Latency

In our continuing series on modern technical metaphors for Christ’s relationship to the world and to us, we move on from Reverse Logistics, and now I bring you: Latency.

Latency, the Web tells me, is “a synonym for delay.”  Latency is “the time it takes for data to pass from one point on a network to another.”  Latency is “a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system.”  Latency is the difference in time between when you hear me say something here in this church, and when others hear it in the live-stream a few seconds later.  Yes, it’s a live-stream, but there’s latency.  There’s delay.  It takes time for data to pass from one point to another. 

Sound is a particularly obvious realm where we experience latency.  There’s latency in the time it takes for the sound of the organ to get from one end of the church to another.  There’s latency in the time in takes for the sound of my voice or the sound from the loudspeakers to get from this end of the church to the west end.  Latency.  Something happens, but then it takes time for you and me to experience it happening, there’s a delay.  There’s latency in light, too, like the light that comes to us from the stars. Even though it’s moving at, well, the speed of light, there’s a delay, a lag, between the time that light was created and the time it reaches us. 

But what does latency have to do with Jesus?

There’s latency all over the scriptures, if you ask me.  And two of the readings assigned for today have specific examples of latency for us to consider.

The story of the conversion of St. Paul is shot through with all kinds of latency, but no where as obvious as the moment the risen Christ addresses the saint-to-be: “Saul, Saul,” comes the voice, “why do you persecute me?”  Saul, who is soon to become Paul, experiences the lag between the reality of this encounter with the risen Christ and his ability to grasp it, for he does not know who is speaking to him.  “Who are you, Lord,” he asks.  The data, which has knocked him to the ground and left him blinded by the light, has not yet fully reached him.  This latency, for Paul, will last more or less until the scales fall from his eyes three days later, when his sight is restored, he is baptized, and he regains his strength - these are the effects belatedly caused by the earlier encounter.  Latency.

The resurrection appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Tiberias also shows latency in the experience of an encounter with the risen Christ.  St. John’s tells us that “Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.”  Eventually one of the disciples realizes that “it is the Lord,” but it takes time, and it takes the others even more time.  Latency.  There is a delay: the time it takes for data to pass from one point on the network to another.  There is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system, namely the presence of the risen Christ.

With Christ, as in other aspects of our lives, latency is cause for frustration and difficulty.  We tend to be most annoyed by the latency between us and God when we experience a lag between the things we ask of God and God’s response to us.  This latency drives every one of us to distraction, since we cannot understand why God doesn’t have a system for dealing with our petitions that has a shorter latency, or better yet, no latency at all.

But as both the story of the conversion of St. Paul, and the appearance of Jesus on the beach show us, the real problem of latency between us and God is not the lag between what we ask of God and when God responds to us.  Rather, the real problem of the latency between us and God is the long delay between the time that God accomplishes something and the time that we realize that God is at work in the world and in our lives.

Let me put it another way.  The risen Jesus comes to us, but we do not know him when we see him.  There is latency, until eventually, we figure out that God is truly with us.  This latency strikes us generally as a flaw in whatever kind of system God is operating.  And we don’t know what to make of the delay.  Is it our problem?  Is it God’s problem?  If God dealt with the latency issue, would more people believe?

I can’t tell you that I know why there is latency that seems to be built in to God’s relationship with us.  I can only assert that the latency is real.  The risen Christ shows up, and people do not know who it is; there is a delay; it takes a while.  Again and again we hear about this type of encounter in the New Testament.  From Mary Magdalene at the tomb, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, to Paul on the road to Damascus.  Over and over again, the realization that Christ is risen is described to us with latency built in.

The reason to reflect on all this, it seems to me, is because we are generally so impatient with God.  We have come to expect so little of God, in part because this latency is so frustrating to us.  Is it possible that God expects us to accept that there is latency in his dealings with us?

The risen Christ shows up to the most unlikely convert, who will nonetheless become a great apostle - St. Paul - and there is latency in the process of his conversion.  (Who are you, Lord?)  The resurrected Lord appears to the disciples on a beach, but they, who had shared his Last Supper with him, did not know that it was Jesus.  Perhaps we are meant to see that often, Christ will show up and no one will know who he is, for a time, at least.  The risen Lord will appear and, for a while, we will be none the wiser.

The very work of salvation seems to be characterized by a certain latency.  We say that Christ has conquered sin and death, that by his resurrection he has accomplished our redemption.  Yes, the work of resurrection is complete, the kingdom of God is at hand.  But where, O where, is that kingdom?  Why are we still living with so much sin,  with so much death?

Theologians describe this tension in terms of Already/Not Yet.  They don’t even know how to put it into a full sentence, so frustrating is the latency involved in God’s work!  The thing about it is that we are aware of the latency because we are so keenly aware of the Not Yet.  But it’s so very easy for us to forget the Already.  But the entire premise of latency is the Already: what Christ has already done for us, that Christ is already with us, Christ has already won the victory, Christ has already showed up, but we have not yet realized it’s him!

St. John actually describes for us the way latency affects the disciples on the beach.  At first, John tells us, Jesus stood on the beach but the disciples did not know that it was him.  Then, after a delay, two of them - Peter and the un-named disciple whom Jesus loved, realize that it’s Jesus.  And then, the next thing you know, Jesus is inviting them all to have breakfast with him on the beach.  John says, “Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?; because they knew it was the Lord.”  We are watching in real time as the effect of the latency is resolved, not surprisingly in the act of breaking bread together with the Lord.

I’d suggest that even in the famous conversation that Jesus has with Peter after breakfast, there is an element of latency at work.  Jesus asks Peter repeatedly, “Do you love me?”  And Peter is frustrated because of the time it seems to take for the data to pass from one point to another, and he cannot account for that delay: “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.”  He might have said, “Lord, you know everything; why the latency?”

Jesus does not explain himself or the latency that so often is a part of his dealings with us, and us with him.  All he says is, “Follow me.”  And one thing we know about following is that there is always latency involved, when you are following behind, since it takes time for data to pass from one point on a network to the next.  There is always a delay in time between a cause and its effect when you are following.  It’s just the nature of following.

Latency can be frustrating and confusing, for sure.  But it’s easier to deal with it when you have learned to expect it.  And you realize that the only real question is whether or not you will do as Christ bids, and follow him.  He has already called us.  He is already among us.  Perhaps we are not yet aware of him.  Perhaps none of us will dare to ask him, “Who are you, Lord.”  But he is about to share bread with us.  Perhaps we are beginning to realize that he is already here, and he always has been.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
1 May 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Reverse Logistics

Chances are that in the last two years you have experienced some disruption in your life or your work because of Supply Chain issues.  Easter celebrations have been significantly disrupted in the last two years, but generally these disruptions have not resulted from Supply Chain issues.  The shut-down of the Peeps factory in Bethlehem, PA in 2020 -  a potentially serious Easter disruption - was the result of pandemic related labor issues, not Supply Chain issues.  German chocolatiers, I read, have experienced Supply Chain issues lately, but they still managed to produce 239 million chocolate Easter bunnies this year, according to a trade publication.  So, you know, disaster averted!  The supplies of candles, communion wafers, and sacramental wine are all flowing pretty much un-perturbed.  So we are doing OK in those departments.  So, no, the Supply Chain woes that have affected so many lives and businesses have not seemed like much of a threat to the faithful at Easter.

The Supply Chain, of course, is all about getting us the things we want or need.  The Supply Chain is in perpetual motion, all over the world, and it needs to be - un-resting, un-stopping, un-impeded - in order to keep commerce and industry going, on which so much depends in our world.  As long as the Supply Chain is moving, so is everything else, so I guess that’s a good thing.

It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of the shadow side of the Supply Chain, called, literally the Reverse Supply Chain. I confess that I had given zero thought to what happens to returned or broken or expired products or merchandise when it either fails to reach its end user, or gets sent back from some stop along the Supply Chain.  But it’s a whole thing.

I am fascinated by a term that comes from this other side of the Supply Chain,  the side that moves in the opposite direction; the term is: “Reverse Logistics.”  Reverse Logistics is what happens when something does indeed get to its end user, but then things don’t go according to plan.  Either it doesn’t fit, or you decide you don’t want it, or it doesn’t work the way it was supposed to, or something else.  Under these circumstances, the perpetual motion machine of the Supply Chain must make provision for a thing - well, many things, actually - to move in the opposite direction.  And this process is managed through Reverse Logistics.  The shoes you ordered online but didn’t fit become subject to Reverse Logistics.  The parts that arrived at the shop but don’t work become subject to Reverse Logistics.  The batteries that wear out and need to be replaced are subject to Reverse Logistics.

Am I over simplifying things if I suggest that the aims, goals, and desired outcomes of the Supply Chain are supposed to move in one direction.  And a perfect Supply Chain would always move in that one direction.  But things don’t always move toward their intended aims, goals, and desired outcomes.  And there is a plan for that eventuality: Reverse Logistics.  It’s what happens when things move the wrong way.

It is tempting to think of God as an important part of the Supply Chain - a very important player, perhaps, but still just one of many.  This tendency springs from a good theological impulse: that God is the giver of all good things.  When we see God this way, we see him as the fount and origin of the Supply Chain.

The Israelites saw God this way in the wilderness.  They grumbled to Moses: “Why have you taken us away from the Supply Chain, where cucumbers, melons, leeks, and garlic were all delivered when and where we needed them?!?”  God was not living up to his responsibilities in the Supply Chain.  So what if he had brought them out of slavery!?  We often have the exact same expectations of God, who we think should function as the divine manager of the Supply Chain.  And we, too, expect God to show up for work and fulfill his duties, to keep stuff coming.  God is the giver of all good things, and neither we nor the Israelites are entirely wrong to hold this expectation.

But where in the perpetual motion of the Supply Chain - even a divinely managed Supply Chain - where is there need or desire for Resurrection?  What purpose does conquest over sin and death have in the Supply Chain?

If the Supply Chain controls our lives, our hopes, and our expectations, then Resurrection looks, at best, like an upgrade, a way to keep things moving, keep shopping, maybe get deliveries a little faster, as though everything is going just fine, as long as the Supply Chain chugs along.  This is the Resurrection as Amazon Prime.

But shouldn’t we expect more from God?  Especially since everything is not going just fine, is it?  And all of our problems are not the result of Supply Chain woes.

What catalog of misery should I recite for you?  When Adam took the apple and ate it; when Cain killed his brother Able; when Noah built the ark; when the construction of the tower of Babel came to an abrupt halt - these stories are preserved to remind us how quickly and how easy things start moving in the wrong direction, in the direction that God did not intend.  When David took Bathsheba just because he wanted to; when the rich young ruler could not imagine giving away his things; when nine out of ten lepers forgot to give thanks; when Judas decided he would rather try to be rich than faithful; how quickly things moved in the wrong direction.

When poverty and gunfire that afflict the neighborhoods of this city; when addiction controls and ruins the lives of so many thousands; when depression and suicide steal the promise of the future from so many young people; when greed so divides us that we cannot even see one another from where we live; when warfare rages in places that we have long since forgotten about, let alone the places in the headlines; when the legacy and reality of racism is just ignored by those who could do something about it; when the planet is abused and destroyed by the very people to whose care it was entrusted.  

Yes, God has been the giver of so many good gifts in our lives and in this world.  But see what we do with what God has given us!

God gives, and God gives, and God gives.  And at those times that his giving has seemed scant, he rains down manna, since God’s nature is to give, even in places that are inhospitable to giving.  The divine Supply Chain keeps things moving toward the end user, with blessings in mind.

No, everything is not just fine, is it?  Everything is not moving in the right direction, is it?  And who needs Resurrection if our only aim is to keep the Supply Chain moving in the same direction, to keep everything going the way it’s going, to pretend everything is OK.

What we do need, given the state of things, is some Reverse Logistics: some plan and some action to address the situation in the world when things don’t fit, or we decide we don’t want things to stay the way they are, or when things are just not working the way they are supposed to.

But the Resurrection is not actually just a way to keep things moving in the same old direction.  If anything, the Resurrection is the moment of inflection when God, seeing that things are not going as he intended, initiates a program of Reverse Logistics.

Read up a bit on reverse Logistics, and you’ll find there’s a lot to discover.  Here’s what some guy who probably has an MBA wrote without knowing he was writing theology:  “The goal is to get the broken part back to the point where it can be repaired or reused.”  And it gets better: in some cases, the guy with the MBA tells us, “the part can be repaired and hold the same value and be used the same as a brand new part.”*  dddThis guy with an MBA thinks he’s writing about Reverse Logistics, but actually, that’s Resurrection!  (We should give that guy a Hallelujah!)

So often we tell the story of the Resurrection as though it is something that happened to Jesus, that Jesus did for himself.  (Look what I can do!). But actually the Resurrection is something that happens to us!  These verses of Luke’s Gospel show us the people who are rushing to the scene: the women with the spices, and then Peter.  They cannot tell what’s going on, because things are no longer moving in the direction that assumed things must move.  Jesus had died on the Cross, and death leads in only one direction; it’s the tail end of the Supply Chain.  But Mary Magdelene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women, and eventually Peter can all sense that something different is happening here - and it’s happening to them!  They thought that they were moving in the same direction.  They thought that they were moving toward death.  They thought they were being given another story of dashed hope to tell, along with all the other stories of failure and disappointment.

They did not know what Reverse Logistics is!

But we know!

God is taking everything that has seemed to move only in one direction: everything that has fed our greed and our selfishness; everything that has pushed us apart from one another; everything that has resisted love; everything that has tended toward darkness; everything that has tended toward war; everything that has tended toward destruction; everything that has tended toward death; and in the Resurrection of Jesus, God has instituted a program of Reverse Logistics, in order to get the broken part back to the point where it can be repaired or reused.  Even better, by the power of the Resurrection that part - that person, that life - can and will be repaired so that it holds the same value and can be regarded as a brand new!

That, by God’s grace, is Reverse Logistics, if you ask me.  It is precisely what God has in mind for me and for you, and for all his creation.  And it’s what God began when he raised Jesus from the dead!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Easter Day 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

• from “45 Things You Should Know About Reverse Logistics,” by Steve Syverson, 7 Oct 2021, on WarehouseAnywhere.com

It began in darkness. And then there was a garden.

It began in darkness. “The earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” But upon this darkness rested a gaze that knew no beginning or no end, no shackles of time or distance or space. A gaze that regarded the breadth of all that could be, that looked deep into its bearer’s own heart and prepared a place for something new. And into this place of darkness - within the heart of all possibility - the bearer of the gaze uttered a Word. Here was a singular Word to fill the darkness. A Word to bear the Creator’s own voice into the formlessness. A word that marked the very first beginning. And the word was Life. 

And then there was a garden. From the lips of the One who gazed upon the void, from the imagination of the heart that devised this astonishing new idea of a “beginning,” there was gathered up a place where this new Word, this Life could begin to answer back. The garden was filled with the voice of the Creator: his whisper, his songs, and his delight. A word, and here was fresh, green woodland. A word, and here were splendid creatures with wings and whistles and legs that galloped with joy. A word, and there was water – lively springs and lakes in which the light itself appeared to gather. But this was only the antiphon before the hymn. For at the center of the beauty of this new and strange thing called a “beginning,” there the Word placed the ones for whom he had ever begun to speak at all. 

After the verdant green, and after the winged and crawling and galloping creatures, and after the fonts that sprung forth from the new earth, the Bearer and Beginning of all things walked in the midst of this infant creation. He walked and he walked and he walked until he came to the edge of the water in which the light itself seemed to gather. He stopped at the place where the waves of the lake met the dust of the earth. He bent forward, gazing once again, this time upon his very own image. And from the silt at that place where the water met the dust, he formed the creatures who would bear his own likeness. Like him, they would begin in darkness. Like him, they would create and name and build. Like him, they would love. And into their hearts he carved a place that only his Word of Life could fill.

But creativity and freedom are gifts that are easy for creatures, even marvelous ones, to misunderstand. Because if there is any word that can make one doubt the Word of Life, it is a different word, and the word is Death. In time – the story of the ones made lovingly by the One who gazed upon himself to form their likeness – in time, the story left the garden. The story spread out into the wilderness and the desert, sending the image-bearers into exiles and conflict and captivity. They forgot the freshness of the green and the light of the water. But the place carved within each of them was still there. Each heart still held within it its own formless void that only the Word of Life could fill. 

And so the one who was the first beginning began again. He began in darkness. A womb, this time - it’s own sort of formless, capacious void. This time the Word of Life spoke to a young woman, a whisper in the dark, a woman whose own image-bearing hands would cradle all of creation - the One who spoke the woodlands, the winged, whistling creatures, the water and light - all of it- against her breast. This time the Word of Life did not lovingly form his image from the clay, but took upon him the form itself. The Word was made flesh and dwelt amon gus. Life became blood and bone, knit within his own courageous mother, and from this Life came healing, wisdom, grace, and mercy, a person into which all of the light around him seemed to gather. 

And then there was a garden. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” The Word of Life had grown, all of eternity bound up within the body of a man who traveled no more than a mule ride’s distance from the place of his birth. He had reminded creation where it had come from. He had sung the ancient song of the first trembling steps of creatureliness. He had preached the promise of new creation and filled their hands with bread. He had reminded them of the special, carved-out place within their hearts - that its emptiness was never meant to be a curse, but to be filled by God. 

But if there is any word that can make one doubt the Word of Life, it is a different word, and the word is Death. And so Life weeps blood into the soil of a garden. Late into the night, outside the city that will kill him, the Word of Life takes refuge in a garden where he cannot stay. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done.”

It begins in darkness. The Word of Life is silenced by Death. They gather his Body, lifeless, from its humiliation upon a tree, and now the void is formless again. The darkness of the stopped-up tomb covers the city and the wilderness. The carved-out place within the heart is no longer an absence, but a wound, nauseous and yawning with need. What was ever the point of a beginning if this would be the end. What was the point of the songs and the story and the lakes and the light. What was any of it for if it was all just dust, abandoned to collapse into darkness.

But outside the tomb, there was a garden. “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.” Why do you look for the living among the dead? 

This is the night. This is the very night where it is revealed that death, for all its strength and horror, is defeated not only in one tomb, not only in one place, not only in one time, but forever. Because if there is any word that can silence the word of death, it is Love. The One who speaks and gazes and creates gives us his Son, a promise of love stronger than death. He is not here. He is Risen. This is Love, sweeter than water and light. Love, which existed before the beginning. This is Love that spreads before itself the canvas of eternity and writes our own names upon it. This is Love, humble and kind. This is the answering song to every need, every fear, every grief, every horror. This is Love that calls right down into the grave, and out from it walks a Risen Son, whole in living, breathing, resurrected Body. 

This isn’t just the story of the universe. It’s the story of all of us. It’s the story of you. It’s the story of truth, goodness, beauty - of life itself.

And it’s all true.

Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
The Great Vigil of Easter
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia