The Weeks Before Christmas

‘Twere the weeks before Christmas, and all through the church
not a creature was stirring, not even a perch.
Well that’s not quite true, there’s no fish in the house;
and everyone’s up: every child, dog, and mouse.

The pageant was set for next Sunday at four;
but no one was asked to play God anymore.
For Covid had forced a big change to our plans:
wearing masks, barring crowds, and a few other bans.

Why, last year we couldn’t let kids come inside;
not for Advent, or twelve days of Christ-a-mas-tide.
And this year, who knows what the rules will allow;
all we know is that Jesus will get here somehow.

If you wanted a part in a pageant to play,
you could do a lot worse that John, Baptist, I’d say.
His costume is great and his lines are all shouted - 
so none of his words will ever be doubted.

He’s a prophet of Jesus; he’s the guy who comes first.
He eats locusts and honey; his breath is the worst!
He wants us to prepare, he wants all of us ready;
espec’ially if your name rhymes with Freddie, or Teddy…

Well, all of us, really, I just needed a rhyme;
don’t look at me like I’ve committed some crime!
Where was I?  Oh, John, comma, Baptist, our friend,
has words to alert us, so hearken!  Attend!

He’s the voice of one crying in the wilderness wild;
to prepare for a Lord who is meek and is mild.
Mild and meek he may be, but he still has got power:
it’s made perfect in weakness, at just the right hour!

So prepare ye the way, and make his paths straight,
run out to the garden and open the gate!
Every valley exalt, and each mountain re-grade;
use a back-hoe, a shovel, or an old garden spade.

It’s a metaphor, really, for hearts, which are crookéd.
John the Baptist reminds us, it’s high time we lookéd
inside of ourselves, to see what’s in there.
Is it hope and expectance?  Or’s it fear and despair?

To many that weirdo seemed odd or absurd:
he preached of forgiveness, he told them the Word
of the Lord, which is more than it first seems to be:
neither Bible, nor preaching, it’s Jesus, you see.

As you’re waiting for Christmas, try not to forget
that life’s not a solo, it’s more a duet.
It’s not you, by yourself, without help, all alone,
if you make your heart ready, prepare there a throne….

Better yet, if you feel as if God is a stranger,
prepare in your heart a stable, a manger;
a place in your life where on Christ-a-mas morn
little Jesus, our Lord, can be laid when he’s born.

For the world all around us is nutty, it’s tough;
Only God can smooth out all the edges so rough;
like your heart and mine, which are easily bended,
when they need to be fixed or repaired, or amended

What’s the gist of this poem?  What point does it make?
It’s not trying to alarm, but only awake
you from slumber, if sleep is the thing, what it is
that keeps your life flat, when it should be all fizz!

For Christmas is often not all it should be
if it’s just about presents, and cookies, the tree.
And these weeks leading up to that great holy day
are a chance to think deeply, to ponder, to pray…

to ask ourselves truly how much we believe
in a God who’s got more than just tricks up his sleeve:
and who loves us so much, like really, a ton,
that he sends us his dearly belov’d only Son

to be not our master; our friend, not our boss;
and to give his own life on the wood of the Cross;
and to rise from the dead three days later, you see,
and to share resurrection with you and with me!

It starts in a stable with hay and with straw;
it’s a story we learn, not a rule or a law.
It’s a person God sends to all people on earth,
which is why we rejoice every year at his birth.

If a child’s to be born, you’re alert, you prepare;
there’s a sense of excitement around in the air!
You make yourself ready, you might stay up late, 
after all of that work to make the paths straight.

So get ready for him, for your Savior to greet,
when he comes, shout it out, maybe send out a tweet.
It may seem somewhat goofy, old fashioned, or odd
but all flesh will soon see the salvation of God!

Now back to your seats, think about what I’ve said,
as visions of sugarplums fill all your heads.
What’s a sugarplum? Please, I am sure I don’t know!
Just go back to your pews, now, just go, go, go go!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen at Family Mass
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
5 December 2021

Grace in the Wilderness

Sermon notes from December 5th

Several years ago now, my first work in professional ministry was at a hospice home in the Midwest. There are many things I remember about this time, as you can imagine, but there was a certain moment on a certain day that I always remember during the season of Advent. One morning, I met a resident to pray together before she was scheduled for surgery. I asked how she was doing or how she was holding up or something ridiculous like that, and she responded: “I am in the wilderness.” I am in the wilderness. 

The interesting thing is that while each one of us might picture something different when we think about a wilderness - a desert, a frozen tundra, an untamed forest - we all have a sense of what “wilderness” feels like. The wilderness is unknowable. There are things about it that we cannot master or subdue. The wilderness is more powerful than we are, and our humanity - it’s goodness and its serious need - is suddenly and wildly exposed. The wilderness is landscape without profit. There is nothing to buy or sell or steal. There is nothing to hide us from God, and yet nothing to stop us from trying anyway. It is also an equalizer. You may be stronger or weaker or a little more prepared than someone else, but eventually, in the wilderness, we are all equally vulnerable before God. 

A hospice is a sort of wilderness. Trauma is a sort of wilderness. A hospital waiting room. Depression. Addiction. Discernment. Pregnancy. Prayer. Pandemic. Creating something. Loving someone. It’s as if this life of ours as human beings together on earth is a series of wildernesses, one after the other like smudged out maps stitched together, direction and destination unknown. We may be stronger or weaker or at times more prepared, but eventually, there we are: equally vulnerable before God. 

But there is good news about the wilderness. God is there. In the desert, certainly. In the tundra, the forest. In the place of powerlessness and desolation, we find that there is not only uncertainty and dread, but also the urgency of a wild and rich desire. In the wilderness, it becomes clear that the thousands of years of unbridled human need - our lifetimes upon lifetimes of stretching our hands toward the edges of something better and more true - every prayer our ancestors or our children have prayed for deliverance, all of this longing - all of it - is answered by someone. Jesus meets us there. Jesus, who himself went into the wilderness to pray. Jesus, who contended with the devil and overcame temptation in the desert. Jesus, whose birth itself was out near the forgotten places, whose holy family traveled across the wilds that his ancestors once crossed in their journey to freedom. In Jesus, our time in the wilderness becomes not merely a time of wandering, but a pilgrimage. 

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” John the Baptist cries out in the wilderness, proclaiming the arrival of the Messiah. In Luke’s Gospel, John is introduced in the very same way as the Old Testament prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Haggai, Zechariah. The text itself positions John to step into the light as the one who will be the last prophet, the one singing the final hymn of preparation and imminent redemption. John has been called the bridge between the Old Testament and the New - the one who extends a hand backward toward Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the other hand forward to us, joining us in praise of the God who answers our prayers. 

It is that answer that we cling to in this season. The Advent season is its own sort of wilderness where we wait for the Lord in the desert and the tundra. We wait for news about pandemics. We are wandering, as a planet, in a time of uncertainty. Waiting, wandering, longing. 

And yet John, beloved friend of Jesus and of us, reminds us that the rough ways will be made smooth. Our longing will be fulfilled and is now being fulfilled. Clear the brush from the path. Clear away any doubt that the savior of the world does not remember your name. Quiet your heart and look into the places of great silence. Know yourself to be not a wanderer, but a pilgrim toward that holy day when “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 

Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
Advent II 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Necessary Songs of Advent

Death sometimes has a way of bringing things into focus.  The death of Stephen Sondheim last week, has certainly done so for many of us who loved to be drawn into his songs, his music, his words, his rhymes, his stories.  The NY Times video obituary for Sondheim tells us that as the great composer-lyricist developed his own style, he “fractured the narrative, [and] told the story in a non-linear manner.”*  This approach to story-telling was a departure from the old pattern of musical theater that led you from the beginning to the middle and then to the end of a story on stage.  Let’s admit that Sondheim did not single-handedly re-invent story-telling.  But he artfully revised the old forms, and gave us something new that made us want to hear his stories the way he told them.  

Today, films, novels, TV shows, comic books (for all I know), and everything else, all tell stories with fractured narratives in a non-linear manner.  But it catches us very much off guard when we encounter this approach to narrative in church, and in the pages of the Bible.  

To begin with, we have started this new church year with a passage very near the end of Luke’s Gospel - only three chapters from the end.  We’re not quite reading the story backwards, but next week, we’ll jump back eighteen chapters to the beginning of Chapter 3, where we’ll meet the adult John the Baptist.  The week after that, we’ll move forward in Luke (further into Chapter 3), to hear more from the cousin and fore-runner of Jesus.  The week after that, we’ll skip back again, further this time, to Chapter 1, before either John or Jesus was born, to visit with their pregnant mothers as they visit with each other.  Then on Christmas, we’ll eventually arrive at the birth narrative in Luke, Chapter 2, having made those stops in Chapters 21, 3, and 1, along the way, in that order.  Maybe we have learned something from Stephen Sondheim.

Or have we?  At first glance, there appears to be much to object to in the passage from Luke 21 that we heard today.  Not only is it ominous and melodramatic - what with signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and distress among the nations; with people fainting from fear and foreboding, and the powers of heaven shaken - it also appears to be misguided.  In verse 29, Luke, says, “Then [Jesus] told them a parable.”  But what follows is not much of a parable; it’s more of an observation of nature: just as you can see natural processes unfolding in order, with the seasons, so you can see how God’s intentions will unfold in order, for anyone to see.  But the information provided by the parable has never really proven to be useful.  Remember that a parable is supposed to illustrate what God and God’s kingdom are like.  But the problem with this parable is two-fold: either it’s impossible for us to tell when God’s processes are actually unfolding (on the one hand) because we constantly feel as though we see ominous and foreboding signs; or God’s processes are constantly and repeatedly unfolding (on the other hand), for the same exact reasons.  And in either case, the ripening cycle of figs in the Middle East doesn’t seem to have provided us with very much useful information, as far as knowing when God’s will is going to be accomplished, when God’s kingdom is at hand, or that the end is near.  Maybe this is narrative being fractured, and told in a non-linear way, but where is it leading us?

Back to Sondheim, who, talking about his work said this, “One of the first things you have to decide on with a musical is, why should there be songs?  You can put songs in any story.  But what you have to look for is, why are songs necessary to this story.  If it’s unnecessary, then the show generally turns out to be not very good.”

At the beginning of every new church year, I am reminded that songs are actually essential to this story we tell.  We may not know what to make of the parable of the fig tree, for instance, but we do know how to sing, “Lo, he comes with clouds descending.”  And singing, we can believe.

One resolution people sometimes make at the beginning of a new church year is to read through the Bible from beginning to end.  Many people will advise you to do this, and I suppose it could be helpful.  But a far more useful resolution, if you ask me, would be to sing through the church year from start to finish.  The story of salvation, after all, is going to unfold in a fractured and non-linear way.  One of the only ways to stick with it is to sing through it: to take up the hymns, and the psalms, and the anthems, the spiritual songs… and sing.  Sing through the broken, fractured narrative of a life that might lead only to death and the grave, and see if the songs are necessary; see if the songs change anything.  

Without the songs of faith, I would say, any version of the story of life will turn out to be not very good, because the songs are necessary.  For me, singing has nearly always made the difference.  Maybe it will for you, too.  The version of the story of life that we start to sing about today turns out not only to be very good, it also turns out to be true!  That Jesus came to us to save us; that he comes to us still, while we wait; and that he will come again.

At the end of the Times’s video obituary of Sondheim, the interviewer asks what Sondheim would like his legacy to be.  The composer replies: “ Oh, I would just like the shows to keep getting done, whether on Broadway, or in regional theater, or in schools, or communities, I would just like the stuff to be done.  Just done and done and done and done and done.”  That is to say that he wants the stories to be told and told and told; the songs to be sung and sung and sung and sung.

Although narratives might be fractured and non-linear, meaning is revealed as we tell stories over and over, and as we sing songs over and over.  And we discover that the songs were always necessary, and always will be.  Sondheim is absolutely correct about this.  Jesus put it this way: “heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  

What if life isn’t nearly as linear as we think it is?  What if life is as fractured and non-linear as a Sondheim musical?  What if the only way to make any sense of God’s unfolding kingdom is to sing about it?  What if songs are absolutely necessary?

What if the best we can do as we face another year without knowing precisely what God has in mind, and easily mystified by what’s going on around us, we determine to just keep singing?  Because the songs are absolutely necessary.  Which songs?  All of them!  Any of them!

Life is fractured and non-linear, and so is God’s unfolding work in the world.

I wish Sondheim had written a song about a fig tree…

…sprouting leaves,
as they do;
so we could see for ourselves,
see clearly for ourselves,
and know that summer is near.

Be on guard!  
Be alert!
So your hearts 
are not weighed down
with the worries of this life!

Like a trap!
Be alert!  
At all times!

Praying for the strength
to escape,
and to stand
before the Son of Man!

When you see these things taking place, 
you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Yes, I’d say the songs are necessary.  I’d say the songs are absolutely necessary.

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

• Mervyn Rothstein, Obituary: The Last Word: Stephen Sondheim, in the New York Times online, 26 Nov. 2021. The Sondheim quotations are from the same source.