God Undressed

One day, God stood up from his throne, so that he could see everything that he had created.  Angelic attendants waited on him, and as he looked down at the earth and all its inabitants, he wept.  This tiny jewel of the universe, this wonder of creation, unique in the vast galactic panoply, the work of wonder that he had made for love and with love, but it was ruptured, torn, and scarred.  Great gashes were torn across the fabric of its green fields.  Rubbish was piled on the mountaintops.  Dark slicks of oil stained the deep blue waters.  Humans - made in God’s image and likeness to be neighbors to one another - regarded each other as little more than potential customers, or commodities, when they regarded one another at all.  Ethnic and religious hatreds drew sharp lines of separation between cultures and classes, nations and languages.  The quest for power, and land, and water, and money shaped human relationships more than the common spirit of humanity, blood was easily and often spilled in violence.  And there was a scent, like a mixture of sulfur and venom that God could detect when he stooped down and sniffed.

Calling on his attendants, God decided to do something about all that he saw on earth, and in order to do it, he decided he must first undress.  He set aside the diadem from atop his head, placing it on a cushion of plushest velvet.  Even without his crown, God’s head was surrounded by a ring of light, which is a feature of the light that simply comes from God.  Then God took off his royal cloak, made of living ermine, who link their feet and arms to form a coat of majesty around God, and who nuzzle God’s face and neck with their own furry faces, delighting to breathe the breath that comes from God’s nostrils.  So they unlinked their limbs and gathered together at God’s feet in a ring around the throne of heaven.  Underneath God’s royal ermine robe, he wore a majestic mantle made of all the stars, and all the planets, and everything that twinkles in the sky, which he removed and laid aside.  And underneath the mantle that twinkled with the night sky, God wore a suit of strongest armor, stronger than any blacksmith could ever forge, and yet light, and nearly weightless.  And his attendants unbuckled every buckle and every strap, and carefully removed the helmet, and the breastplate, and the greaves, and the gauntlets, and the spurs, and every glistening piece of metal, and stood it all in a corner of heaven, beside a great shield and a sword of omnipotence.  And underneath his armor, God wore a kind of chain mail that was made of interlocking rivulets of water, as though slender, intricate waterfalls all wove themselves together to protect the divine person, and the angelic attendants did this and that, and the rivulets of water receded into the source of all water, and the suit of mail disappeared.  Beneath the mail of waterfalls, God wore a kind of sacred vesture woven of gold and silver and a thread that seemed to be made of light: there were seven layers of sacred vestments, which were buttoned up with buttons made of pearls, each of which was carefully unbuttoned by two attendants (there were thousands of buttons, and two times that many attendants to unbutton all God’s buttons, and it was accomplished in the blink of an eye).  And beneath the seven layers of the sacred vesture, God wore a frock of purest wool, that came from sheep who were kept forever in the pastures nearby the courts of the Lord, to graze there safely in case their wool should ever again be needed.  And God removed the woolen frock, and the attendants folded it it just so, in a way that leaves no creases in the wool.  And God wore a long linen shirt beneath the woolen frock, a shirt of linen so fine that it seemed to glow faintly, and God removed the linen shirt.  And beneath the linen shirt, God wore a kind of silken pyjamas that were made of silk spun by silkworms who were treated like kings, and lived in an endless grove of mulberry trees beside the sheep’s pastures.  And God took off the silken pyjamas, and set them aside, and when he draped them over the arms of an attendant, they looked like clouds, and they were perfumed with the scent of rain that has fallen on rose petals.

There God stood, undressed and naked, and asked his attendants how he looked.  Being angelic attendants, whose only home had ever been heaven, they only knew how to speak truth; they could not lie, nor would God have wanted them to.  And as they beheld God naked, and stripped of various layers of grandeur, they told him that he shone with a radiance that was brighter than a thousand suns, and that he was beauty itself, because this was true.  And God knew that their assessment was correct.  So God knew that he had more to do before he was ready to act.

So God took a deep, deep breath - a breath so deep that the universe stood still for a moment.  Then he exhaled gently, before taking a second deep, deep breath, and then exhaled again.  Then a third time, God took a deep, deep breath: a breath so deep that God began to draw his own immensity into himself, as though God could draw the outside of himself inside of himself, to a deeper recess and storehouse of holiness that was within God’s own self, like a hidden pocket; or like a black hole, if a black hole was made of light that shines on a spectrum that you cannot see, so that all you could see of God (if you could see God), when God had drawn God’s own self entirely inside himself, would be God’s lips, as if God’s lips were all that existed in the universe, and everything else had been drawn up into God’s own being when he drew his own breath so deeply within himself, his own Spirit, his own self within himself, so the universe (without even knowing it) was now inverted, drawn up inside God’s own self, as he held his breath.

And God thought (for he was holding his breath); God thought, How do I look?  And the angelic attendants, who knew what God was thinking, because he wanted them to, and who now knew themselves to be inside of God, feeling a little like Jonah, in that they never expect to be in here, looked at God, and smiled at him radiantly, from within, as if to signal that God had divested himself of his divine majesty, and could now proceed with his plan.

And before God let out his breath, he moved his lips just a tiny bit to form an almost (but not quite) imperceptible Word that had existed eternally within God’s heart, and almost (but not quite) silently, God spoke the Word that God had only spoken once before.  It had never been necessary to speak it a second time until now, although the sound of the Word had echoed through creation for all eternity.  And the Word went forth from God’s lips out into the darkness of the inverted universe, before God opened his lips and the Word fell back into God’s still opened mouth, as if he had just caught the most divine jelly bean in his mouth.  And the Word began to tumble gently through the inverted universe, toward earth, eventually landing in one specific spot.

And then, God exhaled slowly and gently, making himself and the universe right-side-out again, returning himself to his majestic immensity, and sending all creation back outside from the secret pocket, or the black hole of light into which all had been drawn for a moment, so that God could make himself small and vulnerable, and speak the Word in a way that was small and vulnerable too.

And the Word was made flesh in a stable in a town called Bethlehem, in the person of a baby boy.  And that child dwelt among us, and he grew in power and wisdom beyond our comprehension.  And when he had grown up, he taught, and he healed people, and he gathered people together, and he fed people, until he was killed by a lesser power, who knew not what they did, for death could not contain him, and it never did.  But that’s another story.

This, at least, is the story that has been passed down by generation after generation of shepherds who abide in the fields near Bethlehem.  Legend has it that one angel was permitted to swoop down low and whisper all these details into the ear of one of the shepherds, of how once, God undressed, dismantling himself in order send his eternal Word into the world with all humility, and with a power that was made perfect in weakness.

The angels didn’t describe how God dressed himself again, but whenever the shepherds look up at the night sky and see the twinkling stars, they remember the majestic mantle made of all the stars and planets and everything that shines in the night sky that is one of the layers of God’s royal raiment.  And the story strikes them as very likely to be true.  And they themselves are humbled to recall what God did for them, and for all of us, so that God could be with us, could be like us, could be one of us, and save us.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
27 December 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Christmas Light

On Christmas morning the church gives us a rousing challenge.  The whole world seems to be focused on Christmas trees and Christmas gifts and Christmas breakfast. If most people are looking back at all this morning they are thinking of their memories of Christmas past.  There is nostalgia in the air.  Time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, or A Charlie Brown Christmas.  In this time we may be looking back to old family recipes, old family photos, old ways of celebrating.  Victorian decorations.  Medieval carols.  Some of us are old enough to feel nostalgia for the nostalgic way we used to feel. 

We might even say that one function Christmas serves for us is to be a storehouse of memory.  There’s something heightened about Christmas that makes us want to look back, and our Christmas season becomes an almost overwhelming succession of stuff from the past: Sinatra records and that jello salad we always had and Charles Dickens and that ancient hymn we love.  It’s striking how we bring up and recycle bits of the past at this time of year, implicitly challenging the present moment to live up to our expectations.

So yes, we look back on Christmas, but not usually all the way back.  We might focus on the first Christmas, to be sure.  Back past Sinatra and Scrooge and going a-wassailing we may see the baby in the manger, the star in the sky, the mother wondering and the angels rejoicing. 

But it’s a challenge, on a morning like Christmas, to go all the way back.  All the way back to the beginning, where John’s Gospel starts us off: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.”  It’s not the same thing as nostalgia. It feels really different. There is no sentimental version of this story.  There is a great light, but it has a different quality than the warm glow we expect at this time of year.

Yes, we look all the way back, this morning, all the way back to the creation where Jesus is present to and in the Father, and all things come into being through him.  Without him not one thing came into being.  We are guided by John’s Gospel to see Christmas as a feast of the beginning of all things.  We aren’t being asked this morning to do something old-fashioned for the holidays; we are being asked to ground ourselves in Jesus, way back at the origin of all that is.

Back at the source, where the light comes into the world.  The true light that enlightens everyone.  The light that enlightens us.  Even now, all the way back from the beginning.

What do we learn by going all the way back to the beginning?  That the light shines in darkness, but darkness never overcomes it.  And that we are witnesses to that light, in the great tradition of John the Baptist.  We ourselves are not that light but we have been given power by God to be children of God, born of God.  We ourselves have seen his glory.  Jesus is the only-begotten Son, but we are nevertheless in some way God’s children, testifying to that great light.

Our Christmas celebration takes the long, long view.  Family traditions and the great cultural storehouse of memory that we call “the Christmas season” glow for Christians in a different light than they do for the rest of the world we’re celebrating with.  For us the cherished past is actually just about one thing.  It’s about the way that Jesus, the light, has always been shining in darkness, and darkness has never overcome it.

Think about it: nostalgia usually has us wishing or imagining that we lived in a different time and place, in Merry Old England or in A Country Christmas.  There is a quiet preference for something we are not.  There is an element of fantasy in our Christmas celebrations.  The good times were back then.  But John’s Gospel is clear-eyed about the past.  John wants us to see all the way back so that we know where we really come from, and where we are going, and what’s happening in the present moment.

We come from Jesus, without whom nothing was made.  Not one thing came into being without him.  It’s daunting to contemplate but let’s try it this way: not one thing was made without God’s determination to be with us, present in all of creation.  Not one thing was made without God identifying with it, as family. Not one thing was made to exist in isolation from God or in the ache of God’s absence or in the abandonment of a godless world.  That light of God with us has always been shining for us.

That’s the light in which we see all things when we testify.  God’s determination to be with us, to become one of us in the person of his Son, to live and die with us and to be born of a human mother in a lowly stable and to know cold and loneliness and misery.  This is the logic of creation itself, it seems.  And we see it.  The light shining in darkness from the beginning is God with us, Emmanuel, Jesus. 

What has come into being in Jesus is life, life as one with God, and the life is the light of all humanity. So we come from God’s eternal desire to be with us.  And we see that light shining, in the stable and in the present moment.

Yes, the present moment is troubling and dark.  Yes, I’m planning on hot coco and my favorite sentimental music later this afternoon.  Yes, the manger scene on our piano is sweet and lovely and the Christmas decorations are merry and bright.  But I’m hoping that for a moment this Christmas I will look on all of it in that more ancient light.  The light that shines from the beginning of all things, without which not one thing came into being.  Not me, not you. 

That light is like a vast embrace from the depths of the unknown.  There is plenty of room in that light, in that embrace.  We have all the room in the world for nostalgia and dreams, for loneliness and sorrow.  There is plenty of room in God’s creation for Christmas to be just another day if that’s what we need it to be this year.  Plenty of room for the truth about what needs to change.  Room for rest and hope and kindness.  For giving and receiving.  Room for that sacred image of the child in the manger, God who found no room in the inn.   

Whatever this Christmas has brought to you, wherever you wish you were, whatever you hope for, I pray that the more ancient light will be visible to you.  And that you, a radiant child of God, will testify to that light without which not one thing came into being.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
25 December 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Child for the Childless

For Christmas this year, without intending to or really wanting to, I received two gifts, in the form of two new skills that I have acquired.

Most recently- in the past week really - along with our Ministry Resident, Aaron Smith, I have acquired the skill of manger design and construction, admittedly, at the beginner level.

I have been saying for weeks that if attendance at Christmas celebrations was going to be severely restricted because of the coronavirus, and if most people would be prevented from coming to church, then we needed to do something to bring church outside, so that people could at least have a place to go and worship on their own terms, a focus for devotion that’s accessible, and a destination for a pilgrimage, even if the only distance you need to travel is a block and a half.

An outdoor manger would be just the thing!  I kept saying this, perhaps in the vain hope that saying it enough would cause such a manger to appear.  But no manger appeared on its own.  And Christmas was coming.  So I recruited Aaron as my helper, and we began by disassembling a wooden pallet on which food had been delivered for the Food Cupboard.  I thought we should build the manger out of wood that had already been somewhere and done something good for God’s people.

It was during this first stage of design (if you want to call it that) and construction (if you want to call it that) that Aaron determined that the aesthetic I seemed to be going for was “rustic.”  That’s not the actual word he used, but it’s the one we agreed on eventually.  Rustic.

You could call the manger we built “crude.”  I have.  And since the empty manger symbolizes the need to make room for Christ to be born in our hearts, a rough, crude, imperfect and unrefined manger is an apt symbol for many of us, if we’re honest.

In quick succession we realized that if we were going to have a manger, then that manger needed a little stable to shelter it.  So we built one.  

And we knew we’d need a figure of the baby Jesus, so we convinced someone to make one for us.

And then we realized that it would seem a bit odd to put Jesus in his manger and leave him all alone, without Mary and Joseph to look after him.  So we devised a way that two non-carpenter, non-artists could assemble something that might reasonably represent the Virgin Mother and Joseph.  You can decide for yourselves if we achieved our aim.

Along the way, something happened to me in this my nineteenth Christmas at Saint Mark’s.  You see, I know how Christmas goes here.  I know how the Sundays of Advent unfold with various services and events that lead us up to Christmas Eve.  I know when I have to ask Max to produce an image for a Christmas card.  I know that Daniel will tell me when we need to write to ask for Christmas memorial contributions.  I know when the figures for the crèche get carried up from the Undercroft.  I know which chalice we’ll use on Christmas Eve, and what order the hymns will come in.  I know when I have to start preparations for Christmas dinner.  And I know that I’ll be Christmas shopping right up until the 23rd of December.  Sure, there are slight variations every year, but the pattern of Christmas is similar from year to year.  And I like it that way!  Ritual unfolds at many different levels, and this is a parish that specializes in ritual.  

But this Christmas wasn’t going the way Christmas goes at Saint Mark’s!  Maybe you thought you knew how Christmas went, too, until this year.  Of course, the pandemic has upended everything.  So, we needed to do things differently; we needed a manger, outside, in the garden.  OK.  Things are going to be different.

I used to think that there was probably some aspect of Christmas that was hard to experience for those of us who have never had children of our own.  Surely there must be a grace, I thought, in sharing that essential human experience with God, who, through the mystery of the Incarnation participates, God’s own self, in the wonder of of human childbirth.  

And it must be a blessing, I thought, for a mother to have some insight into what Mary felt like when she delivered that child, or a father to have an idea of what Joseph felt like when he held that boy for the first time.  They must share something with God that the childless among us can never share... or so I thought.

But over this past week or so, as Aaron and I have made multiple trips the hardware store, and as we’ve wondered if we have made things the right size for the baby that was being made for us,  and as we watched the days tick by, knowing the day was coming when everything had to be ready, and we hoped the paint would be dry before the rain came, somehow I realized that my own preparations for Christmas have been transformed this year, and that I am possessed of a sense of expectation and desire, a desire for this baby to be born, and to take his place in our manger, that we made with our hands (“rustic” though it may be), because everything is different this year, and you can’t take anything for granted; I’ve felt an excitement, and an anticipation, even an anxiety born of uncertainty, almost like... I haven’t done this before... like I don’t actually know how this goes.

And I realize that, of course, at a number of crucial moments in the story of salvation, there have been momentous occasions when God has provided a child to the childless.  He did it for Abraham and Sarah, when Sarah laughed at the idea of it.  And he did for Hanna and her husband Elkanah, when Hannah prayed fervently.  And he did it for Elizabeth in her old age, and for her husband Zechariah, who found it hard to believe that God was going to do this.

And of course, Mary was a virgin: she was childless and she could not have a child, since she had not known a man.  This detail is often regarded these days with extreme suspicion, and is seen by many as an obvious indication that the story can’t possibly be true.  But the point is that, for Mary, too, God provided a child to the childless.  It is Mary’s virginity that puts her in the category of the childless.  And perhaps those of us who are childless ourselves can identify with Mary in way that others can’t, since she had no expectation at all that she could or would bring a child into the world yet.  It seemed quite impossible.  She told Gabriel so.  Mary’s unpreparedness, and yes, her inability to have conceived a child (because she’s a virgin) are not incidental embellishments to the story - they are crucial signs of the depth of wonder and the fullness of God’s love in sending his child into the world in this way.

When God gives a child to the childless, he is including many of us who have not always known that God’s blessings are completely and entirely meant for us, too, since by doing so, God gives us the gift that we always knew could only come from his hand, but which we thought we could never receive.  God extends his blessing to those who wondered if they might be beyond his reach, in order to show that no one  is so far from him that his arms cannot reach all the way around them.  And every detail of the nativity that contributes to its unlikelihood  - Mary’s virginity, Joseph’s reluctance, no room at the inn, Herod’s campaign of terror - each amplifies the good news of this birth, this impossible gift of a child to the childless.

It’s been surprising to me to learn that a “rustic” manger could convey all that meaning, and teach me so much.  And I hope that this Christmas you’ll visit our little manger on Locust Street, yourself.

I said that in these past weeks I’d acquired two new skills.  The second new thing I have learned how to do, in addition to manger design and construction, is to hum.

Singing, of course, has never before so threatened the world.  Choir rooms have never been so dangerous.  And since singing is the most reliable way I can communicate with God, it has seemed like a severe blow to me to have to give up singing in church, and nearly everywhere else too.

Guidelines from scientists and bishops, alike, informed us, however, that while we cannot sing in church, we are permitted to hum behind our masks.  I must admit that I took this direction badly.  Humming has never much interested me.  And if you look up the words “hum” and “humming,” see what you find out about this “inarticulate nasal sound,” as one definition calls it.

To say that to hum is “to make a sound with lips closed” is kind.  Because to hum is also “to drone, like certain insects,” “to murmur without articulation,” to “mumble.”  Humming is “monotonous” and “inarticulate.”  “Distant traffic” is said to hum - doesn’t that sound nice?  Even hummingbirds don’t actually hum (they have no lips!), rather, they buzz with their wings.  So, I was inclined to look rather snidely at humming as a practice that offered not a lot of potential.

Trying to put on a brave face, I encouraged the congregation here (when we could have small congregations) to hum, by telling them that to hum is to sing with your mouth closed.  These are the rules, after all, and we should follow them for good reason.  And I thought I was very clever.  I was also wrong.

When I began to look into humming more seriously I discovered that my definition was close, but wrong about one crucial detail.  For, to hum is not to sing with your mouth closed.  In fact, you can hum with your mouth open or closed, (behind your lips).  But when you are humming, your lips must be closed.  As far back as the 15th century, I’m told, they referred to humming as “sing[ing] with lips closed.”  And I have been coming around to the idea that maybe it’s OK to sing with your lips closed!

A more charitable view of humming reveals that to hum is “to be busily active, like a beehive,” which sounds like quite a good thing to me.  To make things hum is to “set things agoing briskly,” according to one source.  A “humming ale” is an ale that “froths up well.”  Who knew?  But it sounds nice!  And of course people have been humming along with music, as a way of joining in, for as long as there’s been music.

Eventually, I decided to give it a go, and to sing with my lips closed.  It’s called humming, and it’s not nearly as bad as I feared it would be.  In fact, I feel grateful that I can “make a sound with [my] vocal chords without pronouncing any real words, with lips closed” and still glorify the Lord!

These musings suggest that tonight we should gather outside by the “rustic” manger, and hum “Silent Night.”  I suppose that’s what the shepherds did, so as not to wake the baby.

And we did gather outside by the manger earlier today, and place the little handmade Christ-child in the manger there.

And tonight, I will get down on my knees and hum Silent Night - which is a carol that somehow lends itself to humming unlike any other.  It’s almost easier to hum: there’s no danger of mixing up the words in the second verse that way.  I hope you will hum Silent Night too - whether you’re here in church, or at home worshiping with us online.  Go ahead and sing all you like - just do it with your lips closed!

Oh, it’s a hard Christmas this year, to be sure.  But I have found that some of the things that make it hard, also seem to place us in closer communion with Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds, and maybe even the angels, some of whom may well have been humming!

And if having to celebrate a hard Christmas seems like more than you can bear, I recommend that you try thinking of it as a “rustic” Christmas, and see if things don’t look better from a different angle!

Christ is coming to whatever manger you have prepared, and if you haven’t got one ready, he’ll settle for the straw at the bottom of your heart.

Christ is listening to you hum, as you sing to him with your lips closed, and he loves every note of it.

God is giving us this unimaginable and impossible gift - a child to the childless.  What choice do we have but to give him a home?  What else can we do but close our lips, and sing?

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Christmas Eve, 2020
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia