The Lord of the Expanding Universe

Not long ago, I had a conversation with an acquaintance who earnestly tried to relieve me of the foolishness of adhering to a worldview that is shaped by faith in an almighty God.  It was not the first such conversation I have had.  It will not be the last.

The premise of the argument is this: knowing all that we know as a result of scientific inquiry, about the breadth and length of natural history, about the vastness of the universe and its origins, about the intricacies of physics, the nature of matter, and the limits of our own small experience on this minuscule planet within a rapidly expanding universe, how can we seriously cling to a set of beliefs that posits a God who regards earth and the human beings who inhabit it as special or unique within the cosmos?  How, in the face of such immensity of knowledge, with the ability to look out into the universe to a distance of 46 billion light years away from us… how can we adopt such a limited worldview; what you might call a parochial worldview?

The questioner asking this question feels a little sorry for you when they ask it, since what they see before them is a person in a kind of pathetic and grotesque denial, who has sadly (and maybe dangerously) narrowed his mind, and starved his imagination.

Call yourself a Christian these days, and many people assume that you’ll insist the world was created in six days.  Many people assume that you have adopted faith as a way to screen out ideas that are inconvenient to your narrow perspective, or that challenge the status quo.  There are reasons that narrow-mindedness and Christian faith are sometimes lumped together in America, but those reasons don’t find an easy home here on Locust Street.

Yes, we take the scriptures seriously here.  But to take the scriptures seriously in 21st century America requires a broader imagination, not a narrower one.  On the one hand, we are not deluding ourselves that God is an old, bearded man who lives in the clouds.  On the other hand, we take seriously the revelation shared with us in the book of Daniel, since we believe that it might have something to say to us that will do us some good.  

Remember what Daniel saw in his dream:

… an Ancient One took his throne,
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgment,
and the books were opened.

It is not my intention to try to convince you that this vision describes an actual scene that’s unfolding somewhere up there behind the clouds.  But I do want to try to convince you that Daniel’s vision conveys a profound truth that there is One who exists beyond the limit of our observable world, who is both ancient and powerful, whose power exceeds all others, and whose right, and ministry, and intention it is to be our judge.  That’s what I think this revelation to Daniel speaks of.  

But the most wonderful detail of the revelation is easy to miss.  It’s wonderful because it speaks to you and me in the context of a world where justice is elusive, where truth has stumbled badly and is getting harder and harder to grasp, where a wealthy few have whatever they like and the rest of us can scramble as we must.  From this vantage point, of a world that is run amok in so many ways, we hear the rustling of the robes of the Ancient One, we feel the heat from his flaming throne, from the fire that flows from his presence, we hear the mutterings or chanting of the thousand thousands who serve him, the ten thousand times ten thousand attendants who attend him.  But most remarkably of all, we see that the court sits in judgement… and that the books are open.

The books are open!  This is not an idle detail; it is a piece of marvelous good news!  It is not the case that the books are open because the thousands upon thousands of servants have failed to keep things tidy in the courts of the Ancient One.  No, the books are open because judgement has not yet been rendered.

Now, if you close the book on something, you put an end to it; you conclude consideration; you curtail further discussion; you stop considering options for some person or situation.  That’s what happens when you close the book on something.  When you close the books, then your mind is made up, judgement is rendered, appeal is impossible, and hope is lost for those whose conduct has put them on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of truth, the wrong side of peace, the wrong side of mercy, the wrong side of love.  But in the courts of the Ancient One, whose power exceeds all other power, and who lives in a realm beyond the limits of our sight, the court sits in judgement, and the books are open.

The possibility that the books are open is a piece of very good news to a sinner like me, and maybe like you, too.  Because, even though I try, I have been known to find myself on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of truth, the wrong side of peace, the wrong side of mercy, the wrong side of love.  And I know that the longer the books stay open, the better it is for me; and I’m assuming for you, too.

Is this a narrower way of seeing the world, or a broader one?

The faith that I adhere to does not demand that I believe in a limited universe; indeed it requires me to imagine what lies beyond the limits of what we can observe, 46 billion light years away.  The faith that I adhere to, looks toward an apocalypse, and there sees not only destruction and catastrophe - all of which are easy for me to imagine, considering what science teaches us about what we are capable of doing to ourselves and our planet.  

This faith looks toward a revelation that requires an expansive imagination to look beyond the clouds, maybe as far as 46 billion light years away, or further, and see hope advancing in the form of One coming from beyond the limits of what we can see, to whom  “was given dominion, and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

This faith denies nothing about the breadth and length of natural history, about the vastness of the universe and its origins, about the intricacies of physics, the nature of matter, and the limits of our own small experience on this minuscule planet within a rapidly expanding universe.  But the faith that I adhere to sees further, still.

This faith (which is the faith of the church), looks beyond the limits of our sight, and sees One coming, and assures us that every eye will see him.  And this faith hears the voice of the Almighty, the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come when he declares, “I am alpha and omega.”

Do not fail to hear that claim for what it is.  God is alpha and omega; God is the beginning and the end and everything in between.  Put it more simply: God is everything, everywhere, everytime.  God dwells more than 46 billion light years away, and everyplace, everytime in between.  God is.  No matter where, no matter what, no matter when: God is.  And God will be who God will be.

Archbishop Michael Ramsey once gave us a very helpful insight, that “God is Christ and in him there is no un-Christlikeness at all.”  That insight works both ways, so that to say that God is everything, everywhere, everytime, is to make the same claim about Jesus Christ our Lord. 

When Pontius Pilate hauled Jesus in to question him, bound, bloodied, and bruised already, I suppose that he might have felt a little sorry for him, since what he thought he saw before him was a person in a kind of pathetic and grotesque denial, who was sadly (and maybe a dangerously) delusional.  But we know that Pilate reached the conclusion that Jesus posed no threat to anyone at all, and he was willing to release him, if hadn’t been for the crowd.

And now we know whose worldview was the smaller, narrower one; whose vision was constrained; whose life would be counted as small; since Christ’s promise that he, when he was lifted up, would draw all people to himself is being fulfilled, as he continues to work to change the world and our lives by calling all people to the right side of justice, the right side of truth, the right side of peace, the right side of mercy, the right side of love.

When we say that we can look out in the universe and see as far as 46 billion light years away, we are using language to describe a limit - spectacular though that limit may be.

And if we call Christ a king we are acknowledging that even language has its limits, since we can find no other language to describe a ruler whose power knows no limits, whose rule extends beyond the farthest limits of the universe, whose justice, truth, peace, mercy, and love know no boundaries.

Indeed, knowing what we know as a result of scientific inquiry, about the breadth and length of natural history, about the vastness of the universe and its origins, about the intricacies of physics, the nature of matter, and the limits of our own small experience on this minuscule planet within a rapidly expanding universe, how can we seriously call the Lord who rules over all that nothing but a king?

Perhaps it’s the best we can do.  And we ought to do the best we can for the sake of the Ancient One who created a universe that extends for at least 46 billion light years from here… and maybe more!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
21 November 2021
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia

A composite image of 10,000 galaxies in our universe, taken by the Hubble space telescope

He Who Has Promised Is Faithful - Commitment Sunday 2021

Sermon notes from Commitment Sunday

When I was growing up, my mother always told me that there were three things that were forbidden from polite conversation: politics, religion, and money. Admittedly I am about to talk about all three, so I hope we’re all feeling a bit impolite this morning.

Today is commitment Sunday here at Saint Mark’s. Some parishes call this “stewardship Sunday,” but I like that we add this element of obligation. To be a steward is a right and joyful thing, caring for something and holding it in trust for those who come behind us. But a commitment – now there is some grit. There’s some passion in there.

There are as many reasons to be committed to Saint Mark’s, spiritually and financially, as there are people who’ve walked through our red Fiske doors. There are more reasons than that, to be sure, and these months of pandemic have made us even more aware of the particular gifts of this holy place. As the world descended into new darkness in March of 2020, this place tended the light of Christ. Prayers to Almighty God continued in this place. In this place, people still found ways to safely feed and care for our neighbors in need. This is not in any way to compare or to compete with other churches or organizations - all of us have been doing our best in good faith - but I know that each and every one of you knows that there is something special about this place. When death itself crawled up our porch steps and left us lonely, sick, terrified, and in despair – this place showed us the victory of Jesus Christ.

So it is appropriate for me to stand in this pulpit and to point toward our endurance this year. I can tell you about our outreach ministries, our care for our elders and our children, our partnerships with the Saint James School, the Church of the Crucifixion, and St. Simon’s, our food cupboard, our daily masses and recitation of the church’s holy and ancient daily offices, our new and impressive live-streaming ministries. It would be enough, I think, to celebrate these holy things together and to ask you to support them – to commit to them – with all your heart and with a nice portion of your bank account. Because giving to these ministries is a vital thing. It is good and necessary to be generous. Committing to our neighbors is a commandment. But there is even more at stake here.

We, people of Saint Marks - friends near and far - we do not just give because we have to, or because we enjoy the beautiful music here, or because we want to care for others or stand together during a pandemic. At the heart of this commitment of ours is the astounding reality that we believe in Jesus Christ. We give because we are in love with Jesus, and from this love, everything else is transformed. We give because we know that the Bible tells us today in the Epistle to the Hebrews - that we are to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”

He who has promised is faithful. We give because he who has promised is faithful. This is the part where I talk about religion... Jesus - his commitment to us and to all creation was no ordinary commitment, but a perfect commitment to restoration and salvation. Jesus’ Resurrection was the seal of that promise - a truth that wrapped its arms around eternity and presented it, fresh and new, for all people. In Jesus Christ, everything else is transformed, and his faithfulness to us insists upon our response, in love and in generosity.

And we know we can’t do it alone. And so we have the Church. In response to this faithfulness of Jesus, we gather together in these places where the good Lord has led us, in order to support one another, preach his gospel together, and live in witness to that heavenly transformation. And the stakes are high.

Because the Church is no ordinary gathering place of assorted human beings. Here we’ve come to the political part, but don’t worry, because the only one we’ll really be offending is Satan and all the powers of sin and death. The Church - both the broader Church of Christ’s followers throughout the world, and this parish church of Saint Mark’s specifically - the church stands directly in opposition to the majority of political philosophies that define our world today. The majority of respectable philosophies these days are centered on power, superiority, personal gain, and self-preservation... They break people. They sort people - worthy from the unworthy. Churches are essential in the midst of this sorrow. And while I do mean “churches” as communities of those who love Christ, I also mean the buildings. Yes, the pandemic has shown us how we are able to connect with each other online, but the fact of this building - this place - is a dagger in the heart of worldly oppression.

This place is for all of God’s people. This building is a threshold of heaven. Yes, God is everywhere, and we can meet him in the woods or at a concert, but this place is a carving out of a holy place where we glimpse God’s kingdom on earth, because God meets us here - in Word and Sacrament - and this place belongs to all of us. In cities in particular, it is not hard to see the reality that if you want privacy, peace, silence, beauty - you have to have money to pay for it. If you have no shelter, and you’d like to be alone, at peace, where can you go? If you are rich, and you want your identity to mean more than the money you make or the position you occupy, where do you go? If you are young and depressed and you cannot pay for distraction or affirmation, where can you go? If you are older, and alone, and you find yourself invisible to a world that is speeding up with every second, where can you go?

You can come here. Because God is in love with you. And this is the place where we help each other believe this. He who has promised is faithful. To you.

And so we need to talk about money. My hypothetical title of this sermon was “Jesus paid for your sins, but he didn’t pay for this sound system.” But I promise, this is the fun part, because remember - in the love of Jesus Christ, there is not a single thing on this earth that is not transformed, and that includes how we talk about money. We’re bad at this, a lot of us, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here, in the heart of Christ, money will not separate us or judge us or make us feel better or worse than anyone else. Because in our life in Christ, money is a tool. In the Bible, Jesus commends the widow who places her two small coins in the treasury, and we know that the first churches in the Acts of the Apostles were supported by wealthy women who opened their homes to the disciples. Money is a tool, and while we cannot fully shake free of the burdens that the rest of the world has placed on these discussions, we can begin to try.

When I was in my mid-twenties in Los Angeles, I made twelve dollars an hour at my job. I knew - every single week - how much gas I could afford to put into my tin-can Chevy Sonic and how many times I could afford to drive to work and to the grocery store. And in Los Angeles, I also knew that I was doing okay. I saw my own neighbors doing more with less. But I was embarrassed at church. I was elected to the vestry, and in order to accept, I had to become a pledging member. After calculating my budget, I found I could pledge $4 a week. $16 a month. And so I did. And I was embarrassed about that. But I didn’t need to be.

He who has promised is faithful. And my gift was too. And so if that’s you today - or even if you cannot spare four dollars today - this place belongs to you. Maybe today you’re in a place, praise God, where four dollars doesn’t sound like very much. This place belongs to you too. We are responding to the faithful love of Christ together. We are making something new and beautiful together. We are using the tools that we have to ensure that those red Fiske doors remain a threshold of heaven both now and for all of the assorted human beings who will come after us, yearning for the love of Jesus.

And so today I invite you to give all of your money away to the church. Maybe not all today. But maybe. You won’t have much use for it in heaven. Be transformed by the freely given, unstoppable love of Christ. Know that your commitment - of two coins or two thousand - proclaims the possibility of a world made new. Believe that in Christ, there will always be more, always be enough. Trust that when you give - time, talent, or treasure - you are at prayer.

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
14 November 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

You Don't Get What You Pay For

It was John Wycliffe, the 14th century translator of the scriptures, who rendered in English as “mite” the Latin noun “minitum” which was used to describe the widow’s offering in Mark 12:42.  Or as the King James Version of the Bible puts it, “two mites, which make a farthing.”  A “farthing” was worth a quarter of a penny, and the term was used to indicate an amount of the smallest possible, least significant value you could conceive.

Today we heard the more modern translation: “two small copper coins,” along with the wild exaggeration that they might be worth as much as an entire penny!  But those of us fortunate enough to have the old language ringing in our memories’ ears will always hear this passage as the story of the widow’s mite.  A “mite” being a little-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy amount, a coin of very little value; even two of them don’t add up to much.

It would be easy, I think, to mis-remember this little episode as the parable of the widow’s mite, as though St. Mark’s account began with Jesus saying something like, “the kingdom of God is as if a widow had two mites…”  But that is not how the story begins, because it is not a parable.  St. Mark is very clear here.  He tells us that Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury.”  This is not a made up story; it’s the real thing.  It’s quite a scene, if you let yourself picture it.  This is the Temple treasury, and Jesus is watching the people make their financial contributions.  And he’s keeping track of how much people give.  He’s counting.  Just let that ink in for a moment.

So, Jesus is watching, and keeping track of how much people give.  And although “many rich people put in large sums,” Jesus does not praise them for it (nor does he criticize them).  He waits, and he watches.  And when the poor widow comes to the treasury and puts in her two mites, her little-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy amount (times two), that’s when Jesus seizes a teaching moment.

Now, this is a bit of a disappointment for me, to tell you the truth, since I have long wanted to preach on the text, “Many rich people put in large sums.”  But somehow I never find myself in just the right room full of people to preach that sermon.  (Some day I will, though; and I will knock that sermon out of the park!). Instead, I have the widow’s mite to contend with.  So, I’ll do my best.

One of the most reliably accurate maxims of our day is that you get what you pay for.  It’s not just an assertion of economic function; it’s a bit of common sense, too, that you get what you pay for.  Certainly, I have been known to repeat that maxim around the church, especially if we try to cut corners somewhere.  But since we rely so much on volunteers and on the generosity of others at Saint Mark’s, organizationally speaking there is a great deal that we get here that we don’t really pay for - it’s a blessing.  Still, there are plenty of bills to pay for which the maxim applies.  And in most other areas of our lives, the saying does hold true: you get what you pay for.  It is the underlying assumption of the marketplace: that you can get what you want, as long as you pay for it; and you get what you pay for.  Whether we are dealing with housing, healthcare, restaurants, air conditioners, organ builders, dog food, kitty litter, or office supplies: you get what you pay for.

It makes sense in a world that is nearly completely controlled by the metaphor of the marketplace that the rule applies so consistently: you get what you pay for.  

A cynical, but not un-true corollary to this maxim is that you pay for what you get, which means that everything really does have a price, even if it is ostensibly a gift.  That is, that everything comes with some kind of strings attached, and nothing is ever really free.  Again, in the church this corollary can at times apply: there are certainly gifts that come with strings attached to them.  We try to see those gifts as blessings, too.

Sitting there at the treasury, I suppose that Jesus wondered if people expected to get what they paid for when they put their money into the box.  Did he assume that the rich people who put in large sums expected to get what they paid for?  Good seats at the high holy days, preferential treatment from the priests, an “in” with God?  Hard to say.  But it seems clear, doesn’t it, that the poor widow cannot reasonably expect to get what she paid for, since what she paid for was only a little-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy bit?

Technically, Jesus’ observation of those giving at the treasury contains a lesson in what we call “proportional giving” - the idea that generous giving begins with a calculation of a proportion of your wealth, not a simple dollar figure.  But if that was the only lesson we got out of this observation, we would be missing a great deal.  Because the Gospel of Jesus boldly proclaims that you do not get what you pay for.  And that begins with Jesus. 

In the love of Jesus we do not get what we paid for; rather, we are given what he paid for: a life transformed by the power of the resurrection, which means a life defined by transfiguration, forgiveness, and transformation, and freed from the sting of death.  But we live in a world that is so governed by the rule that you get what you pay for, that many people hardly know what to do with the gifts of life, and freedom, and grace, and beauty, and faith - all aspects of resurrection life - that come for free from the hand of God. 

At this time of year we are on the verge of stewardship season.  And we still struggle to conceive of stewardship as something more than a euphemism for fund-raising.  And, frankly, at this time of year, many’s the rector who is tempted to preach a sermon entitled: You Get What You Pay For.  I believe I know how to preach that sermon.  

But maybe part of Christian stewardship is living and giving in ways that recognize that we do not get what we pay for.  We don’t even pay for what we get.   For, to be a Christian steward is to take one’s place in a virtuous cycle of giving with no strings attached that finds its origin in God’s own being.  We give because we recognize that we have been given to.  God is the giver of all good gifts, and everything we have has been given to us by the triune God who is always giving of God’s self to God’s self, and back again!  By virtue of our baptism, we have been given the on-going gifts of God’s grace that spill out of God’s being, by means of the perfect self-offering of love given for the sake of the world by Christ on the Cross.  This is not the mechanism of a fund raising campaign; these are the machinations of love: an unending loop of love into which every human is called, which is also an infinite loop of giving, since the best and holiest response to a gift is to give something in return, and so on, and so on, and so on.

The idea of becoming Christian stewards is that we learn to give in the same way: not because we get what we pay for, but precisely because we have already been given extravagant gifts for which we paid nothing: the gifts of life and love, gifts of beauty, the gift of this planet, the gifts of our families and friends, the gift of the church, the gifts of many things that we possess for a while, and, most especially the gift of salvation, which is the gift of God’s love that delivers us from darkness, decay, and death.  We have not paid for what we‘ve gotten, nor could we ever.  And we have been given so much more than we could ever afford - all from the hand of God.

Observing both the rich and the poor, Jesus’ teaching includes the assertion that it is harder for the rich to learn this lesson than it is for the poor.  I’d say, that’s because the rich are so caught up with the rule that you get what you pay for - in fact, when you are rich, you insist on it, don’t you?  But when we allow our lives to be controlled by the expectation that we must get what we pay for, we diminish our hopes and lower our expectations.  On the other hand, when we see that in Christ we are already living lives in which we have been given far more than we could ever pay for, our hopes are enlarged and our expectations elevated. 

There is a tremendous machinery in America and around the globe trying to convince you and me that we can and should only ever get what we pay for, and that wants to make us pay for whatever we’ve got.  But at every altar before which the Gospel of love is proclaimed, the gift of Christ’s sacrificial love - for which we have not paid, and which we could never afford - is made manifest day after day.  The truth is that Christ calls us here not so that we will give to him, but so that he can keep giving to us, day in and day out.  His self-giving, his love-giving, his grace-giving never stops.

It’s my job, not only to remind you of the holiness of the impulse to give in response to that love, but also to be first among you as a giver, if not in the amount, then at least in the ready and joyful response to that impulse.  And it is my joy to give a lot more that two mites to Saint Mark’s, because frankly, I have a lot more than two mites to give.  And here in this place, I have received more gifts than I could ever account for.  More precisely, it’s my joy to give back to God, from the foot of the Cross, where I am reminded every day that I could never pay for what I get - my life, my freedom, my salvation have been paid for already, and given to me for free.

But I am reminded by the widow’s mite - by that little-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitty gift, that I, too, am called to bring to Christ everything I have, all I have to live on; which seems completely unrealistic, until I remember that without Jesus, I have nothing.  And he has always given far more to me than I could ever give to him.  And this is not a parable; it’s not a made up story - that everything we have comes from God - it’s the real thing; it’s the truth.

And the point of Jesus’ observation is not to convince poor widows to give like rich people.  Rather, the point is to convince rich people to think and to give like poor widows - to be willing to give to God everything you have, since everything came from God in the first place; and to be confident that God will see to it that you get what you need.

All of which makes me hopeful that it’s not too late for my dream come true - if you do your part - to give me a reason to preach a sermon on the text, “many rich people put in large sums!”  I promise you,  I’ll do everything I can to knock that sermon out of the park!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
7 November 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia