His Own Received Him Not

If I close my eyes when I pray,

I sometimes wonder

what I am preventing myself

from seeing.

Am I shutting out the world? 

Will God project some image

inside my eyelids,

that only I can see,

but have not yet seen?

My hands are closed, too.

Clasped, is what you would call them.

Closed is what they, are –

unable to reach, to grab, to pinch,

or to hold on to anything.

What else in me is closed

when I pray,

if my eyes and my hands

are closed?

Usually my mouth is running,

which is not so different

from when I am not praying,

and my mouth is running…

which is another way of being closed.

And my mind, of course,

is following (yes, following)

my mouth;

so it is occupied, unavailable, and closed.

What else is left,

if my eyes, and my hands,

my mouth, and my mind

are accounted for?

Only my heart.

When the Scriptures say

that Jesus was in the world,

and the world was made by him

but the world knew him not.

That he came unto his own,

and his own received him not,

where does that put me,

since I am part of this world?

And where does it put you?

Remember, I am praying,

and my eyes, and by hands, are closed,

and my mouth is running,

my mind is following behind.

And there is only my heart to wonder about.

If this is what I am like at prayer,

how could I receive him, ever?

How could you?

I am so busy with myself,

how can I receive him,

when he comes into the world?

I have my interests, my worries,

my loves, and infatuations,

my greediness, and desires;

I have my work, and my church

to distract me from Jesus,

if I will let them,

which, generally, I do.

Don’t you?

And remember, even when I pray,

almost everything is closed, shut,

unable to receive him.

Sometimes my dog lies on his back,

all four limbs crookedly in the air,

his pink, fur-less belly exposed.

I can stroke his silly belly this way,

and he will wag his tail,

and stay that way for a little while,

until being so exposed

becomes too much.

Is that what it would be like

to be able to receive the Christ?

To lie, belly-up, naked, and exposed?

To be available to be touched by him,

even my silliest parts?

Un-concerned, for a while,

with myself?

It’s so much easier to let it be about me.

So much easier to presume that the world

awaits my judgments,

owes me something,

belongs to me.

And, therefore, I am free

to make an assessment

about God, and about his Son.

I am free to decide

whether I want him

or not.

Free to decide

whether I need him

or not.

Free to decide

whether he is real

or not.

As though all that were mine,

though it is not.

Though I am still free

in just those ways.

And he comes to his own,

and his own receive him not.

I want Christmas to be

as soft as pine boughs,

as comfortable as a bed

of green, scented needles.

I want it to be only, ever

a manger,

and me outside of it,

able to come and go as I please,

or not.

But what I need

is for Christmas to be the sharp,

strong end of a wedge,

or a lever,

that subtly works its way

into some crack, or seam,

or tiny opening

in all that is shut up and closed

and unavailable in me.

Because as it is,

I am not ready or able

to receive him.

My eyes, and hands, and mouth, and mind

are not open for him.

My heart is not open to him.

I am battened down,

and all his battery is of little use,

when I am like this.

For how can he batter my heart,

if I will not even open the door?

But a wedge, or a lever,

something strong that I hardly notice

at first.  Maybe that would work!

Something like a baby?

Sometimes it helps

to go back to the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

Every time we go back

to the beginning,

it’s as though there is

another chance to receive him.

Every time we remember

that the Word was made flesh

and dwelt among us.

As subtle as a baby:

a thin, sharp, long lever;

a wedge

to get into those tight places,

whence I might be pried open.

It’s as though I am lying on my back,

my silly belly open to the sky,

and to the possibility that God will touch me,

will touch you,

and we will wag our tails.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

30 December 2012

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

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