Climb High, Sleep Low

Fr. Mullen on an acclimatization hike on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, July 2016

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain.  (Mt. 17:1)

Everybody knows that the air is thinner at high altitude.  What this actually means, as I understand it, is that the barometric pressure is lower at higher altitude, so the air is less compressed, therefore any given volume of air contains fewer molecules overall, including oxygen, so when you breathe you take in less oxygen, which accounts for about 21% of the ingredients in air.  What this means is that you have to breathe a bit more quickly and more deeply to draw in more oxygen, although this biological response is actually insufficient to allow the body to acclimatize to high altitude.

An old adage articulates the method by which mountain climbers in high altitudes need to acclimatize: climb high, sleep low.  If you climb high at, say, elevations above 10,000 feet, where this kind of thing becomes an issue, you begin to stress your body in the thinner air, signaling that it needs to do something to adapt to the situation.  The best way for the body to do this is to produce more red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the entire body.

Say you are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, for instance, which will take you (if you reach the summit) to a height of 19,341 feet above sea level.  One day’s climb might take you as high as 14,000 feet, but you might make camp that night at a lower place on the mountain where the elevation is only 13,300 feet.  At 14,000 feet, your body got the message that it needs to make more red blood cells in order to better distribute the oxygen your body needs, but it will have an easier time making these new red blood cells while you sleep at the lower altitude that night.  By morning, you’ll be better prepared to climb to greater heights.  And, God willing, this way you will make it to the summit with your wits about you.  Or so I’ve heard.

The traditional location of the account we heard in the Gospel this morning of Jesus’ Transfiguration, in the sight of Peter and James and John, is Mount Tabor, which ascends to a soaring height of 1,886 feet – a mere 17,455 feet below the peak of Kilimanjaro.   But who am I to make comparisons?  Some New Testament scholars have suggested that a different mountain, Mount Hermon, is a more likely location for the transfiguration for precisely the reason that it is a much higher mountain: 9,232 feet.  At that elevation Peter, James, and John might just have been in danger of a nose-bleed.  But neither the apostles nor Jesus, (nor Moses, nor Elijah, for that matter) would have had to worry about climbing high and sleeping low.  They’d have been in safe territory, well below 10,000 feet.  And yet, I wonder if we learn something about this mysterious mountaintop experience if we take into account the old climbers’ adage to climb high and sleep low.

The event of the Transfiguration is notoriously resistant to easy interpretation.  It is usually taken to be highly symbolic – but what does the transfiguration symbolize?  There Jesus stands, his face shining like the sun, in the presence of the ancient representatives of the Law and the Prophets.  And…?  What?  There is the voice from the overshadowing cloud: “This is my Son; listen to him!”  But no words come from Jesus then for anyone to listen to, except (eventually) the order to tell no one yet of what they have seen.  Is he kidding?  Tell no one about this transfiguring light?  Share no description of this mystical vision?  Repeat to no one those divine words?  Exclaim to no one, in voices hushed or loud, what it felt like to be there…  in that Presence!?!

Peter is often mocked for his reaction to the moment (“If you wish I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,”) as though the rest of us have a better idea of how to respond to this event.  But over the years I haven’t heard many better ideas.

So, what if we remember the climber’s adage to climb high and sleep low?

If you had to adopt a slogan for the Christian life, you might think that a good one could be the inverse of that adage: Climb low, but sleep high!  Which is to say that we sometimes think of the Christian faith as a system that promises the high reward of heaven after a life of struggle on earth.  Don’t worry about the trials and tribulations of this life, this way of thinking goes, for the promises of heavenly paradise will make it all worthwhile.  We may climb low while we live on earth, but we will sleep high in the celestial courts!  But maybe the Transfiguration is meant to challenge that way of seeing things.

Perhaps this high ascent is how God puts stress on the system, so to speak, signaling that something is going to have to be different as we go forward from here.  After all, it will not be long, from this point, before Jesus is leading his disciples toward Jerusalem, and his Passion, and his Death, and his Resurrection, and his Ascension into heaven.  Perhaps God the Father leads Jesus to this mountaintop to begin the process of acclimatization, symbolically speaking.  But since Jesus’ Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension are all intended for us, not for his benefit, it is important that Peter and James and John go with him, as our representatives, to begin the process of acclimatization for us.

At a symbolic level, it makes sense for us to think about climbing high and sleeping low if we believe that Jesus actually has someplace for us to go, something for us to do, and that when we follow him we are called to go higher than our other daily challenges require.  Perhaps, the point of the Transfiguration is actually all about the altitude, all about climbing high.  And the light, and Moses and Elijah, and the voice, and the rest of it, are all there to make us want to go there again, to climb high again tomorrow, because, wow, what things happen when we climb high with Jesus!

Did anyone ever tell you that walking with Jesus might lead you up a high mountain?  Did anyone ever tell you that not only would the views be great, but that you would see things with Jesus, experience things at high altitude that you cannot see down low, cannot experience if you don’t climb?  Did anyone ever tell you to expect to see the mystical and symbolic insights of God if you will follow Jesus?  Did anyone warn you that you might encounter visions you cannot fully understand, but that you will delight in them for their beauty all the same?  Did anyone ever warn you that you might find your entire self stressed because the air might get thin in the Presence of God, and you might find yourself gasping a bit for breath?  And did anyone ever tell you that the way to deal with this is not to vow never to climb this high again; but that if you will climb high and sleep low you will be able to climb even higher tomorrow?

Of course this is symbolic language.  Of course the next day Jesus and Peter and James and John did not climb above 10,000 feet.  But within days they were headed to Jerusalem, toward the rarified air of the Upper Room, and to that most challenging climb up to Calvary and to the Cross.  Peter and James and John could not be expected to follow Jesus all this way without some preparation, without some acclimatization, and neither can we.

We are not prepared in our mundane daily existence for the heights to which Jesus calls us.  And if we don’t think (and act) like mountain climbers, then we may never be willing to follow him, for we will only know that when we try, we are left gasping for air.  But if we climb high and sleep low, then maybe we will be ready to continue with Jesus tomorrow, and to go even higher.

So many Christians have such low expectations of Jesus, but the Transfiguration is meant to elevate those expectations, without a full explanation.  Do you want a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it?  Climb high, and sleep low!  Do you want to hear the voice of God?  Climb high, and sleep low!  Are you wondering what it means to call Jesus the Son of God?  Climb high, and sleep low!  Is faith in him congruent with the ancient faith of Abraham, or is it discontinuous of the Law and the Prophets?  Climb high, and sleep low!  Jesus invites us into a rare insight by allowing us to climb high with him.  We are wise if we remember to sleep low, so that tomorrow we can continue higher.

It is intriguing to me that thing that changes when you climb high and sleep low is your blood.  It’s the production of more red blood cells (among other things) that allows the climber who has slept low to climb higher.  What changes was God preparing in Jesus’ blood when he called him to the mountaintop?  How was he preparing the sacred Body of his Son to share that precious Blood with his disciples?  More poignantly, how was he readying his Son to shed his precious Blood for the salvation of the world?

If climbing high and sleeping low prepares our blood to sustain us at high altitude, what unseen transformation may have been taking place in the Blood of Jesus as he climbed high and slept low?  Was God doing with Jesus’ Blood just exactly what he does with our blood if we climb high and sleep low: altering the composition of that blood to keep us alive as we continue on tomorrow, and climb higher?

At 6:54 am on the morning of July 22nd of last year, I stepped onto a piece of rock at the altitude of 19,341 feet above sea level.  It is, by far, the highest I have ever climbed, and it was exhilarating to stand so high on the earth.  And I was able to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro, in part, because I had climbed high and slept low.

But the truth is that I have climbed higher with Jesus than I ever could climb on this earth.

The faithful pilgrim finds that the pattern of climbing high and sleeping low suits us, as it prepares us for the next day’s journey, the next day’s challenges, the next day’s blessings, the next day’s encounter with the Holy.

When we climb high and sleep low, we find that we are in step with Jesus – or, is it the other way round, that when we are in step with Jesus, we find that we are climbing high and sleeping low?  And among all the other changes that may take place in us, one significant part of our acclimatization to this life of climbing with Jesus is that something happens to our blood, symbolically speaking, as we are nourished with his sacred Blood, which is itself mystically altered, so that it may be shared with us, and gives us new life in higher climes.

Let us, my friends, try to remember to climb high and to sleep low, for God is calling us to become acclimatized to a new life that comes from our communion with his blessed Son.  If the air is thin, and it’s hard to do, so be it.  Let’s remember that there is something happening when we climb high and sleep low – that our blood is being augmented with his sacred Blood, which brings with it the promise of life, where we saw only death before.

Lord, it is good for us to be here, overshadowed by this cloud.  Help us to listen to you.  Nourish us with your Blood.  And help us always to remember to climb high with you, and to sleep low, so that tomorrow we may climb higher!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

26 February 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Freedom in a Time of Fear

In 1949, the African-American theologian and poet Howard Thurman published a book of reflections on the teachings of Jesus. This particular book, called Jesus and the Disinherited, is strongly inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, that challenging set of teachings we have been hearing in the gospels for about three weeks now. Thurman’s understanding of what Jesus is up to in today’s gospel requires our attention.

Thurman says that he is writing the book, and indeed that he has directed much of his life’s work, in response to his grandmother’s relationship to the scriptures. Here’s what he means by that: his grandmother had been a slave on a plantation in Florida, and she was illiterate, but she loved the Bible. Young Thurman had the task of reading scripture to her two or three times a week. He knew that there were passages from the scriptures that she cherished, and others that she would never allow him to read. When he was in college he finally asked her why, and she told him then the shameful history of the white preachers who used the letters of Paul, in particular, to silence slaves and demand their obedience. She was willing to hear the parts from First Corinthians that talk about love, but most of the epistles were like scriptural dead zones to her, made toxic by misuse. Much of Christianity, in fact, can feel like a dead zone, made toxic through a long history of distortion and falsification and self-justification.

Because he was such a searching and fearless believer in Jesus, Howard Thurman posed a question for himself and he set about to answer it. His question? Does Christianity have something to say to the person whose back is against the wall, or doesn’t it? Was the Bible a resource for his grandmother or was it a source of oppression? What did Jesus have to say to people who actually were disinherited? Did he have something for them beyond promises of a happy afterlife if they submitted to abuse?

In 1949, then, Thurman set out to write a response to that question. He came to the understanding that, as a Jewish carpenter in Roman-occupied Palestine, Jesus knew all about what a conquering power could do to a people. He knew about defeat, division, and despair, and above all he knew how the threat of violence and cruelty could erode a person from within. He knew exactly what it meant to have your back to the wall, and he could see all around him what it cost his own neighbors to have to submit over and over again to powerful people who consider your life insignificant.

I read Howard Thurman’s words with deep gratitude today, and I have to say, it’s not because my back is against the wall. My back is not against the wall, and maybe yours isn’t either, if I can say that without presuming to speak for another. I’m not powerless, and admiring Howard Thurman is no excuse for forgetting the position of privilege from which I speak. But I know that I live in a world, and in a particular moment, in which the threat of brute force seems to be escalating, and its targets, real or imagined, seem to be multiplying. Forget those maps of “red” and “blue” America, I’m imagining a map in which our nation is divided up by what we fear. Terrorists? Liberals? Conservatives? Russians? Immigrants? Racists? Come to think of it, we could probably divide the country up by which branch of the government we are most certain is coming after us some day soon: executive, legislative or judicial. Or is it the intelligence community we should be fearing? Whose plot to “take over” do you see looming on the horizon?

What the Bible says to the person whose back is against the wall may have a new set of meanings in this moment, if we are giving ourselves over to the fear of some occupying force. There are those who are threatened with physical violence right now, and there are those who are living in anticipation of threats that may or may not be real, but fear is the order of the day. We are becoming connoisseurs of fear.

But Jesus, Thurman tells us, is a master of overcoming fear. And when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” or “love your enemy,” he is addressing your fear, not urging your complicity with oppression. “Pray for those who persecute you” is an injunction to stand tall, to live as the child of God that you were meant to be. Be lavish in your love and your human dignity and your ostentatious trust in God. Be strong, Thurman says, in telling the plain truth. Don’t succumb to the temptation to get by quietly. 

Fear and hatred and mistrust, Thurman says, can do nothing for us but erode our creativity. The crazy, abundant responses that Jesus is calling for in this Sermon on Mount, on the other hand, remind us that God is in control and that we are agents of God’s will. If your back is really against the wall, Jesus tells us, it won’t be enough to do what you have to do to get by. There is no “getting by.” Freedom means claiming our part of that astonishing power that makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good. Freedom means that we see God’s peace falling like rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Freedom of this kind is the freedom to follow Jesus. And by giving us the instructions we receive in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching us that no threat or fear or lie can take that freedom away.

I don’t know about you, but these days I can hardly tell which I am, righteous or unrighteous. I know that I am free and that I have a voice. I know I can make choices about where my money goes and how to vote. I can write letters and march and make phone calls. But I’m alarmed to find that it takes comparatively little to make me imagine the worst. There is a difference between vigilance and morbid anticipation. There is a difference between fear and hatred on the one hand, and the courageous response of a generous heart on the other.

Hear this from Howard Thurman, interpreting with great creativity the words of Jesus: “Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly thrive” (56).

Follow Jesus, without fear. Allow no dead zones in our faith. Claim the freedom to love, undiminished and unafraid.

The Dumbwaiter

The Rectory of Saint Mark’s was built in 1893 to replace the previous residence of the Rector at 1620 Spruce Street. It required the demolition of part of the Parish House, which I guess used to extend further west. And it was built to house a small community of clergy (presumably single) all living under one roof. As I understand it, the clergy living there would have relied on the attention of at least a few people providing domestic service in the house for their care and feeding. The present large kitchen was, I believe at the time, the housekeeper’s suite. In the late 19th century the kitchen was actually in the basement – there are still some large built-in cupboards down there and a mantle over an old fireplace. Everything I know about domestic service in late nineteenth century America I have learned from watching Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas about the English aristocracy, mind you. Nevertheless, I have no difficulty jumping to conclusions that the one must have been very much like the other.

There remains, on the three lower levels of the Rectory, from the basement to the 2nd floor, the shaft of an old dumbwaiter, which would have been extremely useful in a brownstone townhouse that requires a certain amount of vertical movement. But on the first and second floors the dumbwaiter shaft has been converted into closets; so while you can tell that the shaft is still there, and its little carriage still rests in its old place near the basement kitchen, the dumbwaiter is no longer functional. It is a kind of ghost of the memory of the time when servants used the back stairs; and I imagine (somewhat wistfully, I admit) how well looked after the Rector must have been in those days, alas, long gone.

When we hear Saint Paul writing to the church in Corinth that “we are God’s servants, working together...” the words themselves are in no way confusing. But I wonder if we are really able to grasp their meaning. In my experience, most Americans these days are at least a little conflicted about the idea of servanthood. And in the church, it sometimes feels to me as if the idea itself is a little like the dumbwaiter in the Rectory – we remember what it used to do, and we can imagine its usefulness; but we know that it doesn’t work anymore, and we have no intention of trying to restore it. There exists in the church a kind of ghost of the memory of servanthood, but aren’t servants a thing of the past? How can we possibly be God’s servants?

All you have to do is watch a little Masterpiece Theatre to know that ideas about servanthood have changed a lot. The Rectory was built with two staircases (front and back) for a reason, and it wasn’t simply convenience. Servants had their place and their domain: quite distinct from the domain of those they were to serve. Nostalgia for those days may be quaint on Masterpiece Theatre, but it won’t do in the church today. Does that mean that we should discard Saint Paul’s suggestion that we are God’s servants? Is the mere idea of servanthood simply outmoded?

There are those who would say that, in fact, the idea is not dead at all, that servanthood is alive and well in the church, and that as an organization the church is as stratified as ever. It is true, after all, that a small company of volunteers shows up in churches all over the globe to enable the church to function. Hardly a thing happens here at Saint Mark’s without a division or two of such volunteers appearing to get us through our liturgies, or to help the office function, or to provide hospitality when we gather together, or to feed the hungry as we do in an organized way here most days of the week. And as is the case in churches across the globe, a few people tend to do an awful lot of the work.

But notice that Saint Paul does not write to the church in Corinth to tell them that some of them must be servants. He says, “we are God’s servants, working together.” When he says this, he means that God has something for each of us to do, and that we accomplish God’s purposes best when we do our work together.

God has something for you to do. This is a simple statement that could change your life: it changed mine. My life changed when I stopped asking myself what I thought I wanted to do with my life, and started asking what God wanted me to do with my life. With that shift in perspective, the entire world looked different, and I saw myself differently too. And it was a little scary to consider the implications, but it is also the reason I am able to give thanks for my life every single day.

But this assertion is not the domain of the clergy. God has something for you to do, no matter who you are. It might be with knitting needles, or with a book, or in quiet time of prayer. It might be at the ironing board, or at the stove, or with a bag full of groceries. It might be at a hospital bed, or on the phone, or just by holding someone’s hand. It might require some training, or a great deal of patience, or a commitment to be in it for the long haul. It might mean you get up early on days you could otherwise sleep in, or that you stay up late when you would rather be in bed, or that you find yourself well outside of your comfort zone. It might mean you have to get dirty, or work with your hands; or you it might mean you have to embrace silence, or you might have to think long and hard. It might require a smile, or it might lead to tears. It might seem deeply fulfilling, or it might leave you feeling quite drained. It might draw on talent you know you have, or it might result in doing something you never knew you were capable of. It might happen in church, or at home, or in Honduras, or on the street, or somewhere you never thought you would go. God has something for you to do, and that something will probably not be about you; it will be about helping someone else, living beyond yourself, being a neighbor, a friend, a partner. For when God calls us to serve him, it usually means serving someone else, and oftentimes the best way to love the Lord your God is to love your neighbor as yourself. God has something for you to do.

“We are God’s servants, working together....” Working together is such a challenge for so many of us and for the church. Often we prefer to work alone; who of us doesn’t prefer to do things our own way? Working together requires compromise, patience, and more compromise. But working together we can do things that God does not expect us to do on our own. And working together is what makes us a church – a blessed company of faithful people who together constitute the Body of Christ. You cannot be a church on your own. And while it’s possible that many people working separately do contribute to the church, the church is at her best when her members are working together in a more deliberate way. This may be one of the reasons we prefer choirs in church to soloists: it’s a model of working together, many voices producing an anthem that a single voice could never sing on its own.

It can be difficult these days to know what anyone thinks they mean by calling themselves or someone else a Christian. I suspect that many people think the label speaks for itself. And that easy assumption is built on another assumption that there’s nothing much to learn about becoming a Christian, living like a Christian, doing what a Christian person does. There’s an assumption that you could wake up on any given morning and know what you have to do to be a Christian without giving it any thought. I think this is a dangerous assumption. For one thing, it doesn’t allow us to be God’s servants, working together. It takes some thoughtful consideration, some practice, and a concerted effort to let your life be about others and not yourself, to be a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. It requires that shift away from asking what I want, to intently discerning what God wants of me and of you. And it takes us working together to build up God’s kingdom, and strengthen God’s church, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I realize that many people look at the church these days and see a dumbwaiter: an outmoded thing that takes up space that would be better utilized in some other way. But I can’t tell you the number of times that I have wished the old dumbwaiter in the Rectory still worked. Every time I serve coffee or drinks or snacks of any kind on the second floor, I carry trays of cups and glasses and wine and ice upstairs(well, I do use the front stairs for this, I’ll admit), I think, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send all this upstairs on the dumbwaiter? The dumbwaiter might be the last servant left in the Rectory... if serving the Rector was the point.

But I think I may have something to learn from that dumbwaiter, and maybe you do too. For a dumbwaiter has something to do, but it can’t really ever work on its own; it takes working together, with others to load and to unload, to carry and deliver, to remove and to clean up. This is how feasts are kept!

Whether it knows it or not, the world needs the church. Which is to say that the world needs God’s servants, working together. In fact, it is when she strays from her identity as the company of God’s faithful servants that the church incites skepticism and animosity from those who suspect we are little more than a fancy outmoded relic of a former age. Well, we are called to be servants - God’s servants, working together – and if that seems outmoded, so be it, there are worse things to be called in this day and age.

There was a time when God’s servants, working together, believed that they could change the world. They knew that God had something for them to do, and that it would be most effective if they did it working together. The church has known this truth since the days when a dumbwaiter would have seemed like an outrageous contraption, and our ancestors in the faith saw that when they functioned as God’s servants, working together, the most amazing things happened. They brought Good News to the entire globe. They changed the world.

My friends, we are God’s servants, working together. Let us never forget that God has something for each of us to do, and that working together our offerings of ourselves become so much more than the sum of their parts.

There are so many places here at Saint Mark’s to pray, so many places to light a candle, so many places to ask God what he has for us to do, and to help us work together. But today I think I may walk down to the basement of the Rectory, and light a candle there on the dusty, wooden shelf, inside a closed-up shaft, that once carried sherry (I expect) and all kinds of other things up two floors so it could be whisked to the Rector and his guests. I might just make a temporary shrine of that dumbwaiter, and ask God to remind us all that we are God’s servants, working together, and with God nothing is impossible.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

12 February 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia