Saint Mark's Church

It always pleases me when the Gospel cooperates with my ulterior motives.  Today, I am blessed, more or less, with such a scenario.   You think you heard a story about Bartimeaus, the blind beggar, who talks with Jesus and is given his sight by him.  But, as usual, my friends, you have missed an important detail.  The important detail plays right into my hand!  Bartimeaus and Jesus are not the only two characters in this story.  There are others – mostly there are the disciples.  The disciples do two things in this story.  First, they try to shut Bartimaeus up, get him to be quiet as Jesus is passing by with, they suppose, more important things on his mind.  And second, the disciples do as Jesus tells them to when he directs them to “Call him here.”

This is not exciting stuff.  If we were to stage this story in a kind of Sunday School pageant, being a disciple would be roughly equivalent to being a shepherd, or a sheep.  Anyone could get this part.  You could get this part.  (I would get to play Jesus, don’t you think?)

So there is Bartimaeus calling to Jesus in his beggarly blindness, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  And they “shush!” him; maybe they smack him on the back of the head as they do.  Who knows?

But he cries out all the more, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And Jesus hears him and stops.  But he does not answer Bartimaeus.  Instead he talks to his disciples; the ones who have been “shush-ing” Bartimeaus; the one who slapped him on the back of the head.  And Jesus says, “Call him here.”

Which they do.

You know what happens next: a brief interview:

Jesus: What do you want.

Bartimeaus: I want to see

Jesus: Go, your faith has made you well.

Actually, as miracle stories go, the only interesting thing in this one is the important detail about the disciples who try to shut Bartimaeus up, and who call him when told to by Jesus.  It is no surprise that Jesus gives the blind man his sight.  Within the narrative thrust of the Gospels, this is to be expected.  And in this case, he has not argued with the Pharisees, he does not spit in the dirt to make mud, he does not forgive Bartimaeus his sins, or do anything very interesting.

Except… that when he hears Bartimaeus and stops, it is not the blind man to whom he speaks; it is to his own followers: “Call him here.”

Do you realize how often it occurs in the Gospels, that you would think Jesus could very well do something on his own, and yet he relies on his disciples to do it – even something as basic as calling a blind beggar to him?  There is a reason Jesus does this.  He is trying to teach his disciples (while he is still with them) that no one else is going to do the things he calls them to do, and if they don’t do them, they won’t get done. 

No one else was going to get that blind beggar to Jesus.  Now, they didn’t even think that that was a task worth doing, so the lesson is a two-tiered one for them.  Yes, Jesus could have done it himself, but time and time again we see him rely on his disciples.  Because soon enough he will not be with them, and who will do it then?

We are ramping up, here at Saint Mark’s, for Commitment Sunday in two weeks.  That is the day that we ask everyone to make a pledge – a promise – of how much money you are going to give to the church for ministry in the coming year.  There are at least three reasons we do this every year: 

We do it because it is good for you and for me.  It’s good for us to think through our commitment to the church, her work and mission, and how much we want to support that work.  And we very much hope that it is a matter of wanting to do it for everyone who does.

We do it because it is helpful in our budgeting to know what we can count on coming in next year; and the discipline of making a promise helps most of us stay consistent, more or less, in our giving.

And we do it, whether we realize it or not, because no one else is going to.  No one else is going to make the precise commitment you make; no one else is going to keep it in the same way; no one else’s money is going to accomplish what your dollars are going to accomplish at Saint Mark’s.

This is a lesson not just about giving, but about all ministry, about just being a part of the church.  No one else could possibly occupy the pew you are occupying this morning.  No one else’s voice can sing the hymns as your voice can, no one else’s prayers carry the specific weight of your prayers, the special intentions of your heart.

If you are an usher and you greet someone at the door with a smile and an earnest welcome, no one else was going to do that, actually.  Quite possibly, no one else was going to read the readings this morning.  There are those of you who serve at the altar, and those who iron the linens who know perfectly well that no one else is going to do what you do, because if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

No one else is going to feed the hungry who come to us on Saturday mornings.  They would simply go hungry.

No one else is providing staples every month for the clients of the Food Cupboard.

No one else is going to spend an hour together studying the Scriptures the way you do at Bible Study.  No one else is going to pray for peace during Evening Prayer.  No one else is going to show up at 7:30 in the morning to kneel in the Presence of God and lift up their hearts.

No one else, we know this, no one else was going to unlock the gates of Saint James the Less and try to revive the message of the Gospel there.  No one else was going to implore the Holy Spirit to come down and sweep through those gravestones again.  No one else was going to care about the kids of that neighborhood the way we have tried to care.  No one else.

This is the thing about discipleship.  No one else is going to do it if you don’t.  No one else.  But Jesus relies on his disciples for almost everything – even the littlest things!

And this year the Stewardship Committee came to me and said, We want to challenge everyone in the parish to give 5% of their after-tax income to Saint Mark’s.

Oh!  I said.  I am not good at math, but I know that giving away 5% of your money is not something a lot of people do.  How many people on the committee are willing to do it?  I asked.  Good question, I thought.  Good question, they said.

They talked.  And I hope they prayed.  And they came back to me and said, Every one of us will pledge to do it or try to do it, to try to get to 5% in the next 2-3years.  Oh, I said.  And, they said, If we do it, we think the Vestry should do it too.   Well, I said, you will have to ask them.  No one else is going to.

So they sent their chairman, Bruce Nichols, to talk with the Vestry and ask them to pledge this year to give 5% of their after-tax income to Saint Mark’s.

Oh!  the Vestry said.  And then they said, OK!  Every one of them said they would do it or set it as a goal for the next 2-3 years.  Five percent.

And, one of them said, if you are already giving 5% or more, then you should aim for 10%!  I like that kind of thinking!  Even though it means I have to now aim for 10% myself.  Yes, I like it.

Now why would you give 5% (or 10%) of your money to this church?  There are many reasons you might.  But as I have tried to suggest, a more fundamental reason you might give 5% is because you know that every single cent you give to this place is a cent that someone else wasn’t going to give, and will accomplish goals that might not otherwise be achieved.

You might give because you know that this looks like a church with a lot of money, only because it used to be a church with a lot of money, back when we had parishioners with a lot of money.  Oh, where have they all gone!?!?   Yes, we have an endowment.  It’s smaller than it used to be.  It pays certain bills (thank God).  And your dollars don’t have to do the things our endowment dollars do, because the things your dollars do, no one else’s dollars are going to do!  Do you follow me?

Now remember that story from the Gospel.  Jesus and his disciples are walking along.  And Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And the disciples are “shush-ing” him and he is calling out all the more.  And Jesus stops in his tracks.  And says nothing to the blind man.  Instead he says, to his disciples, “Do something for me that no one else is going to do,” (that part was implied), “call him to me.”  And with the help of the disciples – who did something they didn’t even think needed to be done – that blind beggar gets his sight.

Now, my brothers and sisters, we have been walking with Jesus.  And Lord knows what we have been doing, what kind of foolishness we have been up to on the way.  But Jesus has stopped in his tracks. There is something Jesus wants to do in the world.  Maybe he just wants some nice person given a warm welcome at the doors of a church on Locust Street.

Maybe there are some hungry people he wants to feed.

Maybe there is a lovely old church that has been shut down that he wants to open and fill with kids who need a school.

Maybe there is someone blind who he wants to give sight to.

We have been walking with him.  Maybe only since this morning, but anyway, here we are.  And Jesus has stopped and stopped us in our tracks.

Who else is going to do the things that Jesus is calling us to do, calling you to do, me to do?  No one else!  No one else is anywhere near as good at doing the things that you can do for Jesus as you are.  And no one else is going to give – for the sake of Jesus and his Gospel – what you are going to give.  No one else.

You have five percent (or maybe this year it is only four and a half); you have a gift to make to this church – you have several gifts, in fact, of your time and your talent and your money – that no one else can or will make.  No one else can make the difference that you can.  No one else can be the disciple that you can be.  No one else can answer Jesus like you can when he stops in his tracks and says, I can’t do this without you.  No one else.

There is a certain beauty in our willingness to do for Jesus what no one else can or will do, since Jesus did for us what no one else could or would do: he lived his life and gave it on the Cross for our sakes, the forgiveness of our sins; and he forged for us the path to new life in the world to come where he waits for us in glory.  No one else could have won the victory that Jesus won for all the world.

With thanks to him for doing what no one else could do, will you and I do what we can when he stops and asks us to do what no one else will do?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

25 October 2009

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

I met a young priest once, years ago, who was struggling with his first parish placement.  He couldn’t seem to get anything done on time, he was often late or absent, and no one could really figure out if he was just lazy, or if there was something else going on.  Finally, I overheard him say in an offhanded way “These hands were made for chalices, not for calluses.”  Suddenly, I thought, “Aha,” here’s the heart of the matter, a fundamental misunderstanding about what the work of the Gospel is.

I will admit to you, that there are times in the past year when the phrase has flashed through my own head.  When we were out chipping ice off the sidewalk during rush hour after a sudden snowstorm, or up to my elbows in macaroni salad at City Camp at our mission parish of St. James-the-Less, I would think [sigh] “Wouldn’t it be nice if it were true?  Wouldn’t it be nice if these hands were made for chalices and not calluses.”  But it is inescapable: Christian life, ordained or not, is a life of getting calluses.  “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”

Once again, the disciples fail to understand what Jesus is teaching.  James and John come to Jesus because they want positions of power and authority.  They want to sit at his right and left in his kingdom.  They want to be the high chamberlains or chiefs of staff who control access and whose advice is prized above all else.

In response to their request, Jesus asks them a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  Jesus here, as his answer to their simple “Yes,” makes clear is not asking them about a cup or about the baptism that he received from John, but about the cup that he is going to Jerusalem to drink, and the baptism of the cross.  And surely his response to them is one of the more subtly terrifying ones that we hear Jesus make: “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.”  In short, Jesus is saying, “Indeed, you will follow the way of the cross that I pursue, and you will know that baptism of blood which I am going to.  This life that you have chosen, and that I have chosen you for will be the death of you.”

And then once again, because they don’t understand, because they don’t comprehend what he is teaching, what he is preaching, what he is preparing to inscribe into his own life, Jesus calls them together.  The other disciples are annoyed at James and John.  They are perhaps not annoyed so much by James and John’s failure to understand Jesus’ teaching as they are by the fact that James and John got their request in first.

Look at what Jesus says to those disciples jockeying for position and power. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”

The message of the Gospel this morning is the message that is also the message of Jesus’ life and death.  It is the utter reversal and complete inversion that God brings into the world in Jesus.  Greatness comes, not from position, not from authority, not from job title or money.  Greatness comes only from service.  To be great you must serve, to be first you must be a slave.  To get anywhere in the Christian life, you must give up trying to gain position or authority or power.

The way of the world is a way of the glorification and worship of those with power and authority.  It is the cynical subservience of the sycophant before the powerbroker.  It is about what I can get and hold for myself by whatever means necessary.

But that is not the way that Jesus goes.  That is not the way of the cross.  His way is the opposite.  His way is the complete opposite: serving rather than being served.

One of the ways that we can hear how stunning this inversion that Jesus preaches is, is when we lay the passage from the Gospel this morning next to the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.  The Book of Job is rather like courtroom drama, in which we get to hear from all sorts of different characters.  God allows Job to be tested, and all manner of calamities befall him, and there are long speeches from Job’s friends and from Job about how God could allow this to happen.  Then finally, unthinkably, the character that everyone would like to hear speak, and no one expects to, God, opens his mouth and God’s defense of the suffering and calamities that Job suffered is so overwhelming, so majestic, that there is really little else to be said.  “Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you and you shall declare to me.  Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements – surely you know!”  And on and on, the hammering home of God’s absolute power and sovereignty, of God’s total mystery and of God’s otherness from the human condition and mind.

“Who are you to question me?” God says.  “Who are you to even attempt to understand me, when I feed the raven and the lions and tilt the water skins of heaven.” 

And that is where I think we can see the absolute wonder and mystery of the inversion that is Jesus.  The assertion of the Christian faith is that the same God who laid the foundations of the earth became human, and came not for power, not for authority, but to serve.  The same God who is majestic, sovereign and mysterious beyond measure, inverts the way that “things should be,” and instead of coming as a king or president, comes to live the life of a carpenter-preacher in rural Palestine.  He came, not to garner as much power and authority as possible, but to heal, to serve and eventually to die.  That is the model that he leaves us.  “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”

I think about that young priest that I knew sometimes.  His life has not been easy since he entered the priesthood.  He has hopped around to different jobs often, trying to find a place where he doesn’t have to engage in getting his hands too dirty.  I feel sad, often when I think about him.  About the fundamental misconception that he is laboring under.  The reality is this: “Because these hands were made for chalices, they were made for calluses.”  And not just priestly hands, of course.  Christian hands were made for calluses.  After all, I’m pretty sure that he who laid the foundations of the world and became a carpenter in Palestine, developed some pretty significant calluses of his own.  If calluses are good enough for our Lord, I hope that they are good enough for me and for you.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

18 October 2009

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

It came as a surprise to me to learn recently that the bottoms of Saint Mark’s parishioners were, once upon a time, nestled more comfortably in cushions that padded the hard seats of the pews you are now sitting in.  I’d never known that a softer aesthetic once reigned out there in the pews!  But in the Vestry minutes for the meeting on September 7 of 1951, there is an entry that tells much:

“The Secretary brought to the attention of the Vestry that some of the cushions in the pews were in a deplorable condition.  On motion… it was unanimously agreed that the Secretary was to write a tactful letter to the parishioners concerned.”

Salacious as this revelation about shabby cushions is, the remedy – to contact (tactfully) the parishioners who occupied the pews – points to an even more important revelation: pews at Saint Mark’s were available to rent for many decades.  The practice of renting - and in some cases, buying – pews was typical in several denominations throughout much of the 19^th century and well into the 20^th.  Members paid an annual fee for the right to occupy a particular pew week after week. The pews up front were typically more expensive.  While this guaranteed a better view and better sound, it’s hard to believe that there was not also a certain element of social one-up-man-ship involved. 

Of course there are those who simply like to feel at home in the same pew week after week.  I had a parishioner in Virginia once who offered to double her pledge if she could be guaranteed the same pew every week.  She absolutely hated it when “strangers” arrived before she did and sat in “her pew”!

At Saint Mark’s, pews that were not rented were available to anyone to sit in – though I cannot say with certainty that all the un-rented pews had cushions.  Minutes from an earlier Vestry meeting - April 8, 1947 – show us that it was a different time, indeed.

“The Rector reported that several unpleasant incidents had occurred recently and suggested that the system of straps on rented pews be more generally enforced, recommending that an announcement regarding the privileges of pew holders should be made.  In the case of persistent offenders he felt a letter should be written reminding them that pews are rented with the understanding that on Festivals and special occasions the pews should be available to all.  Should they not be willing to adhere to these terms, the privilege of renting a pew ought to be withdrawn he felt.”

I must admit that I have spent some time trying to imagine what the “system of straps” was like and what it was meant to accomplish.  Did these straps restrict access to the pews?  If so, by what ingenious design?  For I have never come across a relic of this system to my knowledge, even in the deepest recesses of the undercroft.  Nevertheless the straps –and the pew-renters who used them - were a problem.  And the distinction – between those who had paid for the privilege of a front row seat and those who had not – was clearly chafing a bit.

It is telling that Saint Mark’s ever allowed the rental of pews.  Many churches founded in the Anglo-catholic revival, like Saint Mary the Virgin in New York and Saint James the Less here in Philadelphia, were founded as free churches, where no seats could be rented or owned, in a direct affront to those with money, power, and influence.  But at Saint Mark’s you could rent a pew.  And apparently, if you were not attentive, the cushion in your pew could become tattered and ragged: a disgrace that might bring you a tactful reminder from the Vestry that some cushion maintenance was in order.

Around these pews and their occupants, has floated for more than 160 years the Gospel.  Pew-renters and “strangers” alike have heard the cautionary words of Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  Saint Mark tells us that the disciples were “greatly astounded” at this, and wondered amongst themselves. “Then who can be saved?”

It would seem that then, as now, the assumption was that wealth was often perceived to be a sign of benediction from above, an affirmation of character, and a guarantee of smooth passage through many barriers, be they in this world or the next.  But in this infamous passage, Jesus lowers the ratings of the wealthy, telling one man that the way to eternal life was to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor.  It’s a remark that most of us are familiar with, but often try to forget!

The man whom Jesus told to impoverish himself left the scene shocked and grieving at the suggestion.  I’d contend that the only reason we don’t leave here today with the same reaction is because we have already decided to ignore Jesus on this one. OK, maybe it will be hard to enter into the kingdom of God if we are rich, but we’ll cross that bridge (or not) when we come to it.

Of course, as we keep reading, we discover that Jesus promises rewards in this life and the next for those who give up their wealth and risk their lives for his sake.  But there is not much evidence that the disciples were especially convinced of this.  The question was still troubling to them: Who can be saved?  Who will find entry into the kingdom of God?  And the central teaching of Jesus on the question is this: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Do you remember what the angel Gabriel said when Mary asked him how it could be that she, a virgin, would give birth to a son?  “For with God, nothing will be impossible.”

At it’s meeting on January 8, 1957, the Vestry of Saint Mark’s adopted a change in the by-laws (Article X, Section 1) that read, “Beginning January 1, 1957, no person may thereafter acquire from the Vestry the right to hold permanent sittings in St. Mark’s Church.  All pews not then so rented shall be free and open to use by any member of the congregation.”

I suppose there were those who were shocked and grieved at this change.  Although provision was made for those who had rented pews for decades earlier to keep them, one had only to miss their payments for a single six-month period and the new by-laws empowered the Vestry to cancel their pew subscription, thereby freeing the pew for anyone who wished to sit in it.

Was the Vestry conscious, I wonder, of taking steps to impose the Gospel on the parish, freeing those who had much of at least a little of the baggage that might make it difficult to pass through the eye of a needle?  Did the leadership of this parish, built, it must be said, with noticeable wealth, now, under the rectorship of Fr. Paige, begin to see a connection between the call to voluntarily give up one’s money and possessions, even one’s pew, and the profound love of God in sending his son to be born among us, in that both illustrate that for God all things are possible?

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest this connection?  That when we begin to learn to give up what the world has told us we must in no wise let go of (our money and our things) we are brushing up the same vast possibility of the mystery of the Incarnation, God with us?  Are we thus learning that all things are possible with God, even the things we believe we cannot afford?

I must admit a certain nostalgia for the idea that a letter could be written (tactfully) to the holder of a pew to remind him of the obligations that accompanied his rights in occupying the pew, and telling him that it was time to cough up for a new cushion.  But on balance, I suppose it is harder, still, to pass through the eye of a needle if you are sitting on a cushion, especially a new one.

I cannot tell from the minutes of the Vestry meetings what the reaction in the parish was to the elimination of pew rents.  I don’t know how much shock or grief there actually was.  But I suspect that for at least some people – and maybe for the Vestry, which had become accustomed to counting on that income – it felt a lot like giving something up that you’d have preferred to keep for yourself.

But I also suspect that Fr. Paige and others saw that renting pews was looking more and more like trying to ride a camel through the eye of a needle – an unlikely way into the kingdom of God.  And while giving up money is never easy for us humans to do, thankfully, with God, all things are possible!

And of course as a history lesson my musings about the pew rents at Saint Mark’s may be mildly interesting and amusing.  But is there something to be learned, I wonder, from the church giving up this practice, her disenfranchisement, in some small way, of the wealthy in favor of anyone at all who wished to sit in a particular pew?  And with the democratization of the pews, has there come also a democratization of the responsibility to care for – and pay for – not only the pews (alas, not the cushions) but for the work and ministry that this church carries out in order to build up the kingdom of God?

Every fall we confront the question of how much of our own money we are willing to give to the church for this work.  Next month we’ll be asking everyone to make a pledge for the coming year.  Sometimes it feels as though we are asking ourselves what a seat in the pews is worth.  But the real question is whether or not we believe that we are engaged in the building up of God’s kingdom, and how much we can spare for that work.

And it would seem that there is never enough to do all the work God calls us to do.  For us it is impossible.  But for God, all things are possible.  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 October 2009

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A few nights ago the sound of jackhammers was echoing down Locust Street, once again.  With construction on the block and around the corner this is hardly unusual.  But when I went outside, I noticed that in addition to the jackhammer across the street on the corner of 17^th Street, there was a crew working just in front of the Rectory.  They were from Comcast, the cable company.

Now, I happen to know that years ago, long before the Comcast Center (the tallest building in the city) was built just five blocks down 17^th Street from us, at least ten years ago, maybe more, in the course of some unspecified street repair or maintenance, the cable that provides the Comcast feed to our side of Locust Street was accidentally cut, and had never been repaired.  We have become accustomed, on this side of the street, to living in the shadow of a huge corporation whose services are widely advertised but completely unavailable to us.

So when I heard the jackhammer and saw the Comcast crew, I began to put 2 and 2 together.  I asked one of the workers what they were doing, just to be sure.  “We’re repairing the cable to this side of the street,” he told me, adding that it had been cut years ago.  What, I asked, had prompted the repair after all these years?  “We have a long To-Do list,” he said, “and we finally got around to it.”

It is a dangerous, and perhaps a silly thing to provide an analogy that compares Comcast in any way, shape, or form to God, so please, let us try to avoid that.

But I do think that the situation as it stood here on Locust Street resembles the way many people feel about God.  You may believe that God exists.  You may even live down the street from his headquarters (or at least not far from a church).  You know there was a time, long past, when God seemed to be at work in the world, when communication flowed between God and his people.  But for reasons unknown, the cable, so to speak, has been cut; you have no access to God, who seems to have nothing to say to you anyway; and so you have become accustomed to getting on without him.

I can’t speak for the entire block, but Saint Mark’s does take up about two-thirds of this side of the street, so for most of us, I can say that we have learned to live quite well without cable.  There are alternatives, after all.  We have a satellite dish on the Rectory roof.  And if there have been benefits of being Comcast customers besides being able to watch the BBC and the Food Network (which the satellite also provides) we are blissfully unaware of and unconcerned by them.

So too, perhaps, with those of us who have become accustomed to living without an intimate relationship with God.  There are plenty of alternative ways to spend our time, especially our Sunday mornings.  And whatever benefits we may be missing out on, go largely un-noticed anyway.

Not so for the children of Israel as they wandered with Moses in the desert.  Having begged for food when there was none, God rained down manna – what the Scriptures call the bread of angels – but this did not erase the memory of delicacies they had enjoyed during their slavery in Egypt.  “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now… there is nothing at all but this manna to look at,” they complain.

They are, of course, confused.  They are not really even thinking about God and whether or not he is looking after them.  They are simply whining.  They have forgotten that when they had fish and cucumbers and melon and onions and garlic, they were slaves who also had to gather the straw to make bricks.  But they feel as though there was a time, now past, when things were different, better: a time before some cable was cut and there was an easier relationship with God, who at this point has led them into the desert with nothing but the bread of angels to eat, and no other alternatives.

Still, they share with us that sense that there was a time when things were different, better, easier.  A time before the heat of the desert had dried up the cable, and God was more clearly on their side.

The other night, as I briefly watched the cable guys do their work, I noticed that there was, just outside my office window, beside the little pit in the ground where the cable connections are made, a barrel with a coil of blue rope in it that was being pulled through a pipe underneath Locust Street and across 17^th Street to the southwest corner where the jackhammer had opened up a hole in the street.  And I knew that that rope would soon be pulled back through the pipe, with the cable tied to it, to make the connections that are hooked up in the little pit outside my window.  How simple it seems.

And the Scriptures hold out for us this morning two possibilities for re-making the connection to God that we suspect has been severed deep underground where we cannot reach it.

The first is in the Letter of James who reminds the church that in times of distress, suffering, sickness – those times when we feel most certainly and anxiously that the cable to God has been cut – the prescription is prayer.  Prayer is the blue rope that we feed through the pipe to God, snaking it underground, across the street, where God asks us to trust that he picks up his end even if he has to jackhammer the pavement to get to it.  And like the blue rope, prayer moves in two directions.  Once fed across the street, it comes back to us, if we listen carefully, faithfully, attentively enough, if we care to spend the time reeling it gently back to discover that God has tied a cable to it so that we can re-establish our connection to him.

James has a simple and beautiful way of saying this: “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective,” he says.  Which means that the blue rope makes its way across the street, and that the cable is always attached when we pull it back through to our side.  The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

The second possibility is harder to spot, because we are easily distracted by Jesus’ exaggerated teaching, in which he seems to be suggesting self-mutilation as the appropriate response to failure.  “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off…  And if your eye cause you to stumble, tear it out…” etc.  We become so troubled by these words that we miss the point Jesus was making.  His disciples were complaining that someone outside their group was casting out demons in Jesus’ name. 

But Jesus says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  Don’t you dare, he goes on to say, don’t you dare put a stumbling block in the way of someone who believes in me, just because they are not a part of your group.  “For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

And there, right there, is another blue rope, but you have to look for it: the cup of water, extended by anyone just because you bear the name of Christ.  Hospitality, kindness, generosity, care extended by anyone – a Muslim, a Jew, an atheist? - and received in Christ’s name is another way of feeding the blue rope through the pipe and under the streets, and then reeling it back to re-establish the connection with God.  How uncanny and unlikely!

And Jesus suggests that we will not always know such opportunities when we see them, so it is better to work on the assumption that whoever is not against us is for us; whoever is not tearing the blue rope from your hands is actually helping to feed it across the street, and back again.

The burden of Jesus’ teaching, like the burden of James’s teaching, is that it’s all about the blue rope.  It’s all about seeking to remain in the kind of relationship with God that allows him to tie his cable of mercy and love and forgiveness and hope to our blue ropes, then tug on them in an effort to get us to reel the thing in, back over to our side of the street.  If your hands or your feet or your eyes are preventing you from tending to the rope, to unraveling it and paying it out, to coax it under the dark recesses of whatever it is that’s under the streets, then do something about it!  Do something drastic!  Don’t just sit there, and complain that there used to be cable, but now we have to settle for satellite.  You might as well be whining for cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic.

Meanwhile God continues to rain down the bread of angels.

To the best of my knowledge (I have not tested this yet) cable has been restored to this side of Locust Street.  Sadly this does not mean that I can now watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore or The Odd Couple, whenever I want, any more than I can count on God giving me the answers I want to my prayers just because they are the answers that I want.

But the fact is that when we imagine that God has a long To-Do list and that we must be very far down the list, if we are even on the list at all, we are probably mistaken.  Because God is really not anything at all like Comcast.  He has never ceased wanting to be in relationship with us.  But we have paved over the streets of prayer and sacrifice that he once used because we have found other things to do with the space he once took up in our lives.  We have – usually with our carelessness, but sometimes out of anger or resentment – severed the cables that connected us to God.

And so he bids us turn again to prayer – a blue rope let out to God’s reach.  Or, at least see the hand reached out to us with a cup of water: the hand of a neighbor, who, if not against us, may well be for us.  God will work, you see, with almost anything; he needs very little.

And from time to time we may feel a tugging in our consciences, our hearts, that place where perfect love seeks to cast out fear.  It is like the hand of God tugging on his end of a blue rope, letting us know that the cable of his love has been tied to it, ready for us to reel it back over to our side of the street, to re-connect, and to love again.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 September 2009

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

When I was in seminary, one of the requirements was a course in systematic theology, and we had to read hundreds of pages from the work of Karl Barth, a famous 20^th century theologian, whose massive theological work, Church Dogmatics, runs to like 20 volumes. It is an incredibly convoluted and dense work. I thought of bringing a selection to read to you, but I’m hoping that you will actually listen to me for a little bit of time and I’m rather sure that thirty seconds of Barth would discourage that. After our class had spent weeks wrestling with Barth’s difficult style and Teutonic prose, the professor told us a story about Barth. At one point, a cheeky reporter had asked him to sum up his million word theological tome in a sentence or two. Barth thought about it for a moment and quoted a children’s song to the reporter: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

There was, the professor was telling all us serious and earnest seminarians, a simplicity to the Christian faith. We could get wrapped in the minutiae of Barth’s neo-orthodox theology, or spend inordinate amounts of time reading about the interrelation between the different persons of the Trinity, but even Barth himself was not foolish enough to think that his writing was anything but an attempt to flesh out the heart of the Christian message, a message of stunning simplicity which a child could understand.

Which is aptly illustrated in the Gospel this morning. Sometimes Jesus teaches in complex parables, but sometimes he says exactly and precisely what he means. The disciples often don’t get it, but Jesus is speaking simply about what is going to happen: he is going to suffer, die and rise again. I find it particularly challenging to preach about the obvious passages: where is the nuance, where the need for scholarly study or clever explanation, when Jesus describing what simply is, like Barth summing his work in the lines of the children’s song: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

He tells his disciples that he must be betrayed, killed and rise again, and they are afraid to ask him what he means. They’ve heard this message before, and when Peter tried to argue with him, Jesus slammed the door on Peter pretty hard. The disciples don’t understand that Jesus is saying simply what he means.

They apparently don’t understand the simple words that he has been teaching them again and again: “Whoever wants to be first must be last and a servant of all.” The disciples don’t understand that the hierarchy of God’s kingdom is a race to the bottom, a race into nothingness, to emptying the selfishness out of yourself as fast as you possibly can, until there is room for God in the space that you’ve fought to clear in your heart. The disciples are looking for power, position, maybe even riches, but not only is that not the way that Jesus operates, but he has plainly told them again and again, in simple language, that the end of his journey, the end of their journey if they follow him is death, death of self, even physical death.

To make the message clear, Jesus draws a child from the crowd. The child doesn’t know anything about theology or whatever the current debates are. The child only knows about the joy of curiousity and discovery; about the brute feelings of love, fear and hunger.

The child becomes the symbol, the illustration to the disciples of their distance from what Jesus is teaching: arguing about position or role, they cannot see the forest for the trees, the wonder in the world around them, or the glory of an innocent, simple child. The child becomes the touchstone of their distance from welcoming God into their lives.

I’d bet that a child would become a touchstone for us as well. Let’s turn the situation around, let’s pluck a child up from our culture and time to use as a measure of our welcome of Jesus. What are the odds, do you suppose, that if we plucked a child from somewhere around Philadelphia, that child would be hungry, or lonely, or living in squalor, or barely literate? What are the odds that the child would have experienced violence or abuse? What are the odds that the child would have health insurance or adequate access to health care? What are the odds the child would survive to adulthood?

To which you might say, “But the living standards of this hypothetical child have nothing to do with welcoming them.” But we have heard the simple message of the Gospel on that too recently: to care only for the spiritual needs of a person is to fail them utterly.

No, my friends, this is the simple truth that Jesus is teaching us this morning: the measure of our welcome of the least of these is the measure of our welcome of God into our lives. Because Jesus comes to lose his life, to pour himself out as a sacrifice, to squeeze the Divine Word down into the form of a child, and if we cannot make room for a child in our lives, we cannot makes the space for God.

Like all the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, God’s compassion is for the little things, the small, that which is ignored or passed over. The orphan, the alien, the widow, the child; unless we welcome and care for them we welcome not God.

Like the disciples, I think we are being reminded of how far from the kingdom we might be. Like the disciples, we are far from grasping the simplicity that Jesus is teaching: position matters naught, shameful death matters naught; whoever wants to be first must be last and become a servant to all.

The truth that Jesus is teaching is remarkably simple. It is like the child’s song. The practice of that truth, there is where the hardness and complexity comes from. But we have here again given to us in the Gospel this morning, the gift that Jesus so often gives us of symbols which we can use to begrudgingly begin again the never-ending process of prying open our hearts: welcome the child as you would welcome God. A simple message, the practicalities of which are a lifetime’s work.

Friends, we are surrounded by children in need, children in squalor, children in dire straights. There are more then enough children in need of welcome to pry open all our hearts to God’s love and grace.

Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft

St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia

20 September 2009