Saint Mark's Church

Having recently spent a week with my twin six-year-old nephews, I find myself wondering when in childhood we learn to make excuses.   Neither of them seems adept at it yet.  When confronted with a scold, a correction, or a withering look, it seemed to me that the boys, at this age, tend either to be sorry or not.  They don’t equivocate; they are not yet reaching for excuses; not even blaming each other yet.  I chalk this behavior up to developmental progress not the disposition of their own characters, but who knows?

I do know how easy it is to look for excuses – I do it all the time.  When I have left something undone  - a phone call I should have made, a letter I should have written, work I put off till later, etc – I find myself fabricating excuses in my mind, for I am a fairly reliable accuser of myself; it’s good to beat others to the punch!  And I’m sure if ever I had done something I ought not to have done I might be tempted to look for an excuse too.

The most common excuse we hear in politics these days is that so-and-so “mis-spoke” – which is a euphemism for “lied,” or “had no idea what he was talking about,” or “made it up completely.”  These are never admissions of wrong-doing, these are excuses.

In the newspaper the other day, I read of how leaders of another denomination, much accused, are relying on the excuse that “I didn’t know I was supposed to tell anyone.”  Or, “it was better to keep it out of the press.”  Or, “I had very little training in dealing with these matters.”  These, too, are only excuses.

One of the great ecclesiastical excuses is often mined from today’s Gospel reading: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”  I know it doesn’t sound like am excuse, so let me try to explain.  During the past fifty years or so, we have learned to fashion this short sentence of our Lord’s into a first-rate excuse for failing to build up either his church or his kingdom.  And clerics have learned to be indignant at the crass suggestion that their work might be measured by the number of people they can count in their congregations.  Why focus, like accountants, they challenge, on such numbers, when all that’s needed are two or three?!?  After all, that’s what Jesus said!

There are certainly reasons that it is harder to get people into church these days.  There are reasons it can be an uphill climb to build God’s kingdom.  But there are also a lot of excuses that find smug satisfaction in Jesus’ promise that he would be in the midst of his people wherever only two or three are gathered together in his Name.

I don’t think Jesus intended this remark as an excuse.  I think he intended it as a brand of empowerment.  I think he was opening up possibilities that his disciples might have imagined were beyond them.  He told them only two of them had to agree on something and ask for it, and God could make it possible.  He knew there would be arguments, disagreements, and division – but these would not impede his kingdom.  Just bring two or three of you together, and there I will be, with power to change the world! 

+ + +

Some time in the morning of Wednesday, August 24, three children must have set out along a dusty road in the hills of northwestern Honduras.  They were unaccompanied by any parent – I don’t know why.  The eldest, was, I think, in his early teens, the others, each a couple of years younger.  They must have heard about the Gran Brigada Medicina – as our free medical clinic was advertised – from one of the flyers that were distributed, or by word of mouth.  Like many of the families we saw walking the rutted roads of the steep hillsides, their feet were the only mode of transportation available to them.

I first learned of the children when I reached for a slip of paper that was handed over to our makeshift pharmacy for every family of patients.  I did not notice the children’s names, I am embarrassed to say, or even their ages, at the time.  I saw that no medications were prescribed, except the anti-parasitic that we gave to everyone, and children’s multi-vitamins.  This was odd.  I turned the sheet of paper over to read the diagnosis.  There was a list of complaints – aches and pains of various kinds – but no diagnosis, and no treatment.  Maybe this was a mistake?  I identified the doctor’s handwriting and went into the adjacent building where the clinic was operating, and he was already seeing another patient.

“Is there some mistake here?” I interrupted.  “Is there something we should be doing, something we can give these children?”

He looked at me with sincere eyes.  “There is nothing to diagnose,” he said to me.  “Their condition is a result of poor hygiene and malnutrition, because they are poor.  They walked for two hours on their own to get here.  They need food, if we have any.”

If I’d been thinking, I’d have rummaged through everyone’s bags and collected various granola bars and scraps of food that we might have been carrying.  But I wasn’t thinking.  I didn’t do it, and I didn’t even find the children.  I went back to the pharmacy and I grabbed a big bundle of vitamins and a few children’s Tylenol, and I handed them over to be distributed when the three children’s turn came.  And I cannot tell you any more of what became of those three kids who walked so far to get so little. 

+ + +

While I was in Honduras, one of my dogs had to go to the vet, for a not especially expensive visit that cost about five times what it cost us to see one patient in Honduras.  I feel as though I need to make an excuse here, but I can’t even define what exactly it is for.  Except that what else can I do in the face of three children who walk for two hours to a free medical clinic that cannot treat them because their illness is poverty and their hunger I had not the wherewithal to feed.

+ + +

The Christian Church these days is something of a mess.  It is marked by scandal, hypocrisy, abuse, name-calling, foolishness, hatreds, self-absorption, and a too-often anemic enthusiasm for the Good News of God in Christ.  She consoles herself with excuses, and with the regular reminder that where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there he is in the midst of them.

But every morning there are children who wake up with no one to care for them, no way to feed themselves, no access to clean water, and no way to find a doctor of the kind found by the dozen across the river at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  Unless we decide to go to them, as the doctors and nurses, and non-medical folks who went to Honduras in the name of this parish did two weeks ago.

It would be misleading to be self-congratulatory and tell you what a marvelous job we did – although we did a marvelous job.  It would be a mistake to believe, even for a moment, that all is well because of our week’s work in Concepcion del Norte.

But it would be wrong to miss the importance and the power of two or three or fifteen people agreeing on a mission of love and care and healing.  It would be blindness to miss the clear evidence of Christ’s presence among the men and women who you sent to do that work in Honduras.  And it would be tragic to fail to recognize the power of God to transform lives and even the whole world when we gather together by our twos and threes, our fifteens and fifties, our hundreds and our thousands.

This is precisely why three years ago this parish adopted an empty church in North Philadelphia as our mission.  And why we have founded there a school that is to open in two days at Saint James the Less, which seeks to serve children like those who walked to the Gran Brigada Medicina – children who have not enough to survive in this world.

This is why we cannot console ourselves with excuses, and why we must not be satisfied with two or three gathered together, when Christ has given us so much power, by calling his people together here on Locust Street for more than 160 years.

And Christ has given each and every one of us power when we were baptized with his Holy Spirit.

Christ gave you power to build up his kingdom.  Christ gave you power to reach out in love.  Christ gave you power to change your own life and the lives of those you touch.  Christ gave you power to bear with grace the image of your creator.  Christ gave you power to conquer darkness and despair.  Christ gave you power to heal brokenness and to forgive those who vex you.  Christ gave you power to live beyond the grave.  Christ gave you power to do whatever you ask in his Name. 

Christ has not given you or me an excuse… to be less than he calls us to be, smaller than we should be, timid of hope, puny in our dreaming, stagnant in our work, tight-fisted in our giving, reluctant in our hospitality, reserved in our loving.

Every day there are homes in this city where two or three children wake up hungry, without all they need, and no good parent to guide them in this difficult world.  But Christ is in their midst too – those beautiful children of his!  And they are walking towards us every day. 

What, I pray, do we intend to do?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

4 September 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

In 1979, the National Hurricane Center developed a system of naming hurricanes that continues to this day.  The Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Name List, now managed by the World Meteorological Organization, is a series of six cycles of alternating men’s and women’s names, listed in alphabetical order from A–W (skipping the letter Q, thankfully).  If a storm is particularly destructive, its name is retired from the list, and another name replaces it.  Otherwise, the names continue to cycle in and out every six years.  I’m not sure what it means that, in a cycle of only 126 names – some of which are quite unusual, like Joaquin, Sebastien with an “e,” and Cristobal – that both Sean and Erika (yes, spelled with a “k”) are included in the current six-year cycle.  Sean is the “s” hurricane name for this year, actually, and Erika will cycle around again in 2015.  Nice to know that the St. Mark’s clergy are well represented in the world of hurricane nomenclature. 

Hurricanes had names before 1979, too, but the systems for creating those names varied.  Before then, North American hurricanes were given only women’s names.  (So glad they adjusted that!)  And prior to 1953, hurricanes were given names based on the phonetic alphabet or even by the saints’ day that fell closest to the storm.  But no matter the system, people have always made an effort to identify these storms by name rather than just by coordinates on a map.  Part of this, of course, is that names are a lot easier to communicate than longitude and latitude, particularly if there is more than one storm at a time, but I imagine that there is another reason for this practice as well.  Naming storms makes them seem a little more human and therefore just a bit more understandable.  If we call a storm by a human name – Irene, say – then suddenly “she” can have feelings, she can “rage” and “unleash her fury,” and as terrifying as this rage and fury might be, at least it’s something we’ve seen before, something we’ve had some practice responding to.  But imagine that this was Storm 9 blowing around outside; then suddenly we are surrounded by a powerful atmospheric disturbance – something impersonal, other, soulless, and that is terrifying in a completely different way.  As strange as it may seem, these names can help us to get a handle on things, to fit these storms into our understanding of the world, perhaps even to imagine that we can somehow control them, or at least control our response to them.  

“Then Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the People of Israel and I tell them, “The God of your fathers sent me to you”; and they ask me, “What is his name?”  What do I tell them?’”  Here we have Moses – he has come to the backside of the wilderness, followed the beacon of the burning bush to the Holy Ground where God abides, heard the voice of God calling his name, and been told that he is in the presence of “the God of [his] father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  He seems to have been thoroughly introduced.  He knows who it is that he is talking with – knows it so acutely that he hides his face in terror.

And yet when God charges Moses to go into Egypt to collect His people from Pharaoh, Moses feels the need to ask for further clarification, further identification.  Who am I, he asks again, who am I that you want me to go into Egypt?  You are the one who goes with me, God responds.  And what if the Hebrews want to know who you are? Moses asks.  I know that we just met, but could you tell me your name again?  What is it that Moses is up to here?  Why does he need more than the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the God of the entire arc of Israel’s history?  What is the name that he is looking for? 

The honest answer is that we’ll never really know.  All that we can really know is that Moses is clearly trying to get out of his assignment.  Perhaps he is just trying to prolong the conversation, put off the inevitable journey ahead of him.  Perhaps he asks for God’s name because he’s afraid the Hebrew people will laugh at him when he arrives in Egypt.  Perhaps he secretly hopes that God will refuse to give him His name, thus creating the perfect excuse for Moses to bow out of God’s plans.  Or perhaps Moses is seeking God’s name because he hopes that knowing the proper name of Almighty God will afford him some control over the situation, give him some power that he clearly does not already have.  After all, in ancient mythology, knowing someone’s proper name often means that you can claim a kind of authority over them.  If you know the true name of a god or of a supernatural being, you can influence them, call upon them to act on your behalf, exert your control over their powers.  Perhaps Moses really was that scared – and looking to name God in an attempt to get a handle on the situation, to gain some kind of control.

Whatever his reasons for asking for God’s name, Moses could have never anticipated the answer he would get.  For God spoke to Moses this name, these holy, mysterious sounds, syllables that are so enigmatic that even today we aren’t entirely sure how to translate them.  I AM WHO I AM, we sometimes say, or I will be what I will be, I am He-Who-Is, or I am being-there.  The mysterious, powerful name of God whispers of the very depths of being itself; it refuses to be controlled or defined; even when shared it has such immense reality, such immense true-ness, that it cannot be diminished or mishandled.  This name is very like the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters we sometimes speak as Yahweh, a name that is so revered, so holy, so other that even though it appears over 6500 times in the Hebrew Bible, it was traditionally said aloud only once a year, held on the lips of a high priest in the holy of holies on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.  The One Who Is is a name that defies description and limitation; it is not a label but a verb.  It is a powerful, terrible, mighty verb, one that reminds Moses – and us – that the one who calls is the very one who called all of heaven and earth into being, the one who continues to breathe life into the cosmos, that continues, always, to be. 

And yet it is The One Who Is who promises to go with Moses to the land of Egypt.  It is The One Who Is who promises to stand with Moses when he tells Pharaoh, Let my people go.  It is The One Who Is who reminds Moses and the Israelites again and again that He is their God – the God of their ancestors, the God of their history, their present, and their future.  This great, mysterious, terrifying Being of Beings is one who chooses to be with His people, for His people, even chooses to be one of His people, to save them and make their state of being holy in his own. 

Like Moses, we are about to embark upon a long, challenging journey.  Like Moses, we have been called by name by God, by The One Who Is, and sent into the world to bring God’s people home.  We sit here at the backside of summer, looking ahead to the program year, at all of the ministries that we are about to undertake in earnest.  And that view, let’s be honest, can be frightening – there is so much need in the world that it swirls about us like the winds of a storm – it can make us want to hide our faces, and ask, Who am I?  Who am I to take on the poverty of Philadelphia?  Who am I to feed the hungry here in Center City, to teach the students in Allegheny West?  Who am I to try to free people from addiction, to care for the dying, to visit the prisoner?  Who am I to travel to the halls of power and speak words of truth there – to say let my people, all of God’s people, be fully free, fully blessed, and fully known?  Who am I?  You are the one, God says, who goes with me.  Say to those people who come here looking for food, rest, forgiveness, and joy, that you are the one who walks with The One Who Is.  You carry with you the power of God’s own Name, because God’s name is a promise – a promise to be with us and for us, in fair and stormy weather, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.  World without end.  Amen.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

28 August 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The book The Help is the story of a group of white women and their black maids in 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi.  The world of The Help is one of rigid roles:  the white women play bridge and organize fundraisers, while their black maids cook their food, clean their houses, and raise their children.  The white women expect the black maids to keep their children clean and well-fed, and above all, out of their hair as they engage with their busy social lives. 

Aibileen is a maid in the house of Elizabeth Leefolt, a woman who finds motherhood completely exasperating.  Her two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, exhausts her, bothers her, and so again and again, she passes her off to Aibileen’s care.  It is Aibileen who dresses Mae Mobley, Aibileen who plays with her and answers her questions about the world.  And it is Aibileen who first notices that Mae Mobley is starting to see herself as her mother sees her – as a pest, as something irksome and irritating.  Mae Mobley can only see herself as a “bad girl,” and this, of course, absolutely breaks Aibileen’s heart.  So Aibileen decides to fight back in her own way – by offering Mae Mobley a kind of daily positive affirmation.  Day after day she repeats these words – “You are a pretty girl, a good girl, a kind girl,” willing them to work their way into Mae Mobley’s heart, hoping that she will learn to see herself as beautiful and lovable, no matter what names her mother might call her.

Now this is just one side storyline in the book – and it may not appear in the movie at all, I haven’t seen it yet – but I remember it distinctly because I think it really rings true.  For which one of us hasn’t seen a loved one beaten down and wanted to build them back up?   We all have known people who believe all of the negative things the world tells them about themselves.  We all have known people who have a difficult time seeing themselves as good, as beautiful, as worthy, who far more easily accept the cruel names that others call them.  I would guess that most of us have felt this way ourselves from time to time.  We know what it feels like to believe the worst about ourselves, and we know what it feels like to love people who cannot see all of the beauty that we see in them.  We know what it feels like to have this kind of broken heart. 

I think this must be part of the reason why listening to today’s Gospel is so difficult.  Yes, I would imagine I’m not the only one who squirmed a little while listening to the story of this Canaanite woman.  This story is hard to hear – first of all because this Jesus is difficult to look at.  Not only does he completely ignore the cries of this Gentile woman, but when his disciples finally ask Jesus to do something about her, he tells them, essentially, that he’s off today.  I’m not working up here – this isn’t my district, and these aren’t my people; my only clients are the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  And then, when the woman quite literally throws herself at his feet and begs for his help, he throws a kind of racial slur in her face, the word that Jews sometimes used to describe a lowly Gentile – he calls her a dog. 

Jesus calls her a dog.  Ugh.  That is certainly hard to hear, but it’s also hard to hear about how this woman seems to just sit there and take it.  She just kneels there in the dirt and says Okay, I’m a dog, I’m a bad girl, and it breaks my heart to hear her say this.  Now to be fair, she does use her wits to turn that slur back against Jesus, and we would be right to give her credit for her cleverness.  Right, I’m a dog, she says, but even a lowly, miserable cur like me gets to eat the food that falls to the floor.  Very smart…and effective, because when Jesus hears his own words handed back to him in this slightly different package – the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like a measure of yeast, like a tiny crumb – it changes him.  He changes his mind, commends her “great faith,” and heals her daughter. 

But to be honest there is a part of me that is less than satisfied with her response, clever as it is.  Part of me wants her to jump to her feet and come right back at him. “Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?” I want her to ask.  “Yes,” Jesus would reply.  “Who is the dog?”  “You are.”  “I am.  I am the dog.  I am the dog.”  (If you can name that movie to me later, you win a free cookie at coffee hour.)  But seriously, there’s a part of me that wants her to fight back.  I want her to say, “I may be a Gentile, but I’m not a dog.  I am not a bad girl; I am good and kind, I am a beautiful woman who desperately loves her desperately sick daughter, and I am worthy of your love and of your care and of your respect.”  Hah!  I can see her in my mind, standing in Jesus’ face, hands on her hips, eyes flashing like fire.        

But the Canaanite woman does not do this; instead she chooses to sit in the dust at Jesus’ feet and in her role as a less-than, as an other, as a dog.  How can we understand her actions?  Are they only a ploy to manipulate Jesus or does she really feel this way about herself?   And if she is just being clever, then where is the “great faith” in that?  No – the key to her great faith is found earlier in the reading, all the way back at the beginning of the story, in these words: “A Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.’”  The woman calls him Lord, Son of David.  She knows who Jesus is.  She truly sees him, recognizes him as the Messiah.  And so when she sits at his feet and accepts her role, she is not sitting at the feet of a mere man and allowing herself to be humiliated by him; she is sitting at the feet of God, and she allows herself to be humbled before him.  She sits at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and says to him, I am not a bad girl, but compared to you, I am, actually utterly unworthy.  Compared to your glory, I am a dog, a flea on a dog’s back.  Compared to you, I am nothing…and yet I still hope for your mercy.  I still am, sitting here, asking you to help me. 

So it is not just her cleverness that helps to change Jesus’ mind; it is also her posture, her humility.  For when Jesus looks down upon her, he sees his own self.  He sees himself, who has “humbled himself and [become] obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”  Yes, Christ knows humility; he knows what it is to know the dust, the humus of our being.  And when he sees this humility mirrored back to him in the great faith of this unlikely woman, it opens his heart in ways even he never could have anticipated.  He starts to see the edges of his mission field expanding; he begins to see this woman as sister and not other.  And the next time he sends out his disciples, he will send them not just to the lost sheep of Israel, but to make disciples of all nations.  And all because this one woman was unafraid to be utterly humble. 

Humility is rather undervalued these days.  In times of fear and unrest, it can be a scary thing to be humble – to admit that we might be wrong, that we don’t have all of the answers, that we might need some help, even from God.  Too often, we wrongly equate being humble with being a doormat – with being weak or unsure of ourselves.  In the wider Church, we have downplayed humility for years.  We see so many broken people in our pews and in the world, all of the Mae Mobley’s out there and in here who feel unlovable, who have been called every name in the book because of their race or class or their sexual orientation or how they dress, and it breaks our hearts.  And so sometimes we hesitate to ask ourselves or anyone else to humble themselves before God because we are afraid that it might take away our already fragile sense of dignity.  We try to offer affirmations of our worth without falling on our knees, because to be that humble is just too scary. 

But we at St. Mark’s know – and this Gospel reminds us – that to deny ourselves the experience of humbling ourselves before God is to deny ourselves a great gift.  It is to deny ourselves the chance to discover who we really are and where our dignity really comes from; we are the daughters and sons of God, who are made worthy and made beautiful by an Almighty, All-Loving God.  What a gift this holy, divine affirmation is – that God sees us as we truly are – as imperfect human beings – and chooses to love us anyway.  What grace this is – that God knows us, knows that we are eternally incapable of earning God’s favor, and then pours that favor upon us anyway.  It is only when we find the right role, when we place ourselves in the correct posture, humbly kneeling at the feet of the living Christ, that we can know and honor and love ourselves as beautiful, good, kind, imperfect, wonderfully beloved children of God.  So be not afraid – come, kneel at this table, humble yourself before Him, and be healed. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

14 August 2011

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Some of you may remember that I am not, as we say, a “cradle Episcopalian.”  I was raised a Christian Scientist.  One of the hallmarks of Christian Science is that members read daily not only from the Bible, but also from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health.  Now, Science and Health was first written in 1875 by the religion’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and although it went through hundreds of revisions by the time of her death, it always maintained its rather gilded Victorian literary style, with long, complicated sentences and an ornate, advanced vocabulary.  Some of my earliest memories are of struggling to read aloud from this book, stumbling over phrases like “animal magnetism” and “infinite manifestation.” But it certainly helped my reading comprehension!  As a little child, I could have easily told you the meaning of words like “omniscient” and “efficacious.” And it was because of this book that I first learned the meaning of the word “impetuous,” because it was used to describe your favorite disciple and mine, Peter. 

Peter, the "impetuous disciple," he was called.  I learned what impetuous meant not by looking it up in the dictionary, but by looking at what Peter did.  Impetuous, I discovered, meant to act without thinking – to run off the edge of a boat with all of your clothes on, to lash out at your leader when he says something you don’t want to hear, and, of course, to step out onto the surface of the sea in the middle of a furious storm.  To be impetuous is to be like Peter – impulsive, reactive, perhaps even a bit foolhardy.

At first glance, it would appear that today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew is the most extreme example of Peter and his impetuous nature.  The disciples are asea in the middle of a storm, bashed and beaten by the waves and the winds, struggling to steer their boat to shore but making little headway against the violent weather.  Suddenly, they see a figure walking towards them on the water.  They are, understandably, terrified, and reach for the first explanation that comes to mind – this must be a ghost, a specter, something extra-ordinary.  But then Jesus speaks, “Cheer up!  It is I.  I am – fear not!”  And here is where the impetuous Peter shows up.  He looks out across the water, sees Jesus standing on the surface of the waves, and decides, Hey – I want to try that too!  So he jumps out of the boat and tries to walk to Jesus.  But when he feels the water splashing against the hem of his robe and the rain slapping him across the face, his brain finally catches up with the rest of his body.  What am I doing, he asks?  He looks around, wild eyed in fear, and almost immediately begins to sink.  And so he cries out for help, Jesus reaches out and catches him, and they both get into the boat as the wind stills and the waves calm. 

As I said, at first glance, this story looks like just another tale of Peter leaping before he looks, another example of that hapless impulsivity that can make him such a charmingly irresistible figure.  But take a second glance, look carefully at these verses, because there is one sentence here, one moment, that completely changes the tenor of this story.  “Peter answered him, ‘Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’”  Look what happens here in this one moment.  Peter pauses.  Command me to come to you, he says, say the word, and then I will step out.  Peter seems unable to move without this word; he is stuck in the bow of the boat like in some nautical version of Simon Says.  If we look carefully, we can see that here, in this moment, Peter actually does look before he leaps; he does think before acting.  He waits for Jesus’ command, for that one word: come.  This is not just another example of impetuous Peter.  Here, in this moment, Jesus is the impetus, and Peter’s action the response.

Now why does this matter?  Is it really so important to see Peter’s water-walking as a step of faithful response instead of just another impetuous leap?  It is really so important, because it completely changes the way we see Peter.  Suddenly, we see not just another knee-jerk reaction from an overly-excited disciple; we see brave, bold action from a disciple who is unafraid to risk his life, his all, to follow as his Lord commands.  We see Peter as a man – a real man, instead of a mere caricature of himself – a man who desperately wants to follow in Jesus’ footsteps even when they take him into the middle of the wild, wild sea.  It is only when we see that first step over the side of the boat as a faithful response to the call of Christ that we are able to let ourselves feel the very real terror that must have been raging inside of Peter’s heart, that we are able to recognize in this often impetuous disciple the mark of true courage, of faith in the face of real fear.

And if this change of perspective helps us to see Peter differently, then it also changes the way that we see ourselves.  Because if this is a picture of faithful discipleship, and not just of an overly-zealous disciple, then this is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.  We, too, are supposed to be stepping out of the boat.  We, too, are required to be brave, to have true courage, to act out in faith despite our fears.  We, too, are invited to step out of the comfort of our own lives right smack into the middle of the storm that is raging out there – a storm of fear, prejudice, hatred, judgment, blame, divisiveness, apathy, cynicism, and greed.  There is scary stuff out there.  We could so easily be swamped by any number of headlines – Climate of Fear!  Wall Street Volatile!  Brace for the Pain!  Brutal Crackdowns in the Middle East!  Flash mobs, church abuse, famine, starvation, climate change…wave after wave of truly terrifying stuff crashes against us every day, again and again, until we feel truly battered and bruised. 

But the simple fact is that even in the midst of this mess, Christ calls.  Jesus stands in the middle of the storm and speaks, a long list of imperatives, commands to which we are invited to be the response.  Come.  And pray and fast, yes, but also forgive, offer, visit, love.  Feed the hungry.  Heal the sick.  Cast out demons.  Step out of the boat.  Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.  Step out of the boat.  You give them something to eat.  Step out of the boat.  Repent, follow me, keep my commandments.  Eat, drink, do this for the remembrance of me.  Step out of the boat.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Go and do likewise.  Make disciples.  Step out of the boat.      

If you’re thinking that none of this is likely to be very easy, I think you’re probably right.  Like Peter, we will have to screw our courage to the sticking point before offering the response that God requires.  Because it’s one thing to say that your response is to invite your friends and like-minded neighbors to pray with you in a stadium in Houston, that’s fine, perhaps, but it is quite another thing to say that your response is to truly love one another as Christ has loved us.  It’s another thing entirely to really love your neighbor as yourself, even when that neighbor thinks exactly the opposite of everything that you think and isn’t afraid to tell you about it.  It’s another thing to make disciples of all people.  To preach the Gospel…at work, or in the grocery store, or to our own families.  To feed the hungry…in Philadelphia and in Somalia.  To heal the sick who are dying from diseases caused by their poverty, to heal this sick world from the ravages of our consumerism.  Sometimes it’s quite another thing just to love yourself. 

So yes, you’re right – none of this is likely to be very easy.  And we’ll probably start to sink.  Peter did.  And that is okay, because we are never, ever asked to offer this response alone.  Christ is always present, standing in the center of the storm, speaking at surprising times and in extra-ordinary ways, calling us, beckoning, willing us to keep him in the center of our vision at all times.  Christ is here, front and center each week as we cry together, “Lord, have mercy!”  Christ is here each week reaching out his hand, ready to catch us in the cradle of this altar and lift us up into the stillness of heaven.  Our Lord Jesus Christ knows that the storm is scary.  He knows our fear, our weakness; he knows how much easier it is to just sit in the boat with the rest of the world and wait for the storm to blow over.  But he calls us anyway and waits for the response.  Come.  Step out of the boat. 

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

7 August 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The little-known back-story to the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 includes some eerily contemporary details.  You see, while Jesus was teaching and healing the crowd throughout the day, the disciples had been meeting behind some bushes.  They’d noticed time rolling by and the dinner hour approaching – they knew something was going to have to be done about food: stomachs would begin to rumble, bellies would demand to be fed.

As the discussion progressed, the disciples took stock of what food they could find.  On the one hand there were five loaves of bread, and on the other there were two fish; and for some reason the group seemed to be dividing along the lines of the bread-guys and the fish-guys.  The bread-guys thought that perhaps they could order out for delivery and divide the bill among everyone gathered (including tip, of course).  But the fish-guys thought that it would boost the local economy (which was clearly in need of a boost, being a desert place) if they sent everyone out to local restaurants in the village to eat.

There was no meaningful discussion of the five loaves and the two fish because, well, they amounted to five loaves and two fish, and what they had on their hands was a group of about five thousand men, besides women and children.  And what can you do with five loaves and two fish if you have 5,000–plus people to feed?  You see, you have a limit – what you might call a ceiling – with what you can do with five loaves and two fish in the company of 5,000 men, besides women and children.  And that ceiling feels pretty low as the dinner hour is approaching and tummies are grumbling and you know that soon things are going to get ugly.

So there they were, huddled behind a mustard shrub (which, if they had taken notice of it, they would have recalled began its life as a tiny seed, maybe even the tiniest of all seeds, but here it was, full-grown, concealing their deliberations from the crowd, and from Jesus), there they were, arguing about what to do about the bread limit, so to speak.  Of course, they could not agree – order delivery; or send the crowd to the local cafes – etc, etc.  They talked about the pros and cons of each.  The restaurant guys started to call the order-out guys socialists, and the order-out guys accused the restaurant guys of owning corporate jets (both of which accusations were fanciful to say the least).

The restaurant guys pointed out that when you split the bill that way, you never get everyone to put in what he actually owes, and Peter and Andrew and James and John had repeatedly been called on to make up the difference, and the coffers were getting low, they couldn’t keep deficit spending like this.

But the order-out guys made the argument that if you want to encourage ministry you have to prime the pump a little, you have to at least give people something to eat, and in a desert place you can’t rely on market forces to do everything, since the market is not actually functioning at what you might call meaningful capacity, etc. etc.  And that a bit of deficit spending now would have a big effect down the line in the ministry it stimulated, provided you didn’t try to do it on the cheap, and provided that you didn’t just give all your stimulus funds to the bankers and trust that they would do the right thing.

But, that bit about the bankers was, of course, a digression.

On one thing only could the two sides agree – five loaves and two fishes were meaningless, insufficient, a recipe for disaster.  There was not enough on hand to do anything, except maybe to have a little nosh themselves, later on.

As the day wore on, the implications of doing nothing began to dawn on them.  They could see, from behind the mustard bush, that Jesus was looking around for them, as he wrapped up his sermon.  It was becoming apparent that they were needed, but, of course, they were hesitant to come out from behind the mustard bush, because they had no solution to the problem.  They could hear the crowd becoming restless.  They saw the women sending their children out to look for food vendors, a Mr. Softee truck, a Halvah guy, a knish lady, something, anything; but there was nothing to be had, and the children were returning to their mothers with empty, upturned palms and hungry eyes.  And the men were beginning to shift restlessly in their places, and to stretch and yawn and glare demandingly at their wives and their children.

And still the disciples debated.  And as they did they noticed how similar was their debate to the dynamics of parliamentary procedure in a bicameral legislature. 

Think, said the order-out guys, of the high quality of debate in the Senate, where the rights of a minority can be preserved. 

Think, said the restaurant guys, of the will of the people represented in their own House by men and women in whose wisdom and care the people place their trust.

Think, said one of them more slyly, of the coming election next year, as he dreamed about how much commercial time you could buy with thirty pieces of silver.  And although none of the others would admit it, they all did think of this very thing, but kept it to themselves.

All the while the clock was ticking, and dinner-time was approaching.

The take-out places in the village had heard about the gathering and were hoping for a big order, their delivery guys at the ready.  The restaurants, too, were on alert and had ordered extra supplies, and were eager for a brisk business, since things had been slow for a few years, what with the wars, and all.  The proprietors of both sorts of establishments looked down the road, but no one seemed to be coming.  They began to get nervous, and to suspect that this crowd would amount to nothing – little business, no money in the coffers, and a lot of left-over food in the walk-ins to dispose of when all was said and done.  And they began to down-grade their expectations.

Jesus had stopped teaching by now and was tending to a long line of people coming up to him to be healed of various illnesses and injuries, one by one, which he accomplished as he laid his coarse hands on their heads and prayed softly to the Father, as a light breeze rustled around him.

Making an excuse, and leaving Mary and Martha to tend to the needy, he slipped over behind the mustard bush to find his disciples engaged in protracted discussion, having staked out opposing positions.  If he had troubled himself he might have discovered a willingness to negotiate on one side, and a complete refusal to compromise on the other, but frankly, this made no difference to him.

What, he demanded to know, is the meaning of all this?!?!

And so the accusations began to fly.  Socialists!  Corporate lap-dogs!  Etc., etc.  Some people just can’t seem to say yes to anything, said one side.  That’s right, said the other, some people just can’t seem to say yes to anything!

Jesus looked at them and had compassion on them, because they were pathetic, and although few people would, in fact, have compassion on a group of men having a childish debate over a problem of their own making that is not really that difficult to solve, Jesus always finds room to have compassion, even for those who only barely deserve it.  Looking into their eyes, he could see the fear deep in their souls that seemed to whimper, “We don’t have enough!”

My friends, he said, do you not remember those days long ago when our ancestors were hungry in the desert, and there was no food and no water, and the your great-great-great grandfathers went to Moses with their eyes full of the fear that is in your eyes now?  Do you not remember how long ago Joseph supplied grain to his father and his brothers (who had left him for dead) when famine was all around?  Can you not recall the flavor of manna, or the sound of quails in great abundance where no quail had ever been before?  Can you not hear the sound of water flowing down the face of a rock, just from the place where Moses struck it?  Did God not lead our forebears long ago to a land flowing with milk and honey, as he promised he would?  Have you really been so deprived?  Has God not always given you what you need and, in fact, so much more?

One of the disciples interrupted:

But this is a deserted place, and the hour is now late, send the crowds away, Rabbi, so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.

Jesus could see that this was a teaching moment.  He said to them, They need not go away; you give them something to eat.

And he could see the hearts of the disciples – on both sides of the issue – sink when he said that.  He saw eyes shift nervously to the basket that held five loaves and two fish.  But the eyes did not linger long on the baskets.  He could see worry cross their brows – how could they have quit their jobs to work with this man who could not even see that you can’t feed 5,000 men, besides women and children, with five loaves and two fish?  What had they gotten themselves into?  And how would they get themselves out?

Looking at them with his compassionate eyes, he could see that all their lives they had assumed they had not enough, even though they had never gone hungry.  They had heard the stories of Moses and the manna and the quail and the water from the rock, but they believed they were fairy tales – nice stories for children, but essentially without meaning in the grown-up world.  He could see that they had allowed fear to control them for so long, calling it prudence or caution to disguise it.  And he could see that they had only a little faith, which was pretty sad considering all they had seen and done with him, but he was not surprised; thus had it ever been.

And he knew that a little faith is enough.  Men and women had done extraordinary things with only a little faith – it was enough to move mountains, so to speak.  Yes, a little faith would do.  And although they were frightened, they still had a little faith.

My brothers, he said, how will you ever form a church when I am gone, if you act like this?  How will you ever build up my kingdom?  How will you ever draw others to yourselves if you imitate the bickering and the bargaining and the faithlessness of the world?  How will people know that you are about something completely different from those who seek only power?  How will those who have only a little realize how much they can accomplish if you don’t show them?  How will the hungry know where is their hope if you do not feed them; if you gather in your groups, behind your shrubbery, engrossed in your own arguments, while tummies grumble, and the would-be saints wander away to look for food elsewhere?  How will the church thrive if you operate from a posture of fear and a presumption of scarcity?  How will you change the world if you cannot change the way you do business?  How will you do great things if you master only petty politics?

Feeling chastened, they looked at him with still un-comprehending eyes, with little hope, and the still strong yearning to simply put forth their arguments one more time.

Anticipating their objection, he said to them again, You give them something to eat.

But, they said, We have nothing; nothing but these five loaves and two fish.

Yes, he thought to himself, How will you ever become who you were made to be if you never consider the loaves and the fishes; if you never account for what God has already given you. To them he said, Bring them to me.  And he told the crowd to sit down on the grass.

And he took the loaves and the fish, he blessed them, broke the bread, and gave it all to the disciples to distribute.  And the rest, as they say, is more or less history.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

31 July 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia