Saint Mark's Church

There is a story told on seminary campuses of a theology professor who every year would tell his students that they had the option of skipping their final exam if they could complete one, simple requirement: they had to invent a new heresy. Seeing as this professor’s final exams were known for being particularly brutal, every year a handful of students would set about the task of creating their own, fresh new heresy. And every year, they all would fail. No matter what crazy, cockamamie idea they would come up with about the nature of Jesus, or the creation of the world, or the second coming, the professor could always find someone who’d had the same crazy, cockamamie idea twelve hundred years ago. The lesson was a simple one: there is very little, perhaps nothing at all, about the Christian faith that hasn’t already been harmfully twisted by someone. That sounds like bad news, perhaps, but it is not. Because that also means that there is very little, perhaps nothing at all, of that twistedness that the Church hasn’t already put in its place: namely, a large box labeled “Untrue and truly unhelpful.”

And yet, year after year, preachers stand before their congregations with trembling knees on this Sunday, terrified that they are going to spout some new – or old – heresy. Why? Because today is Trinity Sunday, the day when the Church focuses on the great mystery of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This week, my Facebook feed has been abuzz with preachers joking about their struggles with their sermons for today. One of them created a “meme,” essentially a photo with a funny caption, that shows a small, fluffy kitten and reads, “Want to avoid heresy on Trinity Sunday? Forget the sermon and show pictures of kittens instead.” Someone else went so far as to create an animated short of two ginger-haired Irishmen haranguing Saint Patrick for his use of the shamrock as an analogy for the nature of the Trinity. (The heresy there is apparently tritheism – ask me later if you’re interested.)

Now this is all a bit over the top, of course, but there is some real grounding to the fears about preaching on the Trinity. Because the blessed and glorious Trinity is not exactly the easiest theological concept to explain. Heck, forget about explaining it, the Trinity is just hard to talk about. We have a God, one God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, the co-eternal Word, who was made flesh by the Virgin Mary his mother, who prayed to God as his Father, and yet said that he and the Father were one, but then seemed to be abandoned by his Father on the cross, who then after his resurrection promised to send a comforter, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the one who stands beside us, but who seems not to have been just sent, but always been standing beside us, the ruach who moved over the waters of creation, who alighted on kings and prophets, who was present at Jesus’ baptism and in the wilderness, who speaks what he hears of the father and of the Son and reveals to us all truth. Three persons, all God; God who is one.

Obviously the doctrine of the Holy Trinity can easily lead to serious confusion. To simplify things for ourselves, we might start thinking about Jesus as a person, wholly separate from God, or of the Holy Spirit as a kind of force field that Jesus, like some ascended superhero, shoots out of his fingertips from heaven. But if Jesus is just a person, then how did his crucifixion change anything? And if the Holy Spirit is just a watered-down, less-present stand-in for Jesus, then how can He (or She) know enough to reveal anything of the truth? You can see how easily we get tied up here. We need some help. We need some greater understanding, some greater wisdom.

And look what we have here, in Proverbs! "Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?" Huzzah! We are saved. Here is the wisdom we have been seeking. And as we read on, this just keeps sounding better and better. Because this Wisdom isn’t hiding her light under a bushel; no! She is standing out on the street corners, parking herself by the entrance to the PATCO line, or working her way down the outdoor tables that line Rittenhouse Square, offering her insights to all people everywhere. She is ready to share her knowledge, and what a knowledge it is! She was created first at the beginning of everything, present when God hung the stars and the moon, cradled in the crook of God’s arm as he bent to separate the waters, to bring forth dry land, to make mountains and rills and sheep and spiders and begonias and crabgrass…and us! Wisdom was there when we were made, when God breathed life into the first dust man and made for him his very own dust woman. Wisdom has been around long enough to know the truth of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so we read on, anxious to see Wisdom get down to business, explaining, codifying, enlightening us about this tricky, testy doctrine of the Trinity.

But wait, what is this? When we read on, we find that there is actually no explaining to be found. None at all! It’s crazy making! Here is Wisdom, Wisdom herself, who knows the truth of all that has ever been and ever will be, and when she is presented with the infinity and majesty of the Triune God, she dances. She who knows the intricacy and immensity of all of God and God’s Creation explains nothing. Apparently all she wants to do is dance, to whirl about in wonder. “I was beside him,” she says, “like a master worker;…rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” She offers no explanations, codifies nothing; she just dances before God in joy.

And perhaps here is where we realize an important truth: that today is not really about a puzzle. Of course we will always continue to ponder the mystery of the Holy Trinity. We will always be drawn to the Trinity, running around it in circles as we try to find where it stops and where it starts, trying to sketch out a family tree of who begot whom and who is made from what. We will always try to figure out the Trinity. And that’s fine, we should – some of us should try a little and some of us, with brains more nimble than mine, should try a lot.

But today is not about a puzzle. Today, we recognize that the Holy and Blessed Trinity is not, at its core, something to be figured out. It is not a set of cosmic magic rings that need to be pulled apart and then slid back together. For Trinity Sunday is not really a day to celebrate a doctrine; it is a day to celebrate a God, three persons in one God and one God of three persons. We are here to celebrate persons, not a puzzle, to celebrate the fact that our God is a Trinity of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with whom we actually have a relationship. This Trinity of persons knows us, more than knows us, loves us, delights in us, pours out upon us all of the gifts of Creation, all of the Wisdom of the ages, all of the forgiveness and mercy and love and truth and justice that we will ever need. This Trinity, this great and majestic mystery, is persons and therefore personal. And, most importantly, these persons are for us.

And that just leaves us in absolute wonder. That understanding that God is for us, that the Father chose to pour himself out to you and to me through the revelation of Jesus Christ and by the workings of the Holy Spirit, that Wisdom leaves me openmouthed with awe. Because truly, what other response can there be to this much love? I cannot explain whence it comes. Why does God love us this much? Why does God delight in us, in the human race, when we like to spend so much of our time ignoring Him and crucifying each other? Why? Why so much grace poured out on us who are so undeserving? “When I consider your heavens, O Lord, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out?”

But this question seems to provide its own answer, and that is: who knows? Who knows why God loves us so much? Who knows why the glory of the eternal Trinity is offered to us free of charge? Who knows, other than the God who made us? And perhaps we are meant not to know; perhaps we are just meant to see. Perhaps we aren’t meant to explain; perhaps we are just meant to dance, as the very Trinity dances in itself, to rejoice in the Trinity as the Trinity is so obviously rejoicing in us. Perhaps that is what this broken world really, truly needs: not people who can explain their faith, but a community of Christians dancing their faith in gratitude and joy, pointing again and again to the wonderful mystery of the Trinity and saying Wow! Perhaps this is the gift of Trinity Sunday – to remind us that it is enough, enough to rejoice, enough to give thanks, enough to fall to our knees, enough to sing Holy, Holy, Holy, enough to dance.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

26 May 2013 - Trinity Sunday

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Reading and understanding the Greek of the New Testament have never been strengths of mine.  My seminary professor of New Testament Greek accurately predicted that I would forget nearly everything she taught me, except how to use a few reference books.  I can’t say I’m proud of this, I’m only being honest.

But sometimes I sit alone in the church here, when no one else is around.  Sometimes I am praying, or thinking, or sometimes my mind just wanders; sometimes I am just looking around, listening.  And sometimes I hear in my head the words of the Gospels, like words Jesus spoke to his disciples in the Gospel reading today - “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” – and I think to myself, What are you going on about Jesus?

Today is the Feast of Pentecost – the very day that we rejoice that the Holy Spirit has come into the world and filled God’s people with power!  Today is about wind and fire and the force and majesty of the Divine Presence that transcends language, nation, race, color, or culture. Today is about BIG THINGS!

But I hear Jesus preparing us for it, and all I hear is this: “I will ask the Father, and he will send you an Advocate.”  To my ears it sounds as though Jesus is promising us that in time God will provide us with a court appointed lawyer.  And this is not the biggest wish I could hope for!  To my ears, it sounds like Jesus is saying, “I will ask the Father, and he will send you a Public Defender.”   And I think – that’s Nathan!  We already have Nathan.  Is this the best God can do?  So I assume that something gets lost in translation, when we hear Jesus say that God wills end us an Advocate or a Comforter.

I mean, we live in a world that is full of uncertainty and anxiety and fear.  And I myself am not without my own uncertainties, anxieties, and fears.  Couldn’t you and I use more than an Advocate, more than a Comforter?  It makes me wish I knew more New Testament Greek.  But I only know enough to look up the words in some reference books, where I am told that the word translated as Advocate or Comforter is, in its Anglicized version actually the word, “Paraclete.”  And I think, Wow, big help!

If I look up “Paraclete” I find out that the word means something like, “one who is called near.”  And I think of Jesus promising to his followers, his friends that God the Father will send to us one who is called near, and I start to think maybe we are getting somewhere.  (And I should have worked at my Greek when I had the chance.)

For reasons that I can’t recall, my mind drifts to the Oscar-winning film, Argo.  Even if you didn’t see the movie, you probably know something about the story of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.  The movie tells the improbable tale of the rescue of six American diplomats who managed to avoid being taken hostage and were secretly given refuge in the Canadian Ambassador’s home.  The movie – which is by no means a strictly historically accurate account of what actually happened – depicts a CIA operative, Tony Mendez, who comes up with a plan to rescue the six diplomats by getting them to pose as a Canadian film crew preparing to shoot a film in Iran.

In the film, the six Americans are going a little stir crazy, holed up in the Ambassador’s residence, and they are reluctant to go along with Mendez’s plan, because it seems far-fetched to them, with a pretty good chance of failure.  They are gripped by uncertainty, anxiety and fear, taking the specific shape that they might end up being caught and executed in the heated anti-American atmosphere of Tehran at that time.

In one scene, Mendez is explaining that they will each have to pose as a different member of a film production company, they’ll have to learn their fake identities, and stick to their cover stories, no matter what.  One of diplomats most opposed to the plan objects, “We can’t stand up to that.  We don’t know what the hell movie people do.”

Mendez, the CIA agent replies, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

As the film unfolds (and indeed as history did unfold) Mendez manages to shepherd the six safely out of Iran, just as planned, using the slightly goofy cover story he’d cooked up, and some really helpful passports provided by the Canadian government.

Whatever other merits Argo may or may not have, it does a good job of depicting the atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear among the six Americans hiding inside the Ambassador’s home.  You have no trouble believing that they are really afraid for their lives, and have reason to be.  You can feel the tension build, the longer they are in hiding, and the more likely it becomes that they will be found out.  But the only thing more frightening to them than remaining hidden is taking the risk of leaving their fragile sanctuary under any circumstances whatsoever.  Their dilemma is not helped by the measure of the resources sent to them: a guy with a flimsy cover story and some Canadian passports.  No Marines, no stash of secret firepower, no helicopters to whisk them away.  Only a guy urging them to play along with a fairly outlandish cover story, and who promises, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do. 

In the church, we often cling to the idea that the feast of Pentecost is a stunning moment of dazzling effect: a rushing wind, and divided tongues of fire resting over the heads of the disciples of Jesus.  We are willfully in denial that this image is merely quaint in a world that has known the battles at Gettysburg and Normandy, or that has sent rovers to Mars, or that has pulled bodies out of wreckage in Haiti or more recently in Bangladesh, or that has watched the footage of an un-manned drone doing its work, or that can recall the implication of the mushroom clouds we caused to rise over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or that is still coming to terms with the destructive potential of a pressure cooker.

The church celebrates the Feast of Pentecost – which is the very day, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, when the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to our spiritual ancestors.  This Spirit is supposed to be our promise, our power, the source of what will sustain us through good times and bad.  This Spirit is God’s power moving through us – the power of the almighty, the maker of heaven and earth…

… and we get what – a strong breeze and Bunson burners?  Speaking in tongues?  Like that is going to help?  The Spirit is supposed to be our Marines, our firepower,  our helicopters, not just our translator!

The disciples were gathered together in one place – probably more or less in hiding – but a crowd gathered at the sound of the wind, and the din of voices grows.  And even in that moment there is skepticism about what this event might have meant.  Is it a wonderful sign from God, a manifestation of his amazing power?  Or is everyone here just drunk?

It’s easy for us to forget that the disciples were huddling together, probably to deal with their uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.  By no means was it clear that having followed Jesus and cast their lot with him had been a good idea.  He had been hung a cross; who was to say that others among their number wouldn’t be next to be marched up to Calvary, especially after the word of his supposed resurrection spread?

Were they reminding themselves of what he had said to them – “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever”?

Now, I’m thinking that their Greek was better than mine.  So I’m thinking that this promise spoke to them in ways that it may not immediately speak to us.  I’m thinking that, yes, they were uncertain, anxious, and afraid.  And when they heard Jesus say that God would send them an Advocate, a Comforter, a Paraclete, they heard something like this: “That’s what I’m hear for.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do,” except the voice wasn’t the familiar voice of Jesus, it was, rather, a voice carried to them on certain breeze, speaking to them in a tongue they could clearly understand.

For reasons known only to God himself, the days of rushing winds, divided tongues of fires, and multi-lingual confabulations seem to be well and truly over.  Not that those particular forces would do much these days to quell our uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.  But what isn’t over is this gentle and confident promise of Jesus’, whenever we tell him we can’t do it, we are afraid to go outside, we are too weak, or too scared, or just too ready to give up: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

And the promise comes to us not so much from the lips of Jesus, as from a certain breeze, that is probably blowing through the pews right now.  Maybe you can feel it rustling the hairs on the back of your neck.  And maybe you can hear it in a language that is crystal clear to you – clearer than anything I could ever say to you: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

This is the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to you.  It is the voice of the one who is called near, the Comforter, the Advocate.  “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

And this is a big promise, a big thing for God to say to us, because, of course, our greatest fear is just this: that God is not here, that he won’t be with us, and that he is not doing anything at all…  which would mean that all our uncertainties, anxieties, and fears are amazingly well founded.

Maybe the world we live in has made puny the power of a Spirit who arrives on the breath of the wind, and alights with tongues of fire, and takes over the tongues or ears of those within a certain radius of his voice.  It can certainly seem that way.  But there is nothing puny about this promise from the one who is called near: “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

It is the promise that once turned the whole world upside down – for the better. 

The powers of this world keep asserting themselves, as they try to keep the world in an alignment that suits them best.  And this leaves many of us with uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

But to the church, God has sent an Advocate, a Comforter, one who is called near to you and to me in our time of trouble.  And when we object that there is no way this can work, that we can’t do it, then he smiles, and says to us, “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll be with you.  This is what I do.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Pentecost 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

My grandmother always says the same grace before meals. She knows others, I’m sure, but she has only ever said one: Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed. This is Grandmom’s grace, said at every family gathering and on every major holiday, said in the same sweet, melodious voice each time, even if five minutes before this 85-year-old, 5-foot-nothing, bold, beautiful, feisty Italian woman was standing in the kitchen pointing a wooden spoon and railing against Congress or anyone who has ever or will ever play for the New York Mets. But come grace-time, and she’s all softness and light: Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and grant that all these gifts be blessed.

Now as a child, I thought that this grace was a little, well, lame. This is because I was a complete grace snob. In my immediate family, we quoted scripture before mealtime. We had standard grace quotes, like “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love, or, if you were hungry: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And if you felt like showing off: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These verses didn’t always relate directly to mealtime, per se, but they were beautiful, and in their King James English, they sounded awfully official and important. As a child, I was far more impressed with the seriousness of these quotes than with the sing-songy-ness of Grandmom’s grace. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed, always seemed childish compared to, you know, THE BIBLE.

What I did not realize in my childish snobbery is that the first part of my grandmother’s prayer actually is THE BIBLE. And not only is it from THE BIBLE, it is given privilege of place by being the last prayer in the entire canon of scripture. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” Here ends the Bible. Come, Lord Jesus is one of the oldest prayers in Christendom, found not only in Revelation but in one of Paul’s letters and in the first liturgy of the Church. Come, Lord Jesus is a prayer that has been offered over and over by millions of Christians in thousands of places and times. It is the most ancient, the most scriptural, the most important of prayers.

What I also did not recognize as a child sitting at my grandmother’s dinner table was that it is also a hugely ambitious prayer, a prayer of epic proportions. I never stopped to think what we really asking. Come, Lord Jesus. What if Jesus had actually taken us up on our offer? What if he really had come? Well, he certainly would have come in and sat right down to eat, probably in that chair – you know, the extra chair from the study, the low one that makes the dinner table hit you right around here. Jesus would have sat in that lowest chair, probably at the spot in the middle of the table where the crack makes your plate wobble back and forth. Or, more likely, he would have sat at the kiddies table, with his knees tucked up around his chin, just suffering the little children all over the place. He would have cleared the table, stayed in the kitchen drying dishes, recycled the empty cans, driven the leftovers over to the homeless shelter. He would have asked provocative questions about forgiveness, invited unusual people to the table, told daring stories about a kindhearted Mets fan caring for a man who had been beaten up along the road to Citizens Bank Park. He would have challenged us by his words and his actions to truly be his disciples in our words and our actions. He would have come, our Lord Jesus, so that our dinner, and our lives, would never have been the same.  

Come, Lord Jesus is a serious, powerful prayer. It is a bold ask. Because Jesus can come in only one way – the same way he has always come, with the same purpose he has always had. Which means that when we pray this prayer, Come, Lord Jesus, we are really asking for Jesus to come and turn our world upside down. For he came, and so he will always come, to exalt the humble and meek and to fill the hungry with good things. He comes as the master to act as the servant; he comes as the highest to sit with the lowest. He comes as the purest of heart, without sin, to walk among brokenhearted sinners. He comes to manifest the glory of God in the shame of the cross. He comes with great power to give it away for great love.  He comes to shake up the world, to shake us into our right minds, to show us again and again how God rejects the priorities of this world for the grace of his heavenly kingdom.

Now all of that shaking up can be supremely uncomfortable. That’s why this prayer takes so much courage, because it means that we are inviting Jesus to change things, to change us. And that means admitting that we need that change, because sometimes you and I find it easier to adopt the priorities of this world than to fight them. We get sucked in to believing unhelpful, unholy untruths – that our worth is somehow tied to our wallets or our waistlines, that we are loved because we are powerful or perfect, that our sin is justified because of need or expediency, that faster is better, that busier is better. We get sucked into believing that when Christ said to love our enemies he surely didn’t mean dead terrorists, or kidnappers, and that when he said to give away two robes instead of one he surely didn’t mean actual clothes, or at least not our nice ones, and that when he said to serve the poor he must have meant only those who are properly grateful, or clean, or pleasant. In the Church, too, we are often tempted by these worldly priorities, tempted to look to our bottom line as the Alpha and the Omega, or to measure our success only in terms of how many people are sitting in the pews instead of how many hearts – in and out of the pews – are transformed by the Gospel.

Opening ourselves up to admitting these failings and owning our own sin, can be a vulnerable, scary business. True transformation always is. This is why this prayer has always been a prayer of the whole Church, a prayer that we offer together, as one body with Christ in us and us in Christ. Together we can have the courage to lift up our hearts and to cry out Come, Lord Jesus! Come down and shake us up. Come down right in the middle of the world’s lies and speak truth. Come down right in the center of our weakness and comfort – be strong with – us. Come down into our selfishness or apathy to help us love as we should, to help us follow you as we should, to help us wash our robes in whatever sacrifice is required to follow in the path of discipleship. Come, Lord Jesus. This is the boldest and bravest of asks, a serious, important, beautiful prayer.

And it is a prayer that is a gift. Because here is the thing: Christ is coming. He has promised that he is coming and that right soon. He is coming in a thousand little ways, this day and at the last day, to bring justice to places where the strong lord it over the weak, to bring mercy to the sick or the sin-sick souls, to bring peace and love where there is only violence and hardness of heart. Ready or not, here he comes. And Christ just wants us to be ready. So he offers us this prayer. I am the Alpha and the Omega, he says, I am the bright morning star, and I am coming. So get ready, and let everyone who hears say, “Come.” You, say Come! Let everyone who hears the great good news boldly say come. Let the Church and the city say, come. Let the faithful say come. Let the doubters say come. Let the joyful say come. Let the addicted say come. Let the children say come. Let the heartbroken say come. Let the survivors say come. Let the oppressed say come. Let the frustrated say come. Let the grandmothers and the mothers the grandfathers and the fathers say come. Let the angry, the exhausted, the jubilant, the lost, the found, the poor, the hungry say come. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and grant that all these gifts be blessed. Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

12 May 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Of Jesus’ childhood, the scriptures provide a report for only three days, when he was separated from his parents, and eventually found sitting with the rabbis in the temple.  So we know that he was a religious child.  But although holy writ does not record it anywhere, I think we can be assured that from time to time, the boy Jesus played games.  One such game he might have played with his friends after Hebrew School, and could have been called, “A New Commandment.”  It was, in fact, a learning exercise, to help memorize the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, of Jewish law.  The trick of the game was to call out something that might or might not be a commandment and see if you could fool your friends.

You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge? Old commandment!

You shall not eat a worm found in an apple?  Old commandment.

A younger brother must make the bed of his older brother in the morning?  A new commandment!

You get the idea.

Even as a boy, Jesus had a way of throwing a curveball into the game.

You shall pay your hired servant on the day of his labor?  Old commandment!

You shall forgive your sister or your wife or your mother even if she troubles you?  A new commandment!

You shall not eat the flesh of an ox that has been condemned to be stoned?  Old commandment!

You should love your enemies and pray for them?  A new commandment!

We Christians are somewhat stupefied by the idea of governing our lives by a body of 613 commandments.  Most of us had to learn to remember only the Ten Commandments when we were young, and, in truth, we generally find even those a struggle.  It is no longer clear to us why you should not boil meat in milk or wear garments that are made from a blend of linen and wool.  Our few Jewish friends who keep kosher (if we have any at all) are something of a quaint mystery to us.

Episcopal tradition, as we have received it, is blissfully free of commandments.  Try to name one thing that is required of you day-in –and-day-out in order to be an Episcopalian – I dare you.  This is not a complaint, it is just a comment – we are not much into commandments, and perhaps with good reason: commandments don’t sell very well, these days.  Americans these days do not want to be told “thou shalt” any more than they want to be told “thou shalt not.”

Jesus himself was not very big into commandments as his ministry matured.  He had a penchant for re-imagining or circumventing the traditional Jewish mitzvot (depending on your point of view).  He left behind no written set of rules.  And the one commandment he did give his followers was this: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  Of course, it has been the long tradition of the church to ignore this commandment (or to re-imagine or circumvent it, depending on your point of view).

In fairness, as commandments go, this one is a bit vague.  What does it mean to love one another?  Strangely, it is immensely easy to disagree about this.  Are we to understand “just as I have loved you” to mean that we should imitate Jesus in the way we live our lives?  If so, what does this mean?  Did he wear linen mixed with wool?  Did he boil meat in milk?  Did he forgive his brothers and sisters, or did he ignore them?  Where did he stand on gun control, or abortion, or gay rights, or the treatment of enemy combatants held in distant places?  How can we apply the injunction to love to these difficult matters?  Are we meant to?

When you think about it, it might be easier to be governed by 613 mitzvot than to have to somehow figure out what this one commandment means.  After all, it’s not so hard to understand this commandment: “You shall not shear the firstling of your flock.”  It’s easy to wear fringes on your clothes and know you are in compliance with God’s law.  But how do we show everyone that we are Jesus’ disciples by loving one another?  Doesn’t love have a way of making up its own rules?  And aren’t there far more than 613 ways for people to show that we love one another, some of them complicated, and some even a little weird?

I sometimes imagine that on the evening of the Last Supper, Jesus’ disciples were indulging in childish reminiscence and playing “A New Commandment” with each other, letting off steam as they prepared for the Passover after an exciting and confusing few days in Jerusalem.

Jesus remained quiet, an inscrutable Mona Lisa smile on his face as his friends made silly suggestions of new and outrageous mitzvot: you shall not feed a multitude of five thousand with only five loaves and two fishes, they laughed among themselves.  You shall not set the Lord’s messiah on a donkey to bring him into Jerusalem, and strow branches in his path as you sing, Hosanna in the highest!” they smirked with one another.

Interrupting his own silence and their game, Jesus gets up from the table and begins quietly to wash the feet of his disciples, much to their amazement and confusion.  And after supper, picking up on their game, he tells them this: “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”  But this is not funny.  This is not a game.  The first part of the commandment is not new at all – that you should love one another – it’s straight from the law, already a mitzvah.  So it’s the second part of the commandment that is new – as I have loved you.  Love one another as I have loved you.

Did they wonder as much as we do about how to let this commandment guide their lives?  Or was it clearer to them because of what he’d done with them, how he’d been with them, what he’d already taught to them?

Did they see that living out this new commandment would mean being guided by a few questions?

Can you wash someone’s feet with it?  A new commandment.

Can you feed a hungry belly with it?  A new commandment.

Can you heal someone with it?  A new commandment.

Can you forgive someone with it?  A new commandment.

Can you restore, renew or redeem someone with it?  A new commandment.

Contrast these questions to some others:

What does it prohibit?  Old commandment.

How can you be sure it’s pure?  Old commandment.

What ancient enmities does it preserve?  Old commandment.

Whose privilege of power does it protect?  Old commandment.

Jesus did not say what to do about the old commandments, except that he said that it was not his ministry or intention to disrupt one jot or one tittle of the old law, but to fulfill it.

Isn’t it odd how appealing the old commandments can be?  Isn’t it funny how often we allow our lives and our religion to be governed by those old questions:

What is prohibited in this church?

Who is pure and worthy in this church?

What ancient enmities must we preserve in this church?

Whose privilege and power must be protected in this church?

I don’t know, maybe those questions have some value.  But they lack the power to identify us as followers of Jesus.  For that, you need the new commandment of love.  For that, you need to ask, “Who’s washing who’s feet?”  It is surprising how easily the old questions melt away when you are washing someone else’s feet.

We live in a complicated and sophisticated age, in which we are faced with many perplexing matters.  I suppose it would be too simple to suggest that all we have to do as Christians is to learn to love one another – because to say that is somehow not saying enough, and the semantics of love are themselves complicated and sophisticated.  But if we need a test by which we might know how closely we are hewing to Christ’s new and only commandment, perhaps it is this: Who’s washing who’s feet here?

It is hard to nurture old hatreds when you kneel to wash someone’s feet. 

It is hard to count the number of bullets in a magazine (too many?  too few?) when you are washing someone’s feet.

It is hard to be critical of someone’s sexual orientation when you are washing her feet.

It is hard to feel self-righteous when you are washing someone else’s feet.  (Well actually, it’s not, but that just goes to show you how easily we can pervert nearly anything, including this test of love!)

Jesus did not give a new commandment because he thought the 613 mitzvot were too many to worry about.  He gave a new commandment because the ancient law was one commandment short.

So he girded himself with a towel, and he got down on his knees, and he began to write the new commandment of love with water and sweat, and the stink of dirty feet.  And he must have known that it would be difficult for us to follow this new commandment.  So by his service to those who should have been serving him, he posed the question by which we might test our faithfulness to the new commandment: Who’s washing who’s feet?  A question so simple, even a child can answer it.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

28 April 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.  (John 10:27-28)

A long time ago when kids still played games like Simon Says, and Red Rover for real entertainment, and actually to pass the time, most of us also participated at least once, but probably more often than that, in an egg carry race – maybe at a school fair or a church picnic or something like that.  I expect that these pastimes have been replaced by other activities that are engaged on the Internet, but perhaps by the grace of God I am wrong about that, and children are still sometimes sent outside to play.

In any case, the rules of the egg carry (or the egg-and-spoon race, as it is sometimes called) remain simple: competitors are each given a spoon to hold, onto which an egg is placed, and they have to race to the finish line without dropping the egg.  Sometimes the race is run as a relay.  In the advanced version you put the handle of the spoon in your mouth and carry the egg that way.  Mothers believe that this race should be run using hard-boiled eggs.  Bolder children, especially boys, prefer the idea of using raw eggs that will crack and splat if dropped, bringing some of the thrill of the egg toss to the somewhat less treacherous egg carry.  I suppose it can work either way.

Games with eggs, like the egg carry and the egg toss, are played almost entirely for fun; they are not meant to impart life lessons, and they almost certainly are not meant to convey theological truths.  If stretched these games may teach simple lessons about fragility and risk.  The challenge of the egg carry is that it is difficult to balance an ovoid object (with or without a liquid center) on the end of a spoon.  Eggs will be dropped, and broken, but life goes on.  After all, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, don’t you?  Eggs are essentially disposable objects in American culture, their original galline function as the capsule of new life notwithstanding.

By way of contrast to the egg carry, there is the deliberately didactic exercise posed to high school students in some schools of caring for an “egg baby” (as they are called) as though it were your own infant child.  This exercise is, I think, generally intended to discourage teenagers from advancing too quickly toward parenthood.  The egg babies (also normally hard-boiled) are fragile and easy to neglect, and therefore represent a consummation devoutly not to be wished, to borrow an old phrase.  Perhaps caring for an egg baby is really not so different from the egg carry – just the same thing in slow motion.  In both cases, eggs are going to be broken, it’s largely a question of how many and how quickly.

You can learn a lot from an egg.

It is startling how often and how regularly these days we are jolted into the painful recognition that life is risky and fragile, and sometimes seems as nearly likely to be broken as an egg carried on the end of a spoon.  This past week it was Boston, near the finish line of the marathon, and the smallest egg, the most adorable, and innocent, and fragile egg on that dreadful day was an eight-year-old boy named Martin Richard.

I know the tiniest bit, from spending time in the company of my twin nephews, who will turn eight this summer, how caring for children can seem like an egg carry.  Some parents are more adept at it than others, some more or less anxious, some better resourced than others, and some children are more fragile than others, some more hard-boiled.  But what can a parent, or an uncle, or a friend, or even an innocent by-stander do when someone is intent on knocking your egg off the spoon, or worse yet, blowing it to bits with a homemade bomb?

You look at the face of this child, as we looked at the faces of the youngsters so recently killed in Newtown, Connecticut, and you know that this is not a game, but that life is every bit as risky and fragile and precious – only ten-thousand times more so – as that egg you used to try to carry all the way to the finish line.  And the lesson we seem to be being taught is similar to the lesson we learned at the school fair, the church picnic: eggs will be broken, and there isn’t always anything that you can do about it.  But that lesson, translated to account for the life of an eight-year-old boy is now neither benign nor commonplace; it is tragic and heart-breaking in the extreme.

A person of faith might well ask why God has allowed things to develop this way.  A parent who accepts the risk of raising her child – her egg on the end of a spoon – might ask why bullies are allowed to knock her egg off the spoon for no good reason?  Why they are allowed to shoot at her egg with high-powered weapons?  Why her egg was attacked by disease in the first weeks of his life?  Or why, no matter how carefully she swaddles her egg with protection, it will always be susceptible to shrapnel?

And anyone who is truthful with you about religion will tell you the only honest answer to those questions: Nobody knows.  Nobody knows why life is as risky and fragile as an egg being carried on the end of a spoon in a race to the finish line.  And nobody knows why God allows so many of his eggs to be cracked, scrambled, smashed, ruined, broken to bits, even though they are the works of his own hands.

But if God does not provide the answers we want, he is not entirely silent, either.  “Horatio,” says God (channeling Shakespeare) “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  Or, as the prophet Isaiah put it another way, speaking for God, when he wrote, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”  I should hope not.

We overheard some of God’s thoughts in the Gospel reading today:  “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

“No one will snatch them out of my hand, for your ways are not my ways," says the Lord.

God knows how like an egg carry life can seem to us.  Lest we should doubt this, he sent his Son into the world with the expectation that he would be reviled, beaten, shamed, and killed – in a show of solidarity with all those who are at the riskier, more fragile end of life’s spectrum.

Although this is almost certainly not what the writer of John’s gospel was getting at when he was writing, it is my hope that in some ways that writer misunderstood things that Jesus said.  And part of the message of Jesus’ teaching, and of his death and resurrection is this: Eggs are easily broken in your hands, my children, but no one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

We often speak sentimentally about being held in the palm of God’s hand, and this image remains only sentimental until we remember how risky and fragile life is in our own hands – indeed, how much life is like being balanced on an end of a spoon, clenched between someone’s teeth, while others try to knock you off the spoon with one or another explosive device.

We get to the end of a week like this one and there are broken eggs all over the place – blood spilled, limbs shorn off, and life taken, just like that – and what hope is there that next week will not be just another egg carry in which the riskiness and fragility of life are tested again?  More poignantly, what words of comfort or consolation can be spoken to the injured and grieving parents of Martin Richard, whose son has just been snatched violently out of their hands?

Words of comfort and consolation are few in times like these, and many of those offered are cheap, as well.  Those worth saying include this assurance from the Lord of Life: No one will snatch him out of my hand.  This is God’s promise to us egg-carriers in a risky and fragile world.  For Christ has already taken that fragile, easily broken egg and swaddled him in protective wool – just like the kids swaddling their egg babies with tissue paper and cotton balls. 

Thus clothed, the egg has now been dubbed a lamb by Jesus, who is teaching him the sound of his voice, singing him gentle songs, I imagine, to soothe the transition into his new life.  And he speaks the words in truth that every parent wishes they had the power to make true: “No one will snatch you out of my hand. No one.”

Faith in Jesus does not always provide answers to life’s difficult questions, like why life is so easily compared to a children’s game in which eggs are bound to be broken.  But faith in Jesus does bring with it this promise: No one will snatch you out of my hand.

There are those, of course who will try, and they may do so armed to the teeth.  But the Lord is your shepherd, and though you are fragile as an egg, you have been dubbed a lamb, too, in his eyes.

Each of us is riding through this life, cradled gingerly in the shallow bowl of a spoon, so often exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  And we discover, as we grow older, that even by taking up arms against a sea of troubles, we cannot, in this difficult and violent world, by opposing end them.  Which is why it is good news to discover that we fragile eggs have all been dubbed lambs, that the Lord is our shepherd, and that no one will snatch us out of his hand. 

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

21 April 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia