The Strength of An Horse

A few weeks ago a dear friend who lives in the country called with sad news: a horse had died.  It was one of two horses he’d bought for his kids, really, when they were teenagers and riding was one of their sports.  Since they lived in the country it was no big deal to buy the horses and keep them on the farm.  But after the kids grew up and outgrew riding and went off to college, my friend, their father, who had himself ridden as a teenager, decided that he would take up riding again – it would be good for him and for the horse.  He chose Moe, the big gelding thoroughbred he’d bought for his son.

So he would ride in the mornings around his property, and along the shady trails that lead through neighboring farms and along the river, and he would ride in the open field where he still had jumps set up from the days when his kids learned to ride the horses over them.  And he would practice his jumping, and enjoy the air and feeling of remarkable freedom you get when a horse is carrying you faster than you think ought to be possible, and then flying with easy grace over a log, or a ditch, or an obstacle set up in the field.  And he was right: it was good for him and for the horse.

Since I started to ride a few years ago, I would visit my friend and I’d ride the other horse.  We would ride together through the woods, and down to the river, and along the road, with my dogs alongside us, except when we cantered and the dogs couldn’t keep up, and then we’d stop and wait for them at a turn in the path or at the top of a hill.  Horses live for a good thirty years or so, and my friend’s horses were getting on in years, but we didn’t work them very hard.

Lately my friend was riding a bit more frequently, having reached a point in his life when he could take it a little easier at work.  And although we live at some distance, and so don’t ride together often, we talk regularly to share stories of our riding accomplishments or failures.  And the other day he called.  A few days before, he reported, Moe had stopped eating, which was a worry.  And on the day he called he’d walked out to the barn to check on him, but Moe didn’t look like his old self.  My friend put a lead rope on him to walk him down the long drive that leads to the entrance of the farm – maybe he needed to get out of his stall, out of the barn?

At the end of the drive, he tied Moe up to the fence for a moment to get the mail out of the box.  And when he turned around, Moe was quivering.  The quivering quickly turned into convulsions which sent the chestnut thoroughbred down to the ground, into the ditch that runs beside the drive; the horse was now clearly unable to get up.

My friend went around to the horse’s head, and there he laid down in the ditch next to Moe, and he held his head, and he told him it was OK, he told he would be alright, he told him what a wonderful horse he had been for him and for his kids.  And finally Moe quieted down, and his great sides heaved their last breaths, and his nostrils fluttered as they left him, and he died there with his head in the arms of a man who had owned and ridden that horse for 24 years.

My friend called the vet, and on doing so immediately began to feel guilty: what had he done?!  Had he ridden his horse to death, he wondered?  Should he have just put him out to pasture and not taken him out for those canters through the woods, not jumped over that fallen tree beside the pasture that makes such a perfect jump?  Should he have refused to take me out for rides when I came to visit, because, after all, the horses were getting older?

And the vet looked at my friend and asked him this: Did Moe ever refuse to trot when you asked him?  Did he ever refuse to canter or to gallop?  Did he ever once refuse to jump over that fallen tree, or anything else that you asked him to jump over?

Not once, my friend replied, not once did he refuse.  And my friend had the answer to his worry that he had asked of his horse something that the horse was not willing or able to give.

...

On Good Friday, it seems a trivial thing to compare the death of Jesus to the death of a horse.  The Psalmist reminds us that God “hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse,” but I am not convinced the Psalmist is correct here.

In any case, there is nothing trivial in remembering that spiritually speaking, Jesus carries us through life.  If you have ever fallen to your knees to beg for something in prayer, you know what it feels like to realize that you are counting on Jesus to carry you on his back.  If you have ever found that you are at the limit of your own ability, or patience, or strength, or whatever, and turned to Jesus in desperation, then you know something about how this feels. 

You think we ask horses to do things that we could somehow do ourselves?  Horses have done for mankind things that we are not capable of doing without them.  Many of us don’t turn to Jesus until we realize that we need something done that we are not capable of doing ourselves, and then we ask him to do it.  The Christian faith has thrived because of that remarkable freedom we discover when Jesus carries us with easy grace over obstacles that we know we could never clear on our own, when he propels us forward with a speed and a strength that is quite definitely not our own.

But of course these days Jesus has become nearly as passé as horses have: as much of an anachronism in people’s lives as riding a horse through the streets of Philadelphia.  Which is why it is not, perhaps, so trivial a comparison.  Because in modern, sensible, adult society everybody knows that you don’t grieve for an animal for all that long when it dies, you don’t weep and moan about it, you certainly don’t let it change your life.  You get over it quickly, because it was, after all, only a horse. 

And what’s the difference, in modern, sensible, adult society, between a horse and Jesus?  You think most people expect you to take this Jesus stuff seriously?  You think you are supposed to weep and moan on Good Friday?  You think you are supposed to be any more undone than you would be by the death of an animal, a pet?  You think you are supposed to let the death of Jesus change your life?  In the world we live in, such sensitivities are the domain only of old ladies, and effeminate boys, and a certain kind of pathetic liberal who can’t seem to find a better framework for making sense of the world.

But here we are, dropping to our knees, almost as if we are ready to get down into the ditch and cradle the horse’s head in our arms – or cradle Jesus’ head in our arms, when he has been taken down from the Cross.  It’s almost as if we are trying to remember that remarkable freedom of being carried, supported, lifted high over the obstacle we cannot cross ourselves – even the great abyss of death, at whose gate we are now paused, Christ’s body in our arms, having heaved his last breaths, as they flutter through his nostrils.

…

The second call my friend made, after the vet, was to his neighbor with a backhoe, who came and dug a grave for Moe, right there at the end of the drive, just beside the crepe myrtles that my friend had planted for his daughter’s wedding.  And here, I pray, the comparison does become trivial.  Grass will grow, as it must, over the grave of my friend’s horse.

But as we see in our mind’s eye, Jesus’ body wrapped in its shroud, and lowered into its grave, we might ask ourselves, what have we done?  The question is implied in our liturgy today: what have we done to you, O Lord?

And a voice answers us: did I ever fail to carry you when you needed me to?  Did I ever fail to gallop for you?  Did I ever refuse to sail over an obstacle with speed and grace that you yourself lacked, carrying you on my back?

No, my child, I never did.  And fear not, for neither will I refuse to carry you over the abyss, and past the grave and gate of death.  For I have never refused you before, and I never will.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Good Friday 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Every Stone

In the late 1950’s, the poet Richard Wilbur was approached by the composer Richard Winslow to write a poem that he could set for an upcoming Christmas concert at Wesleyan University. Wilbur, who was a relative newcomer on the poetry scene at that time but who would eventually become the Poet Laureate of the United States, accepted the invitation, put pen to paper, and wrote a poem that he called A Christmas Hymn. In his recounting of this story, Wilbur says that his friend Winslow set this new poem for solo voice and harpsichord in a style that reminded him, the poet recalls with a grin, of John Cage. For all of the non-John Cage fans or scholars out there in the congregation, this means that the music was probably not particularly warm and fuzzy, and it was not, apparently, exactly what Wilbur himself had in mind.

But in the early 1980’s, the organist, composer and General Theological Seminary professor David Hurd found the poem A Christmas Hymn and took Wilbur at his word, setting the text as a hymn. He named his new hymn tune after Lily Rogers, his choir director when he was a boy soprano at Saint Gabriel’s Church on Long Island, a woman whose middle name was Andújar. Hurd’s hymn, which is quite warm and fuzzy with plush harmonies and gently rocking rhythms, quickly found its way into The Hymnal 1982. You can find it right in front of you – Hymn 104, familiarly known as “A stable lamp is lighted.”

Now if you were to look up “A stable lamp is lighted,” which you’re welcome to do now or after communion, when we will sing it together, you will notice that, true to the poem’s original title, this hymn is found in the Christmas section of the hymnal, wedged right between “A child is born in Bethlehem” and “God rest you merry, gentlemen.” And you may wonder why we, sitting here with palms in our hands, ox-blood vestments on our shoulders, and Holy Week on our mind, are delving into the Christmas hymns. As if there weren’t enough options in the Lent and Holy Week sections to keep us flush in hymns from now until next Sunday. So why Christmas in March? Now for some of you, this hymn is like an dear old friend, and you know that the reason we sing this Christmas Eve hymn on Palm Sunday is because of the hymn’s gently rocking refrain. For Wilbur took this refrain for his poem not from the story of a manger with shepherds and angels, but from the story of a procession with cloaks and a colt.

The poem’s refrain comes from the moment in today’s Gospel when Jesus silences the Pharisees who are anxious about the noise level of the crowd by telling them that even if these crowds were silent, “the stones would shout out.” These stones are the crux of Wilbur’s poetry, the heartbeat pulsing at the center of each verse, where “every stone shall cry, and every stone shall cry.” Wilbur knew the truth of today’s liturgy: that what is true at the end is also true at the beginning, that the Passion and the Palms and the Incarnation are one story, and that this story and these stones have something to tell us.

“A stable lamp is lighted/Whose glow shall wake the sky;/The stars shall bend their voices,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry,/And straw like gold shall shine;/A barn shall harbor heaven,/A stall become a shrine.” First, Christmas, where the gentle rocking is the rocking of a woman, a girl, really, cradling her miracle of a son in her humble, holy arms. In his presence, the cold cave is transformed, the straw shining like gold in the lamplight, the stars sending their heavenly voices down past the angels singing peace on earth, goodwill toward men, down, down to touch the place where heaven and earth are met together in this boy child. In his presence, every stone shall cry out with quiet wonder, the hewn-out stone of the manger where his tiny body is laid to rest on a blanket of straw, the stone of the cave walls that hold the holy family close and safe, the stones of the shepherds’ fields and of all of Creation that welcome this newborn child home to the world that he himself has made.

“This child through David’s city/Shall ride in triumph by;/The palm shall strew its branches,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry;/Though heavy, dull, and dumb,/And lie within the roadway/To pave his kingdom come.” This child, a man really, now winds his way from Bethany to Jerusalem, down a hill and up again, rocking back and forth on the broad, swayed back of a donkey. And in his presence, children with their mothers, old men and their sons, the broken and the whole, the weary and the zealous, all strew his path with smiles and shouts and robes and a riot of spiky branches. In his presence, every stone shall cry out with utter joy, the stones on the hillsides that shine green in the sun, the stones in the road that bends through the valley, the stones of the city wall that cause this man to weep with the desire to open his arms up wide, wide enough to wrap up the whole city, wide enough to hold the world in his saving embrace.   

“Yet he shall be forsaken,/And yielded up to die;/The sky shall groan and darken,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry,/For stony hearts of men:/God’s blood upon the spearhead,/God’s love refused again.” God’s love refused, the love that has been made flesh, this man, a victim, really, now handed over, his embrace utterly rejected, outstretched arms smacked away and pinned down with nails to an old wooden cross. And when he is raised up high on that cross, the women who have followed him faithfully sink to the ground, rocking to and fro in each other’s arms, keening and wailing and waiting for their teacher, their friend, their son die. And when he does, the heavens that once sang in their courses sag and droop in disbelief at what Creation has done to the Creator. And in the presence of this, every stone shall cry out in pain, the stones of Golgotha that are broken and bloodied by so much suffering and death, the stones of fear and hatred that sit in the place of men’s souls, the stones of grief that mark the loss, the death, the end.

“But now, as at the ending,/The low is lifted high;/The stars shall bend their voices,/And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry/in Praises of the Child/By whose descent among us/The worlds are reconciled.” This reconciling Child, a man, a victim, a Savior, really, has shown us through his cross and Passion that this end has always been, from the very beginning, from that birth which led to death which led to life, the rocking forward from incarnation to passion to resurrection. Now the songs of the stars are of peace on earth and peace in heaven, of two worlds made one, once and for all. And in the presence of this song, every stone shall cry out with love, the stones of the tomb ringing with emptiness, the stone that was rejected now made the chief cornerstone, the stone of Death, so heavy, dull, and dumb, lifted away and polished so that it shines like the sun.

But we get ahead of ourselves, speaking of those Sunday morning stones. They will come in due time. For today, hear what the words of this poem and the music of this hymn have to say, that there is no stone that cannot sing. There is no stone that cannot be softened, enlivened, shaped to shout God’s purposes – not the stones of the manger, not the stones underfoot on the Jerusalem road, not the stones looming on the hill of crucifixion, not the stones waiting at the tomb, not the stone that calcified around Judas’ heart, not the stone that set up shop where Peter’s courage used to be, not the stone of the centurion’s unforgiving authority. There is no stone that God cannot soften, encourage, cajole to cry out that Jesus Christ is Lord. So if there are places in you that are hardened by fear or by sorrow, do not fear. If there are places in you that resist Christ’s offer of transformation, be of good cheer. And this week, may you find yourself singing. For here, in the presence of this child, man, victim, Savior, even the stones will shout out. Every stone shall cry. Perhaps even you and me.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Palm Sunday, 24 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The Extravagant Sister

Two people: one man and one woman, both with gifts worth a small fortune. They take up these gifts and use them to excess, pouring them out lavishly, spreading them around so that all is spent. At the end, nothing is left – not one drop remains. Last week it was the parable of a man, a son who wants his inheritance even though his father is still alive. Please, father, he says, can’t you just pretend that you are dead already and give me what I’m owed? And the father, remarkably, agrees, giving his son half of his wealth, wealth that the son then wastes utterly on stuff and nonsense. This week it is the story of a woman, a sister, who takes a pound of burial oil and pours it over the feet of her honored dinner guest until a fog of pungent perfume hangs in the air and a year’s wages lie in a slippery puddle on the floor. Last week it was the parable of the prodigal son. This week – the story of prodigal sister?  

But no, there’s something about that word “prodigal” that doesn’t seem quite right. True, there are some similarities between the sister and the son, but their stories feel so different. The son’s waste comes from pure selfishness, while the sister’s comes from selfless generosity. The son ends up desperate and lonely and hungry enough to eat pig slop, never a good thing, while the sister is defended and affirmed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which is always a plus. We know that we’re meant to disapprove of the son’s actions while heartily approve those of the sister. So could we really use the same word to describe them both?

Now it cannot be denied that the sister’s actions do seem to match up pretty well with the textbook definition of the word “prodigal.” Her exhausting an entire bottle of nard on one man’s feet could certainly be described as “wasteful or recklessly lavish.” This is, of course, exactly what has Judas tsking and twitching in the corner. Spikenard, at least in its pure form, is expensive, and Judas is all too happy to do the calculations in his head – one pound of nard, at the current market value, with tax and the vendor’s markup – why, this oil’s worth 300 denarii! That’s a year’s wages, he thinks, an entire year’s wages that I could have used to line my pockets – I mean, that we could have used to feed the poor, or something.

It seems a perfectly reasonable argument, and a perfectly good reason to call Mary a prodigal sister. But of course, Mary isn’t interested in being reasonable; she wants to be expansive, over-the-top – Mary wants to be the extravagant sister. Extravagant. Which of course also means wasteful, but somehow it just feels better. And there is, in fact, more to this word “extravagant” than just wastefulness – just as there is more to Mary’s story than just how much she paid for the nard.  The word “extravagant” comes from two Latin roots: “extra” meaning “outside of” and “vagari” meaning “to wander.” Interesting, isn’t it, that a word that has come to mean merely wasteful was born out of words that suggest something that travels outside the bounds, something that goes beyond the limits, pushes beyond worldly common sense.

And Mary’s extravagance is about being outside the bounds in far more profound ways that than simply the high cost of oil. To get at the heart of this kind of extravagance, we must start with the extravagance of the smell. Not to put too fine a point on it, but spikenard stinketh. Fans of nard will say that it smells earthy or musk, but others compare it to the sharp reek of goats or, of all things, the funky tang of feet. And it’s strong – it’s eye-wateringly, mouth-puckeringly pungent. The release of that much oil into what was presumably a small space would have made even the most determinedly polite guest put down her pita and wonder how long she could get away with holding her breath. When Mary fearlessly unleashes this scent into the room, she is showing true extravagance, making a gesture that is uncomfortably outside the bounds, that dares her guests to complain, to ask why. Why nard? And why now?

But the extravagance, the outside-the-bounds-ness, of nard is not limited to its pungency. Because the scent of nard is not just strong; it is also the scent of death. Nard was primarily used as an oil for anointing the dead, a strong perfume that was mixed with other spices to ward off the smell of decay. So not only does Mary fill the room with a smell that could have choked a horse – and may have even smelled like one – she also fills the room with the smell of death. And in that room sits Lazarus, her newly-resurrected brother, who had lain in that same smell for four still days. There sits Martha, her sister, who had of course been the one to go to the market to buy the nard for his burial. Death, the smell of death, the memory of death, is all around. This is too much, Mary, we want to say, too much money spent, too much smell to handle, too many memories to endure, too much fear of what has happened and what is to come. This is truly outside the bounds – Mary, how can you wish to take us there?

But Mary does want to take us there, because it is there that she shows us the true core of her extravagance – not the money, or the smell, or even the memories and allusions, but the true extravagance of Mary’s great faith. Mary knows that Jesus’ being in Bethany is dangerous. She knows Jesus’ predictions about his arrest and crucifixion; she knows that the chief priests and Pharisees have ordered the people to turn Jesus in. She knows what they all face in these six short days before the Passover – and yet…and yet she does not flinch. She doesn’t pretend that everything is business as usual, she doesn’t hide away in fear or try to sell her nard to finance Jesus’ getaway caravan – she faces the fact of Jesus’ impending suffering and death and does not look away. The authorities are hunting Jesus? Of course they are. They seek his life? Of course. They want him dead? Fine. He will be dead, he’s almost dead already. And so she takes the oil that she had been saving for his burial and instead chooses to anoint him right then. She anoints him as he is, a man with a living body that is about to be pierced, a man with beautiful, weary feet that are about to be nailed to a tree, a man who said I am resurrection and I am life and then called Lazarus out of his own spicy tomb. She anoints him without fear, for she knows that Death cannot conquer this man, that Death cannot conquer period. She has seen herself how those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy, and she is ready to sing. This is the heart of Mary’s extravagance, that she has a depth of faith to conjure up the specter of Death only to laugh in its face. This is faith that is truly beyond the bounds, that is utterly and beautifully extravagant.          

What if you and I were to take these last two weeks of Lent and live extravagantly? Not with Guinness and shamrock shakes and Irish potatoes, but with faith? What if we were to intentionally live outside the bounds that the world places on things like compassion and mercy, inclusion and hospitality? What if we were to love extravagantly, even our enemies, even ourselves, even those people whose political perspectives, we think, just stink to high heaven? What if we were to worship extravagantly, coming to church not once or twice but five days in a row during the long walk of Holy Week? What if we were to serve extravagantly, at the soup bowl or with the altar guild or at the Saint James School, or serve your housebound neighbor downstairs, or the homeless woman who hangs out on your stoop, or refugees on the other side of the world? What if we were to give extravagantly, or forgive extravagantly? What if we were to sing extravagantly? What if we were to speak the truth with love extravagantly? What if we were to rest extravagantly, remembering the gift of Sabbath and keeping that day holy, holy, holy? And what if we were to trust extravagantly, to believe the extravagant claims that we make here – that Death has no dominion, that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, that God is doing a new thing, and that those who go out weeping will come in again with joy? What if we were to live utterly extravagantly, knowing, trusting that God will not see this gift as a waste. For this living may be outside the bounds of human expectations, but it is never outside the bounds of the expansive, holy, beautiful, wondrous kingdom of God. So go – be extravagant. Be an extravagant daughter, an extravagant son of God; pour out all that you have in the name of a truly extravagant God who gave his only begotten Son that you and I may have life and have it abundantly. So go, live it extravagantly.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

17 March 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia