Evensong (September 6, Fr. Guiliano)

“Do you talk to ants?” In Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, Odysseus utters this phrase after he and his men discover that the Cyclops can talk. They have just spent days in his cave. The Cyclops has been eating them one-by-one, and they have finally found a way to escape: they blind him while he is sleeping, and plan to sneak out, disguised as sheep. 

After they have wounded him, but before they leave, they discover the Cyclops can talk when he prays. He calls on his Father, Poseidon, for vengeance. But he does not talk to them. “Why not?” says one of the soldiers. 

Odysseus replies, “Do you talk to ants?”

In this vision of the universe and human nature, there is a hierarchy. Some are on top; others are on the bottom; and there is little converse between the two. Up in the heaven are the gods, monster or demigods are a little lower, and humans  are little creeping things, hardly worth the attention of their betters.

In our first reading tonight, Bildad the Shuhite articulates a similar theme, as he attempts to engage his friend Job, in the middle of his suffering. 

Dominion and fear are with God; he makes peace in his high heaven. Is there any number to his armies? Upon whom does his light not arise? How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his sight, how much less a mortal, who is a maggot, and a human being, who is a worm!

Bildad and his friends are arguing with Job, trying to convince him that his sufferings are his own fault. His moral failures must be the reason. They even say repeatedly that God is not impressed with heavenly beings. Angels and spirits are charged with errors, the moon and the stars “are not pure.” And a human, like Job? He is a maggot, crawling in the garbage, a worm, wriggling in the dust of the earth. 

This is not an optimistic view of human nature or human dignity. But it was a common one in the ancient world. And it is voiced by Bildad precisely as a half-truth. Because Job is suffering innocently, declared by God to be blameless and upright, someone the angels & Satan should regard.

At the end of the story, God rebukes Job’s friends, saying, “You have not spoken of me what is right.”

Scripture’s view of human dignity is magnificent. It’s not all pessimism. You can read its pages and find yourself astonished at the denunciation of human sin, but it is also Scripture that declares us sharers in the divine image and “partakers of the divine nature.” 

The human calling is not to perish on the earth like an ant, a maggot, or a worm, nor to be crushed by higher powers. The human calling is to live with God and the angels in a life of perfect praise. The Lord knows we are fragile, “short of days,” blown like the dust before the wind or wilting “like a flower of the field.” But we are called to share in God’s eternity.

In our second lesson, John looks and sees Jesus, the Lamb, standing on Mt Zion, but not alone.

With him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.

John sees Jesus surrounded by singers, musicians, a thunderous ensemble of human redemption, causing wave upon wave of song to crash upon the shores of heaven; human beings drawn out to follow the Lamb, to offer priestly praises in the celestial courts, to rest from their labors. 

Humans are not maggots or worms. They are meant to be friends with angels, and their art and skill is to be employed in the service of heaven. 

Music is not frivolous. I had a friend in Oxford, a composer, who would get a little irritated when people asked him about the purpose of music. Why should someone study music? Why should someone join a choir? Why should someone attend Evensong? 

He found this baffling – his art moved through him so constantly that he could no more imagine living without music as a fish could live without water. He would sometimes make arguments about the benefits of music when people asked him, but it wasn’t something he liked to talk about. Music was life to him. He wanted to compose, to perform, to play or conduct, to worship with his art. 

I saw him happiest when we went to Pontigny Abbey, a grand Romanesque church in Burgundy, built to hold thousands of worshippers. There, the echo of a human voice can last a full 14 seconds. Singing polyphony there is like entering the gates of heaven, to hear angelic music, the sound of many waters, the sound of thunder, the sounds we human were born to hear and to make, the sounds we have made on earth and in heaven.

We discover things in our art and in our music that we could never experience otherwise. We take up a Psalm, and find ourselves sharing the words of saints. We find ourselves standing with Mary and Simeon, as they sing their canticles. We share in the prayers of Jesus, who sang Psalms before he was betrayed, and who sings now upon his throne. We learn to sing in the Church with joy, knowing we have been redeemed and that our lives have been woven into greater realities.

This is the truth of our worship, and I hope you have experienced it tonight at Choral Evensong. 

As you go home, I hope our songs and their words re-echo in your mind. “Let every instrument be tuned for praise; let all rejoice who have a voice to raise; and may God give us faith to sing always, Alleluia!”

Sing with Mary a song of mercy, a song of the Lord who exalts the humble. Sing with Simeon a song of light and rest. Sing with the Psalmist, praising the Lord who forgiveth sins, healeth infirmities, and saveth thy life from destruction.  

Sing – and remember the high calling God has granted us. We were not made for dust and ashes. We are not maggots, worms, mere ants. We were made for heaven’s glories; we have been redeemed, that we might shine with stars.