The introduction of cameras in the church during this pandemic has laid bare one of the more open secrets of this parish: that every day we pray here, several times a day. You may think this an unremarkable activity for a church, but in my experience, churches that engage in daily public prayer are few and far between in the Protestant traditions. But Saint Mark’s has long obscured the fact that we come from a Protestant tradition.
The Rectory allows us to gather a kind of residential community here, it was actually built for that purpose. The Ministry Residents and I are all thrown here together because of a call to Christ’s ministry, with no other real reason to live in such close proximity to one another. In this regard, we are a little like a monastic community, but only a little, and in most ways not. But also in prayer: day in and day out, two or three times a day, no matter who else shows up, in-person or online. This pattern of prayer has been going on for a long time at Saint Mark’s - long before the Ministry Residents were a thing here, and long, long, long before I was a thing here. We have adapted to and with the life of prayer here.
These days, the pattern of daily prayer we use here includes the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer (most days) and at least one Mass, every day. As I say, some variation of this pattern has been going on here for a long time; the cameras just make it easier for you to see it and hear it.
If you happen to tune in to watch a very few of us here rigidly adhering to a 500 year-old form of prayer that’s based on a tradition that’s a thousand years older than that, you might think that what you are witnessing is rather senseless, certainly out-moded, and you might ask yourself why we do it. These would be perfectly understandable reactions to the rather drab activity of saying prayers that are ever so much more lovely when they are sung. And I agree with you that it would be better for us to sing the Offices every day; maybe we’ll get there, some day.
But the truth is that the daily, repetitious pattern of prayer here is intended to do something specific (among any number of other possible goals). With all that repetitive prayer, we are trying to create here what you might call an “echo chamber.”
Now, technically, an echo chamber is “a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation.” And reverberation (I should add) is the “persistence of sound after the sound is produced.” But of course we all know that the term “echo chamber” has taken on new meaning in our current century. An echo chamber is also “an environment in which the same opinions are repeatedly voiced and promoted, so that people are not exposed to opposing views.”
The Psalmist has what you might call an opinion that we hear voiced this morning:
Ascribe unto the LORD, O ye mighty, *
ascribe unto the LORD worship and strength.
Ascribe unto the LORD the honour due unto his Name; *
worship the LORD with holy worship....
... the LORD remaineth a King for ever.
The LORD shall give strength unto his people; *
the LORD shall give his people the blessing of peace.
Honor, worship, strength, and glory belong to the LORD - and only to the LORD. Hidden beneath those four letters (L-O-R-D) is the divine Name of the one, true, and living God: unspeakable, hidden in the Hebrew substitute word for it too, Adonai. Eighteen times in the eleven verses of the psalm, voice is given to that unspeakable name.
The voice of the LORD speaks, and when the LORD speaks, the LORD speaks with power.
The voice of the LORD ruleth the seas.
The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
The voice of the LORD divideth the flames of fire.
The voice of the LORD shaketh the wilderness.
The voice of the LORD maketh the hinds to bring forth young.
Ascribe unto the LORD the honor due his Name!
Welcome to the echo chamber.
And because the Psalmist’s opinion is so focused and so clear, when I say that we have worked to build an echo chamber here, it might sound as though we are interested in that second definition: a place where a narrow perspective can be further narrowed and repeated to the exclusion of other ideas. But we’re old fashioned here, so in truth, like the Psalmist, we are interested in the more conventional meaning of the term: a hollow enclosure (let’s call it “open” and “un-cluttered”) used to produce reverberation” so that the voice of the LORD can persist long after the sound is produced.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his Name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
In a world where anyone can believe anything and no one believes anything, we believe that power belongs to God, and we give repeated and sustained voice to the unspeakable Name of the Lord, and to the power that belongs to that voice.
We know that the society around us has organized itself into vast echo chambers of unexamined opinion, political persuasion, and harmful exclusivity. And the surest way to know the difference between a godly echo chamber and an ungodly one is to ask, whom does it serve? That’s why we are so insistent here that our mission is organized around worshiping God on the one hand, and serving God’s people especially the needy, on the other hand. The echo here, we pray, is not self-serving, for it always directs us toward the other: toward God and our neighbors, as God’s word and God’s law have always done.
Events of the past week have provided unsettling evidence of how destructive the modern echo chambers of political communication and ideology can be when they magnify falsehoods and exclude opposing voices. Democracy doesn’t work that way. As it turns out, religion doesn’t work that way either. And so if we are going to build an echo chamber here, we have to be careful to build what you might call a “virtuous echo chamber” for God’s Name.
In a virtuous echo chamber the sound of God’s Name reverberates: it persists long after it was first spoken, touching the ages as it rolls down whichever corridors are open and un-cluttered enough to allow it to endure. In a virtuous echo chamber, we find ways to pronounce the unspeakable Name of God by choosing mellifluous substitute words that prompt us to sing. What we hear in a virtuous echo chamber doesn’t just comfort us in our afflictions, it also afflicts us in our comfort: driving us again and again to consider the other, who is not as comfortable as we are.
The Psalmist knew that the voices we hear and listen to affect our lives profoundly. And he wanted us to remember the voice of the LORD: to be on the lookout for it, to know where it could be found, and to be aware of its power.
And it’s no mistake, nor a matter of poetic license that it is a voice that speaks when the heavens are torn open, and the Spirit is revealed like a dove. The voice of the LORD declares to Jesus, (but for the benefit of the rest of us): “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This voice speaks. The voice says, “Cry out!” And we do not have to ask, “What shall we cry?” With our prayers we build an open, un-cluttered chamber in which the sound of the voice persists, calling us to worship the LORD and serve one another. Among all the echo chambers of our shattered society, the truth continues to sound. And we mean for the sound of the truth to persist
Ascribe unto the LORD, ye mighty, worship and power, honor and glory. Ascribe unto the LORD the glory dues his Name, let the sound of it repeat and repeat and repeat in the echo chambers of the church.
For the LORD shall give strength to his people; the LORD shall give his people the blessing of peace.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
10 January 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
