Christ-bearers

Joyful as this feast day may be, I would be remiss, I think, not to mention the sense of loss that hovers over this celebration.  The preacher who was originally scheduled for this morning wa s the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and a friend to this parish and this diocese, the Most Reverend Frank Griswold.  As many of you know, Bishop Griswold died on March 5.  I want to take a moment to remember him today, not because I knew him well, but because he was truly an important figure for the church, for our church, the Episcopal Church, for our recent history and our particular gifts and our struggles and our witness.  

We aren’t perfect, and our witness isn’t perfect.  We don’t bear Christ in the world with the kind of absolute purity that Mary did.  But if this feast day means anything for us, it means that we are like Mary in some measure.  As the church, we are the Christ-bearers.  The Angel Gabriel is speaking to us as he speaks to her, and our willingness to body forth Jesus is rooted in and patterned after hers.  I’d go further to say that if Jesus isn’t here with us now, present in the church and living in our lives, then this whole story about Mary and the angel is just a pretty picture we conjure up for ourselves.  The church is grounded in the belief that Jesus is still here, and the bodies that are filled with the Holy Spirit and the presence of Christ are our bodies.

So let’s think about Bishop Griswold for a moment this morning, and about Mary, and about ourselves, and about the institutional church.  Let’s think about our shared calling as bearers of Christ in this complex, troubled world.  

In addition to serving as a parish priest in this diocese for many years, Bishop Griswold went on to become Bishop of Chicago and then Presiding Bishop, a role in which he served from 1996 to 2005.  After 2005 he could be found lifting up innumerable ministries throughout the church in a more informal way.  He came here several times, once conducting a wonderful quiet day for the staff.  He was known both for his institutional commitment and leadership, and for his quiet, learned, deep spirituality.  

Bishop Griswold authored several books.  One of them is a lovely collection of prayers and devotions, called Praying Our Days.  In the introduction to that book, he writes about the moment in which he was confirmed as an Episcopalian, and I want to read that passage to you now because I think it helps us think about this feast day, as well as about Bishop Griswold himself.  Here’s what he writes about being confirmed as a teenager:

I must admit I was in a state of uncertainty about what was happening, or what confirmation might ultimately mean. It never occurred to me as I knelt before Bishop Hall that such a seemingly innocent ritual act would become an unexpected doorway through which I would pass to encounters with other bishops as they laid their hands upon me, ordaining me as a deacon, a priest, and a bishop. Now it is I who have found myself laying my hands on the heads of those equally unsuspecting, wondering what the Holy Spirit might have in store for them in the days ahead. Over the years I have learned that what may appear to be a prescribed ritual moment can lead far beyond itself. Hands are laid upon your head, and you find yourself in an open space of continual growth and discovery you never imagined or anticipated.

In this description of a life lived in the church, in ritual community, Bishop Griswold gives us a vivid picture of the work of the Holy Spirit, drawing us to one another, even if only for a moment’s ritual action, for the laying on of hands at confirmation.   He names for us the experience, the feeling, of being present in the world to connect with one another and to be part of the action of God in another’s life.  

There is no angel named here, but the sense of the Holy Spirit at work is palpable.  It’s both personal and institutional.  Bishop Griswold is telling us how it feels, sometimes, to live a life that serves the church, that commits to its structures and its people.  And he is also, crucially, feeling the Spirit at work, and naming the presence of the Spirit.  Over time, in ritual and prayer and connection and wonder, his soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

A few years before he wrote these words, Bishop Griswold had served as the chief consecrator of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.  He had good reason to reflect on the action of God in the laying on of hands, the transmission and deepening and sharing of the Spirit that reaches out through the years and across our most painful divisions.  His own hands were vehicles for one of the most consequential acts in the history of our denomination.  I’d go so far as to say that that specific laying on of hands, the consecration of Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop, is an active reason that our own community can flourish in the present moment.  We aren’t only about being gay, not at all, and we don’t all believe the same things about gender and sexuality.  But I think it’s just true to say that our bearing forth of Christ in the world is immensely enriched by the quality of honesty and trust and openness that that specific consecration bodies forth.  Controversy notwithstanding.

One person’s yes to God, one person’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit, one person’s wonder and prayer, creates an “open space of continual growth and discovery” in which other lives will be filled with the presence of Jesus.  Most of us will not become bishops, but we are all, whether we know it or not, living in that open space that Bishop Griswold describes.  

We are doing the ongoing work of Mary, the ongoing work of the Church, the ongoing work of Jesus in the redemption of the world.  When you serve at the altar or at coffee hour or at the Saturday Soup Bowl, when you come here and join your prayers with ours, when you look to the Church for hope, when you honor the witness of the Gospel in this place by living out your vocation here, you are joined with Mary in bodying forth the savior.  

We all know how hard that is.  We all know what forces are arrayed within us and against us.  If you look around you will notice that this is not a triumphant period in the history of the Church.  I don’t think that much of Mary’s life can have felt triumphant or easy, either.  She was perplexed when the angel spoke. But here we are all these centuries later, living in the open space that she entered and helped to make when she said yes to an angel as a teenaged girl.

I’d like to close this morning, if you’ll indulge me, with one more passage from Bishop Griswold’s little book of devotions.  He closes the book with this passage from the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  Knowing that these words meant a lot to Bishop Griswold, I offer them as he did, in hopes that they will help all of us to welcome the Holy Spirit like Mary did:

Above all, [he quotes Chardin] trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally in everything impatient to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new […]

And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.

Only God can say what this new Spirit forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Mary was perplexed when the angel spoke.  But nothing will be impossible with God.  “Here am I,” she said, “the servant of the Lord.”  And here are we.  Let it be with us according to God’s word. 

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
March 25, 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Jesus Spat

A priest I knew long ago used to say that one of the problems in the church is that we sometimes try to answer questions that no one is asking.  What he meant was that we could create conflict or confusion where there need be no conflict or confusion if we’d have left well enough alone.  The Gospel passage assigned for today - all 41 verses of it - seems to provide just such an opportunity for the church.  It begins with a question that absolutely no one I know is asking: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

No one I know thinks that sin could be the cause of a child born without sight.  And certainly, no one I know would seriously ask a question about whether it was the child or the parents who sinned.  This question - to me, and I am assuming to you - is ludicrous, even insulting.  And yet the church asks us to listen to a 41-verse examination of it this morning.  Indeed, here at Saint Mark’s we ask you to listen to us sing about it for 41 verses!

Most people I know are not even seriously interested in the question of sin - not in their lives or the lives of others.  So even if you reduce the question to its most minimalist expression - Who sinned? - you end up with a question that probably no one is asking.  So, what is the point of asking these questions at all - said or sung?  Would we be better off skipping these 41 verses and moving on to the next chapter in which Jesus tells he is the good shepherd?  Maybe; maybe not.  There’s a lot going on in this story that might yield some insight.  But for today, I want to suggest only one detail of which we could take note.  I want us to notice that Jesus spat.

“He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam.’”  Jesus spat.  This is the only time that St. John tells us that Jesus spat.  Our own patron, Saint Mark the Evangelist, gives two accounts of Jesus using spit in healing miracles.  In the eight chapter of Mark’s gospel we hear of Jesus also using his saliva to give sight to a blind man.  And in the seventh chapter of Mark we are told of the time Jesus spat and touched the tongue of a man who could neither speak nor hear in order to restore both senses to him.

For better or worse, I think we have to take the scriptures on their own terms here, and accept the assumption that addressing these disabilities is a matter of healing, and that healing is good for both the body and the soul.  But here in John’s gospel, Jesus most certainly is at pains to make sure that no one believes that the man’s blindness is the result of anyone’s sin.  As far as Jesus is concerned, the man’s blindness provides the opportunity “that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  And then, Jesus spat.

It seems to me that there are three possibilities as to why Jesus spat.

The first possibility is that it is an example of misdirection.  Misdirection is a technique of deception that magicians use to distract our attention from one thing, toward something else so that we won’t notice the actual mechanism by which the trick is performed.  I don’t think there’s a trick to this miracle, so I don’t think that Jesus spat as a kind of misdirection.

The second reason that Jesus may have spat is that his saliva actually contains magical or mystical healing powers.  There is a long pseudo-scientific tradition of suggesting that saliva contains actual chemical composition with healing properties, but I am ruling this possibility out.  And I hope it will not surprise you to discover that I do not think that Jesus’ saliva contained magical, mystical potential.

The last possible reason that Jesus spat may be this: that he was inclined to employ noticeable symbolic gestures in order to emphasize the power of God at work in him, and the implications of that power for those who receive it.

When Jesus performed acts of healing, we’re told that he “laid hands on” them.

When he drove the money-changers out of the temple, he made a whip of cords, perhaps as much as a symbol as an actual device to accomplish their removal.

When Jesus blessed children, he took them in his arms, laid hands on them, and blessed them.

When he wanted to demonstrate his humility and his love for his disciples, he did not merely tell them how he felt, he wrapped a towel around his waist, and he took a basin and water, and he washed their feet.

When he entered into Jerusalem to embark on the way of the Cross, he gave specific instructions about how to find the precise donkey on which he would, in lowly pomp, ride into the city.

Even after his resurrection, when he gave the apostles the gift of the Holy Spirit, he didn’t just tell them about it, or hand them a certificate; he breathed on them: a powerful symbolic gesture to underscore the power of God at work in him, with immense implications for those who receive it.

And, of course, pre-eminently, on the night before he died, gathered at the table with his disciples, he did not merely encourage them to remember him after he was gone.  But in a sublime moment of mystery and love, he gave them a rich but simple symbolic vocabulary - with bread and wine - by which his memory would ever thereafter make his Presence among them, and us, real every time we, too, follow his instructions to “do this” in remembrance of him.

This is what Jesus does.  He touches; he fashions; he blesses; he arranges; he washes; he breathes; he spits; and he takes, blesses, breaks, and shares.  He enacts a symbolic vocabulary that says more than he can say with words, since his symbolic actions transcend language, and transmit more than language is able to say.  In the church we call this symbolic language “sacramental,” by which we mean that Jesus uses outward and visible signs to indicate the reality of inward and invisible gifts of grace from God.

And the symbolic, sacramental language that Jesus uses is meant to answer real questions that people are actually asking.  You can see that Jesus is uninterested in the question of “who sinned.”  By which I do not mean to suggest that Jesus is uninterested in sin.  He knows that sin is a powerful force that obstructs God’s will in the world.  But I suppose that he also knows that there are times and places that, despite the fascination and preoccupation of religious leaders, not too many people would be asking about sin.

And Jesus has answers to questions that people are asking, like: what will we do about all the darkness in this world?  That’s a question that I know a lot of people are asking these days.  What will we do about all the darkness in this world?  Jesus has an answer to this question.  “I am the light of the world,” he says.  But why should anyone believe him?

So he spat and made mud with his saliva and the dirt, and he spread the mud on the eyes of a man born blind, and told him to go wash, and the man, who once was blind, could now see.  It’s amazing how much light a little mud can bring!

Anyone could have said, “I am the light of the world.”  But with his spit and the mud, Jesus shows that when he says it, the dark places of our lives become filled with light!  And all he has to do is spit!  Such is his power, such is his reservoir of grace.  All he has to do is touch.  All he has to do is bless the children.  All he has to do is wash feet.  All he has to do is take, bless, break, and share bread.  All he has to do is spit!

What will we do about all the darkness in this world?  This question keeps us up at night sometimes, doesn’t it?  And Jesus has an answer to it: “I am the light of the world,” he says, “I am the light of the world.”

Jesus is the light of a world whose vision is darkened by trenches and tanks, by drones and mines, by bloodshed and violence; a world darkened by the systematic destruction of the beauty and the health, and the resources of this earth; a world darkened by religious extremism that dresses up like politics; a world darkened by churches who refuse to acknowledge our own failures and sinfulness;  a world darkened by greediness in those who care nothing for the misery and misfortune of others as long as they can get what they want; a world darkened by an epidemic of addiction; by ingrained racism; by the daily violence of gunfire.  Sin and the wages of sin are all over the place.  If you want to talk about sin, we have things to talk about besides the question of who sinned, this blind man or his parents, that he was born blind.

And Jesus knows this.  He is not concerned the with the questions that don’t concern you or me either.  He is not interested in casting blame and shame by exploring the question of “Who sinned?”  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - we already know the answer to this question.

Jesus is interested in shedding light on the darkest places of this world, and in the darkest corners of your soul and mine.  He is the light of the world!  And with nothing but his spit and a little dirt he can change everything.  Indeed, he has changed everything by the power of his light, and he will keep on shining.  Just ask the man born blind.

And when you are feeling stuck in your own darkness, just turn to Jesus, and remember that all he has to do is spit!  And it’s amazing how much light a little mud can bring!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
19 March 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Serpent's Lie

One of the things we have to remember is how very easy it is to misread (or mis-hear) the scriptures - even the scriptures we think we know well.  Take the story of our first disobedience, the Fall of Man, the Original Sin.  When we hear this story we tend to hear it through the ears of Adam and Eve, which is natural enough, I suppose.  What I mean is this, that when we hear the serpent slithering over toward our magnificently and unashamedly nude first ancestors, we are nearly as naive as they were.  And when we hear the serpent engage Eve in conversation, like her, we tend to take him at face value.

“Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” the serpent provoked.

Eve answered him honestly that they were allowed to eat the fruit from any tree in the garden except the one in the middle of the garden.  And for good measure, God had told them not even to the touch the tree.  He probably should have told them not even to look at it.

Like any good lawyer, the serpent was not going to ask a question he did not already know the answer to.  He was more crafty than any other wild animal, after all.  And he had an answer at the ready.  “You will not die,” the serpent said, “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”

Now, stop right there!  Because chances are, that, like Eve, you take the snake at face value, you take him at his word, as if what he is saying is true.  And if you remember the text even more exactly, you might feel justified in doing so.  For, later in the narrative, we do indeed hear God say, “See, the man [by which I take God to mean “the man and the woman”]… “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”  So, you might argue that the serpent was telling the truth.  And I think that many people read this story as though the serpent was, in fact, telling the truth.  But in case you hadn’t noticed, believing what the serpent says is a mistake. Because the serpent was deceiving Adam and Eve, and it would be a serious mistake to overlook his deception.

How do I know that the serpent was deceiving Adam and Eve?  Because I have read the text, and I have noticed what actually happened, as opposed to what the serpent said would happen.  The crucial thing to notice is what happened when Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, which, of course, is only a figure of speech.

The serpent said to Eve, “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.”  Of course, the prospect of becoming like God is supposed to be greatly alluring to Adam and Eve, but even this statement is deeply misleading, as we shall see.  And despite the testimony already offered here, the serpent is not telling them the truth - at least he is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Crafty as he was, the serpent must have supposed that this was his only chance to get the upper hand in his relationship with the man and the woman, who were themselves a whole different order of creation from him - for he was only a wild animal.  “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,” he said, “knowing good from evil.”  But that is not precisely what happened.

Precisely what happened is this: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

They knew that they were naked.  Only a few verses ago we were told that “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”  But the knowledge of good and evil brought with it the possibility of shame.  The proof of their shame was in their reaction to the knowledge of their nakedness: “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”  The serpent never told them about this possibility, did he?  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would have included the information that when you eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, your eyes will be opened, and with the knowledge of good and evil will come also the possibility of shame.

I have to assume that the serpent himself had already come to this very realization.  I don’t suppose that he, or any of the wild animals, was given an injunction against eating the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.  For most of them it would not have mattered, they were not clever enough to make anything of the knowledge.  But I rather suspect, that the crafty serpent had slithered up the tree and swallowed a bright, red apple whole, and then got a look at his reflection in a puddle: with his stubby little legs, his beady eyes, and his cold and mirthless flesh, his whole body contorted to the shape of the apple until it was digested… and he must have been ashamed of himself… or at least as close to ashamed as a serpent can be.  Crafty as he was, the serpent must have then looked at Adam and Eve, gorgeous as they were - made, as they were, in the image and likeness of God - and he must have felt ashamed of himself.

He might have gone off to chat with an iguana basking in the sun, or a chameleon flashing its colors, or a Komodo dragon looking fierce, and gotten a little encouragement from them, a boost of self-esteem.  Instead, I suppose he stared with envy at the stunningly naked man and the beautifully naked woman -  so curvy, and soft, and fuzzy in the right places, and warm, and tender, and appropriately vulnerable; vulnerable enough to need each other - and, oh, how jealous that serpent must have been!

Was it his jealousy that drove him to undertake his plan of deception?  I can only surmise.  But deceive he did.  Clever as he was, the serpent made his counsel to Adam and Eve sound an awful lot like the truth.  That’s the way really good liars lie: by making it sound like it could be true.  And he took advantage of the realization that Adam and Eve seemed to have more or less forgotten that they had already been made in the image and likeness of God: they were already like God!  They even had access to the tree of life!

There was only one thing that God wished to keep them from in the garden, one attitude that God knew would despoil the splendor of his creation: the knowledge of good and evil that would also bring with it the ready possibility of shame.  God had tried to keep them away from this possibility; he warned them against getting too close to the fruit whose seeds would plant the seeds of shame inside of them.  And he did so because God already knew that they had nothing to be ashamed of.  But his love for his creatures, and their freedom allowed for the possibility of their transgression and whatever consequences might come from it.

If you accept the proposition that I have made elsewhere (along with Albert Einstein) that the 3-dimensional perception of the time-space continuum is a very limited perception of reality, and that actually everything is always happening everywhere, that time can wrinkle up on itself, and space is more complicated than we know, then you can begin to imagine that the story of the serpent’s encounter with Adam and Eve is not really a story meant to describe something that happened once, long ago in the garden of Eden.

If everything is always happening everywhere, then the serpent is not so far from us now, and the tree in the middle of the garden is not so far from us, either.  If everything is always happening everywhere, you could be Adam, you could be Eve.  And if everything is always happening everywhere, the serpent is trying to deceive you and me, even now.  And the trick he has up his short little sleeve is that he knows how to make us ashamed of ourselves.  He tempts us, and tells us that, oh, there’s no danger to us, it’s perfectly safe, you do as you wish; God is just trying to keep you in your box.

You would think that if this is the case, if the serpent is near, then the thing to do is to simply avoid the forbidden fruit.  But in actual fact, we don’t even know if it was an apple tree or a pomegranate, or something else altogether.  And one of the ways to misread this story is to think that the key learning is to be found in knowing where the tree is found on which there grows forbidden fruit, and to avoid that tree; don’t touch it; don’t even look at it!  And I am sure that there are times and circumstances when it is true, that certain fruit should be avoided.

But the deepest truth of the story is not to be found in correctly identifying the tree and its fruit, which is meant to be obvious to us: you’ll know it when you see it.  The deepest truth of the story is that God did not make us to be ashamed of ourselves!  The truth of the story is that we are very likely to have forgotten that we are already made in God’s image and likeness.

The truth of the story is that there is a serpent out there in the world who is more crafty than any other creature, and that he is lying to you and to me, although he’s making it sound very much like the truth.  And the truth of the story is that the lies the serpent tells usually sound something like this: “You are not good enough.  You are not smart enough.  You are not pretty enough.”

These days, the serpent’s lie has become even more subtle, often sounding like this: “You are not white enough.  You are not straight enough.  You do not conform to your assigned gender enough.”

Just like the old days, the serpent relies on the likelihood that many of us have forgotten that we are already made in the image and likeness of God.  This likelihood has two tragic consequences.  First, as is the case for so many, failing to recognize the divine image in each and every one of us, we forget who God is, and as a result we can neither feel nor know his love, because we have ceased looking for it in our own lives, our own selves.  Second it means we are prone to listen to the voice of the deceiver who is probably projecting his own shame on us, and yet, we fail to see that it is the serpent who is responsible when we discover that we are ashamed of ourselves.  And this is a pernicious type of shame that is not the response to a real failing, it is the result of a deception.

And the reason that it’s so important not to misread or mis-hear this story, is because there are people out there who want you to believe that God wants you to be ashamed of yourself.  Yes, there are people who, having misread the story themselves, or, having become preoccupied with identifying forbidden fruit, maybe even projecting their own shame onto you and me; there are these people who want you to believe that God wants you to be ashamed of yourself - especially if you are not white enough, or straight enough, or gender conforming enough.

But the truth of this story has never been to teach us that we have reason to be ashamed of ourselves!  The truth of the story of the Fall is that we never had any good reason to be ashamed of ourselves; we never had any reason to be embarrassed about being naked; we never had any reason to be unhappy with who we are… until we listened to a lie!  The truth of this story has always been to show us that God made us with nothing to be ashamed of - naked, and beautiful, and unashamed.  Shame came to us when we believed a lie.  And we believed the lie because we had already begun to forget that we are already like God in so many ways; we already bear God’s image and God’s likeness.  We have been filled with God’s breath, and we are meant to live in God’s love.

Everything is always happening everywhere, and there are serpents repeating that old lie to us over and over, even today, trying to make us forget that we are made in God’s likeness, with the suggestion that God is keeping something from us.  Jesus heard the same old thing himself in the wilderness, and he could tell you that the serpent has not given up; he knows; he’s dealt with him face to face.

There are serpents who want to shame you when you open your eyes and look at yourself and see yourself naked, when you see yourself for who you are, who God made you to be.  The serpents tell you that God was not telling you the truth, and that he’s just trying to prevent you from reaching your own god-like potential.

But this is a lie!  God has always been trying to keep you from having any reason to be ashamed of yourself.  God made you naked and beautiful, in his own image and likeness - and there is nothing and no one else like you in the world!  God made you unashamed and beautiful in your nakedness, and God has always wanted to keep you that way.  And anyone who tells you differently is lying to you!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
26 February 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Temptation of Eve by William Blake