Saint Mark's Church

My great-grandmother on my mother’s side lived on a farm in central Connecticut.  She was actually my great-step-grandmother, since my grandmother’s mother died in Europe during the First World War, having left her husband behind in Connecticut when she took my grandmother and her little sister back to Slovakia where they’d foolishly hoped the air would be good for her failing health.  By the time my grandmother and her sister had returned to Connecticut their father was remarried.  Though both my mother’s parents were born in this country, they had both spent time in their childhood in Slovakia, and both spoke English with noticeable accents, as though it was their second language.  My grandmother was “Baba” to me; that made my great-grandmother “Baba-on-the-farm.”

Once when I was a boy of seven or eight during a family visit to Baba-on-the-farm there was a dog tied by a chain to the side of the house, or to a stake, or the garage, or some such thing.  What I remember is that there was a dog and a chain.

I suppose I must have wanted to play with the dog.  I cannot remember if it was especially friendly.  I don’t think it was mean.  The dog must have chased me: dogs do chase little boys; it’s fun.  The dog must have circled around me, because my sole clear memory of that or any other visit to Baba-on-the-farm is that I ended up on the ground, my legs trapped by the dog’s chain wrapped around them, tears streaming down my face. 

I am certain no damage was done.  The dog did not bite me, nothing was broken, I’m not sure I even got scraped up.  But, off-balance, ankles bound together by the chain, I was pulled to the ground.  I was certainly scared.  And boy, was I crying.  And I believe my sister may have teased me, and I think I did not take it well.

Recently my great-uncle George died.  He had lived his whole life on that farm, all alone after his mother, Baba-on-the-farm, died.  The farm will now pass into the hands of my mother and her two cousins.  I don’t believe there has been a dog there for many years.  I know that I was never eager to visit the farm in my childhood; maybe it was because of the episode with the dog and the chain.

I don’t know if you have ever been tangled up in the long chain that tethers a dog to his post, or his doghouse, or whatever.  I don’t know if you had a great-grandmother on a farm, or what the details of your childhood were, but I suspect that you know what it feels like to be off-balance, bound-up, scared, knocked off your feet, with the tears welling (at the very least) or maybe overflowing. 

Sometimes this happens to us and we do not know why.  Other times we know the culprit, or at least we think we do.  Still other times we know that we have done this to ourselves.  Maybe we didn’t mean to do it, maybe we didn’t realize the dog was on a chain, maybe we didn’t think he would chase us, or run around us.  Maybe we thought we were fast enough, agile enough to avoid entrapment in this way, but in the end you are on the ground, feet tangled up, the dog making everything worse, and the tears are flowing – or at least they should be!

Maybe you feel this way tonight, or maybe you have recently.  Maybe you can remember the time you felt this way, but it is now, thankfully, receding into the past.  And maybe in your own story it is not a dog on a farm and a chain, but you know what it is: you know where it happened, what dog was chasing you, what chain you got tangled up in, what you were scared of, what caused you such pain, and brought you such tears.

I know that I have other stories, less benign and harder to share, that have left me feeling the same way: stories in which I am clearly more to blame than the dog, and in which nearly every link in the chain was forged by my own hands.  But these stories, I am not so eager to share with you tonight.

I am moved every Ash Wednesday by how many people want to come to church to receive their smudge of ashes.  People come early, they come at noon, they stop by during they day looking for ashes, and like you, they come late in the day, too.  Denominational lines are easily crossed: Episcopalian ashes are acceptable to Christians of almost any stripe, I’m relieved to notice.  And no one takes up an argument about the words I pronounce as I mark the sign of the cross on their foreheads: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  For a half a minute or so, at least, this argument seems unassailable.

I believe that those who come asking to wear this mark of mortality for an hour, or a morning, or an evening, do so in part because of the memory of the dogs who have chased them, the chains they have gotten tied up in, the frightened moments they’ve endured as they’ve been knocked to the ground, and because of the tears we’ve shed, especially when we remember that the dog, the chains, the fear were all of our own doing, could have been avoided if we’d been willing to avoid them.  And I believe most of us are willing to wear this little badge of mortality – which is more a badge of shame than of honor – recognizing our own complicity in what’s left us feeling trapped, knocked down, frightened, and crying.

But I am afraid that it is easy to leave church on Ash Wednesday believing that that is all your ashes mean, that having shown up to accept your ashes as a sign of humility, and walking out the church doors with them still on your head, you may believe that the ashes are all you get, along with the not-so-cheery reminder that you are dust and to dust you shall return (an argument that may seem less compelling to you with every step you take away from here tonight, but which will be proven to be true in the end).

Nevertheless, it is not for this sign of your mortality alone that you have been called here.  It is not for this message of cold finality that you have been led here.  There is more.  For God knows exactly what led you to that dog in the farmyard.  He knows whether it was all in good fun, or carelessness, or foolhardiness, or a cocky over-assuredness that got you into this.  God sees just how many turns of the chain have wrapped around your legs, how tight they are becoming, how many twists there are.  God knows how hard you hit the ground when you fell, and he knows that your tears are not just because of this dog, this chain, this fall to the ground, they are for so much more than that; they are for everything that has ever knocked you to the ground before.  And God knows that you feel trapped there in the dirt, with the dog still yapping, and the chain still tightening around your ankles, and you are gasping for breath between your sobs and your secret inner wailings for someone to help you, to stop this damn dog, un-do this chain, and give you a hand.

God has not called you here to tease you, to make you feel silly or stupid or guilty for the things that you have done or that have been done to you that have, from time to time, landed you on your butt in tears.  God has called you here to help you up, to un-bind the chain, to shoo the dog into his corner, and to wipe the tears from your face.  And as God is coming to your side to help you up, he is asking, as I am sure my mother or my grandmother or my father – whichever it was that rushed to my side – must have said to me, “Tell me what happened…?”

And tonight we are asked to use this act of humility to help us tell the truth about all that, to be honest, especially about the things we have done that we shouldn’t have done, and the things we might have done but failed to do.

Because God intends for us all to inherit his kingdom, when we have become nothing but dust in this world.  And the path to that inheritance demands of us an honest accounting of our sins, even as it promises freedom from the weight of them.

So if you came here tonight for the ashes, so be it, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  But if you have honestly and humbly also come here tonight to lay your sins – which have left you trapped, sobbing and dirty – to lay these at God’s feet, begging his forgiveness and asking him to help you get up, then you are leaving with far more than a cross of ashes on your head.  You are leaving as an inheritor of the kingdom of God.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Ash Wednesday 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there.”  (Ex. 24:12)

Moses had never asked for a special relationship with God.   He was not especially prone to a life of prayer.  His first encounter with God came while he was tending the flock of his father-in-law and he stumbled across a burning bush.   Had God called Moses to the burning bush?  Or had Moses simply been the first one to come across it?  He had sometimes wondered about this, because it was by no means clear that he was a good choice to be God’s intermediary.  When the Lord said to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people… and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians,” Moses was not enthusiastic.  “Who am I,” he asked, “that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

His experience as emissary to Pharaoh was not an entirely pleasant one.  Bringing word of the ten plagues, one by one, that would descend on Egypt was no easy task.  Overseeing the first Passover was a logistical and emotional nightmare, but nothing compared to leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, eventually with the Egyptians in hot pursuit.  The stunning crossing of the Red Sea did not fill Moses with confidence, (Though it did give him a song of praise to sing); he might never have managed without the pillar of cloud and fire to lead them.  And wandering in the wilderness had been no easy life for Moses or for Israel.  The Lord had once already given Moses a lengthy list of laws to follow, and we have every reason to believe that Moses took these seriously.  But now the Lord has called Moses up onto the mountain to wait.

You and I already know what will happen while Moses is waiting on Mount Sinai, covered in cloud.  God will write with his own finger the terms of his covenant with his people on the two tablets of stone.  Back on the ground, Aaron, unsteady in his faith and in his leadership, will make a golden calf for the people to worship.   In his anger and disappointment, Moses will throw the tablets to the ground on his return to his wayward brother and all the people.  And he will go back up the mountain to receive new tablets.  There Moses will ask God to at least let him see him, and God agrees to let Moses see his backside, but not his face, because, as he says, “No one shall see my face and live.”  And the Lord puts Moses in the cleft of a rock, for his own safety I suppose, and covers Moses with his hand as he passes by.  And when he has passed by, the Lord removes his hand and allows Moses to see him from behind.  And then God writes a new set of tablets and gives them to Moses and sends him back down the mountain.

But today the Lord asks Moses to come up to the mountain and wait.  And Moses waits for six days on the cloud-covered mountaintop.

Peter and James and John surely know the details of this story when Jesus leads them up a mountain.  I wonder if they were expecting to have to wait with Jesus on the mountain for six days before the purpose of their visit became clear.  But it does not take six days at all.  Very quickly, it seems, Jesus is transfigured, his face shining like the sun, and his clothes dazzling white, and Moses and Elijah appear and speak with him.

When reading this story, we normally assume that the appearance of Moses and Elijah is for our sake – or at least for the sake of Peter and James and John, who God intends to see this vision of Jesus flanked by these figures who represent the law and the prophets, as if the transfiguring light, the dazzling clothes, the bright cloud overshadowing them, and the voice from the cloud were not strong enough signs to make a point.  But I wonder if the unexpected appearance of Moses and Elijah is not intended primarily for the onlookers, but is intended for their own benefit, for Moses and Elijah.

Here, indeed, are two of God’s great men, the intermediaries of God’s work among and for his people.  Both of them share a link to Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai’s other name.  For, there, Elijah, protected by the mouth of a cave, was also allowed to witness the Lord passing by.  He was not permitted to see any part of God.  He was assaulted by earthquake, wind and fire, none of which revealed God, until, in the silence that followed, Elijah heard the still, small voice of God speaking to him, perhaps not very far from the place where Moses was allowed to see the back of God’s glory after he passed by.

And here they are on a mountain again, a cloud overhead, Peter and James and John looking on.  Moses and Elijah had both wished to see the face of the God they served.  Is this Transfiguration primarily for their benefit, primarily intended to give them, at long last, their heart’s desire, as the others look on and realize that they, too are looking at the face of God?

These stories, of course, are widely discredited, they are counted as little more than fairy tales in our society, even by many who profess and call themselves believers, but who find so much of this all too fanciful to be actually believed.  But I am encouraged by the thought that Moses was called by God up onto the mountain to wait there.  To me, this sounds very much like my own experience of God – who insists on doing things in his own time, at his own pace, and who seems to leave me waiting again and again, when what I want is to look him in the eye and get the answers I need, now!

Those six days of waiting may well have seemed like an eternity to Moses, the arrangements in the cleft of the rock, God’s hand holding him there, shielding his eyes must have seemed so restricting.  And Elijah’s frightening night in the cave, surrounded by wind and earthquake and fire must have been more than he had bargained for.

The waiting, the misdirection, the over-wrought drama are all very much the trademarks of God.  As is the very real suspicion that we shall never set eyes on him, never really know God, who has so much power over the things in life that we have no power over, and yet who makes us wait and wait and wait, we know not why.

What could it have meant to Moses and Elijah, I wonder, to see Peter and James and John standing there, watching it all unfold before them?  How could those three stand out there in the open – no rock surrounding them, no cloaks even to wrap around their faces, no hand of God pressing against them, holding them at bay, keeping their eyes from seeing things they are not meant to see?  Did the two old men allow themselves a smile, when at the blast of the voice from heaven those three puny disciples fell to the ground in fear, thinking “That’s more like it!”?

And in the moments that Peter, James, and John were all face down, did Moses and Elijah indulge in an embrace with Jesus, I wonder?  Did they each take his face into their hands, gaze into his eyes, and allow themselves to kiss him on the head, the cheek, or even right on the lips?

And did they then realize then that this would be God’s last mountaintop moment, could they see so clearly that from now on the Lord would be visiting his people, face to face, and his glory would be right here on the ground for anyone to see?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

6 March 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A cartoon has been hanging on the bulletin board in the Office for well over a year.  It depicts two men in suits in the back seat of a black limousine.  Their window is rolled down.  Behind them is a steel and glass office building in a suburban industrial “campus” they are driving away from.  One of the two men is clearly in charge; he is giving instructions to the other man as they look out the window together.  He says, “Johnson, look at the lilies of the field.  They neither spin nor toil.  Fire them.”

These two may be off to do many things from the commanding position of the back seat of their limousine, but one thing I am certain of: they are not setting off to seek to the kingdom of God, as they speed past the waving banks of lilies.

What they never pause to consider is why the lilies have been gathering there in front of HQ, why they had become so noticeable in their masses.  It never occurs to them that there is a lily protest going on: a lily revolution.  Inspired by what they have been reading in the papers and seeing on TV, the lilies of the field have lifted up their voices and sought to be heard.  If lilies could carry signs, their signs might read, “Consider us!”  If lilies could march and chant, that would be their cry!

And what Johnson and his boss do not realize is that the lilies are not protesting on their own behalf – lilies have no need to protest, no reason to protect collective bargaining rights, or to cry out in misery about their plight, for God looks after the lilies of the field without fail.  The lilies gather in their thousands and their tens of thousands for everyone who speeds by with never a thought for anything but toil and spinning, toil and spinning, and all the anxiety that is wrought by our toil and spinning.

Which is to say that the lilies gather in protest for you and for me.  They suspect that we are in the limo with Johnson and his thoughtless boss.  They believe that either we are in the middle seats, behind the tinted windows that cannot be rolled down, or that perhaps we have been tied up and put in the trunk – we are there either willingly or against our will, they don’t know – but they fear that we are being carried away by forces that do not care about us, that want us only for what we can do for them, not for who we can become, and the lilies are gathering to shout their silent protest on our behalf.

And so they planned a lily revolution: a movement to cry out for us all.  “Why are you anxious about so many things that do not matter?” They ask us through an interpreter on CNN.  “Why do you worry about what you will wear and what you will eat?  Do you not know that God will care for you?  Can you not trust in God?  Do you not see how beautiful he has made us, and we neither toil nor spin!?  Why have you stopped looking for his kingdom?”  This last question, though, is edited out of the news footage, because it made no sense to the reporter or to his editor back in New York, who assumed it was a mistake of the translator’s.  Everyone knows we live in a democracy, and that no one gathers in protest to ask for a kingdom, to demand a king.

And as we watch the news of the lily revolution, not entirely sure what the lilies are going on about, what their strange demands mean, we may begin to feel a certain uneasiness at how peaceful the lily revolution is.  Not a shot has been fired, since lilies cannot carry guns, and there is no reason for troops to shoot at them.  Lilies cannot throw grenades, or shove oil soaked rags into bottles and set them alight.  Lilies cannot wield sticks or stones.  They cannot even wave their shoes in the air in anger.  They can only gather in their masses and demand to be seen, demand to be heard as the wind whistles through them.

Lilies can only beg us to consider who we are and why we were put on this planet.  They can only urge us to look at the ways we use our energy, the causes we give most of the hours of our days to, and ask ourselves if we really mean it.  They can only push us to consider whether or not there is another kingdom we once dreamt about, with a king whose power was made perfect in weakness, whose strength was seen most clearly in the forgiveness he offered, who fed hungry crowds for no reason except that he cared for them, and who was willing to give his life for everyone who realized that they needed saving.

Sometimes, just as the lilies suspect, I am in the car, in that other seat, with Johnson and the boss just beside me, where the lilies cannot see me, but I can see them through the tinted windows, and I see them waving and calling to me about the kingdom, and it makes me want to weep, which I will not do, because of Johnson and the boss, who would think me an idiot if they saw a tear run down my cheek for all that we have given up for the sake of the company, if they saw me cry for the kingdom we left behind in order to toil and spin for the corporation.

And I am trying to remember if I raised my voice from my seat on that day when the boss said to Johnson, “Look at the lilies of the field.  They neither spin nor toil.  Fire them.”  I’m trying to remember if I objected, if I spoke up on the lilies’ behalf.  Or if it even occurred to me to think, “You idiot, you can’t fire the lilies of the field, and if you could it wouldn’t matter.  See how God cares for them, see how beautiful they are, even though they neither toil nor spin.”  And I wonder if I sighed then in my seat in the limo, and if Johnson turned to look at me with a raised eyebrow that said, “What’s the matter with you?  And why aren't you toiling?  Why aren’t you spinning?”

And when Johnson looks at me with that annoying raised eyebrow, it suddenly occurs to me to wonder about you.  Where are you?  Have they tied you up and thrown you into the trunk since you were asking questions about the lilies, and you might not have come along as easily as I did?

But as we drive to our meeting where we will toil and spin because that is what we are told we must do in order to get the things we must get and achieve the happiness that has been prescribed for us, the lilies fade into the distance and I can see that they are not protesting at all.  I was only daydreaming.  Why give the lilies of the field so much thought?  Why let my imagination run away like that, when there is work to be done, a salary to be earned, food to be put on the table, etc, etc, etc.

At home at night I sit down in front of the giant flat screen TV that I got on sale, and that I love, love, love, since it greets me so consistently and yields to my touch every time I push its buttons, doing what I want it to do and filling my dark room with light and color from other worlds.  And I sit there and flip through the channels, only to land on an old black and white film that gives me reason to pause since it is called The Lilies of the Field, and it puts me in mind of all those waving lilies who neither toil nor spin, who seemed to be trying to say something to me, seemed to be pleading for something on my behalf.

Sidney Poitier is driving his station wagon through the black and white deserts of the southwest, and the car is running hot, it needs water.  (How quaint!)  For reasons unknown, the handsome Poitier leaves the main road and discovers a small community of German nuns mending a fence in their black habits, beneath broad-brimmed straw hats to shield them from the hot southwestern sun.

Mother Maria is the nun who is clearly in charge.  She shows Poitier the pump for water, and as he pumps she says, “Gott is good, he has sent me a big, strong man.”

“He didn’t say anything to me about sending me anyplace,” says Schmidt, Poitier’s character, “I was just passing by.”

Mother Maria responds with a sure smile on her face, “Jah, but you did not pass.”

And I saw myself in that moment, glowing with the light from the big-screen TV, I saw myself in my mind’s eye driving swiftly past the rally of lilies all gathered for me, silently chanting on my behalf, pointing their faces to a kingdom I learned about in Sunday school and had put away with other childish things, as Johnson hit the button, and the window rolled up, and the lilies faded into the distance.  God didn’t say anything to me about sending me anyplace.  I was just passing by.  And I just kept passing by, and turned my attention back to Johnson, and to our boss in the seat next to him.

Tomorrow will be another day to toil and spin.  And although I normally take the short-cut which brings me into the parking lot from a back road that passes the dumpsters, not the front entrance that goes by the field where all the lilies are growing, tomorrow I think I will take the extra minute that I normally save and drive in the front way, past the phalanx of lilies that have gathered there. 

Maybe I will even go in early, before Johnson gets there so that I can slow down and consider the lilies, ask them about their protest, inquire about their mad revolution.  I know it will seem odd to others who see me there, pulled off on the side of the road talking to the lilies, when I could be using this time to get ahead, I might have come in early to toil and to spin some more.

Except that it seemed so simple to Mother Maria: but you did not pass by.

And although the work was hard, and the sun was hot, and he got paid nothing for it, Schmidt built a chapel there for the nuns, and he shared their meals with them, and sang with them, and built up an outpost of the kingdom of God with them there in the southwestern desert where lilies of the field do not easily thrive.

So, the next day I drive to work, and I don’t take the short-cut, I drive around to the front of HQ, with its well cared for plantings, and the swelling ranks of lilies that seem to be blooming in great profusion, earlier this year than perhaps in years past.  And I slow my car down, remembering the snide remark in the back of that limo, and the way Johnson laughed so agreeably, so readily at such a sad and lame and hopeless joke.  I am driving very slowly now; I can almost count the lilies, one by one.  But they are not saying anything, they are not waving signs, they do not appear to me now to be pitching a revolution from their flower beds.  They simply stand there by their thousands, holding their gorgeous faces up to the heavens.

And there are no reports on the news, as I had imagined there were, of a lily revolution.  Although last night I dreamt again that recurring dream I have been having about a kingdom that is not of this world, where all is peace, and justice flows down like water, and it matters more who your neighbor is than who your customer is.

I am still driving slowly by the lilies of the field, arrayed before me on my way to work.  But as I round the corner, I see Johnson standing by the big, black car, waiting.  I hear the driver honk the horn impatiently.  I hurry to get my car into its spot, grab my bag and my notes for the presentation, straighten my tie.  And I slide into the open door of the limo again, past the crossed legs of my boss, past the cynically smiling Johnson, and into my seat as the door slams shut and we are on our way, out the front way.

And I peer out the window at the disordered platoons of the lilies of the field, who seem to me to be getting stronger and more beautiful by the day.  And although everything in the car suggests otherwise, I find myself absolutely certain that these lilies of the field are mounting a magnificent rebellion, right here in the shadow of HQ, right here where I pass by with Johnson and the boss, nearly every day.

And I begin to dream of the day that I will not pass by, the day I’ll join the lily revolution.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 February 2011

Saint Mark's Church, Phialdelphia

In his marvelous, most recent novel the Indian writer, Amitav Ghosh, tells the story of the mid-19^th century Raja Neel Rattan Halder, the zemindar of Rashkali[i].  The fictitious Halders were among the oldest and most noted landed families of Bengal.  Born of a high caste with religious sensitivities, Neel is a paragon of purity and cleanliness.  As a child he was delicate and fragile, characteristics that he retains in his adulthood.  When entertaining Englishmen, Neel would not eat with them, “the rules of the Rashkali household were strict in regard to whom the Raja could eat with, and unclean beef-eaters were not a part of that small circle.”  This is not so much a judgment of the westerners as a statement of fact, and for Neel, the extension of his gracious hospitality need not be an occasion for defiling himself.  He can remain clean in their presence, even as they transgress bounds he would never allow himself to cross.

What Neel has been unable to retain in his adulthood is the wealth of previous generations of his family, which has been siphoning away for years, without his really knowing it.  And eventually Neel finds himself in prison because of his inability to pay his debts, and because it suits the British colonizers who want to make use of the Raja’s land holdings.

In prison, Neel has no choice buy to occupy a filthy cell that is an affront to every pattern, every rule he has tried to live his life by.  Ritual cleanness is a luxury even dearer than actual cleanliness.  But the greatest affront to Neel’s status and identity, the greatest challenge to his cleanness is his cellmate: a stinking, shriveled, convulsing, nameless soul who is an opium addict in serious withdrawal, who lies huddled in a corner of the cell, “so thickly mired in dirt and mud that it was impossible to tell whether the man was naked or clothed.”  “For a man of Neel’s fastidiousness,” Ghosh writes, “it was to cohabit with the incarnate embodiment of his loathings.”

Neel, the Raja of Rashkali, decides that if he is to remain sane, he will have to clean his cell.  But to take up into his hands the broom and the dustpan required to do so, is to come into contact with objects heretofore untouchable to him.  “Closing his eyes, he thrust his hand blindly forward [to grab the broom], and only when the handle was in his grasp did he allow himself to look again: it seemed miraculous then that his surroundings were unchanged.”  And he goes about the process of sweeping, and scouring the floor of his cell.  But there remains, in the corner, the addict in the throes of his withdrawal, covered in his own filth, reeking like a toilet, quivering in his semi-private agony.

Eventually, as time passes and the addict’s convulsions subside, Neel decides that he has no choice but to complete the job of cleaning the cell, and this will mean taking his cellmate into his own hands and cleaning him, too.  So he barters with other prisoners for some slivers of soap and some rags, he convinces the guard to allow him access to water, he finagles a new set of clothes, and he approaches the figure that has huddled in the corner of the cell for days.  The Raja of Rashkali scrubs the filth off the man, cuts his loose clothing off of him, finds someone to shave his head and his beard, both of which are teeming with lice, cleans and de-louses his bedding and washes that last corner of the cell, to which he returns the bedding and the still silent figure of his cellmate.

And this is what Ghosh writes in summarizing this phenomenal event in the life of Raja Neel Rattan Halder of Rashkali:

“To take care of another human being – this was something Neel had never before thought of doing, not even with his own son, let alone a man of his own age, a foreigner.  All he knew of nurture was the tenderness that had been lavished on him by his own care-givers: that they would come to love him was something he had taken for granted – yet knowing his own feelings for them to be in no way equivalent, he had often wondered how that attachment was born.  It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened: was it possible that the mere fact of using one’s hands and investing one’s attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one’s care – just as the craftsman’s love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated?”

When I first read that beautiful passage, I knew that it was the Gospel in a different tongue.  I did not realize how well it matched the Gospel reading for today: “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?”

We find it more or less easy to love those who love us already, and it is a fine thing that we should find it as easy as we can.  But Jesus calls us to love those whom we are not inclined to love, to reach out to those for whom affection does not immediately swell in our hearts, to love, even our enemies.  “For if you greet only your brothers and sisters what more are you doing than others?”

I cannot speak for all of you, but speaking for myself, even though I have not a single land holding to my name, generally speaking, I am a Raja in the world, surrounded by things and people that remain essentially untouchable to me.  I could tell you that there is no system of purity rules that I am following, but I would be being a bit dishonest, although the system in our country is not codified and not defended as it has been in India.  Still, much remains untouchable to me.

And yet I know that lying in the corner (of my block, my neighborhood, my city, my nation) there is a shivering, filthy, quivering, convulsing soul, or more, whose misery I can hardly measure.  I do not know his name, or where he comes from.  I do not know how many of him there are in the world.  I only know that I am not inclined to love that slight and stinking bit of humanity.  I am not inclined to wash him off.  I am not inclined to care nearly so much about his cleanliness as I am about my own cleanness, especially since I do not expect that much gratitude will be shown for whatever I do.

But I am reminded that I am a creature of God’s own making, and that God’s love for me is in no way diminished by the fact of it being more or less unreciprocated.  And I hear Jesus asking, “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?  What more are you doing than others?”

Eventually in the story, Neel awakes one day to find his cellmate awake and near him, resting his arm on Neel’s shoulder, and he has only one thing to tell Neel, he tells him his name.

This city is full of quivering souls who have been consigned to lives of dirty, low expectations.  It is convenient that for the most part I do not know their names.  How long will it be, I wonder, before we Rajas are willing to use our own hands and invest our attention in someone other than ourselves?  How long before we learn to love those who do not yet love us?  How long to reach out to all that frightens us and threatens us, to our enemies, and to discover, when we open our eyes, that in our case, the world has changed.  And it is good. 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

20 February 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe….  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.  (1 Cor. 1: 21, 25)

The avant-garde composer John Cage once famously said, “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.”  Today, this kind of self-contradictory nonsense doesn’t seem like the domain of progressive musicians or artists, it seems, to many, like the domain of the church, who many suspect has nothing to say, but has been saying it loudly, nonetheless, for two millennia.  Or, more poignantly, perhaps those who can either forgive the church, or at least be dismissive of her, attribute this attitude to God: that he has nothing to say, and he is saying it.   This would explain nicely the disconcerting silence so many people find at the other end of their prayers.

Perhaps Cage knew this feeling, too.  He once described a conversation he had with his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg:

“After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, ‘In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.’ I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, ‘In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.’

To some, this, too, sounds like a description of religious life, a life of prayer, a life of going to church, Sunday after Sunday: beating our heads against a profoundly unyielding wall.

I regularly encounter people who, with the best intentions, want to engage me on the topic of religion, or of God (these are, of course, not the same thing).  Such encounters with sympathetically minded people usually present me with an opportunity to unfold the wisdom of God in a well-crafted short answer.  And you would think, that since I am supposed to talk about religion and about God for a living I would have such pithy presentations on the wisdom of God and of his church at the ready to be deployed in elevators, at bars, or dinner parties.  But I have very few of such packets of powdered chicken soup for the soul waiting to be reconstituted in my day-to-day encounters.  And sometimes this is a disappointment to me, and no doubt to the sympathetic soul on the other side of the conversation.  I suppose it ends up seeming as though I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

It is not convenient to proclaim Christ crucified.  If the message of the Cross is foolishness to much of the world, it is not always crystal-clear to those of us who believe, either.  Nor is it immediately self-evident that Jesus’ teaching that it is the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, or those who are persecuted who are blessed.  If this is God’s wisdom then no wonder many would rather dream of becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs.

It is hard to be a believer if you are reluctant to embrace the foolishness of God.  His foolishness began in the beginning, when he created this magnificent universe, and a garden with a man and a woman in it, and told them to enjoy Paradise, with the exception of one famous tree.  (This, of course, is not how it actually happened, it is just our foolish way of describing God’s foolishness.)  It certainly looks like foolishness to have chosen an old man and an old woman to be the patriarch and matriarch of your chosen people, who, by the way, do not yet exist.  It looks like foolishness to allow those people, once they have come into being, to be enslaved.  It looks like foolishness to choose as their leader an incompetent speaker, who happens also to be a murderer.  Shall I go on to describe the foolishness of God?  Do you want to talk about David, his great king, who was also a fool of epic proportions?

And those examples come only from Act One.  We have not the time to chart the foolishness that unfolds in Act Two, beginning with a poor Jewish girl and leading quickly to a manger and eventually to the grand foolishness of Calvary.

And in the midst of it, this foolish teaching:

Blessed are the poor in spirit;

blessed are those who mourn;

blessed are the meek;

blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness;

blessed are the merciful;

blessed are the pure in heart;

blessed are the peacemakers;

blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

blessed are you when people revile you.

What foolishness!

I sometimes wish that there were a sort of pocket guide to all this foolishness: a secret manual that they would give you in seminary, a kind of key to turn in the lock, or lens to look through and see how it all makes sense, to see God’s wisdom for what it is, to hear that God has something to say and he is saying it loud and clear!  I see on the shelves of the bookstores many attempts to convert the foolishness of God into the wisdom of this world, all more or less good for you than chicken soup, I guess.  But none wiser than the foolishness of God.

Back to John Cage, who told this story:

“There was an international conference of philosophers in Hawaii on the subject of reality.  For three days, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki said nothing.  Finally the chairman turned to him and asked, ‘Dr. Suzuki, would you say this table around which we are sitting is real?’  Suzuki raised his head and said, ‘Yes.’  The chairman asked him in what sense Suzuki thought the table was real.  Suzuki said, ‘In every sense.’”

Such is the wisdom of this world: we can as easily become confused about the existence of a table as we can about the existence of God.  We know, for instance that money can’t buy happiness, but we have no intention of giving up trying to do so.  We love to suggest that the pen is mightier than the sword, but we will never spend more on pens than we do on swords. And we listen to people all day long who have nothing to say, but they don’t know it, and they keep on saying it anyway, and we keep on listening.

At least John Cage knew had had nothing to say before he said it.  I, myself, have never been very interested in Cage’s music, never found it engaging, never wanted to sit through 4 minutes and 33 seconds of ambient noise and nothing else at his suggestion, so I suppose it suits me well that he has nothing to say.

I am old enough to have been required to memorize a few things in my schooling.  Did you have to memorize this:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

creeps in this petty pace from day to day

to the last syllable of recorded time,

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools

the way to dusty death.  Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

and then is heard no more: it is a tale

told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.  (Macbeth, Act 5, Sc 5)

Poor Macbeth.  If life boils down to nothing, then why say nothing so eloquently?  Why beat your head against the wall, even if you do it in iambic pentameter?

You and I gather at a table week by week; for some of us, day by day.  You are largely silent as I natter on, saying what I will, whether or not I have something to say.  I suppose from time to time you must wonder if I do.  But let me ask you, what do you think about the table at which we gather?  Is it real?  What do you think about the bread and the wine we put there?  What do you think about the words I say, to which you add your ‘Amens’?  Is it tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?  Is it so much foolishness, as it seems to more and more of the world to be?

Let me give you some more of John Cage.  This is what he said:

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful … is why do I think it’s not beautiful?  And very shortly you discover that there’s no reason.  If we can conquer that dislike, or begin to like what we did dislike, then the world is more open.”

I have never liked John Cage’s music, never been much willing to even call it ‘music’ because it has seemed so foolish to me, compared to, say, the brilliant wisdom of a Bach fugue.  I have always thought that it is not beautiful.  I have been all too ready to agree that he has nothing to say, and it has just bothered me that he keeps saying it.  Perhaps you know people who make you feel this way.  But I would like the world to be more open.  And I think Cage may be right, that if we can conquer dislike (that is born of nothing really, no reason), if we can begin to like what we did dislike, then the world does seem more open.  Then the world does begin to seem like a place where the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted may truly be blessed.

And in a world that is willing to bleed and die for nothing but tribe, or class, or power, or oil, or money, or whatever other reasons we have invoked to justify the rivers of blood that flow through human history – if this reasoning is what passes for wisdom, then I would prefer to trust in the foolishness of God who sent his Son to bleed and die for me and for you, even though it is not always clear what that means, not always clear why that particular narrative of bloodshed is so beautiful.

When it seems to me as though God has nothing to say, when it seems as though faith, believing, holding fast to the hope of the Gospel may be an obstacle, like a wall through which I cannot pass, as it sometimes does seem to me, because of the foolishness of it all.  Then I hope I may be willing to devote my life to beating my head against this wall.  Because in something like 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, I think I can hear on the other side of that wall something that sounds like a Word that God has for me, something God has to say, though he has for so long seemed to say nothing at all.  And I ask myself, as I prepare to beat my head against that wall one more time, What does the Lord require of me but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with my God?

And that is something worth saying.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

30 January 2011

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia