Tag: Christmas
0 Christmas Eve Sermon
A lot of you have asked about a podcast from the Christmas Eve service. If you weren’t there, the format followed something more like the arc of a play with ‘the sermon’ being drawn out over the course of the service in vignettes using actors. For that reason, it’s been tricky to get a good recording.
Here’s a video from one of the 5 services.
Here’s audio of just my portion of the sermon. It’s also in iTunes under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
Below is the full script of the sermon and actors’ lines.
Merry Christmas. Only 1 day left of the season.
———————————————————————-
Believe
Opening
You want to know a dirty, little secret?
There’s a whole lot of every Sunday church people who think its enough just to believe in God.
There’s a whole lot of religious folks who think they’ve done their job if they just believe that God exists.
But there’s a difference.
There’s a difference between believing in God and believing God.
There’s a difference between believing in God in here (the mind) and believing the promises of God in here (the heart).
There’s a difference between believing in God and believing God, believing God can be at work in your life, alive in you, fill what is missing in you and turn your world upside down.
And you want to know another secret?
That difference- that difference is the secret of the Christmas Story.
Act 1: Zechariah
[Zechariah kneeling, holding a bible, praying silently with incense]
Everyone thinks the Christmas story begins with Mary and the angel Gabriel.
Not so.
The Christmas story begins months earlier with Jesus’ uncle.
A man named Zechariah, who’s a priest.
For generations Zechariah and his people have suffered at the hand of Caesar and his Empire. Rome.
And for generations they’ve prayed for God to send them someone to save them, to send them an Emmanuel, a Messiah.
Every day of his life Zechariah has prayed this prayer. He’s an old man now.
His prayer’s expiration date has long since passed and Zechariah has given up all hope that God will ever answer.
But one day, when Zechariah is in the Temple offering the same stale prayer he’s always prayed, God sends a message:
Gabriel: Zechariah…Zechariah….
(Zechariah, falls back, completely startled and visibly shaken.)
don’t be afraid.
Your prayers have been heard.
Your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a son.
Name him John.
He’s going to bring you great joy and happiness, but that’s not all.
Your son will also be the Lord’s messenger. He will be the one to prepare the people and make them ready for the One you’ve been praying for for so many years, the Messiah.
Zechariah: (confused) But this is too much to believe!
Look how old I am! My wife, Elizabeth, too!
It’s much too late for those prayers to come true.
Zechariah’s an every Sunday religious person.
Zechariah believed in God; he just didn’t believe God.
He’d given up believing God would ever answer his prayer, would ever work in his life.
And because he didn’t believe, the angel renders him mute.
(Zechariah, rendered mute, feels his mouth and tries to talk to no avail.)
He’s pushed to the sidelines. Because he didn’t believe God, Zechariah has to watch what God’s doing in the world from the outside looking in.
You want to know a secret? [Zechariah begins to take off costume]
Once you get past the incense and bible-timey, Raiders of the Lost Ark costume, Zechariah’s no different than you.
He’s just an old man who’s rubbed the same prayer raw.
Until he finally tossed it in the trash. [Chucks his bible off to the side]
Now I don’t know all of you. I only know the every Sunday folks.
Even still, I know enough of you to know there are Zechariah’s all over this room.
Sometimes-
Zechariah is a woman with cancer, convinced God’s not with her. Convinced God can’t beat it.
Sometimes-
Zechariah is a mom, who’s exhausted from praying the same prayer for her teenager and no longer believes that anything can be done for her.
A lot of times-
Zechariah is a husband and a wife, whose relationship has frayed past the point of repair and if anyone, angel or otherwise, told them anything different, then they’d react the very same way as Zechariah: ‘That’s too much to believe.’
There are Zechariah’s all over this room.
But hear the good news: Emmanuel does come. You’ve got to believe.
Act 2: Magi
The magi- the wise men- were Gentiles.
Meaning: they weren’t Jews.
Meaning: they didn’t know anything about God or God’s promise of a Messiah.
They were astronomers. Not priests or prophets.
They were men of science. Not faith.
They were men of cold, hard empirical facts, trial and error, objective observation.
They were the kinds of people that if you can’t see it with your own eyes, if you can’t hold it in your hands for yourself, if you can’t explain it rationally and back it up with evidence then it simply isn’t true.
It’s a fantasy we might still tell our children but we’ve outgrown it.
[Magi’s cell phone begins to ring underneath his costume…Magi picks up and begins to argue with his mom]
Jason:
Um, excuse me.
Magi: [to Jason]
Just a sec.
Jason:
I’m kind of in the middle of something here. was just about to make my big point about how the magi were basically like all of us.
[To Magi]
What else do you guys have under there? [Magi pull out other gadgets]
Magi:
It’s not what you think…See, I’ve this Star-Finder App on my iPhone. That way, not only can I track the star I can research it on Wikipedia. I can learn about this obscure Jewish prophecy and Google maps can lead us right there to this King.
I bet you don’t know that the magi’s star charts- their reason and research, the latest technology- only gets them as far as Jerusalem.
It doesn’t get them to Bethlehem.
The wise men get lost. They miss Bethlehem by about 9 miles.
The wise men have to ask for directions, which implies they had some wise women with them too.
[female magi enter]
The wise men had to ask for directions.
Who do they have to ask?
Scribes. People who studied scripture. People of faith.
They’re the ones who point the magi in the right direction.
The magi believed in facts, in data, in human wisdom.
And maybe they believed in god the way you believe in gravity.
But that kind of belief only got them so far.
For them to find their way to Bethlehem, to make their way to the manger, they had to believe God.
To believe God’s promise about a little, no account town 9 miles beyond Jerusalem.
For them to make their way to the manger- they had to believe- believe God was doing things in this world they couldn’t see or prove, Google or Tweet, deduce or demonstrate.
They had to believe.
And so do you.
If you want to get close enough to the manger…
close enough to offer this God your best gift
close enough to see him at work in the world with your own two eyes
close enough to hold his presence within you
close enough for him to change your life in a way that resists all explanation
…if you want to get close to the manger, then you’ve got to take a leap of faith.
And believe.
Act 3: Mary
If you’re like me-
When you picture Mary, you picture like the Mona Lisa but dressed in pink and blue. You picture a 30-something woman who looks like Al Pacino’s Sicilian wife from Godfather Part II. Before she explodes.
If you’re like me, you picture this angel who’s glorious and not threatening at all even though he’s constantly having to say ‘don’t be afraid.’
And you picture Mary bowing down stoically ready to serve the Lord at a moment’s notice.
You picture something like this…[Overly dramatic and stoic]
Gabriel:
Mary! The Lord is with you! You are touched by his grace! Among all the women in the world you have been blessed.
Mary: (like she was expecting this)
Gabriel :
You have found favor with God. Listen, you are going to have a Son. His name will mean: ‘God will save us.’ He will be the answer to your people’s prayers.
Mary:
How can this be?
Gabriel:
The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you. That’s why this holy child is not just your son but is the Son of God. Remember Mary, the impossible is possible with God.
Mary: (Bowing stoically)
You want to know a secret?
That’s not who Mary was. And that’s not how it went down.
Not at all.
[Mary removes her costume, revealing more ordinary and contemporary clothing]
According to tradition, Joseph was an older man, marrying Mary as a favor to her family because they couldn’t afford to provide for her.
According to Jewish Law, because Mary and Joseph were betrothed, any you-know-what before her wedding day would be considered adultery.
And now the angel Gabriel has just told Mary she’s expecting.
Not by Joseph.
By the Holy Spirit.
Just curious: if someone told you they were pregnant by the Holy Spirit, how likely would you be to believe them?
I didn’t think so.
That’s the dark side of the story we never picture when we picture Mary.
The angel’s news is news almost no one will believe.
And Mary’s got to know that the second Gabriel’s finished talking.
I’ll tell you what else a good Jewish girl, like Mary, would’ve known.
Mary would’ve known that if she was accused of adultery then, according to the Jewish Law, she would be brought before a priest.
She would be shamed publicly.
And then-under oath- she’d be forced to drink a mixture of ash, holy water and the ink from the priest’s written accusation against her.
If the drink made her sick, which was very likely, then she was guilty.
And if she was guilty, then she’d be stoned.
Mary would’ve known that the second the angel started talking.
She would’ve known that Joseph would be humiliated.
And she certainly would’ve known that her child would be regarded as illegitimate and banned as an outcast.
No matter what we picture when we picture Mary, that was the reality she knew.
And yet-
And yet when she hears Gabriel’s news: [Understated, Gabriel more empathetic, Mary more troubled]
Gabriel :
Don’t be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God.
Listen, you are going to have a Son. His name will mean: ‘God will save us.’ He will be the answer to your people’s prayers.
Mary:
How can this be…I’m not…I mean, I’ve never….how is this possible?
Gabriel:
The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you. That’s why this holy child is not just your son but is the Son of God. Remember Mary, the impossible is possible with God.
Jason: And Mary replies…
Mary:
‘May it be with me according to your word.’
Jason: In other words, Mary says…
Mary:
‘Here I am God. I trust you.’
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Mary.
There is a big, life-changing, ante-up, make-or-break difference between just believing in God and believing God.
Believing that, no matter how things look now, no matter what obstacles stand in your way, no matter what it seems life has dealt you, nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible.
With God.
Act 4: Joseph
[Jason interrupts music]
Wait …what is that?
[Musician replies]
[To crowd]
Do you all know that song?
Actually, come to think of it, do you all know any songs about Joseph?
I didn’t think so. I don’t either. I mean, there are no ‘Ave Josephs.’
I’ll let you in on a secret:
The Church has treated Joseph like an extra in a story starring his wife and her child.
It’s the annunciation to Mary that artists have always chosen to paint, not the annunciation to Joseph.
You don’t see many Renaissance paintings of Joseph snoring on his sofa as the angel Gabriel whispers into his ear:
[Joseph laying down to sleep]
Gabriel: [whispering]
‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, all this is happening to fulfill what the Lord promised: ‘The virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will name him Emmanuel.’
But when we ignore Joseph, we miss something important.
Because everything about Christmas- it all hinges on the angel’s three words.
Gabriel: [whispers]
‘Joseph, son of David.’
If Emmanuel is to be born the son of David then Joseph’s got to be the father.
Our salvation hinges on what Joseph decides to do about Mary.
If Joseph believes the angel then Mary will have a home and a family and her child will be born the son of David.
But if Joseph wakes up from his dream, rubs his eyes and files for divorce, then Mary is an outcast forever- either stoned by the priests or disowned by her family, leaving her and her illegitimate child to beg.
Or worse.
Whether or not he’s the biological father doesn’t matter. According to Jewish Law, Mary’s child becomes Joseph’s child just by Joseph claiming him as such.
So everything about tonight hangs on Joseph.
You think you struggle with believing the virgin birth?
Joseph wakes up one morning to find his fiancee pregnant, his trust betrayed, his future and his reputation ruined, the life he thought he had gone forever.
And then he’s asked to believe.
The unbelievable.
Everything we celebrate tonight- it all hinges on a very big IF- if Joseph believes.
Even though we treat him like an extra in someone else’s story, of all the people in the Christmas story, Joseph is just like you and me.
Joseph doesn’t get a Burning Bush telling him beyond a shadow of a doubt what he should do.
Joseph doesn’t get an Annunciation like Mary does. The angel Gabriel doesn’t stand in front of Joseph’s own two eyes and say: ‘Hail Joseph.’
Joseph just has a dream. [Gabriel whispers silently into Joseph’s sleeping ear]
Which would’ve felt like… what exactly? A hunch? A gut feeling?
Joseph doesn’t get a Burning Bush.
And neither do we.
When we’re faced with circumstances beyond our control
When we’re tempted to choose the easy way out
When we worry about it might cost us or what pain will come our way or what others might think
We have to wrestle with what God wants us to do
And then we have to believe
Believe that if we make the hard choice and do the right thing
Then God will be with us.
Because that’s what Emmanuel means.
God is WITH us.
Act 5: Angels and Shepherds
[Luke’s Nativity is read. Shepherds and Gabriel take spots during reading.]
Has anyone seen the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian?
It’s set in first-century Judaea when the Jewish opposition to the Romans is hopelessly split into factions.
There’s a scene where one of the splinter groups has a secret meeting where a vigilante soldier asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
One by one his fellow freedom-fighters grudgingly admit a host of benefits the Romans have brought the Jews. But Reggie, their leader, remains unconvinced.
He finally demands, “All right … all right … but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order … what have the Romans done for us?”
To which the reply comes, “Brought peace.”
And Reggie has no answer.
I’ll tell you a secret, something most church folks don’t know.
Before Luke ever wrote his Gospel.
Before Jesus ever preached ‘the’ Gospel.
Rome already had a Gospel of their own. You know what it was?
All over the Empire, Roman citizens- ordinary men and women just like you- would proclaim with thankful hearts: ‘Glory in the highest. Caesar Augustus, son of god, our savior, has brought peace to the whole world.’
Peace by any means necessary.
To anyone who wasn’t stuck under Rome’s boot, the advent of Caesar Augustus was considered gospel: “Good news of great joy.”
You see, it’s no accident when the angel Gabriel appears to the shepherds, he plagiarizes Rome’s Gospel.
He takes it and he literally turns it upside down:
Gabriel:
“Do not be afraid. I’m bringing you GOOD NEWS of great joy for all the people. For you, a SAVIOR has been born. Glory to God in the highest…and on earth, PEACE TO THOSE ON WHOM GOD’S FAVOR RESTS.’
Glory to God in the highest.
Gloria in excelsis Deo…We hear those words as a pretty song.
But to the shepherds, to Mary or Joseph, to Zechariah., to anyone else living in Israel- for a generation those words had instead always sounded more like this…
(Liz plays the Darth Vader music).
The angel Gabriel takes Rome’s Gospel and he twists it and then he turns it to point not at a throne but at a manger.
And of all the people in Judea, Gabriel delivers this news to shepherds.
We’d call them unskilled workers.
[Shepherds remove their shepherding costumes]
Shepherds were at the absolute rock bottom of society.
Not only that, their work made them ritually unclean, which made them invisible to the rest of society.
We’d call them unskilled workers.
Gabriel:
“I’m bringing you GOOD NEWS of great joy for all the people. For you, a SAVIOR has been born. Glory to God in the highest and on earth, PEACE TO THOSE ON WHOM GOD’S FAVOR RESTS.’
That’s not just a birth announcement written in the sky.
It’s a defiant declaration. It’s a declaration that dares us to believe.
Not just to believe in God. Anyone can do that.
No, the angels dare us to believe that things in our world are not as they seem.
That Caesar and Herod and Rome and anyone like them in our day or in our lives- they’re not in charge.
That pain does not have the last word.
That poverty does not exclude you from the grace of God.
That Power goes by another name. Because Christ is King.
The angels dare you to believe.
That as small or insignificant or unlikely you might see yourself, just like shepherds, you can play a part in his Kingdom.
Act 6: Simeon
The Christmas story doesn’t end with ‘Silent Night.’
After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph take their baby to Jerusalem, to the Temple.
To offer a sacrifice to God. Two pigeons, a peasant’s offering.
[Mary and Joseph and baby enter]
And there in the Temple they dedicate their baby to God.
But the story doesn’t end there either.
An old man sees them there in the Temple.
[Simeon rushes up to them]
Scripture says he was a man who’d been praying his entire life for a Savior.
Scripture says God had promised him that he would not die without seeing the Savior for himself.
But God never gave him any details: no who, what, when, where or how.
So he’s has just been waiting and praying his whole life.
And somehow he doesn’t need an angel or the heavenly host or any clues about a babe wrapped in bands of cloth to point him in the right direction.
Somehow when he sees this tiny scrap of a child- somehow he believes:
Simeon:
‘God, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment, but now I have peace for I see salvation with my own two eyes.’
His name’s Simeon.
I’ll let you in on one last secret.
The Christmas Story doesn’t end there either.
It can’t…because here are all of you.
And I know enough of you to know there are Simeons- young and old, religious and not so much- all over this room.
Maybe like Simeon, you’ve been waiting and wondering if what’s missing in your life will ever come.
Maybe like Simeon, you’ve been longing for the hole you feel in your life to be filled.
Maybe you’re like Simeon and peace is the one thing in your life, the one thing in your family, the one thing in your marriage that you still don’t have.
If you’re like Simeon, if you’re like Simeon at all, then I dare you.
I double-dare you.
To believe like Simeon.
Believe that the meaning you’ve been waiting for, the significance you’ve been longing for, the peace you’ve been praying for your whole life-
It’s there in Mary’s arms.
Merry Christmas.
And may the peace of Christ be yours now and forever.
0 Magi Math
This Sunday is Epiphany, the arrival of the magi to Bethlehem.
Around January 6, the symbol +C+M+B+ with two numbers before and two numbers after (for example, 20+C+B+M+14) is sometimes seen written in chalk above the doorway of Christian homes. The letters are the initials of the traditional names of the Three Magi: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. These letters also abbreviate the Latin phrase Christus mansionem benedicat, “May Christ bless the house.” The beginning and ending numbers are the year, 2014 in the example above. The crosses represent Christ.
0 My Favorite Christmas Sermon – 2
You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened ‘to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.
Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.
He has become our justice, our sanctification, our redemption, so that, as it is written: Let him who glories glory in the Lord.
Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of the Virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God.
Truth has arisen from the earth: because the Word was made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven: because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
Truth has arisen from the earth: flesh from Mary. And justice looked down from heaven: for man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.
Justified by faith, let us be at peace with God: for justice and peace have embraced one another. Through our Lord Jesus Christ: for Truth has arisen from the earth. Through whom we have access to that grace in which we stand, and our boast is in our hope of God’s glory. He does not say: “of our glory,” but of God’s glory: for justice has not come out of us but has looked down from heaven. Therefore he who glories, let him glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.
For this reason, when our Lord was born of the Virgin, the message of the angelic voices was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men of good will.
For how could there be peace on earth unless Truth has arisen from the earth, that is, unless Christ were born of our flesh? And he is our peace who made the two into one: that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity.
Let us then rejoice in this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord. That is why Scripture says: He is my glory, the one who lifts up my head. For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?
Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.
0 My Favorite Christmas Sermon
I first had to read this sermon as an undergrad in ‘Elements of Christian Thought’ a 300 Level Theology Course taught by Gene Rogers at UVA. It’s the first known Christmas sermon and was preached by John Chrysostom.
BEHOLD a new and wondrous mystery. My ears resound to the Shepherd’s song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn. The Angels sing. The Archangels blend their voice in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory. All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised.
Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side, the Sun of justice. And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, He had the power, He descended, He redeemed; all things yielded in obedience to God. This day He Who is, is Born; and He Who is, becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became He God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassability, remaining unchanged.
And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him Angels, nor Archangels, nor Thrones, nor Dominations, nor Powers, nor Principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.
Since this heavenly birth cannot be described, neither does His coming amongst us in these days permit of too curious scrutiny. Though I know that a Virgin this day gave birth, and I believe that God was begotten before all time, yet the manner of this generation I have learned to venerate in silence and I accept that this is not to be probed too curiously with wordy speech. For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of Him who works.
What shall I say to you; what shall I tell you? I behold a Mother who has brought forth; I see a Child come to this light by birth. The manner of His conception I cannot comprehend.
Nature here rested, while the Will of God labored. O ineffable grace! The Only Begotten, Who is before all ages, Who cannot be touched or be perceived, Who is simple, without body, has now put on my body, that is visible and liable to corruption. For what reason? That coming amongst us he may teach us, and teaching, lead us by the hand to the things that men cannot see. For since men believe that the eyes are more trustworthy than the ears, they doubt of that which they do not see, and so He has deigned to show Himself in bodily presence, that He may remove all doubt.
Christ, finding the holy body and soul of the Virgin, builds for Himself a living temple, and as He had willed, formed there a man from the Virgin; and, putting Him on, this day came forth; unashamed of the lowliness of our nature’. For it was to Him no lowering to put on what He Himself had made. Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its own Creator. For as in the first creation of flesh, man could not be made before the clay had come into His hand, so neither could this corruptible body be glorified, until it had first become the garment of its Maker.
What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.
For this He assumed my body, that I may become capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His spirit; and so He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh, to sanctify me; He gives me His Spirit, that He may save me.
Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been ‘in planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels.
Why is this? Because God is now on earth, and man in heaven; on every side all things commingle. He became Flesh. He did not become God. He was God. Wherefore He became flesh, so that He Whom heaven did not contain, a manger would this day receive. He was placed in a manger, so that He, by whom all things arc nourished, may receive an infant’s food from His Virgin Mother. So, the Father of all ages, as an infant at the breast, nestles in the virginal arms, that the Magi may more easily see Him. Since this day the Magi too have come, and made a beginning of withstanding tyranny; and the heavens give glory, as the Lord is revealed by a star.
To Him, then, Who out of confusion has wrought a clear path, to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Ghost, we offer all praise, now and for ever. Amen.
1 O Little Town of (Modern) Bethlehem
Here’s a contemporary take on the story of Jesus’ birth. It’s filmed in Bethlehem – a modern city of hope, pilgrimage, and unspeakable sorrow – it is powerful in its own understated way.
4 With Us: A Christmas Sermon
Here’s a Christmas Eve sermon on John 1.1-16 from several years ago. Merry Christmas to all of you.
The first time I ever went to church was on a night like tonight. Christmas Eve.
My mother made us go, my sister and me. We’d never gone to church before so we didn’t know on Christmas Eve you have to come early. We sat far up in the balcony in some of the last seats left.
I was a teenager then, 16 or 17 years old. And I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to get dressed up. I didn’t want to sing songs that others knew better than me. I didn’t want to sit in a hard, uncomfortable pew and listen to a minister preach. Or tell lame jokes.
I mean- why would anyone want to ruin Christmas by going to church?
I didn’t believe. Better still, I disbelieved more strongly than I believed in anything.
I was convinced you Christians just turn God into whatever and whom ever you want God to be. If you’re a Republican then so is God. If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat then, surprise, God agrees with you on most essential things.
You put God in a box. You wrap him in whatever flag you’re already flying. You put him on your side of this or that issue.
And what better example of that could there be than tonight? I thought. Christmas Eve, the night when, you Christians say, God Almighty swapped heaven for a trough, when God took flesh and became a baby: a sweet, passive, docile, wordless, dependant baby.
You know…if you want a god that can be used by us, then Christmas Eve is made to order. A baby? That’s a god that lets us be in charge. That’s a god we can worship and celebrate without having to be changed or challenged. I thought.
The philosopher Ludwig Feurbach said that when Christians say “God” they’re really just talking about themselves in a loud voice. When I was 16 or 17, I was a lot like Feurbach- except I also like Super Mario Brothers and Professional Wrestling.
I didn’t believe. And I knew all the arguments why I didn’t.
The thing is, back then, I didn’t know much about babies.
My first son, Gabriel, was already 15 months old when I got to hold him for the first time. My wife and I, we held him for the first time not in a hospital or maternity ward but in a hotel.
That’s where our adoption worker brought him to us. Instead of pinks and blues, the “delivery” room was decorated with tropical plants and Mayan art.
Technically speaking, he wasn’t still a baby. He was no longer a newborn but his toddler’s eyes still looked out at the world with innocence and wonder. His fingers were still small and fragile beneath their soft, pudgy skin, and they still clutched onto my fingers for protection. And even though he knew a handful of words already, he still most often spoke in shrieks and cries that demanded care.
We spent our first few days as a new family in that little hotel in Guatemala while we completed the paperwork for Gabriel’s adoption.
The wrought-iron table in the hotel courtyard was where I first sat him on my lap and learned how to feed him and wipe his mouth and clean up after his spills.
The slate patio outside our hotel room, where we sat down on the ground opposite each other, pushing plastic cars back and forth, that’s where I learned to earn his trust.
The hotel garden had a tall, thin palm tree growing in it. That’s the tree I pulled on and swayed back and forth, pretending to be an angry gorilla. That’s where I made Gabriel laugh for the first time. That’s where I made him laugh away his fears.
And then there was the old burgundy armchair in our room- that’s where I held him against me and, for the first time in my life, let my too-cool, cynical voice sing soothing and silly songs to him.
When I was 16 or 17, I didn’t know much about babies. I thought that just because they’re wordless and dependant then they must be passive, harmless. I didn’t know then that babies alter lives. They clutch and grab and pull on us when we’d like to get on to something else.
How could I have known at 16 or 17 how babies disturb schedules, how they force us to think about someone other than ourselves? They jumble and reorient priorities. They call out of us a tenderness and compassion we didn’t know we possessed.
Babies give us a glimpse at the person we could be if everything else in our lives was wiped clean or made new.
I didn’t know it when I was 16 or 17, but if you really want to invade someone’s life, if you want to mess with their priorities and preconceptions, if you want to change them or draw out them love and mercy- then you send them a baby.
If the Gospels were college courses, then John’s Gospel would be a 400-level class. John’s Gospel is the course with all the prerequisites because John presumes you’ve already heard the Nativity story before.
John expects you to know that, when the story opens, Caesar rules the world by the sword and that he needs a census to pay for it.
John expects you to remember that this “king” is born to a poor, unwed, 15 year old Jewish girl, whose unlikely pregnancy few will believe is a sign of anything more than what you could read on the bathroom wall about her.
John expects that by the time you get to his Gospel you should be able to write a short answer essay on the paradox of this cosmic news being delivered not to the press or priests, not to the wealthy or the wise, but to shepherds, who in first century eyes were about as smart and savory as the sheep they kept.
You need to know that the news the shepherds hear from angels is an answer to a prayer so old it had almost been forgotten.
John expects you to know all that because John doesn’t just want to tell you the story of Christmas. He wants to interpret it for you.
He wants you to be able do more than point at tonight’s scene and say ‘the manger goes here, the wise men go over there.’
John instead wants you to be able to creep up to the manger and look down upon the baby it holds and say to whoever will hear your awed whisper: ‘This is what it means. This is why this birth, this night, is more holy than any other.’
Holy because the baby Mary holds is, inexplicably, God- made flesh.
His cooing voice is the same voice that long ago said: ‘Let there be light.’ His tiny fingers that hold onto Mary’s are somehow the hands that first hung the stars in the sky, and the light in his half-open eyes is the same unquenchable fire that once met Moses in a burning bush.
Tonight, his skin is still splotchy. It feels new and warm, but the truth is he is timeless. Eternal. And in his small, gently rising lungs is the power to make worlds.
John wants you to know that tonight.
John wants you to look down into the manger and know that God’s plan to finally disarm us of everything but our love is to send a baby.
And not just any- but Himself, made weak and wordless and wrapped in strips of cloth. Made flesh.
Made every bit like one of us so that every one of us might be made more like God.
Our first night with Gabriel was Easter night, a year and a half ago. My wife was asleep on top of the bed still in all her clothes. The television played softly in Spanish and showed pictures of Easter parades from earlier that day. Gabriel stirred awake next to my wife, crying and fearful.
At that point in my life I’d been a Christian for 11 years. I’d been a minister for 5. And it was Easter. But it was the first time in my life that I really understood tonight.
I sat Gabriel in the burgundy armchair with me. He curled up in my arms and I sang him back to sleep. I saw pictures of the Easter Jesus play across the TV screen and I looked down at Gabriel: tiny, trusting and unknowing. And I thought to myself: ‘This could be God. In my arms. Breathing against me.’
That’s when the strangeness and mystery of what John tells us tonight really hit me for the first time. Thinking about how much Gabriel had already changed me in just a few hours, I realized for the first time what a powerful thing it is that God does tonight.
I used to scoff at Christmas because I thought a baby was just a safe idol that could be used by us, could be made into whatever and whomever we wanted. But it’s actually the opposite. Babies have within them the power to remake us. What God does tonight is actually more powerful than a hundred floods or a thousand armies.
I mean- go ahead and ask a baby about what you’ve done or not done in the past. Ask a baby about that relationship you’ve yet to reconcile. Ask them about the expectations you’ve not met or about the sins you’ve committed or that thing you’re afraid to tell your spouse or your children or your parents.
You’re not going to get an answer. Babies don’t give answers. They just give light. With babies all that matters is that they are present, that they are there, that they are with you.
I mean- try telling a baby you’re not completely convinced they exist. Try telling a baby: ‘I don’t think believing in you really works in a modern world.’ It’s not going to get you off the hook. With a baby all our questions are relativized.
Babies force us to love them on their terms.
The calendar and the TV said it was Easter, but to me that first night with Gabriel was like Christmas. Holding him in my arms I could sense a new life that he opened up to me. He had neither the words nor the power to absolve me, but, holding him, I felt that everything had been forgiven. Who I’d been before he came into the world no longer mattered.
It only mattered who I would be from that moment on.
Tonight, the baby Mary holds in her arms, the baby breathing against her, IS God. Maybe you’ve heard the story before. Maybe you know where the manger and the wise men should be placed.
But I don’t want you to leave her tonight without knowing that- without knowing that because God takes on a life that means your life is sacred, without knowing that God is new and warm and cooing tonight in order to disarm you of everything but love, without knowing that God is born tonight in order to draw out of you the person you no longer thought could be.
Tonight, Mary holds him in her arms: the Word made flesh.
Tomorrow, Mary’s reputation will still be suspect in the eyes of her community. Tomorrow, she and her fiancé will still be homeless. They’ll still be poor. Tomorrow, their lives will be in danger. Tomorrow Mary won’t know what the future holds or if she’s strong enough to get there.
Tomorrow, her questions and fears and doubts will still be there. And so will yours.
But tonight none of that matters. Tonight, all that matters is he is with us. Tonight, that’s enough.
So listen to John’s invitation and creep up to the manger. Look at the light in his eternal, newborn eyes and know that everything you’ve done or been before tonight is forgiven. Know that all matters is who you are from this moment on, the moment he comes into the world.
Because I can speak from personal experience- this child, he has the power to make you new again.
Merry Christmas.
1 What I Can’t Say In My Christmas Eve Sermon
Tomorrow evening at 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 many of the pews will be occupied by what preachers and church people call the ‘Christmas crowd.’ Or, as they’re called in the NY Times opinion piece this Sunday, ‘Chreasters,’ those who attend only on Christmas and Easter.
Every year, like the Times article, there’s a story in the paper or on TV talking about the preacher’s challenge on Christmas Eve. They always want to know how does the preacher come up with a creative, attention-grabbing, stuffed-to-the-gills-with-the-gospel sermon to connect with those people who only come on Christmas Eve, who only come because their mother-in-law makes them, who will never come again until next Christmas. Or maybe Easter.
When it comes to the ‘Christmas Crowd’ here’s what I can’t say about them in my sermon tomorrow night:
The dirty little secret is that often the way preachers and church people talk about ‘Chreasters’ makes them sound like the bad guys, like we want to make them feel guilty for not being regular church-going people.
Which doesn’t make any sense to me because I gotta think ‘Chreasters’ are exactly the sort of people Jesus would prefer to hang out with.
It’s true. It’s all in the bible: those of us who look down our noses at those who only show up once or twice a year, while we faithfully serve and worship God week after week, have more in common in with the Pharisees, who killed Jesus, than we do with those Jesus chose to hang out with. How ironic is it that Matthew, to whom one of the Gospels is attributed and from whom many churches will be reading tomorrow night, was a tax collector. Not a good religious person.
So rather than looking down on them with guilt-inducing contempt. We should, like the Lord we adore, simply welcome them in the thrill to be with them.
The NY Times article reflects on how the changing demographics and the rise of the religiously unaffiliated means there will be less ‘Chreasters’ in the pews tomorrow night than ever before. As someone who loves Jesus, I gotta think that’s a bad thing.
THIS week millions of “Chreasters” — Americans who attend church only on Christmas and Easter — will crowd into pews to sing carols and renew their vague relationship with the Christian God. This year, there may be fewer Chreasters than ever. A growing number of “nones” live in our midst: those who say they have no religious affiliation at all. An October Pew Research Center poll revealed that they now account for 20 percent of the population, up from 16 percent in 2008.
Avoiding church does not excuse Americans from marking the birth of Jesus, however. Most of us have no choice but to stay home from work or school — and if you complain about this glaring exception to the separation between church and state, you must be a scrooge with no heart for tradition. Christmas has been a federal holiday for 142 years.
Yet Christianity’s preferential place in our culture and civil law came under fire this year, and not simply because more Americans reject institutional religion. The Obama administration subtly worked to expand the scope of protected civil rights to include access to legal marriage and birth control. Catholic bishops and evangelical activists declared that Washington was running roughshod over religious liberty and abandoning the country’s founding values, while their opponents accused them of imposing one set of religious prejudices on an increasingly pluralistic population. The Christian consensus that long governed our public square is disintegrating. American secularism is at a crossroads.
The narrative on the right is this: Once upon a time, Americans honored the Lord, and he commissioned their nation to welcome all faiths while commanding them to uphold Christian values. But in recent decades, the Supreme Court ruled against prayer in public schools, and legalized abortion, while politicians declared “war on Christmas” and kowtowed to the “homosexual lobby.” Conservative activists insist that they protest these developments not to defend special privileges for Christianity, but to respect the founders’ desire for universal religious liberty — rooted, they say, in the Christian tradition.
The controversial activist David Barton has devoted his career to popularizing this “forgotten history” through lectures, books and home-school curriculums. Mr. Barton insists that “biblical Christianity in America produced many of the cherished traditions still enjoyed today,” including “protection for religious toleration and the rights of conscience.”
Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the American Family Association, told me that he saw the “nones” as proof that “the foundations of our culture are crumbling.” The Pew poll, he said, “is one of the signs.” A couple of weeks after we spoke, he told a radio audience that God did not protect the children killed in the Newtown, Conn., massacre because of the Supreme Court decisions banning prayer and Bible reading in public schools. “God is not going to go where he is not wanted,” Mr. Fischer said.
How accurate is this story of decline into godlessness? Is America, supposedly God’s last bastion in the Western world, rejecting faith and endangering religious liberty?
The truth is that “nones” are nothing new. Religion has been a feature of human society since Neanderthal times, but so has religious indifference. Our illusions of the past as a golden age of faith tend to cloud our assessment of today’s religious landscape. We think of atheism and religious apathy as uniquely modern spiritual options, ideas that Voltaire and Hume devised in a coffee house one rainy afternoon sometime in the 18th century. Before the Enlightenment, legend has it, peasants hurried to church every week and princes bowed and scraped before priests.
Historians have yet to unearth Pew studies from the 13th century, but it is safe to say that we frequently overestimate medieval piety. Ordinary people often skipped church and had a feeble grasp of basic Christian dogma. Many priests barely understood the Latin they chanted — and many parishes lacked any priest at all. Bishops complained about towns that used their cathedrals mainly as indoor markets or granaries. Lest Protestants blame this irreverence on Catholic corruption, the evidence suggests that it continued after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenberg church door. In 1584, census takers in Antwerp discovered that the city had a larger proportion of “nones” than 21st-century America: a full third of residents claimed no religious affiliation.
Here’s the rest of the article.
0 Musing on Mary in Guatemala:7
‘All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ – Acts 1, 2
I was surprised the first time I realized that Mary, after only Peter and Paul, receives the most mention in the New Testament- 217 mentions in the New Testament. I was shocked the first time I read the beginning of Acts and noticed Mary’s name dropped in there among the list of those who comprised the first church.
A Christian legend holds that, following the crucifixion, the Beloved Disciple took Mary with him to Ephesus where they lived quietly and while he cared for her. It’s a legend that, perhaps unwittingly, portrays Mary as rendered helpless by her grief.
The legend abides and you’re likely to hear it repeated upon a visit to Ephesus today.
Luke, in Acts, gives us a much different take on Mary. There Mary is quietly mentioned as a leader in the Acts church, devoting herself along with everyone else to Jesus’ teaching, to the fellowship of the community, to the Eucharist and to prayer.
How is it we never think of Mary as one of the believers gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost in Acts? How is it we never think of Mary as one of the disciples who receive the gift of tongues at Pentecost? Yet surely, since she’s mentioned here along with the others, she also participated with them in the Pentecost miracle.
If Pentecost is a story of God unwinding the effects of Babel and creating a new community, a new family of God, then Mary is there at this new family’s birth, as one of its leaders.
I like to think that in the birth of this new community Mary finally sees the promise of Messiah coming true, that in the life of this new community the Jubilee she’d sang about in her magnificat was finally being fulfilled. After all, here was a community ruled by love rather than thrones, a community where the lowly are indeed lifted up and the hungry filled because ‘everyone held everything in common.’ Just as she’d sang about before his birth, all of this is made possible by her Son.
What Mary must realize in Acts, little more than month after her Son’s death, is what she must have started to guess at the Annunciation: that God was bringing together a new People, a people distinguished not by the usual lines of blood or family but a people called together by the particular life which claimed them, a people brought forth not through simple biology but through practicing the life of Jesus.
We return today from the Highlands having discovered that we’re a part of a community which transcends all the world’s definitions of family.
Because of what God does in a manger at Christmas, you have family in parts of the world you hadn’t even looked until now.
1 Musing on Mary in Guatemala:6
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you…‘ – Matthew 2
Though it’s not the stuff of Christmas cards, Jesus is born with monsters at his manger. Because the story of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt and Herod’s bloody reprisals typically gets read the Sunday after Christmas, few Christians are even aware of the story.
Biblical scholars will tell you how Matthew depicts the flight to Egypt in order to buttress the similarities between Moses and Jesus. Just as Moses leads his people from Egypt to deliverance so too does Jesus go down to Egypt and later deliver his people. Just as Moses threatened and incurred the wrath of Pharaoh, Jesus also ignites the fears of Herod the Great.
The parallel with Israel is instructive.
When God delivered Israel from Egypt and instituted the covenant with them, God included the stipulation that Israel was to care for the stranger and the alien among them for they too once were strangers and aliens in another land. In other words, because of their saving story they were called to identify with others. Whatever else Matthew may want us to know about the flight to Egypt, I think he also wants us to identify with refugees for Jesus himself was once a refugee in anther land. It’s not enough to say, tritely, that Jesus is born ‘into poverty.’ It’s better to say that Jesus was born into the sort of family we see so much of in our community- poor families who’ve fled their homeland and live, legally or not, among us. Of course, these are the same ‘refugees’ who are missed by many of the families in Guatemala you serve this week. Too often Christians treat such strangers as a political problem or a social cause but fail to, firstly, see them as Jesus.
0 Musing on Mary in Guatemala:5
‘On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.‘
– Matthew 2
When my wife and I brought our first son home, we received more gifts than we could have possibly used: three baby swing sets, bottles of every kind and color, clothes and enough toys for a classroom.
But frankincense, gold and myrrh?
What kind of gifts are those for a baby?
Frankincense was something you used in worship, in the temple. Myrrh was what you used to anoint a dead body for burial.
I wonder what Mary made of the strangers who came to greet her new baby? I wonder what she thought when they bowed down before someone wearing diapers? I wonder where her mind went when they presented him with those auspicious gifts?
And every year I wonder how the scene must have looked through the magi’s eyes. Their gifts, their audience with the King in Jerusalem, their ability to take a long journey to Israel all suggest they were men of wealth, power and sophistication.
Surely Bethlehem was not the sort of royal birthplace they would have expected.
Mary and Joseph and whatever humble home they’d made wouldn’t have looked anything like a throne.
The holy day when the magi meet Jesus is known as Epiphany and it usually centers on how Christ’s coming opens salvation to the gentile world as well as the Jewish world.
Read more simply and less theologically, I think the magi remind us how, in scripture, strangers almost always represent an unexpected blessing from God.
Indeed, at times strangers can be angels in disguise and, always, strangers are those who cause us to reorient our self-images, our assumptions about the other and the things we value.