Big Data

I am told that we are now living in the age of “big data.”  The term refers to all the information floating out there in the digital world.  Information that is added to the data set when you make a phone call, or send a text message, or search Amazon for a book to read, or post dopey photos of your dogs on Facebook, or send an email, or search for anything at all on Google.  All these (now daily) activities generate data that is being stored somewhere for someone to use for some purpose or other.  Walmart is using it to figure out what to sell you.  The Department of Homeland Security is using it to determine whether or not you are a potential terrorist.  And the Obama campaign used it to figure out how likely you were to vote for the incumbent president.  Some people estimate that the amount of data to be stored or tracked in the world doubles every 1.2 years.  That’s a lot of data.

In many ways Christmas seems like a big-data kind of holiday.  There is lots of information to keep track of: shopping lists, recipes, holiday parties, Christmas cards, mailing lists, etc. 

And the whole Santa gig seems like it lends itself easily to the world of big data.  There are big sets of binary data for Santa to keep track of: girls and boys; naughty or nice.  If the elves aren’t into big data yet, they will be soon.

And what could be a bigger big data gig than God’s?  I mean whose got more to keep track of than God?  This year, managing not only all the usual stuff but also keeping one big-data-eye on the Mayan calendar as well!  God is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful.  God is the original big data user.  The more we learn about the universe and its size, the more impressive is God’s capacity for big data.  Not only is our own planet exploding with growth and complexity, apparently the entire universe has been expanding for millions of years.  What God must know about big data would put Google to shame!  And Christmas, we are reminded, is a holiday for everyone.  Jesus came into the world for everyone, and we have been continuing the celebration of his birth for more than two thousand years, so the data around this holy night must be getting bigger and bigger by the year.

Which is why it is odd that actually the Christmas story seems so devoid of big data.  There is this one particular pregnant Jewish girl, and her particular, patient mensch of a fiancé.  They make their way to a particular small town, well outside of the big-data capital of the day, and all the lodges are booked, so they find shelter in the tiny, particular sanctuary of a stable.

At the time, the data about what was happening was actually only a tiny set of information.  A prophecy here and there, a few angels in the sky, and some shepherds who had nothing else to do.  This is not a big data moment – it’s more like performance art.  There is the matter of the star that shines to mark the place of Jesus’ birth – and one star out of millions does seem like maybe it could be tracked with big data – but the wise men are wise enough to keep the information to themselves, and the star guides only them.  In fact, the only potential user of big data in the entire Christmas story is the villain – Herod the king – who sets out to destroy every baby boy in Bethlehem, while the Holy Family slips away in tiny obscurity.

In our own time, Christmas has become such a huge holiday that it is no longer even just about the story of that little family.  Christmas is about peace and joy and love in any shape or size, from Whoville to Hollywood, and everywhere in between.  It’s about marketing and shopping and malls and sales and parties and movies, and parades, and music.  It is about big, big data, which is probably OK, probably not hurting anyone.  Maybe sometimes all the data around Christmas obscures it, but so far no amount of data has ruined Christmas.  And part of the miracle of Christmas is this: that despite the great proliferation of data, the whole thing persistently boils to down to the very small data set of two: you and the child, Jesus.

In a world that is sifting through big data to send you a targeted Groupon, Jesus is being born for you.  Not someone like you; not someone in the same demographic set as you, but being born for you.

For God, who has all the data in the universe available to him, has little need for it.  God does not have to figure out what kind of advertisements you are most likely to respond for, or what size shoe you wear, or what kind of music you listen to, or whether or not you are behind on your mortgage, or who you voted for in the last election.

This is information everyone else wants about you, needs about you, to try to get what they want out of you.  But God already knows all this about you, and tonight, it hardly matters.  Tonight, God doesn’t want anything out of you at all.  Tonight God wants to give you something.  He wants to give you the gift of his Son.  And this is a tiny piece of data – no bigger than an infant child – it has not gotten any bigger after all these centuries.

God gives this gift to you and to me because he sees how much we need to be transformed.  He sees how easily our hearts are hardened, how selfish we become, how unwilling to share, how ready to fight.  He sees how we make much ado about nothing, how we grapple for power, how we live for things that are not important, while the important things in life go wanting.

God has ample data to show that we are not ready to receive a gift from him – even after all these years.  He already knows that he will send his Son into the world and the world will receive him not, again and again.  There is immense data to demonstrate this to God.  These days the data points to the possibility that more and more people don’t give a damn about God or his Son, and even those of us who claim to care, often do a rotten job of acting as though we do – unable to follow his one simple commandment that we should love others as he loved his disciples.

So, God has been crunching the numbers, year after year, Christmas after Christmas. Perhaps this year he has upgraded his technology, increased his server-power, and really thrown himself into big data.  Who knows?

But still, as Christmas comes, there is this remarkable fact that it all boils down to the tiny data set of you and Jesus… me and Jesus.  There is no big data here.

There is only the fact of God’s love and his power to change our lives for the better – a fact that could constitute a universe of big data…

… but instead has been somehow implanted in the womb of a virgin girl, born in a stable in Bethlehem, visited by shepherds and wise men, and sung to by angels in the sky.

And which tonight is just about you and the child Jesus… about me and the child Jesus…

… who has given up his power to master all the data of the universe, in favor of simply being cradled by each of us in our hearts…

… in this tiny, little data set of two…

… on this dark, and rainy, and eventually… on this silent night.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Christmas Eve 2012

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

Zion Crumbles

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.  (Zeph 3:16-17)

For most of her history, Israel has dreamt of Zion: a high place where God reigns, and where peace and prosperity, safety and happiness are the order of the day.  Christians inherited this dream from our Jewish ancestors.  We never forgot that we came from a people who were led by God to a Promised Land, a land said to be flowing with milk and honey.

So magnificent was the prospect of the American continent that it was easy for some of our more recent ancestors to imagine that this great land was, at last, the Promised Land of God.  Indeed, to travel across America – from its cities to its vast and varied wilderness – is to encounter a land that might well be blessed by God.  Many Americans have tended to think of our nation as a kind of Zion – an exalted place where God reigns, and where peace and prosperity, safety and happiness are the order of the day.

But we share with Israel – ancient and modern – the regular, painful awakening to our own delusion about this.  God is not in charge here.  Peace and prosperity are both elusive.  And safety and happiness slip easily from our grasp whenever we think we are holding them fast.  

The apparent foolishness of hoping for Zion is one thing that has contributed to the easy dismissal, these days, of religion and faith.  “See how all they hope for proves false and crumbles, time and time again,” say those who only believe that there is nothing to believe in.  And this can be a hard argument to counter, for it often appears to be accurate.  Zion is smoke and mirrors, a fantasy, like Oz – a manipulated but false promise that something beautiful lies at the other end of the yellow brick road.  Only fools, hopelessly stuck in a childish fairy tale, place their hope in such ideas.

It is, of course, true that Zion crumbles every time we think we have it in our grasp, that the Promised Land always lies just beyond the horizon, and sometimes the horizon seems very far away indeed.  As it does today, in the aftermath of the bloody slaughter of holy innocents in Connecticut two days ago.  If Zion was anywhere in sight before, we have lost it now; if ever it seemed within our grasp, it has proved to have been made of a kind of crystal that crumbles and melts at the merest touch of our fingers.

If Zion is the hope for peace and prosperity, safety and happiness, where is that hope today?  It is being readied for burial with the little bodies of twenty beautiful children.

What can we do but keep silent in the face of such sadness?

[Silence]

Somewhere beneath the rubble of our lives, are the foundations of Zion – the foundations of hope.  After the silence… eventually… when we are ready… comes the work of digging through the rubble of disaster to rebuild Zion, which is to say, to rebuild hope in our lives and in the lives, I pray, of those whose children or brothers, or sisters, or friends, or teachers, or students, were taken violently from them.

Every child is a Zion-in-miniature – a symbol of hope, of peace and prosperity, safety and happiness – and every child is just as fragile as the hope for Zion, just as susceptible to the wickednesses of every age, just as likely to crumble at our touch, especially when we treat so many children with a cruel indifference in our own day and age.  See how easily they crumble.  See how easily we destroy our own hope.  Zion crumbles. 

A voice says, “Cry.”  And I said, “What shall I cry?”  All flesh is grass, and its beauty is like the flower of the field.  Zion crumbles.

But a voice reminds us to dig through the rubble  - painful though it may be.  Yesterday that voice belonged to the parent of a murdered six-year-old girl, Robbie Parker, who, in expressing his grief, found the strength to offer his prayers and sympathy for the family of the man who killed his daughter.  As Zion crumbled all around him, he was already identifying the stones with which it would be rebuilt: stones of forgiveness, faith, and love.

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.

… [and] I will bring you home.

Sometimes the voice is all we have; a voice that says, “Cry!”

What shall we cry?

We might remind one another that while it may be deeply American to defend the right to bear arms, it is yet more deeply godly to burn with a desire to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.  And that means every kind of weapon, firearm, missile, and bomb: transformed in the heat of God’s forge.  For Zion cannot be built with the edge of a sword or the barrel of a gun.

How easily and how often Zion crumbles.

Since Friday, Zion has lain in smoking, bloody ruins in a school in Connecticut.

Who knows why God has made Zion so fragile, when we think we need a fortress?  Why is hope so easily killed?

A voice says, “Cry!”  And I said, “What shall I cry?”

Do not fear, O Zion;

let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst.

… [and] I will bring you home.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

16 December 2012

Saint Mark’s Church

2 days after the shooting of twenty children

and seven adults in Newtown, CT

The Best First Line

What’s the best first sentence? You know, like “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” First sentences are important – they set the mood, set the tone, draw you in – but they’re also just kind of fun, even famous in their own right. The American Book Review has even created a list of the top 100 best first lines of all time. “Call me Ishmael” is number one, in case you’re curious. What’s your favorite? Okay, I know, you’re in church, so you’re all thinking that maybe you’d better go with  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” since God is listening and all, but let’s just assume that one for now. What about “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Or “Marley was dead: to begin with.” Or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Or “Mrs. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”*

There are, of course, tons of first lines to choose from, but I’ll bet that not one of you would pick “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.” Now, true, this isn’t exactly the first line of Luke’s Gospel, but that line isn’t much better. “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Oy. That sets the tone for sure, although I’m not sure it really draws you in as much as it makes you imagine yourself in a post-lunch overly-warm lecture hall about to settle in for a long winter’s nap. But you shouldn’t give up on Luke too quickly, because even though he says (twice) that he’s planning on writing an “orderly account,” once he starts writing, he just can’t help himself – he ends up writing a musical. Everyone in his story just keeps breaking into song – Mary and Zechariah and the angel with the multitude of the heavenly host and Simeon…they’re all so full of joy and wonder that they’ve just gotta sing!

But now that Luke has gotten to chapter 3, it’s like he suddenly remembers what kind of story he’s supposed to be writing. Right! Right, an orderly account. Okay. Back to lecture. So, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, etc., etc., etc., But we must be careful here. Because Luke is not just setting the stage for the who, what, where, and when – he is also setting us up. Now most of us have heard this text so many times that we tend to gloss over the first part of it – right, a bunch of historical figures who may or may not appear later on in the story – and we’ve learned to expect the second part, – right, of course the word of God came to John, he is the John, after all, John the Baptizer, the voice in the wilderness, the one who proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Seems self-evident to me. But look again at what Luke sets up here – that in the time of emperors and governors and rulers and princes and principalities and priests and people of immense power, the word of God came not to them but to that guy – that kind of weird guy standing by a stream in the middle of the wilderness.

And the great question is – Why? Why choose that guy? Why would God choose John? Why would God choose John’s unlikely, ancient mother to give birth to him, an unlikely, awkward prophet, just so that God could put his powerful word into John’s unlikely, acerbic mouth. Why John, a nobody, instead of all of those other people who had more money, more power, more prestige, and could certainly have had more impact? We can’t say it’s because they were just inherently unsympathetic to God’s cause or unreceptive to God’s call – you just have to look at the story of the conversion of Paul to know that God is quite happy to find a way of working around that. So why John? Or for that matter, why Abraham? Why an old, old man to be the father of a great nation? Why slippery, shifty Jacob to build the foundation for the twelve tribes of Israel? Why stuttering Moses to be God’s mouthpiece before Pharaoh? Why Ruth? Why David? Why Mary? Why does God always seem to favor the most unlikely people to do his work in the world? If the first line of creation is that in the beginning God lovingly and carefully created heaven and earth, why in the world would he hand over the future of that world to such a bunch of misfits?

Well, first of all, it’s because God, the author of all, loves a good plot twist. God delights in surprises, delights in showing us redemption and grace in the most unexpected places. I imagine that it pleases God to no end to watch his people discover him by stumbling upon him, to see us jump with a start when he pops up in strange places. After all, this is the God of the burning bush, the God of Balaam’s talking donkey, the God who appeared to Elijah as a sound of silence. God loves a good surprise, not only because surprises bring us joy in a very particular way, but also because surprises help us to see how dependent we are on him, help us to find him; surprises help to draw us in. I certainly know this from my own life. How could a God who called me to ordained ministry from Saint Mark’s Church, then sent me to low-church Virginia Theological Seminary, and then called me back to Saint Mark’s be anything other than a God who revels in a good plot twist?

But even more important than God’s love of surprise is God’s love of us. God is an author who desperately wants his characters to know one another. Why choose an unlikely prophet? Because by choosing the unlikely, God shows us that to hear his word, we are going to have to really pay attention to each other, to be alert, to look and listen for his word at all times and in all places, because we never know when we just might hear it. If God only spoke to us through the most likely mouth, we might very well just stop noticing when those mouths were moving. But there can be no cheating here. We cannot assume that we’ll hear God in a particular place or from a particular person. We cannot assume that we’ll hear God speaking to us through the most powerful, the most prominent, or the most predictable. God’s choosing the unlikely reminds us to never, ever rule someone out as a potential messenger for the word of God – the man on the street corner who is shaking for his next fix but who reminds us as we pass by that we are blessed, the child who has just learned his words but who tells us that he likes being blessed at the altar because he can feel the angel wings beating around his head, the self-avowed atheist who unintentionally echoes the great commandment when he tells us that love is a force known best by our actions – even the woman who gazes back at us in the mirror. God is happy to send his word to the most unlikely among us if that means that we will have to pay better attention to one another, to learn to read one another better, to look – hard – for the Christ that lives within each one of us, and to love one another as we love ourselves.  

And this is Advent. To look for God in the most unlikely of places – in the wilderness, in a barren womb, in a manger. This is Advent. To wait and watch with eyes and hearts wide open and expectant, to look for the coming of Christ again and again and again, to stand together upon the height and to look to the east, where God will surely gather all of us misfits into one. This is Advent. To look for God’s holy surprise – his word in our mouths, his grace in our hearts, his strength in our hands, his Son in our story. So here is the best first line of this best first season. In the final year of the first term of Barack Obama, when Tom Corbett was governor of Pennsylvania and Michael Nutter mayor of Philadelphia, when Katherine Jefferts Schori was the presiding bishop and Charles Bennison finishing his tenure as Bishop of Pennsylvania, the word of God came to…who? You? Me? Your partner? Your father? The person sitting next to you in the pew? The person you’re going to stumble across when you step out of this church? May God finish writing that first sentence for you in a most wonderful and most surprising way.

*The first lines listed here are from, in order, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Star Wars by George Lucas, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, A Christmas Carol by Dickens, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

9 December 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia