.” And here’s a quotation on God from Anonymous: “ God will provide the victuals, but He will not cook the dinner.  There are other equally light-hearted  and delightful quotations . For the most part, this massive collection of “business quotations” is an easy going book for an easy going audience. It is not a book with much hint of “gloom and doom” nor does it offer much of a reality check on every-day life as it really is.

The Forbes Book is not the kind of book Jesus and his disciples would pick up, much less read through, but we can imagine the Pharisees and Herodians might take some delight in it.  This may be because our book has nothing to offer by way of explanation and understanding of hard facts, for example, that our city, Philadelphia, “the birthplace of American democracy,” is the poorest big city in the United States  with 27% of its population including more than a third of its children, living below the poverty line. [46.2 million nationally] Nor will our treasury of delightful sayings help us explain and understand the appalling disparity between the rich and the poor in our country and the fact that, year- by-year, proportionally fewer people control  more and more of the country’s  wealth. 

So we come to this morning’s Gospel, and the tension between giving to God what is God’s and giving to the emperor what is the emperor’s.  We know the story here:  the Pharisees and Herodians are determined to trick Jesus, who is proving to be quite a nuisance, into incriminating himself so that they can get him arrested and out of the way . After their two-faced flattery of Him, the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. For us, this is a silly question: of course it is lawful—and required and right—to support the emperor—our government—because this is a legitimate way to care for each other and to support the welfare and social good of the entire community.  But for people under Mosaic Law, the question was a serious—and tricky—one.  

Jesus responds by acknowledging the trickery at hand and calls the Pharisees and Herodians hypocrites. To be called hypocrites by Jesus is not something anyone would wish for because, for Jesus, hypocrisy may be one of the worst transgressions. Hypocrisy is distortion and denial and dishonesty, all of which the Pharisees and Herodians are guilty of, as are we if we are not mindful of our Christian covenant.  The difference between us and the Pharisees and Herodians is that we truly know Jesus and that is why we are Christians and why we practice the Faith.  To be who and what we say we are means that we practice obedience as much as we practice generosity, compassion, justice, and fairness in everything that we do. Unlike those people trying to trick Jesus in order to destroy Him, we proclaim Jesus and practice His ways. Thus, we have chosen to resist poverty, hunger, and  injustice in the inequitable distribution of wealth. As mixed-up as some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters all over the country might seem, they could be seen as  expressing some of our own Christian sensibilities.

As Christians, we know there is something terribly wrong in our country, as the facts about Philadelphia as the poorest big city in America affirm.   We all have our own stories of adversity and crisis, yes. But we know from the Gospel, Jesus’s own story, that this is what is means to be alive and human.  Yet, as Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel , we ARE in fact responsible for one another through what we give to the Emperor and that not to pay the emperor can be to turn our backs on what we give to God.  

Unlike the Pharisees and Herodians, we don’t need to say how amazed we are at Jesus’s presence, justice,  compassion, wisdom  and goodness. We know all this and it is the Good News of the Gospel. But what is the Good News is often the Hard News of the Gospel. How do we manage this tension? Let’s try this:  what if each of us wanted  to add a new quotation to The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, one that included God, taxes, generosity, compassion, justice, and Faith?  Here’s my suggestion and it comes from a “comedian,” of all people, Stephen Colbert. It’s a zinger so get ready:  

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Amen.   

Preached by Dr. Peter Kountz

For 9:00am High Mass

Sunday, October 16, 2011 – Pentecost  18/Proper 24