Saint Mark's Church

Perhaps, like me, you have a drawer somewhere in which you have stashed a pile of gift certificates and gift cards that thoughtful people have given to you, but that you have never gotten around to using.  A few years ago, I designated a single drawer as the destination for my gift cards and gift certificates, because I knew how prone I was to lose track of them and leave them un-used and un-spent.  By keeping track of the cards, I hoped I’d do a better job of actually using them in the way the givers intended me to do.  But like a significant percentage of others who receive such generous gifts, I remain often careless and forgetful about these gifts.  A quick inspection this morning revealed cards or certificates for L.L. Bean, American Express, and a kitchen shop in South Philadelphia.  I could not bring myself to look at the dates on these cards to determine how long they have been in the drawer.

In the business world these cards, I am told, are referred to as “stored value products.”  The question remains for whom the value is being stored – the recipient or the issuer?  Estimates are that as much as $8 billion worth of gift cards go un-spent every year.  As one business writer says, companies love gift cards, because “they receive payment in advance for products they may or may not ever have to deliver.”  From the giver’s point of view, once he or she has paid for the card and handed it over, it’s out of his or her hands, and the recipient is free to do whatever he or she likes with the gift.[i]

It occurs to me that the ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday are something like a gift certificate or a gift card: they are gifts given to us out of the love and generosity of the giver, but a great many of us are unlikely ever to use this gift.  For the gift of the ashes, and the reminder that we are from dust and to dust we shall return is a gift of stored value.  By this gift God is calling us each to repentance, to a new relationship with him and with each other.  God is asking us to use this act of humility – receiving this sign of mortality – as a chance for a new life, to turn our backs on the foolishnesses and faults that have become our personal trademarks.  I have my trademark foolishnesses, you can be sure, and I suppose you have yours.

But the question remains, for whom is the value stored?  Will we use this opportunity, this Lent, to really make room for the clean heart we are asking God to install in our lives?  Or will we walk away from Ash Wednesday in more or less the same way we walk away from any other Wednesday, washing the smudge from our foreheads in more or less the same way we would deposit a gift card in a designated and forgotten drawer, leaving God with the gift of his grace and forgiveness still in his open hand, looking like a pile of so many ashes?

God is making a promise of hope and repair, of forgiveness and love.  The payment, we are assured, has already been made; the gifts are ours to accept, or not.  But because it can be complicated for us to accept hope and repair, forgiveness and love, usually a little work is required on our part, a little effort to make it clear these are gifts we really want.  And once the gift has been given, the recipient is free to do whatever he or she likes with it.  God does not compel us to accept his grace.

Here’s the kind of work it takes to claim the gift:

You fall to your knees in a prayer of repentance or thanksgiving.

You open your heart to God’s love.

You turn from the things you do that are hurting yourself or others, and you start to do things another way.

You seek forgiveness from one you have wronged.

You offer forgiveness to one from whom you have been withholding it.

You help someone in need, recognizing their need may be greater than yours.

Because we are sinners, these apparently simple acts are often difficult and complicated for us to accomplish.  Because we are sinners these ashes are like gift certificates that may never be used, left in the drawer of your heart to grow old and forgotten, even though they will never expire.

But the truth is that God has no end of mercy and forgiveness and love, just like this world has no end of ashes.

God will not soon run out of grace, not ever.  God is willing to extend his offer of grace to you as long as you are alive to hear it. 

God is not about to stop breathing down your neck, if you will let him get close enough.

God is not about to withhold his gifts from you.

God is not short on what you need to change your life, or what I need to change mine.

And tonight God is giving you the gift in the form of a little smudge of ash on your forehead.  He does it other ways on other days.  His gifts of love have stored value, which, on second thought, have no worth to him, since God is love.  So the value must be being stored for you and for me, waiting for us to claim it, to use it, to take it: the gift of his mercy, his forgiveness, his love, meant for you, and for me.

We’ve been given a great gift this night.  And the only question that really remains is:  What ever shall we do with it?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Ash Wednesday 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Donna L. Montaldo, “Retailers Clean Up On Holiday Gift Cards,”  About.com Guide

Each morning while hiking this summer in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, my group of three would gather to cook oatmeal over our little camp stoves, and gradually pack up camp in order to get back on the trail.  One particular morning, my two friends asked me if I had happened to awaken in the night and step out of my tent.  No, I said, I had not. 

Too bad, they told me, it was the starriest night they had ever seen: the night sky ablaze with a vast quilt of brightly dancing starlight that was broad and deep and entrancing.  Never seen anything like it, they said.  It was the kind of night you’d remember for ever, they told me, the kind of night that could change your life, the kind of image you’d bring to mind when everything in the world seemed dark and you needed to remember that there is light in the world, there is hope.  That’s the kind of beautiful night it was, they said.

Wow, I said, I wish I’d seen that.  But I’d slept right through it.

There were other starry nights on our three-week hiking journey, but none compared, they assured me, to that night by Thousand Island Lake, in the shadow of Banner Peak, when the sky glistened and the stars dazzled.  I imagine it was the kind of night that left you certain that there is a Power in the universe that pulses with light and heat, and leaves you grateful, not only to be a part of such a complex creation, but also to have had a peek at the Power that seems so often hidden in the world.  But I can only imagine, because, of course, I never actually saw the exquisite sky that night.  I was wrapped snugly in my sleeping bag, glad to be off my feet and deep in a happy sleep that left me ignorant of the Power that shone so brightly above me, just outside my tent.

That morning we packed up our things, as I say, and moved on.  Maybe I’ll revisit that spot again some day, but the chances are slim.  It had taken a week of walking to get there, mostly uphill, and it’s not exactly on the way to anywhere else.  And who knows if the stars will be shining so brightly there again?  There are other places where the night sky shines brilliantly, I know.  But something tells me that the sight I missed is not easily replicated.  In any case, that night is gone, and its particular brilliance lost to me, except in my imagination, and through the report of my friends. 

I am at least glad to know that my two friends saw the sky that night.  I am glad they told me about it.  I am glad to know that the stars in the heavens still have the power to grab our attention and make us take note; to sing silently of the Power that made them and set the planets in their courses, and stirred the currents of the seas.

But I have to admit that I am a little envious of my two friends, in a childish way.  Even after we grow up we tend to be childish about these things – these experiences we hear of someone else’s, but we don’t get to enjoy ourselves.  We don’t necessarily whine to others about it, but inside we whine, which means we are more or less whining to God.  How come Matt and Tom got to see the stars that night but I didn’t?  You know what it feels like.

On that chilly morning that I learned I had slept while the stars blazed above me in a silent symphony, it never occurred to me to doubt the report of my friends or to suggest that they were making it up, or that it had been less fabulous than they recounted.  It only seemed to me as though, because of the gossamer shell of my tent, I had missed seeing the display of Power that transfigured that night for my friends.

I wonder if it was like that when Peter and James and John came down from the mountain with Jesus after he was transfigured – glowing with white light, and the source of his astounding Power somehow more evident than usual, inescapably on display for the three friends who happened to be on the mountain with him, even though sleep was close at hand.

St. Luke tells us that they didn’t tell anyone about it at first.  But they must have eventually decided to break their silence and tell the others about the amazing transfiguration they witnessed.  And what did the others make of it when they heard the story?  Did they doubt the veracity of this amazing sight?  Did they wonder if it was made up, or at best exaggerated?  Did they begin to come up with possible explanations, like, maybe the sun was behind Jesus, and it was low in the sky, and it kind of created a glow around him?

Or did they just think to themselves, Wow, I wish I’d seen that.

And did they wonder about the various gossamer barriers of their lives that might have prevented them from seeing it, might have prevented them from getting closer to Jesus.  And did it occur to them that they might all have been at home sleeping at just the time Peter and James and John were fighting sleep and staying awake to see this wondrous sight?

Wow!  Would have been great to be there and see that!

Of course, they had sensed the Power of Jesus.  Of course, they knew he was different.  Of course they could tell that everything was changing, much had already changed.  But to see him transfigured…!  What would that have meant to them?  To peer into the bright light of the Power and see him shine!

Wow, I wish I’d seen that!

This morning we awaken, and we are told this story about the Power of the universe alight in this man Jesus, about whom we have been hearing all our lives.  And it suggests to me a choice:

When we hear this story, we can dismiss it, as the kind of thing that sprang from the over-active imaginations of men with ulterior motives in an ancient and more gullible time – and there are plenty of people who would explain this story that way.

Or we can think to ourselves, Wow, I wish I’d seen that.

In which case it might occur to us that we have been sleeping through a lot of life, paying only a very little attention, and only too happy for the kinds of gossamer shrouds we wrap ourselves in, that prevent us from over seeing the Power of the universe that pulses with light and heat.

Mostly these barriers (like my tent) have only one purpose – to make us comfortable.

But, you know, you have to get up out of your tent in the dark of night if you want to see the galaxy twinkle.

That moment on the mountaintop, with Jesus shining and transfigured, is gone, just like that night in the Sierra Nevadas.  We are not likely to pass that way again.  But I am so glad we have ancient friends to tell us the story, to remind us of the time they saw the Power of the universe possess this One Man, who would give his life for us, and change everything for us!

And it hardly occurs to me at all to believe that it didn’t happen just the way the Scriptures say – although I cant imagine why or how it did happen.  But, wow, do I ever wish I’d seen that!

And it makes me glad to be here with you, to tell the story, and to hear it again.  It makes me eager to fight the waking sleep that so often beckons us to sleep walk through life.  It makes me want to give up the comforts of my tent and sleep under the open skies, so to speak, lest I should miss some night of wonder, some enchanted evening when the Power of the universe is on display, its light and heat transfiguring the Presence of a Man whose name, I realize I know.

For if the universe is filled with Power, if there is transfiguring grace that changes everything, bringing to fruition God’s providence and hope, then its name is Jesus.  And I pray I won’t be asleep when next his Power lights up the sky with a glory unlike any other power the world has ever known.

And if I am, then I hope at least one of you will tell me about it!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

10 February 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” And how many of you when you heard that thought, “Aww!” Aww! We heard that at our wedding, or at our daughter’s wedding, or our grandson’s blessing ceremony. How many of you heard this text and found yourselves picturing white lace and black tuxedos, imagining the scent of pale roses, remembering the smiles of your own wedding day? Love is patient and kind; it bears all things, believes, hopes, endures all things. Love never ends, because it’s stitched into a needlepoint with your wedding date and hanging in your kitchen.

All of which is lovely. Because the text is lovely and what it says about love is lovely and so why not have it read at a lovely occasion like a wedding. But hearing it today, in the context of a regular, green, ordinary Mass, we are reminded that this text is much more than merely lovely. This iconic passage, this beautiful Ode to Love, longs to lead to a much deeper place. It wasn’t intended to inspire a sense of “Aww” as much as a sense of “Oh!”

Remember that Paul is writing to a group of contentious Christians in Corinth who have been doing nothing quite so well as fighting with each other about who Abba likes best and whose gifts matter most. He has already reminded this factious bunch that they need to start functioning as a whole, like a body does, that a preacher can’t lord it over someone who speaks in tongues any more than an ear can lord it over a pinky toe. Their gifts must work together for the kingdom. And besides, Paul tells them, there are even greater gifts to be had, the gifts of faith, hope, and love. These are gifts anyone and everyone can have in equal measure, and without these gifts, especially the gift of love, all of the other spiritual gifts aren’t worth the paper to wrap them in.

And just in case there is still someone sitting out there in the crowd who remains convinced that her gift of healing actually is far grander than her sister-in-law’s gift of teaching because after all how hard is it to teach and her sister-in-law isn’t that good at it anyway, Paul provides some practical, and pointed, illustrations. Even though he rather generously uses the first person throughout this passage, there are implied parentheticals all over the place. If I speak in the tongues or mortals and angels, but do not have love (like, say, all y’all over there), I sound brash and ugly. Love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant…or rude. (Ahem. Stephanus.) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (hairy eyeball to the ladies in the back row).

So in light of the general grumpiness in Corinth, it’s pretty safe to say that 1^st Corinthians 13 isn’t just a love song intended to conjure up the warm-n-fuzzies; it is a manual to check bad behavior. Paul doesn’t want the Corinthians to hear this passage and say aww! isn’t love sweet – he wants them to say oh! We’ve got to get down to business loving for real: loving with patience and generosity, no matter who we are dealing with; loving in right action, no matter what we are feeling; loving by bearing, believing, enduring for the good of all, for the good of the Church and of the Gospel. Oh! And for Paul, if that oh! is a little bit of a surprise, if it’s a little bit of a shock, that’s okay. Because Paul clearly feels that the oh! of a shock is more than worth it if it leads to more love. 

Jesus feels this way too – that’s the only way to explain what looks at first glance like some very unloving behavior from our Lord in his hometown synagogue. Remember that Jesus has just returned to Nazareth after ministering throughout the Galilee. He has gone to the synagogue and read a powerful passage of redemption from the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when the eyes of the people fall on him, looking for an interpretation, a word, an insight, he powerfully grafts himself into the text: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And the people are impressed. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Unlike the crowds in Matthew and Mark’s version of this story, who are immediately offended by what they see as Jesus’s ridiculous presumption, the crowds in Luke are quite pleased. They are proud of this local boy made good. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they cluck one to another. And then the trouble begins. Aww. Look at Jesus, all grown up. I remember when he was knee high to a locust. I remember when he used to follow Mary around holding on to her skirts. Do you remember the time he and little James chased each other right into the mikvah? And now he’s the Messiah! Aww. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t he wonderful? And isn’t it wonderful that we already know every little thing about him?

And right here is where Jesus gets a little testy. He pushes back, and he pushes back hard. He actually goes so far as to put words in the crowd’s mouth, forecasting demands they haven’t even made yet, predicting that no prophet can be accepted in his hometown, reminding them of prophets before him who overlooked their neighborhood crowd to offer grace and healing to outsiders – to a widow and a leper, both Gentiles. The crowd is hurt by these barbs, deeply hurt, a hurt that quickly turns to fury. They lash out at Jesus, sweeping him out of the synagogue, so desperate to throw their hometown hero down that they find themselves raging at the top of a cliff before they realize that he’s disappeared.

And really, who could blame them? They thought they were on Jesus’ side. They offered him acceptance; they offered affection, even love, or so they thought. Why the harsh words about how un-special they are? Why couldn’t Jesus have just said, “Well, thank you all very much. I’m so glad that you approve. By the way, there’s a lot more to come about the whole mission-to-the-Gentiles thing, but for now I’m just thankful for your support.” Where is the all-bearing, all-enduring love here?

But Jesus is not looking for Aww, he is looking for Oh! He does not wish for the people to blithely and unthinkingly accept his assertions about himself; he loves them too much for that. And he does not want them to assume that they understand every little thing about him; he loves his Father too much for that. He is the Son of God, and he will not be tamed; he will not be hemmed in, labeled, or limited. You think you understand my mission, he says, and you are charmed by it. Will you be so charmed when I tell you that my mission is not only to you, that, like Elijah and Elisha before me, I will gather in the Gentiles and fold them into the flock? Will you be so charmed when I challenge you to see a bigger picture of what God’s kingdom looks like, when I invite you to live in a much, much, much larger tent? Don’t be charmed by me; be changed by me! I don’t want just Aww – I want Oh!

Oh! is transformation; it is revelation and redemption. Oh! checks our bad behavior, keeps us from putting God in a box of our own making. Oh! is the wildness of the Holy Spirit breaking in to show us something new, something big, something beautifully and achingly true. It is the reminder of the promise that God has done, will do, and is doing something new in your life, in my life, in the life of the church, right now. That new thing may be surprising. It may even be shocking. But that only means that it will really and truly of God, who always offers us more than we could ask for or imagine.

And that is love, is it not? That nudge, that challenge, that blinding new truth is the voice of the truest true love, the love that precedes all of our loving, the love that bears all and believes all. This is love on God’s terms, a love that demands our all and rejoices in the truth, a love that pushes us to know Christ more fully, to have the humility to know what we don’t know, and to offer love ourselves with a clarity of vision and a strength of purpose that is about far more than simply being nice. So if you find yourself in your life, in your prayer or study, in your worship or ministry, in your joys or in your sorrows, if you find yourself saying oh! – know that is a great gift of God. That is what love sounds like.

Preached by Mtr. Erika Takacs

3 February 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Ezra and Nehemiah were never friends.  They came back to Jerusalem under separate steam when the Persians conquered the Babylonians and the people of Israel were allowed to return to their old home.  It’s not at all clear that they ever knew each other.  And they probably thought that their work had nothing to do with the other’s.  Nehemiah’s work was to rebuild, and Ezra’s work was to remember.  And Nehemiah’s mother always thought that her son got the short end of the stick  - what with second billing in the Bible: Ezra…  and Nehemiah.  Nehemiah was the politician, the leader, the do-er of things.  His job was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which had been destroyed during the Babylonian occupation

Rebuilding Jerusalem is a noble, if a thankless, job.  It is always about more than meets the eye – for Jerusalem is God’s own city.  And when Nehemiah went back to rebuild its walls, he also went to prepare the city for the return of God’s people to their home, to his home.  And he accomplished his mission in 52 days – that’s how long Scripture tells us it took Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  An impressive accomplishment.

It must have been hard to move back to the city after 60 or 70 years of exile.  The names of the streets had been changed.  None of the same old places were still there – so much had been destroyed.  The city was an empty, burned-out shell.  It was impossible to find a decent bagel.  You move back to Jerusalem, but you never really lived there before – your grandparents did.  But who wants to pick up where his grandparents left off?  You’d gotten used to life in Babylon.  Maybe you’d met a nice girl there, a local girl.  Your grandparents told the stories of deportation, and it was horrible, yes.  But they’d been tough old birds.  They made the best of it, and made a life in Babylon, in what was, after all, a pretty amazing city.  Yes, it was a hardship to be driven from one end of the Fertile Crescent to the other, but moving back would be no picnic either.

And move back to what?  Jerusalem was no Babylon.  It had fallen apart at the hands of various marauders.  Was there work there?  Who knew?  But there was the Temple to consider.  That’s what Papa always said.  The Temple, the Temple, the Temple.  God was in Jerusalem.  Not that God wasn’t with them in Babylon – but he wasn’t at home there.  “How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?” Papa asked, as if the answer was self-evident.

So when Cyrus the Great invaded and routed the Babylonians there was cause for rejoicing.  Cyrus decreed that the Jews were free to go back, free to rebuild their old city, and its famous Temple.  And Nehemiah was a talented, capable man.  52 days – he was proud of that.  52 days to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  But now Jerusalem was like a ghost town.  Walls, yes, but what about the rest of it?  What about its soul?

Sixty years doesn’t seem like such a long time – only a couple of generations or so.  But you can forget a lot in sixty years.  Things that had seemed so important in Jerusalem faded from memory in Babylon, without the shadow of the Temple to protect their memory.  As Israel was forced to wander away from Jerusalem, their minds and their hearts wandered too.  And it’s not like wandering hadn’t been a part of the Jews’ story.  Didn’t Abraham and Sarah wander?  Didn’t Moses wander?  Doesn’t the Bible tell us that sometimes God tells people to get up and go – and he doesn’t always tell you where you are going.  And you pack things when you leave that maybe you don’t unpack right away when you get wherever you are going – wherever God is leading you.

Does God’s law move with you when you are driven out of God’s own city and carried into exile, where you must – under pain of real punishment – learn to follow the new laws?  You couldn’t bring one set of dishes with you, let along two – keeping kosher was not so important as keeping alive.  So you adapted, you followed local customs – what choice did you have?  And if you forgot the details, you could be forgiven, couldn’t you?  God understood, didn’t he?

But Ezra’s job was to remember.  The boxes with the sacred scrolls that others left packed-up in Babylon had all been carefully un-packed in Ezra’s house.  These he studied, as if by remembering the law he could remember Jerusalem – even though that city was the vaguest memory to him.  But remembering was his job as a priest.

Remembering is a harder job than you think.  Not a lot of glamour in remembering – even less so in reminding others, when the time comes, of lessons that had been easy to forget.

Ezra re-packed his scrolls, when he journeyed back to Jerusalem.  He wrapped them carefully in their embroidered covers, and tied them with silken cords, and placed them in their boxes to be transported back to Jerusalem, whence they had come, those generations ago.  For what did the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem stand for if not the call to remembrance?  Why had the walls been rebuilt if not to define again the boundaries of God’s own city, wherein God’s law must be remembered.  Nehemiah did his job; Ezra must do his, too, standing on a platform in the square by the Water Gate, unfurling the words of the law for the people to hear and remember.  This was coming home.  And soon there would be the Temple again, built again from the force of memory – the memory that this is God’s house, God’s home.

They say that everything is cyclical, and maybe that’s true.  There is a cycle in the life of faith that seems to require regular rebuilding and remembering.  And although these seem like different kinds of work – as they seemed to be for Ezra and Nehemiah – they are part of the same process.  For, if Jerusalem is easily ruined, and if God’s Temple is easily torn down, then what else is safe?  Nothing.  And being a part of the community of faith, being part of the chosen people, doesn’t guarantee you much – except that probably at some point you will have to rebuild and remember.

There was a time when the Episcopal Church was called the Republican Party at prayer.  Those were the days!  In those days, we sometimes thought like a party that assumed we would enjoy a permanent place of privilege.  If George Washington had been an Episcopalian, how could anything ever go wrong?   Nothing would ever have to be rebuilt or remembered!

But it seems that our walls do crumble, and our communities do forget, and I could take you on a tour of Episcopal churches that are hardly more than empty shells, and where the Word of God, if it is ever read, rings hollow against the abandoned or nearly abandoned stone walls.

Has the church been driven in to exile?  If so, where has she gone, and when will she return?

Whatever exile the church is enduring is nothing compared to the exile so many people feel in their hearts – where they know God is supposed to dwell.  Many, many people of faith, however, feel as though they have been somehow set adrift, wandering from one exile to another, wondering why God is so hard to find, why his transforming work can be so little in evidence.

We live in a world of spiritual exile, anxiety, and fear.  How can we sing the Lord’s song in so strange a land?  And what can we do but learn to adapt, to get along, following whatever rules seem to govern the world in which we live?  After all, Babylon is a very handsome city, not a bad place to live, when you get right down to it.  And we suffer from a great misfortune: there is no edict ordering us home, no king sending us back whence we came.  No benevolent power is pushing us back toward a holy city.  We cannot even be sure where the walls are that we should be rebuilding, or what the laws are that we should be reading in the square until the remembrance of it brings us to tears.

But Jesus comes among us.  Something awakens when he walks in. 

There is a scroll – we hardly even know which one it is (ours are still packed up in our boxes).  But he knows.  Deliberately he opens the scroll to the place he wants.  He remembers.  And now he remembers for us: 

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me

to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year

of the Lord's favor."

We have to remember and rebuild.  These things are cyclical.  And although they seem like different kinds of work, they are part of the same process: rebuilding and remembering.

Are you poor?

Are you a prisoner of something, someone?

Have you lost your sight?

Are you oppressed and unable to break free?

You are like a holy city, whose walls have crumbled, and whose laws have been forgotten.  We are all like this.  If Jerusalem can crumble, so can we.

You need to remember and rebuild

There is always the Temple to consider  - the Temple, the Temple, the Temple – which God has now constructed in your heart.  Within your very body, he has made a Temple for his Holy Spirit.  Remember and rebuild.

Do not make the mistake of dismissing the work of Ezra and Nehemiah as boring, ancient history.  Everything is cyclical, and they were doing this work back when it was seriously hard to do: rebuilding and remembering.

Are you poor, a prisoner, blind, oppressed?  Do you suspect that time has already passed you by, and you have not much hope?

Can you hear the voice of the One who is reading from the scroll?  It sounds like hammers repairing stone walls, to me.

Can you hear the law of God’s love being proclaimed somewhere in the square?  Do you remember now?  Do you feel like you can be rebuilt?

Rejoice and do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!

Rejoice!  Rebuild!  Remember!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

27 January 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The journey looked like this. Three Kings, lounging on cool satin pillows in the sultry Persian air, observe a star. Together, they watch as it arcs across the sky towards lands unknown. They look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and purposefully process out of the room, padding away on soft, slippered feet. They pack for travel, one gold, one frankincense, one myrrh. Their trunks filled with gifts and robes and telescopes, they mount their sturdiest camels and set out across the sands towards the West. For weeks, months, they travel through the wilderness in a stately parade, gently rocking on the backs of their beasts, stopping only to check their coordinates or to rest in rustic towns where their appearance provokes quiet wonder and the offering of the people’s finest food and drink, their softest beds, their cleanest hay.

The Kings break their journey in Jerusalem and seek out Herod. They deign to dine with this Roman toady some silly men have begun to call “the Great.” He flatters them, fills them with dates and roast lamb and fine wine. He wants information from them; they know this. “Go and search diligently for the child;” he purrs, “and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” But they need no encouragement. They would never be anything less than diligent, and they know without saying a word to each other that they will never pass this way again, never share their star-child with this petulant, petty fool.

They move along, quiet now, serenely watching the star as it settles over a tiny, dark cave on a moonlit winter’s night, where a tiny babe is the only Word that is spoken. Here they kneel in a row, each removing turban or feathered hat or jeweled scarf and placing their gifts before this long-expected child, this babe of their searching, born, king of the Jews. That night they rest easy, fulfilled and happy, and when they all dream a dream of warning, they look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and leave for their own country by another road.

Maybe.

Or maybe the journey looked like this. Three kings, or maybe they weren’t kings, maybe they were just wise men…and why three? Maybe four or five or six, maybe there was Caspar and Melchior and Balthasar…and Cornelius and Bilbo and Eliot. So *some* magi have been watching the skies every night for months. This is what they do – they’re wise men, after all. Suddenly Melchior sees something in the heavens that he’s never seen before: a star – a great, bright, blaze of a star – starting in the East and moving across the sky. He’s excited, he’s like a dog with a bone, panting as he tells the others that he wants to go chase it. At which point there is a great deal of eye-rolling and groaning. Caspar reminds Melchior that this wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten something wrong – remember that time he’d predicted the end of the world? Balthasar sighs and immediately begins double checking Melchior’s math. (He never was very good with fractions.) Cornelius just crosses his arms and says no way, he isn’t going anywhere, he has a concert coming up that he cannot miss. Eliot protests that they’ll have a “cold coming of it,” that it’s “just the worst time of the year/For a journey, and such a long journey:/The ways deep and the weather sharp,/ The very dead of winter."* But Bilbo tells Eliot to stop waxing so poetical and turns to Melchior with a star in his eyes – yes! yes! a star! let us wish upon it, let us follow it, let us have an adventure!

It takes a while, of course, to convince the rest to go along. This must portend something wondrous, Melchior keeps saying, and there is this tale, this ancient tale from Hebrew prophets of a boy born to save the world. What if this star marks his coming? We wouldn’t want to miss that, would we? And it’ll be fun…so one by one, they nod their heads grudgingly, plan their gifts and pack their trunks. Eliot says goodbye to “The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,/And the silken girls bringing sherbet,” Cornelius hurries back inside at the last minute for some extra staff paper, they all scramble up atop their stupid, stinking camels, and the journey has begun.

And it is a real slog. The desert winds blow sand in their eyes, the nights are freezing cold, the days are blistering hot. The clouds cover the skies so that there are no stars at all. They get lost, they get hungry and blistery and gruuumpy. Cornelius won’t shut up about the concert and eats all of the stuffed dates and dried apricots and bitter chocolate they had brought along as gifts. Caspar is silent and Balthasar is nervous and Eliot won’t stop going on about “the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly/ And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.”* But still they slouch on.**

Finally, after weeks of stumbling and griping, they all see where they must be headed – Jerusalem, the star of the West. They wind their way to Herod’s door and say, Help? Where is the child? they ask. When Herod looks at them blankly, they push on. He must be here, they say, we’ve followed this star for months and we darn well mean to pay this child homage. But Herod is confused, and angry, and ranting, until finally one of his scribes remembers Micah – that old prophet Micah, who once said that a ruler would come forth from, not Jerusalem, but Bethlehem of all places. Bethlehem? Herod can’t believe it, but he thinks, What can it hurt to send these magi on to check it out? Go to Bethlehem, he growls, look for this magical Messiah baby, and let me know if you find him. Let me know where you find him. (Cue evil laugh here.)

And so the magi are suddenly back up on their stupid, stinking camels, and traveling – again – down an unknown road – again. Now they are all quiet, too tired to care, too exhausted to worry about where they are going or why Herod was so jumpy or what they’re going to give this baby since they forgot to pick up an extra gift in Jerusalem. They are so tired they hardly notice when the star stops. They stumble off their camels – with overwhelming joy –  and into the house where they find a wide-eyed girl of a mother holding a baby boy. She tells them stories of shepherds and angels while they slump to the ground before him, offering him the gifts not already eaten. Cornelius offers to sing his newest melody, Bilbo tells the child a great tale of their adventure, and Eliot promises a poem. They each pay him homage, this wisp of a child, and suddenly they feel the hard ground shift beneath their knees. Somehow, everything has changed. They stand and leave the holy family and head back out into the night, and they know, now they know, that the journey has really just begun. It stretches out before them, not just around Herod and back to their home but all the way to Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee, and Bethany and Jerusalem and Golgatha and a tiny, dark tomb. Eliot asks, “Were we lead all that way for/Birth or Death?”* The others shrug their shoulders, quiet, but peaceful now. Perhaps “the end of all our exploring,” Caspar says, “will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”*** Eliot jots that line down for remembering. And then they journey on.

And isn’t this what our journeys look like. Much as we might like to imagine that our journey to find the Christ will always be a journey on a straight path, a journey of confidence and reassurance and knowledge, with a clear destination in mind, with an inspired beginning and a profound end and evenly-spaced steps along the way, our journeys of discipleship are rarely like that. They are far more interesting. We may begin grudgingly, haltingly. We may need a nudge or a push to get started at all. Or we may start off inspired but find the terrain difficult and stumble. We may get lost, grumpy, lose track of our own gifts along the way. We may meet people who treat us with disdain, who bluster or mock or send us packing. And we may arrive at a particular place and think that we’ve really, you know, arrived, only to discover that what we find there only encourages us to keep seeking just a little further on down the road, just over that hill, around that bend.

But if we are willing to keep walking, we will find that this messy, complicated journey is rich with life. The bends in the road help us to practice our faith, the encounters along the way help us to practice loving neighbors, the stops and starts help us to practice Sabbath and prayer. Even the Herods can be transformed into guiding forces and by the grace of God end up pointing us in the right direction. This kind of journey changes us. This journey brings us to our knees and brings us to ourselves. This journey breaks us open so that when we find the Christ child we will be open to what he has to teach us, to the new life he has to offer us. This is what the journey looks like. For why take a journey if it isn’t going to take you anywhere at all? So if your journey looks more like the second version of the wise men’s journey, know that you are on the right path. You are on the path where God is with you. So journey on.

*From T. S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi

**After W. B. Yeats' The Second Coming

***From T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

6 January 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia