A Ready Eye

There are people in the world who hate the light. They moan about the light, throw their hands up in the air and shake their heads about it. They dodge it whenever they can, preferring to skitter around in the darkness, even if that means an occasional bump on the shins. They’ll tell anyone they meet about their loathing of the light, about how the light is the enemy, how the light ruins everything. They’ll pick themselves up and move far away, deeper into the forest or further out into the desert just to try and escape that ever-present, always disappointing, perpetually troublesome light.

Now these people are not mole people. They’re not cave dwellers or orcs or goths. They’re not particularly maudlin or pessimistic. These people are astronomers, amateur astronomers to be exact, astronomers who don’t have access to giant telescopes in an observatory somewhere in the middle of the deepest, blackest wilderness. These are the astronomers who are using their own telescopes, slogging them out into their own backyards, using their own two arms to swing a galaxy or nebula into view, and struggling every night against the light. Porch lights, street lights, automatic motion-detecting lights, lights from cars, lights from airplanes, and most of all – worst of all, the greatest culprit of all – lights from cities, the soft, nearly unnoticeable glow that hovers just over the horizon, turning the sky from a sacred, heavenly blackest black to a muddy, reddish brown. Light is all around, and when you are trying to pinpoint one beam of it streaming down from far, far away at 299,792,458 meters per second, ambient light is the enemy. When you’re trying to see starlight, the blacker the viewfinder, the better.

I experienced this in person over Thanksgiving when I was visiting my husband’s family in North Carolina. My father-in-law is one of those brilliant amateur astronomers. He and my mother-in-law live in a small town, very purposefully, so that while the light from the nearest city can sometimes be a bother, it doesn’t make nighttime viewing impossible. When we were there in November, we went out every night, and every night my father-in-law went through the same routine – he would haul out the telescope and set up a table for all of his different eyepieces, and then he would make sure that all of the lights on the back of the house were turned off. We were in as dark an environment as we could possibly muster.

Or so I thought. But there was one more level of darkness, a deeper kind of black that my father-in-law explained to me on our first night in the backyard. Once, when I stood up from gazing into the telescope, he told me to close my viewing eye, even to put my hand over the lid, while he changed out the eyepiece. By doing so, I was keeping my pupil dilated as much as possible. Instead of opening my eye between viewings, and letting that pernicious light from the next town over or the neighbor’s front porch run right into my retina, I was keeping my eye primed and ready, so that when I looked back into the eyepiece, my eye could take it all in right away. I was keeping my eye in the dark so that it could see all of the light the eyepiece had to offer – the tiniest pair of twin stars, the fuzziest blot of a nebula, the subtlest shade of red that colored a particular planet. By keeping my eye in the dark, I found that I could see much, much more.

Now, I would imagine that the wise men didn’t have to worry too much about light pollution. One would think that if you wanted to find the dark in the first-century, the dark would be fairly easy to find. But for the magi, using only their own two eyes to view the workings of the heavens, finding that true darkness was still important. They were astronomers, after all – darkness was mother’s milk to them, darkness was gift and blessing. I can see them now, standing in their own backyard, going through their own nighttime routine – they’d set up the table for the astrolabe and the quadrant, and then carefully extinguish the candles in the windows, close the back door to keep the firelight inside, and ask the gardener for the thousandth time to please, please, for the love of all that is holy could he please put out the garden lamps for just a couple of minutes. I’m sure they would sigh when the lights from the heart of Babylon lit up the night too brightly. And who knows what they thought when they neared the city of Jerusalem? All of this light! Cover your eye, Caspar, use your hand, keep your eye in the blessed, blessed dark.

And because they did keep their eyes in the blessed, blessed dark, they were able to truly see. They saw this new light, this strange wild star, that didn’t do what it was supposed to do, that didn’t go where it was supposed to go, that wasn’t tethered to any map that the magi knew.* They kept their eyes in the dark so that their pupils were as wide open as possible, fully able to take in what the night sky had to offer them. They kept their eyes in the dark so that they could be ready to see the miracle right in front of them.

Now, if you had asked the wise men all those centuries ago if they were haters of the light, I’m sure they would have said no. Astronomers aren’t haters of the light, they would have protested. Astronomers love the light. We love the light so much we spend hours looking for light we can barely find. We spend a lifetime watching the light moving towards us from a thousand suns that died a thousand lifetimes ago. We love the light – we name it, record it, honor and celebrate it. We love the light – it’s just that we know which light to love. We know which light to look for, which light to revere. We look for the light that is coming into the world, the light that shines into the darkness and will not be overcome. We look for the light that marks the place where God’s heart lies, where God takes on hands and feet and curly brown hair so that we can know and feel how carefully each of the hairs of our own heads is counted. We look for the light that shows the glory of the Lord, born in a manger. This is the light that draws us here. This is the light that makes us kings stream from far-away nations to lay gifts at the feet of a poor child. This is the light that puts all other lights to shame. The lights of Babylon or Jerusalem or the gardener’s burning lamps are fine, but we have sought the true light, and we will do all we can to keep our eyes ready to see the continuing miracle of that one, true light.

I don’t know about you, but I want to look for the light like this. I want to seek this one, true light. I want to see it at its rising, I want to follow it on its journey, I want to see where it stops over the incarnate Word and be overwhelmed with the joy of the magi. I want to have ready eyes to see the coming of Christ in the world. But so many times my eyes are distracted by other lights. You know the lights I mean – buy this thing and you’ll be happy, pray this way and you’ll be rewarded, just keep moving and eventually you’ll find peace. We can so easily find ourselves blinded by lights we aren’t really looking for, our pupils turned to pinpricks by the dazzling rays of other, less holy desires. And it is hard to see the gift of the one, true, long-looked-for light when our eyes are not quite ready.

But tonight we celebrate the true gift of these wonderful, wise men – that they were also wonderful, wise astronomers. And they knew that when you are looking for the true light, you need to just close your eye first. Close your eye. Cover it with your hand. Get your vision ready. Go into your closet and shut the door, and let your eye adjust to the sacred darkness. Close your eye first; be still, and let all of those other lights fade away. Close your eye and be ready. Come here to this quiet, dark place, where we have our own nightly routine – where we set a table with a plate and a cup and all of the tools we will need, and still our hearts and ready our eyes to see the light that is shining into the world. You can leave one eye open so that you don’t bump your shins too often, but come here with one eye shut, primed and ready to find that light the moment it comes into view. Let the windows of your soul open up wide to let that light, the true light of Jesus Christ, with all the true joy and true prosperity and true peace that he brings, shine into your heart. Close your eye and be ready. And then arise, shine, you holy astronomers, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 2017

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

*Some of this language is borrowed from/influenced by the Godly Play stories for Advent.

What's in a Name?

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”[i]

Act II, Scene II.  The scene is the Capulet’s Orchard, and Juliet asks this famous question from her balcony, born of frustration and love.  “What’s in a name?”

       “it is not hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man….

       … Romeo doff thy name;

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.”

What’s in a name?

Today we gather, not because it is New Year’s Day, and not because it used to be called the Feast of the Circumcision, but to rejoice in the Holy Name of Jesus.  And Shakespeare has perfectly framed the question of the day.  What’s in a name?  The question, for Christians, could also be said to be born of frustration and love.  From a certain angle, much of the Biblical record could be said to address this question.  That is to say, much of the Bible could be said to be about the matter of who God is and what God’s name is.  El, Elohim, Adonai, Jehovah, HaShem, – are all versions of names of God in the earlier Scriptures, where also, of course, are to be found the names of other competing gods: Amon, Asherah, Baal, Chemosh, Dagon, Molech are all mentioned.  As are the Greek gods Zeus, and Hermes, and Artemis.

If you frame the question of faith in terms of God’s name, the Bible is the story of discerning that possibly singular fact; and the assertion that God’s own people have struggled to keep track of God’s unutterable divine name, and therefore unable to remain faithful to God.  Look beyond the Bible, and the question of the name of God becomes vastly more complex.  Is God Allah?  Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva?  Something else altogether?  What’s in these names?

Every year, eight days after Christmas, we arrive at a new year, and at this unremarkable proclamation that “it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”  But what’s in a name?

It is so tempting to join Juliet in the very modern implications of her old question.  It’s not about the name, so let’s not quibble about what we call God, which only results in more careful definitions of what separates God’s creatures from one another, which surely must grieve the heart of God.  Let God doff his name, as Juliet wishes Romeo could.  Why allow semantics to cause so much grief?  “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;/ Thou art thyself though….”

But the church tells us that today is one of the most important feasts of the year, not to be trifled with, and thereby urges us to take more seriously the question of what’s in the name of Jesus, the implication being that the answer will amount to quite a lot.  Juliet’s question is interesting to us today precisely because it is pressing and insightful, and because the answer, for us, to what’s in a name, has profound meaning, even more than it did for her, despite our frequent desire to join her in dismissal of the question as mere semantics.

Because God wants us to know his name.

It was not always so that God wanted us to know his name, or to use it.  The Scriptures tell us that God preferred to robe himself in mystery and obscurity; and tradition suggests that God’s name should be nearly as un-utterable as his person was un-seeable.  By some point in history, the rabbis discerned that, out of reverence for the Holy One, God’s name should almost never be spoken aloud.  They knew how likely people are to misuse the divine name, and to substitute the true and living God for some other object of lustful desire in their lives: money, power, sex, for instance.  Nothing has changed.  The flip side of the question of the name of God, after all, is the tendency to chase after other gods, after idols - which include money, power, and sex - as well as graven images, or gods that go by other names.

And so an angel visits Mary, and Joseph, too; and instructs them both that the child that Mary will bear shall be called Jesus – the name is not optional.  And “after eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”

The blessed Son of God, the incarnate Word, God-with-us is not shrouded in mystery and obscurity, he is given a name, and that name is Jesus.  And that name matters.  For the biblical problem – namely the question of who God is – has become a deeply vexing problem for our time.  Does God exist at all?  Wouldn’t we rather chase after idols?  Does it really matter what we call God?  These are questions with powerful answers, one way or another.  And while these questions can and should be answered with some sophistication and even finesse, those of us whose lives have been shaped by the angelic message, by the wondrous birth, and by the Cross and resurrection, might claim some confidence when it comes to the answer.  For God’s mission in his creation is accomplished by the person of his Son, and his name is Jesus.

It is difficult for many of us these days, however, to embrace this name, and all that comes with it.  We are sympathetic to Juliet’s point of view; we see how much damage has been done by insisting on this name or that; we know that God’s name has been weaponized so that it has ceased to sound like what it truly is: the name of love incarnate.  When the name of Jesus is thus deployed so that it divides rather than unites, so that it condemns rather than forgives, so that it spells out contempt rather than love, then it is a horribly disfigured name: misspelled, mispronounced, and wrongly written.

But when we give up the name of Jesus, then we forfeit an enormous measure of God’s revelation of God’s self: the inescapable recognition that God does not wish to remain in un-seeable obscurity, needs not relate to his people only through intermediaries, and desires that those who know him should share in the work of building up his kingdom by knowing intimately the person of its king.

And when we give up the name of Jesus, we forget that God’s saving work is not vague and non-specific, not a coating of sugar over the bitter portions of our lives.  No, the saving work of God – the redemption of his people from our sins – is accomplished not vaguely and uncertainly, but specifically by this person Jesus, his Son, who seeks to be known, embraced, and loved by each and every one of us to whom the joy of singing his name has been given!

As the scene unfolds beneath Juliet’s balcony, the girl presses her case with Romeo, in the line we hear earlier:

“… Romeo, doff thy name,

And for that name, which is no part of thee

Take all myself.”

To which Romeo replies;

“Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d

Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”

“Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d.”  Today we come to hear of love baptized – but in the older, more appropriate form for the God who made a covenant with Abraham: by circumcision, the sure sign of the covenant; and by the giving of a name, an ordinary name that would be forevermore extraordinary for its unfailing identification of the person of God.

For love itself can never in time be new baptized.  And the One who bears the name of Jesus was begotten to be love before there was either speech or language.  His name was given before the earth was made.  His work of saving love determined before time was.

Many there are who would stamp out the name of love to serve their own purposes, who would forget that Holy Name to advance the interests of their own idols, who would squelch the name of Jesus from our ears in favor of other names or no name at all.

But love demands that we remember its true name.  And although Shakespeare certainly never intended his love scene to be played this way, his words provide a useful reflection on this holy name of love, as we ponder what we are doing here on this feast day.  Romeo protests to Juliet: “O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?”

Juliet: “What satisfaction can’st thou have…?”

Romeo: “The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.”

Juliet: “I gave thee mine before thou did’st request it; And yet I would it were to give again.”

“I gave thee mine before thou did’st request it.”  The love of God was given to us long before we ever did request it, and that love has a name: not Romeo, not Juliet, but Jesus.  And whenever we speak that holy Name, may God grant us to hear him assuring us of the love forever enshrined in that name, that he does indeed grant to us again and again: the love of his only Son, begotten before all time, and given the name that is above every name, so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:10-11)

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus 2017

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] All quotes from William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, in The Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford, 1914, Act II, Sc. II

11:27

Good morning. It is 11:27 a.m. On Christmas morning. Well done, you! Look at all you’ve already done. You’ve gotten out of bed, had your morning cup of coffee, and gotten a good start on Christmas. You’ve opened presents, or wrapped last-minute presents; you’ve had a big family Christmas breakfast, or at least snuck in your favorite holiday pastry. You’ve opened up the eggnog, put the turkey in the oven, cleaned up six of the seven fishes from last night’s supper. Maybe you’ve even caught a few minutes of A Christmas Story on TBS. And you’ve made it here for Mass – bravo! Some of you on very little sleep – I know, because I saw you at midnight last night. But you’re here, at 11:27 on Christmas morning, showered and shaved and present-ed and pastry-ed and warmed up and full of joy.

Of course, that’s nothing compared with what families with kids have accomplished by this time on Christmas morning. Can you remember how many things you had already done by this time in the morning on the Christmases of your childhood? By 11:27 in the morning, kids have been up for hours and hours and hours. The presents are not only unwrapped, they’re out of the packaging and strewn about the house. Dolls have been fitted out with several different outfits, bikes have been tried out in the street, new gaming systems have been plugged in and shapchats posted, remote control cars have been crashed into the molding enough times that Moms have had to use middle names. Some kids have even gotten dressed and come to church! Breakfasts have been eaten and cleaned up, the Christmas playlist has already been repeated, and parents everywhere are wishing they could settle down for a long winter’s nap. Christmas with kids means a busy morning; Christmas with kids means that by 11:27, you’ve already done it all.

I can only imagine how much the Holy Family had done by 11:27 on Christmas morning. Jesus had been up for hours and hours. And with the long night of labor and of listening to the lowing of the cattle and the shuffling of shepherds, I imagine that Mary and Joseph were ready for a long winter’s nap. But there was so much to do! There were blankets and bedding to clean up; there was food to find and plans to make. Joseph gathered some wood and made a fire outside the mouth of the cave; he milked the sweet little goat who had kept them warm all night and gave the milk to his beautiful, exhausted wife. Mary was feeding the babe, again – so grateful that her little Jesus was so hungry, because she had seen what happened when newborns wouldn’t nurse. She cleaned him and swaddled him, and it took her three full tries to get it right. She had done this for other babies hundreds of times, but somehow when the child was finally her own, every tuck and fold of the fabric seemed so much more important. Joseph walked to the well, drew some water and drew some stares when he did so as the only man within sight or recent memory to carry a water jug. Mary bathed, Joseph helped to rake fresh hay. Mary joked about going back to the innkeeper, babe in arms, to see if there was a room now; Joseph laughed and said that he preferred the company of the cows. They fed and ate, washed and cuddled, cleaned and packed, napped and prayed, smiled and wept and shook their heads. By 11:27 on that Christmas morning, the Holy Family must have felt like they had already lived an entire day’s worth of worry and wonder and joy.

But by 11:27 on that Christmas morning, something else had happened, something greater and grander. What God had done by 11:27 on that Christmas morning made all our actions look as tiny as a newborn’s toes. For by 11:27 on Christmas morning, God had changed everything. By 11:27 on Christmas morning, God had moved in the world, and moved into the world, like never before. God’s own Word, speaking since the beginning of time, no – not the beginning of time, but simply the beginning – that eternal Word that brought all things into being, the seas and the heavens and the whole round world, that same Word had been made flesh and begun living among mortals – and among about the mortal-y-est mortals there could be – a harried innkeeper, a motley bunch of misfit shepherds, a brave and frightened carpenter, and a faithful and fledgling mother.

By 11:27 on Christmas morning, God had already changed everything. The Lord had bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth could now see the salvation of our God. True, the arm that was bared was surprisingly small and pudgy. And true, you could see the salvation of our God only if you were willing to travel to a literal hole-in-the-wall in the hole-in-the-wall town of Bethlehem. But that was the miracle – by 11:27 on Christmas morning, God had changed the game, but in a way that was so quiet and so real, you had to pay attention to notice. You had to look for stars and start following them. You had to listen to angels and start trusting in them. You had to find the shepherds and start moving like one of them. And when you did, you found yourself gazing into the eyes of this tiny, beautiful boy, and you knew, somehow, that the world at 11:27 this morning was simply not the same.

This was true at 11:27 on Christmas morning, and it is still true for us at 11:27 today. The world we live in is different because of what we celebrate here. We have to pay attention to see it. We have to look for the light in our hearts and in each other; we have to listen to angels and to the Angelus, we have to find our identity as disciples, as followers of Jesus, and start walking like one. But when we do, we find ourselves gazing into the very heart of Christmas, and we know that the world is wholly different – holy, and his.

It may not always look like it. It may look like hate has won the day, that suffering and want will soon swamp us all. But here at 11:27 on Christmas morning, we lift up our voices and sing a new song. For God has already changed everything. The light of the world has shined into the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Jesus is born, Jesus is God with us, Jesus is God for us, Jesus saves us, Jesus loves us and commands us to love one another, Jesus tells us to bless and break and eat and drink in remembrance of him and when we do, Jesus comes. Here, at 11:27 on Christmas morning, Jesus is come. For us, and for the blessing and redemption and salvation of the whole world.

This is what God had accomplished by 11:27 on Christmas morning: only the reordering of the entire universe and the gift of a love that will not fail us, ever. This love always is. This love always is with us. For the truth is that by 11:27 tomorrow morning, God will already have been blessing you for hours. And by 11:27 on Tuesday, God will already have been breathing life into your body since the stars winked out into the morning. By 11:27 on Wednesday, God will already have loved you awake. By 11:27 on Thursday, God will already have poured out peace upon you and those you love. By 11:27 on Friday, God will already have been healing and inspiring, offering and nudging, calling and forgiving, comforting and redeeming you and renewing the whole world for hours and hours. By 11:27 every single day for the rest of your life, God will have already been God, and God with you. So check the clock. It’s now 11:36. Look at all that has already been done. It’s 11:36, and God has already been awake for hours and hours. It’s 11:36, and this child is born for you. It’s 11:36, and this child has changed the world. It’s 11:36. What are you, children of God, going to do next?

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

Christmas Day, 2016

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia