This Song Is Best

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who is a church organist posted a photo on Facebook of her preparations for Christmas. Not surprisingly, it was a picture of a musical score, an arrangement of a hymn, with all of her expressive markings and organ registrations scratched in in pencil. She posted the picture with the tagline: “Fixin' to be that time again.” Oh. Perhaps I should have mentioned that my friend Jessica is a church organist in Tupelo, Mississippi. But the thing that struck me about her post wasn’t just her fabulously southern use of the word “fixin” – it was the particular piece of music that she posted, or rather the particular part of that particular piece. The piece was Adeste fideles, the hymn with which we began our liturgy this morning. But Jessica’s photo wasn’t of the beginning of the hymn, with a big “full organ” written over the words O Come All Ye Faithful – the photo was of the middle of the last verse. Now, some of you know where this is going, I think. Because in the middle of the last verse of Adeste fideles in this particular arrangement by Sir David Willcocks, very recently of blessed memory, something miraculous happens.

** Musical demonstration by Mr. Simon Thomas Jacobs**

And that, my friends, is the most succulent, most titillating, most anticipated chord of Christmas, no doubt. And that is what my friend Jessica was referring to – that it was fixin’ to be that time again, that time when we get to sing this hymn with that sexy chord and just revel in the extravagance for a moment.

What’s particularly interesting about that chord is where it happens. Sure, it’s in the last verse, when you might expect some harmonic fireworks, but Willcocks was about more than that, I think. For Willcocks placed that wondrous chord on the word “Word” – “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.” It’s the place in the hymn where today’s Gospel comes to light – and the Word became flesh, and lived among us. It’s a rare appearance of John’s Christmas Gospel in the hymnody of Christmas, which tends instead to focus on herald angels and midnights clear and little towns of Bethlehem. And no wonder, really. There isn’t much about today’s Gospel reading that sounds carol-y. “He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.” It’s good theology, but you can’t dance to it.

 Or can you? Because it turns out that the text of the prologue to the Gospel of John was, in fact, an extremely popular carol in the middle ages. Not all of it – just the phrase that Willcocks plays with – the Word was made flesh, or, in Latin, Verbum caro factum est. Verbum caro factum est was, apparently, kind of a hot lyric in the 16th century. Aside from the motets and sacred songs on that text that were composed for Christmas Day by composers like Hans Leo Hassler and John Sheppard, there were popular medieval Christmas carols based on that text, including one famously arranged by a contemporary of Willcocks, Sir William Walton, the refrain of which is “All this time this song is best: Verbum caro factum est.”

Verbum caro factum est was apparently so popular that it found its way into secular culture – specifically, as so many good lyrics and tunes do, into drinking songs. One such song began with Verbum caro factum est and then continued with, and I’m roughly translating the Old English here, Yo, I’m all up in the club, party people in the house, hold up, who’s got my bottle of bubbly. So how did the prologue to the Gospel of John get paired with a song about pouring out good cheer? Well, most obviously, in its original context, Verbum caro factum est was very cheery news – the best news, in fact. So good news, good cheer, let’s have a beer. But as the song itself began to separate from the occasion, when it became less of a song about Christmas and more of just a song to slosh your tankard too, the scriptural phrase, interestingly, stayed in. The reason? Well, one medieval poetry scholar has suggested that the use of Verbum caro factum est at the beginning of the song was a way of getting people’s attention. It was kind of the medieval equivalent of saying, “The Lord be with you” in a room full of Episcopalians. When medieval people heard Verbum caro factum est, they knew to pay attention to what was coming next.* Because Verbum caro factum est was the money line. That was when your ears perked up, when your head snapped to. Verbum caro factum est was the moment when you hit your knees.

And it still is. Verbum caro factum est is still the moment, the moment that this Christmas Day is all about, the moment that calls us to attention this morning, that had us hitting our knees a few moments ago. Verbum caro factum est, the Word was made flesh, is the moment when Christmas happened, when God’s only-begotten, most beloved Son became a part of this world, of deeply ordinary stuff like dust and microbes and liquid and lint. And this is the most miraculous thing imaginable – that God would choose us, choose us even after all of the mess we’d made, and choose us so firmly and so finally that God would jump right into the thick of that mess to clean it up. Verbum caro factum est.

So it’s no wonder that Willcocks chose such a sensual chord for that moment in the hymn, because that moment in the hymn is all about the sensual. It is all about the gift that because Jesus was born, everything we see and touch and smell and listen to is known deep in the heart of God. Because Jesus knew what it was to feel the scratch of hay on your cheek. He knew what it was to smell the earthy funk of so many sheep and goats in a dark damp cave. He knew what it was to look up and see rocks, hills, and plains, to listen to every stone as it cried out. Everything we see and touch and smell and listen to God also has seen and touched and smelled and listened to. And tasted, of course tasted, like the sweetness of bread on your tongue and the richness of wine as it slides down your throat like silk.

Verbum caro factum est. The Word was made flesh, knew our flesh, and took that flesh, this world, you and me and all of Creation into his arms and blessed it, redeemed it, saved it, loved it, now and forever. And this morning we greet that Word, born this happy morning – Jesus, to thee be all glory given. Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. What better thing to sing, really? All this time, this song is best: Verbum caro factum est.

*This idea comes from the work Poems Without Names: The English Lyric, 1200-1500 by Raymond Oliver.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

25 December 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

The Force Awakens

One, singular piece of information, much discussed in the media, has had a profound affect on the way many people will experience Christmas this year. I first learned this piece of information late last Friday night, and since then I have been trying to figure out precisely what its significance is. Does it make me anxious and worried? Or does it leave me hopeful and expectant? I’m not sure.

Maybe you are wondering too, on this warm Christmas Eve, with so much to worry about in the world, whether Christmas fills you with dread or with hope. And maybe, if you have come across it (and it’s very likely that you have), maybe you are still trying to decide if this single bit of information has contributed to the mystery of this Christmas Eve in a good way or a bad way?

Even if you have not learned it first-hand, you have probably heard from someone else the news that I am referring to. And by repeating it to you I am giving nothing away. This is the news: Luke Skywalker has vanished.

With these words, the Star Wars saga, that began when I was a ten-year-old boy, has continued this year. And many of us have been enthralled to see those words crawl across the screen, as we are once again pulled into the conflict between good and evil that’s taking place in a galaxy far, far away. And we are invited to perch at the edge of our seats as we discover whether the Force, newly re-awakened, will be deployed for the virtuous, the humble, and the needy, or whether it will serve only to advance the cause of the powerful, the rich, and the self-satisfied of the Empire.

To put the question in Biblical terms: will the humble and meek be exalted, and the rich be sent empty away? Or will the mighty maintain their seat, and the proud see the self-serving imagination of their hearts gratified once more? Is this not the question that Star Wars asks again and again?

And is this not the question of Christmas? It is surely the question that Mary sings about when she learns that God intends for her to bear a Son by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. And if Mary doesn’t know the meaning of Christmas, then who does?

Right versus wrong. Good versus evil. Light versus darkness. George Lucas may have sold the rights to the Star Wars franchise, but the story endures. And it enlists such an immense following because it presents these fundamentally religious matters that are about more than politics, more than justice, more than governance, and certainly about more than the movies. Will goodness prevail? Or will it be eclipsed by the power of evil that so often seems to have the upper hand, the better theme music, and the cooler costumes?

A wise priest I know recently said that we “know that evil is a force in this world because it takes energy to resist it.”[i]

How right he is. And we knew that there was evil in the world even before Darth Vader came marching into our lives with his well-scored entrance music, his menacing mask, and his black cape swooping behind him. We know that evil is a force in this world, not because we have seen it on the big screen, but because we can feel it for ourselves, in our lives – sometimes with all the force of a punch to the gut that leaves you feeling like you may have to throw up. And it takes energy to resist that evil.

You find this, at a distance, when you are reading the paper or watching the news. But you also find it closer to hand when you hear of people you know and love who have suffered horribly – not only from sickness and natural disaster (these are bad enough), but at the cruel hands of a vicious regime, or a thief, or a gunman, or a bully, or an abuser, or system that just couldn’t care less. Or maybe you have suffered yourself in these ways.

And you know that goodness will not prevail unless someone does something about it – unless some energy is spent to resist the power of evil at work in the world, near and far. We know that evil is a force in this world because it takes energy to resist it.

Sometimes the evil is so much more personal, though. Sometimes it is that secret desire that you mostly keep at bay, but that, given the opportunity (which often means sufficient time alone, or enough distance to keep a secret) you will indulge, to the detriment of your own self and your good relationships. Does it come in a bottle, or in a pill, or wrapped in leaf or papers? Is it found online (in great profusion), or maybe even on the dark web? Is it at the other end of a phone number that you are careful not to save on your cell phone? Or is it hidden in a text message that you hope no one will ever see, or that you were careful to delete? Have you become so good at keeping this secret desire a secret that you no longer bother wasting much energy even trying to resist it? That it no longer seems like it really takes on the shape of evil?

Have we relegated evil to the movies, because we ourselves don’t bother spending much energy resisting evil anymore – globally or personally?

Part of the genius of the Star Wars legend is the ambivalence of the Force, which can be mastered either for good or for ill. There is perhaps no more terrifying weapon in any of the films than the bony empty fingers of the Emperor, or the black-gloved hand of Darth Vader or Kylo Ren stretched out in order to dominate an opponent - body and mind – with nothing but the unseen power of the Force; knowing that those empty fingers, that empty hand, will bring the object of their invisible power to its knees! The image speaks to us because we actually know that evil so often is invisible, or all too often it is disguised, made up like something we think we might like to have, or might like to be, or might at least like to dress up as for Halloween.

But still, evil is a force in the world. And in the midst of all this, Luke Skywalker has vanished. Luke, whose virtue and mastery of the light side of the Force may mean he is destined to overcome his dark patrimony, unless of course he is not.

Luke Skywalker has vanished. Perhaps this is an appropriate meme for the 21st century – a century in which so often virtue has vanished, faith has vanished, justice has vanished, truth has vanished. And for so many, God has vanished too.

Of course, Luke Skywalker is no god, nor even a savior, but he clearly represents a best hope for ourselves – a story we would like to be able to tell about ourselves: of the hope that we can overcome the darkness that threatens to eclipse our lives, sometimes from the inside out. But now Luke has vanished. Whither now hope?

Well, here we are on Christmas Eve – full of the questions of the moment, wondering if and when we shall have reason to hope for anything at all. And to begin with, the Christmas story tells us that if there is hope to be found, it will not be found in a galaxy far, far away. The answer of Christmas, to the vexing questions that plague us, begins with this assurance: that hope is to be found right here in our midst, because God is at work in our midst. God is here, with us.

And the answer of Christmas continues with a simple thing - a child is born – which is nearly incomprehensible to the dark side of things, because what can a child do? And this great mystery of God’s love – that a child is born – appears to be foolishness on God’s part at first glance, but is shown to be ever more wise, the more we learn about ourselves and about the force of evil.

Try to vanquish evil with military might and you have yourself a never-ending arms race. Try to vanquish evil with fire and you have incited an arsonist more committed to the work than you are. Try to vanquish evil with the strength of your own bare hands, and you find you are up against a fighter who enjoys the fight more than you do. We are tempted to think we should meet evil on its own terms, and beat it at its own game. But this is foolishness. Evil will always be a better destroyer, a better eliminator, and a better murderer than we can be, or ever should be.

God’s wisdom, rather, knows those ways in which evil can never prevail: in weakness, humility, and some measure of poverty – at these, evil has no facility, with these, evil can maintain no equilibrium; and in these, evil can find no power. Which makes a child the perfect hope against evil: an infant savior the kind of redeemer that could only spring from the wisdom of God.

We come running to God on Christmas Eve with the worried meme on our lips that Luke Skywalker has vanished, and the loss of hope that that implies in the real world. We want God to strengthen us, to arm us, and to steel us for battle – after all there is a lot worth fighting for in this world of ours! And a film like Star Wars, that understands our need to be reminded about the possibility of our victory in this struggle, encourages us in our desire to be ready for the fight!

But God knows how things go when everything becomes a war, every challenge is a battle, and every person is called to be a soldier: things don’t go well, not in the long run.

So God chooses weakness; God chooses humility; God chooses poverty. God sends a child to come into the world to be our Savior.

And God calls his people together at Christmas to remind us of this, no matter what the meme of the moment may be, even if Luke Skywalker has vanished.

Put not your trust in Jedi, comes God’s Christmas answer to the vexing questions of our time, nor in any power of men. Turn, instead, your eyes, and your ears, your hands and your hearts, to the manger, and to the Child lying there, sleeping so softly, and see, the power of God to transform all things by his grace, by the power of love, and by the wisdom of his Word. Gather round this cradle, and watch and wait for it. Listen for him; use a baby-monitor if you have to, or stay close enough to hear for yourself if you can. Follow the example of the shepherds, who know that something quite beyond their ken is at hand, but who want to be there to discover it anyway. Remember the wise men who were drawn to this mean crib. Hear the sweet song of the angels singing, hovering as close as they dare.

Do whatever you have to do to be there by his side when his little eyes flutter open, and his little arms and legs stretch out, and his little fingers grasp yours, and his little voice lets out a cry… and the force awakens that has changed the course of human destiny because he gave us again the power to become the children of God that we were always meant to be.

And if there is anything that worries you this Christmas; and if you have the nagging sense that evil remains a force in this world; if you feel quite certain of this because you know that it takes you some energy to resist it, then by all means thank God for bringing you here tonight to show you again that God sent his Son into the world to save it; and to save us. Thank God that the force awakens in its crib, the newborn child: nothing but weakness, humility, and poverty.

The force awakens every Christmas, and every day, and beckons us to believe in him, to place our trust and our hope in him, to align ourselves with that holy force of light and life whose Name is Jesus, and who will teach us that his power is made perfect in weakness.

There is good reason for us to gather tonight, past our bedtimes, when we should be snuggled in our beds; to be here together on this night of mystery and wonder and birth. Because he is only an infant, we know he will not sleep through the night when he comes, and we want to be here when the force awakens, that brings with him hope and salvation, without so much as a rattle to shake.

He is tiny, and he is weak, and he is humble, and he is poor, and he is the Son of God, who brings with him into this world of worry, anxiety, and fear, only his weakness, his humility, and his poverty. And these are more than enough, by the grace of God, to save the world.

So much has vanished: slipped through our hands and just disappeared: so much hope has been lost. Which is why it is good to be here, so that we can sing when the force awakens, and rock him to sleep again till the morning when he awakens again, as he does every morning, to bring us hope.

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Christmas Eve 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Fr. Frank Wade, speaking at the Clergy Conference for the Diocese of Pennsylvania, Dec, 2015

The Most Powerful Woman

Mary is in blue and Elizabeth usually appears in red. Mary stands with head slightly bowed, while Elizabeth is hunched over, bent from the waist or kneeling at Mary’s feet. Mary looks young and rosy-cheeked; sometimes, her hair is long and loose-flowing. Elizabeth usually appears much older – sometimes looking just more womanly, more voluptuous; sometimes looking downright ancient, wrinkled and weathered. The women stand facing each other, arms around each other, whether wrapped in a warm embrace or clutching each other in fear – it’s difficult to tell. Sometimes they are alone, standing together on a road outside of a home or a staircase or an archway. More often there are others standing in the background – Zechariah hovering in the corner, looking chastened and mute; a random shepherd or neighbor woman; a brood of chubby angels hovering overhead. Rarely are the two women inside a house, even though that’s the setting that Gospel of Luke describes. Perhaps painters just found the idea of Elizabeth running outside to greet her cousin with John running along inside her too delightful to resist; maybe they were just interested in practicing their landscapes.

Artistic renderings of the Visitation aren’t all exactly the same, but they are remarkably similar. Unlike paintings of the Annunciation, where Mary and the angel Gabriel are arranged in all kinds of configurations, almost all of the paintings of the Visitation are marked by a similar shape in the middle – a kind of heart, a circle where the love of Mary flows out into Elizabeth and then is poured back from Elizabeth into her cousin. For all of the other characters who might be lingering in the background, the focus in these paintings is on the singular, intimate moment between these two women, the point of contact where the women’s heads come so close together that their halos clunk and catch. 

And in a few paintings, it isn’t just their halos clunking together. Some show Mary and Elizabeth standing belly to belly, baby bump pushing into baby bump as the women struggle to get their arms around each other. And in some of these images, it isn’t just the baby bumps we see; in some, we actually see the babies themselves – a little John nestled inside a circle of light in Elizabeth’s womb; a little Jesus in Mary’s. And what’s stranger still is that in these images, the boys are not simply lying there, growing organs and flexing their fingers for the first time and enjoying whatever their mommies had for lunch. No, the boys are acting out their adult roles in utero – little naked baby John the Baptist kneeling with his arms crossed, while little naked baby Jesus blesses him from the opposite womb. In one painting, John is dressed in camel’s hair, and Jesus is fully clothed and wearing a crown.* I can only imagine the kind of heartburn those outfits must have caused their mothers for 9 months.   

Setting aside the strange look of these medieval ultrasounds and the inaccuracies of their gestational timelines, there is something wonderful about the thought of these babies meeting for the first time – these little babes, tiny hopes of the men they would become, who would meet again years later in the wilderness when John would push his cousin down into the watery womb of the Jordan, now pushed up against each other, womb to womb, smiling and saying, Hey! I know you…. The Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth was also the Visitation of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, and what a joyful, leap-inducing visit that must have been.

But to look at the visitation as if it had two separate levels – the mothers visiting and talking up here, and the babies bumping tiny fists down here, is to miss a key point of connection in this story. For Luke tells us that when Mary arrives at the home of Elizabeth, it isn’t the stirrings of the tiny Jesus that cause John to leap in the womb; it is Mary’s voice. It is Mary’s greeting that gets John kicking up his heels with glee. “For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting,” Elizabeth tells her cousin, “the child in my womb leaped for joy.” Mary is the one John responds to; Mary is the one Elizabeth showers with words of blessing and praise. Of course Elizabeth knows what is going on down there; she knows the gift that Mary carries in her womb. But for now, Elizabeth – and John – are drawn to what’s up here – Mary is the focal point, the foreground, the foremost figure in their frame.

And why? Not just because her body houses the Son of God, as if she were some kind of holy incubator with legs, no – because she believed. Mary believed, she believed what Gabriel said. She believed so strongly that all of God’s promises were coming true that she acted on those promises before any of those signs were even showing. She went – with haste, Luke tells us – to her cousin Elizabeth’s to see the good news that she knew would be there, before she had any proof that this miraculous story might be true. Mary believed and acted on her belief in a way never before seen among women or men.

Mary believed, and her great, nearly impossible faith drew out in Elizabeth a sympathetic resonance in the depths of her own soul. Yes, Elizabeth said, in an echo of Mary’s words to the angel Gabriel, yes, be it unto me according to thy word. I will be the mother of this prophet son, who shall be called John, the prophet of the Most High. Yes, Elizabeth said, yes, here is my place, here is my calling, here is how I bear fruit and bring the kingdom of God into the world in my way; and this truth stirred so strongly in her being that even her son felt the tugging of her holy purpose. He leapt, and she shouted with joy, and Mary sang a song for them both: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

 You know, Advent is a time when our culture is captivated by Our Lady. Pop stars sing her name on mainstream Christmas radio, her figure pops up on lawns and in lights, and this year, National Geographic Magazine put Mary on the cover with the words “The Most Powerful Woman in the World.” And every year at this time, theologians spill buckets of ink in an attempt to fix our conceptions about Mary, to try to get Mary right. She wasn’t meek and mild at all, they’ll say, she challenged an angel! She wasn’t just a mother, she was also a disciple. Mary was a feminist, a political activist, an adventurer and a radical and a punk. And while I think that many of these attempts at re-characterizing Mary are well-intended and some are even helpful, the truth is that most of the time it’s difficult to tell what’s truth and what’s just our own longing. I don’t know if Mary was an adventurer or if she was a homebody. I don’t know if she was chafing at the bit to get out of the kitchen or if she loved nothing more than baking bread for her husband and son. I don’t know if she was timid or brash, forceful or quietly persuasive. I don’t know. I can guess, but I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.

But I do know that National Geographic is right. She is the most powerful women in the world. Because Mary’s faith not only changed the world for all time thousands of years ago; Mary’s faith continues to change the world right now, because Mary’s faith changes us. Mary stands before us as a woman who believed in God’s divine restoration, as a woman who believed that God was working out a holy purpose, and that God could use ordinary stuff – a peasant girl, a barren old woman, a home, the road, the love of cousins – to change everything. Mary stands before us as a woman who believes deep in her heart that every single one of us – Elizabeth and Zechariah, John and Joseph, you and me – is a part of that purpose. Mary stands before us now with words of joyful greeting, words of assurance that even when the world is dark and our lives are filled with confusion and worry, God is bringing all things to completion in the most wonderful, world-changing way. So hear the voice of Mary’s greeting, feel her pull you into her circle of embrace, and listen for your own heart to leap in response to her greeting, listen for that thing that is your own true calling to sing from a deep place within you, listen for your own yes, your own song – Blessed are you, and blessed are we that the mother of our Lord has come to us to show us who we are, what we are to do, and how our souls can, too, magnify the Lord.

*This painting is by contemporary artist James B. Janknegt. 

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Sunday, 20 December 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia