A.I. Easter

The photo of Pope Francis wearing a big, white, puffy coat from haute couture designer Balenciaga has been circulating for a couple of weeks now.  I suspect more people will have seen the photo - which makes him look more Michelin Man than monsignor - than will hear his Easter sermon.  In the photo, there is a pectoral cross hanging around his neck.  But it’s the wedding band on his left hand that gives the photo away as a deep fake, generated by Artificial Intelligence.  It has to be said, the pope can carry off high fashion, he looks terrific in Balenciaga.  Apparently the pope is an extremely popular subject for deep fake photos.  I’ve now see one that shows him on a motorcyle, in a fighter jet, drinking a pint of beer at a pub, and wearing a black leather biker jacket as he addresses a crowd - all fakes.

A headline in yesterday’s Times asks this question, “Can We No Longer Believe Anything We See?”  The story goes on to discuss the ease with which deep fake photos can be made of almost anything - from AI-generated photos of the moon-landing being staged, to a beach party, to action shots of Premier League soccer, and so much more.

But the suspicion that you can’t believe your own eyes lurks behind Easter too.  It’s probably a lot easier to believe that the resurrection was a fake than it is to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  The “guard” that we heard mentioned in the Gospel today was placed there by Pontius Pilate, who was told by the chief priests et al that Jesus’ disciples would try to fake his resurrection, and that they “may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’”  Of course, by next Sunday we’ll be remembering that Jesus’ own disciple, Thomas, had to be convinced that Jesus wasn’t somehow a fake.  And maybe Thomas wasn’t the only one.  Establishing the truth of the resurrection  - the actual factuality of it, that Jesus of Nazareth really died and that he really, truly rose from the grave, and that the whole thing isn’t a fake - this was a serious concern on that first Easter morning, and it has been ever since.

Artificial Intelligence can do more than produce deep fake photos of the pope.  You can ask the AI-driven chatbot ChatGPT to write an Easter sermon for you.  I did.  And you may never know whether or not what I am saying to you now are my own words, or whether they might have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.  Although the first give-away that these words are my own is that I did not begin this sermon by addressing you all as “My dear friends,” as was the case for nearly every version of an Easter sermon I asked ChatGPT to write for me.

I asked Chat GPT to write sermons for me that employed the central theme or illustrations that I have used on Easter’s past.  And do you know, the chatbot was happy to do so.  I asked for “a short homily on the resurrection using reverse logistics as an illustration.”  The sermon began like this:

“Reverse logistics is the process of moving goods from their final destination back to their point of origin. It is often used in the world of business to manage returns or defective products. However we can also apply this oncept to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  I’ll say you can!  And I did last year!  I mean, I am flattered to assume that ChatGPT has been reading my stuff on the internet!

I asked the chatbot to write a six-word homily on Matthew 28:1-10, and this is what I got: “Christ is risen!  Rejoice and believe!”  Not bad at all!

When I just asked ChatGPT to “write an Easter sermon,” it gave me a text that is a lot shorter than what you’re getting now, and ended with a perfectly lovely prayer.

When I asked ChatGPT why Jesus rose from the dead, I was give a four-point answer that asserted that the resurrection “validated Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God and the Messiah,” “gave people the hope of eternal life with God and the promise of resurrection for all believers,” “defeated sin and death,” and “paved the way for the Holy Spirit to come into the world and empower believers to carry on His mission.”

I asked ChatGPT if the message of Easter is good news for all people.  And do you know, the chatbot did not hesitate to say, “Yes”.  And it went on to tell me why!  “The message of Easter tells us that no matter how broken or lost we may feel, there is always hope for a new beginning. It tells us that even in the midst of suffering and pain, there is a light that shines in the darkness. It tells us that God's love is unconditional, and that through faith in Jesus, we can be forgiven, reconciled with God, and have eternal life.”  Very soon, I may be out of a job.

I was hoping that Artificial Intelligence would  provide me with the ridiculous and the ludicrous, so that I could both give you a good laugh this Easter morning, and also contrast the inadequacy of AI with my witty and insightful wisdom.  As I say, I may soon be out of work.

I asked ChatGPT to write a short homily on Matthew 28:1-10 that would be suitable for children  “Hello children!” it began. “Today, I want to tell you a story about a very special person named Jesus.”  It went on to give a perfectly concise and simple account of the Gospel reading, taking a lot less time than I usually do at the Family Mass.  And this response from ChatGPT really was my favorite, because it included this short paragraph:

“This story reminds us that even when things seem sad or scary, there is always hope. Jesus shows us that even death can't keep us down, and that we can have new life in Him.”  How relentlessly hopeful ChatGPT is: even death can’t keep us down!  My, oh my, what faith!

When I asked ChatGPT if Jesus really rose from the dead, I was told that this is “a matter of personal faith and belief,” which is true, as far as it goes.  But this answer began to suggest to me certain limitations of having ChatGPT write your sermons for you.  Because, plausible though all that sermon material may be, it lacks the courage of its own conviction.

I asked ChatGPT if the story of the resurrection of Jesus us true.  This is what it told me:

“As an AI language model, I cannot determine whether the story of Jesus’ resurrection is true or not.  The question of the authenticity of the resurrection is a matter of personal faith and interpretation of religious texts.”  This response sounds right on its own terms, but of course it’s also a little disturbing.  If you can’t attest to the truth of the resurrection, how can you write such reasonable proclamations of it?  How can you tell us that we could apply the concept of reverse logistics to the resurrection of Jesus Christ?  How can you tell us that even death can’t keep us down, if you don’t really believe it?  And if Artificial Intelligence can produce sermons that are superior to some I’ve heard preached by real clergy, (and it can!) how can we know what’s real and what’s fake?

That, of course, is the question that everyone must have been asking on the first Easter morning.  And if they wondered then, who could be blamed for wondering now?  St. Matthew seems to address this question, in a way, in the telling of the story.  For he includes a detail in his account that I suspect is meant to address this very question.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary have visited the tomb; they have been told by the angel to “go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’”

Matthew tells us that the women departed quickly, full of both “fear and great joy.”  Then, “suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”  The reason, I suspect, that the women took hold of his feet, and that Matthew reports this detail to us, is to prove that it’s really Jesus, and not just a ghost, not just an apparition, not just a deep fake of some kind, but the actual, real person of Jesus, who not only has a body, but a body that can actually be recognized as Jesus.

Each of the gospels makes the effort to proclaim in its own way that the risen Christ is a real person, who has a body, and who can be actually be recognized as Jesus, although it may take some time.  Originally, the Gospel of Mark lacked such convincing details, and the longer ending of Mark may have been added to in order to provide just such a proof.  The Gospel of Luke tells the story of the resurrected Jesus walking with disciples who do not realize who he is on the road to Emmaus, but eventually Jesus reveals himself to them.   And the Gospel of John tells of the resurrection appearance of Jesus on the beach during which he cooks fish for breakfast for his disciples on a fire and eats with them, as if to prove that even in his resurrected state he’s got a body and he needs to eat.  Each of the gospels addresses, in its own way, the question of whether the resurrection might be a scam, a trick, a fantasy, or a fake.

I asked ChatGPT to write a sentence about why Easter is not fake.  It was unconvincing.

I asked ChatGPT to write a one sentence conclusion to an Easter sermon.  What it gave me wasn’t too bad: “Let us celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and may his love and grace fill our hearts with hope and joy, not just on this day, but every day of our lives.”

But I think we can do better than that.  We live in an age when we can almost longer believe anything we see.  It is an age of fakery, to be frank, and you will find fakery everywhere - it didn’t start with pictures of the pope made by artificial intelligence.  In such an age, our faith depends in part on those women who left the tomb full of both fear and great joy, who took hold of Jesus’ feet and knew him for who he was: resurrected and real.  I believe those women, and I believe the evangelist who tells us about them.  More to the point I have the courage of my convictions, and on the basis of the testimony of those women, I am willing to end my Easter sermon this way:

Hello children!  Today, I want to tell you a story about a very special person named Jesus… who lived a long time ago.  He was very kind and loving, and he helped many people.  But one day… Jesus died on a cross and was buried in a tomb.  But then something very amazing happened… some of Jesus’ friends went to visit the tomb, but when they got there, they found the tomb empty!… An angel appeared to the friends and told them that Jesus wasn’t there anymore! … He was a live again!  The friends were so happy to hear this news.  This story reminds us that even when things seem sad or scary, there is always hope.  Jesus shows us that even death can’t keep us down, and that we can have new life in him.

Or, let me put it another way, using just six words:

“Christ is risen!  Rejoice and believe!”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Easter Day 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Run

In a brief ten-verse passage from Matthew’s Gospel, we hear the word “fear” four times.  The angel tells the women at the tomb not to be afraid, but to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen.  The women run off as instructed, “with fear and great joy.”  As they run, they meet Jesus who tells them again not to be afraid, and tells them again to go to the disciples.  The fear doesn’t stop them from going where they are told, or from meeting Jesus.  So there is a kind of fear, it seems, that is compatible with following the risen Lord and going where he sends you. We know this not only because Matthew tells us that the women are both joyful and afraid, but because Jesus tells them not to fear after the angel has already told them not to fear.  Nobody says it twice if they think once will do.  Yes, Jesus is eager for them to let go of the fear but he doesn’t ask them to pull themselves together entirely before they start doing the work. 

Maybe Jesus and the angel both know that fear of the resurrection is part of what happens when you witness the resurrection.  Fear of Jesus is part of what happens when you know Jesus.  The fear comes to the surface, maybe, because you are moving down the road, doing what he tells you.  Your feet may have started moving toward Galilee, but the rest of you still needs to catch up.

Because you have enough grace to know that something real is happening, and it’s not like anything else that happens.  Because of this encounter with the heavenly messenger and the risen Lord, your life has changed and you have become an evangelist and it’s your job—you and your friend Mary—to preach to the disciples and to herd that obstreperous group all the way to Galilee, where Jesus has promised to be present.  That’s a tall order.  So yes, the two women run with fear and great joy, intermingled.  

But the women aren’t the only ones who are afraid here.  We’ve heard that they have left some guards back at the tomb.  The guards are there because of the fear that the followers of Jesus, who couldn’t possibly be sincere followers, might come to steal his body and proclaim that he is risen.  In Matthew 27:65 Pilate has told the authorities to “go make the tomb as secure as [they] know how.”  So the guards are there at the tomb, too, not to honor Jesus but to keep him in the tomb.  Trying to keep the tomb as sealed as possible, trying to make death as final as can be, the guards have a notably different experience than the women do.  Same place, same time, very different experience. 

These guards are overcome with fear not because they see Jesus directly but because of the messenger who looks like lightning, and because of the earthquake, and because the stone has been rolled away.  The resurrection is traumatic for them.  They are shaken, but somehow also frozen “like dead men,” fixated on the secondary effects of the resurrection because they can’t grasp it directly.  Though they are present just like the women, and should I think be able to hear the angel speak, they cannot hear or respond to the angel’s words of life.  Some of the guards will, in fact, turn away from the empty tomb in their numbness and go collude with the authorities to tell the lie that Jesus’s body has been stolen.  In Matthew 28: 11-15 these “dead men” who leave the tomb without meeting the risen Lord will be paid a large sum of money to hide the truth of our salvation.  They were sent, after all, to be guards, to guard against life itself.  And when their whole frame of reference is shaken, when the tomb opens right up in front of them, they are just dead to the experience.  They were there the whole time, but having the resurrection happen right in front of them is not enough to change them.

So there are two wildly different responses to the resurrection in Matthew’s account. 

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not easy to give something so coherent as a “response” to something as overwhelming as the mystery we celebrate tonight.  That’s why this Easter Vigil is so far-reaching in its ritual.  We don’t just come here to think about the fact that he is risen, or just to have feelings about it.  We come to experience a rebirth of everything, and that means awakening what may long have seemed dead.  That requires a process.  Fire becomes the light of Christ.  Smoke becomes incense.  Water becomes the water of baptism.  Scripture turns into prophecy.  Bread and wine, of course, become the risen Lord himself, and we become the Body of Christ.  We register that it’s all new tonight, was all new at the resurrection. 

But it doesn’t happen for us, normally, in a moment.  That’s why we do this every year.  Because part of us is running with joy and fear to meet the Lord, eager to see him, and part of us is probably trying to keep that tomb as closed up as possible.  One part of our response to God is lively and open and willing, and one part is like a dead man.  Real faith just is that complicated.  Real faith takes what it takes, and we are partly here tonight to do what it takes to acknowledge the ongoing unfolding of new life in us.

But that’s hard to do, so let’s get some tips from Matthew.

First: the angel who appears before the women at sunrise on the first day of the week has, I think, a very helpful attitude.  He appears from heaven, and rolls back the stone as the earth quakes.  His appearance is like lightning.  The guards tremble and freeze.  And the angel sits down.  He doesn’t only tell the women not to be afraid.  He invites them to enter the tomb and take a look at where Jesus had lain.  If you want to try to grasp something about where the risen Lord is this year in your life, take a look at where he used to be, where you can’t find him anymore.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  Pull up a seat.  It’s going to take a while to come to terms with the action of the living God in your life.  This isn’t a pleasant ritual or a party to welcome spring.  We are looking at an empty tomb.  This is transformation, and it takes everything in us.

Another tip from Matthew: though it’s important to sit down and to look, it’s also important to get moving when you can. Because you need to get moved away from the place where you are comfortable.  In Matthew’s Gospel, it’s very important to travel to Galilee.  That’s where Jesus is going to meet the disciples.  He’s not to be found in Jerusalem, where the Temple is, where the authorities are, where God has been found throughout Israel’s history.  Jerusalem is the place the people have longed for when they were in exile.  Jerusalem represents a reliable sense that God is with us.  That’s where the buildings and the rules and the leaders are.  But at the resurrection, the angel tells the women to head for rough-and-tumble Galilee.  That’s where Jesus comes from and that’s where he wants to go right now.  To a more unlikely place of origin for the Word of God.

One last tip from Matthew: listen to the people who don’t matter. In Matthew’s Gospel it’s important that the women are the messengers to the disciples.  Women are famous for telling old wives’ tales.  Women can’t testify in court.  Women aren’t leaders.  And they are the first evangelists Jesus appoints.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are the ones who make the church happen.  They are the figures who are willing to be knocked off center, sent on a journey.  They are willing both to lead and to follow, to go where the Lord and the angel tell them to go. 

So Matthew is giving us what we need tonight if we are to meet the Risen Lord.  He’s telling us these things, not so that we can be “spiritual” or “self-actualized.”  He’s telling us these things because Jesus has a mission for us.  Jesus has a mission for you.  There is an urgent message of salvation that is waiting to be delivered to the world.  

The women at the tomb are given more than one chance to let go of fear, and no one seems to judge them, not even the narrator, for mixing joy with terror.  The word comes to them again and again. The word meets them on their road as they go.  You are free to live without this fear, even if it hasn’t left you entirely.  You are free go and spread the word.  You have a message for your brothers and sisters.  You know something about where they need to go to meet their savior.  They need to go to Galilee, and it’s your job to help them get there.  Run and tell the disciples.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
The Great Vigil of Easter 2023
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Stranded Assets

Lately I have been wondering if perhaps, for the first time in more than twenty-five years of ministry, I might have something to learn from big oil executives.  I am informed that the big energy companies are contemplating a problem that is looming because of climate change and the pressure to shift to renewable energy.  The big energy execs are considering what will become of the vast infrastructure of coal mines, drilling platforms, oil rigs, and miles and miles of pipeline that represent significant economic investment of their companies.  More to the point, those energy companies are also considering what will become of all the as-yet-uncollected coal and oil and gas that those mines, rigs, platforms, and pipelines are meant to extract, if renewable energy advances are made in enough time to prevent significant climate change.  If the sun, and the wind, and water, and maybe hydrogen, or even nuclear fusion become reliable and affordable sources of energy (as seems likely), then all those coal mines, oil rigs, drilling platforms, and miles and miles of pipeline, start to look a lot less valuable to the energy companies than they once were.  And the stores of coal, gas, and oil that they have laid claim to, but which are still stuck in the earth, start to look a lot less valuable too.

Economists have a term for all this infrastructure and all those raw materials, should they start to become less valuable as the demand for renewable energies increases; economists call the coal mines, oil rigs, drilling platforms, and miles of pipeline “stranded assets.”  They call the coal, oil, and gas left in the earth “stranded assets,” too, (as if they belong to the energy companies).

The energy companies made all that investment because they could see, of course, that fossil fuels would make the world go ‘round, as it were.  These resources produce the energy that powers our society, and brings power (and wealth) to those who claim them as theirs.  They were not expecting that any of their assets would ever be stranded.

According to Lloyds of London, “stranded assets are defined as assets that have suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluation or conversion to liabilities.”   And if I was an oil company executive, I’d be worrying that all that stuff, and all that oil, that may soon be much less valuable to me than it once was, since the world is finding and using all those other sources of energy.  I’d be worried that all that stuff we built and all that oil still in the ground might soon become stranded assets.  And, of course, if I was worried about having stranded assets, the question I’d be asking is: Can we un-strand these stranded assets?*  Can we take that which has suffered write-down, devaluation and liability, and find renewed value in it?

But I am not an oil company executive.  I am a priest of the church.  And I do not worry about the infrastructure or reserves of natural resources that are the concern of big energy companies.  I do, however, as a person of faith and a leader in the church, find something intriguing about the concept of a stranded asset.

But my chief concern does not lie where you may think it does: with the infrastructure and the resources of the church that may seem less useful to some people than once they seemed to be (like big, old, brownstone buildings, for instance).  Oh, there is a time and a place to worry about all that, but Good Friday is not the time, and this is not the place.  To be frank, my concern about stranded assets has to do, quite specifically, with Good Friday, as I stand here with you in the shadow of the Cross.

No, it is not this big old brownstone church that I worry may some day be a stranded asset.  It’s not the silver altar in the Lady Chapel, or the fancy chalices that we have locked up in vaults, or the stacks of vestments stored in wide, shallow drawers that I worry may some day become stranded assets, if they should happen to suffer from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluation, or conversion to liabilities, so to speak.

Nor is it the other great natural resource of the church - the people of God, whom you represent, as you gather here today in this place - that I worry about.  God’s people may falter and suffer from many things, we may rebel and relapse time and time again, but  unanticipated or premature write-downs, devalued, or conversions to liabilities you never shall be!

The potentially stranded asset that I am worried about has far greater implications for Christian faith and religion than a bunch of old buildings or a silver altar.  It has greater implications even than the significance of the people of God.  Since we live in a society that is rapidly deciding it has no particular need of the church or its teachings, a society that is quickly forgetting the narrative of salvation that the scriptures convey, a society that is substantially unconvinced of the value that Jesus might bring to their lives or the life of the world; the potential stranded asset looms over us today from the outskirts of Jerusalem, long ago.

On this Good Friday, I am wondering if the Cross is in danger of becoming a stranded asset.

Once, the Cross seemed useful to everyone, or at least the vast majority of everyone that most Christians could see from wherever we happened to live.  Once, servants of the Cross of Christ believed the Cross was so useful to everyone that they would stop at nothing to bring it anywhere and everywhere - even carrying out grotesque acts of cultural destruction and death; this was not a good thing.  But for many centuries, across many cultures, from northern Africa, all across parts of the Middle East, and all of Europe, and up and down the Americas, the Cross was a symbol of the power that made the world go ‘round, as it were.  The Cross was at the center of the spiritual energy that powered vast societies, and the Cross brought power (and sometimes wealth, it has to be said) to those who claimed it as theirs.  No one was expecting that the meaning and value and power of the Cross could ever be stranded or declining in value.

But today, behold the wood of the Cross… and ask yourself if it does not seem a little stranded to you, on its green hill, far away: suffering from unanticipated, premature write-downs, a general devaluation, and in some circumstances, a conversion to outright liability.  The world is finding and using other sources of power.  The world has decided it might be best to look elsewhere for its spiritual energy needs, or to reassess whether we ever had those spiritual needs to begin with.

Of course, for the first century Romans, the Cross was a stranded asset as soon as the body of Jesus was taken down from it.  But it was a cheap asset to them, so it hardly mattered.  But the Cross’s greatest value was never in its raw materials; it was always in its symbolism.  This was true for the Romans, too.  A cross was a threat to anyone who thought they could attack or undermine the prevailing power.  It was a threat that was meant to instill fear and submission.  I can’t say that I know how effective a cross was as a threat in this way, but I can say that it would probably have worked on me.  I think I’d have avoided getting anywhere near a cross.

As I’ve said, the Romans had no particular interest in un-stranding the stranded asset of the Cross, so it would remain to be seen if those who followed Jesus saw the value of un-stranding the stranded asset of the Cross.  And the answer to this question lay in whether the meaning of the Cross could be transformed; whether the threat of the Cross could be turned into a promise.  And the answer to that question lay in whether or not the powers that be had accomplished what they set out to accomplish with the Cross; whether or not, on the arms of the Cross, Jesus was finished.

We now have two thousand years of testimony that the threat of the Cross was a miserable failure, but that its promise has been fairly spectacular.

For the Cross was meant to bring an end to the teaching and ministry of Jesus; the Cross was meant to squelch Jesus’ declarations of forgiveness and replace them with accusations; the Cross was meant to break up the community who had gathered around him; the Cross was meant to rub salt in wounds that Jesus would otherwise have healed; the Cross was meant to erase from their memories the Lord’s only commandment to his disciples that they should love one another; the Cross was meant to cement the power of death to bring to an end the hopes of those have nothing else to hope for anyway; the Cross was meant to take away the breath of those who’d have sung the praise of Jesus’ name; the Cross was meant to usurp the power of the Prince of Peace; the Cross was meant to embarrass the humility of one who would enter Jerusalem on an ass; the Cross was meant to overshadow the light of this world; the Cross was meant to lock the gate of heaven; the Cross was meant to dry up the river of the water of life; the Cross was meant to devour the sheep and their shepherd too; the Cross was meant to close the doorway into the heart of God; the Cross was meant to weaken the covenant of love that God seeks with his people;the Cross was meant to cause Jesus’ followers to lose their Way, doubt the Truth, and give up on the promise of eternal Life.  But in every conceivable way, the Cross failed to do what those who had deployed it hoped it would do.

For the Cross became a beacon for the teaching and ministry of Jesus; the Cross proclaims the expansiveness of God’s forgiveness; the Cross became the meeting point for the community who gathers in Christ’s Name; the Cross brings healing to the wounds that need to be healed; the Cross reminds us always of the Lord’s only commandment to love one another; the Cross has ended the power of death for those who have the nerve and the faith to hope in Christ; the Cross is transformed by the breath of God and the power of the Holy Spirit; the Cross became the banner of the Prince of Peace; the Cross teaches humility from the Lord of Lords; the Cross now shines with the light of the world; the Cross unlocked the gate of heaven; the Cross became a source of the waters of the river of the water of life; the Cross marks the pasture of the sheep and serves as a staff for their shepherd; the Cross has opened the doorway into the heart of God; the Cross will stand forever as a sign of the covenant of love that God seeks with his people;the Cross is all that Jesus’ followers need to find our  Way, remember the Truth, and lean on the promise of eternal Life!

Well, maybe that was then, but this is now.  So, if, today, the Cross is again in danger of becoming a stranded asset yet again, then maybe the issue is precisely the same: can we find again again the promise of the Cross?  Can this stranded asset be un-stranded?

And the answer is clear, as long as there is anything good and holy to be crucified by the powers of dark self-interest, then the Cross retains its power as an asset for those who believe in God’s desire to restore beauty, truth, light, and goodness to the world he made.  The Prayer Book puts it much more simply, this way: that by the passion of his blessed Son, God made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life.

Yes, I worry from time to time that perhaps the Cross has become a stranded asset - written off, devalued, and mostly a liability.  But then I remember that that’s exactly what the Cross seemed to be on that first Good Friday.  And I behold the wood of the Cross - meant to be such an awful threat - and all I can see is God’s promise; and I give thanks for the gift of this Cross of Jesus that shall ever be dear to me, and to the world for which Jesus died on the hard wood of the Cross.  And I know that Jesus can and does un-strand this stranded asset: his faithful Cross.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Good Friday, 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

* I was introduced to the concept of stranded assets by Peter Coy, writing in the NY Times, and I owe this phrase “un-stranding stranded assets” to him too.