Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mud
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
Jeremiah lived in a time of strife in Jerusalem, to say the least. His prophecies put him on the wrong side of the Hebrew politics of national pride which induced most of Judah’s leaders to ignore the threats of Nebuchadnezzar. They seemed sure of Jehovah’s loyalty in spite of their lack of loyalty to Him. Jeremiah, nicknamed the “weeping prophet,” angry, bitter and heartbroken, called them out, and they hated him for it.
In those days, the princes said to the king:
“Jeremiah ought to be put to death.”
And so they took Jeremiah
and threw him into the cistern of Prince Malchiah.
There was no water in the cistern, only mud,
and Jeremiah sank into the mud.
At breakfast in Lincoln a couple of weeks ago, John and I got to talking about mud. He remembered some of his cattle caught in a quagmire after a pouring rain. There was nothing the cows could do to free themselves, so John hooked a rope to his tractor and pulled them out. One by one, bellowing in fear and pain, the mud sucking and holding onto their legs, the tractor pulled them out. Suddenly silent, they walked over to the feed trough and began eating. John had been holding his breath, sitting up there on the John Deere’s seat. He sighed and began to breathe again.
Lord, come to my aid!
The LORD heard my cry.
He drew me out of the pit of destruction,
 out of the mud of the swamp.
And he put a new song into my mouth.
Jeremiah was not left to die, stuck in the mud of the prince’s cistern, because King Zedekiah sent soldiers to pull him out. After Jeremiah recovered he warned the king that he must surrender to Nebuchadnezzar or be killed. But Zedekiah was “afraid of the Jews,” and in just a short time the Babylonians captured the king and his sons. Things did not go well.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, swamps full of mud and quicksand stymied General Grant as he struggled seven failed ways to enter Vicksburg and free the Mississippi River from Confederate control. At about the same time a thousand miles east, General Ambrose Burnside (these days we call our cheeky hair “sideburns”), chasing Robert E. Lee, sent his soldiers struggling into a January storm that turned the clay roads of Virginia into impossible mud.
The rain continued all night and into the morning of January 21. Federal camps and roads turned to mud pits overnight. The poor condition of the roads caused delays and officers scrambled to figure out a way to continue the operation. Burnside, obstinate, ordered the army to march on even as the rain continued to fall in sheets upon his men.
The march proved to be beyond miserable. The flow of men, animals, and wagons turned roads into soup. Regiments were forced to stop and rest every 100 yards just from the effort of walking through the mud. Wagons and cannon sank to their axles and were abandoned as not even the efforts of a dozen horses could move them.
As the miserable day came to an end, a poor omen appeared on the banks of the Rappahannock opposite the site Burnside had planned to cross: campfires of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
On the morning of January 22 it became clear that Burnside had again lost a race to Robert E. Lee. Confederates yelled jeers and insults across the river at the miserable US troops. The campaign was over. The Mud March, as this infamous movement would become known, was not.
War correspondent William Swinton wrote of the deteriorating conditions the army faced:
“The ground had gone from bad to worse, and now showed such a spectacle as might be presented by the elemental wrecks of another Deluge. An indescribable chaos of pontoons, vehicles, and artillery encumbered all the roads-supply wagons upset by the road-side, guns stalled in the mud, ammunition-trains mired by the way, and hundreds of horses and mules buried in the liquid muck.”
Burnside ordered the army to return to their original camps on January 22. The retreat began on the 23rd. Fortunately for the Federal troopers, the rain slowed significantly. Unfortunately, they had to return using the same roads they had destroyed during their advance. It would take some men until the 26th before they made it back to their original camps. Exhausted, the Army of the Potomac hit rock bottom after the Mud March. So, too, did its commander, Ambrose Burnside.
Soon Burnside was relieved of duty and replaced by Joseph Hooker, President Lincoln’s third choice to command the Army of the Potomac.
John Deere tractors were a few decades further in the future.
Jesus did not speak of mud, but of fire, which has also played its part in wars and rumors of wars.
I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
In The Genesis Record creationist theologian and scientist Henry Morris suggested that the  forty-day flood survived only by Noah and his family might have begun when the earth moved to its present 23.5 degree tilt from a much more vertical position. (The tilt is responsible for today’s seasons.) The flood began (Gen 7:11) when “the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.”
Did it rain on earth before that day? Perhaps not. And if not, there would have been no mud – no mud for cows to get stuck in, no mud for Jeremiah to be nearly smothered by, no mud to change the course of war for soldiers and their generals.
But now, of course, the earth is on a tilt. And always there have been storms and rumors of storms, and more than enough mud for all of us.
Brothers and sisters:
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us
and persevere in running the race that lies before us
while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,
the leader and perfecter of faith.
(Joshua 3, Psalm 114, Psalm 119, Matthew 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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