After Christmas

Sometimes it feels this way, doesn't it.

(Another good comic from over at AsboJesus)

An Advent Sonnet -- A Great Poem by Waldo Beach

Professor Beach was a Professor Emeritus at Duke Divinity School when I was there.  He wrote this poem that I will forever remember as Christmas approaches, and, now, as I look back at it.  The poem is "Advent Sonnet" and is found in his book Christmas Praise.

On coming to Christmas, misled, we forget

That the birth of God’s son was not lovely at all.

A stench filled the gloom of the bleak manger stall.

There was blood on the straw and a halo of sweat

Around Mary’s head.  Soon, warned they should flee

To escape Herod’s sword, by stealth in the night

The family of God was driven to flight,

As from Bethlehem’s inn outcast, refugee.

But as birth of new life is sprung out of pain,

And faith out of fear, so now once again,

If we come to the stable by way of the cross

And dismantle our spirits of tinsel and dross,

We can join with glad hearts and exuberant voice

To sing with the heavenly choir, “Rejoice!”

The Incarnation -- 15

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"The divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needed to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child... The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets."

J.I. Packer

The Incarnation -- 14

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"The glory of the incarnation is that it presents to our adoring gaze not a humanized God or a deified man, but a true God-man - one who is all that God is and at the same time all that man is: one on whose almighty arm we can rest, and to whose human sympathy we can appeal."

Benjamin B. Warfield

The Incarnation -- 13

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"Lying at your feet is your dog. Imagine, for the moment, that your dog and every dog is in deep distress. Some of us love dogs very much. If it would help all the dogs in the world to become like men, would you be willing to become a dog? Would you put down your human nature, leave your loved ones, your job, hobbies, your art and literature and music, and choose instead of the intimate communion with your beloved, the poor substitute of looking into the beloved's face and wagging your tail, unable to smile or speak? Christ by becoming man limited the thing which to Him was the most precious thing in the world; his unhampered, unhindered communion with the Father. "

C.S. Lewis.

The Incarnation -- 12

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As his “body,” the church, through us, members of the body, the living Christ is always intruding, going where he is not necessarily wanted or expected, taking up space where people did not expect God to be.


In his earthly ministry, Jesus intruded into the homes of sinners. He showed up at a wedding and caused a scene. He came into places of death, where people hardly knew him, and brought forth unexpected life.


Maybe that is one reason people try to keep religion theoretical and spiritual. [But] Christianity is not a “spiritual” religion: it is an incarnational religion. It believes that God has a body, that God takes up space, that God will not remain ethereal and vague, distant and detached.

Barbara Lundblad

The Incarnation -- 11

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Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: "a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb".   Jesus entered our world through a door marked, "No Entrance" and left through a door marked “No Exit.”

– Peter Larson

The Incarnation -- 10

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The incarnation of Jesus Christ is God’s undeniable evidence that relevance to culture is not optional.

- Erwin McManus

The Incarnation -- 9

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Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If the holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.

And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and re-create the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (Harper San Francisco, 1985)

The Incarnation -- 8

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Our imitation of God in this life … must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.

- C.S. Lewis, from his book The Four Loves

The Incarnation -- 7

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"...The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

This is the real stumbling block in Christianity.... It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

...If Jesus was the same person as the eternal Word...it is no wonder if fresh acts of creative power marked his coming into this world... It is not strange that he, the Author of life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again.

...Once we grant that Jesus was divine, it becomes unreasonable to find difficulty in any of this; it is all of a piece and hangs together completely. The Incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains."

JI Packer in Knowing God

The Incarnation -- 6

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"... without the incarnation, Christianity isn't even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. "Be nice to one another" is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope.


The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality."

Michael Spencer (Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality)

The Incarnation -- 4

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"Action is always superior to speech in the Gospels, which is why the Word became flesh and not newsprint."

Colin Morris

The Incarnation -- 5

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"...the incarnation is the complete refutation of every human system and institution that claims to control, possess, and distribute God. Whatever any church or religious leader may claim in regard to their particular access to God or control over your experience of God, the incarnation is the last word: God loves the world. God came into the world in the form of the people he created, the human race (including you and me), who bear his image. God's creation of humanity in his image gives hints of who he is, since we all are marked by his fingerprints.


But as flawed humans, we give only a vague hint of God. Our broken reflection of God's image is easily drowned out by our broken humanity. then, two thousand years ago, God came in his fullness. He came to all of us in Jesus. The incarnation is not owned, trademarked, or controlled by any church. It belongs to every human being. The incarnation is not something that requires a distributor or middleman. It is a gracious gift to every person everywhere, religious or not. God gave himself to us in Jesus."

Michael Spencer (Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality)

The Incarnation -- 3

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He became what we are that he might make us what he is.

Athanasius

The Incarnation -- 2

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"There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."


Madalene L'Engle

The Incarnation -- 1

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As far as the Incarnation is concerned, I believe firmly in it. I believe that God did lean down to become Man in order that we could reach up to Him, and that the drama which embodies that Incarnation, the drama described in the Creed, took place.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Looking For an Epic, Earth-Shattering, Violent, Christmas Upheaval

Image by Ushlambad via FlickrI sit here right now in a hospital room, worn out from a poor night of sleep as my son had a sleep study for some of his own problems.  I have Christmas bulletins in process.  There are calls to be made to make sure our various musicians know the hymns.  Later today I'll help deliver food baskets and presents to persons in our community who have some financial needs at this time of year.  I have sermons sketched out but not complete.  There are still gifts to buy and we worry that we don't have "enough" to fill the stockings of our kids with all the stuff they expect and all the stuff we want to give them.  And I'm sure, when I get up in front of the three different congregations in just a couple of nights, there will be a calm that will come over me and I'll proclaim, with joy, that Christ has come and our God is here and I'll pray that this will be a time of peace and love and joy in the lives of my hearers.  And I'll be right.

But, maybe there's more to this.  Maybe I'll run the risk of making this time just too "quaint" for what it really is.  Remember, if you will, that that lovely night that Christ was born was not lovely at all.  There was blood.  There was dirt and animals and screaming.  There was sweat.  There was a young couple with no place to stay and forced to have their baby among the livestock.  And this...THIS...is how our God comes to us.  Ironic, isn't it?  The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, born in this way.

The only people that "got it," according to our Scriptures were the shepherds themselves.  Then, of course, the Magi who came from a long way away.  All the local religious folk didn't get it.  Makes me wonder about all of our good religious folk.  Why do we think we have a corner on the market of a Christmas understanding?  We're the first ones touting all that that sweet little baby in the manger means for the world and I wonder if we're not the very people that meaning, at least in Scripture, was hidden from.

So, what if we looked for something different?   What if, instead of a "nice" Christmas or a "Merry" one, we prayed for one that would turn our world upside down and turn our lives upside down.  Childbirth is not a "silent night" event.  What if the Christ that is born anew in our hearts comes not with silence but with an upheaval of the power structures, of the priorities of the day?  What if we were a different people on December 26th?  What if our world was a different world the day after?  Perhaps that is what it means when the God of the Universe moves into our neighborhood (John 1, Peterson's The Message).

This reflection...this prayer...this morning...has been fed by Mike Cooper's blog post over at The Gospel Coalition.  It's entiteld, "Christmas: The Hinge of History."  Here's a good chunk of it.  Please go read the full post for more:

Christmas is violent. It’s earth-shattering. The very order of things, the way the world worked, was being rewritten. In 1811, an earthquake in Missouri caused church bells to ring in Philadelphia and made the Mississipi River run backwards. When the Christ-child gasped his first breath, the hinge of history swung in a new direction, and hell shuddered. The assault on its gates had begun.

We celebrate Christmas right at the Winter Solstice—a bit of metaphorical genius, if you ask me (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere). Right as the year reaches its coldest, just as the nights get their longest and darkest, we open our Bibles and read,

    The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
    on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

Historically, the church observed Advent in the month before Christmas, a month of fasting and anticipation. I grew up in churches that skipped the fasts and dove straight into the fa-la-la’s. Discovering Advent was like discovering Good Friday. A deep well of meaning gave Christmas wider and broader dimensions. For all of Christmas’s cause for celebration, there’s an accompanying need to awaken our minds to the surrounding desperation. The world was, and remains in many ways, in darkness. Christmas is part of that glorious already/not-yet tension, where the finished song of redemption awaits the “Amen!” of restoration. We celebrate Christmas in a broken and fallen world, in broken and fallen churches full of broken and fallen people.

Whatever we do in these coming days, let’s not miss the truly epic story of irony and violence that is the “true meaning” of Christmas.

So...what would it look like this morning, as we wait for hospital food to be delivered, as we get up and face the day, as we wonder if we got the right gifts or enough gifts...what would it look like to pray for an EPIC...EARTH-SHATTERING...VIOLENT...CHRISTMAS UPHEAVAL?

(HT to SDSmith for pointing me in Mike Cosper's direction.

Village of Quinhagak's "Hallelujah Chorus" -- Great Video

Merry Christmas From Rural Alaska

Running to Paul When Jesus Gets Uncomfortable

Image via Wikipedia

Was reading the comments section at a blog where the discussion was about social programs and charity where a person argued that Paul said we shouldn't give to a person who's just being lazy.  While "God helps those who help themselves" is really a Ben Franklin quote, you can find is alluded to in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12:

"Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you. And we did not eat anyone's bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were here with you, we gave you this command, anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living." (RSV)

Here, it seems, there were folks who were living off of the church as they expected Christ to come back at any time.  There is a specific context.  And, yes, when taken out of that context it makes me uncomfortable...it seems to say that charity just for those who really need it.

But in the comments section came the following comment from someone named Leanne.  It's a great message for all who would look to Paul (or other parts of Scripture) when the Gospel passages get difficult.

We often run to Paul and to other Scriptures outside the Gospel to justify our dicomfort. But truth is, Christ called us to die, to pick up our cross. This is not a religion about what works economically. It is a belief system about God giving everything for Creation and inviting us to do the same.

...we shouldn’t run to Paul to explain Christ. We should run to Christ to explain Paul. As Bishop N.T.Wright states, read Paul first and the Gospels second, you’ll get Paul all wrong. Read Gospels first and Paul second, you’ll understand Paul in a whole new way.

I searched through a lot of N.T. Wright's stuff to find an exact quote for the above comment but couldn't find one.  If one can offer it, I'd be appreciative.

I Want to Be Welcomed Home LIKE THIS. This is HOSPITALITY.

I don't care if it is a T-Mobile ad.  This is awesome.  Do you think the church could learn something about hospitality from this?




(HT to J. Henderson for the link. It takes an airline pilot to really know what it's like to be welcomed at an airport).

Emerging Trends in Christianity. Uh oh!

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The Barna Group is out with some more research on Christianity and it's gonna be interesting.  Their work is usually a wake-up call to the church (whether or not the church wants to wake up) and this is no different.  Here are the six megathemes based on their work over the last 11 months.  I've followed each point with some commentary.

1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate. 

Less emphasis on the resurrection.  Not sure the Holy Spirit is an abiding presence of God.  Lack of Biblical literacy.  It's a theological free-for-all among younger folks.  This is going to make it hard for pastors and churches to proclaim some of the theological concepts we've held as truth for, well, a couple thousand years.  I think this gets at how we are training and teaching (or NOT training and teaching) our members.


2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.

We're not inviting persons to church.  We're not talking about the faith outside of church.  We don't see many good role models for Christians in the world.  All of this combines to make it less and less likely that our own Christian kids will find themselves in a church later in life.  Our faith is becoming compartmentalized.  The need for outreach and religious conversation is growing.  I think we can get into debates about what outreach and evangelism means.  But I agree with this point pretty strongly and see it in myself as well.


3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.

Don't tell us about eternal life.  Tell us how to make it through this life.  Educate us.  Give us friends.  Give us 10 simple steps to a better marriage or more money or to a better us.  Less and less is it between us and God.  Less and less is it about eternity.  I know I fall into this camp and, perhaps, more than I need to be.  After all, while Karl Barth said we need to read with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, what will it look like when all we're really doing is reading our newspaper anymore.  Perhaps the natural result of this is Joel Osteen's "prosperity Gospel" or the growth of self-help groups in churches rather than Bible Studies.


4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.

Yes doing good works is good.  Yes, it's good to work for justice and health and clean water and all of the things that I know I've worked for or my denomination has worked for.  But we need to do better connecting this with God and Bible.  Says the study:

To facilitate service as a long-term way of living and to provide people with the intrinsic joy of blessing others, churches have a window of opportunity to support such action with biblical perspective. And the more that churches and believers can be recognized as people doing good deeds out of genuine love and compassion, the more appealing the Christian life will be to those who are on the sidelines watching.

5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.

Barna doesn't merely suggest that the church has become too tolerant.  Barna says it:

Our biblical illiteracy and lack of spiritual confidence has caused Americans to avoid making discerning choices for fear of being labeled judgmental. The result is a Church that has become tolerant of a vast array of morally and spiritually dubious behaviors and philosophies.

We need to question, not whether there are moral absolutes, but what those moral absolute are.  And then we can broach the issue about whether or not these absolutes can then be placed upon society as a whole.  However, all of this is moot if the church continues in its trajectory towards believing that there are no moral absolutes in the Bible. 

The Barna report says this is about the "the balance between representing truth and acting in love."   Where I think I'd come down with a different perspective is how this relates to those inside and outside the church.  Does a moral stance, for instance, that homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian teaching mean that we should be opposed to gay marriage or "Don't ask don't tell" or death benefits for homosexual partners?  I'm not so sure I want to go there.


6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.


Barna reports:

Christianity has arguably added more value to American culture than any other religion, philosophy, ideology or community. Yet, contemporary Americans are hard pressed to identify any specific value added. Partly due to the nature of today’s media, they have no problem identifying the faults of the churches and Christian people.

A couple of things here.  1)  I agree that Christian influence on people's lives is largely invisible.  2)  I'm not going to blame the media for this, but rather all the points above in numbers 1-5.  3)  Perhaps, instead of lamenting the lack of influence Christianity has on people's lives, we should focus on the increased influence of other things--patriotism, capitalism, racism, individualism, and relativism.  It's not all "liberal" isms that diminish the voice of Christianity in this country.  It's just the liberal isms that get blamed.


No matter what side of the theological perspective one stands on, the research by Barna should remind us of what's going on around us if we pay attention. And it should mean we need to do a better job defining what it is that happens to us as we celebrate the birth of some insignificant baby in some insignificant part of the world...who we say has changed history and offered salvation to the earth.


Again, read the Barna report here.

"The War on Christmas" in Girdwood

Image via WikipediaOur local school has decided not to have caroling this year.  Now "caroling" is really an exaggeration.  In the past, for about 15 minutes for three different mornings kids were invited (not required) to attend a sing-a-long of holiday themed songs in the music room or the gym or wherever the designated gathering place was.  And, in between "Frosty the Snowman" and "Let It Snow" (sung with great gusto in our ski-loving community) there was usually one...one...Christian themed song.  This is not that much different than our holiday concert with mostly secular music, but a Jewish and African American one there along with the lone Christmas carol.

But, alas, the school-time caroling is no more...at least not during school hours.  There will be an after school caroling party today.  And this change is for the usual reasons: 

We have a couple of Jewish students and one family that it Buddhist and "we" want to be sensitive.  True.

We have a principle who can be a stickler for rules and regulations and anything that could possibly end up in a complaint or, worse, a legal issue, must be avoided.   This does not make the principal anti-Christmas or anti-Christian or anything.  Perhaps just a bit too cautious.

We have a couple of persons who have expressed concern that the school would be endorsing one religion over others...while proponents of caroling say it's all cultural and no one is evangelizing or anything.  Admittedly, this gets tricky.

Could it be that the "War on Christmas" has come to Girdwood?

Maybe.  But let's think about this.

I have not been involved in the caroling debate.  I've shown up at school to sing with my kids because it's fun...not because I've had any role in planning this or defending it.  Because I'm a pastor, I try very hard to keep my nose out of religious issues at the school.  My kids still need to go there.  My wife teaches there.  And there are just "good parent" things I want to be involved in without having to go into the school only being seen as "Here comes the minister."   But I have put some thought into the caroling issue and how "The War on Christmas" is perceived.  Here are some of them:

• Every holiday song has a point of view, a perspective, a theology, we might say.  We don't "do" Santa at our household.  We talk a lot about the birth of Jesus but Santa doesn't make an appearance.  There is a mythology...a religion, as it were...surrounding Santa.  It comes complete with rituals and beliefs and morals.  And, I think it's in contrast to Christianity.  So, my wife and I avoid it and we tell our kids Santa doesn't exist.  I know you may do it differently in your house.  God bless you.  But, if our understanding of faith is that Santa doesn't exist, should we be offended that our kids sing about Santa at school?  A lot of the argument against caroling is that it pushes a religion (Christianity) on non-Christian kids.  I want to argue that the other songs about Santa push a religion as well...but on Christians.  I think it's helpful to see that.

• Taking Christian caroling songs out of the school does not weaken Jesus Christ or the message of the church.  If we're relying upon our schools to teach the message of Jesus to kids, then we need to be concerned about how weak the church has become.  If we can sing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" and "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' For Christmas" and follow it with "Silent Night" and not see a problem in those mixed messages, then perhaps we need to look more closely at our understanding of the "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" who comes to bring salvation to the world.

• I know a lot of "The War on Christmas" seems to be aimed at retailers, such as Wal-Mart, where persons now say, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."  Sure, this is not about "the holidays" for me but about Christmas.  But we need to understand that most retail places, if they thought it would increase their revenue, would tell you to "May the Force Be With You" as you entered the store.  They're out to get $$$$ from you this "Holiday Season" or "Christmas Season."  I don't want my understanding of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, to be defined by what Wal-Mart can tell me at the door.  They already own everything else.  Why should I be bothered that they've loosened their grip on Jesus?  I'm happy to say "Merry Christmas" to the greeter because that's who I am.  I think them saying "Happy Holidays" is more truthful to who they are.  (Now, if they'd just say, "Happy Holidays, please buy a bunch of stuff you don't need" that would probably be more truthful).

Look, in a little over an hour, I'm going to take our 4 year old twins to the school to join up with our 13 year old twins and a bunch of students to sing Holiday Songs.   We'll sing some traditional carols.  We'll sing Santa stuff.  We'll sing about snow.  There will be hot chocolate and it will be fun.  I know some people are mad that we won't be doing it during school hours.  I'm really not mad about that.  If there are some non-Christian, secular, Santa-loving kids who hear "Away in a Manger" and start asking questions about "the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay"... great.   If there are some folks of other religions who hear us singing and, while they may not join us, appreciate that they aren't made to feel forced upon by the Christian faith this time of year...great. 

While there are folks who still believe that we're a Christian nation, I'm not one of them.  It doesn't mean I love this country less than anyone else.  It just means that, instead of viewing this place as a Christian nation, I view it as a nation with a lot of Christians in it.  We have some great Christian (or Deist) based ideals in our founding documents because those ideals shaped our founders.  Yet we are in a constant struggle to determined how to live most faithfully in a multi-cultural environment.  And as many persons fight back against The War on Christmas, I think we need to be clear about what Jesus we're fighting for.  Is it the God of the Old and New Testaments.  Or is it Jesus-lite...a mix of secularism, nationalism, capitalism, Santa and the sweet baby in the manger.

Now...I need to get ready for some caroling fun.  I can't wait to hear how loudly the kids sing "Let It Snow."

"The Jesus Way" -- Quote from Eugene Peterson

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. . . Do we do it in Jesus’ way or do we do it the Wal-Mart way? Spirituality is not about ends or benefits or things; it’s about means. It’s about how you do this. How do you live in reality?

So, how do you help all these people? The needs are huge. Well, you do it the way Jesus did it. You do it one at a time. You can’t do gospel work, kingdom work in an impersonal way.

Found in a 2005 article in Christianity Today, "Spirituality for all the wrong reasons"

(HT  to Chaplain Mike over at Internetmonk.com)