Christmas

For Christmas, my husband gave me the flu.  Of course he didn’t mean to, but because of the flu, the sermon I was supposed to be preaching tomorrow is still in its embryonic phases, written in lucid (hopefully) moments between Tylenol doses.  No worries though, the sermon isn’t getting preached anyway.  I’ll be spending tomorrow, most likely, the same way I’ve spent the last five days.  Thanks to Fr. Paul for covering my tail, when I was supposed to be covering his.

But I thought I’d post here the sermon fragment that won’t get preached.  For your edification or, if I wasn’t as lucid as I like to think myself, entertainment.

Blessed Christmas, folks.  Hope yours is healthy and happy.

Because I have kids, I’ve spent a significant portion of my life enduring talking cartoon vegetables attempting to define the “True Meaning of Christmas.” I have to admit, the little asparagus summed up the cultural Christmas pretty well with “Christmas is when you get stuff.” Indeed, the secular Christmas has come to be about nothing more than greed and material status. We buy gifts to make us look good when we give them and we look forward to getting “stuff.”

Having had the flu for the majority of the week leading up to Christmas, I had some time to explore some of the cultural icons of Christmas. Religious context stripped away, symbols floated meaninglessly across my computer screen. A Simpsons episode stated it best, what is the point of a tree which, in Lisa Simpson’s words, has been cruelly chopped down and “tarted up.” Gifts, trees, without meaning, it is just more stuff.

Another of my flu-ridden cultural studies noted that our culture has shaped our Christmas, because indeed our culture’s god is greed. Some Christians may, as the commentator said, put on a good show, but really its about greed. He cited televangelists and Oprah as the icons of Greed-worshipping modern spirituality. Again, its just more stuff.

And then there’s that iconic secular Christmas tune: Santa Claus is coming to town, with its message “so be good for goodness sake.” Now if that isn’t the very opposite of the Gospel message that the real St. Nicholas so boldly defended, I don’t know what is!

So we come to church and look for the true meaning of Christmas here. We find a baby in a manger, a sanitized and romanticized birth story, some cuddly thoughts about shepherds and sheep. But no real answer to the “so what? How then shall we live?” Jesus was born, hooray… but does that change anything? Just like those trees and stars that floated across my screen devoid of context, the baby in the manger is just an absurdity if you don’t know the back-story.

If you want to know the real meaning of Christmas, you have to know the context. John, the beloved disciple, begins, as good stories often do, at the beginning. Literally. In the beginning, was the word. This is John’s Christmas story. In the beginning, before there was anything else, there was the word. His Hebrew readers would know this story; Genesis one begins with those same words “in the beginning.” In fact the Hebrew word for Genesis means beginning. And John’s Hebrew reader would know that in the beginning, God spoke, and nothingness became everything, the cosmos obeyed his command came into existence. In the beginning was the Word.

John’s Greek readers would get the point, too. They would read John’s words as “in the beginning was reason.” Reason, they believed, ordered the universe and held everything together. In other words, in the beginning was the one through whom all things were made. Nothing was made without him. Psalm 19 says that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” And Christmas is about the Word by which all things are made “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” The word by which the heavens were made left the glories of the Father’s presence, and became flesh, and dwelt among us.

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“He was a baby and a child, so that you may be a perfect human.  He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, so that you may be freed from the snares of death.  He was in a manger, so that you may be in the altar.  He was on earth so that you may be in the stars.  He had no other place in the inn, so that you may have many mansions in the heavens. He, being rich, therefore became poor for your sakes, that through his poverty you might become rich.  There fore his poverty is our inheritance, and the Lord's weakness is our virtue. He chose to lack for Himself, that He may abound for all.” - St. Ambrose

Its not about us!

I've occasionally made the jest that my memoirs could be entitled "Raising Father." After all, at home I spend my days picking up after little boys, errant toys and school assignments. Not so different from picking up errant prayer-books and stray altar-ware in the church. Set the table, do the dishes... not glamorous tasks, no matter how we may dress ourselves up to do them.

Once upon a time, a wise priest told some of us that the job of the altar party was to be in icon through which worship could be aided... an icon, what a lofty goal. He is right, but it seems more accessible to consider ourselves a window- invisible by itself but pointing beyond to what's on the other side. Visible invisibility.

Occasionally, while tripping through some liturgical oddity or another I find myself pondering that idea visible invisibility. After all, there is much to be done with dignity and order, but its not about us.

To be present, ready.
Invisible and unobtrusive.
The servant in the King's presence chamber.
To be Visible and incarnational.
Flexible and flowing.
Icon unseen.
Would that it were easy as all that.

On Alban and Missionaries

Missionaries get all the fun. They get to go to exotic places, eat exotic food, hang out with exotic people who need Jesus in an entirely incomprehensible language. Sometimes they even get to have exotic near-death experiences and catch exotic diseases. And when they come home everybody looks at their slides, even the people who groaned at your vacation slides in equally exotic places. In fact churches will even interrupt their Sunday school programs for their slides and talks and appeals for money.

But alas, we can't all be missionaries. Some of us have the unglamorous jobs of earning money, showing up for church, pretending the choir is on key, mopping floors, living domesticated lives. And sometimes we wonder, how in our domesticatedness can we be like those missionaries out in the wilds.

I spent today at St. Alban's Church and the history of the saint was alluded to briefly. But for those of you who may not roam in Anglican clergy circles, perhaps St. Alban is not someone you know well. He's certainly not on the Billboard top forty all time best known saints.

Alban was a pagan, which is pretty much how all the celtic saints started out. You kind of get the impression that Alban was just living his domesticated life, sweeping his floors, when BAM this priest shows up on his doorstep with a few fleets of Roman Soldiers on his tail. He lets the guy in and in the course of letting this fugative missionary priest in to his little domestic scene (in order to escape yet another missionary exotic adventure, death by Roman Military) Alban hears the Gospel.

And knowing himself, new convert that he was, ill equipped to be a missionary, he puts on the priests cloak and takes the place of the priest when the Romans draw near and is martyred. Alban, without ever leaving home becomes the first Christian martyr in the British Isles. But moreover, without ever leaving home, he enables the missionary to spread the Gospel a bit further through the land.

Today nobody remembers the name of the missionary. But they name churches after Alban. Alban, in his little domestic scene, in his one moment of glory, was the reflection of Christ who took on our death when he took on the cross.

I think that's important for those of us who don't go to exotic places. Jesus is the one who is sent, but he is also the great sender. We can reflect him whether we are obediently going out, being sent or whether we obey a call to a more domestic life and remain faithful to sending the faithful.

Kind of cool, that Alban.

A bizarrely domestic posting...

Totally out of place here, but a couple of people have asked for the "Drunken Pumpkin" bread recipe, just because it sounds interesting. So here it is:

2 c. flour
1 c. brown sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 T ground cinnamon
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. ground nutmeg
1/8 t. ground ginger
1/2 c. milk
1 c. canned or home processed pumpkin (add extra spices for home processed if you like)
2 eggs
1/3 c. shortening or butter (mmmm... butter)
1 generous shot of rum, brandy cognac or other "warm" spirits
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 c raisins (optional)

I know the orginal recipe from which this is modified probably has instructions on how and when to add what, but who reads that stuff? Just throw everything willy-nilly in the stand mixer and mix. Bake at 350 for about an hour (less if making small loaves).

I like to top the loaves with cinnamon and sugar or some sort of crunchy caramel sprinkles I got from Pampered Chef when once roped into a party somewhere.... sprinkle on before baking so it sticks. yeah, you knew that.

Ghosts of sermons past....

I recently came across a pile of church bulletin inserts, the ones with the Scripture passages on them, on which I had made notes while listening to sermons during the three years I served at Church of the Nativity. None of the words in bold are my own. The preachers are rarely noted in my scribblings but could be any of the regular staff who were there at the time. But I though a few excerpts were worth sharing, for the good of the order.

"When we start trying to separate the holy from the secular, it is almost impossible." I have no idea what the context of that quote was, though I'm sure there was some riff on separatist movements humming in the background. But the quote is a worthy one. While indeed we can go on about how it is not for us to judge the world, to separate out the holy from the profane, that is God's work... the more interesting aspect of this was the occasion of the sermon: Christmas Day. It is telling, is it not, that man seems to have this inborn need to try to separate ourselves off as holy, to draw the line beyond which there be dragons, to divide the spoils on behalf of the king, when it was Jesus himself who left the realm of holy to join the world of the secular, profane.

"The 'if it feels good' generation yields to the 'whatever' generation." The background hum here was the idea that America is entering a period of "nervous breakdown" and eventually "suicidal tendancies." How does the Gospel preach to a people whose motto is "whatever" and how do we give good news to those who relish their corporate depression. The preacher's answer was in self sacrificial love, which in a culture of depression both speaks to the self loathing tendancy but also stands out sharply with the naval gazing tendancy, both of which seem to accompany depression. What if the depressed are right that we're worthless, that we don't deserve what we have... you see, of course they're right, which is why God's grace is such an amazing gift, which is why we give away our honor, our possessions, our love. The preacher noted that apathy feeds depression, so surely the antidote is action. And the preacher notes the need for genuine action, not only lipservice or obligation works. "Let your love be genuine" he cites, and in a depressed cynical culture, nothing else will speak anyway.

God uses the Assyrians and Cyrus though they do not know god. Israel knows god and refuses to be used. (paraphrased) How amazing that God uses all people, even before the time of Jesus. How amazing that when the faithful refuse God, he still continues to show forbearance. How humbling that the outsider is the one who sets the insiders free to do God's purpose. The preacher pointed out that Cyrus came along with alot of messianic language, anointed king, God going before him... not just in his own culture but in the Scriptures. How awesome that an outsider like us could reflect the work of Christ, even before the incarnation. And of course, Christ was the ultimate outsider, though the people never would have expected their messiah be an outsider. He was outside the system of sin and death in order to lead the people to life eternal.

Which brings us full circle to the outsider stepping inside, the holy stepping into the profane, love breaking into the cynical world. Light in the darkness.

Blessed Advent.