Tag: Jesus
0 Wearing Ashes in the Soviet Safeway
Last night after the Ash Wednesday Service I ran to Safeway to procure a few (non-meat) products for my dinner. That’s right, not only am I giving up farting for Lent (see earlier, evidently inflammatory, post) my wife informed me yesterday we’re also giving up meat for Lent.
I tried to point out to Ali that my commitment to give up the latter was in direct contradiction to and would most certainly frustrate my attempts to give up the former. My wife though doesn’t just give things up for Lent each year. She’s hard core. She gives up something for Lent each year but also the things she’s given up in previous years. Thus I’m now on the hook for forty days of not farting in my wife’s vicinity while being sustained on a diet of beans, vegetables and fruit.
Anyways, I was standing in line in the small, Soviet-esque Safeway near my house, about 4 people back. I could hear the bagger and the teller whispering words like ‘what’s’ and ‘going on’ and ‘holiday’ and ‘apocalypse’ and ‘probably’ and ‘something’ and ‘in’ and ‘Revelation.’
They were staring at the black, greasy cross on my forehead.
When I got to the checkout, one of them asked me furtively: ‘So, uh, is it like a holiday or something? Or did you go to a funeral?’
Thinking that would certainly be a memorable- and probably psyche destroying funeral- I replied: ‘It’s Ash Wednesday.’
‘Oh, right!’
Long pause.
‘What’s Ash Wednesday?’
And I replied with exactly what I’d told the congregation 30 minutes earlier: ‘Ash Wednesday is the day we remember that life is a gift from God by remembering our mortality.’
Longer pause.
‘I don’t get it.’
I kind of just smiled and swiped my debit card not wanting to venture too much more into this conversation and not because there were a dozen people waiting behind me impatiently with their lunch meat, TP and Crystal Light.
I didn’t want to say much more because, in all honesty, I still hadn’t processed or recovered the night’s service.
Less than hour before, I had traced an ugly black cross on a child in my son’s class and said: ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’
Words that become jarring when spoken on to a 10 year old’s forehead.
And after her, several people back in line, I traced the same bruise-like cross on the forehead of someone whom I’ve grown to love over the past 8 years. Knowing that if I stay in this congregation for a while longer I’ll likely perform this person’s funeral, I said to this friend: ‘‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’ I fought back the sudden urge to cry.
And after that friend came another soon after, someone with whom I’ve shared many a laugh on mission teams in Guatemala. On him, I traced a brooding black cross and said: ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’
There were others like that.
Like the parishioner whose battle with cancer I’m privy to. When I marked him with the cross and said ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return’ the words rung with a painful truth.
Or the parent worried that their child will one day make good on threats to return themselves to the dust prematurely.
And then there was a handful of complete and total strangers. People who came in off the street because they saw the service announced on the sign out front. To these strangers, I drew an executioner’s tool on their forehead and basically said: ‘Remember, eventually you’re going to die.’
More so than any other holy day in the church year, Ash Wednesday affects me.
On Ash Wednesday it’s as though every one gathered in the pews becomes a walking, talking, breathing (for now) illustration of the day’s meaning: that life is fragile, tightrope experience, sometimes precious and sometimes terrifyingly awful and that, good or bad, it will one day end.
In so many ways, we’re finite. Just a part of the world God made. Like dirt.
But were it not so, our lives would cease to be gifts.
We don’t preach a sermon on Ash Wednesday largely because we don’t need to. The people in the pews are the embodiment of the message.
Here’s what I mean.
0 Wearing Ashes in the Soviet Safeway
Last night after the Ash Wednesday Service I ran to Safeway to procure a few (non-meat) products for my dinner. That’s right, not only am I giving up farting for Lent (see earlier, evidently inflammatory, post) my wife informed me yesterday we’re also giving up meat for Lent.
I tried to point out to Ali that my commitment to give up the latter was in direct contradiction to and would most certainly frustrate my attempts to give up the former. My wife though doesn’t just give things up for Lent each year. She’s hard core. She gives up something for Lent each year but also the things she’s given up in previous years. Thus I’m now on the hook for forty days of not farting in my wife’s vicinity while being sustained on a diet of beans, vegetables and fruit.
Anyways, I was standing in line in the small, Soviet-esque Safeway near my house, about 4 people back. I could hear the bagger and the teller whispering words like ‘what’s’ and ‘going on’ and ‘holiday’ and ‘apocalypse’ and ‘probably’ and ‘something’ and ‘in’ and ‘Revelation.’
They were staring at the black, greasy cross on my forehead.
When I got to the checkout, one of them asked me furtively: ‘So, uh, is it like a holiday or something? Or did you go to a funeral?’
Thinking that would certainly be a memorable- and probably psyche destroying funeral- I replied: ‘It’s Ash Wednesday.’
‘Oh, right!’
Long pause.
‘What’s Ash Wednesday?’
And I replied with exactly what I’d told the congregation 30 minutes earlier: ‘Ash Wednesday is the day we remember that life is a gift from God by remembering our mortality.’
Longer pause.
‘I don’t get it.’
I kind of just smiled and swiped my debit card not wanting to venture too much more into this conversation and not because there were a dozen people waiting behind me impatiently with their lunch meat, TP and Crystal Light.
I didn’t want to say much more because, in all honesty, I still hadn’t processed or recovered the night’s service.
Less than hour before, I had traced an ugly black cross on a child in my son’s class and said: ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’
Words that become jarring when spoken on to a 10 year old’s forehead.
And after her, several people back in line, I traced the same bruise-like cross on the forehead of someone whom I’ve grown to love over the past 8 years. Knowing that if I stay in this congregation for a while longer I’ll likely perform this person’s funeral, I said to this friend: ‘‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’ I fought back the sudden urge to cry.
And after that friend came another soon after, someone with whom I’ve shared many a laugh on mission teams in Guatemala. On him, I traced a brooding black cross and said: ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return.’
There were others like that.
Like the parishioner whose battle with cancer I’m privy to. When I marked him with the cross and said ‘Remember that you are from dust and to dust you shall return’ the words rung with a painful truth.
Or the parent worried that their child will one day make good on threats to return themselves to the dust prematurely.
And then there was a handful of complete and total strangers. People who came in off the street because they saw the service announced on the sign out front. To these strangers, I drew an executioner’s tool on their forehead and basically said: ‘Remember, eventually you’re going to die.’
More so than any other holy day in the church year, Ash Wednesday affects me.
On Ash Wednesday it’s as though every one gathered in the pews becomes a walking, talking, breathing (for now) illustration of the day’s meaning: that life is fragile, tightrope experience, sometimes precious and sometimes terrifyingly awful and that, good or bad, it will one day end.
In so many ways, we’re finite. Just a part of the world God made. Like dirt.
But were it not so, our lives would cease to be gifts.
We don’t preach a sermon on Ash Wednesday largely because we don’t need to. The people in the pews are the embodiment of the message.
Here’s what I mean.
1 An Atheist’s 10 Commandments
Alain de Botton, author of The Consolations of Philosophy, has this list of virtues or ‘commandments’ for those who can’t believe in the God of the more famous 10 commandments. This is a good list; in fact, in several ways this list seems a bit more practical and everyday than the list Moses brought down with him.
But de Botton’s list suffers from the same mistake as though who wish to post the Mosaic Commandments in public spaces: it’s a list of virtues stripped of any guiding narrative or interpretative community. Just as it’s not self-evident what it means to refrain from covetousness (in the case of scripture), it’s not self-evident what the practice of empathy entails. One person’s version of empathy will differ markedly from another person’s definition based upon the narrative around which they orient their lives. For Christians, after all, any definition of empathy, hope, forgiveness etc is determined and shaped by the Christ story. Because that’s our narrative we’re stuck with a 70X7, turn the other cheek notion of forgiveness.
It’s not a question of whether we will be shaped by a guiding narrative but which one we will allow to shape us. The very notion that we don’t need a controlling narrative to our lives is in fact the narrative of modernity; it’s its own story.
- Resilience: Keeping going even when things are looking dark.
- Empathy: The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.
- Patience: We should grow calmer and more forgiving by being more realistic about how things actually happen.
- Sacrifice: We won’t ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice.
- Politeness: Politeness is closely linked to tolerance, -the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, cannot avoid.
- Humour: Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it is disappointment optimally channelled.
- Self-awareness: To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one’s troubles and moods; to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.
- Forgiveness: It’s recognising that living with others is not possible without excusing errors.
- Hope: Pessimism is not necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.
- Confidence: Confidence is not arrogance – rather, it is based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we will ultimately lose from risking everything.
2 Jesus Farts: A Lenten/Valentine Meditation for My Wife
The incarnation is one of the primary theological convictions of the Christian faith.
We believe the Holy Spirit “overshadowed” Mary and, through her, God took flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. That’s our claim at Christmas. As St Athanasius put it, God became what we are so that we might become like God.
God became what we are. In all its dirty, unpleasant particularity. Jesus was fully human, as the Nicene Creed says. Not mostly human. Not pretty much human with all the crappy, embarrassing or difficult parts left out.
Most often we use words like incarnation or we talk about ‘God taking flesh’ without getting down to specifics about what that entailed or included. It’s like when it comes to the incarnation, there’s a subconscious part of us that screams: ‘Stop: TMI!’
The Gnostics, early Christian heretics, were the first to get squeamish about the implications of incarnation. The idea of God taking up residence in a human body just seemed unseemly once they stopped to consider all the dirty little goings on in their bodies during the average day.
Unseemly or not, the Church has always stood against Gnosticism and the various other heresies that have wanted to put an asterisk after that part of the creed ‘and became truly human.’
Like it or not, in Jesus God had a body just like yours.
Jesus may have been without sin, but he wasn’t without boogers. Jesus not only wept, you can bet your @#$ that he wiped his @#$. There aren’t any Carols about it (future undertaking?) but part of what we’re professing at Christmas is that Mary’s boy (aka: Lord of Hosts) grew up to spit,, poop and fart. He had moles on his skin, dirt on his feet and underneath his fingernails, and a smell that I’m sure his mom could recognize on his clothes. Contrary to Dan Brown, I don’t think Jesus had a thing with Mary Magdalene, but since he was fully human, you can be sure he didn’t escape puberty without a______________.
In a sense then, such things as farting are profoundly powerful theological expressions, for they convey God’s absolute solidarity with us in the incarnation. Just as water signifies the invisible grace of our justification and just as wine and broken bread signify Christ’s atoning work, so too is farting a sort of olifactory sacrament, signifying God’s absolute identification with us, TMI and all, in the incarnation.
As I tell my wife, ‘it may smell bad and be immature-according to your bourgeoise, Victorian, elitist standards- but what I smell…is the totality of salvation.’
Problem is, my wife doesn’t like it. The farting.
And that’s a problem.
Because, after all, my love for her is also supposed to be a sacrament, a visible sign of how God loves us.
And- okay it’s a bad analogy- just as Christ gave up his life out of his love for us, so too should I be willing to freely give up what I so frequently squeak out. Out of our love for her.
So this Lenten season, while other believers give up chocolate, porn, meat or drinking, I will be doing my ascetic best to give up farting.
I don’t want to puncture any images of holiness, decorum and perfection you might already have associated with me, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think Jesus probably had it easier in the wilderness than I will over the next 40 days.
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.
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.