SMACS 0723

One of the defining images of modernity occurs at the end of the film “The Wizard of Oz,” when Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow find themselves in the presence of “the great and powerful Oz.”  Amid smoke and flame, thunder and flashing light, a booming voice addresses the petitioners who have made their perilous pilgrimage to the Emerald City to beseech the wizard to get Dorothy home to Kansas.  It’s Toto the dog who pulls back the curtain to display a grey-haired man wearing a cravat, who’s pulling levers and switches, and shouting into a microphone.  It becomes immediately clear that there is no wizard of Oz.  He’s a fake wizard, a counterfeit guru, an artificial god.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” he says as his puny insignificance is revealed.

Many people suspect that just such a ruse of falsity can be found behind some curtain in any and every church: that there is no God, but that the machinations lit by candlelight, behind stained glass, obscured by the smoke of incense are nothing but the petty performances of puny people trying to play our parts in costumes we can’t ever really fit.  They look at a place like this, at people like us, at me, I suppose, in particular, and say, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, there is no God.  Whatever you think is going on here is fake, counterfeit, artificial.”

You might think that the release this week of spectacular images from outer space would tend to reinforce the cynical critique that a worldview shaped by religion is, by definition small, narrow, and in denial, since the universe is so much more vast than anything imagined at the altar or in the scriptures.  How can we keep on telling stories of Adam and Eve, of Noah and his ark, or of Abraham and Sarah, when we know (or at least we should know, could know) that these stories never happened?  Don’t these images pull back the curtain of our religious traditions, showing us a scientific explanation of the world?  When we can see in vivid color the distant and mysterious past of the immensity of the universe and explain its origins scientifically?  When we can see for ourselves what a teeny-tiny place we occupy in the vast expanse of interstellar space?

We should sit in silent awe when we look at the image that was released this week from NASA’s Webb telescope of SMACS 0723.  The image shows us a speck of the sky as small as a grain of sand from where we stand: “a tiny sliver of the vast universe,” NASA says.  SMACS 0723 is a galaxy cluster “as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster.”  Yes, we should sit in silent awe to contemplate the privilege of perceiving light that has travelled 4.6 billion years to reach us.

More profound silence when we consider that according to NASA, that same image revealed “light from one galaxy that traveled for 13.1 billion years.”*  It’s a tiny speck on the image, but it’s there: a far-away galaxy that is a speck of light in a sand-speck of sky, many, many billions of miles and many, many billions of years away from us.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain; the scientific details of the expanse and origins of the universe might seem to put the lie to anything you’ll find in the pages of the Bible.

Here on earth, of a Sunday morning, we are asked to look back to Abraham, who, if he was a real person, might have lived around four thousand years ago.  But neither science nor history can say whether or not Abraham was a historical figure who actually existed.  It’s entirely possible that he did not.  Abraham, might be a character assigned to represent the archetypal patriarch of monotheistic faith.  He might be a mythical figure who stands-in for whomever it was to whom God first revealed his intention to be in a covenant relationship with at least some segment of humankind.  Amen.  So be it, I say.  An archetypal, mythical Abraham is as real and true as a historical one, if you ask me, since the covenant with God is just as real and true.

The covenant that the Lord made was “to be God” to Abraham and to his offspring, to give Abraham the land of the Canaanites, and to make him the father of many nations.  Two out of three clauses of such a covenant would seem problematic to me, since they involve real estate, on the one hand, and fertility, on the other; especially considering that Abraham was 99 years old at the time.  If you ask me, the real  substance of the matter is the “everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” (Gen. 17:7)   But the matters of real estate and fertility were apparently of some concern to Abraham and his wife Sarah, too.

Now, we don’t really know how the Lord revealed himself to Abraham, who was first called Abram.  Genesis says that the Lord spoke to him, that “the Lord came to Abram in a vision,” and that “the Lord appeared” to him.  All of this is vague.  But, then, it was, like, four thousand years ago.  Except for this one day, recounted in the 18th chapter of Genesis, when “the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre.”

Scholars tell us that Mamre was a real place, located near the city of Hebron, in what’s now the West Bank, south of Jerusalem.  Abraham and Sarah were camping there for a while by the oaks at Mamre, for the shade, I suppose.  And Abraham “looked up and saw three men standing near him.”  And the text is clear that we are to understand that these three men are a theophany: a manifestation of the living God.  Some people will tell you that they were three angels.  Others say that it was the Lord and two angels.  Our tradition sees in this moment an appearance of the triune God.

For reasons that I cannot fathom, the editors of the lectionary tell us to stop reading before the story of this appearance is over.  What’s left out, as a result, is the account of Sarah laughing at the absurd promise that she, in her old age, would give birth to a son - the child she had much prayed for when she was younger.  Sarah, who must have been in her 90s too, was listening from inside the tent to her husband’s conversation with the three men, and she heard the outrageous promise that she would at last become a mother, and she laughed when she heard it.

There is something wonky in the text here, but the divine visitor gets the last word when he asks pointedly and rhetorically, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”  And then the Lord challenged Sarah on her insistence that she did not laugh.  And the Lord said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

The scene, as it unfolds, is the near opposite of the scene from “The Wizard of Oz.”   It is Sarah who hides herself behind the curtain of the tent flaps, hoping not to be noticed by an actual personification of the great and powerful Lord of the universe.  Sarah can see for herself that there is nothing fake, counterfeit, or artificial about this divine visitor.  God shows himself to be real and available, to the point of making house calls.  Pay no attention to that lady behind the tent flap.  Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

Cast your eyes if you can from the oaks of Mamre, in their very specific spot not far from Hebron, something like four thousand years ago, to that other very specific spot: a tiny speck of light in a sand-speck of sky, many, many billions of miles and many, many billions of years away from us.  In between these two, and beyond and all around them, is the domain of God’s creation.  The same God who was at work in the world 13.1 billion years ago, was at work by the oaks of Mamre four thousand years ago, and is at work in us here today.  The immensity and age of the universe does not in any way undermine the reality of the Lord who makes house calls, and who expresses his intention to establish an “everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”  We’re much better off, it seems to me, if we can see the truth of both instances.

Another of the astonishing pictures that NASA released this week was of the group of galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet.  NASA tells us that that image “contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files.”  The complexity of these images and the sophistication required to produce them should not be understated.  Science has given us a way to see things that, as far as we know, only God has ever seen before.  No wonder we find these images jaw-dropping.  But the complexity and sophistication, like the sheer immensity of the universe we can perceive, and the sheer age of the light we are perceiving - 13 billion years old! - could serve to discourage us from believing that the God who could create such a universe has any interest in paying attention to the likes of you and me.

To remind us that God does, indeed, regard the likes of you and me, we have the precise address of the oaks of Mamre, where the Lord was known to have visited, and chatted for a time with the father of faith, and with his wife, Sarah.  Neither Abraham or Sarah could have imagined the expanse of the universe that was created by the Word of the Lord who sat with them by the oaks of Mamre.  If you tried to tell them, they would surely have laughed at the absurdity of the thought that we can take pictures of light that is 13 billion years old; just as some may laugh at the suggestion that Abraham was 99 years old, and just as Sarah laughed at the suggestion that she would bear a child in her old age.

It’s easy to laugh.  But it’s not that hard to believe in a God who makes house calls, even if he has been at work in the world for 13 billion years or more.  It’s not really that hard to believe in a Lord who wants to establish an “everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”

Yes, NASA’s photos of the ancient universe do pull back the curtain, so we can see what’s really going on in the universe, and what’s gone on before us.  And what we see behind the curtain is that there is no fake wizard there, no counterfeit guru, no artificial god.  There is a universe that is billions and billions of years old.

And there are three men sitting by the oaks of Mamre: a manifestation of the divine, making a house call, and stopping long enough to ask, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 July 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

*All NASA quotations are from www.NASA.gov/webbfirstimages

SMACS 0723

A Kingdom for Everyone

Once again, the Gospel seems to be encouraging us to imagine that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  I should warn you, that I am trying to lull you into a false sense of security by repeating a theme of a recent sermon, because I am going to try to play a trick on you.  Of course, you may already know how this sermon goes.  You may have heard it before.  But still, if you look at the Gospel reading from St. Luke assigned for today, it would be easy to conclude that Jesus wants us to think that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  And what a week to have to confront that possibility in church!  The times seem custom-made to revisit the point that there might be only two kinds of people in the world, do they not?

Consider the Gospel.  The missionary instructions that Jesus gives to the seventy are riddled with binary thinking:  There’s a harvest to be gathered, but the laborers are few.  So there are laborers and there are slackers, I guess: two kinds of people.  Then there are lambs and there are wolves.  Then there are people on whom peace will rest, and those in whom peace will find no home.  Two kinds of people can be found in two kinds of towns: the towns where Jesus’ followers are welcomed, and the towns where they are not.

Could it be any clearer that Jesus wants us to conclude that there really are only two kinds of people?  “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”  And don’t we all know who the wolves are?  We have 24-hour news channels whose primary purpose seems to be to teach viewers who the wolves are to their lambs.

Jesus might appear to buy-in to this kind of thinking, since the language he uses does readily conform to it.  “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’  But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.’ … I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”

There are only two kinds people in this world.  Those for whom the kingdom of God has come near, and those for whom the fate of Sodom awaits.  And you remember what happened to the people of Sodom, do you not?  Things did not go well for them.

There are only two kinds of people in the world.  Lambs and wolves.  Pro-life or pro-choice.  Pro-guns or pro-gun-control.  Religious fanatics or sensible people who have outgrown religion.  And you know who you are; and you know who they are; so, when you encounter them, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.  This advice to shake the dust off your feet in protest against another is included in all three of the synoptic Gospels.  It’s a thing.

Maybe it’s because our nation was born in rebellion that we find this sort of thing so appealing, and we can’t help but divide the world into two kinds of people.  We shook the dust of Great Britain off our feet with conviction and violence, did we not?  We showed them that there are two kinds of people in the world.  And we are not the kind of people who would be ruled (and taxed) by a distant monarch!

I think people in America are wondering if it’s time to do some more dust-shaking.   I’m looking at you Texas.  And you are surely looking at us in the City of Brotherly Love.  Two kinds of people.  Maybe when we stand up at the peace, we should practice shaking our feet.  Do it vigorously.  And lean on your neighbor if you need to.  You’re going to want to make sure your balance is steady.  We don’t want to lose anyone when we start shaking the dust off our feet.  Because we have the kingdom of God to proclaim to those who welcome us!  But to those who reject us, well… on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom.

But I told you that I was going to try to play a trick on you.

The problem with this approach, with looking at, say, Texas this way… the problem with declaring the kingdom of God, on the one hand, and pronouncing the fate of Sodom, on the other is this… that it’s not quite what Jesus taught.  For, when Jesus said to say this, “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you,” he went on to include this clarification, “Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.”  Yes, he did threaten that it would be more tolerable for Sodom, destroyed by fire and brimstone, than for those who rejected the promises of the kingdom.  But still, he said, right there - in the middle of the town where the proclamation of his Name had been rejected, in the midst of all the foot-shaking, and the cloud of dust it kicked up - still, there: the kingdom of God has come near - just as it has for those who were welcoming.

And here’s what happened when the seventy returned: they brought back zero reports of rejection.  They told no stories of shaking the dust off their feet.  And they saw no cities reduced to rubble by fire and brimstone.  All they saw were signs that what Jesus had told them to say to everyone - to everyone - was true: that the kingdom of God had come near.  They reported back that so powerful was the mere proximity of the kingdom of God that the very demons submitted to the power of Jesus’ Name!  And while they were taking on demons, what Jesus saw was this: Satan fell from heaven like a flash of lightning!

If the fate of Sodom was a threat, it was an empty one.  For, the word of the kingdom of God brings not damnation, but salvation, as the powers of darkness fall even from their perch near God’s own dwelling, where they seek to ruin everything!  But the powers of darkness do not prevail!  They cannot prevail so close to the kingdom of God!

So, on second thought, let’s not rehearse our foot-shaking, when we should be practicing our peace-sharing, since sharing peace seldom reinforces the idea that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  Jesus played a trick on his disciples.  He played-in to the tendency that they share with us to suspect that there are only two kinds of people in the world - those who are with us, and those who are against us.  But what he actually taught them was that the kingdom of God is to be proclaimed to everyone, and that that kingdom is near at hand, even to those who seem to reject it, and even to those who we are inclined to reject Jesus.

So, let us also not fall for the trick that leads us to believe that the kingdom of God is meant for some people, but not for others.  No, rather, the kingdom of God has come near to one and all; the kingdom of God is meant for one and all; and the kingdom of God has room for one and for all.  It is not our neighbors who stand in opposition to the kingdom of God, it is the prince of darkness.  But he has already fallen from heaven!

On this Fourth of July weekend, some Americans are preoccupied with the idea that in order for Christ to make his home in our lives and in our hearts, we must claim this land for him like conquistador-disciples.  That idea comes with the suspicion that there will be a lot of dust to shake off of a lot of feet, wherever the Gospel is not welcomed whole-heartedly, since it is shaped by the suspicion that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  But Jesus didn’t call his disciples to establish a Christian nation; he sent them out like lambs into the midst of wolves to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of God, even in places where the word was not welcomed or embraced.  And not one of them came back reporting that they had shaken any dust at all off of their feet.  It takes a lamb to do work like that, work that wolves can never accomplish: proclaiming Good News gracefully, even where it is not welcomed, and refusing to let that Good News morph into Bad News by delivering it with all the gentleness of a wolf.

Today, too, Jesus will send us out like lambs into the midst of wolves.  And the trick for us will be not to allow ourselves to become sheep who put on wolves’ clothing, sharpening our hooves and our teeth, so that there’s nothing of us left that resembles a lamb anymore.

Remember, if there are only two kinds of people in the world its’s these: good people, and good people in pain.  And the kingdom of God has come near to us all.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
3 July 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Treachery of Images

Recently, while visiting family in Southern California, I happened to see one of Jasper Johns’s flag paintings in the Broad collection in L.A.  Famously, these paintings of the US flag prompt the question: Is it a flag, or is it an image of a flag?  The implications are not entirely semantic if you assign a high value to the meaning and purpose of a flag, as many of us do.  It matters, for instance, if you care about how a flag should be treated.  I’m not sure I know the answer to the question of whether the painting is a flag or an image of a flag, but I’m pretty sure it’s the question that matters.

I was reminded that nearby in L.A., there hangs another famous work that prompts questions too: René Magritte’s 1929 painting called, “The Treachery of Images.”  It is a rather large and realistic illustration of a pipe, of the kind that grandfathers once smoked.  You would almost expect it to be an advertising poster for tobacco or for pipes for your grandfather.  Except that in big, neat script beneath the image of the pipe are written in French the words, “Ceci n’est past une pipe.”  This is not a pipe.

The explanatory label at the L.A. County Museum of Art says that the painting is a “treatise on the impossibility of reconciling word, image, and object, it challenges the convention of identifying an image of an object as the thing itself.”  The label goes on to say that “the painting prompts the viewer to ponder its conflicting messages.”

It is possible that the details of the observance of the Feast of Corpus Christi could amount to a treatise on the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object.  For, at the end of this Mass, we will place a consecrated Host in a monstrance for all to see.  With the greatest possible ceremony, I will lift that monstrance, held beneath the folds of a humeral veil, and carry it in procession, surrounded by torches, preceded by thurifers swinging thuribles to create a smoky haze of sanctity, accompanied by singing, and, if you do your part, met by deep bows of reverence and adoration as we go.  Then I will place the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Christ on the Altar for our adoration, to offer our prayers, and to beseech and to receive God’s blessing, before returning the consecrated Host to the Tabernacle.

Much could be said about the meaning of the ritual, this community, and God’s work in the world.  Perhaps in a progressive parish like ours, in the twenty-first century, such medieval ceremony prompts the congregation to ponder conflicting messages.  Perhaps it will be impossible for some to reconcile Word, image, and object.  Perhaps some will find that the Procession and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament challenge us to wonder if we are mistaken to identify a sacramental sign of Our Blessed Lord as the Holy One himself.  To put the question simply: Is this Jesus, or is it just a kind of sign or image of Jesus?  Ritual so confronting in its extravagance might well prompt the question: Is this the Body of Christ, or is it just a representation of his Body?  I happen to think it is a vital question, and that it’s not just the question that matters, but the answer, too.

Lately, I have been trying to underscore the nature of this parish community as a Eucharistic community - a community formed first and foremost by the Mass.  And I have been saying that what this means is that we gather as Christ’s Body, to be fed by Christ’s Body, so that we can feed Christ’s Body in the world.  Such a statement is  deliberate in entwining Word, image, and object; resorting, as it does, among, other things, to St. Paul’s teaching that we believers, gathered together, amount to more than just a smattering of Episcopalians; we are, in fact, members of the Body of Christ, just as there are other members all around us in the world.  And that this is not just an image or a metaphor, but that we are the real thing; and our neighbors are the real thing, no matter how lowly we may be.  In some meaningful way we can be said really to be the actual object of the Body of Christ.

But I look at you, and I look at me, and I think: Really?  This is not the Body of Christ.  I look at the people we feed so many days of the week in this place, and I think: Really?  In, oh, so many ways, we and they don’t look much like the Body of Christ to me.  But it is a mystery of God’s love and grace that God allows such inadequate members to be assembled into so marvelous and so holy a thing.  And despite my doubts when I look at us, I feel absolutely confident that we are and must be the Body of Christ in the world.  And when I look at the often bedraggled souls who we feed in this place week by week, I am doubly convinced of it.

Perhaps some people will look at what we do here, when we take that bland, flat disc of bread and place it at the center of the golden rays of the monstrance, and bow to the Presence we believe inhabits such a lowly form, and they will respond with dubiousness.  You may examine the evidence, and see only the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object; and you may conclude, as you gaze at the Host in the monstrance, that this is not the Body of Christ.

If there was a surrealist artist among us, the artist might render a painting of the monstrance-encased Host held up by veil-draped hands, and place the words in big, neat script below the image, “This is not the Body of Christ.”  For that, I think, is the great concern and critique of the sublime expression of religion we will soon enact here: that no amount of ritual can change the view that the object in the monstrance cannot be what we say it is, cannot be who we say it is; that this is not and cannot be the Body of Christ.

But to take that view, and to enlist the surrealist artist to spell out those words would be either to fail to learn a lesson from the likes of Magritte and Jasper Johns, or to learn it too well - I’m not sure which.  Those artists expect us to ponder conflicting messages in so complex a world as ours.

More to the point, in focusing our attention on the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object, we are forced to admit that the Host is an object that conforms imperfectly to our images of both Savior and Bread.

And if we had a surrealist artist among us who could paint for us that image of the monstrance-encased Host held up by veil-draped hands, I’d think that the words he’d write out in big, neat script would be these: “This is not a piece of bread,” since to so many in the world, that is precisely and only what it appears to be: a piece of bread.

The observance of today’s feast invites us to consider the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object in the time and space that are immediately available to us.  In this holy place of mystery and love, and in this holy moment of time, the convention of identifying an image of an object as the thing itself is challenged, as we lift up and adore a lowly object that to the eye is so plainly nothing more than a bland, flat disc of Bread.

But this is not a piece of bread.  And you are not a smattering of Episcopalians.  And bedraggled, hungry souls are not the dregs of the earth.  Though many are bedeviled by the impossibility of reconciling Word, image, and object, since, after all, this is all a matter of faith; you assembled members… those hungry souls… and that bland, flat disc of bread… these are the Body of Christ.

On this Feast of Corpus Christi, we gather as Christ’s Body, to be fed by Christ’s Body, so that we can feed Christ’s Body in the world.  So, let us adore for ever, the most holy Sacrament: not just an image or a sign of Christ’s Body in the world, but the very real thing.

This is not a piece of bread.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Treachery of Images by René Magritte