The Amplitude of Love

Everybody knows that Christmas is marked largely by light and sound.  And food, too.  But for my purposes, I want to dwell on the lights and sounds of Christmas, both of which are transmitted in waves.  In fact, it’s not really the lights and sounds of Christmas I want to focus on, it’s the waves.  Not long ago, I asserted from this pulpit that life is cyclical.  And I referred to the wave patterns of light and sound to support my point of view.

At this moment I would also like to point out that even an authority no less significant than Taylor Swift thinks life is cyclical.  Just this past summer, she released a song in which she sings that “I go back to December all the time.”  Cyclical!  This is an entirely gratuitous reference to Taylor Swift, but, geez, that woman is in charge these days, so I want her on my side!

Light and sound are cyclical: transmitted in wave patterns, with speed, amplitude, and frequency.  But Christmas is not just about light and sound.  And Christmas is not just about food.  Christmas is also about love.  “Love came down at Christmas,” an old hymn says.  And I have found myself, wondering  why we don’t talk more about love at Christmas.

The scriptures are not as explicit about love as they are about the lights and sounds of Christmas.  The light was provided by the star in the east, and the sound was provided by the angels singing.  But the story of Jesus’ birth is full of implicit expressions of love: from Joseph’s care for Mary, under difficult circumstances, to God’s concern for the world he means to save.

Focused, as I’ve been on the cycles of sound and light waves, I have found myself wondering if love is cyclical, too.  More to the point, I’ve found myself wondering if love is transmitted in wave patterns.  We have been so conditioned by Cupid (that dopey, chubby angel, who is a notoriously bad shot), to think of love as an arrow, shot straight, or maybe arcing toward some point, that it might be hard for us to think as love as a wave, with its own speed, amplitude, and frequency.  But what if love, like a wave (or waves) is pulsing all around us now?  And if, indeed, Love came down at Christmas, transmitted in waves, what does that mean for us?  What difference does it make?

You know what a wormy, zigzag, squiggle a wave looks like when it’s drawn out on a graph, expressing the measurements of speed, amplitude, and frequency.  Of interest to me at Christmas, I think, is particularly the amplitude of the wave: that is, how high and how low it goes, how “big” the wave is.  Because I think Christmas has something to do with the amplitude of love.

Physicists tell us that waves interfere with one another all the time.  Taylor Swift has never written a song about this that I know of, but that’s her problem, not mine.  She’s missing out.  And recently, I learned that when waves interfere with one another, that interference can be either “destructive” or “constructive.”  Destructive interference produces a wave with diminished amplitude: a smaller wave.  But constructive interference produces a wave with greater amplitude: a bigger wave.  Let me make that point again, it’s late after all, and I’m talking about physics.  Constructive interference of two waves results in a bigger wave.

Look, I fell in love with the phrase “constructive interference” the moment I heard it.  There was no chance you were going to be spared.  It would hardly matter what it describes!  But stay with me!  (And why isn’t Taylor Swift writing songs about this stuff?!?  This is great!)  What if love really is pulsing around us now, like a wave, or waves.  Who knows where those waves originated?  Maybe in the human heart; or maybe in trees, like carbon dioxide; or, more likely, from roses, especially when they grow a little un-tamed in the garden.  Think of all these hearts, all these trees, all these roses, emanating waves of love, all around us, everywhere.

Set aside the speed and the frequency.  What if the amplitude of those waves of love around us has grown dim, and the waves have  flattened out?  Don’t you think this happens in places?  I do.  In corporate board rooms.  And in meetings where generals debate target selection.  And, of course, between people - even people who have been in love.  The waves of love can grow flabby and flat.  Happens all the time.

Is it possible that what happened at that first Christmas, is that God looked down from heaven, as it were, and noticed how small the amplitude of the waves of love throughout the world had become?  That he saw how flat the waves were.  And that God knows that flat waves are just too hard for most people to detect.  And so love seems absent when the amplitude is so low, and the waves are so flat; love seems hard to find, and difficult to share.  And other waves - waves produced by the desire for war, and the love of money, and basically any kind of selfishness you can imagine - these other waves have such reliably noticeable amplitude (with high peaks and low valleys), that it seems like they easily crowd out the waves of love, when the love-amplitude (if I can call it that) is low.

But remember, those physicists tell us that waves interfere with each other all the time.  So I guess love waves would interfere with one another, too.  And we already know one way to increase the amplitude of a wave!  That’s right: constructive interference!  (Eat your heart out, Taylor Swift!)

What if God sent his Son Jesus into the world as an act of constructive interference: to increase the love-amplitude in the world, so that people would take notice of love; and so that love might have a chance amid all the other wormy, zigzag, squiggling waves out there?  What if love is all around us being transmitted in waves?  Some of it might be coming from the trees, some from the roses, and some of it from the person next to you, or the person who is nowhere near you but who you are thinking about right now.  And, of course, some of the love-waves are coming from you, too!

Waves are always interfering with one another.  But what if somehow, all we have managed to produce by way of wave interference is destructive interference, which results in smaller amplitude, and less noticeable love?  And what if this pattern of destructive interference had been going on for a long time?  Wouldn’t the loving thing to do - the loving thing, from a loving God - wouldn’t it be to send in a source of constructive interference?  And jack that love-amplitude up?!  What if that’s what the Child in the manger is?  Producing not just ample waves of sound, as he cries for his Mother’s breast, and not just whatever light waves would come from the One who is light of light; but what if that Child is also the source and origin of love?  What if he emanates love that gets transmitted to the world in waves, with speed, and frequency, and amplitude?  And what if he came to us to be the source of constructive interference, with the capacity to greatly increase the amplitude of our love?  Wouldn’t that be good news?

One of the reasons I like to think about Christmas this way is because this stuff is real; this actually happens - waves and constructive interference!  This is physics, baby!  This isn’t just some Taylor Swift song about going back to December all the time!  What if love really is transmitted to us in something like waves that we cannot see, and that are hard to measure, but are, nevertheless, as real as sound waves and light waves?

What if Christmas is about more than light and sound and food?  What if Christmas really is about the gift of love being given to us again and again by God, since, somehow, the amplitude of love in the world had grown flat and weak?  And what if Jesus - who, if he is God of God, and light of light, and very God of very God, is also love of love - what if Jesus is the constructive interference that we need to increase the amplitude of love in our lives, and maybe usher in a new era of God’s love?

Now, that’s an era I’d be looking forward to!  So, I don’t know why Taylor Swift isn’t writing a song about constructive interference.  But, don’t worry, Taylor, you’re not the problem, it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.  Don’t worry about constructive interference.  I’ve got it covered.  I go back to December all the time, too.  It’s a wonderful cycle to return to every year.  No matter how diminished the amplitude of love has become, without fail, God sends his Son to us, again and again, in this beautiful act of constructive interference that looks like Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger, as Love comes down at Christmas.  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Christmas Eve, 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Among You Stands the One

Every one of us, I expect, has had the experience of searching for someone we know in a crowded place.  I found myself doing it just the other day at Macy’s after the Boys & Girls Choir had sung carols before the light show began, and the crowd had grown thick.  But I’ve had the same experience lots of times elsewhere: in a concert hall, at Times Square, at a train station, even on the beach: trying to recognize some feature of someone I know among a sea of unknown faces and bodies.  I’m sure that you can also think of plenty of times that you have been looking for someone you know in a crowded place.  You ask yourself if you happen to remember what they are wearing.  If they are tall, you know that will work in your favor; and if not, oh well.  With any luck they are wearing a hat that you can look for, or at least there is some distinctive feature to search out.  Because, it’s important to find this person.  I don’t know why, but you do; that’s why you are looking for them.

It’s harder, of course, to find someone you don’t know, in a crowded place: nothing to recognize.  But most of us have had this experience, too.  You go to pick up your husband’s cousin, whom you’ve never met, at the airport; or the exchange student just arriving from Denmark; or the job applicant coming into town for an interview.  It’s a little easier these days than it used to be, since pictures are so much easier to share, but it can still be a challenge to find someone you don’t know in a crowded place.  But, once again, it’s important to find the person; you know this, and so you have a strategy.  Meet me under the lamp post with the No Parking sign.  I’ll be one with two Labradors.

What’s hardest of all, is finding someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them.  And that is the challenge that John the Baptist poses for those who will listen to him, as we are being asked to listen to him today.  How do you find someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them?

This is how John the Baptist puts it: “Among you stands one whom you do not know.”  Or, as the King James Version put it, “There standeth one among you whom ye know not.”

Among you stands one whom you do not know.  The church has spent so much time and energy and money trying to negate this statement through the ages: to render it as thoroughly untrue as we possibly could.  It’s as though we thought that if we couldn’t demonstrate in the church that that was then, but this is now, we had failed or somehow offended.  That the spread of the Gospel and the Christian religion was a counter-argument to John the Baptist.

And so, if you didn’t know Jesus, then we would beat you with him until you got to know him.  We would waterboard you until you knew him, and we’d call it baptism.  We wanted to prove that we had heard John the Baptist, and that we had progressed beyond those early days of tentative faith (ours, not his).  We wanted to take over the world, so that no one would ever have to find a Savior they did not know, even when they weren’t looking for him.  We didn’t want there to be a time or a place where people wouldn’t know that Jesus was in the room.  We hated the idea that someone might not be looking for Jesus, or that we might have failed in some way to bring him with us wherever we went, as though it was up to us to do so, as though his call was to “carry me,” as opposed to “follow me.”  All this seemed like a  problem to us, as if we were the the first-born child, we took the responsibility on our own shoulders, as if it was ours to bear, as if we really were the first-born.  (We’re not; he is.)

How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them?

Building Christendom was the very real response to John the Baptist’s call.  We heard him say, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” and we took it a little too literally.  For one thing, we forgot that it was the way of the Lord that John called to be made straight, not everybody he might encounter along the way.

How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them?

These days, the question seems quite real again, since  building Christendom has, in many ways, backfired on us.  There are a lot of people out there who aren’t looking for someone whom they do not know, and they think that’s just fine.  There are many people who do not know Jesus, and are not interested in meeting him.  And the church can no longer assert with a straight face that the waterboarding we sometimes did was enhancing anything.  We are returning to a climate in which the words of the Baptist have renewed meaning: Among you stands one whom you do not know.

This statement contains what sounds to me like both good news and bad news.

Let’s start with the bad news: that so many people do not know Jesus.  I say this is bad news because if you don’t know Jesus, then you may never be converted to a sincere desire for peace; you may never be convinced of the holiness of every human person; you may never seek and accept the forgiveness you need in your life, nor offer the forgiveness you need to offer; and you may never discover that everything in life is a gift, and the best things you’ll ever do with your life will involve the things you give away.  Without knowing Jesus, you may be convinced (wrongly) that there are only two kinds of people in the world.  So, from my perspective, it’s pretty bad news to conclude that so many people in the world do not know Jesus, quite apart from any latent desire of mine to rebuild Christendom.

But, now, for the good news: “Among you stands one.”  The profound good news in John the Baptist’s simple declaration is that Jesus is among us; God the Son is with us; the eternal Word of the Father is with us; Emmanuel; God with us!  The Baptist’s cry is a near-perfect expression of the mystery of the Incarnation: among you stands the One, as long as we know who “the One” is, and have some idea of what that means.

Among you stands the One.

“Among” is an interesting word.  It comes from Old English and seems to have entered the lexicon in the 12th century, meaning “in the midst of.”  The “mong” part of “among” comes from a word that meant, not only “to mingle,” but also, “to knead,” as in kneading dough, so as to bring the dough together, and allow it to develop into more than the sum of its parts.  Among you stands the One...  whom you do not know.

How do you find someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them?

Pay attention to how selective John is in his quotation of Isaiah: “Make straight the way of the Lord.”  It’s the way of Jesus that John is concerned about; it’s the space for Jesus that needs to be identified and marked.  You clear a path for Jesus, because it’s Jesus’ way that needs to be opened up in the world.  Your own path might still be crooked and jagged.  But if we want people to find someone they do not know, when they are not necessarily even looking for him, what’s needed is a clear and straight path for Jesus.  Because the good news is that he is already among us.  That was the import of John the Baptist’s call: the Messiah is already here… but you do not know it yet!

“Make straight the way of the Lord!”  For so long, we have made this part of the project harder than it has to be: making straight the way of the Lord, because we thought it implied that Jesus wanted us to do the hard work of salvation.

You and I are not capable of doing the hard work of salvation: we haven’t got what it takes.  Jesus is the one who does the hard work of salvation: which is forgiveness, sacrifice, and grace, poured into our lives.  Our job is to make straight the way, so that more grace pours directly into our lives than runs off the side of the road.  How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them?  You open yourself up: you unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and you sweep the path, making it straight as possible as you do, for among you stands one whom you do not know.

I’d never noticed before, how in John’s Gospel, this declaration of John the Baptist, that comes so near the beginning of the story, is echoed again very near the end of the story, when Mary Magdalene stands weeping outside Jesus’ tomb, but just near her, among her and the garden, you might say, among her stands one she does not know: the resurrected Christ, whom she mistakes for the gardener.  It is not Mary’s initiative that brings about the revelation that here stands the risen Jesus.  It’s Jesus’ initiative to call her by name, and show himself for who and what he is: the risen Lord of Life.

Among you stands one whom you do not know.  But he is always taking the initiative to call each and every one of us by name, and show us who he is: the risen Lord of Life.  What we have to do is unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and sweep the path, making it straight as possible as we do, so that more grace pours directly into our lives than runs off the side of the road.

There is no point in trying to rebuild Christendom: it was probably never a good idea anyway.  But there is every possible reason to unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and sweep the path, making it straight as possible as we do.

For, there standeth one among you whom ye know not.  Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 December 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Thank You For Your Service

Thank you for your service.

It seems as though we must have gathered here to say these words, or something like them, to the ghost of George Washington, or at least, as we say in the Troop, to say them to his memory.  Perhaps that is why we came here today: to add our voices to the long echo of nearly 250 years of memory and gratitude directed to the man who we can rightly call, in so many ways, the father of our nation.  But it’s possible that this is not the reason we have gathered here.

A recent survey by USAA found that veterans below the age of 45 overwhelmingly respond unfavorably to the sentiments they perceive are being expressed when they hear someone say “Thank you for your service.”  The implication seems to be that many veterans in the post-Vietnam era, find the phrase empty, articulating only the most superficial meaning.

I understand the impulse of those of us who haven’t served to try to bridge the gap between us and those of you who have served in the Armed Forces.  But it’s possible that the effect of such a small phrase falls far short of the task.  And it’s possible that it would be a superficial way of remembering the contributions of George Washington to this country, by gathering here to say “Thank you for your service,” to his memory.  Maybe it’s the case that we should try, instead, to listen to the memory of George Washington on this day.

On the 19th of September, 1796, the Farewell Address of George Washington was published in a Philadelphia newspaper.  Washington had decided not to seek another term as president.  Following the premiere of the Farewell Address in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser, it was then published in papers across the country.

In our own day and age, we are accustomed to office-holders taking every opportunity to burnish their records and establish their legacies, to maximize the potential political leverage of every situation for their own political gain, even in departure or retirement.  And it feels as though we don’t often see our public servants stepping down unless they have to.  George Washington didn’t have to step down, and many were surprised that he chose to do so.  Of course, he wasn’t only the president, and he wasn’t merely the commander in chief: he had served as the commander of the Continental Army that won the liberty of the nation, and changed the course of history.  If ever there was a man for whom the words, “Thank you for your service” might be uttered, you’d think it would have been George Washington.  No doubt there were people who expressed such sentiment to the esteemed man.

Early in his Farewell Address, which is largely  concerned with the importance of preserving the unity of the young nation, the danger of political factionalism, and the risk of foreign entanglements, Washington, far from seeking adulation for his own record of service, was at pains to express “acknowledgement of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country.”  Washington went on to say to the people of the nation, who had twice elected him to the highest office, that “the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts” he’d made in service to the nation.  “If benefits have resulted to our country from these services [of his], let it always be remembered to your praise,” he wrote.  It was as though he was saying to the people of the United States, “Thank you for allowing me to serve.”

“My feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgement of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country….”

It is possible that the designers of the US Capitol got carried away, when, by way of thanking George Washington for his service, they had painted in the rotunda a large fresco that depicts “the apotheosis of George Washington.”  “Apotheosis” means “the exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.”  That’s even rarer and more wonderful than election to the Honorary Roll of The First City Troop (so, it’s pretty good).  But Washington wasn’t trying to be elevated to god-like status.  He just wanted to get home to his farm.

Scholars tell us that the words we heard read earlier from the prophet Micah were among Washington’s favorite biblical passages, which he referenced repeatedly.  It was not, however, the hope that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” that brought the great man back to this passage again and again.  Rather, it was to be reminded that when warfare shall come to an end, then, eventually, “they shall sit every man under his vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid….”  Washington yearned to return to his own private life at Mount Vernon, and to sit there under his own vine and fig tree, so to speak.  It’s possible that he felt he had been given divine assurance of his right to retire in some shade by the Potomac in Virginia.

But he could not do so, without first expressing his gratitude to his nation for what had been given to him in the gift of this country, which he helped give birth to: the father thanking the child for the gift of its birth.  “My feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgement of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country….”  Thank you for allowing me to serve.

People come to church for many reasons, including because they have been told it’s required, and they have no other option.  (Not that that reason applies to anyone here.)  But one of the principal reasons to come to church is to give thanks.  We give thanks to God every single day in this church, for the many blessings he bestows on us in so many ways.  Today, those blessings include the many blessings he has bestowed on us, in this nation, in the person of George Washington, in the fellowship of the First City Troop, in the service of the men and women of the armed forces, and in the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in the course of that service.

And it makes sense that when we gather to honor the memory of George Washington, we are here, not so much to express our thanks to him for his service, but to direct our thanks toward God for the gifts and the talents he bestowed on our first president, and for what an extraordinary return Washington made of God’s investment of those gifts in him.

Just a few lines later in his Farewell Address, Washington offered something like his own benediction on the people of the country he fought to establish.  “I shall carry it with me to my grave,” he wrote, “as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence…” which is another way of saying something like, “May God grant you every blessing of the highest order.”

And it seems good and right to gather near the anniversary of his death, not merely so that we can thank him for his service, but to remember before God that benediction, and to listen to the echo of George Washington, himself, as he acknowledges “the debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country.”

It’s the kind of thing that would normally prompt us in the Troop to call for a song.  But since we cannot ask our long departed friend to sing, instead, we’ll have to let it suffice that we shall join Washington in an expression of the debt of gratitude that we, too, owe to this country, and to offer our songs today to God’s praise and glory, but also, to the memory of George Washington.   To his memory.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
at the Service for the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry
in memory of George Washington
10 December 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia