In the 1970s, an American developmental psychologist named Edward Tronick carried out a series of studies observing the relationship between a child and the child’s caregiver. The fruits of these studies are known as the “The Still-Face Experiment.” In a video demonstrating this so-called still-face paradigm, a young mother and her infant child are in a room, and the mother engages the child in play. She smiles at the child, makes cooing sounds, and the baby responds. They touch one another. They’re thoroughly and emotionally engaged. The baby smiles and watches the mother. The mother greets the baby, and the baby responds with a cute cry of affirmation. When the baby points at something in the room, the mother’s eyes follow the child’s finger, and she smiles in affirmation. The parent and child interact in the most loving and heartfelt way.
After a couple of minutes of this play, and in an instant, the mother looks away from the child and then turns back to her. This time, her face is blank. She stares at the child with no expression on her face. As the infant processes this change in behavior from her parent, she attempts to reconnect with her mother, using the same gestures as when they were engaging in normal interactions. The baby smiles, but the mother offers nothing in return. Then the baby points at something, but the mother doesn’t follow the baby’s finger. The baby becomes more distressed as she realizes that all her communication tools are failing. Finally, she utters an outcry of frustration, shrieks loudly, and dissolves into tears. At this point, the mother breaks her still-faced persona and returns to a loving interaction with the baby.[1]
The point of The Still-Face Experiment was to demonstrate the inherent connections between human beings, who are relational by nature. This deep relationality can be seen in its incipient stages by observing a parent interact with an infant child. When the mother in the experiment withheld normal, loving facial expressions and modes of communication from her child, the child withdrew emotionally in her own way and exhibited signs of negative behavior.[2] In the video experiment, the point at which the mother discontinued her still-face and returned to her usual self was the moment in which the baby’s negative reactions collapsed into a distressing cry.
There’s something about a cry of distress that elicits anxiety and a need to placate from any normal human being. I frequently hear such cries from children as I walk back and forth between the rectory and church, as a baby in the preschool next door cries out in distress or a child is frustrated on the playground. And my immediate instinct is for that cry of anguish to be alleviated. The cry of distress or the lament, it seems, is the normal vocal mechanism by which one in need establishes connection with one who can be a source of comfort or aid.
For whatever reason, which may always remain a mystery, the apostle Paul understood the power of that primal cry in the relationship between humanity and God. In his letter to the Romans, Paul describes the Spirit of God as praying within us, groaning inwardly with sighs too deep for words. This Spirit prays within us when we don’t know how to pray.
And then in his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes the Spirit of God’s Son, which cries, “Abba! Father!”, the very words used by Jesus in his hour of death as he speaks to his Father. Paul tells us in Galatians that because we are adopted children of God, we, too, have the right to utter that primal cry, “Abba! Father!” Indeed, it’s the very Spirit of God who gives voice to that cry within us. And it’s that passionate cry which connects us to God, our heavenly Father.
But I wonder if this utterance of the Spirit within us is rather like an eerie reversal of The Still-Face Experiment. The Still-Face Experiment demonstrates that the cry of distress from an infant is what can prompt a parent to turn back to the child and reestablish communication and affection. In the famous video, the moment in which the baby dissolves into tears is when the mother breaks her manufactured still-face, smiles, and speaks lovingly to the child once again. It’s as if the mother can’t take the manufactured withdrawal anymore. Because she loves her infant so much, she can no longer pretend to be oblivious to her needs. She must engage with her.
But in God’s interaction with humanity—and contrary to what we might often think—there’s never a moment in which God the Father confronts our pleas for help and responds with a cold, still-face. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that it’s we who are so often blind to God’s pleas for us to turn back to him. We maintain a still-face, stubborn in our sin, cold-hearted in our refusal to love, and parsimonious in our unwillingness to help the needy. The Spirit’s cry within us is something like God’s own cry for connection. It’s as if God cries out within us, in his longing for us to reestablish relationship with him, desperately hoping that we will hear his cry of love and change our still-face into a smile.
On this seventh day of Christmas, Paul reminds us that the birth of Christ to a woman, under the law, was God’s precious gift of intimacy. The birth itself was a baby’s cry to a still-faced world broken by sin and evil. For centuries, God had been faithful to this people, chosen and loved by him eternally. Although God had proven his love time and again, this stubborn people suffered from persistent amnesia. Although they had been told by God himself to remember so many things, they still forgot. They forgot to remember God’s deliverance on that Passover night, to remember the commandments in the Law, to remember how good all of creation was, to remember that they were chosen and loved, to remember that the covenant established with them was unconditional. And so, in the fullness of time, God became a child, an infant crying in the dark night of a wintry world to forge a connection in the most intimate way possible and to turn the cold, selfish still-face of humanity into a warm, interactive countenance of love.
In God’s own gesture of love, God had to come in the flesh, get beneath our skin, and seep his way gently into our hearts, and into those hearts, God would send his eternal Spirit to cry out, “Abba! Father!” This plea for help, this cry of filial intimacy, would be how God would woo humanity’s still-face back into responsive relationship.
All around us, people are yearning for belonging. They’re weary of being told that they’re not enough and that they can never be or do enough to be loved by the world. Many have been told even by the Church that they’re not even enough for God himself, that they can never be enough to stand before God and receive his love. And far too many behave as if they know nothing about the incredible message that St. Paul shares with us, a message that reaffirms our beloved status as adopted children of God.
It’s a still-faced world in which we live. The apathy of humanity before its marvelous Creator is chilling, if not frightening. But there’s one beautiful thing that can cut through that icy chill to elicit a response. It’s a plaintive cry that sounds not somewhere out there in the world but right here inside our hearts. It’s as near to us as the hearts beating in our chests and the blood pulsing through our veins. It’s a cry that can be our very breath if we so choose. It’s the very Spirit of the risen Christ yearning for us to breathe with his breath and turn back to God. And it’s the Spirit’s very cry within us that affirms that we are no longer slaves to this world of sin but are children of God. And not just children, but heirs of an eternal promise in heaven, where no cry goes unheeded and where we have a Father who looks on us with unceasing love, ready to welcome us back home.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Christmas
December 31, 2023
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Jw0-LExyc
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tronick