Tag Archives: Christmas

The Incarnate Spirit

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a Sermon for Christmas

Merry Christmas! We have joyously arrived at the eve of Christmas, that day in which we celebrate, not just the birthday of a special child, but the very incarnation of GOD: GOD’s incredible presence with us and in our world.

It is one of our favorite feasts and holidays. One that brings great joy and fellowship throughout our world. And hopefully most of us feel so joyous after a particularly rough season of Advent this year.

Tonight, we celebrate the kickoff to a great season characterized as much by our family experiences of divine fellowship as by A Charlie Brown Christmas. A time in which our experience of the power of GOD’s work in our lives is found where it always is, in the love and generosity of our friends, our neighbors, and even strangers.

The name we use for the holiday is Christmas, which is not a description of the holiday itself, but the traditional Latin celebration of the holiday in the Christ Mass: three masses at night, dawn, and day, to celebrate three aspects of the Incarnation. A more fitting name for the holiday may be the Feast of the Incarnation, the day in which we celebrate in worship the coming of GOD’s holy Word in human form, that Jesus would be born as a human, live as a human, and would die as a human.

We are also reminded in the Incarnation that Jesus didn’t come once, 2,000 years ago, only to stay away. That Jesus comes to us and will return to reconcile the world. This understanding of this feast day means that our focus isn’t only on that little baby, but on the promise of change and transformation that comes with him. The promise that we will be changed inside and out. As individuals and as a society. And that our work is found in bringing that change to the world and in Christ’s name.

And this is the rub; the part that continues to challenge us. The Incarnation, then, isn’t just about GOD coming among us and Jesus being born or even the promise of Jesus’s return. The Incarnation means that as Jesus came as the Word among us, we are to become incarnational. That we are part of GOD’s revolution. We are compelled by Paul to be the hands and feet of the Body of Christ, the living embodiment of GOD. We are compelled by Jesus not to act certain ways but to be certain people. We are to live intentional, Spirit-filled lives of devotion to GOD, the holy trinity.

Tonight, as we sing, eat, and drink, may we see Jesus in one another. That little bit of magic we foolishly call “the Chrismas spirit” is not really magic. It is not the result of a seasonal incantation. It is truly the Incarnate Spirit, the very work of GOD in us. Bringing GOD’s priorities of love and joy and service out of us.

May we share that spirit gracefully.

The Three Wise Guys (Eating Scripture)

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Eating Scripture took a holiday to fast for a few weeks, but returns today with a serious hunger, eager to devour Epiphany!

In Epiphany, we are challenged by the fact that what the holiday is intending to deal with is nothing like what people feel on that day. It began as a celebration of Jesus’s ministry, was changed to be about the scope of that ministry and now exists as a bookend to Christmas: a completion of the nativity scene.

Perhaps a bigger question is raised by Epiphany than the gifts and the dudes with the crowns. Who are we in relation to Jesus?

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

How the Grinch Stole this Christmas

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or Guns, Grinch, and Faith

My wife loves that her two favorite Christmas specials are also our daughter’s. She loves A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and it isn’t really Christmas until we’ve watched them both. And now, watched them at least a half dozen times each.

A few weeks ago, I heard a story about Charles Schultz and the making of the Charlie Brown special. He had written in the now familiar climax in which Charlie Brown exasperatingly shouts

“Doesn’t anybody know what Christmas is really about?”

and Linus begins reciting the birth narrative found in Luke 2.

Apparently Schultz’s collaborators were uncomfortable with using such a direct reference to scripture, that they discouraged him from using it, but Schultz insisted.

This is certainly an interesting story, particularly to those that want to keep track of overt displays of Christian speech.

Of the two specials, however, Grinch is a much more radically Christian and disturbingly provocative choice.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Though Dr. Seuss’s story makes no Christian claims or references to Jesus, the Christ child, or the nativity, it displays a much greater example of Christian community than the Peanuts gang. As we learn at the beginning of the story, all of the Whos down in Whoville prepare for Christmas by decorating and wrapping presents. Then they get together for a great big feast and a great Christmas sing! Everybody in town gathers at one table and shares in a great meal and they sing. Everybody, the tall and the small.

This, of course, is the set-up for the Grinch, as he plans to steal, not just their Christmas, but their joy. His intention is to violate them by sneaking into their homes, stealing all Christmas elements and anything they can use to celebrate, including all of their food.

So what happens when the people discover they have been violated? They gather and sing anyway!

No punishment.
No hunt to find the Grinch to try him and execute the vandal.
No arming of Cindy Lou Who to prevent further victimization.

They sing.

As if that weren’t enough, we have that moment, brushed off by millions of viewers as simply “the magic of Christmas,” and not the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Grinch, in hearing the singing is transformed. He returns all of the Christmas stuff and then what happens? They feast.

Is the Grinch not transformed by the Spirit? Does he not repent, turn from his wicked ways, and return to the table, helping prepare the feast?

In light of a season darkened by the tragedy of the Sandy Hook shooting, Grinchy behavior in Washington around the future of our economy in the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations, and the annual abandonment of Christmas on the 26th, like the countless trees tossed to the curb, I can think of no story more important than this for our understanding of what Christmas is actually about. Not the birth of a baby or the pastoral remembrances of years gone by, but the living out of Christian community in the midst of tragedy. Of being moved to be different than the world.

The trouble we have each year is that rather than take the example of the Whos, we take on the mantle of the Grinch instead. We shop and wage a war against Advent and shove the poor out of sight. Or perhaps into sight on one day so that we can feel good feeding or clothing them.

found on cranksmytractor.com

found on cranksmytractor.com

Real Christian community sees tragedy as an opportunity to praise GOD. That the “reason for the season” isn’t “Jesus” like the answer on some test, but in actually praising GOD. That putting Christ into Christmas means actually embodying the love of Christ during Christmas, rather than worry about hearing a story about Him or being wished “Merry Christmas” by an underpaid store clerk.

With all of the things we need to work on in 2013, may we make our love and praise in embodying Christian community be the way we make that happen. May we respond to our current tragedies and the evils in our society with love and hope, rather than suspicion and fear. And may we be changed this season, that we might come to appreciate that the love of Christ is so much more important than our stuff—in our homes and our minds.

Winnowing Forks (Eating Scripture)

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Continuing our Advent and Apocalypse theme, we have more from John the Baptizer. Repent, change, because the big guy’s coming up behind me!

Notice, too, the season, the demand for fairness. Just the kind of gospel for the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

Celebrating Fools

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Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, ...

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Epiphany.  It is one of those church holidays that has morphed over time to become what is known in some parts as “Three Kings Day”.  Originally something else, it is now the day we honor the “Wise Men” or “Three Kings”.  Unfortunately, we celebrate without the hint of irony that comes with getting the entire story backward.

The Birth Story

The place of the three wise guys is folded into the Christmas story in virtually every telling. In fact, the announcement of pregnancy, the travel to Bethlehem, the birth, and the arrival of three dudes with presents is all wrapped into a single story.  That story is then treated as simultaneously innocuous (as in “look at the cute little baby!”) and the only means for eternal salvation (as in Jesus’s time on earth is entirely irrelevant, as His death is all that matters).  The very real and grittiness is scrubbed out of this season to allow us to feel glossy and happy.

Epiphany is not about the birth.  In fact, it’s origins had nothing to do with the wise guys, but with the baptism of Jesus.  That’s right: we skipped from birth to Jesus getting dunked in just 12 days!  Now, we save that until we’re in the season of Epiphany.  The day itself has become about the Magi.

The Magi

Everyone who studies the Bible gets a very rude awakening when dealing with this story.  We are used to these religious images of kings, with crowns, expensive clothes, and riding camels, showing up at the stable (?) with these presents on the night Jesus was born.  The text reads nothing like that.  Neither does it infer anything like that.  What it says is quite the opposite.

These guys that show up are not kings or “wise” men, but astrologers.  Yes, those astrologers [and this is my kind]. Not philosophers, but people seen by and large as quacks and frauds.  These are the “wise men” sent to find Jesus.

Which begs the question of why we tell this story so wrong.  It has to be more than scrubbing away the grime and grit.  This is calling these people the very wrong thing.  Sort of.

The truth is that these astrologers truly are wise.  Wise to GOD, rather than to the world.  The world wouldn’t call them wise.  The world think they’re fools.  And, let’s be clear, the world includes the Jewish leadership.

Jester

Image by lokidude99 via Flickr

Think of Shakespeare’s plays and how the fool, the jester, and even the crazy, are the ones gifted with true vision.  Everyone else is corrupted and blind (sometimes literally), but the fools are given the gift of seeing things for how they truly are.

These fools are the people in the story that get it, and reject the majority and the authority.  They bring gifts, rather than weapons (to kill the baby boy).  The fools are the ones who are truly wise.

My trouble with our telling of the story is that this is so essential to their character.  It isn’t that even kings bow to Jesus (perhaps one reason we think of the fools as kings), but that the earthly kings were blinded from seeing Jesus; that fools and outcasts have real vision.

When we, instead, shortcut to call the fools wise, we skip the most essential step: the part in which we see what true wisdom involves.  It allows the earthly powerful to maintain their power and the earthly wise to be seen as wise, when this incredible moment reveals that to be totally false.

Today we celebrate fools.  For it is in fools that GOD entrusts the real Kingdom.

On the 12th Day of Christmas

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I love vigilantly keeping the Christmas decorations up through Christmas.  Take a look at what we did for the kids at my tumblr page.  My wife did the fireplace and I did the logs and fire.  We also had a great time counting down the days!

Tonight the Wise Guys show up.  What do you think they will bring?

It’s Still Christmas, Jerk!

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Barnes & Noble at The Shops at Tanforan mall i...

Image via Wikipedia

Last week was a particularly hard week for us.  My wife is in retail management, so that means we all have to follow the life patterns of the craziest time of the year.  Sales were very strong for our Barnes & Noble and the few times I foolishly ventured near the shopping center, I almost cried since it was so hard to get out.  But considering just how bad last week was, none of us was prepared for this simple fact: people would be such Jack Asses yesterday.

I did ponder this the other day as I was writing my request that people not wish me “Merry Christmas” before it actually was.  I thought about the potential that the actual Christmas season: the time from Christmas to Epiphany: that time that we should be celebrating the 12 days of Christmas and reveling in the “Christmas Spirit” is the time it all goes into hibernation until next October.  I didn’t write it, but I briefly thought about how rude people might be and how all of that hope and good cheer of Christmas isn’t likely to last.  The militants, so eager to demand feilty to the Merry Christmas Mafia would abandon their cause at the first opportunity to make it all about me-me-me again.

Oh, did they.

I thankfully stayed here today and welcomed some good friends into my home.  They brought lunch and I let them entertain my children.  How kind of me, really.  So I didn’t venture out.  But when my wife got home, well, it wasn’t pretty.

She is very pretty.  But she look beat down.  After the past week in which she was exhausted and a little irritated, but mostly excited, she came home despondent.  She dealt with the rudest and meanest customers all year.  She dealt with insufferable, arrogant, pig-headed people.  The kind of “customers” in which the people after them in line have to make some kind of joke out of self defense.  The please-don’t-hate-me-I’m-not-like-them joke that both lightens the mood and demonstrates to the employee she isn’t alone in thinking that rude person was in fact rude.

I wonder what it would be like if we started treating Advent like Advent and Christmas like Christmas, regardless of what the world does.  If we started getting together for Advent parties that are subdued and hopeful, then great big ruckus Christmas parties a few days into Christmas.  If we continued to wish Merry Christmas to people for the full twelve days.  If we continued to spread the love and joy of Christmas beyond the confines of the one all-too-short day we label as “Christmas Day”.  If we loved the jerks at their jerkiest–even when it happens to fall on the worst day to do so.

What if we no longer expected Black Friday and Boxing Day to be the two worst days to go out in public?  What if we instead expected the love, temperance, and generosity that characterize the season?  Would we even recognize our neighbors?

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

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My friend Penny brings new light to Christmas through a discovery of a missing verse from the classic hymn: “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”.

I’ve always loved this evocative hymn, with its angels and their unfurled wings coming to us through a mysterious door from heaven to bring God’s news to us in splendid celestial song.  I appreciate its recognition of our weariness and the sad fact of the constancy of war and strife that drowns out the angels’ love song.  It poignantly reminds us just how much we need a savior.
But it speaks to me even more urgently now, now that I know this verse.  Those of us who do not soar and sing but are ourselves bent, not curled over in caring but bent out of shape – distorted – beneath life’s crushing load of fear or sadness or anxiety or loneliness, or lack of every kind - we are bidden on this night to just rest beside our path and listen God’s messengers singing heavenly music.
Read more from her post: “Merry Christmas!“.

Fixing What We Got Wrong

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christmas 2007

Image by paparutzi via Flickr

My mentor during seminary, The Rev. Darren Elin once remarked that we get our two biggest holidays backwards: we celebrate Christmas the night before and Easter the morning after when it should be the other way around.  Boy was he right.

This is my first Christmas in 5 years in which I wasn’t one of the leaders in worship.  I have to tell you, missing Sunday morning Eucharists is one thing, but not doing a Christmas service is just weird.  But I digress.  I found myself in the same spot everyone else was.  We headed to the “family service” at 4:30 pm on the day before Christmas (which, by the way, is ridiculously early for normal people with families.  I’m just saying.) and we aren’t planning on going anywhere this morning.  And it’s Sunday for GOD’s sake.  Ugh.

I wonder what kind of challenge it really is to switch our priorities.  If we really cared about Christmas as we say we do, why are so few of us in attendance when it actually is?  I’m afraid of what the real answer reveals about us.

  • We care more about family traditions than our church ones; and
  • We care more about our church traditions more than their meanings.

I know all of the legitimate reasons for how we do what we do in the way that we do them now.  Hey, I just succombed to it!  I’m just wondering why it isn’t easier.  Why wouldn’t it be easier to get more people to show up on actual Christmas rather than before?  Why can’t we expect people to make room on Christmas morning for worship?

I have to say, considering that whole GOD coming to earth thing, I have to say that it seems like the least we could do.

A Humble Beginning

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My Christmas Message

Christmas isn’t just some story about family.  It isn’t about shopping or gift-giving.  It isn’t about all the hoopla.  And even “putting Christ back into Christmas” is to make Christmas something it isn’t.  It is way more than that.

Have a very Merry Christmas!