Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on October 8, 2023. At St. Mark’s, we keep the second Sunday of October as the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church. Today the Eucharist is offered in thanksgiving for all departed founders, architects, builders, pastors, and benefactors of the parish, whom we name aloud at the Offertory.

Collect: Almighty God, to whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer: We give you thanks for the fellowship of those who have worshiped in this place, and we pray that all who seek you here may find you, and be filled with your joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: 1 Kings 8:22-30, 1 Peter 2:1-5,9-10, Matthew 21:12-16

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

This is always one of my favorite Sundays, because it means the preacher’s task aligns with one of my favorite subjects: the actual physical building of the church. Churches in general, and St. Mark’s in particular, are full of many successive layers of symbol, intention, and experience, making them unique among the buildings of any given city, region, or country.

Like all good art, celebrating churches as physical buildings is not merely for experts and technicians, but for everyone, and especially for the people who make our home here. This building preaches as well or better than any preacher, including myself, and I hope this morning merely to help us all hear a little better the sermon this building preaches continually.

For a framework, I’m going to draw more heavily than usual on an author beyond the scriptural text. Maybe you’ve heard of the famous American architect, Ralph Adams Cram. Roughly contemporary with Frank Lloyd Wright, Cram was just as prolific a builder — principally of church buildings, but of others too: much of Princeton University is his design, and the old campus of Rice University; also St. John the Divine in New York, and other cathedrals, schools, houses, and universities across the country, including a few skyscrapers too — and all this while also serving as a professor at MIT and writing extensively about art, history, society, and church building.

In one of his major books on the subject [Church Building, 1901], Cram suggests a church — any church, whether a tiny village chapel or a great cathedral — has four major qualities essential to its integrity as a church. He orders them from the first and most important to the least, but I’ll begin the other way around, from the last to the first. All are essential, but Cram was particular about the order, in order that first principles might remain first.

Fourth in his list of essential “qualities of a church” was, in his words, “The arrangement of a building where a congregation may conveniently listen to the instruction of its spiritual leaders.” Okay, that much may be obvious, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. “The arrangement of a building where a congregation may conveniently listen to the instruction of its spiritual leaders.” Practically speaking, that means the lectern and pulpit you see before you, in St. Mark’s marvelous acoustic. And what is it that the congregation hears at St. Mark’s? A sermon, lessons from Scripture; the prayers of intercession we offer, the words of the Eucharistic prayer; also the hymns we sing and the anthems offered by the choir. The organ speaks, too, and the piano, and the harpsichord, and when we gather in this church we hear all of these individuals, texts, instruments, and the resonating building itself, speaking in harmony.

There is no single message that these all give voice to. To borrow a musical image: like the Gospel itself, St. Mark’s speaks and listens in polyphony, not in melody, and certainly not in monotone. Still, there is an underlying harmonic structure, which speaks underneath it all. And what it speaks is the ancient hymn of the thankful church, Te Deum Ladaumus, “We praise thee, O God.”

Next in Cram’s essential qualities of a church is, in his words, “The creation of spiritual emotion through the ministry of all possible beauty of environment; the using of art to lift people’s minds from secular things to spiritual, that their souls may be brought into harmony with God.” 

For Cram, listening, noting the underlying harmony of so many voices, was not enough; a church worth the name ought to evoke in each individual person, through “the ministry of all possible beauty,” their own desire, not just to enjoy the sound of harmony, but to be part of it, to be part especially of God’s harmony. Any barn, any auditorium, can be rigged so a congregation can hear readers, preachers, and musicians. But for Cram a church had to be more, had to, by its very beauty, evoke the desire to enter a larger world, to enter God’s world.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself here, but when I step into this church from off the street, I am always brought up short by the stillness of the space, by the way light from the skylight over the apse plays through the chancel; by the greens and reds and blues and golds of the creation windows bringing out the deep reds and browns of the pews and the floors; by the great chancel arch framing the space; and, though it’s still off being restored, by the dazzling kaleidoscope of the rose window ushering in the setting sun.

It’s clear to me this whole space is alive, even when it’s empty; that its heart beats to the same rhythm that drives the harmonies spoken here when it’s full. I’m sure you have your own favorite corner, or pew, or pillar, that inspires you in similar ways. I don’t think I’m alone when I say, what it evokes is not simple enjoyment, though it is that; there is a kind of deep gratitude, a peace larger than my own making that seems to well up within me, and I am drawn beyond myself into the mysterious depths the building begins to reveal.

Cram’s next essential quality of a church is, in his words again, “The providing of a place apart where may be solemnized the sublime mysteries of the Christian faith.” Now we get to the specific rites a building such as this hosts, and their purpose. 

“The providing of a place apart where may be solemnized the sublime mysteries of the Christian faith.” You can be baptized in a bathtub, and the sacrament is no less valid or true. But there is something really significant about having a place, a specific place, where not just I am baptized, but where dozens and hundreds and thousands are; in old churches, where a hundred successive generations have been incorporated into the Body of Christ.

Behold the font, at the back of the church: a beautiful object, certainly, but more than that, the place where souls are hid with Christ in God. Look at the altar, the freestanding one we use most Sundays, or the high altar we’re using today. Not just so much beautiful stone and wood, though certainly that: here is an anchor from earth to heaven, its feet in Berkeley, California, but its head on the farther shore of that great crystal sea that flows around the throne of God.

St. Mark’s is a place apart, where in the name of God we solemnize the sublime mysteries of the Christian faith, mysteries in which we locate the salvation of our souls and the renewal, the redemption, the healing of the whole world. These are the solemn pageantries we offer day by day, week by week, year by year, in which life – our own lives first of all, but also creation more broadly – is offered, lifted before the throne of God, for God to do with according to his loving purposes.

So we come to Cram’s first and foremost of the essential qualities of a church. If the other three have been familiar to us, this first may be less so; it may be the most difficult for modern, 21st century residents of the Bay Area of California to imagine. But for Cram it was so important that without it everything else falls to pieces.

And that is, in his words, first and foremost, “A church is a house of God, a place of His earthly habitation, wrought in the fashion of heavenly things, a visible type of heaven itself.” He’s echoing here the patriarch Jacob at Bethel, in the book of Genesis, who says, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

There are few ideas more core to Old Testament theology than the idea that the earthly temple is a mirror of the heavenly temple; and, by extension, that earth itself is a mirror of heaven. The two are connected. Temples, shrines, places of worship — official or unofficial, large or small, grand in Jerusalem, rustic on hilltops, or miniature in homes, are God’s dwelling first, and, if mine at all, then mine second.

I said a few moments ago, that the feet of St. Mark’s altar are in Berkeley, and its head in heaven. But under this first and most important of Cram’s qualities of a church, the reverse is true: its feet are firmly rooted in heaven, and here in Berkeley we simply witness the long extent of its reach. When I walk into the empty church and am struck by the heartbeat of so many voices in harmony, the voices are mine and yours, the readers, the scriptural and musical texts, the organ; but the heartbeat is God’s. When we come to the altar and kneel at the rail, it may be Blake Sawicky wearing a chasuble and distributing Hosts. But the priest is Christ, the fare is Christ, and the occasion is Christ’s — his last supper, his sacrifice on Calvary, and his wedding banquet at the completion of all things. We are guests at that table, guests whom God welcomes into the family of his only Son; whose acts of love on the cross we repeat, heavily stylized though they may be, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Yes, it’s crucially important that this church be first and foremost God’s house, before it is any of our own. Why? Well, if for no other reason, there is the purely pragmatic one — this being God’s house saves us from the traps of egotism waiting to catch us unawares in the other three qualities. Listening, evoking emotion, solemnizing our faith, all of these can quickly make our religion about us and the marvelous thoughts and experiences we’re having, if we forget that first of all, when we enter St. Mark’s we enter a place that is God’s before it is ours.

But even more importantly than that, remembering that this is God’s house first makes it clear to whose honor and glory it exists, and who it is who receives the faithful service we offer, service we offer either here in this place itself, or as a result of having been here.  This is God’s house, first and foremost, a mirror of the heavenly temple. Like creation itself, its work will not finally be complete until the mirror is burnished to such a polish, to such a clear, such a perfect reflection, that glass, silver, senses themselves pass away and we step wholly and completely into the image it reflects.

There’s an old painting I love, and I can’t remember the painter or the title, or else I’d find a print somewhere and hang it up in the narthex. It’s probably the saccharine sort of thing only a priest would love, but bear with me a moment — it shows the inside of the church, from the perspective of the very back wall, looking far forward in the misty distance towards some glorious liturgy being offered at the altar, which is bathed totally in light. We can’t really make out the specifics of what’s happening, it’s too far away, and anyway it’s much too bright. 

What we can see is a woman in the dim foreground, on her knees in the last pew, many empty ones in front of her, suffering from some unknown grief, praying and leaning against a pillar for support. She is pointed towards the altar, but she’s so absorbed in her grief it’s not clear she’s even aware of what’s happening up front. But she doesn’t have to be aware, because just behind her, radiating the same golden glory as the altar, is Jesus himself — whatever is happening up front can take care of itself, but he’s there in the back for her; he holds her steady, ministers to her as the angels must have ministered to him in Gethsemane. It’s just a painting, but it’s truer than any treatise: this is God’s house, and all who seek him here, in whatever way they can, will find succor.

So we give thanks for this church. We give thanks for the founders, architects, builders, pastors, musicians, and benefactors who have done so much to leave us such a beautiful legacy. We give thanks for the sermon this legacy continually preaches: that this is none other than the house of God, and here is the gate of heaven; that there is traffic, concourse, love between heaven and earth; and that what is created will be brought to its fulfillment in the nearer presence of its Creator. And we give thanks for all whom this mystery has touched here, whose lives now bear the unmistakable imprint of heaven.

So may St. Mark’s be the place where what we seek we find, where what we ask is granted, where the door is opened onto another shore and a greater light; where we offer the solemn pageantry of the sublime mysteries of the Christian faith; where our hearts are lifted to beat in harmony with God’s, and where every voice joins the great polyphonic hymn of angels and saints, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts; heaven and earth are full of thy glory; hosanna in the highest.”

Amen.

This sermon was preached on Sunday, August 6, 2023, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, the feast of the Transfiguration.

Collect: O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35, 2 Peter 1:13-21, Luke 9:28-36 

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

It’s a delight today to keep the Feast of the Transfiguration on a Sunday — it more often falls on a weekday, and at St. Mark’s we observe it with a low mass in the chapel. But this year we keep it with all the Sunday festivity we can manage. And there’s a lot here to keep: last year on this feast I observed that it’s a moment like in so many stories, the hero in disguise reveals himself for all to see. It’s hard to get clearer than a dazzling light and a voice from heaven. 

But this year, I want to spend a little more time considering the inverse, that here is a moment of startling clarity for the reader, for you and me — but for the disciples on the mountain with Jesus, it was an intensely disorienting experience. So much so, that the effect on them seems to be utter stupefaction, blindness, even, and they are almost completely dumbfounded — as I suppose you and I most certainly would have been too, in their shoes. 

Peter, James, and John, these seem to be Jesus’s closest friends among the twelve, and he takes them with him on a few other occasions of great importance. They’re the three who witness his raising to life of Jairus’s daughter, for instance, and they’re the ones he asks to keep awake with him in the Garden of Gethsemane the night he was betrayed. 

As a result, these three enjoyed a privileged view into Jesus’s mission and personality. They seem to have been his closest earthly friends, people who knew him better than most. So it’s striking that they are frequently so hapless, that they simply cannot see what’s happening in front of them. 

Peter, their spokesman, consistently misses the point: here at the transfiguration, he offers to build three dwellings, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, but says nothing about the thundering voice they’ve just heard or the blinding light in which Jesus’s appearance is changed. We know it made an impression on him, because in today’s second Lesson, a much older Peter, much closer to death, reflects on the transfiguration, citing it as evidence for the trustworthiness of the Gospel he is preaching. But at the time, on the mountain with James and John, he misses the point. Even John, often referred to as being “eagle-eyed,” far-seeing, deeply perceptive, says nothing about it, leaving it out of his gospel entirely. 

We live in a world where we place a premium on knowing things, on knowing things and being close with people who are principal agents. If you’ve seen the musical Hamilton, you’ll remember the song where the young Hamilton wants to be “in the room where it happens.” 

Peter, James, and John are certainly in the room where it happens, but they don’t fit very easily into a world like this with expectations like ours. They have an enviable proximity to Jesus, but at the most critical moments, they’re asking the wrong questions, they’re entirely wrong-headed, or else they just fall asleep. 

I can’t blame them: the transfiguration in particular was clearly a stunning occasion, blinding in brightness; strange to see Jesus’ face changed, stranger still to see these two saints of elder days suddenly present in the flesh and chatting with Jesus, and then nothing short of terrifying to hear the voice speak in thunder from the cloud. No wonder they behave as though in a stupor. 

But still, any modern influencer worth their salt would have pushed through all that and pulled out their phone to start live-streaming, or at least to take a few photos. Why were the disciples so liable to be taken by surprise, hadn’t they learned by then to expect something remarkable? And couldn’t they muster at least a little more mental presence for the event, so the rest of us who weren’t there can benefit? 

Even so, the transfiguration is an event that the Church subsequently has drawn much benefit from. The Christian tradition has understood it over the centuries in many and various ways, chief of all as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ coming death, complete with sleepy disciples, the top of a mountain, and two figures on either side. Other writers make much of Moses and Elijah being present, as figures of Law and Prophecy. Others note that this is one of the small handful of theophanies in the Bible, when the full triune Godhead appears visibly to people on earth: Jesus the Son, the voice of the Father, and the cloud representing the Holy Spirit. 

Yet other authors make much of the topic of conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah. In our NRSV translation, they are speaking of Jesus’s “departure,” which he is about to make in Jerusalem. But in Luke’s Greek, it is not just any departure, nor just any death. The word is literally “exodus” — Moses and Elijah are speaking with Jesus about the exodus he is about to make in Jerusalem. And this of course tracks with long Christian tradition for Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection to be another exodus: this time not through water only, but making a way through death itself, so that all who follow can pass safely through to their eternal promised land in the nearer presence of God. 

All this commentary is extremely interesting, and if you’re like me, you’d like the disciples to have at least something more intelligent to say on the subject than “let’s make three tents,” just as the party is breaking up. As it is, all we really have in Scripture is their stupor, which, frankly, is not very much to go on. 

But then, despite how much it sometimes appears this way, the disciples are not in fact idiots — they are in the room where it happens, and they are dear friends of the one who does most of the happening. If we find their responses disappointing, if we find it difficult to learn much of use from them, it might be a good indication that we have some self-examination to do ourselves, some uncovering about what is motivating us and what is shaping our desire to learn. Is it simply to be armed with more facts and insights, to increase our satisfaction with our own cleverness? Or is it to grow in love of him who made us, who calls us out of darkness into his own marvelous light? 

Because in truth, the disciples’ stupor teaches us at least as much about what it means to follow Jesus as any of the rest of the insights subsequent tradition has drawn from this event. And what it teaches is simply that there comes a point in following Jesus, probably more than one, where we do not know the answer; where we are in the middle of some experience that is so strong, so intense, that we cannot make sense of it. Everyone around us might have made sense of it, and they may be full of advice for what we ought to do with it. But for us in the middle of whatever it is, the larger picture is missing, and no attempts to explain it really avail. 

It’s a different kind of moment for every person. For some it may be the news that their cancer is back. For others it may the loss of a job, or the beginning of a job. Or a change of house or living or family situation, or an overwhelming weight on the conscience. For some it’s the sudden discovery of a vocation, while for others it’s the loss of vocation. Maybe it’s a long series of unanswered prayers, or a spectacularly unexpected answer to a prayer. Maybe it has to do with where you experience God; or maybe it’s an encounter with love, or grief, or stress, or an emotion that’s particularly strong for you just now. Whatever it is, it’s impossible to see the whole thing in any kind of perspective, and all you can do is lie stupefied before the immensity of the thing. 

If you know what this is like, you can have some empathy for Peter, James, and John. No amount of working around it or working through it is finally effective, because it’s the sort of thing that fundamentally stops your capacity to function, to sense, to make sense of whatever it is. 

For the disciples, being brought to this moment is not a mark of failure, but is exactly the point. If we want to learn who Jesus is, the nature of creation and our place in it; if we want to contemplate the full depth of the love of God, there will come a point when our sensory faculties, our language, our reason, our intellect, will finally no longer avail. Not because we have to turn them off in order to accept these doctrines, but because their full truth so fills and overflows our capacity to receive them that we cannot but be blinded the closer we get to them. In the stupor of Peter, James, and John, they behold the unveiled glory of God. 

I’m not suggesting that we will necessarily follow suit. But I am suggesting that being okay with our own blindness at times is no bad thing, and that in fact it is the necessary precondition to receiving all that God has to offer us. 

So if you are feeling blind at the moment, at a loss for words or explanation, don’t be in too great a hurry to figure it out, to push through, or to move on. Sit there a while, consider building a dwelling under that cloud, offer hospitality to whatever and whoever you find there. When the cloud finally rolls away, you may find that you have been transfigured: that you have encountered God without knowing it, that you have passed from death to life, that your eyes can now see in ways they couldn’t before. 

God grant that when that happens, we give thanks for the blindness that gave us sight, for the stupor that carried us through the gates of life, and for the Son whose radiance enlightens our minds and inflames our hearts. 

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on Palm Sunday, 2020, April 5, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley. This is the fourth Sunday of public services suspended due to Coronavirus; the recording of the service can be found on the St. Mark’s website, here. I realize I’m well behind in posting sermons, but hopefully this can serve as something of a fresh start; as time allows I’ll start filling in the (substantial!) gap.

Collect: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Matthew 26:14-27:66

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

On Palm Sunday, I always find myself a little bit uneasy: we rejoice with the crowd in the Gospel, carry palm branches, and sing Hosanna to the Son of David. And then, not more than a few minutes later, we’re all shouting “Crucify.”

I’m not the first person to note the radical shift in tone in today’s liturgy, many have already commented that we’re taking a fairly extreme emotional journey today. In some corners of the church, the journey from palms and donkeys to scourging and the cross is so stark, the celebrant and sacred ministers even change vestments in the middle.

It’s not a new comment, but I do want to spend a moment here this morning. If we’re all shouting “crucify” just now, what were we so thrilled about before? What were the Hosannas for? There’s no question the crowds in both Gospel passages are made up of largely the same people. Why the sudden shift? Is it really so easy to adulate and adore in one breath, and then to shout murder in the next? Of course it is, as anyone knows who watches professional sports, or who follows politics. Someone will say, ‘Oh that’s different, we know better now.’ But I’m not so sure. Crowds have a mind of their own, and it’s amazing what a mob will perpetrate that individuals would recoil even from contemplating.

There were people who warned Jesus: in Luke’s account of the triumphal entry, there are Pharisees in the crowd, and they seem to know what kind of trouble gets stirred up when a mob starts forming. “Teacher,” they say, “tell your disciples to stop.” And Jesus replies, “I tell you, if these were silent, even the stones would cry out.”

This year of course the crowds are silent. There are no hosannas in the streets, there is no “crucify” coming from the square; only a small few here in church, and otherwise we are scattered across the many places where you’re watching from home. This year the crowds are silent, and so the stones take up their part. What do they cry?

Stones are perhaps wiser than the rest of us mere mortals. They have long memories. This road Jesus travels, from Jericho to Jerusalem, has seen its share of pain and suffering. These stones had seen desperate refugees fleeing the city’s destruction by the Babylonian army. They had seen David escaping Jerusalem after his son Absalom usurped the throne. They had seen the arrival of Joshua’s army, and before that they had seen Abraham leading his son Isaac to sacrifice. These stones have drunk blood, and no doubt they would again. Would this crowd be the next, if Rome’s hand fell hard? Or would it be this man on a donkey?

The long scale of geologic time helps make the perspective stones offer. Buildings which to us seem solid and everlasting, stones know are anything but. Even if the builders’ art is perfect, and every stone stacked upon another endures for an age, stones remember the quarry, and before that the hill, where for countless eons the earth has moved and shifted. Imperceptible to any lifespan, the shifting earth has introduced cracks and faults by the million deep within even the firmest rock. Stones know, the strongest building is no monolith, but a perpetual trapeze act of balance and motion, no less complex, no less tenuous, for taking longer to play out. The slightest shift in the earth, just as much as the strike of a ruthless, conquering army, will cause the whole thing to collapse. The stones on Jesus’ way didn’t need the fickleness of a crowd to remind them of the fragile impermanence of their lives.

It’s not only earthquakes and conquests they’re aware of, either, but the long slow drip of the elements, too: moisture, wind, even changes in temperature, all have their effect. Any stone must know it’s only a matter of time before the elements do their work, and a rock is reduced to soil. Oh they know it will take ages, but stones must be proud that the living things around them grow, draw their sustenance, and bear fruit from the residue of their long endurance.

Are there stones in your heart? I’m sure there are in mine. Some have been there forever, some are new. Many I have collected and piled there, many have been dropped in by others. A few I have polished smooth and bright and cherished as if they were gems, and a few others are sharp enough that brushing against them scrapes and cuts. But stones they all are, heavy, burdensome, impediments at best and obstructions at worst. Can anyone build from these stones? Can they ever be worn into soil? If they topple, could they take my soul with them?

Today the streets are silent, the crowds are all in their homes, and the stones finally have their chance to cry out. What do they cry? Do they recognize the one for whom the crowds would shout Hosanna? Can they hear his voice who called them into being? Do they join the crowd, shouting as if for a conquering hero? Or do they rather cry out their premonition that a death is coming?

In a week’s time, a soldier will dig a foundation pit among these stones, a small one, for a single post. A man will come, losing his footing on the gravel, carrying a wooden cross. And here where they have dug they will nail him to it and raise it up. The stones will have their fill of blood once again. This blood falls like Abel’s so long ago, unjustly killed by a jealous brother. But where it lands it does not sear, it does not salt with death, as Abel’s did and so many others since. This blood lands like rain, watering the earth, filling it with plenteousness. And where it touches stone, it cracks: the work of a thousand ages accomplished in a single moment; the stone of the tomb, of every tomb, broken forever and its door left wide: all the dead released from their prison, and where there was barren stone, there is now a heart of flesh, bearing fruit to eternal life.

Yes this is the death these stones have been waiting for, the death that will make them the very first witnesses to the resurrection of the Son of God, before even the angels, from inside the tomb. And this year, with the streets silent, they cry out: “Behold the lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. . . He will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

In silent streets, in heavy hearts, hear the stones cry out. May their cry light a flame of hope in all of us, a flame growing to a blaze, which the darkness shall not comprehend, till the Sun of Righteousness rise with healing in its wings, and darkness shall be no more.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.