Dissolute: A Musical

It’s a little surprising to me that Andrew Lloyd Webber never wrote a musical based on the parable of the Prodigal Son.  The only Broadway treatment that I know of this parable is contained within the 1971 show Godspell - it’s highly mannered, and hasn’t aged well, if you ask me.  But Lloyd Webber, and his lyricist Tim Rice, who, together, wrote two biblical musicals, could have done a good job with this story, I think.  There’d have been a stirring number when the Prodigal Son goes to his father, full of self-confidence, and asks for his part of the inheritance: perhaps the song would be titled, “Give me my share.”  I can almost hear it.

But maybe a show like that shouldn’t be written by Webber and Rice.  Maybe Lin-Manuel Miranda would be a better choice for a show like this, and for the song, “I’m gonna take my share.”  Miranda has no record of dealing with biblical material, but his percussive cadences and driving rhythms would be highly effective, especially in rapping out the details of that part of the prodigal’s life, which was left unexplored by the evangelist: the period of time when the headstrong son “squandered his property in dissolute living.”

The word “dissolute,” I am informed comes from the Latin dissolutus "loose, disconnected; careless; licentious,” which is the “past participle of dissolvere ‘loosen up.’"   “Loosen Up” makes a good song title too, and I imagine Miranda inventing some character who encourages the Prodigal Son to loosen up, now that he is out of the grip and control of his father, and who shows him just how to do it.  Miranda has a way with tragedy.  He can show us what becomes of the Prodigal Son, now that he has taken his share and has learned to loosen up.

If I were consulted, I’d tell Miranda to set that scene in Philadelphia.  If I could workshop it with him, I’d place on stage a street sign marking the corner of 33rd and Allegheny Ave, just around the corner from St. James School, and on which corner, I am told, earlier this month, shots were fired in the middle of the day, while school was in session.

Being so close, the shots were heard in the school.  And I believe I am correct that, although gunfire is not rare in the neighborhood (I have heard it there myself), I believe the incident marked the first occasion in the eleven years of the school’s history that the school went into lockdown.  Doors were shut and locked, shades were pulled down, and teachers and students huddled in the safest corners of their rooms, while the principal and head of school consulted the police.  The lockdown did not last long - only minutes, I’m told.  The shooting is not listed on any published police reports that I can find, so I am assuming that no one was injured.  But, of course, someone could have been.  There have been 371 non-fatal shootings in Philadelphia so far this year, and 101 fatal shootings.  The incident I’m talking about isn’t even included in that count.

Now, I don’t know anything about the person who fired the gun that day.  And it’s not my real purpose to speculate about whomever that person was, that maybe, for instance, it was someone’s prodigal son.  Rather, it’s my purpose to speculate about the dissolute living of the Prodigal Son - the one from the Bible.  It’s my purpose to imagine that he did not just make a few bad but un-specific decisions that were rather unfortunate; but that his decisions, his choices, one after another - loose, disconnected; careless; licentious - those choices landed him somewhere very much like the corner of 33rd and Allegheny, where shots were fired not so long ago.

But I can’t avoid wondering if maybe those shots were fired by someone’s prodigal son.  Or maybe they were fired at someone’s prodigal son.  And maybe, in neither case, did the prodigal son have any idea that only a block away there were middle school children huddling with their teachers in the corner for safety.  And, the fact remains that this is what happens - this is what happened - in the real world.

To be honest, I have another purpose in speculating this way, which is to say that there are in this city, and in every city, town, and village across the globe, and at every intersection, prodigal sons and daughters everywhere, who have done nothing more drastic than loosen up - because who doesn’t want to loosen up? -  and who do not realize how much danger lurks when you become loose, disconnected; careless; licentious - and who find themselves at crossroads very much like the corner of 33rd and Allegheny, on one side or the other of gunshots, while children huddle for safety nearby.  How are we going to set such a thing to music and sing about it?

No matter who the composer and the lyricist are, the curtain might fall at the end of Act I, as the shots are fired, and the children race to the corner of the classroom, and their teachers assure them that they will be alright, and the theme of “Give me my share” is played by the orchestra.

When the curtain rises on the next act, things do not get better for the Prodigal Son.  Having hit bottom, he hires himself out to a pig farmer and finds himself envying the pigs.  There’s a song to be sung here too, which proves that comedy is tragedy plus time: the Prodigal Son eyeing the pigs’ feed, since no one will give him anything.  Eventually, the young man comes to his senses.  In the telling phrase of St. Luke, “he came to himself.”  Seeing himself again for who he really is, the son decides to go home to his father, and as he sings, he imagines how deeply and earnestly he must beg his father’s forgiveness.  “I am no longer worthy,” he sings, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

As the curtain rises on the final act, we find the father gazing into the distance, and he can see his son coming home, even though he is still far off.  For dramatic purposes, we will have to re-organize the biblical material and put the scene with the jealous older son here at the beginning of the last act, before the actual return of the prodigal son, while the fatted calf is being killed and the robe and sandals are being set out and the ring is being polished.  And when the Prodigal Son arrives back on stage, back home, we will have to add some words to St. Luke’s text, to make sure that the song makes sense to the audience and conveys its important meaning.

St. Luke writes only that the son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  But the song we will ask Miranda or Lloyd Weber to write will be more precisely specific in its meaning, and clearer in its purpose.  When he opens his mouth to sing, the Prodigal Son on stage will say this: “Father, forgive me, for I have sinned against heaven and before you.”  Father, forgive me, he begs, Father, forgive me!

And when the Prodigal Son throws his arms around his father’s neck, with tears running down his cheeks as he gives himself to his father’s embrace, the audience knows that his tears do not flow from remorse that he spent months or years in some abstract and undefined state of dissolute living.  We know, rather, that he begs his father for forgiveness because he has  stood at the corner of 33rd and Allegheny on one side or the other of gunshots.  And since coming to himself, he had learned that nearby that day there were children in a school, huddled in the corner, frightened and brave.  And he has been dreading this moment of reunion with his father, wondering how his father can ever forgive him for such things, since he has been having a hard time forgiving himself.  Our composer and lyricist will give us a song for the father to sing that includes the famous line, “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”  And the title of the song will be a word that answers the plea of the Prodigal Son as he ran to his father’s embrace: “Forgiveness,” it will be called.

Having been told and re-told so many times, the parable of the Prodigal Son often sounds dated and highly mannered to our ears, as if it is an interesting relic that might be distantly related to our current experience in some small way, but not, perhaps, of urgent significance to us.  But there are many stories being told in our own day and age about what happens when we loosen up more than is good for us, and we become disconnected; careless; licentious.

And we forget (because St. Luke is not explicit in his language about this), we forget that the father has to forgive the Prodigal Son.  We fail to see that it’s forgiveness that the elder brother struggles with and is less ready than his father to offer to his brother.  Nor did we see all that the Prodigal Son needed to be forgiven for; just as I did not realize, when I first heard it, that the story of the gunfire at 33rd and Allegheny is a narrative in need of forgiveness.  And it’s one of the easier ones, since as far as I know there was no bloodshed that day.  But best to start with the easy ones.  Because there are other narratives, too - at least 371 non-fatal stories, and 101 fatal stories so far this year in this City of Brotherly Love - all in need of forgiveness.

We should tell this story of forgiveness as many ways as we can.  We should be very, very clear about what it is that happens when we squander what’s been given to us in dissolute living.  We should affront ourselves with the depth and variety of tragedy that comes as a result of doing nothing more than loosening up: becoming disconnected, careless, and licentious.  We should be clear that these are stories that happen to people we know and people we don’t know; people we like and people we don’t like; situations we can relate to and situations that are hard for us to relate to.  These are also stories that have happened to us - to you and to me.  And in all of them, forgiveness is required.  Forgiveness is required.

The story of the Prodigal Son, after all, is not meant to teach us all that much about the Prodigal Son - we can all fill in the blanks of that story pretty easily.  The story of the Prodigal Son is a story that is really about the father.  It is a story about a father who forgives, and whose forgiveness is not gauged against the depth of our dissolute living, or the extent of our disconnected, careless licentiousness.  This father is ready and willing to forgive the prodigal son whose finger pulled the trigger on the corner of 33rd and Allegheny Ave.  He is ready to forgive 371 shooters in this city, and another 101 shooters, and more than that, too.

He is hoping that if we tell this story enough times, sons and daughters will learn how not to demand their share and how not to squander all that’s given to them.  But since we have proven to be slow at learning these lessons, he is ready to forgive.  And if he is ready to forgive us our trespasses, then we ought to be ready and willing to forgive those who trespass against us, as Our Lord taught us to pray.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
27 March 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Friendship with the Cross of Christ

Sermon notes from 3/13/22

Every day, there are new stories and new images from the war in Ukraine. Every morning, the newspapers run fresh pictures of terror, the latest timestamped video footage of explosions, perhaps a merciful portrait of someone’s unique courage or resilience, but always in over against another terror of the day. There is an image from the war from last week, maybe the week before, that I cannot unsee. It is a picture of a town square in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. It shows the gray cobblestone of the open walkway in front of the cathedral there. There is a newsstand in the background. An archway. Two people walking together. The edge of a parked car. But in the center of the image stands a crucifix. There is a cross built from massive, simple wooden beams, and upon the cross is a corpus - the figure of Jesus, broken in crucifixion and gazing downward at the stone below. The whole of the cross is about four times the height of a grown adult man, and one can know this because in the picture, the Cross does not stand in the cobblestone square on its own. 

There is a man there. We cannot see his face because it is bent forward, resting upon the beam. His forehead presses up against the wood. But we can see that the man has white hair. His clothes are simple - black pants, a black jacket. And his arms are stretched out into a circle, embracing the whole of the beam. A grown, adult man, presses the whole of his body against the wood of the Cross, clinging to its base as a small child clings to a mother’s knees. His hair is white, but his posture - his need and his love and his sorrow - is a posture beyond age and space and time. 

It is this image that I find burning behind my eyelids as I read the words of Saint Paul to the Philippians this morning. He warns them: “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.” Now, when you read the letters of Saint Paul and think about them in aggregate, looking at them all together, it becomes clear that when Paul writes to the Philippians, he is writing to beloved friends with whom he is well pleased. Philippi was like many of the places where the earliest churches took root: diverse, centrally located along trade routes that connected the major cities of the Roman Empire, marked by conflict, division, and interreligious dispute. But the Philippians, we know from Paul’s letters, were generous of spirit and resources. Even though many of their number were poor, they sent money along to the even poorer church in Jerusalem. Paul delights in them, even here calling them marvelously “my joy and my crown.” 

But Paul worried greatly about those he called “the enemies of the Cross of Christ.” It is important to note that he is not talking about pagans here. Everybody knew that the pagans were enemies of the Cross of Christ - there was no pretense there, that’s a whole separate situation. But here Paul warns his hearers about a distinctly different problem popping up among those who allegedly hope to follow Jesus. Because in the first century of the church - not unlike all other centuries of the Christian faith since the very beginning - there were some people, calling themselves Christians, who liked very much what Jesus had to say about many things but did not want to think about the Cross. Some denied that Jesus was truly resurrected, believing him only a moral teacher, perhaps a prophet. Some wanted to forget the Cross entirely, focusing only on the resurrection and hoping to ignore the means by which it was achieved. The Cross was difficult to think about. Messy. Devastating. A sign of weakness and a mechanism of terror. Not exactly material for happy evangelization and tidy invitations to come on over to the church in Philippi and submit your pledge. 

These philosophies are enemies of the Cross. Paul’s warnings are not about judgment or hopeless condemnation, but about a passionate love for the followers of Jesus to whom he writes. And - I like to think - his passionate love for those who read him still, including each of us. He wants them to know the truth. He wants them to recognize that they deserve the fullness of the Gospel. He wants them to know and believe in the extraordinary plenitude of the paschal mystery, and this plenitude can only be seen and known and believed through the reality of the Cross. When Paul warns of the “enemies” of the Cross, he is exhorting those who hear him to instead become friends of the Cross. 

We think sometimes about being friends of Jesus who tells his disciples, “no longer do I call you servants, but friends.” But Lent is as good a time as any to remember, too, that our Christian call to friendship with Jesus is a call to friendship with his Cross. 

The Gospels tell us that when Jesus died upon the Cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two. The veil separated the innermost chamber - the Holy of Holies - the resting place of God in the Arc of the Covenant - from the rest of the temple. The veil marked the dividing line between the human and the divine, the earthly and the heavenly. It was only the high priest, and only on one day of the year, and only after rigorous ritual purification, only he could move beyond the veil. 

And then the veil comes down. The Cross was the end of the barrier, both material and cosmic. The Cross is the repairer of the breach. The Cross is the place where even the most unimaginable depths of human failure, sin, and terror are brought within the perfect and unutterable mercy at the heart of God. The beams of the Cross extend beyond Golgotha to plunge even unto the greatest darkness: grief, death, our gangrenous human proclivity to cling to the mechanisms of our own destruction, even hell itself - all of it purged by this wooden hinge upon which the whole of history turns and turns and turns - always, irresistibly, towards God. 

The Cross stretches out across every impossible thing. It is the bridge between hatred and forgiveness. It is the flowered path that spans the distance between condemnation and mercy. It is the arms that reach down over the cliff and pull us back to solid ground, arms that fold around us - even in our most wretched guilt - and wipe our tears and smooth our hair and clear our eyes and rock us gently, sweetly back to sleep. The Cross is the bridge between life and death. It is the ultimate, unconditional assurance that there is no terror beyond God’s triumph.  

And so we are called to be friends of the Cross. We are called afresh during Lent to draw near to salvation: all of it. The whole thing. Jesus in his life, his teaching, his Passion, his death, his Cross, and the fullness of the Resurrection that came all the way through the annihilation of iron, wood, and blood. 

The Cross is not our stumbling block, but our gateway into the fullness of the Gospel of Christ. We are meant not to fear it as an enemy, but to embrace it as a friend. To stand below it, with Mary and with John, trusting in the One who gazes down upon us. We are meant to fold our own arms around it. We are meant to press our foreheads to its surface. We are meant to let it hold us up - in our mornings of exhaustion, in our midnights of worry, in our secret heartbreak and hidden shame - even in the middle of a cobblestone courtyard in the shadow of a cathedral in a city under siege. 

The Cross stretches out across every impossible thing. 

Preached by Mother Brit Frazier

13 March 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Devil Made Me Do It

It’s been a fairly long time since most of us took the devil seriously, so it’s awkward to be confronted with the possibility that Jesus did take the devil seriously; that Jesus might actually have believed that the devil existed; and that Jesus might actually have encountered the devil face to face.  Now and then, in my darkest hours - which are few and far between, to be honest, even at times like these - but in my darkest hours, I find it easier to relate to those possibilities: that Jesus took the devil seriously, that Jesus knew the devil exists; and the Jesus confronted the devil face to face, as we are told by St. Luke that he did.

Christian theology has never conceived of the devil as anything close to God’s equal.  A persistent adversary that is willing to put up a fight doesn’t have to be an equal to cause lots of grief.  The devil is not, in our view, the dark side of a coin or equation of which God is the light side.  The devil is not the yin to God’s yang.  Not every cause of our heartbreak comes from the devil: not sickness, or tornadoes, or heart attacks, and probably not even Covid; not tsunamis, or the wildness of a grizzly bear, or the pregnancy that did not make it to term.  

But we do conceive of the devil as the prince of darkness, who finds strength in anything that causes us humans despair, as those awful events surely do.  And we see that the devil’s area of expertise and interest is primarily in turning the human soul inward, to be ever more concerned with the self, ever more interested in one’s self above all else, ever more intolerant of anything that does not gratify one’s self.  Every one of us faces these tendencies to center our attention more intensely on our own selves - my wants, my desires, maybe even my real needs - to a degree that is not good for us.  We should hardly be surprised that as he prepared for his healing, forgiving, and life-giving ministry, Jesus confronted the darkness that takes offense at his light, and that that darkness, knowing that Jesus’ life was given for others, sought to bend Jesus’ life back in, toward himself, seeking to ply him with sustenance in his hour of hunger, power in his season of weakness, and pride in the time of his deepening humility.

There’s a line in an old country song that goes like this: “the devil made me do it the first time, the second time I did it on my own.”   Of course, it’s a clever turn of phrase, delivered with a wink and a laugh.  But, of course, it’s also funny because it’s true, or at least, it’s very close to the truth.  Once we have allowed our attention to be turned inward, once we start to become ever more concerned and interested in our own selves, and ever more intolerant of anything that does not gratify ourselves, we find it’s easier to face that way than it is to make the effort to turn around and face others; and, in fact, there is much we enjoy about it.  Being self-centered pays a lot of dividends up front.  The devil might have made us do it the first time, but the second time, and every time thereafter, we may do it happily on our own.  As it happens, there is a strong scriptural basis for this clever turn of phrase, but that’s not what the song is about.

People mostly tend to think that religion is about the first part of that phrase - that the devil made me do it the first time.  But only a very small part of religion is really about that.  Most of religion is about the  second part of the phrase - that the second time I did it on my own.  Most of religion says, “Yes… and what are we going to do about that?”

Jesus walks into the wilderness, and the devil, who is not yet convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, knows how these things work, and he knows an opportunity when he sees one.  I’ll get him to do it the first time, the devil thinks, and the rest will take care of itself.  But Jesus does not yield.  Jesus does not require the devil’s sustenance; he does not want the devil’s power; he will not be puffed up with the devil’s pride.  The devil can’t make Jesus do anything: not the first time, the second, or any time thereafter.  Jesus is not just the light side of the devil’s dark math.  Jesus is not merely the yang to the devil’s yin.  For Jesus is light itself come into the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  Not the first time, the second time, or any time thereafter.  And the religion of Jesus is built in part on knowing this important truth: that Jesus is the light, and the devil’s darkness cannot overcome it, though he will try: a persistent adversary who knows how to put up a fight.

We are living in age of moral quandary.  Can we tell the difference between the truth and lies?  Can we tell the difference between right and wrong?  Can we tell the difference between good and bad.  And many people are not convinced about who the devil is; they are not convinced the devil exists.  At its best, religion helps us figure out the truth about what’s happening in our world and our lives, not only because we become convinced about the devil who can make us do things the first time, but because we see what damage we do to ourselves and our neighbors, when we do things a second time, entirely on our own.

When we live in a society that encourages amassing fortunes so outrageously enormous that no one needs them, and still allows huge swaths of people to live in abject poverty, is this the devil’s doing or our own?

When we can see plainly the effects of four hundred years of racism in our nation, but we shrug and say it’s not really a problem, is that the devil’s doing or our own?

When an army of bullies storms its way into a democratic nation’s capital by force just because they want to and they have enough brute strength to do it, is that the devil’s doing or our own?

When we pour poison into, under, and all around our planet as though it doesn’t matter, is that the devil’s doing or our own?

And when we obscure the difference between truth and lies, we blur the difference between right and wrong, we confuse the differences between good and bad, is that the devil’s doing or our own?

Jesus’ experience in the wilderness tells us that the devil exists.  It doesn’t tell us what the devil looks like, or if he sits on one shoulder or the other, or whether he’s serpent or a spirit; but it tells us the devil is real.  Considering all we know about human history, it should not be too far fetched for us to believe that there is a prince of darkness, whose only aim is to turn our energy and emotions in, toward ourselves, to make us self-centered, self-interested, and intolerant of others.  There is a persistent foe who is willing to put up a fight in order to win us over.

But the good news is this: the devil is no match for Jesus.  He may persist, but he cannot prevail against Jesus.  The darkness has not overcome the light, and it will not overcome the light.

Here’s more good news: the devil has nothing good to offer you and me.  We do not need the devil’s sustenance, we’ll never require the devil’s power, and there is nothing to be gained by being puffed up with the devil’s pride.  If Jesus doesn’t need any of that from the devil, then neither do we.  The devil tried to convince Jesus to turn in toward himself, and think only of himself.  But the devil could not do it the first time, and Jesus will not do it on his own.

Here’s more good news: We can tell the truth.  We do know right from wrong.  We can choose to be good.  All these things are clearer and easier to do in the light of Jesus’ love.

Here’s more good news: there is nothing the devil can make us do the first time.  And if there is no first time, then perhaps we’ll never ever do it on our own.  But remember, most of religion is about dealing with the second time, the times we err and stray from God’s ways like lost sheep, entirely on our own.  Maybe that’s why they call them “second chances.”  And here’s more good news, since Jesus came to forgive us our sins: we get all the second chances we need.

Come quickly, Lord Christ, to help us who re assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
6 March 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Temptation of Christ by Gustave Doré