Two Journeys

The journey looked like this. Three Kings, lounging on cool satin pillows in the sultry Persian air, observe a star. Together, they watch as it arcs across the sky towards lands unknown. They look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and purposefully process out of the room, padding away on soft, slippered feet. They pack for travel, one gold, one frankincense, one myrrh. Their trunks filled with gifts and robes and telescopes, they mount their sturdiest camels and set out across the sands towards the West. For weeks, months, they travel through the wilderness in a stately parade, gently rocking on the backs of their beasts, stopping only to check their coordinates or to rest in rustic towns where their appearance provokes quiet wonder and the offering of the people’s finest food and drink, their softest beds, their cleanest hay.

The Kings break their journey in Jerusalem and seek out Herod. They deign to dine with this Roman toady some silly men have begun to call “the Great.” He flatters them, fills them with dates and roast lamb and fine wine. He wants information from them; they know this. “Go and search diligently for the child;” he purrs, “and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” But they need no encouragement. They would never be anything less than diligent, and they know without saying a word to each other that they will never pass this way again, never share their star-child with this petulant, petty fool.

They move along, quiet now, serenely watching the star as it settles over a tiny, dark cave on a moonlit winter’s night, where a tiny babe is the only Word that is spoken. Here they kneel in a row, each removing turban or feathered hat or jeweled scarf and placing their gifts before this long-expected child, this babe of their searching, born, king of the Jews. That night they rest easy, fulfilled and happy, and when they all dream a dream of warning, they look at each other with wise eyes, nod deeply, and leave for their own country by another road.

Maybe.

Or maybe the journey looked like this. Three kings, or maybe they weren’t kings, maybe they were just wise men…and why three? Maybe four or five or six, maybe there was Caspar and Melchior and Balthasar…and Cornelius and Bilbo and Eliot. So *some* magi have been watching the skies every night for months. This is what they do – they’re wise men, after all. Suddenly Melchior sees something in the heavens that he’s never seen before: a star – a great, bright, blaze of a star – starting in the East and moving across the sky. He’s excited, he’s like a dog with a bone, panting as he tells the others that he wants to go chase it. At which point there is a great deal of eye-rolling and groaning. Caspar reminds Melchior that this wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten something wrong – remember that time he’d predicted the end of the world? Balthasar sighs and immediately begins double checking Melchior’s math. (He never was very good with fractions.) Cornelius just crosses his arms and says no way, he isn’t going anywhere, he has a concert coming up that he cannot miss. Eliot protests that they’ll have a “cold coming of it,” that it’s “just the worst time of the year/For a journey, and such a long journey:/The ways deep and the weather sharp,/ The very dead of winter."* But Bilbo tells Eliot to stop waxing so poetical and turns to Melchior with a star in his eyes – yes! yes! a star! let us wish upon it, let us follow it, let us have an adventure!

It takes a while, of course, to convince the rest to go along. This must portend something wondrous, Melchior keeps saying, and there is this tale, this ancient tale from Hebrew prophets of a boy born to save the world. What if this star marks his coming? We wouldn’t want to miss that, would we? And it’ll be fun…so one by one, they nod their heads grudgingly, plan their gifts and pack their trunks. Eliot says goodbye to “The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,/And the silken girls bringing sherbet,” Cornelius hurries back inside at the last minute for some extra staff paper, they all scramble up atop their stupid, stinking camels, and the journey has begun.

And it is a real slog. The desert winds blow sand in their eyes, the nights are freezing cold, the days are blistering hot. The clouds cover the skies so that there are no stars at all. They get lost, they get hungry and blistery and gruuumpy. Cornelius won’t shut up about the concert and eats all of the stuffed dates and dried apricots and bitter chocolate they had brought along as gifts. Caspar is silent and Balthasar is nervous and Eliot won’t stop going on about “the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly/ And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.”* But still they slouch on.**

Finally, after weeks of stumbling and griping, they all see where they must be headed – Jerusalem, the star of the West. They wind their way to Herod’s door and say, Help? Where is the child? they ask. When Herod looks at them blankly, they push on. He must be here, they say, we’ve followed this star for months and we darn well mean to pay this child homage. But Herod is confused, and angry, and ranting, until finally one of his scribes remembers Micah – that old prophet Micah, who once said that a ruler would come forth from, not Jerusalem, but Bethlehem of all places. Bethlehem? Herod can’t believe it, but he thinks, What can it hurt to send these magi on to check it out? Go to Bethlehem, he growls, look for this magical Messiah baby, and let me know if you find him. Let me know where you find him. (Cue evil laugh here.)

And so the magi are suddenly back up on their stupid, stinking camels, and traveling – again – down an unknown road – again. Now they are all quiet, too tired to care, too exhausted to worry about where they are going or why Herod was so jumpy or what they’re going to give this baby since they forgot to pick up an extra gift in Jerusalem. They are so tired they hardly notice when the star stops. They stumble off their camels – with overwhelming joy –  and into the house where they find a wide-eyed girl of a mother holding a baby boy. She tells them stories of shepherds and angels while they slump to the ground before him, offering him the gifts not already eaten. Cornelius offers to sing his newest melody, Bilbo tells the child a great tale of their adventure, and Eliot promises a poem. They each pay him homage, this wisp of a child, and suddenly they feel the hard ground shift beneath their knees. Somehow, everything has changed. They stand and leave the holy family and head back out into the night, and they know, now they know, that the journey has really just begun. It stretches out before them, not just around Herod and back to their home but all the way to Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee, and Bethany and Jerusalem and Golgatha and a tiny, dark tomb. Eliot asks, “Were we lead all that way for/Birth or Death?”* The others shrug their shoulders, quiet, but peaceful now. Perhaps “the end of all our exploring,” Caspar says, “will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”*** Eliot jots that line down for remembering. And then they journey on.

And isn’t this what our journeys look like. Much as we might like to imagine that our journey to find the Christ will always be a journey on a straight path, a journey of confidence and reassurance and knowledge, with a clear destination in mind, with an inspired beginning and a profound end and evenly-spaced steps along the way, our journeys of discipleship are rarely like that. They are far more interesting. We may begin grudgingly, haltingly. We may need a nudge or a push to get started at all. Or we may start off inspired but find the terrain difficult and stumble. We may get lost, grumpy, lose track of our own gifts along the way. We may meet people who treat us with disdain, who bluster or mock or send us packing. And we may arrive at a particular place and think that we’ve really, you know, arrived, only to discover that what we find there only encourages us to keep seeking just a little further on down the road, just over that hill, around that bend.

But if we are willing to keep walking, we will find that this messy, complicated journey is rich with life. The bends in the road help us to practice our faith, the encounters along the way help us to practice loving neighbors, the stops and starts help us to practice Sabbath and prayer. Even the Herods can be transformed into guiding forces and by the grace of God end up pointing us in the right direction. This kind of journey changes us. This journey brings us to our knees and brings us to ourselves. This journey breaks us open so that when we find the Christ child we will be open to what he has to teach us, to the new life he has to offer us. This is what the journey looks like. For why take a journey if it isn’t going to take you anywhere at all? So if your journey looks more like the second version of the wise men’s journey, know that you are on the right path. You are on the path where God is with you. So journey on.

*From T. S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi

**After W. B. Yeats' The Second Coming

***From T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

6 January 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia  

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