Hail, Mary; What's Up?

It’s my strong suspicion that here at the Church of the Good Shepherd, the 1992 film Sister Act is not frequently a topic of discussion from the pulpit.  We have been rather free-wheeling on Locust Street for a long time, so we are used to this kind of thing, but I hope it will not trouble you too much, in this venerable parish, if I mention this well-known film, in which one of the musical numbers is introduced when Whoopi Goldberg comes out to greet her fellow nuns.  In that wonderful scene, Whoopi greets her sisters with these words: “Hail, girls,” to which the other nuns reply, “Hail, Mary; what’s up?”

Hail, Mary; what’s up?  Although this question is not strictly scriptural (part of it is), and it does not come from the text assigned for tonight, I ask you to indulge me in adopting it as my text on which to base a few thoughts as we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary tonight.  Hail, Mary; what’s up?

The obvious answer from Mary on today is, “I am,” since in many places the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven is being celebrated today.

Hail, Mary; what’s up?

I am.

This is an anachronistic greeting: “Hail!”  And I think it bears some consideration.  “Hail” is a complicated word. I turn to the OED at times like this.  Of course, the great dictionary reminds us that as a noun, “hail” is “ice or frozen vapor falling in pellets.”

It reports on the adjective, or descriptive “hail,” which suggests “health, safety, welfare.”  But it can be construed to say even more, according to the OED: “free from injury, infirmity, or disease; sound, unhurt, safe, healthy, robust.”  Hail Mary.

It provides for the word as a verb, meaning “to pour down like hail;” or in another sense “to call out in order to attract attention,” as in “hail a cab.”

And of course, it tells us that “hail” is “a salutation expressing well-wishing or reverence.”  Hail, Mary; what’s up?

It’s important to keep our orientation when we reflect on this greeting.  For, if you thought about it, and you imagined how God might send his Son into the world, how the God of God, the Light of Light, the very God of of Very God might make his way to God’s people on earth, you might think that such a Son would be born of a heavenly Mother.  Perhaps the Son of God should be born of some angelic womb, pure and spotless.  It makes sense that the Prince of Peace should be born of the Queen of heaven.  And if the bees can produce a queen for their own hives, surely God could have found or made for himself a Queen in heaven with whom to consort and to produce the Holy Child.  And then to send them both down from on high, to debase themselves among mere mortals.

But curiously, mysteriously, this is not what God chose to do.  Instead of debasing the divine, he exalted the humble and meek.  Mary may have been pure, but she sure was lowly.  It’s not her lineage the scriptures tell us about; it’s Joseph’s; what with patriarchy and all.  It is integral to the story of the birth of our Savior that his Mother has no place to go but up.  She did not swoop down from heaven on a cloud.  She was not even the daughter of Pharaoh.  She was a handmaiden of lowliness.  Hail, Mary; what’s up?

Ask her that on the way to Bethlehem for the rude and inadequate circumstances of her labor and delivery.  Or during the flight into Egypt when the Holy Family was just trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities.  What’s up?

Ask her that when she was frantically looking for her missing son in the streets of Jerusalem.  Hail, Mary; what’s up?

Ask her that at the foot of the Cross, where she watched her Son die.  Hail Mary.

She had no superpowers, no mystical vision that enabled her to keep track of her son. She had only the memory of that extraordinary greeting, “Hail, Mary.  Hail.”  No, she was no goddess sent down from heaven to parent a divine child.  She was as lowly as they come.  And when we say, “Hail, Mary,” we track her transformation, her exaltation, her magnification as she, because of her faithfulness and because of her humility, becomes the Queen of heaven, the first believer to be worthy of a crown.

Something can be done to the word, “hail,” to turn it from a greeting into what one dictionary (not the OED) calls public “praise or [a] show of approval for a person.”  And it’s this subtle shift that we make in the use of the word as we consider the implications of Mary’s answer to our question, “What’s up?”  When we realize that he that is mighty hath magnified her - this lowly handmaiden - our “Hail Marys” take on this new meaning, and our “Ave,” our “Hail,” carries so much of the word’s larger meaning with it.  And when we say, “Hail Mary,” we identify in her our health, our safety, and welfare, because of the Son she bore for us.  We see that if Mary can be free from injury, infirmity, or disease; sound, unhurt, safe, healthy, robust, by the grace of God, then maybe we can be too.  Hail Mary!

We see in Mary the signs that God is pouring down grace into our lives like hail, just as he did in her life.  When we find in Mary the exaltation of the humble and meek, we are grateful for God’s wisdom and mercy in sending his Son to us by lifting her up, rather than by sending some heavenly queen down to us.  And this gives us hope!

We ask, “Hail, Mary; what’s up?”  And the answer is so much more fulsome than it might have been, because she has, by the grace of her Son, become what she was not.  No, she did not start out as the Queen of heaven, but she may be so now!

Hail, Mary; what’s up?  “I am,” she says.  “Lowly handmaiden, though I was, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed.  For he that is mighty hath magnified me.  He hath exalted the humble and meek - by which I mean me and you, and holy is his Name.”

To which we may reply, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!”

Hail Mary, what’s up?

You are!  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
The Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, 2023
The Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA

Storm

There was another article in a prominent publication this past week or so that promised to explain the decline of church attendance among Christians in the twenty-first century.  I guess its explanations were as good as any.  I don’t intend to try to counter or agree with those explanations.  I just want to say this morning that I do honestly think it’s hard to worship God right now.  And I believe—Matthew’s gospel helps me believe—that acknowledging that difficulty is a step toward worshipping with confidence and conviction.  

So let me sketch briefly why I think it’s hard to worship God.  I promise I’ll have other things to say too, but let’s just put some of this out on the table.  Let’s talk about why church is hard. 

First: God has always been hard to worship.  It may be the most natural instinct in the world to venerate the creator, but the whole history of Israel, just for example, makes it clear that it’s tough to stay faithful.  And if you do stay faithful, God puts you through your paces.  Ask any biblical patriarch or prophet, or any saint.  

Second: What we are living through right now is a real crisis.  I’m not saying that I know what’s going to happen in the future, but it just has to be acknowledged that our environmental, political, and technological circumstances right now are truly unsettling.  So much of what we know and take for granted seems fragile.  It’s discouraging.  It’s distracting. We are all spending a lot of time grappling with these changes whether we realize it or not.  Gratitude to God may not be our first response. We see a lot around us that feels like it can and almost should shake our faith.  I’m not leaving us there, but let’s just acknowledge that almost on a daily basis our faith may be shaken.  And we are constantly waiting for the next shoe to drop.  There are so many shoes.

And a third reason that it’s hard to worship God: churches are scrambling to speak prophetically or even in a way that will make anyone bother to listen.  We don’t have the political or technological solution to what’s happening around us, though I believe strongly that we can support and contribute to solutions.  The things we do best are the things that we are afraid to do right now.  We tell the truth.  We confess our sins.  We ask for help.  And above all, we worship our creator in the person of Christ.  

But It's hard to tell the truth because the truth is baffling.  It’s hard to confess our sins because they are somewhat baffling, too.  What’s normal about the way we live our lives every day, and what’s sinful about the way we live?  Those questions can be addressed but first we have to realize that they are hard questions, and important questions.

It's hard to ask God for help, because seeing the fragility of the structures that surround us may make us question exactly how God works in the world.  Our sense of reality is being shuffled around these days, and our sense of God’s sustaining help is probably being shuffled with it.  That’s hard to admit. I don’t know why we think that we have to understand before we ask for help, but I would be willing to bet that many of us are, if we are honest, hoping that we will be able to figure out exactly what God can and can’t do for us before we throw ourselves at God’s feet and beg to be saved.   

So it’s hard to worship God.  It’s hard to worship God right now, in this environment.  It’s hard to live the lives we normally live and still be reaching toward God.  

So that’s why Peter’s risk-taking in the gospel this morning, and Jesus’s bold appearance, are so urgent for us to take in.  Because what we are doing when we worship God isn’t just hard.  It’s also breathtaking.  And if we could see the full difficulty of our lives of faith, we might just also see that God is working among us abundantly.

Being here in church this morning, we are more or less already out in the boat in the stormy waters.   

One of the reasons I just spent a bit of time talking about why it’s so hard to worship God is that I want us all, myself included, to take in the fact that if we are here to pray at all, to sing a hymn, to take communion, Jesus has already moved us away from the shore.  We may not want to admit that this is a dazzling act of faith, because that would mean admitting that this is hard.  And a lot of our day-to-day coping may seem to depend on pretending it’s not hard.  A lot of what we do out there in the world may be based on numbing out and functioning.  

But coming here today--climbing into this boat—that’s a profound act.  We are making ourselves vulnerable to God.  Available for God’s purposes.  You have already this morning, before brunch, broken with what keeps us anchored to despair.  

And out here on the water, as we are, we are going to feel the wind.  Once we’ve broken with the dream of complacency and human self-sufficiency, we are going to notice the waves and the storms.  We are going to grieve the losses on Maui.  We are going to begin to face the suffering of the poor among us.  We are going to admit that we long for safety.  We are going to wish that we could turn back.

And this storm that we are feeling, that’s where Jesus is going to meet us.  As we see the peril we are in, we will also see him more clearly for who he is.  That’s how it works in this important story.  

That’s why Peter’s words to Jesus in this story are so beautiful.  I guess he’s kind of foolish and arrogant, but what he names is exquisite.  “If you really are who you say you are, Jesus, call me out of the boat to be with you.”  No, he doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking, but he knows he wants to be where Jesus is.  He knows that hiding won’t work for him anymore.  He knows that he needs to know more, to experience more, to trust more.  Turning back doesn’t occur to him, because his vulnerability is giving him a glimpse of who Jesus really is.  

What Peter shows us, and what we need so deeply to understand right now, is that worship and fear are connected.  They happen when we recognize that we are in way over our heads.  When we are far from shore.  Maybe when we are stepping out of the boat that makes us feel a little bit protected on our journey.  

Matthew tells us that when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, calling Peter to him, and saving Peter from the waves, they worshipped him and called him the Son of God.  But I think the radical act of worship here starts before the end of the story.  Getting into the boat was worship.  Peter’s yearning to step out onto the water was worship.  So was falling in and getting rescued.  

Maybe Peter’s faith was small in a way, but Jesus certainly could work with it, couldn’t he?  Jesus revealed himself and calmed the storm whether Peter was faithful in a perfect way, or not.  

We need to see each other’s acts of imperfect faith, as we have seen Peter’s this morning.  That means we need to acknowledge the storm.  We may feel that it’s best to keep our heads down and pretend that nothing is wrong, but worship and fear are connected.  If we suppress the fear we suppress the worship too.  

Scared faith doesn’t feel like it’s worth much.  But if we are naming our fears and our imperfections, and praying through them, perhaps we will also see that even the small faith we have is actually Jesus moving us forward.  Right into the storm.  Right to the place where Jesus can be seen as he truly is.  We have been worshipping, and there is deeper worship to come.

God is working in this world.  God is working in you.  If you can’t see that, it may be that you are quietly overwhelmed with fear and don’t realize the marvelous act of God that you are, fear and all.  Trying to stay normal in this world, you may be overlooking the extraordinary presence of God right inside you, and right here among us.

Welcome into this storm. Welcome into the risk and the danger.  Jesus has brought us out here on the waters, and from here we can begin to see and worship Jesus more deeply, more honestly.  We are out on the boat in the waves, where we can hear our savior speak to us: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

I don’t know whether this awareness is enough to reverse the decline of church attendance in America. I guess we will see about that. But I do know that here in the boat with you is where I want to be.  I want to worship and give thanks, and see God acting in the world that God has made.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
August 13, 2023
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Eyewitnesses

A cloud is at the center of the mystery of the Transfiguration today.  Of course, we know that a cloud is not only a “visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the atmosphere.”   We also know that the Cloud is “a global network of remote servers that operates as a single ecosystem, commonly associated with the Internet.”  When we speak of the Cloud, it’s tempting to suggest that the term is only a metaphor.  The Cloud is not a place we can go to or visit.  It’s not up or down, it’s not here, nor is it there.  But it is accessible from nearly anywhere.  The Cloud is much more than a metaphor.  In it are found not only the dearest memories of our past (often in picture form), but also crucial power that lets us get on with our lives in the present, as well as essential material for the future.  So when we think of how often the scriptures report to us that God is found hidden or shrouded in, but also revealed by a cloud, we already know that a cloud can be real without having a singular location.  And we can already imagine a cloud in which can be found so much that is so important to us - not as a metaphor, but as real memories, real power, real hope.

It’s surprising to me that reflecting on the Cloud, helps to make more plausible the report of God’s presence in a cloud on top of the mountain so very long ago.  But I think it might.  In fact, I think this reflection on the nature of the Cloud could make it easier for people of the twenty-first century to believe in the ancient stories of so long ago, that have become, in many ways, harder for us to believe in today.  Because it’s tempting to wonder what’s the point of faith or religion, now that we know so much, and we don’t need to make up stories about the origins of the universe, and we have so many means of healing at our fingertips that far surpass the prescriptions of mere faith?

And doesn’t most, maybe all, religion belong in the category of what St. Peter called in the Epistle reading today “cleverly devised myths”?  Surely there is a long tradition of religious myth: stories that were shared to provide meaning in life.  But where did such stories come from?  Were they ever made up of anything other than whole cloth?  And what distinguishes the Christian stories from the Roman stories of gods and monsters, or the Greek stories of gods and monsters?  What distinguishes the Christian stories, for that matter, from the Jewish stories of prophets, and chariots of fire, and commandments, and a God who dwells mostly among clouds on a mountaintop?

“Cleverly devised myths.”  It’s a little jarring to find in our own scriptures such an accurately and succinct critique of faith and religion - including, perhaps? - our own.  As the culture around us shifts, and more and more people see less and less meaning, purpose, or truth in religion or faith… I suspect that a lot of people out there assume that nearly everything that goes on in here is about following cleverly devised myths, fables, and stories that cannot be true.  And it may be that you suspect this possibility too.  It may be that you are not so sure that all of this does not stem from cleverly devised myths.

I always object to this use of  the word “myth” to signify something that is patently un-true.  I believe in myths as a paradigm of truth.  But I have to admit that the scholars tell me that that is not how St. Peter, or whoever wrote this epistle, is using the word.  In this instance the word seems to be pointing clearly at the kinds of narratives that provide backstories for a universe of gods and monsters.

And there’s an implied question here, about whether the stories about Jesus are just another set of stories about gods and monsters that can’t really be true.  After all, there are patterns at work in these stories, patterns that are identifiable in other middle eastern religions of the period: patterns of cleverly devised myths.  There are other stories told of miraculous births.  There are other songs sung by virtuous women.  There are other traditions from other religions that have been borrowed, co-opted, or re-deployed.  And knowing what we know, how can we see the Christian faith as anything more than another cleverly devised myth?  Cleverly devised myths, indeed!  Is it not possible that the Christian religion, that the Christian faith, is a carefully woven fabric of carefully devised myths, the fibers of which are straining considerably beneath the weight of modern science and consumer culture?

As I say, it’s surprising to find ourselves in the clouds today.  But it is in and through and by the cloud that something is revealed in the feast of the Transfiguration.  And I think we should revel for a moment in the confluence of this ancient revelation in the cloud that holds so much of the past as well as the power of the present and hope for the future.  That’s what Peter and James and John found in the cloud when they went up the mountain with Jesus, who was transfigured before them, and who chatted with Moses and Elijah, and who was revealed to be the Son of the living God by the voice that spoke to them from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen.  Listen to him.”  And remember what Peter wrote (more or less) when he reflected on the memory of the revelation inside that cloud.  “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

We have been eyewitnesses of his majesty.

The feast we celebrate today  - the Feast of the Transfiguration - is perhaps most significant as a celebration of eyewitnessing.  Because when it comes to religion and faith, very little of significance is ever observed by eyewitnesses.

You want to believe that an angel went to Mary and greeted her with news that she would in her virginity bear a son?  Fine.  I do too!   But no one one witnessed it.  You want to believe that angels sang while shepherds watched by a manger in Bethlehem?  Fine.  I do too!  But no one witnessed it and reported about it.  You want to believe that Jesus rose from the grave, and that angels attested to his rising?  I do too!  But let’s at least stipulate that no one witnessed his emergence from the tomb, except perhaps the angels.

But on that day on the mountain, Jesus took with him Peter and John and James so that they could be eyewitnesses of his transfiguration, which St. Peter would go on to describe as Christ’s “majesty,” which he saw, with his own eyes.

At first glance, the feast of the Transfiguration seems like a sign that requires interpretation.  What are we to make of the changing appearance of Jesus’ face, of the dazzling whiteness of his clothes, of the vision of Moses and Elijah?  What are we to make of the cloud that enveloped them, or the voice that then spake from the cloud, “This is my Son, my chosen.  Listen to him”?  It feels like we have to decipher all this in order to know what’s going on.  And it may not hurt us to try to do so.  But there is another possible response to this account of the Transfiguration, and it’s the one that St. Peter urges upon us: to simply accept the eyewitness account, and to see Jesus for who he is, and to bask in the glory of his majesty.

Code lives in the cloud.  And the code, so to speak, that underlies the faith of a church like Saint Mark’s, was written on that mountaintop with Peter and John and James, who were eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty.  Because in the sacramental gift of his Body and Blood, Jesus gave every subsequent generation of believers a way also to be eyewitnesses of his majesty.  To be sure, we have to arrive at our own mountaintops with the eyes of faith - but faith is a gift not a skill, and anyone can have it.  But this church was built to be a place where people could sort out the many cleverly devised myths they’d encounter in the world by coming face to face with an eyewitness of Christ’s majesty.

This church is a cloud - often more smoke than vapor, but that is neither here nor there.  And to say that this church is a cloud is not to suggest a mere metaphor.  It is to assert that herein are found the dearest memories of the past (often in picture form), and crucial power that lets us get on with our lives in the present, as well as essential material for the hope of the future.

Every single day we come face to face with Jesus here.  And if the details of the daily revelation of who Christ is have more to do with bread and wine than they do with a blinding white light and the appearance of Moses and Elijah, well, so be it.  This church was built to facilitate the daily encounter with the living God within the cloud wherein his Presence can reliably be found.  Which is to say that, contrary to what so many may now believe, this place was not built to be an incubator for cleverly devised myths.  It was built to be a gathering place for eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty.

Remember what else Peter wrote, reflecting on the revelation in that cloud: “you will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

My friends, we have not been called here to follow clever devised myths.  Rather, we have been called here into the cloud, wherein are found our dearest memories, our power for the  present moment, and our hope for the future.  We have been called into the Presence of the living God so that we can be eyewitnesses of his majesty - presented to us day by day in the form of his Body and his Blood.  We are eyewitnesses; we see for ourselves the evidence of his beauty, his grace, his forgiveness, and his love every single day.  And here, in this cloud, we see him face to face, by the gift of faith.

We will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts.  But until then, we remain in the cloud,  eyewitnesses of his majesty!

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
6 August 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia