Leo's Demise

From time to time I am compelled to give you all a report on Leo, the scaredy-cat of the Rectory.  Leo was brought to me about six years ago as a terrified kitten who’d been found by someone, shivering behind a dumpster, apparently abandoned by his mother.  He has lived these past six years in fear and isolation in the Rectory.  Change of any kind is a terror to him.  Visitors send him into quick flight.  One dog was bad enough, but when the second dog entered the equation four years ago, Leo probably should have been medicated or sought therapy.  Fortunately the Rectory is large, and over these six years Leo has claimed refugee status in one room or another, finding various sofas to live behind, beds to quiver under, and closets to hide out in.

Leo has become to me an icon of hopelessness and fear.  I can only conclude that he is a deeply un-Christian cat (sweet though his disposition has always been).  He stands in stark contrast to the two Labradors who live in the Rectory with me in a state of profound hope: constantly expectant that someone is coming to visit them, that they may be taken out for a walk, that they may find a morsel of food on the ground, that they may find a puddle to play in, a fountain to frolic in, a stream to swim in.  To the Labradors, treasures lie all around, and they give their hearts easily to each and every one of them.  Their lamps are lit, so to speak; they are dressed for action.  The little domes of their heads can sometimes be spotted in the windows of my office, as they wait for their Master (or anyone at all, really) to return, fasten his belt, and have them sit down to eat.

But Leo cowers in fear, (who knows where?): terrified of what the next footfall might bring.  No treasure possesses his heart, so it thumps hopelessly, nervously, ironically in his little leonine chest.

For some weeks I have been preparing to bring you sad news about Leo – uncertain about just how to do so.  Six weeks ago when I was traveling abroad, I emailed Kent John and asked him to check on Leo.  His reply brought concern: no sign that Leo was eating his food or using his litter box.  Some weeks previously the room Leo had been hiding out in for the past several years had been invaded by painters.  This incursion sent the cat in flight to the fourth floor, taking refuge in the old chapel up there, behind a pew.  But now, no sign of him was to be found.

On my return home, I searched the house: looking especially carefully in the basement, where I found a dead rat, but no Leo, and no sign that the carnage was his work.  I put food in his bowl in the chapel on the fourth floor, I went around opening closet doors to make sure he had not been shut in.  I returned again and again to the basement, calling his name, looking behind boxes, but still no sign of the cat.  I checked the fourth floor, too, but nothing.

After a month I was worried.  After five weeks, despairing.  And by the sixth week I had given up hope, and have been wondering how to break the news to you that Leo is gone.  Who knows where?  Did he flee out the back door between someone’s feet in a state of terror?  Did he slink out the front door while workmen were coming and going?  Might he come home again?  After all these weeks?

Of course I felt guilty.  I felt I have been a poor steward of one of God’s creatures – one who needed me more than most.  But I consoled myself with the reassurance that really it was Leo’s own issues that got the better of him, not my neglect.  It was his inability to adjust to the world around him – a world in which he was loved and cared for (even the Labradors would have liked to befriend him).  But he could find no hope, no treasure in which to place the trust of his heart.  “Do not be afraid” – the scriptures say, but these words would be an idle insult to a cat whose life was defined by fear and the avoidance of nearly anything that would get too close, anything or anyone who might protect him and care for him.  Leo’s disappearance was nobody’s fault but Leo’s, who chose his own fate when he walked out of the sanctuary of his Master’s house.

But still, a sense of sadness and responsibility rested heavily on my shoulders as I began to accept that Leo was gone, and hoped that you all would forgive me for not taking better care of him.

On Thursday I had not yet determined to share this news with you when I walked into the Rectory after Morning Prayer.  As soon as the door was shut behind me I heard a little squeak of some kind.  I stopped to listen.  Yes, it was either a squeak or a peep. In fact, it sounded familiar.  I opened the door to the basement.  “Leo?”  I called out.

And in reply came not a squeak or a peep, but a cry, a plaintive wail that I know well.

“Leo!” I shouted, as I skipped down the stairs, turned on the light and stooped under the ductwork.  His loud squawking moan wouldn’t stop now – calling to me out of equal parts fear and need. 

There was a wadded up sheet of plastic – a drop cloth the painters left behind – stuffed behind an old, immovable iron safe.  No movement there, but unquestionably the location of the cat.  I brushed aside the plastic sheet, and there was Leo!  He darted behind the safe, and continued to cry.

I raced up the stairs to the fourth floor to get his food and water bowl and his litter box.  I danced down the stairs to bring them to him, I was singing his name out in reassurance: “Leo!  Leo!  Leo!”  I placed his food down, and his water, and put his litter box nearby.  And my heart raced with joy.

He crept out from beside the safe far enough to allow me to scratch him behind the ears.  I dared not pick him up yet, since he doesn’t much like being held in the best of circumstances.

And I rejoiced to have found the lost cat, to know he was safe and alive, to be able to feed him, and do what I could to care for him.

I have to report to you that at the moment, Leo is still making his home in the basement.  I suspect he will stay there for a long time.  Maybe it’s the best place for him.  He can hide as much as he wants, and steal upstairs to patrol the rest of the house under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night if he so desires.

And so, although once he was lost, but now he’s found, Leo will probably remain an icon of hopelessness and fear.  His six-week sojourn in darkness and his miraculous return do not seem to have put a treasure in his heart; he shows no signs of desiring to move upstairs and live among the hopeful creatures of the household.

And, of course, this story would be only mildly amusing if not for the sad reality that so many people live their lives the way Leo does: captives of hopelessness and fear.  For some it is self-pity, or jealousy; for others it’s the result of addiction or co-dependence; for others it grief they cannot let go of; for others it’s the constant worry of scarcity in a world that has never provided them with anything other than plenty; for some it’s self-loathing, for others silly pride; for some it is greed of one kind or another.  There are a host of reasons to decide to live in fear and hopelessness – to live, as it were, under the bed, behind the sofa, deep in a closet, or in the darkest recesses of the basement – even if you have friends and family who love you and care for you and would do what they could to help you.  To live this way is to live without a treasure to trust your heart to.

And the truth of the matter is that there is only one Treasure worth entrusting your heart to.  There is only one Master worth waiting up for till he comes.  There is only one Light who will conquer the darkness.  There is only one Spirit to fill you with hope.

Most of us have our moments when we flee to the basement, and cower there in fear.  But the lesson of Leo is this: if you must hide in the basement, at least do not run for the door.  Do not take flight through the back door, or slink out the front when no one is watching.  At least stay in the basement till you find some way to overcome your fear and you are brave enough to squeak or to peep: to make the first sounds of a prayer.

Listen for footfalls on the floor above you as you hear the door creak open.  And do not be afraid to call out when your Master is looking for you – as he always is.

Do not be afraid, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom – yes, not just the basement, but the entire kingdom!

So open your mouth and wail, open your heart and cry out, reach out your paws and embrace the One for whom you have been waiting, although you did not know it. 

Blessed are you when he comes and finds you, and rescues you from your fear and your hopelessness, which at least kept you awake for this moment.

And for God’s sake, remember that you are not cat!  So when you have found this treasure worth giving your heart to, for the love of God, come on up out of the basement, and live!  For in him is treasure worth an entire kingdom, and it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.  Claim him, and him alone, as your treasure – who calls you out of darkness into his marvelous light – for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

11 August 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Beauty and Holiness

I wonder what Jesus looked like when he prayed. Did he stand or sit…or kneel? Did he face east or west, turn to the sun or to the sea? Did he walk about as he prayed, matching long strides to the pace of his prayer? Did he take off his shoes or cover his head? Did he hold himself still, or did he daven and silently move his lips? Did he chant or sing or hum? Did he close his eyes and bow his head? Did he smile, or frown, or weep? Did he begin his prayers in silence or with a sigh? Did he stretch his arms to heaven and say, O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you, in the name of the Father, and of me, and of the Holy Spirit? No, perhaps not.

What did Jesus look like when he prayed? The Gospels are fairly mute on the subject. There is, of course, the moment on the mount of transfiguration when Jesus’ garments began to glow white like no amount of sunshine and Clorox could ever bleach them. But other than that one description of Jesus in prayer, the Gospels leave us guessing. They do often tell us where Jesus prayed, that he liked to pray in places that were set apart and secluded – a mountain, the wilderness, places of privacy where the Holy Spirit had enough space to take wing. But what Jesus looked like when he prayed there? We are left only to imagine.

Today’s Gospel reading is equally silent on the subject. Luke tells us that Jesus is off praying “in a certain place,” perhaps one of these deserted spots, away from the maddening crowds. But it seems that this particular “certain place” is not so very far away, because the disciples can clearly see him. And they are watching him closely. Look! they whisper to one another. He’s praying again. Just look at him. I wish I could pray like that. He looks like he is full of peace, full of beauty and holiness. I want to look just like that when I pray.   

So when Jesus returns to the group, they ask him to show them how. Lord, teach us to pray, they say, the way that John taught his disciples. Now scripture again has nothing to say about how John the Baptist prayed, but I would imagine that his prayer practices were as severe as his wardrobe. Find a rocky spot in the desert, I can hear him saying, and kneel there until you can feel the sharpness of your sin. If you are ever unsure of your need to repent, walk into the desert and sweat a while. Hairshirts are always helpful tools to keep you from being too comfortable with the riches of the flesh, and always, always remember to say grace before tucking in to your locusts and wild honey.

Who knows what John the Baptist taught his disciples about prayer, and who knows what Jesus’ disciples are expecting when they ask him for some prayer instruction. But one thing is for sure – the disciples want to pray like Jesus. They want to look like him; they want to be like him. They want to be world-class pray-ers, Olympic athletes of supplication, Greek gods of petition. Teach us to pray, Lord, so that we can be really good at this, as good as you are, beautiful and serene and holy, holy, holy, just like you.

Jesus, of course, knows what they are asking. He knows exactly what they are looking for. He knows what it is that they want from him, but he also knows what it is that they need from him. So instead of offering helpful hints about the seven habits of highly effective pray-ers, he just smiles and says, okey dokey – or however you say okey dokey in Aramaic – this, my children, is how you pray.

Father. Hallowed be your name. And with those five simple words, Jesus changes everything. Father. Hallowed be your name, and instantly Jesus takes the focus away from the pray-er to the pray-ee. Because prayer, Jesus knows, is not primarily about our holiness; it is first and foremost about the holiness of God. God is the holy one, the numinous one. The disciples may have been asking about how to be holy themselves, but Jesus knows all holiness, all beauty, all prayer begins with God, the Holy One, the one whose very name is so holy it cannot be spoken, whose being is so holy it can only be expressed in the sound of sheer silence, whose presence is so holy that we cannot bear to look upon it. Take off your shoes, Jesus tells his disciples, for your God is holy, and the place of prayer is always holy ground.

But Jesus’ teaching does not stop there, because he then goes on to show his disciples – including you and me, of course – that this holiness does not exist for its own sake. It is not a disembodied, disinterested holiness; it is holiness on your side, holiness for you. That holiness is your Father, your Mother. That holiness is closer to you than your own heart. That Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One is extremely, intimately, inexhaustibly interested in you. And so ask, and your prayers will be answered. Ask for bread enough, for food enough, for patience and endurance and strength enough. Ask for whatever you need, ask again and again, ask and seek and knock, for our God is holy and righteous and will give you whatever you need, not because of your holiness, but because of His. God will give you whatever you need, not because you prayed well, or enough, or at the right time of day or in the right posture or with the right words, but because God is God and can do no other.

God can do no other – including giving us anything less than a good gift. Jesus promises us that God will respond to our prayers, but he does not promise that God will give us what we ask for in the form that we would prefer the very second we’re looking for it. God actually knows better than that. God will not give us more stuff when what we need is more space. God will not give us a quick fix when what we need is a slow returning. God will not take us out of the wilderness when what we need is to see that he is in the wilderness with us. God will not even give us an instant cure when what we need is an enduring healing. This is good news, of course, but it is not always easy. It’s difficult to lay aside our own expectations about what God’s response will look like or when it will come. We can start to imagine that God has gone deaf and dumb, when really the problem is that while he’s reaching out to offer fish and eggs, we’re looking around for snakes and scorpions.

But the more we pray Father, Hallowed be your name, the better we get at seeing the gifts that God offers. The more we pray Father, Hallowed be your name, the more holiness we begin to see all around us. For the holiness of God cannot be contained. It spreads out and around, landing on everything like sunshine dripping down the soft leaves of summer. It is a saturating holiness that fills in the tiniest cracks and makes even the rests between the notes pregnant with the presence of the Almighty. It is a holiness that rubs off and rubs in, even into you and in me.

When we pray Father, Hallowed be your name, you and I actually become the holiness that we seek. When our eyes are pining for the beauty of God, when we turn our faces to the "splendor of Goddes grace," we actually begin to look like heaven. begin to look like what we’re looking for. “And every gentle heart,” poet Robert Bridges writes, “that burns with true desire/Is lit from eyes that mirror part/Of that celestial fire.” And that is what you look like when you pray. You look beautiful. You are beautiful when you pray. You are beautiful when you say Father, Hallowed be your name. You are beautiful when you join with angels and archangels to sing Holy, Holy, Holy with all of the heavenly choirs. You are beautiful when you sing “Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face,” yes, even you in the back who thinks that God would probably rather you not sing in public, let me tell you, you’re wrong, God loves it when you sing, especially hymns out of The Hymnal 1982. When you sing, when you pray, you are so beautiful, filled with the holiness of God, afire with the light, the truth, the beauty that the world so pines to see. You are so beautiful that someone out there, who is looking for a home or looking for a hope might just look at you and say, wow. I want to pray like she does. I want to look like that. Teach me how to do that. So tell them. Father. Hallowed be your name. Invite them to pray in the beauty of holiness. Alleluia, alleluia! Praise with us the God of grace.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

July 28, 2013

The Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Jackson, Mississippi

What's It All About?

The other night I held in my arms the infant child of good friends: a child who may not have long to live.  The details are unimportant; suffice it to say that the diagnosis is severe, and the prognosis dire.  But my friends have determined to love their child with every ounce of their being as long as he is with them in this world.  And as I held him in my arms and looked down at his sweet, innocent face, and saw what a beautiful child he is, I was hit by a sense of how unfair it is.  I’m sure his parents have had more than a moment or two of such feelings.  And when you confront those feelings while you are holding in your arms a beautiful baby boy, you might ask yourself how you can ever trust God, who has tethered this child so tenuously to the life that he gave him.

If I were a consultant, and if God hired me, I’d have to tell God that one of his problems in the world today is that so many people don’t trust him.  And it’s not because they are cynics, or contrarians; it’s because there is plenty of cause in every day life to wonder whether or not God is trustworthy.  I won’t even posit a list of suggestions – you have all the material you need, I’m sure, to come up with your own.  Let the infant boy who snuggled against my chest the other night provide sufficient cause to wonder whether or not God is trustworthy.

We hear Jesus today teaching his disciples how to pray – his simple prayer of reverence, obedience, sustenance, and forgiveness.  And when Jesus goes on to expand on his teaching he makes this promising statement: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find it; knock and the door will be open for you.”

Oh, if only this were true!  But you know already that the prayers of my friends were not answered when they heard the news that their child would not be long for this world.  (And, of course, you know of your own unanswered prayers.)  Such bad news has the power to rob a child of his beauty, to make it seem as though this child - who cannot suckle as other children do, who is not growing the way that other children do, who cannot develop the way that other children do – is a less beautiful work of God’s own fingers.  Because what parent does not hope and pray for a perfect child?  To borrow from the Gospel: you pray to God for an egg, and then for a perfect child to be born from that egg; you trust in God not to give you a scorpion, so to speak.

This, of course, is what we assume that God is doing when imperfect children are born, as they are every day of the week: we assume that God is giving a scorpion, when an egg – and a healthy, perfect child emerging from it – was what was asked for.  How can you trust such a God?  This seems like a fair question when you are veering toward resentment that the child in question is so imperfect, so fatally flawed, and, therefore, such a failed attempt on God’s part to meet your expectations of what your child should be, must be.

And it is true that the child I held the other day is quite literally, fatally flawed.  And as long as I can see him only as such a child, I am doomed to resent God because of him, bound to conclude that God is not trustworthy, because he has failed to deliver on the promise, failed to give what was asked for, failed to disclose what was searched for, failed to open the door of happiness that was knocked at. 

My friends flirted with this resentment – I expect they still do from time to time, maybe even on a daily basis.  But, they also decided to see their child differently: not as the embodiment of a fatal flaw, and as an unanswered prayer, but as a child who bears the imprint of God’s own fingers.  Which is to say that my friends began to see their son as God sees him.  And they also decided to let God decide (so to speak) how long or how short this child’s time on this earth will be, knowing that, painful though it is for them, it doesn’t make their son any less beautiful.

For weeks and weeks, I could see almost none of this, despite my long conversations with them, and my daily prayers for them, and my desire to empathize with them.  For weeks and weeks my only thoughts of this child were gripped by worry, and anxiety, and fear.  For weeks and weeks, I had never actually picked up the child and held him in my own arms. 

And then, I did.

And when I looked at him, and felt him snuggling there – generously allowing himself to be taken from his mother’s arms – I could see nothing but a beautiful baby boy.  I could not see his fatal flaw (though I know it’s there).  For a few minutes, or more, I was privileged to see him, perhaps, as God sees him: as a beautiful child who needs the love and the care of his parents, even if it will be for a much shorter time than a supposedly more perfect child would require.

Of course it is not so simple – life never is.  It is complicated, and frightening, and painful.  And it is enough to make you want to give up on the whole notion of trusting God.

But when you are holding a child in your arms whose whole future depends on a the grace of God, what else can you do but trust the One who made him in the first place not to forsake him, not to forsake you?  And what makes him different, in that respect, from any other child (or from you and me) – whose whole future depends on God?

Who or what you put you trust in is, in part, a matter of what you see around you, and how you evaluate whatever it is you see.  And I admit that I found it very hard to trust God about this child – and I would not have blamed my friends for giving up on trusting God either – before I held their boy in my arms, and saw him for what he truly is.  Which is not an imperfect child whose fatal flaw is cause for worry, anxiety, and fear for those who love him, but a perfect imprint of some beautifully imperfect aspect of God, who, tragically, cannot survive long in this world.

This is not to fall back on the old platitude that God makes no mistakes.  Rather, it is to say, that if I can see the beauty in a child – any child – can you imagine what God can see?

For it would seem that there is a part of God that has a hole in his heart, and a malformed brain, and a disfigured smile, and undeveloped lungs, and a hundred thousand imperfections like the imperfections borne by the imperfect children, who nevertheless bear God’s image in the world – if only for a fleeting moment (or less) before their light goes out and they are known no more.

Of this we can be assured because it is, of course, God’s own story: his perfect Son: beaten, bloodied, and killed so as to become an unrecognizable image of the perfection whence he came, and yet the perfect icon of it.  How can his lifeless form, hanging on a cross, elicit trust in the One who sent him into the world for this?  Which is an eminently reasonable thing to ask as you contemplate the crucified Lord, and wonder what sort of God could countenance this cruelty.  And you may continue to see it this way, and struggle to put your trust in God… until the day you are willing to hold Christ in your arms, to cradle his head against your chest, to welcome him into your life – as either infant or corpse – and look at him, and see him as God sees him: as a child of beauty, who bears God’s own perfect image, because in his bloodied brokenness, and in his death he has become the perfect image of God’s love.

If I were a consultant, I would tell God not to operate this way.  I would tell God to operate more like Toyota, making sure to give people exactly what they want: perfectly rendered answers to their prayers.  And like most advice from consultants, my advice to God would make perfectly good sense.  I’d tell God to make sure that people found him at least as trustworthy as a car manufacturer, for instance.

But God’s ways are deeper than my ways, his thoughts are more complex than my thoughts.

And the strange thing is that when you cradle an imperfect child in your arms, about whom you have known so far only worry, anxiety, and fear, and you look down into his face, and see him for the beautiful boy that he is, then you begin to feel that maybe God can be trusted, even in such dire circumstances, even though you cannot explain why this is happening, or what it’s all about.  But you choose to trust - which only makes sense when you are holding this deeply imperfect life in your arms, and you can see not only that he is beautiful, but also, that you love him.  It is only in love that we discover that even the imperfect is the answer to our prayers, the object we were searching for, and the answer to the door on which we knocked. 

And the really painful part, is that having discovered this truth – having seen the perfect image of God even in an imperfect child – we remember that he will not be long for this world (which is as it must be), we will have to let him go, give him up, trust in God, which has become so much harder since we learned to see him as he truly is – as God sees him - and to love him.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

28 July 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia