Word Waves

For the longest time we could not see.

For the longest time we could not see the things we hear.

We could not see sound.

Did not know its pattern.

Did not know it traveled in waves.

Did not know its progress could be charted;

its speed clocked at 340-some-odd metres per second.

For the longest time we could not see.

Then, in time, we saw.

We learned to measure

sound.  We learned to map it,

and to chart its progress;

to measure its speed.

We discovered we could watch it.

And we did.

But for the longest time we could not see;

we could not see the things we hear.

And now, not only can we see

the things we hear,

we can outrun them,

overtake them,

and leave them behind.

But for the longest time, we could not.

We could not see the things we hear.

We could only listen, and be dazzled by them.

We imagine that what is true of sound

is also true of God:

that we have overtaken him;

outrun him,

left him behind.

Many people imagine this.

We have become too smart for God,

the story goes.

We are too sophisticated

to believe such foolishness.

And after all,

we overtook sound long ago.

Light cannot be so far behind.

It is only a matter of time.

Somewhere, deep in the ingredients of stars,

there is an echo, or a wave

that you could hear, or see,

if you could find it.

It sounds like the beginning,

which is a mystery,

since eternity has no beginning,

and no ending.

But the echo, or the wave,

sounds like the beginning,

sounds like the origin,

of something God spake,

when God first began to speak

his eternal wisdom,

that has no beginning,

and no ending,

although the sound itself

is both, beginning and ending.

The sound captured in the echo, or the wave,

existed in God always,

even when he had not yet spoken it.

Don’t you see?  Can’t you hear?

Although, for the longest time, we could not?

I suppose there are sounds

too high and too low for us to hear;

waves too fast or too slow

for us to measure, to see.

I suppose the sound of God speaking

was like slowing it down,

or speeding it up,

to allow us to hear it,

to allow us to see it,

though for the longest time

we neither heard nor saw.

Not even the echo.

Not even the wave.

We are deaf and we are blind.

But, if only we were dumb,

we might not say the foolish things

we say about God,

and what’s on his mind,

and what he sounds like,

and what he looks like.

We might not have to use

a personal pronoun

when we refer to him in speech.

Speaking about God

is something better left to God.

Which may be why once he spake

the Word that had always dwelt deep within him,

that has its origins in the echo or the wave

that has always been,

has no beginning or end,

though he is Alpha and Omega.

The Prologue of the final Gospel

is not a speech.

It is a drawing

of the sound of God’s voice.

It is the urgent wave

sketched out,

to enable the blind to see,

to assist the deaf in our hearing.

Because for the longest time we could not see.

And we could not have heard it,

even if we had tried,

since the sound was still deep inside

the mind of God.

John was drawing the waves

of the sound,

as the Word pulsed through him:

up from the deepest places of the planet.

His naked feet measuring

the seismic movement,

and his hands

recording it for posterity.

I am trying to draw the waves

of that sound for you now,

using words,

that are neither fast enough

nor slow enough,

to do it justice.

But which have been slowed down

enough, or sped up

enough, so that we can hear,

and which will help us (I hope) to see.

Because for the longest time

we have done neither.

We have not outrun the Word.

We have not overtaken it.

We have by no means left it behind.

We have barely begun to grasp

its sound.  And it remains beyond

our reach – although it is very near us.

We imagine that having seen it,

having measured its waves,

and sized it up, and recorded its light,

that we have taken charge

of it, and everything.

Since for so long we could not see.

Men have always thought this;

ever since the sound could be heard,

the light seen.  We thought

we could douse it,

silence it, turn it on

or off at our pleasure.

As though it was only sound,

only light, only echo, only waves.

But it is more

than sound, more

than light, more

than echo, more

than wave.

It is dancing, it is justice, it is

fellowship, it is mercy, it is

learning, it is kindness, it is

softness, it is sharp, it is

virtue, it is humility, it is

beauty, it is darkness, it is

generosity, it is tenderness, it is

hope, it is solace, it is

friendship, it is healing, it is

relief and reinforcement, it is

silence, it is power, it is

music, it is touch, it is

water, it is air, it is

soil, and it is fire, it is

grace upon grace, and

grace upon grace, and

grace upon grace.

It is immeasurable, unknowable,

unstoppable, inaudible, inflammable.

For the longest time it was beyond us.

But then God spake,

and give it to us,

gave him to us.

Slowed down, or sped up, so we could

see, and hear, and touch,

and feel, and know, and love.

The Word is yours, and mine:

very near us, on our lips, and,

sometimes, in our hearts,

if we will have him,

if we will dare to speak

the Word that God once spake,

and call his Name,

which is Emmanuel, God with us -

but, slowed down, or sped up,

so that we can see it, measure it,

hold it, love it, be dazzled by it -

is Jesus.

He is the Word

that became flesh,

and dwelt among us.

And we beheld its glory.

Full of grace and truth.

And from his fullness have we all

received grace upon grace.

Thanks be to God.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

29 December 2013

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

The Name of Jesus

It is the great question of all nativity scene owners everywhere – do you put out the baby Jesus when you first put up the crèche, or do you wait to place him in his manger on Christmas Eve? When you put up your nativity with the rest of your Christmas decorations, do you include the baby Jesus right away, or do you leave the wise men and shepherds and angels and all just staring at an empty spot in the middle of the circle? I am always curious to see what people decide to do.

Of course, I have always assumed if I see a manger scene without the baby Jesus it’s because the owners have decided to wait and let Jesus make his appearance on Christmas Day. But it seems that I have been a bit naïve in this assumption. Apparently, some of the baby Jesus-es are just missing, because swiping baby Jesus-es is now a thing. That’s right, it is now apparently a trend to steal tiny plastic or blow-up or glow-in-the-dark baby Jesus-es right out of their tiny plastic or blow-up or glow-in-the-dark mangers. There has been such a rash of baby-Jesus-stealing this year that a company has designed a special GPS tracker to stick inside the Christ child in case he is pinched while you are at Mass.  

Learning of this unfortunate phenomenon helped me to understand the manger scene that I passed a few days ago in the Italian market. Mary and Joseph were there, glowing, somewhat eerily, under a white, wooden crèche, surrounded by a few shimmery shepherds and lustrous farm animals. And right in the center of the scene was a similarly iridescent baby Jesus, lying in his manger. But instead of being an open v-shaped trough, this particular manger was a thick, white shadow box that actually came up and around the Christ child, covering up his arms and trapping him inside in a way that made me utter a silent prayer that the Son of God was not at all claustrophobic. The manger certainly didn’t look beautiful, or comfortable, for that matter, but I don’t think that was the point. The point, clearly, was that no one, and I mean no one, was going to steal a baby Jesus that was jammed into the manger like that.

It’s a haunting vision, isn’t it? Hundreds of nativity scenes set up on Christmas Day, with not one baby Jesus among them, and somewhere, a stack of baby Jesus-es, all serenely extending arms to one another as if to say, “Hello there, little man – at least we’re in this together.” Christmas with no Christ child, no one to wrap in those swaddling clothes, kings presenting gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the baby in absentia. What a sad picture of Christmas morning, with all the faithful gathered around the crèche to gaze upon the child and no Jesus to be found.

Now our bambino is just fine. He’s over in the manger, lying in the straw, with plenty of room to stretch out his little arms, thanks be to God. But this morning, we have gathered around to sing our carols and to hear the story of the birth of the Christ child. And we have heard: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the light is shining into the darkness, and the true light is coming into the world, and where exactly is the part with the baby Jesus in the manger again? Where is he – is he in there? What a Christmas morning, with the faithful gathered around the Gospel to gaze upon the child and no Jesus to be found.

Of course, Jesus is found in this Gospel; in fact, he runs all through it. Jesus is the Word, the father’s only Son, the light that shines into the darkness. And that moment when we all just hit our knees as we heard of the Word being made flesh is the moment of the incarnation, the miracle of God-made-flesh that we celebrate here this morning. And yet I miss hearing that Word’s name; I miss hearing the name Jesus. I miss hearing the name that Joseph spoke softly into the warm darkness of the manger – Jesus – the name that Mary cooed to her newborn son as they rode together on the back of a lumbering donkey. Jesus. I miss hearing the name that made our Lord turn his head when he heard it in on the streets of Nazareth, or in the temple of Jerusalem – Jesus! – the name that he heard whispered in the wilderness, or on the mountaintop, or in Gethsemane’s garden. But in this Gospel reading, his name is missing; “Jesus” is simply nowhere to be found.

But maybe, just maybe, this is part of the point of hearing this particular Gospel lesson on this particular morning. Maybe this is part of its challenge, part of its gift. For maybe, just maybe, it is up to us to help that name be found. Maybe this is actually our job – to do the naming ourselves. Just as Joseph was told all those years ago in the depths of a dream that Mary would have a son and that Joseph would name him Jesus, maybe it is also our calling, our responsibility, to name him. Maybe this is what we get to do. God pours him out into flesh, Mary bears him in her womb, and Joseph and you and I – well, we get to name him.

And the name of Jesus is, of course, not just any ordinary name. It is a name given to him by God, a name of infinite beauty and holiness. It is the name that is above every other name, the name at which every knee shall bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. This is the name that carries within it the promise of God’s salvation, the assurance that God is with us. This is the name that brings with it the hope of the incarnation, the love of the cross, the joy of the resurrection. 

And this is the name that you and I get to offer. This is the name that you and I get to bear into the world. When the world asks its impossible questions, we speak his name as answer. Who will love me, now that she is gone? Jesus. Where is God in the midst of this misery? Jesus. And when the world comes up with unhelpful answers that need better questions, again, we speak his name. Why should I care about the addicts freezing out there on the street? Jesus. Why must I continue to reach out to care for those who are rejected? Jesus. We speak his name in times of joy and times of sorrow, in times of relief and in times of fear. We speak his name as we look at each other, as we gaze into the faces of the wounded and the broken, the beloved and the enemy, as we reach out our arms to each other and say, “Hello there, little one, blessed are we who are in this together.”

There is certainly plenty of space in this world for his name; there are plenty of little empty niches, hollow, hopeless places where we can speak the name that brings peace and salvation and love, the name that fills the darkness with everlasting light. There is room for us to speak his name, to cry out Jesus! with joy and assurance that he has not been stolen away – he is here, among us, born for us this day, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. So name him, Christians, name him, name him for yourselves, name him for each other, name him for the stranger and the lost and the lonely. Fear not! For the child that is born is of the Holy Spirit. Mary has born a Son, and you shall call him Jesus. 

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Christmas Day 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

A Honeybee Christmas Story

A long time ago there was a Queen Bee who lived in a hive among the scraggly hills outside of Bethlehem. One day, as the Queen Bee sat surrounded by her offspring in the hive, she took note, among all the worker bees, and drones, and larvae still un-hatched, of a newborn honeybee that caught her eye as it wriggled out of its larval sac and into the world.

The night before this infant honeybee had been born, the Queen Bee, who liked to gaze up at the stars through a chink in the walls of the hive, had noticed a particularly bright star in the east, and she’d taken it as a sign that she should be looking for a special honeybee child to be born in the hive.

In those days, you see, honeybee colonies were collapsing – just as they have been in our own time, for several years – bees dying off for no apparent reason, with no known explanation.  Entire colonies were disappearing, and the olive, and almond, and pomegranate trees were struggling in their groves without honeybees to pollinate them.  And no one knew what was the cause of the illness that brought to ruin one beehive after another, killing off thousands and thousands of honeybees, their tiny carcasses ground into the dust by the sandals of men and women passing by on their way to and fro Bethlehem.

The Queen Bee suspected that Herod the Great was to blame for the slaughter of the honeybees.  She had heard stories (for beehives are full of gossips) about the way that Herod had set out to kill all the infant Hebrew boys in the Bethlehem, and she harbored a deep and angry suspicion that it was at least a by-product of Herod’s campaign of terror, if not an actual part of his strategy, that was bringing about the destruction of so many colonies of honeybees, killing thousands upon thousands of bees.

She was a proud and beautiful Queen Bee, and she knew of the importance of bees to the well-being of mankind, so she took affront at the idea that men would do her and her kind harm, since honeybees do so much good for humans.  But she had seen enough of humanity to know that men are fickle, and prone to abuse their power, and to resent those who do well by them.  So she had begun to harbor a great resentment, herself, against humanity, as she reigned day by day over her colony of buzzing, fanning, busy little honeybees.

And she’d had this vision of a star, and she didn’t know what it meant, until she noticed the one little honeybee being born in the hive, that somehow caught her eye, and she decided that she wanted to keep this child bee close to her.  So, the Queen Bee had the little infant honeybee brought to her, and swaddled in honeybee swaddling clothes, or some such thing, much to the amazement of the other bees in the hive.  And she nurtured the special baby honeybee herself.  She fed her the finest honey from the stores the drones maintain for her, and she fawned over the little girl honeybee in its infancy.

And when the little bee began to grow old enough to receive instruction, she had her finest worker bees take her out on forays amongst the flowers, and gardens, and groves, and riverbanks of Bethlehem – teaching her about the collection of nectar and pollen.  Inside the hive, they showed her how the honeycomb is made and then how the honey is deposited, sealed up, and left to thicken and grow sweet.

The Queen Bee insisted that her special honeybee should always be protected, both inside and outside the hive.  She was not allowed out of the Queen’s sight without an escort of burly drones who would gladly give their lives to carry out the Queen Bee’s wishes.

Whenever the little honeybee was not out among the flowers, or learning about the workings of the hive, the Queen Bee herself would instruct her young child.  She explained to the little bee that a honeybee has only two potential capacities in life: the bee can collect nectar and make honey, or the bee can use its stinger in service to the Queen.  Honeybees have no other real potential, for either they keep on making honey, or when they deploy their stingers to protect the hive or the Queen herself, the stinger is left in the flesh of the victim, and the honeybee who inflicted the sting soon dies.

You can imagine that the Queen Bee spent long hours teaching her protégé the ancient stories of honeybees, reciting the names of her forebears so the little honeybee would know her lineage, and instilling in the young bee a desire to serve her Queen above all else, as well as an intense hatred of Herod the Great, whom the Queen blamed for the ongoing epidemic of colony collapse among honeybees.  Herod would have to be dealt with, the Queen repeated to her offspring.  Some day she would raise up a swarm and attack Herod in his own palace, and bring an end to his reign of terror!  She shared with the little honeybee her plans to build up the hive and mount an attack on Herod with a swarm so large that it would seem to be a plague of biblical proportions.  In time, the growing hive looked with respect and a kind of reverence upon the strong young honeybee who was now almost always at the side of the Queen.

One night, as the Queen was gazing up at the stars through the chink in the wall of the hive, she noticed a star yet brighter than the star that had heralded the birth of her special offspring.  Beehives being the rumor mills that they are, word quickly reached the Queen that a human Child had been born in Bethlehem that night, and that the people were saying this Child would be called, among other things, the Prince of Peace; that he would bring forgiveness wherever there was hurt or hatred; that he would be a new kind of king who ruled with love rather than by force; that true justice would be the result of his reign, and that mercy would characterize his rule; that he would usher in the kingdom of heaven; and that he would bring hope to all those who had none.

Now, you would think that the Queen Bee would have heard this as good news, but you’d be wrong.  For the Queen had grown obsessed with the idea of wreaking vengeance on Herod.  And some Baby-of-Love, heralded by the stars, about whom apparently angels were singing in the night sky, and shepherds were dashing off to visit – such a child threatened to undo her plan to mount a swarm of vengeance.  And after all, only by getting rid of Herod, thought the Queen, could she prevent the collapse of her own colony of honeybees, that had so far avoided the fate that so many others had suffered.

The Queen was blinded, you might say, by her vengeful spirit, and she’d been given little reason to think that any human child could be the bearer of good news to honeybees, anyway.  So she called her beloved daughter honeybee into her innermost chamber, and shared with her a special mission:

“My child,” the Queen Bee said, “I have loved you like no other bee in the hive.  I have reared you myself, and shared with you all my wisdom, all my history, all my insights, and all my plans.  You are the strongest, cleverest bee in the hive, and no one surpasses you in any way.

“Tonight, my dear one, I must ask you to realize one of the only two potential capacities of which a honeybee is possessed.

“Tonight I will send you to the newborn Child in Bethlehem, and you must sting the infant King with your stinger, dear child.  For if the prophecies are true, he will prevent me from unleashing my swarm on Herod; he will be a force for peace, when what we need to protect the colony is terrible power; he will urge forgiveness, when what we need is to show these humans that we are more frightening than they had ever imagined, and we are not to be trifled with!”

And the Queen Bee produced from a secret part of the honeycomb, a dark and treacly substance that was, she told the little honeybee, a special venom, more deadly than normal bee venom, guaranteed to kill a little newborn child with only one sting.  She loaded the venom carefully into the glands that empty into the stinger of her beloved little honeybee.  She looked at her daughter lovingly and gratefully, for it pained her to send her beloved child on the cruel errand she had planned, but she could see no other way.  And whispering words of love and encouragement from her antennae to her daughter’s, she sent her strongest, most beautiful, dearly beloved honeybee child out on a mission to kill, and to die.

The honeybee easily found the barn, what with the bright star twinkling right over it, and with the shepherds showing the way as they loped along toward the place.  In the night sky, the honeybee circled, taking in the scene: parents with newborn Child, shepherds gawking, cattle lowing, and indeed, and angel or two off in the distance singing in Latin, as angels are prone to do.  Then she swooped in closer, and buzzed through the open barn a few times.   It was more of a lean-to than a proper barn.  The father was asleep, in a pile of straw beside the manger.  The Mother was drowsy but awake, having laid her Child down in his own bed of straw to sleep.  But the Child was not sleeping; his eyes were open, twinkling with a brightness not unlike the brightness of the star above.

It was a warmish night, and the Baby kept wriggling out of the swaddling clothes his Mother had wrapped him in.  He was reaching out his hands and opening his little pudgy palms wide as he could, the way babies do.  An easy target.

The honeybee buzzed by again, and the Mother saw it, and drew in her breath sharply.  The Mother swatted at the honeybee with a handful of straw, but she was tired, and her defenses were down.

And the Child locked his eyes on the compound eyes of the honeybee as the brave bee prepared to realize her potential, to give her own life for the sake of her mother, the Queen, and to save her own hive by this regrettable act of treachery.  And the honeybee extended its stinger from its abdomen and set a course for the soft exposed shoulder of the little child.  She felt the venom: heavier than the usual venom in its sac, ready to be delivered.  She flew far outside of the barn, in order to build up as much speed as possible.

The Mother had no idea what was about to happen.  The father was snoring, the stupid cattle were still lowing, and the shepherds were useless.

The honeybee zoomed in toward the Child, who clearly saw it coming.

Just then, the Mother looked up and saw what was about to happen, but she had no time to react or even to scream.

The Child was looking at the honeybee with a look of serenity on its face, and a look of strength, and of grace.  And the Child stretched out its hand to the incoming honeybee, whose stinger was ready to strike.

“Foolish child,” was the last thing the honeybee thought as she prepared to pierce the Baby with her stinger.  She aimed directly for the soft palm of his outstretched little hand.  And as she went in for the kill, the Baby actually gently closed his little fingers around the honeybee, making it even easier for her to place her stinger right where she wanted it.

The Mother shrieked a little shriek.  The father roused from his sleep. The cattle looked up. 

The Mother stooped over the manger in fear to see what damage the bee had done, expecting to find a red, inflamed spot, and the little stinger sticking out of the Baby’s flesh.  But she never suspected the truth: never suspected the deadly power of the venom that the honeybee had deployed for this Holy Child.  She expected to hear the Baby cry out, but she was not expecting him to die.  She was expecting him to wail, and for it to be a very difficult night, but not to be his last night.  She was ready to open the little hand and to kiss the tiny wound, to bathe it with her saliva, and to draw the bee’s venom out of him with her lips.  But she was not prepared for what happened next.

She was not prepared for the Baby to lie absolutely still, and to remain absolutely silent.

And she was not prepared to see the tiny stinger there in the flesh of his tiny hand, but to see that there was nothing red or inflamed around the stinger; there was only a tiny drop of a thick, golden liquid.  And when she pressed her lips to it, she knew immediately what it was: honey.

And she was not prepared to see a fluttering of tiny wings down in the straw as the honeybee discovered that her venom had been somehow turned to honey, and that she had not died.  And the bee sped off into the night to return home to the Queen Bee and urge her to re-evaluate the situation.  And the Child cried out to its Mother that he was hungry.

Now everybody knows that the world does not work like this.  Everybody knows that honeybees do not plot to overthrow governments.  And everybody knows that special little babies are not born who turn dangerous weapons into honey.

Everybody knows that no Prince of Peace has established his reign over the face of the earth; that forgiveness has not triumphed over hurt and hatred; that we have not yet seen a king who could truly rule with love rather than by force; that true justice is so far unknown in the world, and that mercy is a rare commodity; that the kingdom of heaven seems like a fairy tale; and that no Child has yet brought hope to all those who have none

Except tonight.  When for some reason, more of us than would normally be open to such a thing, have come here to sit with the baby Jesus.

And maybe we have come here hoping that he will take all our hatred, and jealousy, and violence, our cruelty, and our abused power, our pride, and even our sense of honor that is so easily misplaced; that Jesus will take whatever it is that warps and ruins our lives and the world we live in; that Jesus will take our stingers, and our venom – of which we have plenty – and turn them into honey.

And we come here tonight, not to tell ourselves fairytales that will never come true; but to remember that this Child has done it before.  He has brought peace out of deadly venom, from the tip of a sharpened stinger.  He has brought life where no one could see anything but death.

And he will do it again.

He is doing it now, if we will let him; if we go back to our hives and re-evaluate the situation, and decide that of the many potential capacities available to us, perhaps the best one is to make honey.

And if you aren’t sure what that might mean, how you might make honey out of the venom of your life, then you might want to reach out your hand, so to speak, and place it in the hand of the Baby Jesus and just hold on to him, and let him show you how.

And when you do hold him, don’t be surprised to find that your own hand has about it the faint aroma and the unmistakable taste of a drop or two of honey.

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Christmas Eve 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia