Saint Mark's Church

Imagine, just for a moment, that you’re a Pharisee. You probably don’t want to imagine that you’re a Pharisee; you’d probably rather imagine that you’re St. Peter or the Centurion or Spartacus – but humor me for a moment.  You’re a Pharisee.  You are a lay leader in your religious community. You love the Torah and the beautiful logic of the law that it lays down for you.  You live a simple life; you tithe, faithfully observe the Sabbath, try to keep your body and soul pure and holy.  You hold yourself apart from the temple priests and the Sadducees, partially because you disagree with them on practices and doctrine, but mostly because you like to hold yourself apart.  You see it as your task, your calling, to lead your community into a new understanding of themselves as faithful, practicing, holy Jews. You teach and preach and live a life of righteousness under the law.

Into your life comes a man named Jesus. You first heard about him from John the Baptist, that desert zealot who kept calling you and your friends a brood of vipers. At first, you liked Jesus a lot – certainly more than his hairy, locust-eating cousin. Jesus said some good things, and he at least he wasn’t calling you names. He spoke about fulfilling the law, about ushering in the kingdom of God; he taught and healed and preached just like you wanted to. But then you began to notice that he didn’t always act just like you wanted to. He and his disciples didn’t follow every single letter of the law, especially about Sabbath practices. He liked to hang out with a rather unseemly crowd and let scandalous women weep all over his feet. You yourself asked Jesus for a sign, and he refused you.  And just this past week, after he rode into Jerusalem with fanatics screaming Hosanna and strewing palm fronds at his feet, he stormed into the temple and made a royal mess of the money changing tables and told parable after parable about how you and your Pharisee friends – fellow reformers, mind you – are about to have the kingdom taken away from you because he thinks you wear the false masks of hypocrites. He’s even started calling you – guess what? – a brood of vipers.

And so one day you look at your own reflection in the waters of the mikvah and you say enough is enough; no more following him around asking stupid questions and hoping that he’ll say what you want him to. It’s time to take action, time to out this Jesus as the heretic he is, to show the people that he is not their Messiah. It’s time to get him in some serious trouble. But you can’t really do this on your own. After all, you’ve a righteous, law-abiding guy; you need help from some tougher players. So you look over your shoulder, cross the tracks, and knock on the door of the local Herodian gang. Now the Herodians are not fans of yours – they’re establishment guys, fans of Rome, power players in the political scene. They may not particularly like you, but they really don’t like Jesus, and they’re happy to help you set him up.

And so you all put your heads together and whip up the perfect impossible situation. You’re going to ask Jesus whether or not you should pay the census tax, a tax mercilessly imposed by Rome, a tax that the Israelites absolutely hate. If he says yes, the Israelites will hate him too; if he says no, he sets himself up directly as a dangerous enemy of the Roman state. Either way, you win. And just to add to the pressure, you’re going to ask him this question together – you, the Pharisee, who despises the census tax, and your new allies, the Herodians, who want nothing more than to continue to placate the Roman authorities who are the primary source of their power. And you’re going to pose this question right in the temple, right in front of God and everybody. Your plan is to flatter him a bit, soften him up, and then spring the trap and watch him squirm.

And so imagine that you, the Pharisee, meet up with Jesus on the temple mount. “O great and powerful Rabbi, answer a simple question for us – do you think we should pay this tax to Caesar, or not?” And you sit back and wait for the squirming to begin. You wait for Jesus to start shuffling his feet and writing in the dirt and avoiding your eye like a bad student who didn’t memorize his Torah portion for the day. You begin to imagine his disgrace, his downfall, you can almost see his disciples turning and walking away, his followers turning to you, giving themselves over to following the law as you see it, worshipping God as you think they should, listening to you.

But here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t squirm at all. He looks you right in the eye and calls you out. “Why are you trying to set me up? I see that mask you have on, you know. Show me the coin, and I’ll tell you what to do with it.” And without thinking you reach deep into your pocket, and pull out a small silver denarius – and you look at this coin, with its image of Caesar’s arrogant, self-righteous head, with its inscription that celebrates his power and even his divinity – and you suddenly realize where you are. You’re standing on the temple mount, holding an idolatrous, sacrilegious piece of mammon in your sweaty hands. You hear Jesus’ voice like it’s coming from very far away, “Let Caesar have his own stupid coin; but give God, whose most holy place you are standing in right now, all of the things that are His.” And you, the righteous Pharisee, can’t quite believe what it is that you’re doing. You’re standing there aligned with people you don’t like, hearing words that you already know are true, words that you should be telling the people yourself. And you’re stuck holding this stupid coin, trapped and squirming.

And the moral of the story is…? It could be: don’t try to set up Jesus. This is never a particularly good idea. But it could also be this: you can tell a lot about a person by what she carries around in her pockets. These Pharisees had gotten themselves so tied up in knots by their own fear and condemnation, so disconnected from the holiness of their calling, that they were walking around with the desolating sacrilege in their pockets without even realizing it. They were carrying around an image of worldly concerns, of mortal power, the very power that they were seeking for themselves even as they condemned it with their words and overly-scrupulous actions. They had somehow bought Rome’s argument – that you needed this coin to be safe and successful in the world – and so they had actually answered their own question. Should we pay taxes to Rome? I guess so, if you can’t even leave the house without Rome right there in your pocket.

A wise man once said that you can tell what kind of discipleship a person is living by looking at his checkbook. But since no one uses checks anymore, I think we could update that saying to this: you can tell a lot about a person by what he carries around in his wallet.  And yes, I do mean literally. What you have in your pocket right now says something about you. Your keys – how many, and to what? Your smartphone, your wallet, with how many credit cards? Membership cards, pictures of your family. Cash. Bus tokens. A clip of your beloved’s hair. A hand-written prayer. A cross. An icon. A pledge card. A mint. Some of the stuff in our pockets might be just fine – good and meet and right so to have. But some of it might be like that damning denarius. Some of the things that we carry around with us in our pockets – literal or metaphorical – might just cause us to shuffle around a bit if we had to pull them out here in this holiest of houses, in front of God and everybody.

Now as squirmy as all of this might make us, there is some good news here.  We aren’t alone in all of this. It seems to be a part of the human condition to collect junk in our pockets like so many bad apps on our iPhones. And Jesus doesn’t condemn us for it – he didn’t condemn the Pharisee for it, and he doesn’t condemn us. He just asks us to figure out what to do with all of it. He asks us to take it out, look at it, evaluate it, and decide if it’s something that belongs to the world or something that belongs to God.  Is it something we offer as a grateful gift to God, or is it something that we just need to get out of our pockets because it probably isn’t very good for us anyway? The trouble is that Jesus didn’t really say how to do that, how to categorize these things, our stuff. And whether you are a part of the richest of the rich 1% or the rest of us 99%, figuring this out is a real challenge. Which things are Caesar’s? Which things are God’s? The truth is that Jesus isn’t willing to give us a hard and fast rule about how we decide which is which. He is, after all, not a Pharisee. He is Jesus, the Christ, the fulfillment of the living law, and he is not willing to be trapped by our own anxieties and insecurities. But he is willing to stand with us, to look at each and every thing that we pull out of our pocket, to help us decide where it belongs – what we are to do with it, how it fits into our lives as disciples. So go ahead, take a look. What’s in your wallet? And what does that say about you? And, more importantly, what are you going to say about it?

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

16 October 2011

St. Mark's, Philadelphia

How refreshing it is to peruse Emily Post’s 1922 guide to proper Etiquette.  Here we learn that:

‘Invitations to a private ball, no matter whether the ball is to be given in a private house, or whether the hostess has engaged an entire floor of the biggest hotel in the world, announce merely that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody will be “At Home,” and the word “dancing” is added almost as though it were an afterthought in the lower left corner, the words “At Home” being slightly larger than those of the rest of the invitation.’

Oh, how delicious!

In the section on wedding invitations, this marvelous guide also provides instructions for what is called “The Train Card,” which, we are instructed, is to be used “if the wedding is in the country.”  It reads:

“A special train will leave Grand Central Station at 12:45 pm, arriving at Ridgefield at 2:45, pm,” etc.

Oh, how scrumptious!

Not only does Mrs. Post provide the proper form for wedding invitations of many variants, she also informs her readers of the proper form of acceptance and regret, with the interesting note that “an invitation to the church only requires no answer whatever.”  After all, who cares if you come to the church, when it’s the reception that costs all the money!

Long ago I fell afoul of Emily Post’s guidelines for wedding invitations and all manner of other things.  And I have recently earned a reputation for the serial committal of a new kind of faux pas: when in receipt of an e-vite invitation, I have more than once clicked the response that says, “Maybe,” and I have been mocked and derided by my friends for this weak and uncomplimentary response to invitations.

It turns out that the whole notion of allowing a “Maybe” response to an e-vite invitation is under attack by the Internet mavens.  Here’s what one blogger wrote:

‘As data, “maybe” is… useless…

‘Maybe is a magnet for neuroses. It salves guilt complexes and incites passive-aggressive avoidance behaviors.

‘“Maybe” sometimes means maybe, but it can also mean, “I’m not coming but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.” Or even, “I plan to come but I reserve the right to change my mind at the last minute if something better comes along.” Some people even use maybe to mean, “I won’t make dinner but I’ll come for dessert.”

‘When you invite twelve people to a restaurant dinner via a web service, at least four will say maybe. Do you reserve a table for twelve? When eight show up and range themselves at opposite ends of the table (“because other people might be joining us”) you have an awkward table filled with gaps. The empty seats haunt the meal, suggesting social failure.

‘But if you call the restaurant at the last minute to change the reservation to eight, two of the maybes will show up, like ants at a picnic. They’ll have nowhere to sit, and they’ll blame you. (“I told you I might come.”)

‘How can you know what “maybe” means?  … you can’t. All you can do is phone people and ask whether they’re leaning toward coming or not….  If they’re the passive-aggressive type, they will continue to evade the snare of commitment. “I’m probably coming,” they’ll say.’·

It is this failure to commit that makes the “Maybe” response so infuriating.  And if it’s infuriating to respond “Maybe” to an invitation to a friend’s dinner, what does it say to God if our response to his invitation to be a part of the kingdom of heaven is a tepid “Maybe”?

If Jesus had had a blog he might have posted on it today’s parable of the king who gave a wedding banquet that none of those invited decided to come to.  He might even have linked to the blogger I just mentioned, finding resonance with his rant against the “Maybe.”

“I have swung open the gates of the kingdom of heaven to you,” Jesus might say, “and your answer to me is that you plan to come but you reserve the right to change your mind at the last minute if something better comes along?!?!

“I have paved the way of righteousness for you and you want me to know that you can’t make it to dinner, but you might be there for dessert?!?!”

“I have prepared a table for you, I have anointed your heads with oil, your cups overflow, and still you are not coming, but you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

Imagine what it would have been like if Jesus had given his disciples instructions to prepare an upper room for the Passover and reminded them to be there well before sundown, and they’d said to him, “Maybe we’ll come.”

Imagine that later in this Mass, after we have prepared the sacred vessels, chanted the sacred chants, we have invoked the Holy Spirit to come down, repeated Jesus’ own holy words, offered the Bread and the Wine… imagine that I hold up the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood for all to see.   “Behold,” I say, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.  Happy are we who are called to his supper.”

And you look lazily up from you pews, and reply, “Maybe.”

The sad truth is that the world and the church are full of Maybes and probably always have been.

Maybes hear the invitation to God’s kingdom and do not take it seriously.

Maybes hear the call to work in God’s vineyard, and look for something else to do.

Maybes hear the promise of God’s love and suspect that there is something better to be had in the world.

Maybes see the shadow of Christ’s cross and think that it doesn’t mean very much.

Maybes can recognize a hymn tune but can’t, or simply won’t, sing the words.

Maybes tread the ground near God’s Sacraments but never look up to see them.

Imagine that I asked the parents and godparents of the child who is to be baptized today the questions I will ask them in just a few minutes:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Maybe.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

Maybe.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

Maybe.

Do you turn to Christ and accept him as your Savior?

Maybe.

Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t; it’s hard to say.  It’s hard to put my whole trust in God’s grace and love.  It’s hard to follow and obey him as my Lord.  So maybe I will, but maybe I won’t.

And what about the rest of us?  At every baptism, we are asked to give a clear answer to some important questions:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you sin, repent and return to the Lord?

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Now, it may be that “Maybe” is, in fact, an honest answer to these questions.  But it is not the right answer.  And so the church gives us a better option, since merely saying “Yes, I will” is hard to believe.

“I will, with God’s help” is a lot more plausible.  It allows for the frank honesty that following through with these promises is hard to do, but that with God’s help it’s worth a try!

If you listened carefully to the Gospel this morning, you might be struggling with the details.  What is going on here?  A king gives a wedding banquet but no one comes?  And some of the invitees kill the slaves who bring the invitations?  So the king sends troops to avenge their deaths?  Then people are gathered up from the streets to come to the party, except that one guy, who can’t possibly have been planning on being at a ball, isn’t dressed properly and so is bound hand and foot and thrown into outer darkness?  What is going on here?!?!?

What we are seeing is the collision of two worlds.  It is as though the invitation to the wedding banquet was prepared with all the old world consideration of Emily Post.  The wording was just so, asking for the “honor of your presence,” not merely the “pleasure of your company,” and  “honour” was spelled the old-fashioned way, with a ‘u,’ as Mrs. Post instructs it must be.  The size of the invitation is 5 1/8 inches wide by 7 3/8 inches deep, precisely.  The invitations have been engraved.  Maybe even a special train has been arranged to leave 30^th Street Station.

And it is as though in the face of all this precision, all this effort, we have replied with an email that says with a shrug, “Maybe.”

Jesus is trying to convey the inadequacy of such a response to an invitation of this sort.  Jesus is trying to get past the maybes of our lives and to get us to Yes!  He is trying to show us how sad and boring it is to meet his invitation with a maybe, how much it misses the point to be constantly on the lookout for a better party.  And in his parable, he is asking us what he needs to do to convince us that the kingdom of heaven is worth it.  “Do I have to bind you hand and foot and threaten to toss you into outer darkness?!?”

Maybe….

Returning to Emily Post’s Etiquette; one of the more charming and antiquated bits of guidance in the weddings section of the book is the instruction about reserved seats in church.  The mothers of bride and groom are instructed how to write out cards if specific pews are reserved for specific people.  But, we are told, “a card for the reserved enclosure but no especial pew is often inscribed “Within the Ribbons.”

I think this is a marvelous turn of phrase: Within the Ribbons.  Who wouldn’t want to be within the ribbons, whatever that might mean.  It sounds lovely without being restrictive, special without being snooty, set apart without being inaccessible.  Within the Ribbons.

As I hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as I experience the call of Christ in my own life, and as I try to help you hear it in your lives, I believe that Jesus wants each and every one of his children – every breathing soul and every beating heart – to be “Within the Ribbons.”  He wants us all to be at the banquet of the kingdom of heaven.

And his teaching is the way he tries to get us there, past the maybes into the “Yes” that brings us within the ribbons.

It is as if a king had engaged an entire floor of the biggest hotel in the world, but the invitation, in that old-fashioned, maybe even snobby, way, simply reads “At Home”.

If I received such an invitation, it would be as if two worlds were colliding.  I’d have to look up Emily Post just to know I was being invited to a ball!

But God willing, I would finally understand the importance of the invitation, and I’d be eager to reply.

And of course, I’d be a fool to send a email reply that just said “Maybe.”  I’d be better advised to make sure my formal shoes are comfortable for dancing, which I see the invitation has included, almost as if it is an afterthought.  But dancing there will be, till late into the night.  And that, I trust, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

 9 October 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia 

• · www.zeldman.com, 20 June 2007

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but he did not go….”  (Matt 21:28-30)

Two brothers always cause a problem in the Bible.  Whenever a story starts with two brothers you can brace yourself for a bumpy ride.  Think of Cain and Abel.  Think of Esau and Jacob.  How about Moses and Aaron – they run into some trouble with each other.  Think of Joseph and all his brothers.  Think of the Prodigal son and his angry brother.  Two brothers are going to cause trouble.

The Bible is like a dollhouse in which two brothers always dwell and can be called upon to act out whatever lesson God has to teach, for which brothers will provide the best illustration.  But the Bible writers knew a secret about dollhouses and brothers: they knew that there is a dollhouse in each of our imaginations, too, where two brothers dwell, who can be called upon at any time.  It doesn’t matter if you had a brother of your own, or not; you don’t even need to have had a sister.

The two brothers in the dollhouse of our imaginations are identical twins, who always dress alike and comb their hair alike, and who deliberately try to confuse their friends, their parents, even you and me.  One of them was born a minute or two earlier than the other, and so is the older brother – a fact he never tires of reminding his identical younger sibling.  Of course the brothers in the dollhouse of our imaginations are rivals for their father’s affection.  One constantly seeks his father’s approval, the other, overcompensating, constantly challenges his father’s authority.  But both want nothing more than their father’s love.  (Sometimes the dollhouse of our imaginations seems like a single-parent household; sometimes Mother is nowhere in sight.)

Of course this biblical, imaginary dollhouse is located on a farm – or to be more precise, by a vineyard.  And of course, as soon as the brothers are old enough they are awakened early in the morning by their father and told to get up and work in the vineyard.  Now the brothers of our imaginations are not stupid.  They know that working in the vineyard is a metaphor with all kinds of possibilities.  But this does not make the hour any less early when their father comes knocking at their door; this does not make them any less sleepy; this does not prevent them from yawning deep yawns and rubbing their eyes in the dark of the bedroom they share in the dollhouse of our imaginations.

As they lie there in the dark, they talk to one another.

“What is this all about,” says one brother to the other, “what kind of metaphor is this?  Is this about the virtue of hard work”

“No,” says the other brother, “I don’t think so.”

“Is it about the harvest being plentiful but the laborers being few?”

“No,” says the other brother, “I don’t think so.”

“Is it about wearing the appropriate attire to a wedding?”

“No,” says the other brother, “it’s too early for a wedding.”

“Is one of us supposed to get up, ask Dad for our share of inheritance, go off and spend it on women and wine and come crawling back months later to test Dad’s love for us?”

“Different story,” says the other brother.

“Is there a wounded man lying beside the road outside that we are supposed to take care of?”

“We’re not Samaritans,” says the other brother.

“So, what gives?”

“I don’t know,” says the other brother, the older brother, “but I’m not getting up.”

A knock comes again at the door, and it opens, letting light in from the dollhouse hallway.  “Let’s go, you two,” says the father, “Up and at ‘em.”

“OK,” says the younger brother, “I’m going.”

“Aww, Dad,” says the older brother, “It’s too early, I’m not getting up, and I’m not working in the vineyard; just try to make me!”

“You realize this is a metaphor, son?” asks the Dad.

The response to which is a couple of groans from beneath a couple of sets of covers, in the sons’ room in the dollhouse of our imaginations.

Lying there in the dark, the younger brother, who generally tried to please his father, and so had assured him that he would go to work in the field, had not meant it when he’d said he’d wake up.  He was feeling self-righteous.  He had recently read the entire Bible from start to finish.  Had his brother done that?  No, he had not!  He had been going to Youth Group meetings every week, when his older brother often chose to stay home.  And he had recently been on a mission trip to some hot and sweaty place where for four whole days he had done good works rather than hang out at the beach, which he’d rather have done.  He could get away with skipping a day’s work in the vineyard, his father would never know.

But the older brother (only a few minutes older, mind you) feeling, I suppose, the weight of responsibility that comes with birth-order, was already regretting his defiance of his father’s direction to get up and work in the vineyard.  And he was musing on the possibilities of the metaphor.  Because he was a twin, he knew, without even asking, that his brother was feeling self-righteous.  His brother had this tendency, after all.  In fact, the older brother had often covered for his younger twin, to keep peace in the dollhouse.  It sometimes irked him that his younger brother got away with so much, but he was his brother, his twin, and he loved him; what could he do?

And besides, the brothers had recently been allowed to start drinking a little wine with dinner – wine that came from the grapes that grew in the vineyard – and both brothers discovered the pleasure of drinking wine (in moderation, of course).  Already they were both developing a palate not only for the depth of flavor from the fruit that grew on their vines, but for the secondary characteristics that came with careful blending of varieties and with aging in the barrels, and then in the bottles.  The younger brother was satisfied with a straightforward merlot, but the older twin was discovering a taste for the subtleties of pinot noir, although it was a much more difficult grape to grow.  It would be good, he began to think, to get out of bed and work in the vineyard, because the fruit of my labor is, quite literally, worth it.

His younger brother, lying there in his dollhouse bed, and being a twin, after all, knew that his slightly older sibling was thinking this way.  He knew how seriously his brother took the responsibility of being first-born.  And he knew how his brother was developing a fondness for the slim rewards (in his opinion) of the difficult-to-tend pinot noir grapes, (whereas merlot vines were so much easier to tend, and their grapes produced a wine that, if less complex of flavor, could nevertheless pack a decent wallop of alcohol).  He also knew that his slightly older twin would eventually get up out of bed and head to work in the vineyard, as their father had asked.  He knew that his older twin would rebel for a moment, but eventually he would take responsibility and do what was asked of him.  The work would get done.  If there was hell to pay later that day, for choosing to sleep in, the younger brother would start to quote the scriptures, drawing on his recent reading of the entire Bible, displaying his impressive ability to cite chapter and verse, particularly choosing those passages that point out that we are saved by grace alone, and not by our works.  He felt smug, as the verses ran through his mind and he rolled over in bed and pulled the covers over his head and heard his brother get out of bed and get dressed.

Now, this being a metaphor, as the brothers well know, the time has more or less come to figure out who is who; to separate the sheep from the goats (just to mix the metaphor), the men from the boys, Republicans from Democrats, the good from the bad and the ugly.  It would be a good time to name names, to assign blame, to point fingers.  The joy about standing in the pulpit is that one gets to feel self-righteous about this, as one pulls the covers back from the metaphor and reveals who is who; matches an identity to the lying and lazy younger brother, and another to the cranky but virtuous older brother.

Except, of course, that this metaphor is actually about being self-righteous.  It is about the gap between what you say and what you do; the faith you declare and the life you live.  This story is a story of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, and of the tendency of the overtly religious to these two faults.  It is story of people who seem to say in church that they will get up and work in the vineyard, but instead just end up quoting the Bible as if that justified them.

And it is a story about people who never go to church but who somehow seem to live out the Gospel of love and compassion without ever being able to tell you where in the Bible it says this is important, just as they cannot name names of those who the Bible says are going to burn in hell, since they believe that if the Bible ever seems to say such a thing, then clearly we who read it are misunderstanding some aspect of revelation of the God of love.

And if names must be named; if sheep must be separated from goats; if brothers must be shown to be who they really are in the dollhouses of our imaginations, then the truth is that both brothers live inside a dollhouse in each of us.  Both of these twins inhabit each of our lives.  There is a tax collector and a prostitute in each of us, and there is a chief priest and an elder in each of us.  There is one brother and the other in each of us.

Every morning God wakes us up with the sun, or with a knock, or an alarm, or the dog licking your face.  And every morning brings a call – not just to go to work (which we all have to do) but to work in the metaphorical vineyard of God’s kingdom.  Many people these days are so deaf to the metaphor that they don’t even know it is in play.  But if you are listening to me talk, you know, or at least you suspect that God is calling you to build up his kingdom, to work in his vineyard somehow, and if this has never occurred to you before, then I am here to tell you, he is calling you!

God is calling every one of us to work in his vineyard, which is not always easy.  It requires our time, our energy, our money, our commitment, our bodies, our souls, our relatives, and our friends.  And every morning the story of the two brothers could play out in the dollhouse of your hearts.  Every morning you might hear one or the other of the brothers answer:

“OK, Dad, I’m going,” on the one hand.

Or, “Aww Dad, it’s too early.  I’m not getting up, and I’m not working in the vineyard; just try to make me!”

Sitting here in church, of course we know what the right answer is; we know which brother we are supposed to be.  But, that, of course, is the point of the story.  We know the right answer; we can give the right answer!  But we are complicated people, with many ways of evading the call to work in God’s kingdom, and we are prone to not always do what we say we will do.  Furthermore, we are prone to feel self-righteous, especially if we have been going to church regularly, reading the Scriptures, and if we have given a little bit of our time, a little bit of our energy, a little bit of our money already to the work of God’s kingdom.

Enough is enough, already, we tend to think.  And we also tend to think that the work will get done; that someone else’s inner older brother will get out of bed and work in the vineyard, while our younger twin rolls over and goes back to sleep.

And then a knock comes again at the door, and it opens, letting light in from the dollhouse hallway of our hearts.  “Let’s go, you two,” says the father, “Up and at ‘em.”

And it only remains to be seen which brother will rule our hearts today.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

25 September 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Three little words.  They are spoken in moments when our emotions run high, when our hearts race and our stomachs clench tight and our cheeks are flushed pink.  Three little words.  They often sort of spill out of our mouths in a rush, popping out when we least expect them.  Sometimes we whisper them; sometimes we mumble them.  They often sound breathy, or overly loud or…whiny.  That’s right: whiny.  Because I’m not talking about those three little words – not “I love you” – I’m talking about the other favorite three word combination in the English language: it’s not fair.

I don’t know why we humans always seem to look for the world to be fair.  I don’t know if this is something we learn in childhood, or if we actually come out of the womb looking for the tallies to be even on either side of life’s ledger.  I don’t know if the alarm that goes off in our minds when we see the scales tilted towards one side or the other (an alarm that goes off with the most enthusiasm whenever those scales seems to be tilted away from us) – I don’t know if that alarm is genetic or simply handed down by our parents.  Maybe the eternal quest to find fair is simply an American thing.  I just don’t know.  What I do know is that the search for fair – and the crying and whining when we discover something that is not fair – begins at a very early age, and it lurks around the edges of our personalities through all of the stages of our lives.  It’s not fair: Billy got two blue m-n-m’s, and I only got one.  It’s not fair: Anjel got first seat in the trumpet section and he doesn’t practice nearly as much as I do.  It’s not fair: Julia’s mom says that she can stay out until 1:00 instead of 12:30.  It’s not fair: I’ve worked really hard in school but my parents can’t afford to send me to college.  It’s not fair: all of my friends are married by now.  It’s not fair: my sister can’t get pregnant when I have five children.  It’s not fair: I’ve been loyal to this company through all of the takeover transition and I’m the one who’s losing my job. It’s not fair: I’ve never smoked a day in my life, and I’m the one who ends up with lung cancer.  It’s not fair: you don’t love me the way that I love you.  It’s not fair: I’ve lived a good life, loved long and hard, and now I end up alone and unvisited in a nursing home where no one seems to know my name.

Now sometimes when we say, “It’s not fair,” it means that there’s something in the world that needs to be changed.  And so we go about trying to change it: we write “when in the course of human events” and “[bring] forth upon this continent a new nation,” we publish abolitionist newspapers and shepherd slaves on the Underground Railroad, we protest about women’s abolition outside the White House until we are thrown in prison, we board a bus with both white and black students and ride to Mississippi.  Sometimes we see the scales of justice tipped so badly to one side or the other that we have to – we simply must – stand up and start pushing them back into place.  We cook soup and feed it to all takers on Saturday morning; we travel to Honduras with approximately 8 tons of medication and even more love and care; we unlock the gate on a school in West Allegheny. 

But most of the time, most of the time, when we say, “It’s not fair,” it doesn’t have to do with questions of true justice; we simply mean that it’s not going our way, that our life isn’t the way we envisioned it, that our expectations of the universe aren’t being met.  It’s not fair.  And what is it that our moms and our best friends and our work colleagues always say back to us?  What is that phrase?  Oh, yes.  Life isn’t fair.  That’s right.  Life isn’t fair.  Don’t expect things always to go your way.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  Sometimes you get the short end of the stick.  Because mostly, life doesn’t turn out like you expect it to; it isn’t fair, and it’s often not nearly as good as you’d hoped.  These aren’t exactly comfortable words, but they’re intended to help us toughen up, adjust our hopes and dreams, and live in the real world.

Well, we have got two classic cases of “It’s not fair” whining in our readings this morning.  First we have Jonah, this unlikely and unwilling prophet, who has finally spoken his word of warning to the people of Nineveh.  And – lo and behold – they actually listened.  They changed their evil ways, dressed themselves (and their animals) in ash and sackcloth and repented and returned to the Lord.  And so – lo and behold – the Lord actually pardons them.  And that’s when Jonah starts up with the whining.  I knew this is what was going to happen; I never really liked these Ninevites anyway and then you made me come preach to them and because of me they decide to try to be good Jews for a second and a half…and you go and forgive them.  It’s not fair!  I’ve been living the hard life of the Torah for ever, and they put some soot on their goats’ heads and you decide to pardon the whole lot.  I’m just going to go sit by myself in the corner and sulk, because you are so not fair!!  

Compare that classic whining to the whining of the early workers in today’s parable from Matthew.  These are the people who were recruited by the landowner to come work in his vineyard very first thing in the morning.  The landowner promised to pay them a good day’s wage, and so they’ve worked hard, all day, sweating in the sun, pushing through the after-lunch drowsies, hour after hour until all the work is done.  When evening comes, they go to the landowner’s manager to get their pay.  But then, wait a minute – they’re told to get at the back of the line.  They have to wait while all of the people who worked less than they did (some a lot less than they did) get their pay.  Well, that’s not fair, they should have been paid first!  But then they see that the people who worked only an hour or so got paid a full day’s wage; so they start to think that they must be getting some kind of special vineyard-laborer-of-the-week bonus.  But when they get to the head of the line, they are paid exactly what the landowner said he was going to pay them, exactly the same as the slackers who didn’t start work until 5 pm.  One day’s wage.  It’s not fair, the early workers say, those guys over there got paid the same as we did, when they spent most of the day loitering in the Wawa parking lot and we’re going home with farmer’s tans and palms full of calluses.  Not fair!

Now what’s really interesting is how the Jonah’s Lord God and Matthew’s Lord Landowner respond to these whiners.  They say essentially the same thing – the same thing that our parents and friends have been telling us for years.  You think I’m not being fair?  Guess what.  Life’s not fair.  Don’t always expect life to go the way you’re expecting it to go.  Life isn’t balanced; life isn’t fair.  Sometimes you win and sometimes I help other people to win too.  Sometimes you get the prize and sometimes I give the prize to a whole lot of other people too.  Life isn’t always what you expect it to be: sometimes it’s a whole lot better than you’d hoped. 

Life isn’t fair.  And in the sinful, human world that we live in, this usually means that hearts will be broken.  In this world, “life isn’t fair” usually means that there isn’t enough for everyone and that we need to compete for everything we have – jobs, love, security, peace, family.  But Jonah and Matthew remind us that we don’t live in just this world.  We also live in the kingdom of God, here and now.  And if we are able to see into that kingdom, and, as today’s collect says, to hold fast those things that shall endure even as we sit here among things that are passing away, how much easier we can be.  If we plant our expectation and hope in those things heavenly, how much less anxious we can be about earthly things, for in the kingdom of God, all of their brutal power fades away.  Because in that heavenly kingdom, life, true life, the life given to us by God and redeemed by His only Son, is absolutely not fair.  In that kingdom, we all get far better than we deserve.  We get the gifts of God’s love even when we don’t love Him back.  We get God’s forgiveness even when we sin repeatedly and terrifically.  We get the inspiration of the Holy Spirit even when we aren’t really looking for it; we get the gifts of bread and wine even when we have little faith. 

And all we have to do to receive these radical, life-changing, unfair gifts is to accept that God gives them to everyone else too – to admit that we are all made equal by God’s infinite blessings.  And so if we want to receive God’s forgiveness, we have to accept that God is also forgiving corporate CEO’s who are living high on the hog while their companies lay off more and more people.  If we want to receive God’s inspiration, we have to accept that God is helping other people’s creativity too.  If we want to receive God’s love and healing, we have to accept that God is loving and healing those people we most dislike too.  All we have to do is to accept that God will do with God’s Grace and God’s Love and God’s Mercy and God’s Patience whatever God wants to do, which is always to give generously.  To you.  And to me.  And to everybody else.  And that just isn’t fair.  Thanks be to God. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

18 September 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia         

'Because you are so small you cannot imagine how it looked from where I see, so far above.

You imagine either that it was as horrifying to me as it was for you, or that I barely noticed it at all.

You think either that I was there in the midst of it, or that I was nowhere to be found.

You believe that I can be either here or there, but not in more than one place at a time.

You have used the awful events of that day as a reason to abuse me or to dismiss me.  And some of you have re-shaped me in your own image.

Some of you have run to shelter beneath the shadow of my wings; others have vowed never again to speak my Name.

---

Once, long ago, from a whirlwind I asked a man, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth!?”

And what could he say, because he was so small?

And now, you, from your own whirlwinds, throw the question back at me: “Where were you?”  Demanding to know, as though it was your right to ask.  “Where were you?” you want to know.  As though you are not small.

You forget that I created mastodon and mammoth, leviathan and pachyderm.  You forget that with my finger I rippled the rocky ranges into majestic peaks; that to stir the oceans I dip my pinkie into depths of sea too dark and cold for you to bear.

You forget that from my mind came forth honeybees and hummingbirds, mosquitoes and amoebas; you do not realize that I know the shapes and colors of sub-atomic particles and can count them all from my bed.

You are, in your own way, smaller than the hummingbird or honeybee: more fragile, less stable, oddly enough: more flighty.  At least the honeybees ask no questions of me.  At least the hummingbirds wage no wars 

---

I can see that day, that is to you ten years ago, unfolding before me now.  The sky is clear and bright, you remember.

I can see the jets taking off.  I can hear the radio communications.  I can see the villainy and the heroism already in the hearts of men.  I know who is who.

I can feel the pounding hearts as the plan unfolds.  I can smell the cool slivers of steel as tiny blades are unfolded.

I hear my Name taken in vain.  I have heard this before.

I have dispatched my angels before you even know what is happening.  They are ministering to the dead in the cockpits before you even know the door is locked.

I know this is unfair.  I know you would prefer it if a legion of those angels would have carried the planes on their shoulders.  I would have preferred it, too, for that is my way. 

But this is going your way: the way of men, the way of wars, the way of pain, the way of death.  So long ago you chose this way, and really, you have never stopped choosing it.  And so it goes, as a writer once said 

---

I feel the explosive heat in Arlington.  I see the field in Shanksville that I know is being readied to become a quickly dug, and shallow grave.

And I see those two proud, slender towers, reaching up to me, as they have these thirty years or so.  Extended like a child’s fingers, waiting for me to grasp them and hold on tight, as though if I held on tight enough I could protect you from everything, as children imagine.

I hear the music of the breeze between the towers.  I do not wish to see this end; I have no desire to hear this music cease 

---

Angry men are only angry men – the shape or the name or the color of their anger makes no difference.  Rage sounds the same in almost any language.  The urge to destroy fits beneath almost any uniform.  The accents of hateful slogans are lost in the shouting – they sound more or less the same to me 

---

And I can hear every cry on every flight that day.  And I can hear every gasp for air on every floor of those towers.  I know the sound of every voice.  Do you think I didn’t hear?  Do you think I didn’t listen?

I hear every prayer, and I am answering every one – though I know how hard it is for you, in your time, to recognize this.

I see the bursts of flame, like violent incisions in those long, elegant fingers: fiery blood rushing out, and with it so much life.

I know what happens when the air is thick with smoke.  I know when the elevators stopped running, and I can see the chaos in the stairways.

I can count the firemen making their way up – and they have angels, too.  I can feel their valor climbing every step, and I know, as they do by now, that black bunting was made for days like this.

I see men and women peering out of vertiginous windows and making calculations of mortality.  They will jump, but not without my consort.

I hear the struggle of resistance over land the Quaker’s once claimed for peace.  And I know there are real martyrs on that plane – though not the ones who sought to claim the title for themselves.

Because you are so small, I know, I know how much this hurts.  I know how hard it is for you to bear 

---

I remember how long ago all the brothers of Joseph dreamt of murdering him for jealousy and spite.  Do you remember this, too?

I see them toss him into a pit, reluctantly letting him live.  And I hear them haggling with the slave traders, as they settle on a price – 20 pieces of silver is his life’s worth.  He is small, too.

I watch the brothers return to their father without the youngest, his favorite.  I remember his worry.  I see the cruel brothers take the boy’s coat and dip it in goat’s blood to convince the old man that the apple of his eye is dead, so they can be rid of him at last.

Where do you think Joseph’s dreams came from?  Who do you think guided him, like a boat downwind, through the highest corridors of Pharaoh’s court?  Who do you think blessed him, although he was so small?

I watched, years later, as his brothers made their journey toward Egypt, looking for grain, in the days of famine.  I saw the gleam of recognition in Joseph’s eye when they arrived.  I listened as he sent them back for his youngest brother.  I saw Benjamin return to Joseph.  I heard Joseph wail in mourning for the family that had been lost to him but was at last restored.  I saw Jacob rise from his sickbed to be reunited with his son.

And after their father was dead, I saw the crafty brothers stand beside their long-lost brother and beg for Joseph’s forgiveness.

And this is what I heard him say:  “Do not be afraid…  even though you intended to do harm to me; God intended it for good….” 

You intended evil; but God intended it for good.  Which sounds absurd –that God can bring good out of evil – which sounds like grasping at straws; which sounds like the worst kind of kitschy, feel-good theology you can imagine…

…Until you remember that it was only Joseph’s way of saying, “I forgive you." 

---

I remember all this as I watch men thinking evil against one another, and acting on their thinking.  I remember Joseph’s simple calculus, and his faith in my good intentions.

I remember how small he was; how small you are.

I remember it as I see again the flames, as I hear again the screams, as I feel again the horror that you felt that day.

And I remember it as I hear you demanding of me: “Where were you?!?  What were you doing when the planes were hijacked, when the Pentagon was on fire, when the fuselage dug out a grave in Shanksville, when the towers burned and fell?!?

“Where were you?!?  What were you doing?”

They intended it for evil; how can I intend it for good? 

---

And I fear you cannot comprehend or even hear this answer.  Maybe it is because you are so small.  For I know how much you have suffered.  I know how you now live with grief.  I know how satisfying vengeance would be.  I know how impossible justice is.

I know you need me to hold you in the palm of my hand, because you are so small.  I know you are fragile and beautiful.  I see my own image every time I look at you.  I know you are the most wonderful and most difficult thing I have ever made.

And I promise that because you are so small, I have never left you on your own – not even when flames engulfed you.  I have never removed my hand from you.  I have never let you out from beneath the shadow of my wings – especially when you could not fly and you needed to 

---

I know you want answers from me.  I know you want to know where I was, what I have been doing.

I will tell you, although I fear you will not believe me, and even if you do, I suspect you will not be satisfied with the answer.  I expect you will want more.

Where was I?  What was I doing?

I was forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving.

When Cain took his brother’s life, I was forgiving.

When Moses killed an Egyptian, I was forgiving.

When Joseph was reunited with his brothers, I was forgiving.

When my own children prayed to a golden calf, I was forgiving.

When they were driven into exile, I was forgiving.

When my Son was denied a clean room in which to be born, I was forgiving.

When he was betrayed, mocked, and hung on a Cross, I was forgiving.

When my children were persecuted, I was forgiving.

When my church splintered into fragments, I was forgiving.

When my beloved were sent into gas chambers, I was forgiving.

When murderers stole my holy Name from the lips of the muezzin, I was forgiving.

Wherever men with evil intentions plot in their hearts and act out those plots, I intend it for good.  But there is only one way to do it: to forgive, and forgive, and forgive. 

Until then you are just brothers who have betrayed each other; who have thrown each other into a pit and are haggling over the price of a life’s worth.  Until then, all the evil intended cannot be intended for good.

For you men – who bear my image, the imprint of my thumb, the hallmark of my making – you continue to intend evil against one another; you continue to dig pits for one another; you continue to think that a life can be haggled over as though it was yours to give or take… because you are so small.

---

 You intend so much evil; but I intend it for good…

 …which is to say that I forgive, and I forgive, and I forgive.'

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 September 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia