Two Kinds of People

It’s often easy to conclude that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  Sometimes even the scriptures seem to want to suggest that the world is divvied up this way: God’s chosen people and everybody else; Jews and Gentiles; saints and sinners; the redeemed and the lost.  The biblical tradition often seems all too comfortable with binary thinking.  And the church often seems this way too.

You can sort of see this way of thinking in the passage we heard from the Acts of the Apostles earlier.  You have Paul and Silas doing the work of the Lord, on the one hand, and just about everybody else on the other hand: the slave-owners, the magistrates, the crowd, those in the marketplace, the Roman authorities, the jailer, etc.  It’s the good guys against the bad guys.

The Psalmist sometimes adopts this binary point of view.  We heard it in the Psalm this morning:  “Confounded be all those who worship carved images and delight in false gods,” but, “the Lord loves those who hate evil; he preserves the lives of his saints.”

I don’t know if it’s always been this way, but a binary perspective of the world around us often suits us.  Maybe there really are only two kinds of people in the world: believers and non-believers; Republicans and Democrats pro-life and pro-choice; straight and Queer; rich and poor; gun owners and gun control advocates; vaxers and anti-vaxers; tree huggers and oil drillers; Fox News watchers and MSNBC watchers.  Two kinds of people.  I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Others have done a much better job than I could of considering why we break the world down into binary categories so easily and so regularly.  It probably has to do with the way our brains work, and with media influences, and the complexity and the sheer number of choices we have to make every day.  If we decide that there are only two kinds of people in the world, I guess that makes it somewhat easier to decide which side of whatever binary choice it is that we want to be on.  I have been feeling the pressure of these binary choices a lot lately, maybe you have too.  We seem to have to choose sides about a lot of important things: abortion, and the climate, and gun-control, and so many other things, too.

And the church, oh the church!  With her myriad sins and failings, and her long, long list of abuses; the church seems to be the cause of a dilemma that becomes more pronounced with every report of abuse from yet another denomination or powerful institution, making it easier and easier for people to want to disaffiliate from organized religion. It feels almost like a binary choice to remove ourselves from any fellowship that can be so cruel and so self-serving.  Do we want to be a part of such a fellowship, such an institution, or not?  If there are only two kinds of people in the world, which side are we going to be on?

Every time I think of the war in Ukraine, I begin to think that maybe there really are only two kinds of people in the world.  It’s been so easy to support Ukrainians, because the war seems to give us a lens through which we can see right and wrong, good and bad so very clearly.  And either you’re with ’em or you’re against ’em.

And when the news came from Uvalde, Texas last week, of the nineteen little children who were murdered by an eighteen-year-old boy… and the podcasts, and the news stories, and the editorials, and the social media posts all seemed to urge us to decide and to declare what kind of people we are, in this world in which there are probably only two kinds of people.….  Well! I knew, didn’t I?  I know where I stand, and I know why it’s important!  And I believe strongly that I am on the right side of gun control.  And I am willing to stake my claim that I am on the side of the angels… and most very likely on the side of God himself!  That’s the way I see it, and I do believe this!  And under the right circumstances I would argue the point!

I am grieving those nineteen children and their two teachers.  More quietly, much more quietly, very, very quietly, I am also trying to grieve the death of the eighteen year old boy who perpetrated that fiendish act.  But mostly I am digging my fingernails into my arm to try to keep from weeping when I think of the awful deaths of those little children.  And I feel I ought to say something to you and to the world about it!  I hear all the righteous anger, and the calls to action, as well as the thoughts and the prayers.  And I am wondering; I am asking God what God has to say about all this, and how I can help say it for him.

And I happened to be in my car the other day, listening to a radio station that represents the binary choice of my point of view.  And I heard a woman named Scarlett Lewis being interviewed by Cory Turner, and she was talking about forgiveness.*  Now, I’m big on forgiveness!  I’ve been trying to talk about forgiveness too!  So I sat up and took notice.  And it turns out that Scarlett Lewis is the mother of a 6-year old boy named Jesse “who was murdered alongside many of his classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary” School, ten years ago.

And the story on the radio was going on about school safety, and a report by the Secret Service, and bullying in schools, and something “they call a threat assessment model, where a team of trained staff, including an administrator, a counselor or school psychologist and a law enforcement representative work together to identify and support students in crisis before they hurt others…” which, the reporter told us, reminded him of something Scarlett Lewis had told him a few years ago, when he had interviewed her.

This mother of a child who’d been shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School at the age of six… this is what she said: “There are only two kinds of people in the world…”. And I braced myself, because it seemed like whatever came next was going hurt in its poignant, insightful, truth-telling accuracy.

“There are only two kinds of people in the world,” she said, “good people and good people in pain.”

There are only two kinds of people in the world, good people and good people in pain.

When Jesus prayed for his disciples on the night before he died, he prayed to God the Father “that they may all be one.”  It sure doesn’t sound to me like he is thinking that there are only two kinds of people in the world.

Am I going too far, if I suggest that Jesus’ prayer implied that the only kinds of people in the world are good people and good people in pain?  Because, theologically speaking, Scarlett Lewis’s two kinds of people are the only two kinds of people that makes sense if Jesus’ prayer has any hope of leading somewhere: good people, and good people in pain.  Scarlett Lewis’s assessment actually sounds like a kind of derivative of Jesus’ prayer that we all might be one, since if the only two kinds of people there are in the world are good people and good people in pain, well… maybe there are not really two kinds of people in the world.  Seeing the world and the people in it that way might be the only way that love wins, as we so often hope it will.

I don’t know what measure of grace it takes to survive the murder of your six-year old child and to be able to say that there are only two kinds of people in the world, good people and good people in pain; but I want to get some of that grace.

When Jesus prayed that we might be one, maybe his prayer meant this: that there might be only two kinds of people in the world: good people and good people in pain.

I wonder which kind of person you are.  I wonder which kind of person I am.

All these calls to action, these fed-up demands that we finally do something, and to stop it with the thoughts and prayers, these injunctions to one another are not much use as long as insist on seeing each other as one of two kinds of people in the world, since, in such a world, everything we do cancels the other out.  We’ll only act, we’ll only do something, we’ll only change, we’ll only be transformed when we are one, and when we can see that the only two kinds of people in the world are good people and good people in pain.

And Jesus prayed explicitly that we might be one, that in our unity we might share again in the divine nature, as he and the Father are one.

It’s my job to look for Good News, for evidence of the Gospel in the world, and to draw attention to it, highlight it, and help us take something from it for our own good.  My God, that task has seemed hard to accomplish this past week.

The good news expressed in Jesus’ prayer that we all may be one, might not be so easy to hear at first, especially when it seems so obvious to us that there really are only two kinds of people in the world… until you consider the possibility, suggested by a woman whose six-year-old child was murdered at his elementary school, that maybe there really are only two kinds of people in the world: good people and good people in pain.

And maybe we really all can be one, if there are only good people and good people in pain?

And I think… that’s a world  that we could live in, in peace.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
29 May 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

*on “All Things Considered”, National Public Radio, May 26, 2022, The interview with Scarlett Lewis had actually taken place in 2019

A Brown Box on Locust Street

Let’s acknowledge the obvious, that if a = b, then b = a.  In mathematical terms this fact is described as one of the properties of equality.  But those of us who are not very good at math often think of it as common sense.  The inverse of this property of equality is, I believe, also true.  If a does not equal b, then clearly b does not equal a.  This is not complicated, is it?  It’s the type of illustration I would us in a children’s homily.  I think you can handle it.

The problem is that every single one of us actually carries a working knowledge of this simple property of equality around in our heads (and in our hearts), and that working knowledge includes the inverse rule, that if a does not equal b, then b does not equal a.  And the real problem is that Jesus, who we sometimes experience in the scriptures as obtuse, evasive, or oddly coy, now and then speaks in the clearest and most obvious terms, as he did with his disciples in the Upper Room on the night of the Last Supper, after Judas had left.  “I give you a new commandment,” he says,  “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  It is Jesus’ only commandment to his disciples; the sole rule of life that he exhorts them to adopt as his followers: that as he loved us, we should love one another.  It is, of course a near re-statement of the Golden Rule that we should do unto others as we would like others to do to us, assuming that everyone wants to be loved.  And it’s a simple enough commandment, in a sense.

And perhaps it would have been just fine on its own, if Jesus had not added to it a statement of the property of equality - “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  If a equals b, then b should equal a.  The King James Version put it a little differently, saying that we’d be known to be Jesus’ disciples “if ye have love one to another.”  If ye have love.  If ye have love one to another.  Jesus does not seem to have taken into account that the inverse of the properties of equality are also true.  Jesus does not seem to have taken into account what would happen if his followers did not love one another.

Remember the context.   Jesus has just shared his last supper with his followers.  In St. John’s account there is no telling of the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist.  There is, rather, the moment when Jesus girds himself with a towel, gets on his knees, and washes the feet of his disciples in an act of kindness, humility, and love.  Jesus is explicit that he is modeling behavior he expects his disciples to imitate.  “If I … have washed your feet,” he said, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you  also should do as I have done to you.”  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.  By this.

I feel my cheeks flushing with embarrassment when I stop to think of Jesus’ own example, of his one, only, and new commandment, and of the property of equality expressed when Jesus said, “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  By this: if ye have love one to another.  My own failures at following this commandment are so many and so obvious to me that I can’t muster much enthusiasm for suggesting a list of the possible ways that you might have failed.  I can’t even garner the energy to accuse the church, as an institution, of her long catalog of failures to follow the new commandment of love.  I can, however, see how the property of equality and its inverse cast an unflattering light on those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  But on the other hand, if we don’t have love one to another, we shouldn’t be surprised if people reach their own conclusions.

At this point in a children’s homily, it would be long past the time that I should have pivoted to suggesting how we can follow Jesus’ only commandment, how we can actually love one another, what it might mean to have love one to another.  And in a children’s homily, chances are very good that I would have with me my brown shoe box of Beanie Babies, which contains twelve little stuffed animals: a bunny rabbit, a beagle, an walrus, a moose, a blue jay, three frogs, an ostrich, a pelican, a tiger, and a bald eagle.

The stuffed animals are useful stand-ins for us people, because they can do whatever we can imagine they can do.  For instance, they can be miserable failures at loving one another, or they can be fantastically good at it.  My brown shoe box full of little stuffed animals is a self-contained world in which it’s possible for me to imagine that all of the inhabitants can and will have love one to another.  But what’s really important, of course, isn’t whether I can imagine all the animals having love one to another, it’s whether or not the children can imagine it.  Because if the children can imagine a world in which the moose and the pelican have love for the bunny and the blue jay, maybe their imaginations will allow that possibility to grow and expand, not only to include the three frogs, but also the pelican, and the ostrich, and the tiger, too.

And maybe the kids will notice that the stuffed animals all make their home in small rectangular brown box on Locust Street.  And if we can imagine a small rectangular brown box on Locust Street as a place where everyone who has a home there is also able to have love one to another, then maybe we can also imagine a bigger rectangular brown box on Locust Street where everyone who has a place is also able to have love one to another.  Strictly speaking, one brown rectangular box is not equal to the other, so I guess this is a case of the property of equivalency rather than of equality.  But I’ll settle for equivalency here, if it helps us to have love one to another.

And when I think of the way that people have reached out in care to one another in this parish as part of Neighbor Care, I think, yes, maybe that’s possible.

When I think of the way the Soup Bowl is reconfiguring again, welcoming hungry people here on Locust Street again as we have for so many years, and also taking bag lunches out to the streets, I think that’s a sure sign of having love one to another.

And when I think of the work that’s being done every day at St. James School, I think, yes, that’s it too.

And when I think of the lessons boys and girls learn when they sing in a church choir, I think, yes, that’s about a lot more than music, if we are doing it right, as I think we are.

And when I think about the volunteers and the Ministry Residents who deliver food to the Church of the Crucifixion twice a week for distribution there, I think, yes, that’s a way of having love one to another.

And when I think of the forgiveness stones that helped at least a few of us to  find ways to seek forgiveness and to offer it, I think, yes, that’s a way we have love one to another, too.

And I begin to think that maybe it’s possible for the church to follow Christ’s one and only commandment.

John 13:35 is not counted among the hard sayings of Jesus, but I think maybe it should be.  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  It’s hard for us to live up to this simple challenge, to live by Christ’s simple command to love one another.  Anyone can see what a challenge is posed by the inverse of the property of equality, since if we don’t love one another very well, doesn’t that mean that we are not really disciples of Jesus?

Which is why we keep returning to our rectangular brown boxes on Locust Street, to learn again how to have love one to another; to practice; to experiment; to fail; to seek forgiveness; and to try again.  It’s why sometimes we have to learn from a little stuffed moose, or three stuffed frogs, relying on the property of equivalency, in order to live up to the property of equality that if a = b, then b = a.

For I believe that week by week, the three frogs in my brown shoe box are getting better and better at learning to love one another, at having love one to another.  I believe that the walrus is getting better at it too.

And I am praying that if the properties of equality govern our lives, so too will the property of equivalency, so that what I can imagine for the creatures that inhabit a small brown rectangular box on Locust Street, I can also imagine for the creatures who inhabit a large brown rectangular box on Locust Street.  I am praying that a = b, and b = a.  And if my prayers are answered, then, by this everyone will know that we are Christ’s disciples: if we have love one to another.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
15 May 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

To Pray with Boldness

Sermon notes from 5/8/22

There is a story I’d like to share with you this morning about a time when I was wrong. Some time ago, I was serving in a large parish with a long list of ministries. One of the first women to welcome me to the parish asked which ministries I would like to visit - which groups might be of some interest to me - and of course I reviewed the list and noted many of the ministries that were familiar: Bible Study. That sounded good. Contemplative prayer. Okay. Meals on Wheels, well sure. But there was one ministry on the list of which I was suspicious. It was simply listed as “Healing Ministry.” I asked what this was, and the woman who was my gentle shepherd responded with eagerness and joy: “oh, that is where we lay hands on people and pray for God to heal them.” 

Oh. I didn’t know about that…It sounded…charismatic. Different. I told the woman that I was interested in just about all of the parish opportunities, but not the “healing ministry.” But she was wiser and holier than I. She looked me dead in the face. “When you’re up at the altar celebrating the Eucharist, do you believe in what you’re doing? Do you believe that the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is showing up there?” “Well yes,” I said, “I believe it with all my heart.” “And when you pray for people, do you believe that it does something, that God is listening and responding? Do you believe that what you say to God matters?” “Yes,” I said. “I do.” “Do you believe that God cares about us and is present with us?” “Yes,” I said, “yes, I believe that.” She looked at me with pity, “Then what is limiting your faith in the possibility of being healed?”

What is limiting your faith in the possibility of being healed? She was right. Something was limited in my faith. I had had some vision in my mind of people gathering around to ask God for something impossible, not connecting how odd it was to be so limited in my imagination when the Bible tells us - more than once! - that nothing at all is impossible for God. I had failed to see how all of the rest of it - the Eucharist, the prayers, God’s presence - all of that would be as good as washed away if I did not believe in a faith founded upon the true and physical reality of the Resurrection. It was almost like I had been afraid to really take a good look at Easter and believe it was meant for me - for us - today.

In the Gospel of Saint John, just before his arrest, Jesus is teaching his disciples and tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” And yet it is still a shock to the friends and companions of the widow Tabitha when Saint Peter calls her back to life. After Jesus himself, the act of someone dying and being returned to life is very rare, even in the early church, certainly as it is remembered to us in scripture. Even in the immediate years after Jesus’ own Resurrection, this is still a miracle that seems to exist beyond possibility. And yet Peter, in the name of Jesus, continues the story of God’s extraordinary insistence upon calling life from death. Something new is happening here. This fresh faith is larger than the limits of imagination. It is wilder than the fragility of the body. When God has declared that those who believe will work greater things than these, this is not just a proclamation but also a promise. 

And yet we hold these things at a distance from ourselves. We are bold in our prayers for many things, but there is still a part of us that remains limited in our capacities to imagine laying a hand upon another and asking for God to heal them. We are afraid to ask someone to lay their hands upon our own bodies and pray for us. Maybe we’re afraid because it’s intimate. Maybe because it feels…somehow out of place for modern, intelligent people. Maybe we’re truly afraid to ask for these things, because…what if nothing happens? 

This story of the revival of Tabitha in the Acts of the Apostles brings us a stunning revelation of the power of God, the power of Easter resurrection, and yet we wonder about the widows who remained quite certifiably dead. What about those widows’ husbands, leaving their families to lives of fear and precarity, perhaps great poverty and suffering? What about those of us who are sick who pray to be made well and are not? What about the prayers we have whispered tearfully into the night that fall into nothing when the one we love still suffers? What does it mean when we pray and are still in pain? 

Well, it means we are close to Jesus. It means that we are fully within the embrace of the one who makes us to lie down in green pastures, who leads us beside still waters. We are held by the one who spreads a table before us in the presence of our enemies, who annointeth our head with oil and maketh our cup to overflow. We are nearest to the one who pursues us with goodness and mercy all the days of our life. And in this intimacy with Jesus Christ is found true wholeness. 

We spend these holy days of Easter encountering the Acts of the Apostles within our liturgy. The Acts of the Apostles describes the very beginnings of first Christian communities, and it is essentially an adventure story, a mystery, and a great romance - recalling the first people and places that encountered the miracle of the resurrected Christ. All throughout, we see a remarkable thing happen. This community is comprised of people who have witnessed the Resurrection of Jesus - many of them had seen the resurrected Jesus firsthand. And yet they are continually surprised by the power of the Son of God. They are plunged into something fresh and new, something wild and impossible. They had seen the Messiah come back from the dead, and yet they are still being surprised. They, like us, have moments of holding the glory of God at a distance, believing in the possibility of grace and yet so often not seeing how profoundly it has already come among them.

What is limiting our faith in the possibility of being healed?

Sometimes we pray for small things, not wanting to be disappointed, and God deeply cherishes these prayers. But with Easter comes another invitation too. We are reminded to pray boldly. To not let ourselves remain limited. God wants us to pray for bold, weird, holy things, trusting that even if we do not receive them, we are still being instructed in speaking the language of hope. It is already a bold thing to pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

For God, even these are possible. 

Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
5/8/22
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia