The Birth of Apollo

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Psalm 139:1-18, 1Corinthians 1:9-13, 26-29, John 17:21-24

I promise to be quite brief. I have to these days or I get heckled. Stop talking daddy. Stop talking.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together to cleanse this little goblin of his original sin. I always admired theologian Eddie Izzard’s doctrine of original sin – Where you have to commit an act that no one has ever committed before. It’s more challenging. ‘Poking a badger… with a spoon’ was Mr Izzard’s example. Oberon, who, as of tomorrow, we have successfully kept alive for 3 years, has already committed several original sins: In just the last month he has pulled a loo-roll holder out of the wall and pulled the dining room light fitting out of the ceiling. He should really have been called Samson. As everyone tells us: “he’s a very confident child.” At five months Apollo has not really had time to develop originality.

A colleague said to me earlier this week that every time you say promises in church you emerge as a different person. A changed state of being. I think we have to be careful here. Many’s the person who’s married someone thinking that marriage will change their partner, resolve their infidelities, only to be disappointed, and discover their real age. I can reveal that the promises made on ordination don’t resolve the petty and not-so-petty foibles of the clergy. Neither the promises of matrimony nor ordination suddenly transform us into something better; Sometimes wives don’t even take their husbands’ names, and the poor bloke looks like an add on who’s been transplanted into the family after the event. And priests are not visibly held in the Holy Spirit tractor beam conferring their new powers to bless, consecrate and absolve.

But neither is it nothing.  I remember when Sally and I were ordained someone told us that a sacrament is just the public recognition of what is already the case. They were trying to be kind and stop people panicking and running out the church like Julia Roberts in the Runaway Bride.

But sacraments are more than this –  It’s not just God - we’re all participating. This moment matters.  It is a change in relation. In baptism we are joining in with the yes that God speaks to all creation to one of our own. It’s a calling.

It’s not magic though. It’s like the marriage toasts when traditionally the groom deliberately first says “My wife and I…” It’s funny because it’s this awkward stepping into something different that at the same time is just as it was.

Or we might think of naming the baby. Oberon’s name was always definite but even as Rhiannon was heading off to register Apollo at 6 weeks, we were a little undecided. With that uncertainty, or if it’s just “baby” there’s a slight vagueness of identity. Once a child has its name – it takes on a little more definition. It’s a little bit more like a person, less like an accessory. I’m still a little sad we didn’t call him Anastasius – which is Greek for resurrection; He was born on Easter night – traditionally the time of the harrowing of hell. Rhiannon thought that was just a bit pretentious.

Apollo is good though. Dante appeals to Apollo, god of poets, singers and music, at the beginning of Paradiso, the happier part of the greatest work of Christian literature. But Apollo is more – one of his Homeric epiphets is “killer of mice”; And the vicarage does usually have mice. It also gives him something in common with Zz who loves chasing small furry animals and occasionally murders them, mostly by accident. We think.

I was very tempted to use the Tyndale translation for today’s 1Corinthians passage – His is the first English translation so the spelling is all squiffy (Kitty would have coped)–  But he does call Apollos, Apollo, which is better. After all, we don’t call Paul, Paulos do we?

Apollo unfortunately comes off very much as second fiddle to Paul. Despite being mentioned a number of times in the New Testament, and quite possibly being the author of the letter to the Hebrews, he does not have his own feast day and has fallen into shadow.

We should take account of the wisdom of the 2004 arthouse film Mean Girls,though, when Gretchen, who is always number 2 to Regina, reminds us: Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, right? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar,  We should totally just STAB CAESAR!” (who am I to disagree?)

As an apostle Apollo may be the underdog but as Paul himself admits: God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;  God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

In this, Christianity is a little bit like carnival night. It’s about reversals: The birth of God in poverty and jeopardy. The transformation of death to life on Easter night; The last shall be first; Jesus gathering the children and declaring in the face of the learned teachers – ‘the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’

So perhaps it is a higher honour to be named after a dubious apostle, an uncertain saint, and a killer of mice.

At Oberon’s baptism the choir sang Mascagni’s Easter Hymn, which would have been more appropriate for a baby born on Easter morning. It’s sung by the ‘fallen woman’, the soprano out on the square, who feels she can’t go to church because of an affair. But it’s her song that rises in parallel with the resurrection, drawing in the villagers and taking the worship from the church into the open air. The song gives us an image of grace. Surprising; Out of focus, in the background of where the action is supposed to be. Born in humility.  But glorious.

Two of my favourite writers of the twentieth-century were women who both probablyhad death-bed baptisms, one catholic, the other Church of England. There is something deeply Christian about hanging around on the edge of the Church. Not out of a lack of faith; but from a suspicion of institutions, of power, of concern over who else is left outside, 

The last-minute Catholic, Simone Weil, wrote: ‘In the old baptism by immersion the man disappeared under the water;  this means to deny one’s self, to acknowledge that one is only a fragment of the inert matter which is the fabric of creation.  He only reappeared because he was lifted up by an ascending movement stronger than gravity;  this is the image of the divine love in man. ‘

That to me is the description of the fallen soprano singing outside the church in the town square. The people who go to church usually believe that they have earned love. It’s a prize they’re entitled to because of their good – or at least not terrible lives. It’s a transaction: Dear God, I have been good, therefore I deserve to be let in the good place. God dressed up as Santa Claus.

It’s more likely the people on the margins, hovering outside the church, who do not feel entitled. Who may love without expecting a return; Who regarding themselves as nothing will be lifted up by an ascending movement stronger than gravity. Love defying gravity – maybe even witches can be saved.

So perhaps original sin might be thought of as self-justification; Where the more we justify and commend ourselves, the more we belong easily, the further we have fallen from grace. Infants – who know only dependence, are perfectly and wholly available to love. Which is why, to find grace, we must become more like Apollo. Perhaps this sacrament is as much for us, as for him. Apollo. Uncertain saint. Destroyer of mice.  Amen.

Apollo, of you even the swan sings with clear voice to the beating of his wings, as he alights upon the bank by the eddying river Peneus; and of you the sweet-tongued minstrel, holding his high-pitched lyre, always sings both first and last. And so hail to you, lord! I seek your favour with my song.

From Homeric Hymns to Apollo 

The glory of the One who moves all things
permeates the universe and glows
in one part more and in another less.

I was within the heaven that receives
more of His light; and I saw things that he
who from that height descends, forgets or can

not speak; for nearing its desired end,
our intellect sinks into an abyss
so deep that memory fails to follow it.

Nevertheless, as much as I, within
my mind, could treasure of the holy kingdom
shall now become the matter of my song.

O good Apollo, for this final task
make me the vessel of your excellence,
what you, to merit your loved laurel, ask.

The opening of Dante’s Paradiso

Apprehend
Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellow'd; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now. Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires
Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts
Burn hotter than my faith.

A Winter’s Tale IV.iv

A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.

Frances Cornford on Rupert Brooke