I am guessing that for many (at least in the Eastern time zone of the US), Christmas Day celebrations are either winding down or wound down quite a few hours ago, and the evening is turning into just another ordinary evening. Here at the headquarters of the Fool's Errand, turkey has been consumed, dishes are in the process of being cleaned, presents were opened long ago, and if anything remains to mark the day it might be pulling out the DVD of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for viewing. Then, for all practical purposes, Christmas will be "over" for 2011.
But what if that weren't so? What if the church actually took its liturgical calendar seriously and continued to "be Christmas" until Epiphany? Things would have to change, yes? The typical one-day blowout wouldn't be sustainable over twelve days; we'd have to pace ourselves. At the same time, opening up the full twelve days as a way to observe Christmas would be about as countercultural as you can get; when the secular world starts observing "Christmas" the day after Thanksgiving and ends at about noon on December 25, and the body of Christ is just getting started, unfolding the whole story of Christmas (massacres of children, strange prophecies in the Temple, all that), well, that's a witness.
Maybe I'm just feeling jealous of my Jewish friends for whom Hanukkah is a multi-night observance. Or maybe I'm finding a certain level of dissatisfaction with The Way Things Are. But for now, I can't help but wonder if this is the time to slow down and consider making Christmas a real live liturgical season in deed as well as word.
No answers here, just some things to chew on.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Christmas Eve, "Christmas Eve," and Getting Totally Gobsmacked By Grace
For a brief while we are in an activity lull. With my wife's parents in town, we took them around to see a few of the sights of Richmond today, including St. John's Church, where Patrick Henry gave his "give me liberty or give me death" speech back in 1775. The afternoon is fading, but the Christmas Eve service we will attend this evening is not until 9:00 p.m., so there is a small amount of down time suitable for thinking.
It is Christmas Eve. Somewhere on the planet, the sweep of "midnight masses" and other late-evening observances of the transition from Eve to Day has already started. Other bloggers have already covered the degree to which many of these services or observances will, in my evolving view, "get it wrong"; the softening and hypersentimentalizing of the Nativity, with creepily silent baby and odorless barnyard animals. (I am again reminded of Iona community's John Bell and his reaction to the verse of "Away in a Manger" that declares, "But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes": "Why not? What's wrong with him?") The whole thing gets "tamed," made much more domestic and acceptable to comfortable modern listeners who have busily been ignoring the prophets of Advent, with their insistence on a world undone.
And yet for all of that taming and softening and weakening, that spark is still there; not quite yet has the ember of Incarnation, that thing which makes this whole feast day worth bothering with, completely been extinguished.
Without getting into too much theological deep water or rehashing theological controversies stretching back nearly two millenia, I will simply acknowledge that the whole Christmas event draws its power from the notion that the baby born on that night ages ago was not merely a baby of solely human significance. Whether one holds that God Godself was present in that child from birth (or earlier) or not, it remains that this child will be the extraordinary God-With-Us, Son of God, whatever term you choose to use. God Incarnate, God enfleshed. Presumably squawling like any newborn who ends up being put down for sleep in a manger instead of something more bed-like, with swaddling bands wrapped around as the only protection from the cold, who-knows-what smells wafting all around.
What then are we to do with this Incarnation, this "Word became flesh" as described in John 1? Or what does it do in us? Friedrich Schleiermacher published a curious little book (treatise? novella?), Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, in which he seems to suggest that the most natural, most right response to the Incarnation is joy. And if we have known that joy, the joy that comes of knowing God-With-Us really is with us, we live with one another in joy. We share joy and give grace to one another. We don't necessarily agree, we certainly don't all behave or believe the same way, but we share the joy of God being among us and showing us how to love one another by how God loved us. (John comes back to that thought a few times in his gospel, and even the first epistle of John reiterates that point as well.)
While I'm still working my way through Schleiermacher's little tome (yes, I deliberately checked it out to read over and around Christmas Eve because, well, that's how my mind works), I am already haunted by its opening. The assembled guests await the hostess, Ernestine, and her permission to enter the main room and begin the giving and receiving of gifts. They are, not surprisingly, a tad impatient, but Ernestine has held them at bay, striving to set everything just so and to provide the utmost welcome and hospitality she can. At last the doors are opened and the guests enter; when they do, however, instead of rushing in and grasping the gifts, they are in fact overwhelmed by what Ernestine has done; the arrangement of the gifts, the decorations, the lights, all is so right, so warm, so welcoming, and done with such taste and feeling (this is an early nineteenth-century German work, after all, so feeling is going to be a major concern) that the guests are drawn away instead to shower their hostess with embraces and gratitude. In that simple unexpected moment of receiving Ernestine's labor of love, the guests are ministered with grace and given a moment, just the tiniest taste, the barest hint of the joy of the Incarnation shared by one (probably without realizing it as such) with all. Indeed Schleiermacher's primary aim in Christmas Eve seems to be to show, rather than describe, what it means to be the body of Christ, bound together by this Incarnation joy and the love that flows from it.
It can hit you when you least expect it. Even as I was reading Christmas Eve on Christmas Eve Eve, I found myself getting gobsmacked by a similar unexpected ministering of grace. A gift, with contributions apparently coming from about eleven different sources (some of whom I literally have not seen since my high-school graduation night--talk about the incarnational power of Facebook!) through a couple of devious ringleaders, leaving me more floored and tongue-tied than I can remember being since...I can't even guess how long. And yet, there it was, reminding me that more people care about this fool's errand than I can even guess (though I wouldn't presume that my becoming a Presbyterian minister--excuse me, teaching elder--is all that impressive to all of them, by any means), and that I'm a lot less cut off than I fancy myself to be sometimes.
Maybe your experience of this is different. Sometimes it might look like something else, I suppose, only to be realized in retrospect. Still, those unpredictable and unearned moments reward like few things can, in some cases all out of proportion to the size of the gesture and quite without regard to dollar signs.
Christmas Eve draws on. The joy of the Incarnation awaits. A blessed and joyous Feast of the Nativity to you all.
It is Christmas Eve. Somewhere on the planet, the sweep of "midnight masses" and other late-evening observances of the transition from Eve to Day has already started. Other bloggers have already covered the degree to which many of these services or observances will, in my evolving view, "get it wrong"; the softening and hypersentimentalizing of the Nativity, with creepily silent baby and odorless barnyard animals. (I am again reminded of Iona community's John Bell and his reaction to the verse of "Away in a Manger" that declares, "But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes": "Why not? What's wrong with him?") The whole thing gets "tamed," made much more domestic and acceptable to comfortable modern listeners who have busily been ignoring the prophets of Advent, with their insistence on a world undone.
And yet for all of that taming and softening and weakening, that spark is still there; not quite yet has the ember of Incarnation, that thing which makes this whole feast day worth bothering with, completely been extinguished.
Without getting into too much theological deep water or rehashing theological controversies stretching back nearly two millenia, I will simply acknowledge that the whole Christmas event draws its power from the notion that the baby born on that night ages ago was not merely a baby of solely human significance. Whether one holds that God Godself was present in that child from birth (or earlier) or not, it remains that this child will be the extraordinary God-With-Us, Son of God, whatever term you choose to use. God Incarnate, God enfleshed. Presumably squawling like any newborn who ends up being put down for sleep in a manger instead of something more bed-like, with swaddling bands wrapped around as the only protection from the cold, who-knows-what smells wafting all around.
What then are we to do with this Incarnation, this "Word became flesh" as described in John 1? Or what does it do in us? Friedrich Schleiermacher published a curious little book (treatise? novella?), Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, in which he seems to suggest that the most natural, most right response to the Incarnation is joy. And if we have known that joy, the joy that comes of knowing God-With-Us really is with us, we live with one another in joy. We share joy and give grace to one another. We don't necessarily agree, we certainly don't all behave or believe the same way, but we share the joy of God being among us and showing us how to love one another by how God loved us. (John comes back to that thought a few times in his gospel, and even the first epistle of John reiterates that point as well.)
While I'm still working my way through Schleiermacher's little tome (yes, I deliberately checked it out to read over and around Christmas Eve because, well, that's how my mind works), I am already haunted by its opening. The assembled guests await the hostess, Ernestine, and her permission to enter the main room and begin the giving and receiving of gifts. They are, not surprisingly, a tad impatient, but Ernestine has held them at bay, striving to set everything just so and to provide the utmost welcome and hospitality she can. At last the doors are opened and the guests enter; when they do, however, instead of rushing in and grasping the gifts, they are in fact overwhelmed by what Ernestine has done; the arrangement of the gifts, the decorations, the lights, all is so right, so warm, so welcoming, and done with such taste and feeling (this is an early nineteenth-century German work, after all, so feeling is going to be a major concern) that the guests are drawn away instead to shower their hostess with embraces and gratitude. In that simple unexpected moment of receiving Ernestine's labor of love, the guests are ministered with grace and given a moment, just the tiniest taste, the barest hint of the joy of the Incarnation shared by one (probably without realizing it as such) with all. Indeed Schleiermacher's primary aim in Christmas Eve seems to be to show, rather than describe, what it means to be the body of Christ, bound together by this Incarnation joy and the love that flows from it.
It can hit you when you least expect it. Even as I was reading Christmas Eve on Christmas Eve Eve, I found myself getting gobsmacked by a similar unexpected ministering of grace. A gift, with contributions apparently coming from about eleven different sources (some of whom I literally have not seen since my high-school graduation night--talk about the incarnational power of Facebook!) through a couple of devious ringleaders, leaving me more floored and tongue-tied than I can remember being since...I can't even guess how long. And yet, there it was, reminding me that more people care about this fool's errand than I can even guess (though I wouldn't presume that my becoming a Presbyterian minister--excuse me, teaching elder--is all that impressive to all of them, by any means), and that I'm a lot less cut off than I fancy myself to be sometimes.
Maybe your experience of this is different. Sometimes it might look like something else, I suppose, only to be realized in retrospect. Still, those unpredictable and unearned moments reward like few things can, in some cases all out of proportion to the size of the gesture and quite without regard to dollar signs.
Christmas Eve draws on. The joy of the Incarnation awaits. A blessed and joyous Feast of the Nativity to you all.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Jock Theology 101
The cliches are too numerous to count. We'll go with the one that has a lot of currency where I came from: Football ain't a religion. It's way more important than that. And football (mostly college in the case of that quote) is hardly the only sport with its own "liturgies" and "creeds," so to speak.
Of late the news in Jock Theology 101 has been dominated by a certain quarterback playing more like a running back for the Denver Broncos. [NOTE: since I believe in full disclosure, I will freely admit that I will never be inclined to give Tim Tebow a break, because he is a F'ing Gator. Even if I have totally renounced all football on the (F)BS level until the B(C)S lies in a smoldering, decrepit ruin and they've either figured out a legitimate and fair way to come up with a so-called National Champion or quit pretending they're going to try, GatorHate is going to remain strong in my veins, like it does for any graduate of Florida State University. So there.] Tim Tebow has, all the way back to his F'ing Gator days and presumably even further, been a rather loud and public voice for a particular strain of evangelicalism, and has managed to cheese off a lot of people in the process. He's also managed to cheese off a lot of NFL types by being a part of several wins for the Broncos despite being a really poor passer, though his latest few games do seem to be picking up in passing quality. There's been a Tebow backlash, then a backlash against the Tebow backlash, and maybe now a backlash against both backlashes. Quite the polarizing guy.
Mind you, there are several different outlets through one might make theological criticism of Tebow, but I'm going to stick with one (I really don't have that much time to write this blog entry after all). By his words and behavior both present and past, Tebow seems to give the impression that God actually cares who wins athletic contests.
Perhaps God had a rooting interest in David vs. Goliath. Otherwise, I can't find a shred of evidence in either testament, particularly in how the gospels present Jesus Christ to us, that this is at all a justifiable belief. Even when Paul starts using running metaphors, he only wants to exhort his readers to finish the race (2 Timothy 4:7); he doesn't say anything about winning it.
While it might be amusing to accuse Tim Tebow of being a closet Pelagian, I really don't feel compelled to do much more than to link you, my two or three readers, to this fanciful Rick Reilly column from his days at Sports Illustrated. It happens briefly, towards the end of the column (you might have to go to page two), but it's about as effetive a refutation of the notion that God is going to play "us vs. them" games with our games just because we do so. While I'm always scared of putting words in God's mouth, even in a literary sense, I can't really argue with how Reilly shoots down that particular jock theology, after Christ has picked up a save for the Cincinnati Reds: "And please stop praying for wins. Put yourself in my position. If your kids were playing each other, who would you root for?" Hate to disappoint, but those folks on the other side of the line are your brothers, Mr. Tebow, if you're really serious about this Jesus business.
But in truth, my attention has been distracted from Tebow by a new entrant into Jock Theology 101: Albert Pujols, who seems to be enrolled in the class with his wife. Pujols has never been quite so vocal and exhibitive about his religious faith, but has (let's be fair here) done a heck of a lot of funding and supporting a lot charitable and religious activities in the area. The impulse is to appreciate Pujols's wilingness to "walk the walk" instead of putting that much energy into "talking the talk." One could even argue that this is how it should be done, if you believe things like the Semon on the Mount (Mt. 6:1-6 in particular--you read that one, Tebow?).
Nonetheless, after taking 254 gartanguo-gazillion dollars to swap uniforms for the next ten years from St. Louis Cardinals red to Anaheim Angels red, the family Pujols was apparently surprised that St. Louisians, the oft-proclaimed "greatest fans in baseball," weren't all sweetness and light about his impending departure, freshly-won World Series notwithstanding. Pujols's wife Diedre apparently took their case to a radio station in St. Louis (not your usual sports-talk station, but a Christian station that had apparently once been partly funded by Pujols).
Presuming that Diedre has not gone rogue, one learns very quickly that for all his good works and apparent sincerity of belief, Pujols may well be getting tripped up on a strange little belief to try to fit into a viably faithful way of looking at the world: Dollars = Respect. Or maybe it's Length of Contract = Respect. Apparently an initial offer of a five-year contract for $130,000,000 (or about $26,000,000 a season) was insulting. (Keep in mind that Pujols is 31 years old; not bad right now, but the end of that contract has the potential to be ugly for the Angels.) Eventually the Cardinals offered ten years and something like $210,000,000, but by then the apparently wounded Pujols was ready to bolt for the big bucks and bright lights of southern California. Diedre Pujols does a little bit of lashing out a fans and a lot of defending Albert, but unless I'm missing something that seems to be the gist of it.
Again, I'm straining to see how that formula works. Maybe Pujols has major faith-based plans for all that moolah, I don't know. But I gotta say I can't make the whole Dollars = Respect fit with anything I've ever known or learned about Jesus Christ. "The laborer is worthy of his hire" and all that, but jeez louise, $26M/year seems a plenty worthy hire for a guy who plays a game.
I have got to admit that right now is one of those times I'm pretty happy not to have children. I can't imagine trying to explain how Tebow and Pujols and their public deeds would fit with the things we'd have been trying to teach them all of their lives. Oh well.
Of late the news in Jock Theology 101 has been dominated by a certain quarterback playing more like a running back for the Denver Broncos. [NOTE: since I believe in full disclosure, I will freely admit that I will never be inclined to give Tim Tebow a break, because he is a F'ing Gator. Even if I have totally renounced all football on the (F)BS level until the B(C)S lies in a smoldering, decrepit ruin and they've either figured out a legitimate and fair way to come up with a so-called National Champion or quit pretending they're going to try, GatorHate is going to remain strong in my veins, like it does for any graduate of Florida State University. So there.] Tim Tebow has, all the way back to his F'ing Gator days and presumably even further, been a rather loud and public voice for a particular strain of evangelicalism, and has managed to cheese off a lot of people in the process. He's also managed to cheese off a lot of NFL types by being a part of several wins for the Broncos despite being a really poor passer, though his latest few games do seem to be picking up in passing quality. There's been a Tebow backlash, then a backlash against the Tebow backlash, and maybe now a backlash against both backlashes. Quite the polarizing guy.
Mind you, there are several different outlets through one might make theological criticism of Tebow, but I'm going to stick with one (I really don't have that much time to write this blog entry after all). By his words and behavior both present and past, Tebow seems to give the impression that God actually cares who wins athletic contests.
Perhaps God had a rooting interest in David vs. Goliath. Otherwise, I can't find a shred of evidence in either testament, particularly in how the gospels present Jesus Christ to us, that this is at all a justifiable belief. Even when Paul starts using running metaphors, he only wants to exhort his readers to finish the race (2 Timothy 4:7); he doesn't say anything about winning it.
While it might be amusing to accuse Tim Tebow of being a closet Pelagian, I really don't feel compelled to do much more than to link you, my two or three readers, to this fanciful Rick Reilly column from his days at Sports Illustrated. It happens briefly, towards the end of the column (you might have to go to page two), but it's about as effetive a refutation of the notion that God is going to play "us vs. them" games with our games just because we do so. While I'm always scared of putting words in God's mouth, even in a literary sense, I can't really argue with how Reilly shoots down that particular jock theology, after Christ has picked up a save for the Cincinnati Reds: "And please stop praying for wins. Put yourself in my position. If your kids were playing each other, who would you root for?" Hate to disappoint, but those folks on the other side of the line are your brothers, Mr. Tebow, if you're really serious about this Jesus business.
But in truth, my attention has been distracted from Tebow by a new entrant into Jock Theology 101: Albert Pujols, who seems to be enrolled in the class with his wife. Pujols has never been quite so vocal and exhibitive about his religious faith, but has (let's be fair here) done a heck of a lot of funding and supporting a lot charitable and religious activities in the area. The impulse is to appreciate Pujols's wilingness to "walk the walk" instead of putting that much energy into "talking the talk." One could even argue that this is how it should be done, if you believe things like the Semon on the Mount (Mt. 6:1-6 in particular--you read that one, Tebow?).
Nonetheless, after taking 254 gartanguo-gazillion dollars to swap uniforms for the next ten years from St. Louis Cardinals red to Anaheim Angels red, the family Pujols was apparently surprised that St. Louisians, the oft-proclaimed "greatest fans in baseball," weren't all sweetness and light about his impending departure, freshly-won World Series notwithstanding. Pujols's wife Diedre apparently took their case to a radio station in St. Louis (not your usual sports-talk station, but a Christian station that had apparently once been partly funded by Pujols).
Presuming that Diedre has not gone rogue, one learns very quickly that for all his good works and apparent sincerity of belief, Pujols may well be getting tripped up on a strange little belief to try to fit into a viably faithful way of looking at the world: Dollars = Respect. Or maybe it's Length of Contract = Respect. Apparently an initial offer of a five-year contract for $130,000,000 (or about $26,000,000 a season) was insulting. (Keep in mind that Pujols is 31 years old; not bad right now, but the end of that contract has the potential to be ugly for the Angels.) Eventually the Cardinals offered ten years and something like $210,000,000, but by then the apparently wounded Pujols was ready to bolt for the big bucks and bright lights of southern California. Diedre Pujols does a little bit of lashing out a fans and a lot of defending Albert, but unless I'm missing something that seems to be the gist of it.
Again, I'm straining to see how that formula works. Maybe Pujols has major faith-based plans for all that moolah, I don't know. But I gotta say I can't make the whole Dollars = Respect fit with anything I've ever known or learned about Jesus Christ. "The laborer is worthy of his hire" and all that, but jeez louise, $26M/year seems a plenty worthy hire for a guy who plays a game.
I have got to admit that right now is one of those times I'm pretty happy not to have children. I can't imagine trying to explain how Tebow and Pujols and their public deeds would fit with the things we'd have been trying to teach them all of their lives. Oh well.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
A rerun of sorts: what Christmas is all about
About a year ago I was feeling frustration over what at the time seemed to me a boomlet of blogs and other sources that appeared to advocate jumping the gun and questioning the value of the season of Advent in the liturgical life of the church. The lectionary readings for the third Sunday of Advent last season prompted in me a response and, I suppose, a defense of Advent (not that it requires a defense from the likes of me). Since I wasn't blogging at the time, or at least hadn't admitted to blogging at the time, it got recorded as a Facebook note.
I would not call it a sermon, yet; I'm sure I'd be required to exegete things differently now, and probably scolded for combining scripture passages and such. Nonetheless, it still expresses some things I find important and valuable, and if perhaps it is of worth to anyone else, make of it what you will.
(Again, remember that the scriptures are last year's, not this year's.)
I would not call it a sermon, yet; I'm sure I'd be required to exegete things differently now, and probably scolded for combining scripture passages and such. Nonetheless, it still expresses some things I find important and valuable, and if perhaps it is of worth to anyone else, make of it what you will.
(Again, remember that the scriptures are last year's, not this year's.)
I have long been a fan of Charlie Brown. Even as a child, I “got” him. I could understand where his perpetual frustration with the world and its inhabitants came from, because I felt it often myself.
My favorite of all Charlie Brown/Peanuts stories was, no surprise, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Even today I’m willing to hold that the existence of that show itself single-handedly justifies the existence of television. For one, I’ve always liked the music, even before I knew anything about Vince Guaraldi or how unusual it was to use jazz as an accompaniment to an animated TV show. But most of all, again, I “got” Charlie Brown’s frustration. At the dramatic climax, when the tree he selects has been laughed and hooted down, and he finally lets out his exasperated exclamation “isn’t there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?”, well, I could feel where he was coming from. I knew what I heard at church, and I saw what went on “out in the world,” and they didn’t match. So yes, I could see where he was coming from.
Of course in the TV show, the absurdly philosophical Linus, having quickly memorized his lines under threat of violence from Lucy, takes center stage and recites the Christmas narrative from Luke (you can’t do that on TV today, that’s for sure!), and everyone is properly chastised; after one small setback the tree is decorated and all ends well. Warm fuzzies safely delivered, everyone can go home happy.
When I read the scriptures offered by the lectionary for this Sunday, the third Sunday in this irritant called Advent, I wonder if Linus has gotten things slightly wrong. (Irritant? It seems to me that this year I hear and see, depending on the media used, more and more people, even those whom I’d never think, looking for a way to edge out of the waiting and watching of Advent a little early and get on to “Christmas” ahead of time. Or maybe I’m imagining things. Anyway, back to the main point.) Yes, Linus has given us a good summary—the best possible summary, you could even say—of what Christmas is. I’m not sure, though, if he—or we—necessarily get from that what Christmas is all about.
The reading from Isaiah 35 points to a day and a world we probably don’t recognize. It is a world turned upside down and inside out. A world in which the desert is blossoming abundantly is not the usual world of the prophet. Words like “wilderness,” “dry land,” “desert” . . . these are not places in the biblical landscape typically associated with rejoicing and blossoming. But the prophet keeps driving the images home:
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. (Isaiah 35: 6b-7)
But there’s more; it isn’t only the wilderness being undone. We are also promised sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, dancing for the lame, and speech to the mute; even the infirmities and disabilities that afflict the body are turned around. But beyond physical malady, even more emphasized is something not associated with the wilderness, or the desert: safety.
Through this undone wilderness the prophet sees a road, one promised only to God’s people. No threats will be found there; no lions, no predators of any kind. But this promise is ultimately capped by the image of the “ransomed of the Lord…joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” All this undoing and turning upside down has a point.
If the prophet promises an undoing, the words of the Magnificat are a virtual assault on The Way Things Are. The words out of Mary’s mouth exhibit no ambiguity at all. God looks with favor on the lowly servant. The proud are scattered in the “thoughts” of their hearts (here, I sheepishly confess, I kinda miss the old language; “imaginations of their hearts.” Somehow that seems to get at the falsity of what we conjure up to comfort ourselves all too often. But I digress.) The powerful are brought down, the lowly are lifted up. The hungry are filled, the rich sent away without. The reversal of the world’s ways cannot be more explicit.
[Even if one opts for the appointed psalm instead of the Magnificat, one finds no escape. Even the psalmist proclaims the opening of blind eyes, food for the hungry and justice for the oppressed.]
If there is still doubt, Jesus echoes the very words of the Isaiah reading in his message to a weary, worried, wounded John the Baptist, languishing in Herod’s prison. One can hardly blame John for wondering. After all those years in the wilderness (which was distinctly not blossoming and flowing with streams in his experience), it had seemed so certain. Cousin Jesus, nondescript though he may have seemed, sure looked like he must have been the One, what with all those noises from heaven and things descending upon him.
But now, while Jesus was still preaching out in the countryside, John sat in Herod’s prison, a place people didn’t leave alive. Is this how it ends? Is Jesus really the One? Have I wasted my life just to lose my head to this corrupt so-called king? So he sends some of his disciples, maybe some of the very few left to him, and asks directly: Are you the One? Should I be looking for someone else?
Jesus’s answer seems anything but direct, unless you remember your Isaiah. Again, the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear. Plus as a bonus, lepers are cleansed and the dead are raised. And then the last, cryptic comment: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11: 6). Is that a jab? Something only John the Baptist would understand?
All of these witnesses proclaim in concert that the world as we know it is due for an undoing. A world in which the poor and lowly continue to be oppressed and impoverished, in which the powerful continue to lord it over the powerless, in which the rich are filled to a point beyond gluttony and the hungry only get hungrier; this is not the world proclaimed in Isaiah, in the Magnificat, in the Gospel.
Is it a mistake to tie this world undone, turned upside down and inside out, to Christmas? I don’t think so. While it is no doubt tempting to sprint ahead to the babe in the manger, we do so at our peril.
For one thing, we risk failing to understand exactly what we’re embracing. Even that babe in the manger makes no sense at all without the words from Isaiah, from the Magnificat, from Matthew. Look at it this way: should Prince William and the princess-to-be Kate Middleton ever decide to produce an heir to the throne, where do you think that child will be born? I believe we can be certain it won’t be at a feed trough in Yorkshire, not with all those palaces at their disposal. That’s not how it’s done among those of high status (I hesitate to say “powerful” of the British royal family, but there is certainly still some status invested there if one judges from the tizzy over the engagement announcement). Yet the One we call Messiah, Immanuel, Christ the King, was born in a nondescript setting in a nondescript town in a nondescript backwater of the Roman Empire. Nowhere near Rome, the seat of earthly power. Not in Jerusalem, the focus of spiritual authority. This cannot make sense to us without the images and contrasts drawn by Isaiah, by Mary. Even this babe is part of a world undone. Herod in all his power could not stamp it out, though he tried, brutally. The Roman Empire couldn’t comprehend it.
For another thing, we run the risk of finding ourselves—dare I say it?—on the wrong side of this world undone. Very few of us think of ourselves as “rich,” or “powerful.” We are most proficient at casting our eyes longingly at those with more than us: more money, more power, a better car, a bigger house, a hotter spouse, you name it. But is it possible, just maybe, that we don’t always remember the poor, the hungry, the blind, the lame, the oppressed as being those blessed of God? Are we too comfortable, too much at home in a world where the powerful just get more and more powerful, the rich get richer and richer, and the poor . . . well, the Bible itself says they’ll always be with us, right? Are we too ready to accept that justice is a thing to be bought and sold, that the Golden Rule really does say “he who has the gold makes the rules,” and that the only way to cope with The Way Things Are is to play the game, grab as much gold and power as we can, and as for those less fortunate, well, tough luck, you obviously deserved it somehow?
If that way, The Way Things Are, has found so cozy and comfortable a home in us, then there’s a serious problem. Isaiah’s blossoming wilderness, that desert with springs bursting forth, is forbidden to us. We become the powerful who, Mary warns us, are brought down from our thrones and sent away empty. If we’re at home with the way things are, then we have no part of God’s world undone.
And this, Isaiah and Mary and even Jesus tell us, is what Christmas is all about. All the “Silent Night”s and “Away in a Manger”s are just noise if that babe in the manger doesn’t grow in us into the One Who undoes and throws down the powers and thrones we humans so adore. Without taking time to hear the stern rebukes of the prophets, we risk turning Christmas into little more than a too-cute idolization of a highly sentimentalized children’s story, something too easily accommodated to The Way Things Are and, frankly, something far worse than the crass overcommercialized boondoggle so many of us vocally deplore. That at least is a clearly false and sham “Christmas”; to trivialize the real thing, to try to take what Christmas is without the life-changing demands a true Christmas makes on us, is something like an abomination.
So then, if Isaiah and Mary and Jesus may be allowed to bump Linus from his spotlight, what then do we learn? The desert blooms and flows with life-giving water. The blind see. The deaf hear. The lame walk, even leap (and dance too, I’ll bet). God’s people walk in safety. The lowly are exalted. The poor hear good news. The proud are scattered, the powerful dethroned, the rich denied. And those who are not offended at this undoing Jesus are blessed.
And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Isaiah 35:1-10
Luke 1:47-54
Psalm 146:5-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Saturday, December 3, 2011
The winding down: a status report
For anyone keeping track:
There's one week of classes left in this inaugural semester of my fool's errand. After that comes exam week; with all my exams of the take-home variety this term, that's not quite as meaningful but still represents a lot of due dates. The break between the fall term exams and the beginning of the January term is only a little more than two weeks. Whew. I'm going to be really happy when June arrives, as it is really the only extended break in the seminary calendar. Yeah, I got spoiled on that academic calendar in the past.
After a massive blowing off of steam last night on the part of a good chunk of the UPSem community in the form of Calvin Ball (no, not Calvinball), the last push resumes. I am reminded again that I am very happy to be among the people I am among. My last exegesis paper is puttering along, with progress slow but not nonexistent, as I get tangled in the vines of John 15.
After a relatively quiet term I ended up with multiple chapel responsibilities in the last portion of the term, from simple reading of scripture to nagging and wheedling the seminary choir into a processional hymn with handbells (completely stolen from my vague memories of such a hymn as done at First Presbyterian in Tallahassee, I think), to, this week, singing a recitative in Bach's cantata Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61. The miracle is that I'm in a seminary choir that will sing a Bach cantata; if the experience comes with the misfortune of the world hearing me flail through Bach recitative, it's a small price to pay. The rush of chapel experiences confirms some things I already knew; I can read reasonably well, and the biggest charge I get in some cases is actually being able to choose hymns for a service.
My wife and I have been singing in the choir at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church for the last few weeks, and will continue to do so through Advent. It is an interesting experience, musically challenging as we hoped. After that we will resume visiting other Presbyterian churches in the area, and possibly settle in at a church for the Lenten season when that arrives. It's a strange way to attend church, but for now it strikes the balance between the need to experience a church community over time with the need to cultivate possible places to do an internship down the road. Whether this will continue for the longer term I do not know.
We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my relations, and will spend Christmas here with my wife's. That has become the pattern of our lives. It is a workable compromise.
Miss Piggy is still with us. She is one incredibly persistent dog, approaching eighteen and a half years old. The cats continue to rule. No one with cats is surprised by this statement.
No earth-shattering revelations or ponderous ruminations tonight. A simple status report is all. Useful, though, to remind myself of where I am, and that behold, it is good.
There's one week of classes left in this inaugural semester of my fool's errand. After that comes exam week; with all my exams of the take-home variety this term, that's not quite as meaningful but still represents a lot of due dates. The break between the fall term exams and the beginning of the January term is only a little more than two weeks. Whew. I'm going to be really happy when June arrives, as it is really the only extended break in the seminary calendar. Yeah, I got spoiled on that academic calendar in the past.
After a massive blowing off of steam last night on the part of a good chunk of the UPSem community in the form of Calvin Ball (no, not Calvinball), the last push resumes. I am reminded again that I am very happy to be among the people I am among. My last exegesis paper is puttering along, with progress slow but not nonexistent, as I get tangled in the vines of John 15.
After a relatively quiet term I ended up with multiple chapel responsibilities in the last portion of the term, from simple reading of scripture to nagging and wheedling the seminary choir into a processional hymn with handbells (completely stolen from my vague memories of such a hymn as done at First Presbyterian in Tallahassee, I think), to, this week, singing a recitative in Bach's cantata Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61. The miracle is that I'm in a seminary choir that will sing a Bach cantata; if the experience comes with the misfortune of the world hearing me flail through Bach recitative, it's a small price to pay. The rush of chapel experiences confirms some things I already knew; I can read reasonably well, and the biggest charge I get in some cases is actually being able to choose hymns for a service.
My wife and I have been singing in the choir at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church for the last few weeks, and will continue to do so through Advent. It is an interesting experience, musically challenging as we hoped. After that we will resume visiting other Presbyterian churches in the area, and possibly settle in at a church for the Lenten season when that arrives. It's a strange way to attend church, but for now it strikes the balance between the need to experience a church community over time with the need to cultivate possible places to do an internship down the road. Whether this will continue for the longer term I do not know.
We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my relations, and will spend Christmas here with my wife's. That has become the pattern of our lives. It is a workable compromise.
Miss Piggy is still with us. She is one incredibly persistent dog, approaching eighteen and a half years old. The cats continue to rule. No one with cats is surprised by this statement.
No earth-shattering revelations or ponderous ruminations tonight. A simple status report is all. Useful, though, to remind myself of where I am, and that behold, it is good.
Monday, November 21, 2011
When prospects become tragedies
For a baseball fan this is the dark season as it is. Baseball season is over, and nothing awaits but a giant sucking void between now and the first rumors of spring training in February. Awards are given out in November, which is nice, but arguing over what in heaven, hell, or earth that guy was thinking voting for Michael Young for AL MVP isn't quite the same as Miracle Day back at the end of the season, or watching the kids break in, or hoping that Matt Kemp might get the Triple Crown after all, or whatever part of the season provided that extra boost for you.
For a real, passionate baseball fan, other sports don't quite cut it. Football, the brutalizing overblown spectacle that it has become in the NFL at least, is the antithesis of baseball (George Carlin nailed that pretty well). While I can occasionally engage a little with college football (what was FSU doing Saturday night?) it's not there either, and the B[C]S is a pathetic excuse for a joke, which discredits the whole enterprise beyond repair. Even if basketball were appealing to you, the NBA is in the process of self-immolation, and the college game isn't quite rolling yet. Hockey (more antithesis) is rather shadowy these days, the NHL having in fact ceded its #4 position in pro sports attendance to Major League Soccer, believe it or not. So for a baseball fan, these are bleak, sad days, with little solace on the horizon.
Things are bad enough, in other words, without real life intruding on the escape-world that is fanship. And yet real life has intruded, violently and roughly, into the baseball fan's offseason in ways to make the mind reel.
First was the kidnapping in Venezuela of Wilson Ramos, a talented young catcher for the Washington Nationals. A little awareness of international news will remind one that this sort of thing is sadly common in Venezuela these days, and other professional athletes have had family kidnapped there for hefty ransoms, but this is the first case I know of where the athlete himself has been the kidnapping victim. This story at least had about as happy an ending as possible, as Ramos was rescued a couple of days after being kidnapped.
Today's story cannot have a happy ending. Greg Halman, a young outfielder for the Seattle Mariners, was stabbed to death while at home in the Netherlands, not long after being part of a tour of major leaguers visiting and giving baseball camps across Europe. Halman wasn't quite the talent that Ramos is, being too prone to strikeouts, but he had made the majors and still had the chance to make it for good. The sadness of having to use the past tense to describe that chance stings, all the more for those who follow that team more closely and perhaps saw him play or maybe even encountered Halman, maybe got an autograph.
Let us be clear: following any sport with any kind of intensity is thoroughly escapist. (Admittedly for some people it seems to be a substitute for real life, particularly among followers of certain teams or college football conferences -- coughSECcough -- but we rightly worry about such people and know something's not right with them, yes?) What is supposed to be the fun thing about sports (besides its unpredictability) is that real-world fears are banished as long as there's a game going on and your team is still in it. Murders and kidnappings and wars and bills and all manner of other stresses are left aside for a time, to root in common with people you wouldn't give the time of day to in real life but to whom you are bound by this one common passion. The only thing you're supposed to be wondering about Greg Halman this offseason is if he can cut down on his strikeouts and be a contributor next year, not oh God, how can this happen? or any of the other questions we always ask when tragedy intervenes rudely in our lives. That in this case murder seems the clear cause (and according to early reports, his brother is a suspect) only deepens the hurt and confusion and disorientation. (This column by Rob Neyer of Baseball Nation suggests that Halman is only the third active major leaguer to be murdered in the history of Major League Baseball.)
No, it's not unique to baseball; a young tight end for the University of Arkansas football team died unexpectedly this weekend as well. So far as anyone can discern foul play is not involved there. There is something particularly disturbing about foul play being involved. Part of the issue is, I guess, that celebrities (which certainly includes professional athletes), despite the increasing tabloidization of celebrity these days, still have a certain untouchability about them in our naive little minds. Yeah, they can screw up their lives with the best of us (and it becomes more entertainment fodder these days), but being murdered still shocks in most cases (the bloodier aspects of hip-hop rivalry a couple of decades ago notwithstanding).
Baseball players are supposed to play until they can't play anymore, then go get old and show up for old-timers games and tell stories and all that romantic stuff. They aren't supposed to get kidnapped or stabbed to death. It's not supposed to be real life. It's supposed to be baseball.
For a real, passionate baseball fan, other sports don't quite cut it. Football, the brutalizing overblown spectacle that it has become in the NFL at least, is the antithesis of baseball (George Carlin nailed that pretty well). While I can occasionally engage a little with college football (what was FSU doing Saturday night?) it's not there either, and the B[C]S is a pathetic excuse for a joke, which discredits the whole enterprise beyond repair. Even if basketball were appealing to you, the NBA is in the process of self-immolation, and the college game isn't quite rolling yet. Hockey (more antithesis) is rather shadowy these days, the NHL having in fact ceded its #4 position in pro sports attendance to Major League Soccer, believe it or not. So for a baseball fan, these are bleak, sad days, with little solace on the horizon.
Things are bad enough, in other words, without real life intruding on the escape-world that is fanship. And yet real life has intruded, violently and roughly, into the baseball fan's offseason in ways to make the mind reel.
First was the kidnapping in Venezuela of Wilson Ramos, a talented young catcher for the Washington Nationals. A little awareness of international news will remind one that this sort of thing is sadly common in Venezuela these days, and other professional athletes have had family kidnapped there for hefty ransoms, but this is the first case I know of where the athlete himself has been the kidnapping victim. This story at least had about as happy an ending as possible, as Ramos was rescued a couple of days after being kidnapped.
Today's story cannot have a happy ending. Greg Halman, a young outfielder for the Seattle Mariners, was stabbed to death while at home in the Netherlands, not long after being part of a tour of major leaguers visiting and giving baseball camps across Europe. Halman wasn't quite the talent that Ramos is, being too prone to strikeouts, but he had made the majors and still had the chance to make it for good. The sadness of having to use the past tense to describe that chance stings, all the more for those who follow that team more closely and perhaps saw him play or maybe even encountered Halman, maybe got an autograph.
Let us be clear: following any sport with any kind of intensity is thoroughly escapist. (Admittedly for some people it seems to be a substitute for real life, particularly among followers of certain teams or college football conferences -- coughSECcough -- but we rightly worry about such people and know something's not right with them, yes?) What is supposed to be the fun thing about sports (besides its unpredictability) is that real-world fears are banished as long as there's a game going on and your team is still in it. Murders and kidnappings and wars and bills and all manner of other stresses are left aside for a time, to root in common with people you wouldn't give the time of day to in real life but to whom you are bound by this one common passion. The only thing you're supposed to be wondering about Greg Halman this offseason is if he can cut down on his strikeouts and be a contributor next year, not oh God, how can this happen? or any of the other questions we always ask when tragedy intervenes rudely in our lives. That in this case murder seems the clear cause (and according to early reports, his brother is a suspect) only deepens the hurt and confusion and disorientation. (This column by Rob Neyer of Baseball Nation suggests that Halman is only the third active major leaguer to be murdered in the history of Major League Baseball.)
No, it's not unique to baseball; a young tight end for the University of Arkansas football team died unexpectedly this weekend as well. So far as anyone can discern foul play is not involved there. There is something particularly disturbing about foul play being involved. Part of the issue is, I guess, that celebrities (which certainly includes professional athletes), despite the increasing tabloidization of celebrity these days, still have a certain untouchability about them in our naive little minds. Yeah, they can screw up their lives with the best of us (and it becomes more entertainment fodder these days), but being murdered still shocks in most cases (the bloodier aspects of hip-hop rivalry a couple of decades ago notwithstanding).
Baseball players are supposed to play until they can't play anymore, then go get old and show up for old-timers games and tell stories and all that romantic stuff. They aren't supposed to get kidnapped or stabbed to death. It's not supposed to be real life. It's supposed to be baseball.
Friday, November 18, 2011
An impure God
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Even as I stagger to a break in our academic schedule around here--blessings on Union Presbyterian Seminary for calling off classes for the entire week of Thanksgiving--and even as I occasionally wonder if I'm somehow "not getting it" at times, I continue to be fascinated by the splintery history of doctrinal squabbling that is the story of the early Christian church. As any historian will gladly note, even if it sounds a bit cliched anymore, you can learn from the past, or you can repeat it.
One of the tendencies that seems to underlie much of the theological debate of the era from roughly the 300s to the 500s or so is the question of just how much God could actually be involved in the muck and mire of human nature. No, this is not the theological question of how much God might be implicated in the sinful nature of the world--my brain is still short-circuiting on how to process that theological debate. Here the question is whether or not, given the sinful state of humanity, just how much can it be said that God--the Divine, the All-Powerful, the Transcendent, all that good stuff--could be said to have any direct involvement in the redemption of that sinful humanity. This was a difficult thing for the ancients to wrap their early-century minds around, and I suspect it still twists a few minds these days (though perhaps in a different way). (Bear with me, folks, this gets to be a bit of a thicket.)
Arius, the chap whose name has become affiliated with a particular and long-standing heresy in Christendom (heresy=the side that lost the debate in the long run, essentially), could not-like so many in his time, it should be noted--stomach the idea of a God the Father (this was the language of the time) Who was not a singular, indivisible, transcent, impassible Being above all, and most emphatically could not stomach any notion that the Son was in any way of like form or substance or equality with that over-all God the Father. A large spectrum of the church of the time bought was Arius was selling, but a broader spectrum could not; such a distant Father and merely-a-creature Son made no sense from the point of view of salvation--what good could a mere creature do in that respect? They may not have known exactly what they believed at this point, but they knew what they couldn't believe, and Arius's extreme subordination of the Son to the Father was more than they could accept. Their response, eventually, can be found in no less a place than the very Nicene Creed still used in many churches today, with its assertion of a Son who was "eternally begotten of the Father," "being of one substance with the Father," "begotten, not made," "was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." The making of that creed, which took two different councils (not just the Council of Nicaea), a bit of imperial arm-twisting from Constantine, and a whole lot of argument (some of it quite bitter) to hash out, is one of those events which brings to mind the old saw that those who enjoy sausage should not watch it being made. Nonetheless, it was made, and still hangs around today in confessional churches of many denominations, and is formative language for understanding how the early church got to a notion of a trinitarian view of God.
By no means was the church through haggling over the nature of Christ, however. Even as the need to refute Arius was provoking the trinitarian refinement above, other early church thinkers were still continuing to struggle with its implications for understanding Christ and what it meant to speak of a Son Who came to be crucified. How can an immutable, impassible, transcendent God conceivably be said to suffer? What could it possibly mean for Christ to be both "fully divine" and "fully human"? How could that even be possible?
Quite a few third- and fourth-century Christian bishops and such took a whack at this contentious question. Apollinaris of Laodicea argued that the Word (or the Son) took on a human body only; no human mind or soul or will was involved, preserving an absolute unity. This position was naturally found wanting; Gregory of Nazianzus busted that claim up with his effectively pithy formulation "what He did not assume He did not heal," meaning that if the Son did not in fact take on in some way the full range of humanity--body, soul and all--then the whole range of humanity--body, soul, and all--was not fully redeemed by the Son. Again, the church was nudged into a particular affirmation it didn't quite know how to handle yet. [Yes, I have borrowed the old-fashioned practice of capitalizing pronouns referring to God in some way, mostly because I find it helpful to keep track of exactly who or Who I'm talking about.]
The nudge became a full-fledged shove when Nestorius proposed his two-natured, Word-plus-man christology, in which Divine and human natures were present in Christ but were totally distinct from one another; the divine nature was not at all affected by the human nature, nor vice versa. This did a very nice job of protecting the notion of an immutable, impassible, all-transcendent Deity, but again failed the sniff test where a saving Son was concerned; could such a duality possibly live up to John the Evangelist's eloquently direct phrase "The Word became flesh"? Didn't that end up sounding more like "The Word got carried around in a flesh suit for a while" instead? Hashing this one out was even thornier than before, but nonetheless the church could not quite let go of the idea of the suffering Son; after much back-and-forth Nestorius was enlisted in the ranks of heretics as well, and the church more or less settled on a position that established once and for all the necessary joining of Word and humanity, even if it at times had to concede that the nature of such a union was rather difficult to explain (and believe me, I've left loads of fun out of this quick-and-dirty summary, including the whole business of what role Mary played in it all).
What I find fascinating in all this tangle of theological debate is the absolute mania on the part of some to protect the absolute impassibility, immutability, and transcendence of God the Father. I find it fascinating because these people (Arius, Nestorius, and the like) seem to be putting much more effort into that protection than God did. The position at which the church finally arrived posits a thoroughly mind-boggling idea; that a God Who (as the church has reckoned) is indeed all-powerful, transcendent, immutable, impassible, and all that stuff, was less interested in preserving that all-powerful, transcendent, immutable, impassible dignity than in doing whatever it took to restore His fallen creation. God would rather get down in the mud with us to bring us back to God, than preserve God's dignity. This is mind-blowing, when you think about it. God would rather go through the whole of human experience, from infant pooping his swaddling clothes to angsty teenager, single adult, itinerant preacher/miracle worker/vaguely insurgent type, to crucified criminal, than to see humanity continue to be cut off from God's embrace.
This does remind me that Arius and Nestorius still have their comrades today. How many people are horribly offended by the phrase "infant pooping his swaddling clothes" above in relation to Jesus? Hmm? And yet, if we're going to talk about the whole range of human experience, how do we avoid the idea that eventually Mary had to re-swaddle the poor child? Certainly today, whether from prudery or an inability to process the notion of a fully human Son of God, there are plenty of people who don't want to imagine a Jesus who, but for sin, lived a fully human life with all the embarrassments and degradations that implies. For that matter, what about the Jesus Who engaged in the nasty habit of breaking bread with the scummier elements of society and giving the good church folk a hard time? The urge is still there to protect God in a way that God does not seem interested in being protected.
This jumbled and ill-formed complex of amazement haunts me as we sneak up on the Advent and Christmas seasons, a time when Christianity marks the beginnings of this earthly intervention. It's worth putting aside some of the frillier parts of the season on occasion to chew over just what it means to call Jesus Christ "the Word made flesh," who "emptied himself," the "fully divine" who became "fully human" and hung with sinners and tax collectors and eventually died about as gruesome and awful a death as humanity has ever devised. It is difficult to conceive and more difficult to explain, and frankly we don't always live as Christians as if we truly believe it. But it's there. Think about it.
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