This post is aimed at practicing Christians. I ask you simply to ponder some things during these few remaining days before Christmas. I don't expect you to agree with what I write, but I do ask you to think about these truths and consider doing something about our approach to this Holy Season.
First, while most of us think of this time as "Christmas," we are still in Advent. There are only three days of Advent left. Yet I doubt that most Christians have given much thought to the spiritual implications of this season which is quickly passing.
Most of us have been so deep into “Christmas” that Advent has gone by with only a passing nod. And I am talking about how Christians celebrate this Holy Season, not about how others approach it.
The purpose of Advent is to prepare Christians spiritually for the coming of Christ. But, unfortunately, most Christians have for weeks now been swept up into “Christmas” Madison Avenue style. The reality of our lives is that the culture has us trained to skip Advent. And, even in the Church we have bowed to much of that pressure.
By the time Christmas actually gets here we are worn out with Christmas, and have been involved in precious little spiritual preparation. And, because we are totally worn out - and unprepared spiritually - Christmas Day, as a religious holiday, is a flop. Most churches in America don’t even have a worship service on Christmas Day. We end “Christmas” on Christmas Eve, which is, of course, still in Advent.
And “Christmas Time,” that time from December 25 to January 6, is essentially ignored in many churches, although it is an official time on the Church calendar and has been for over 1500 years. The “twelve days of Christmas” are remembered in an old song, but seldom in our lives.
By the time evening of the first day of Christmas arrives, we are spent. We have already sung all the carols, opened all the presents, eaten ourselves into a stupor, are worried about getting the tree down and putting away the decorations; and, far too often, are also worrying about how we are going to pay for all that we charged to our credit cards for “Christmas.”
I have never been able to change how we celebrate Advent and Christmas in any local church I have served -- because members would not tolerate it. I may have wanted to do it, but wanting is one thing, and doing is quite another.
But I do think that we need to know that, when we are caught up in the consumerist myth of Christmas as a grand spree of planning, decorating, spending and gluttony, we are giving up something that, until the last half of the last century, was a precious part of celebrating the birth of Christ throughout the entire history of the Church: And that is simply waiting for Christmas.
Advent is the time of waiting for Christmas; the God-given chance to wait and ponder and wonder; to pray and hope and anticipate and marvel; the time to look forward spiritually to what Christians believe is one of the greatest events of all time: the Birth of the Messiah.
And then, after that birth, the Church has always said that we are to celebrate a glorious time of joy and peace called “Christmas Time;” a time that does not end until January 6th ; that is, until the Day of the Epiphany: the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles, and the traditional day that the magi are said to have arrived in Bethlehem.
Can we change all this and put a true Advent and a true Christmas season back into our church life? Theoretically we could try; but I seriously doubt we could do it. The chances are that we are incapable of turning the tide of the culturally controlled, commercialized Christmas, which has now so pervasively invaded our homes and, it is painfully obvious to me, the Church.
The truth is that most Christians like things in their local churches just the way they are. And it is equally true that most of us like to celebrate Christmas the way we have always celebrated it.
But, even if we Christians don’t change our habits within our faith communities, some of us could do something individually, if what I am saying rings a bell with a few of you. And that something is, each in our own way, in our own families, in our own hearts, remember to celebrate Advent in Advent and Christmas at Christmas.
Sue and I do this, and we believe that we have a more spiritually rewarding Holy Season than we did before we started paying attention to the distinctions between Advent and Christmas. We have found that it is actually possible to slow down, take a deep breath, and sit in wondrous anticipation of the miracle that is about to unfold before us. And, having gotten some personal perspective on Advent, we can wait for Christmas to come.
Perhaps it is too much to ask of others this year, but Advent and Christmas come to us every year. And it is never to late to learn what they truly were designed to be. I honestly believe that Christians could move forward spiritually were we only to go back to the intended purpose of these Holy Days for our faith, and then plan our lives according to a spiritual calendar and not a secular one.
To get us pointed in that direction I want to share with you two beautiful yet simple writings by two of the most spirit filled Christian writers of the last half century. First, something Henry Nouwen wrote about this Holy Season. It’s very short.
Listen to what he has to say about this marvelous season of Advent/Christmas.
“Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness. I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God’s saving power; but over and over again I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world. Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the “shoot that shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.”
Only one who understands the spiritual waiting and expectation that is Advent could write that.
And finally, let me share with you an Advent prayer of hopeful intercession, a prayer that is a call to Christ to come to us once more. A prayer that could only be written to one who has lived Advent in true anticipation of the coming of the Lord. This Christian prayer is by Frederick Buechner.
“Thou Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Wherever there is war in this world, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope — come, thou long-expected one, with healing in thy wings.
Holy Child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, — come thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings.
Savior, be born in each of us who raises his face to thy face, not knowing fully who he is or who thou are, knowing only that thy love is beyond his knowing, and that no other has the power to make him whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for thee -- even though he has forgotten thy name. Come quickly.
Amen.”
My prayer for each Christian is that we will make room in our hearts for the few remaining days of Advent, and for the glorious coming of the Savior at Christmas. And for all of my dear friends, both those who do and those who do not share my particular faith, I pray that you will find peace and blessings in your lives now and in the new year that comes swiftly upon us.
God bless you all.
This is a love story within a love story, and a humble gift to ALL of my new and wonderful friends here on Open Salon. It is, as you would expect, a Christian story written by a retired Christian pastor. Please understand that. I am who I am and my faith is what it is.
But I mean no disrespect to any who believe differently, or who do not believe at all. I have no interest in or intent to proselytize my faith. Had I any this would not be the place to do it. Christians may see this story as their story, others, of course, may not.
But I do pray that the many friends I have made here who are not Christians, who might have at one time been Christian but no longer are, who may be of another faith altogether, who have belief systems that does not involve organized religion, or who have no belief system at all, will find some words of love and hope in this message that are universally applicable expressions of the best of what the human condition can be.
Those who hold themselves to be superior to others and who hold their religion high over the heads of others, who look down on those who do not share their faith, have much to account for. Those of you who know me know that I am not that kind of man.
And so, my friends, this is my Christmas gift, humbly offered, to each of you.
Since Advent started and the preparation for Christmas began in earnest I have been thinking of the most important day on the Christian calendar. And, at the same time, I am sometimes painfully aware that you cannot turn on the television without seeing another repackaged “Holiday Special.” And every TV ad beckons us to buy, buy, buy, recession or not. We are told that this will not be a true Christmas without this new car, or perfume, or that toy, or these trinkets.
As my thoughts have drifted back to that most holy day on the church calendar they have turned to another Advent and Christmas season much like this one that occurred 16 years ago.
Sue and I were driving from St. Louis to Sedan, Kansas in the far southeast corner of that State. We left the interstate at Joplin, drove through Joplin on US 66 and then caught US 166 which crossed into Kansas and worked its way west to Sedan, about 90 miles.
This part of the trip was on two lane highway that took us through many small towns as dusk was falling. And each small town was decorated with lights. Lights and evergreen garland intertwined were wrapped around street lamps, and strung neatly on wires high across main street. Giant candy canes, Santas and candles topped each street lamp. It was all very pretty.
But amidst the glitter and the anticipation of both the Christ Child and Santa and his reindeer, there was a sadness deep in my soul that bore down on me. My “step” grandfather, Sam Shade, a man who did not know the meaning of the word “step,” the man who claimed both my father and me as his own, who loaned me money several times when I had no other way to continue college, was dead.
In some ways that seemed totally impossible for a man who was a legend in Kansas journalism, who owned, published and edited small Kansas county seat weekly newspapers for over 60 years. A man I loved with all my heart and knew that the feeling was mutual. Where was I to turn to even begin to deal with this loss? I, a pastor, knew what to say and do to help dozens of others go through the same grief process. But I was hopelessly out of my element when it came to consoling myself.
But in spite of the stark contrast of the happiness I could see out of my window as I drove through the decorated villages and the pain of losing Sam, something kept drawing me back to that holiest day of the Christian calendar. My thoughts kept turning back to the memory of another death, to another time and place, and to the great gift of hope that followed that death, because, for once, death did not win. My thoughts turned not to Christmas but to Easter, the greatest of holy days for those of my faith.
In the midst of all of my personal grief and pain and at a time when the world called me to be joy filled, my faith reminded me that we Christians are not so much a Christmas people; but rather we are an Easter people living in the shadow of the Cross, for each of us must on day go through the “valley of the shadow of death.”
That could be a somber thought if we do not remember that those words of the Psalmist are intended to be precisely correct: we go “through” the valley of the shadow of death, and death cannot contain us. We are promised by the One who did it that there will be resurrection and renewed life on the other side of that dark vale. And it is there, only there, in that saving promise, where our hope lies.
One can fairly ask what any of this has to do with Christmas. And my answer is everything. Christmas cannot, even when carefully understood in the clearest statements of orthodox theology, stand on its own. And yet most Christians focus mainly on the birth of the Messiah, in both its aspects of faith and of secular commercialism. And we often so confuse and conflate the two that Christ himself could not unravel the tangled mess that Christmas has become.
Most good Christians believe that spending an hour or two in church on Christmas Eve celebrating the birth of the Messiah in word and song and prayer pretty much does it; gets us through our Christmas obligations, and lets us get back to what is really important like food, fads and football.
We do this shamelessly. The church has been saying for two thousand years that Easter is the great feast day of the Christian year. But it has far less appeal to us than the promise of Christmas, with its confused conflation of religious and secular idols, its blending of Christian truth and pagan myth, secular fairy tales and commercial magic.
We are drawn like moths to the bright allure of the Christmas message of peace and good will, of close-knit, idyllic families gathered together, and of a mystical, magical baby lying in a manger. These are the things that tug at our heartstrings, even as the hucksters of consumptions tug at our pocketbooks.
The current Christmas message in many, many churches in American today, especially in the prosperity preaching mega churches, is “Salvation by Good Will.” This message says that a magic, mystical baby will cure our ills, ease our pain, pull our families together, restore our self esteem, overcome our loneliness, and relieve our bitterness, our resentments and our anger.
This message says that just to wait for, to hear a song about, to hope for, the coming of this miracle child will restore our faith in ourselves and in humankind, and, somehow, make us whole. And, depressingly often, we believe it.
I am not a scrooge. I do not intend to become the OS Grinch that stole Christmas. We need the hope and joy and the heartwarming truth of the real Christmas message. We rightfully hunger for stories that talk about peace and goodwill, about the innocence of a baby in a manger. We need our spirits lifted in a world sadly lacking in words of kindness, compassion and care. And, yes, we desperately need the Christian Christmas message to help offset the materialism that our consumption crazed society is determined to make the core message of this holy season.
But even as important as the Christian Christmas message is, it should never be confused with the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is not even the second most important message of the Christian faith. If one were to take the time to read the Advent scriptures in the Christian liturgical calendar you would quickly see that none of Advent is focused on building up to the coming of a magical baby in a manger.
Rather, the Advent message that precedes Christmas is an instruction for believers to be alert, stay awake, watch for, and prepare for the coming of the fully prepared Lord of All. The message is that the Master is coming and we know not when. The focus of all of the Advent passages, every year, is on preparation for the One who comes to save the world, not by his birth, but through his actions, his witness, his death, his resurrection and his enthronement as Lord of Lord and King of Kings.
Christians should not await the coming of the Christ child in the wide-eyed innocence of those who know nothing of what will happen to that child. No. We await the coming of a child with whom we are totally familiar, a child we already know. There have been over 2000 years since the coming of that child; 2000 years to learn and study who he was, how he lived, what he would become, and how he would die.
That is the true Christmas story. Christians should own this story, make it a part of us. Own the story of the baby Jesus in the manger, yes; but also own the story of a Messiah, a suffering servant foretold by the prophet Isaiah. It is the story of One who overcomes a stumbling, bleeding walk up a narrow path to the top of a dirty, wind blown hill outside of Jerusalem, struggling under the burden of a Cross on which he will die. And it is this same man, Emmanuel, God with us, who three days later will be raised by God the Father to live in glory; the same man who has offered to us a share in his everlasting salvation, in glory for all eternity.
And so, as we approach Christmas Eve and Day we are watching not only for the coming of a baby in a manger but for the coming of our Resurrected Lord and Savior. And “watching” in the Biblical context does not mean sitting around doing nothing else. The scripture is clear that watching includes preparation and working to be ready for his coming.
If we set our eyes too low we will never be able to truly watch for the coming of Christ. We must lift our eyes upward from the manger to the Cross, and then even above that, to the resurrected Christ and to his enthronement as Christ the King. Because it is there, and only there, where true Christian hope lies.
And when our eyes are properly focused on Jesus and his teachings we will know how to prepare for his coming, for he has already told us that we are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned. When we do that we are saying with Christ’s mother, Mary, ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”
This salvation that Christ offers in not only for ourselves, not even primarily for ourselves, but rather it is so that we can be a blessing to others, to those who have little or nothing of this life’s blessings. Can we hear that message through the din of our holiday buying and feeding frenzy? That is the true question of Christmas.
Can we look down on the small babe in the manger and see who he will become, what he will have to do and how he will suffer? Can we look into his eyes and see the hope he has for us, the strength he offers us, while we go about the hard task of preparing for his return?
I think we can. I think we can because all of us, Christian or not, believer or not, are not innocents. We are a people who share a common human story. I figured that out 16 years ago.
As Sue and I stood that December on a bitterly cold, windy and snow blown day, gathered with a handful of others under a flapping canopy tent, I felt loss and pain and fear. But then an old Baptist preacher reminded us of the old, old story and of the promise it held for each of us. It was a story of promise for each who chooses to believe, a story of hope and of love beyond comprehension.
And as Sue and I drove back toward Joplin to the interstate on those two lane roads through the Chautauqua Hills that Sam so loved, we drove through the same small towns we had come through the day before. It was getting along toward dusk. The Christmas lights were coming on; reindeer were prancing in front yards, and, with the help of one faithful reindeer who struggled under his weight, Santa was trying desperately to climb back onto a rooftop that he had fallen off.
And in the lea of the wind, protected by some shaggy old cedar trees in the front of an old Methodist church, the lights came on as we approached, and we slowed to look at a well worn and slightly bedraggled manger scene.
And, finally the tears came, followed by a small sense of release in my heart. For at last I knew what it all meant to me, not what it should mean to others, but what it meant to my life, to my loss, to my fears.
I finally knew that all my preparation, all my helping of others, all the calls at 4 a.m. to come to someone’s side, all the things I had been studying and preaching all those years applied to me as well. I knew finally that it wasn’t selfish to want and need God to come to me as well as to those I prayed he would come to.
I finally figured out that he did all this for everybody, and that everybody included me. That same promise is offered today to all and will be offered until the last days.
At that time I could not have put it into words, which seemed pitifully small to contain such a cosmic reality. But I now knew the meaning of the real Christmas message, and the hope it contained. I knew that Christmas was nailed to a Cross, lay in a tomb and rose in glory that we might be found innocent in the eyes of God, though we yet be sinners.
And I knew that the loss and the pain that I felt on that windy Kansas hilltop could never take that knowledge away from me. I knew that in the hands of God Sam would be OK, that I would be OK, no matter what I had to face in the future.
I remembered through my tears what that babe in the manger was really all about. I remembered that his story was my story, the story of Christians everywhere. And I knew like nothing I had ever known before that there was hope and eternal life available for only the asking because of the coming of that child. I knew that if God could capture my heart and hold it gently in his hand that he could and would do the same for any who but asked.
And so my Christmas gift to all here in the family that is OS is that faith, hope and love can conquer any mountain we must ever climb, can bridge the widest valley between us and our fellow men and women, and that we can come to know and love one another without consideration of any boundary that any human may erect, because the God of the universe has made those boundaries irrelevant. We only have to ignore them.
May blessings and peace be with each of you and with your families from this day forward and for evermore.
Monte
Its certainly an interesting perspective, and it was a popular and pretty song. But it is rotten theology. It says everything looks pretty good when viewed from afar. Which is, of course, often true. I even joke that I look pretty good – from a distance!
The theological implication, however, is that “from a distance” is precisely how God sees us. This God conjured up in the mind of the lyricist is remote, distant and most of all, obviously blind to what is really going on “down here” on earth.
And, seeing nothing out of order, oblivious to the details of our lives, he simply watches. He doesn’t DO anything. He just watches. He watches like we would watch a bunch of ants carrying off a moth, or like we watch a far off tornado or a hail storm, fascinated but uninvolved since it doesn’t affect us.
But, up close to the action, down here on earth, it is, in fact, quite a different story. The icecaps are melting, glaciers are disappearing, polar bears will likely be extinct in the wild in my lifetime, all because of global warming. The forests are decimated as are hundreds of mammal, reptile, and insect species. The streams, rivers, and seas are polluted.
And we humans use our greatest powers of ingenuity and creativity for humiliating and destroying other human beings. People suffer and die; people lie, cheat and steal, poverty runs rampant, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Of course, none of this is visible “from a distance.” But, when viewed up close and personal, it is all too much. Our world, and too many of our lives, are a complete mess.
The song does have a moral message, a positive, hopeful humanistic message. The lyricist wants us to become who we appear to be when viewed “from a distance.” From a distance we are one, no one is in need, harmony echoes through the land, and hope dwells abundantly in every home.
However, for the songwriter, in order to do this we must climb out of the hole we are in. God is “up there” and “looking down.” – but he isn’t doing anything, and he has no intention of doing anything.
The song suggests that God cannot save us; only we can save ourselves. The changing, the peacemaking, the forgiving, the healing, and the saving is our work. There is no hint that there is far more evil in this world than man can even imagine, let alone hope to end. There is far more pain than we can heal, far more greed and hatred than man alone can handle. It has always been so.
If that is true, then what do we do? Do we throw up our hands and just give up? Who do we turn to to help us when we cannot begin to create our own future? When everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket and nobody seems either to care or to be able to do anything about it if he or she did care, do we just give up, turn in 0n our selves and ignore the reality of our human condition?
St. Paul has an answer to that, but his is an entirely different perspective than that of the lyricist. In his letter to the church at Phillippi he urges the congregation to repentance, change, and holy living not because God is far away, but because “The Lord is near.” (Phil 4:5b).
Paul, like the song writer, is concerned about the gap between humans and God. However, unlike the song, the unified thrust of Paul and of all the biblical writers is this: we, through our sin, created the gap between God and man. But the gap is closing, and we aren’t the ones closing it.
The chasm is being filled, the road is being made straight, cleared of obstructions, being made ready for the coming of the Lord. The great gulf between God and humanity is being filled, but the filling in is coming from God’s side. God is coming closer.
God’s increasing nearness is not because we have climbed up higher to get his perspective on things. We have already tried that with the building of the Tower of Babel. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. We are incapable of climbing up to visit God; and we are not wired to solve all the injustice, cruelty and destruction that our minds are wired to conceive.
No, the great gulf between man and God is being filled by God because God has climbed down, seen what is going on, and made a decision to do something about it!
Paul didn’t just make this idea up. From the beginning the prophets of the Lord have urged us to get our act together because “The Lord is Coming.” John the Baptist, in the tradition of the prophet Isaiah, appealed to God’s certain coming – as a way of urging humans to live justly and mercifully with each other. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” John shouted. “Make his paths straight.” God will come, John announced, and in that day “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk 3:6).
The Gospel of John (Jn 1:1-14) tells us that God is not content to watch from a distance as we go on bungling our stewardship of creation and mangling each other. Rather, God is coming; the gap is closing.
To be sure, there is a very real distance between God and us, as there must always be between Creator and creature. We are the work of God’s hands; we are not now and will never be God. Our ineptitude is obvious even when written in the most positivly slanted of the histories of the human race.
Unfortunately, many people assume that the distance between God and us is so grand and infinite that is unbridgeable. And, since it is unbrigeable it is irrelevent. The song writer clearly implies this to be the case, and appeals to us to do whatever it takes to make the distant view of earth a reality. We are to create the perfect, peaceful world that God thinks he sees because he is too far away to know any better!
Would that we could! But we can’t. We aren’t God, and while we must try to do our best to stop the stupidities of our own destruction, we need help, and a lot of it! Like maybe we need a God that cares enough about us – in spite of our sin, - to come to us! – for we surely can’t get to him on our own. And how many centuries of incompetent stewardship of this creation do we need to live before the obvious dawns on us? "We can't do this by ourselves!"
And yet, ironically, that is precisely the good news that Advent brings! The good news is that the gap between God and man has been breached. God has rushed into the world to meet us. In a few days Christians throughout the world will celebrate the truth that God has traversed the distance between him and us.
In a week Christians will celebrate our belief that God has come down to live, teach, preach, heal and begin the reconciliation that was prayed for by kings and rabbis, urchins and prophets. Over two thousand years ago on a cold night in an improbable village, born to an improbable young woman God arrived – up close and in person – God took flesh and entered this messy world. Or, as the Bible so eloquently puts it: “the Word became a flesh and dwelt among us.”
As we near the end of this Advent season the waiting, and listening, and hoping and praying that God will, in Isaiah’s words “…tear open the heavens and come down,’ is coming to an end. And a Christmas truth believed by all Christians will be proclaimed: that the long awaited miracle has happened: Christ has come, Emmanuel, “God with us.” And never can it be said that he knows us only “From a Distance.”
My prayer is that all, regardless of religion, belief system, or personal faith, will know the joy that comes from feeling the closeness of God in their lives. And if you do not acknowledge the existence of God, if you have no belief system or personal faith at all, if your personal spiritual journey has not led you to faith, I hope that you too will find peace, love and the friendship that enables us all to help to do our part to make this small planet a better place than it was when we inherited it.
Monte
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