Hooves in the Mud

For five days in July I had the glorious experience of riding a horse along the lanes and beaches and country tracks of County Sligo in northwestern Ireland.  As a novice rider, I can tell you it was an adventure, and I was glad to have my old friend and experienced horseman, Joe, along with me.  It was Joe who reassured me, just as my horse was about to gallop as fast as I have ever moved on a horse, that I could manage it and wouldn’t fall off.  It was Joe who led the way through terrain our horses were not sure they wanted to cover – and convinced them (and me) that everything was perfectly alright, never mind that cliff to your right.  It was Joe, who convinced me that it if I was the one to open all gates and knock on all doors, I’d get a lot of needed practice mounting my horse from the ground, without a mounting block.

Joe’s experience and good humor were invaluable on the trip – three days of which saw just the two of us and our big Irish hunters riding from B&B to B&B, all our things stuffed into saddlebags.  The horses were amazing; they managed to walk over rocky coastline, navigate a peat bog, gallop over mussel-strewn beaches, climb up sand dunes, wade across a tidal pool, stroll in the surf, and canter along country lanes.

One afternoon, we were heading up a wooded hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  The further we got into the woods the deeper the mud became, and we could hear the horses’ hooves slurping as they pulled them out of the mud one step at a time.  For a few yards at least it seemed the mud must be up to the horses’ knees, and they were moving slowly, gingerly, a little hesitatingly.  Worried for the horses in this deep mud, I turned to ask Joe, “Should we dismount?”

“Are you kidding me?” he said  “We can’t dismount; we couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud.  Stick with the horses!”  Sure enough, our horses, Diamond, and Garry Finn, steadily plodded along without ever seriously stumbling or losing a shoe in the deep mud.

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail – this could be a description of what some days in our lives feel like.  It could be a description for the unemployment rate – or some other aspects of our economy at the moment.  It could be a description of the war in Afghanistan.  Except that mud doesn’t seem to apply in the desert, it could be a description of the work that faces our 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq, who are curiously still being given combat pay (and rightly, so, I have no doubt). 

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  It could be a description of life in the church – in this diocese and beyond as we struggle with our various issues.  It could describe the way our 7 million American Muslim brothers and sisters feel as they endure outrageous insult after insult from various political leaders, media outlets, church pastors, and probably neighbors, too.

Heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.

Back on my Irish hillside, atop my Irish horse, I can tell you, that it never really occurred to me that I might be in trouble, that things could go wrong.  Our horses had managed every obstacle so superbly.  And what did I know about horses and mud.  In fact, when I suggested that we dismount, I thought I was only doing the noble thing: being kind on a wet, uphill stretch of trail, to this wonderful beast who had carried me so confidently and gracefully.  It was only when I turned to Joe, with what I thought was a beneficent suggestion that the light dawned.  “Are you kidding me?  We can’t dismount; we couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud!”

For many of us, who lead relatively comfortable middle-class lives, life is often like this.  We fell relatively confident.  Things get muddy, but we don’t imagine there is real trouble lurking; we suspect we could just dismount and walk the rest of the way, leading our horses by the reins.  But lately, as the mud has gotten deeper, perhaps we feel a knot in our stomachs.   The mortgage is harder to pay, the job you are looking for is harder to find, the insurance company still won’t pay that bill, you discovered another lump, his meds aren’t working so well, it’s harder to fall asleep every night, the anger isn’t subsiding, the cigarettes or the booze or whatever is harder to quit than you thought, the silences at home are growing longer and more unbearable, mother doesn’t always recognize you anymore, the pain just won’t go away, the ache of grief can still cripple you nine years later… heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.

And it turns out that faith looks very much like this: like heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail; finding cause to wonder whether or not you can make it; considering the possibility that you should continue the rest of the way on foot; and realizing, “Are you kidding? You can’t possibly make it through this mud!”

Of course, the first step of faith is to realize that you have been riding a horse all along!

Back in what increasingly looks like the old days to me, we used to hear these words from today’s Epistle reading every Sunday: “This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  They were part of a tiny collection of verses called the “Comfortable Words” that the priest recited just after the confession of sin.

Today they are uncomfortable for us to hear, because we think the phrase is talking about us: sinners?!?  Why must the church always be so negative!?  Why this insistent focus on sin?!  It’s so un-contemporary, so not what people are looking for!  But of course, those words are not primarily about us; they are primarily about Jesus and his ministry of forgiveness and salvation.  They are Saint Paul’s way of saying, “Are you kidding me?  We couldn’t possibly make our way through this mud!”

And, of course, Saint Paul knows that a lot of the mud in our lives is not the result of exterior forces acting on us without our participation, like a heavy rainfall.  Much of the mud we get stuck in comes from within, through some interior leak in our spiritual plumbing, which is why you can get stuck in the mud in the middle of the desert.  He just calls that “sin.”

Back in Ireland, the muddy trail that Joe and I were riding along was sheltered by trees, and my focus, after I realized that this entire journey was really up to the horse, was down: watching his front hooves as best I could; listening to the slow, steady slurps of his progress, one step at a time.  It wasn’t long - maybe ten or fifteen minutes – till we came out of the muddy patch and into a dry clearing where we could turn and look behind us.  We discovered we had travelled much higher than we imagined we were going.  The green checkerboard of the Irish countryside spread out beneath us, and a short distance beyond that, the sea.  We consulted our map, and found that it was just for this that we had slogged up the hillside – this beautiful view, toward which we didn’t even realize we were headed - now we were heading down a paved path, back to the long, flat expanses of sandy coastline where our horses would run again, faster than I thought possible.

This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be receive, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I might as well be the foremost.  Put it another way: we are heading up a hillside along a very wet and muddy narrow trail.  Chances are good that we got ourselves on this hillside out of sheer willfulness, selfishness, greed, or some set of mixed motives.  And by the time it occurs to us to get at all worried about the footing…  Are you kidding me?!

But the good news is that you are riding a horse who is surefooted and knows the terrain.  And you are headed for a clearing where you may well discover that you have travelled much further uphill, much higher than you realized or imagined.

And the view is grand, as they would say in Ireland.  And the way that leads back down the hillside is easier.  And it leads to the sea, and the broad flat beaches, where you can run as fast as you like, as long as you can stay on your horse!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

12 September 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia



Friend, Go Up Higher

Forty-seven years ago, on the steps beneath Lincoln,

was a man, and a speech, and a wonderful dream,

about the country we live in, and the way he’d been thinkin’

of our freedom, our values, and that sort of theme.

It was moving to hear, or so I’ve been told;

it was stirring, the crowd quite a sight to behold,

they were black, they were white, they were pink, they were brown.

As they gathered to talk and to sing and to pray

for the marvelous, wonderful, glorious day

when God’s merciful spirit would come down.

For it seems that back then there would be no objection

if a person were beaten or shot at and killed

on the basis of naught but his darker complexion.

And I think I’m not wrong that blood was thus spilled.

This seems crazy to me, it seems clearly so wrong,

which is why they were gathered in that long-ago throng,

in the multiple shades of our own melting pot

to sing “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty,”

which to some of the world must seem somewhat flighty,

but which may be the only real hope that we’ve got.

Now it’s all these years later and we’re gathered in church,

and hatred we know, just has not been abolished,

and we hear in the Gospel of how someone’s perch

tells you something about just exactly how polished

will be the crown on their head at the end of their days,

when they’re called on to answer for all of their ways,

and they’re asked by St. Peter, who stands at the door,

“Were you kind, were you humble, did you do your darn’d best;

do you know how you get to be here with the blest?

Just how much did you care for the sick and the poor?”

Now to some this is just a ridiculous question

it’s thought of by lefties and commies and pinkos

too stupid or lazy to get rich in professions,

and who run to the government teat for their drink.  Oh,

yes we’ve become, it would seem, such a nation,

where it’s riches for some, but for others starvation,

or nearly.  I assure you this approach takes its toll,

not just on people of color – of brown, beige and black –

it comes at a cost to every Tom, Dick, and Jack,

just ask all our workers at the Saturday Soup Bowl.

So Jesus reminds us when he tells us a story

of a man who goes to a party and sits

in the worst seat, clearly a place of no glory

at all.  But he sees all the people of glitz

tripping over themselves to get the best seats,

as if this were somehow indicative of feats

of worthiness, noblesse oblige, or perhaps honor.

But their host had a guest for that seat well in mind,

and sends the swells packing, other places to find,

and ponder a future as nothings and goners.

When you go to a party, our Lord recommends,

don’t take the best seat, take a place that is lower,

and as others go past you, even your friends,

don’t worry, be happy, don’t grimace or glower.

It’s a good thing when you and I choose to be humble;

it’s really no cause to bristle or grumble.

Not everyone here can sing in the choir;

not all of us need to be close to the altar;

there’s a motto we’ll hear that’s not found in the Psalter,

when your host takes your hand and says, “Friend, go up higher.”

It was five years ago, in a storm called Katrina

that set the great city of New Orleans afloat.

It was awful; there was chaos, even at the arena

where many gathered in hopes that they’d soon find a boat

to take them to safety; to find higher ground;

though sadly so many good souls out there drowned

in the waters that flooded the city that week.

A group from this church went to help not long after;

to try to bring some small relief from disaster.

And the sight left us gaping, with few words to speak.

And still to this day that great city’s a mess,

with houses and businesses and lives un-rebuilt.

You’d think with the power and wealth we possess

we’d prevent this neglect, this occasion for guilt.

You’d think that from where all the powerful sit

they could see this is where all our national grit

is required to help a whole city in need.

You’d think that from way up on high, in DC,

there’d be help on the way, without much of a plea.

But you’d be mistaken, misguided indeed.

Where you stand on an issue, I’ve been told once or twice,

depends largely on where your posterior’s placed.

Which is why Jesus long ago gave us advice

to be careful in choosing a vantage point graced

with a lower perspective, since your whole P.O.V.

will be shaped by what people and things you can see.

Down low with the poor and the sick and the ailing

is where Jesus said we would find the right view;

it’s where he makes all that’s become old  brand new;

it’s where divine grace is the power prevailing.

It reminds us that when we are sailing through life,

and we realize we’ve money and privilege and health,

there are many more others with little but strife,

who’d be much better off with just a bit of the wealth

that’s been given to us, with which we are blest,

as though we were somehow better or best.

But search through the Bible to see if your riches

are a sign of a blessing from God on his throne,

or if maybe people of wealth are more prone

to be found, in the end, in hell’s lowest ditches.

Now, the Gospel is funny, it makes its demands,

and it’s full of these stories to help make us good.

It instructs us in how to use hearts, heads, and hands;

though so often its lessons are misunderstood.

Some strive to be orthodox, righteous, or pure,

as though entrance to heaven these goals would ensure.

But if entry to Paradise is what we desire

then day in and day out we could all do much worse

than to learn to repeat and to live out this verse,

when we see someone coming, to say, “Friend, go up higher.”

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

29 August 2010

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Magnificat

Just a couple of months ago, about the time I turned 43, I noticed something unusual in church.  I was having trouble reading the Bible.  This was not a spiritual crisis; more specifically, the Bible I usually read from at Morning and Evening Prayer was becoming harder to read.  Now, Saint Mark’s is not exactly flooded with light, and the print in this particular Bible is quite small, so anyone, I reasoned, might have difficulty from time to time seeing such fine print in such poor light.  Time passed, but not much, and I began to look to see whether or not a light bulb had burned out somewhere in my vicinity, because the Bible was now growing noticeably harder to read.  What circumstances around me could be changing to produce this strange effect, I wondered.

I deployed the only reasonable defense I could think of to battle this optical challenge – I brought the Bible up closer to my face in order to see the small print more clearly – but I realized that this tactic was not working.  So, by chance I tried a different approach, something counter-intuitive: I pushed the Bible a little further away from my eyes than usual, extending my arm at some distance, and then the most extraordinary thing happened: lo and behold, the words of Scripture came into focus!  A miracle!

Today we are celebrating Mary, the Mother of Jesus.  And we are doing it in some style, since devotion to Mary has long been a hallmark of Saint Mark’s, and the catholic-minded movement from which this parish sprang 163 years ago.  To some Christians, such devotion to Mary has seemed very much like the act of pushing the Bible away from you – because much of what the catholic tradition has said about Mary cannot be found in the pages of Scripture: that she was conceived without the stain of original sin (her immaculate conception); that she was carried bodily up into heaven at the end of her life (her assumption); that she shares with Jesus the ministry of salvation (she is co-redemptrix); that she has special access to Jesus’ ear in heaven (she is mediatrix); and that she is the Queen of Heaven.  And I list all these without even getting into the issue of her virginity (perpetual or not)!

With this kind of thinking going on so close to Rittenhouse Square in the 1840s and 50s, is it any wonder, really, that our neighbors soon organized to build a low church across the square on Walnut Street where the Bible could be expounded upon with deliberate clarity, rather than obscured by Marian folderol?

Mary has been seen by some in the church as a problem, a distraction, an opportunity for indulging the worst excesses of liturgical and theological foolishness.  And it is true that she has had to bear the misguided exploits of the church over the years, the object of all kinds of projection and other neuroses of the church and her leaders.  But like many a Jewish mother, she has borne her burden gracefully, and without complaint.

And of course, Mary is not absent from the pages of Holy Writ; she is very much a presence there.  What other reports have we in such detail of angelic encounter as the annunciation that Gabriel makes to Mary?  Who else is so close to the Cross on Good Friday, and so much on Jesus’ mind? 

And who else has given the church such a song of beauty to sing as Mary?  “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior!”  These words of the Magnificat are said or sung in churches every day at Evening Prayer or Vespers; they are recited here at Saint Mark’s every day, to be sure.  Mary’s song has been on the lips of the church since the days we first re-covered the memory of it, when Saint Luke wrote it down in his gospel.

My soul doth magnify the Lord!  It’s a funny thing to sing or to say – after all, what does it mean?  Our English translation borrows the Latin word “magnify” that itself came from an old French word that means to praise or extol.  It can also imply that something is made more exciting, more exaggerated, or to seem larger than it is.  Or, it can mean that something is actually enlarged, made bigger.

Mary’s soul magnified the Lord.  In a sense this is literally true since the embryo that developed in her womb grew to become the child she delivered into the world.  But I think there is more to Mary’s magnifying than that.  Because I know how hard it can be to see Jesus and to know him for who he is.  I know how hard it is to find faith in this world of ours that a man who spoke in parables; and who was killed on a cross two thousand years ago; whose followers wrote almost nothing down and were not especially good community organizers; whose name has been used to invoke all kinds of horrendousness; whose church so easily becomes a shambles – that this man is the Savior of the world.  Yes, it can be hard to see this.

Jesus has been so miniaturized in our society, shrunk down to such insignificance.  Even his Cross is often preferred these days without his body on it.  In can be hard to see Jesus at work in the world.  But Mary, saw something all those centuries ago when Gabriel came to visit and brought her word that she was highly favored and that the fruit of her womb would be blessed by God in a special way.  Somehow Mary saw the story of salvation, spread out before her, and the place her Son would play in it, before she could even feel that her belly had begun to swell.  And then she magnified the Lord.

And when she did, what did she see?  She saw that lowliness was not a condemnation from God, but, more likely, a sign of his favor.  And that pride would be scattered by God as easily as ashes from a spent fire.  She saw that real power does not reside in the thrones of kings or the offices of presidents, but in the weakness of the lowly and meek.  She saw that riches pass away, but that the hungry can and will be fed by God’s providence.  And she saw that God’s promises, made so long ago, like his mercy, do not fade away.  This is what she saw, when she looked closely, to magnify what God was doing through her in the world.  And when she saw that God was at work in her, she knew that it was the Lord who was magnified, not her.

So many have missed this truth about Mary – that her soul magnifies the Lord – as though that couldn’t possibly do any good.  But in a world with poor vision it is extremely helpful to have someone magnify the Lord, who can be elusive, small, and hard to see.

The folderol (on display most prominently in our hymns this morning) is, or course, un-necessary, as folderol always is.  And the church has occasionally gotten carried away with this folderol where Mary is concerned, if you ask me.

But here at Saint Mark’s, I think we know what it feels like to be inspired by Mary, to think that our souls might some day magnify the Lord, too.  That we might see Jesus somewhere before anyone else does, and that we might lift up our voices in song to help magnify him so that others can see him too.

Most of us know, I dare say, what it is like to squint in the dim light and look for Jesus, and see nothing but a blur, at best.  Most of us know the feelings of disappointment, despair, loneliness, failure, and hopelessness that lead us to suspect that the Scriptures are not true, that wars have not ended, peace is not accomplished, sickness has not been healed, fear, hatred, and racism still hold too much sway, the rich still seem to get richer, and the poor get poorer, and most of us remain stuck somewhere in the middle, not moving much at all even though it seems like we have been working awfully hard to catch up.  Can we be blamed for feeling at times as though Jesus is hard to find, and for suspecting this means that he is not really here?

And can we take the church seriously when – with Scripture apparently at arms length – we indulge in fantasies about Our Lady?  But isn’t it just at times like this - when things that used to be clear to us have grown blurry, that certainties of life begin to seem so uncertain, that mystery begins to become so much more present, and the light seems to be dimmer than once it was – that we do something counter-intuitive, since squinting and looking closer didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.

And if in stretching our arms out, we appear to be pushing Scripture away, then this is only an optical illusion.  For there is a song in our ears, and (God willing) on our lips, as we do what we never had to do before – we reach our arms out, further, and behold, at last we can see!

And if we are to celebrate Mary, it is not, I think, because we have gotten carried away with a silly old tradition, and thrown away the Bible.  It is because we want to see Jesus more clearly; we want to make him more visible to the rest of the world; we want to heighten the importance of his ministry to the poor, the lowly, the meek, and all who suffer unjustly at the hands of power.  It is because we want to magnify the Lord, and we can think of no way to do it better than to sing with the one whose soul first magnified him, whose womb brought him into the world, whose wisdom taught him to pray, whose feet followed him to the cross, and whose heart first gave his sacred heart its beat.

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and with Mary, my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin

15 August 2010

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia