Until You Bless Me

Sermon notes from 10/16

I wonder when was the last time you wrestled with God. Perhaps it was some time ago, in a season of doubt – a time when you were young and passionate and sleepless with uncertainty. Perhaps the last time you wrestled with God you were angry. You had done everything correctly - everything you were supposed to do - and yet there you were, suffering despite the things you had so properly ordered. Perhaps the last time you wrestled with God, something was breaking - your family, your identity, your health, your sense of wholeness or wellbeing. Perhaps you sifted through the pieces late into the night and paced or prayed or cried out in fury. Perhaps you weren’t even sure you believed in God - not then, not really - but there wasn’t anyone else to listen when you wept into the dark.

Jacob knew all about darkness. In Genesis this morning we find him in the midst of a cosmic wrestling match in the night. In many ways, this battle is the enfleshed representation of the conflicted, combative unfolding of his life. When Jacob is born, Genesis tells us that he comes into the world grasping the heel of his brother Esau. His name means “the usurper” or “the supplanter” - or even, “the crooked one.” He is born already wrestling for higher position. When the boy Jacob grows older, he famously disguises himself as his elder brother in order to trick his father, Isaac, into giving him his blessing. Esau discovers the treachery, and he vows to kill the usurper, and Jacob flees into the night. He is driven far to the northeast where for years he works for his uncle, Laban, in a sort of exile – in fear of his brother’s wrath. And this morning, in Genesis 32, Jacob is trying to come home. 

At this moment in the story, messengers have reported to Jacob that Esau is approaching with 400 men. In terror, Jacob sends his family on to safety and waits near the riverbank alone. Jacob has no assurance that his brother will accept his offer of gifts or apology. He has no certainty about whether or not his family will survive or whether his plan will succeed. He has nothing of earthly value or military superiority that will guarantee him anything at all, but what he does have is a promise. Jacob has a promise from God. When he first fled the wrath of his brother and began his journey north, Jacob fell asleep upon a stone and dreamed. It was here he saw the ladder stretching from heaven to earth, flush with angels ascending and descending, and the Lord stood over him and said, “I, the Lord, am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and your children. And your children shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east and the north and the south, and all the clans of the earth shall be blessed through you. And look, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

And so when the stranger comes to Jacob along the river, and when Jacob realizes that this stranger is no ordinary man, and when in fact this stranger reveals his staggering divinity, Jacob does not let him go. He is in terror. This could very well be the last night of his human life, but he has not forgotten the promise. “I will not let you go until you bless me.” 

Is this not our own desperate prayer into the darkness. There is something deep within us that believes – sometimes against all reason – in a promise. This is the promise thrumming beneath all of creation, the promise that cradles our faith. In the midst of terror and grief, there is a part of our heart that believes, somehow, that we are meant for wholeness and life. How can we exist on the riverbank in the dark when we know we are meant to wake up in the morning and go home? 

When we are wrestling with God in the night, we are crying out with Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” 

This was the lament of all creation for a long time. The desperation of brokenness and the burdens of sin and death were like an eternal night alongside an impassable river. For generations, the cries in the night seemed to go unanswered, and yet something within us believed in that possibility of wholeness and life. “I will not let you go until you bless me.” 

And so God gave us the only possible perfect blessing. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God did not give us skill or wealth or mighty military power, but his very own Son whose Cross would become the bridge across the river from exile into our true homeland of eternal life. 

The intimacy and profound nearness between Jacob and the divine wrestler became freely given to each of us. When all of creation cried out for God’s blessing, all of creation received nothing less than his Body and his Blood. 

It is true that we still may wrestle into the night in our uncertainty or our fear. We may not make it through the night without our own limp, our own transformation, or without leaving behind our own name. But in our intimacy with Jesus, the Son of God, we rise in the morning.  We sing out with Jacob, “I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved.” 

Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
16 October 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

A River Runs Through It

If you wanted a river to wash in, you would not choose the Schuylkill; nor the Delaware, most likely.  Rivers are not for washing in anymore.  Indeed, rivers aren’t what they used to be; or at least they don’t mean what they used to mean.  Rivers today are often reminders of our capacity to ruin what God has given us.

But in the biblical mind a river is, if not everything, at least almost everything.  One of my favorite verses from the Psalms, for sheer poetry and compact density of meaning is Psalm 46:4, “There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God.”  The creation story in Genesis 2 tells us that “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.”  Of course the people of Israel had to cross the river Jordan to make their way into the promised land: the same river in which, many generations later, John would baptize Jesus.  In Ezekiel’s vision of God’s healing and restoration, a river flows out from beneath the temple.  And in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, we read of “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

God accomplishes God’s work by causing rivers to flow.  God gives life by the currents of rivers.  God fulfills God’s promises when we cross the rivers that we must cross.  And God gives new life when we are buried with Christ in the waters of baptism - a river that makes its pools in fonts like ours and in churches everywhere, all over the globe.  A river is everything, or nearly everything.

Most of us have been taught that the importance of rivers, once upon a time, (and maybe even a little bit today) was their role in enabling commerce and industry.  And, no doubt, this is an accurate reading of history.  But it is a partial reading of history, shaped by our preoccupation with the marketplace and its transactions.

But faith is supported by religion, and religion is shaped by shared symbols of rich meaning.  And a river is not merely a byway of commerce and industry; a river is a shared symbol of rich meaning through which faith is conveyed.  But these days, when we would not dare wash in Schuylkill, and when the Delaware is not what it once was to this city, we hardly know what a river is or what a river could mean.

This was not so for Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army. Naaman knew what a river was, and what a river was for.  Naaman knew how a culture, a people, a faith, and a religion could be described by a river, and fed by a river.  And Naaman was a great man, in high favor of the king.  He knew the importance of a river.

And when he arrived more or less at the doorstep of Elisha the prophet, he was not expecting to be directed to a river.  Rivers he knew: in Damascus, the rivers of his own people, his own city, his own king.  Naaman was not in search of a river to wash in.  He had leprosy, and he was in search of someone, anyone, who had the power to make him well.  He was a man of power in search of power.

An interesting thing about this story is where the power is located.  And if you look closely at the story, you see that power is never found where it ought to be found.  To start with, we are told that through Naaman the Lord had given victory to Aram (which today we’d call Syria).  God had given power, not to his own children, his own nation; not to Israel, but to Syria - we don’t know why.

Next, there is the young girl who has been taken captive.  Other translations call her a “little maid.”  But let’s be honest, she’s been captured in warfare and forced into slavery.  She is nothing; she is nameless; she is powerless.  But God has work to do through her, and so she has power that she could not otherwise have.  It’s this little maid who knows where healing is to be found for Naaman; it’s her intervention that gets the entire narrative going.

Next we see that the king of Israel already knows himself to be powerless.  The only thing he can imagine is that the Syrians are spoiling for another fight, looking for a pretext for more conflict, in which they are sure to prevail.  But the king of Israel is powerless.

Elisha, the man of God, knows that power lies in his own hands.  But when Naaman arrives with his horses and his chariots - with all the trappings of his power - the man of God will not come out to see him.  He sends a messenger, a powerless servant, to see him instead.

In this story, power is never to be found where it is expected; instead, power is nearly always found where it is not expected.  Power is held in the hands of slaves, and servants, and messengers.  Power is carried in the hands of of the weak and the nameless.

Nothing could make that message clearer to Naaman than to be told by some servant of Elisha’s to go wash seven times in the Jordan River.  Naaman flies into a rage, as only men of power can do.  “Are you kidding me!?” he roars!  “I will not be sent by some lackey to go wash in the River Jordan!  Rivers I know!  Rivers I have!  Rivers run through the streets of Damascus: rivers that make the Jordan look like a creek!  Send the man of God out here!  Have him call upon the Name of the Lord his God!  Have him wave his hand over my awful, flaking, scratchy, itchy, sickening skin, and have him cure this leprosy!  I know what a river is, and I don’t need your river!”

Power, you see, doesn’t always know power when it sees it, especially the kind of mystical power that is often cloaked in weakness.  And again, the story confuses us, by locating power in the voices of the servants of Naaman, who urge their master to calm down and reconsider, and just try to do the simple thing, and wash in the Jordan River, as the servant of the man of God has directed.

And so, Naaman, who is a great man, much in the favor of the king; following the advice of his servant, on a journey that had been launched at the suggestion of a slave girl, with only the instructions of the messenger of the prophet to go on, dips himself seven times in the waters of the Jordan.  And there, in the river, he is healed.

God’s power is not found where we expect it to be found.  And we do not know what a river is for.

Come with me all the way to the New Testament now.  Throughout St. Luke’s Gospel, the evangelist tells us in detail of the movements that Jesus makes through the regions of the Galilee and in Jerusalem.  Now, I don’t for a moment think that St. Luke intended it like this, but if you chose to read it this way, I wonder if you could hear St. Luke describing Jesus’ movements as though he, Luke, is describing a river; and as though that river is Jesus, coursing through a holy land.

The evangelist describes the path of Jesus’ movements as he travels.  And if you drew these movements on a map in light blue ink they might look like a river.  Jesus goes to Nazareth and to Capernaum.  He flows into and out of the lake.  He passes through grain fields, irrigating them.  He flows into the mountains, and then back out again like a stream.  He meanders, during the course of his ministry, into and out of villages, towns, and cities. He is moving, flowing, “bringing the good news of the kingdom of God” with him.

In chapter 9, Luke tells us that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” sending messengers ahead of him.  His course is clear.  It’s not until chapter 13 that Luke describes Jesus’ progress again, telling us only that “he went on his way through towns and villages… journeying toward Jerusalem.”  In chapter 19, the blue line flows through Jericho.  And then, eventually in that chapter Jesus draws near to Jerusalem and weeps: his tears the only suggestion that he is a river flowing into the holy city.

Back in chapter 17, St. Luke tells us that “on the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going [flowing] through the region between Samaria and Galilee,” and then he entered a village where ten lepers approach him.  It’s leprosy that links this story to the story of the healing of Naaman.  And the people who make these decisions must have paired these two passages together for that reason, I am sure.  And it’s that pairing that allows me, in my fanciful reading of the text, to see Jesus as a river.  No prophet has sent the ten lepers to the river, but the lepers have come to him nonetheless, because they have heard of his healing powers.  They come to the river of Jesus’ love, and all they have to do is get close to be washed by the power of his grace.  They are healed in his presence.

I don’t know whether to belabor the point or to let it sit lightly, since it’s kind of a kooky suggestion to say that Jesus is a river.  But just as we hardly know what a river means anymore, so many of us don’t know what Jesus means anymore.  We struggle to see how God accomplishes God’s work in sending Jesus to flow among us; how God gives life through Jesus; how God fulfills God’s promises in Jesus; that the river of Jesus’ love is nearly everything: maybe it is everything.

It would almost be easier if there was just an actual river we had to go wash in.  But it’s not too much more complicated than that, as the ten lepers found out.  Jesus passes by - a river of love and healing grace - and all you have to do is come near and seek him out.  And he will make you well.  You don’t even have to be grateful for his gift.  You certainly don’t have to pay for it; you can have it for nothing.

And along the banks of this river, power - real power that transforms people and the world we live in - God’s power is not to be found where power is usually located (among the powerful), but with the nameless and the weak; with those who have been forced into slavery; with the servants and the messengers who are easily dismissed, disregarded, and ignored.

So, yes, it might be a little kooky to ask you to see Jesus as a river.  But to me, considering the condition of the world we live in, it seems hopeful to remember that a river can be almost everything.  It sounds like good news to me that there is a river of love that we can still go to and find healing and grace.  And that river is not a feature of geography, but a flowing spirit that knows no bounds.  To me, it sounds promising to recall that God gives power where we least expect it, and consistently to those who are otherwise powerless.

And I, for one, am grateful for this river of grace and healing and love.  And I want to encourage you to be grateful too - to offer thanks for all that God does for us, as he sends his Son - a river of love and grace and healing - to flow through us, among us, with us.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.

The people of Israel crossed the river Jordan to make their way into the promised land.  And Naaman washed himself seven times in that same river.

A river flows out from beneath the temple bringing healing wherever it goes.

And in the new Jerusalem, the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

A river is everything, or nearly everything.

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God… and the Name of that river is Jesus!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
9 October 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Schuylkill River

A Mustard Seed

My faith failed me in a decisive way, once. Of course I’ve failed at faith many times, habitually even, like everyone else, but in this case I’m talking about a distinct and early experience of failing to have faith when I was a little girl. Maybe third or fourth grade. I think this must have been the first time I ever thought about what faith was, even. Maybe prior to that time I had been content simply to accept what my teachers and parents told me, or whatever I could make out of the sermons I heard. It had possibly never been necessary for me to consider whether following the rules more or less like all the other children had constituted “faith.”  I mean, I was in Catholic school and I was keeping my grades up. Isn’t that salvation? I seem to have been considered nice enough by others. Was there something extra required of me under this new category of “faith?”  

The crisis I’m talking about, the failure, came in response to my teacher’s discussion of this very passage from Luke’s gospel. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,” I thought I heard her say, “you will be able to make trees jump into the water.”  Now, I’d like to believe that my teacher presented this verse with some theological subtlety, but if she did, I certainly wasn’t listening. No, what I heard was just too tantalizing to be ignored, and if more was said it was too late for me to hear.

“What a revelation!” I thought. I was supposed to have a thing called faith, and it only needed to be the size of a mustard seed, which was apparently quite small. I mean, how big could that be? And if I had just that little thing, I’d be living confidently in a world of active divine intervention. Impossible things would keep happening every day, just as the fairy godmother promised Cinderella. It would be like wishing on a star.

Well, I was accustomed to completing homework assignments successfully, neatly, and on time, so I approached this challenge with some enthusiasm. My faith must be at least as large as a mustard seed, I reasoned, because I never got in trouble in school and that meant I was one of the good children. So I closed my eyes and prayed as devoutly as I could. I thought I had a shot at making it work for me. I mean, in all honesty, I was kind of the teacher’s pet.

So I prayed energetically. And then, it hardly needs to be said, the trees outside remained just as they were. 

I’ve called this event a crisis but in truth it was the quietest little moment of giving up, of adjusting my expectations. I guess Sister Carol went on talking, but I was done with the lesson. I figured I must have misunderstood, and I tucked away that whole puzzle about what faith was, out of sight and out of mind. Either I wasn’t enough or God wasn’t, or the church was saying stuff about God that nobody believed. Each of these possibilities felt unpleasant to explore. Clearly these were questions good children didn’t ask or think much about. 

This is a quiet giving up that most of us share, if I understand us correctly. We mostly live, I think, with the unspoken assumption that either we are not enough or God is not enough. Or that the church says stuff about God that no one believes. And for the most part we don’t want to know exactly where the truth lies. It’s just awkward to ask. Better to keep moving forward looking like we get it. Thus faith itself is walled off from our deepest curiosity and stricken from most of our conversations. The crisis lies precisely in our ongoing, polite, resignation. We improvise in silence and hope what we are doing is ok.

So let me say out loud that I still don’t know exactly what God will or won’t do when I pray, or when you do. And I’m still not sure what the full power of faith is, or exactly how faith comes into our hearts. I’m ready now to accept that when Jesus speaks of trees jumping into the sea he is using almost apocalyptic language, and apocalyptic language was something his original hearers understood much better than we do. Like so many vivid things scripture says about the day of the Lord, these alarming phenomena in the physical world are signs of God’s radical will to transform us.

Of course, to know those things about the tradition of apocalyptic language is still not to know for sure what the full power of faith is, or what God will or won’t do among us, and I’m convinced that we should be more curious than we are about that, and more willing to talk about God’s actions among us. But measuring our faith for the purpose of being teachers’ pets? That I’m hoping to let go of.

Faith is surely an act of God, not an act of self-improvement on our part. It’s not at all clear how we can “get” for ourselves more of something that is a pure gift. It’s not at all clear that faith—or let’s call it trust--can grow if our chief motivation is anxiety about how much of it we may or may not be entitled to possess. Just possibly, the thing we need to do about having trust in God is to trust God to work that out in us.

That is why I’m grateful this morning for the relatively tough language Jesus uses with the apostles when they ask for more faith. He is quite discouraging. The desire to have more faith ought to be something he wants to explore but honestly he is pretty dismissive here.

It’s bad enough that he tells them the thing about the mustard seed and the trees. That must have been hard on them. But then he goes on to tell the meanest parable ever. “Think of yourselves as slaves,” he begins, not too promisingly, “and do what you are supposed to do. And don’t stand around waiting to be thanked.”

As a recovering teacher’s pet, I can see that there is very little hope for any of us to look good or emerge feeling successful from this encounter with Jesus. This is bad news for straight-A students. 

But look, there are better things than merit badges and brownie points in store for us in the kingdom of God. In just a few verses Jesus has done away with success and failure. He has ruled out competition and self-satisfaction. He has liberated us from judging our relationship in external terms. 

Yes, we’ve had to surrender the idea that we can think of ourselves as the best servants ever, but what we’ve lost is only about as important as the ability to make trees jump into the sea. There are no teacher’s pets in God’s kingdom, and no wonder-working, tree-drenching magicians. By giving those ideas up we open a space—God opens a space within us—that is filled by God’s freedom within us. Think about Jesus’s own relationship to looking good or impressing some external authority. He went right to the heart of that problem for us. He went ahead and embraced human failure. He let the authorities crucify him, to save us. That’s a God we can actually trust.

And that kind of giving up—not the quiet resignation, but the active embrace of the gap between our understanding and God’s action in the world—that’s the gift we need. We need to become able to rejoice that God and God’s ways are utterly beyond our comprehension. That’s freedom. That’s deep love. 

So let’s rejoice together. I don’t have enough faith, and neither do you. I don’t possess even an amount that’s as big as a mustard seed. I suspect that when I feel as though I do have faith, I’ve lost the deepest part of it already. Because surely, the deepest part of faith is the freedom to let go of what we think of ourselves and others so we can go where God calls us, not where anxiety pushes us. “Not according to our works,” as we hear in this morning’s epistle, “but according to his own purpose and grace.”  Surely continuing to judge myself, God, and the church as though I were a goody-two-shoes in third grade is an existential mistake. 

So look around at us. Look at who we are. We’re nothing special. By God’s grace we are probably enough. By God’s grace we are certainly free.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
October 2, 2022
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia