A few months ago I happened upon a brand new blog with one or two posts. The blogger’s name is Anna Sarah and she is an Episcopal church planter among young adults or shall we say, “Emerging Generations.” The blog’s title is Leaping Schnauzer, which I haven’t quite figured out yet, but hey, I’m going with it.
I find a couple of things interesting about this blog. First of all, Anna is starting to read some books on the Emerging Church, and so I enjoy her perspective. She gets the need for a broad, diversity of perspectives, understands the complexity of truth, and values people who are different from her. I have this odd feeling that while I may have read more about the Emerging Church, in practice she is way ahead.
Secondly, her whole approach to church planting is missional, or out in the community where people are at. She’s working on building connections in her community and I look forward to seeing where Christian communities spring up. It reminds me of Neil Cole’s book Organic Community.
Lastly, Anna is blogging on topics that I have blogged on in the past, but of course she’s coming from different angles and arriving at conclusions that are sometimes a little different from my own. While she hits on plenty of new things, I really enjoy seeing where someone else ends up when presented with a similar topic.
And one last thing, if I ever figure out what’s going on with the Leaping Schnauzer bit, I’ll let you know.
Christmas Eve 2007 began with Julie rising early to bake crackers, crackers I tell you, to go with the 50+ jars of jam we made to give out as Christmas gifts. More about those later, due to secrecy I couldn’t mention them on the blog. Back to crackers, Julie made all of these wonderful crackers that she bagged. The edges that we couldn’t give made up our breakfast.
Goat cheese and home made crackers is just “delish.”
At some point I dragged myself out of bed and helped Julie pack the car. We then drove 300+ miles to Philly.
Here is the dilemna we often face for Christmas. My apologies to my Catholic readers, but I did the Mass thing for 15 years and to this day just can’t do it. It works for some, but not for me, and so Mass with my family was out. We needed to kill time, but also wanted to celebrate Christmas.
The church I used to attend is a good one and a half hours away from my mom’s place, and the other churches I had attended had several elements that we were a bit uneasy about. I’ll just leave that one there.
What to do on Christmas Eve?
In a brainstorm, I thought of my friend Todd’s church The Well in Feasterville, PA. It is located on the way to my mom’s house and I trust Todd to not do anything weird, cheesy, or unorthodox. Do we have a winner?
I was just thinking about Jesus tonight. I asked God to hold me in awe of Christmas, of the incarnation, of the unfolding of his salvation plan.
It may have happened.
What if Christmas has far more to do with losing, giving away, and outright poverty than anything else? While it’s true that we traditionally give gifts, there is this flip side of getting what we want. So if anything, Christmas is about maintaining an equal balance. We give gifts to people who are giving gifts to us and everything balances out, each left in the same place as before.
Nothing changes, only we let other people buy things for us that we wouldn’t normally go out and purchase.
But the Christmas story is about God emptying himself, becoming poor, risking it all, and becoming a part of creation in order to make us rich, spiritually rich that is. In other words, God takes a “loss” and we score a “gain.” The rich becomes poor and the poor become rich.
Such a thought is startling to me.
We can keep the evening out, balanced approach to Christmas because it’s fun and because it’s now part of our North American tradition. It’s not mandatory, but it’s certainly not wrong.
But what seems to be mandatory is the need to give to those who cannot give back, to give in such a way that redemption and justice can happen. Wouldn’t it be amazing to give because of what God has done? What a fantastic way to embody and share the Gospel.
A recent survey of humans concerning their satisfaction with God yielded a record 65% stating they were “very dissatisfied” with the job the almighty is doing on earth these days. When asked to state their reason for giving God such a low grade, a resounding majority cited “distance and mysteriousness” as their chief concerns.
The same survey was given to God concerning his opinion of humanity, and reported back with a 100% “very dissatisfied” rating of humanity. When asked the same follow up question regarding the reason for such a low score, God responded, “distance and lack of faith.”
Alright, so I just made that up.
If there is one problem that Christmas is set up to solve, it has to be distance. People who are distant from God are likely to get themselves into all kinds of trouble. God’s solution for wayward creation was entering it and changing it from within.
God knew that people tend to drift away, and so entered Jesus, walking among the average person. No trumpets, no weapons, no homage, just an average, ordinary person who also happened to be God.
Think of how modern leaders handle a crisis. The leader’s name, identity, reputation, and clout go into solving problems. We look to experts, to authorities, to power. And then Jesus walked up alongside people like you and me and turned the world upside down.
This afternoon I was listening to an interview of a director from the archives of Fresh Air. The director’s father is a renowned director as well, and so Terry Gross asked one of her million-dollar questions, “Did your father give you any advice that has stuck with you,” or something that’s classic gross, I mean Gross.
The father had told his son, “Don’t try to create a scene that is dramatic or funny, just try to make something that is true.” The director added, “That is fantastic advice that I never received in film school.”
And if that wasn’t enough, the director shared another story about his days as a pre-med student who didn’t think he could replicate his father’s success. His father encouraged him to reconsider his career because being a doctor just didn’t have enough magic for him (the son). He was right.
Wow, how many of us are stuck in a job just for the respect that comes with it, not to mention the salary? The magic bit sounds cheesy, but I believe in cheese, I believe in that kind of metaphorical magic, and so I guess I believe in being cheesy.
But the clincher for me was his remark about creating something that is true. Yep, I agree. I bang my head on the keyboard trying to think of something clever, witty, funny, or deep to write and of course it’s a classic case of the watched pot.
And then there are times when I have story to tell, a list to share, or an observation to post from my study of scripture and those clever, silly, and deep thoughts sneak onto the page. I admit that I surprise myself sometimes, asking, “Where did THAT come from?” Of course the cause of that surprise is not always a good thing…
Over a recent dinner with our family we discussed how translators of the Bible have sanitized the image of the Wise Men, referring to them as wise advisors to a far off ruler(s). Christians in the past went so far as calling them kings, as in, “We Three Kings.”
Of course these three guys were really astrologers, royal astrologers who advised kings on the significance of events in the night sky. So I guess Christians didn’t exactly want to celebrate a false religion at the birth of their savior. Think of all the arguments that such a move has squelched, “Mom, if the 3 astrologers could worship Jesus, then I can be an astrologer and worship him too!”
Nevertheless, God went through quite a bit of trouble to make sure a star led these three astrologers to Jesus. And if you want to be a little more challenged, think about this: God played by their own religious rules to point them to Jesus. While not an outright endorsement of astrology, we do have a picture of God going to extraordinary lengths for the sake of these astrologers and their people.
We can only speculate what effect this star and this encounter with the child-king had on the three astrologers, but I think this star/astrologer business does reveal some concrete bits of God. The lines were blurred a little here. God used a religious system that is taboo to point its adherents to the truth of Jesus.
This does not mean that astrology in itself can lead us to God. Far from it. God wanted to shove these guys away from all of that. Why else would he send them on a two-year chase of a star to a far off country?
And so we have a picture of God reaching out to people who were previously on the outside, guiding them in. We also have God speaking the religious language of this people, a thought-provoking development if there ever was one for us.
Technorati Tags: Christmas - three+kings - wise+men - Jesus - astrologers
If Advent is a time of waiting for Jesus to come, then it’s safe to say that he has a lot of competition. We are bombarded by obligations, advertisements, elaborate plans, and a thousand other things to do, each elbowing their way into our lives and staking their claim.
Jesus wants to come in, but things are getting kind of crowded.
How hard it is to enjoy a silent moment, to sing a Christmas hymn from the heart, to feed on the life-giving words of scripture. I tried this last week and found myself thinking of roughly fifteen things that I could be doing with my time.
Chores, projects, and various other things to do: all fighting for a slice of my time, my attention, my life. And when I give myself to them, offer my time, let them come into my life, they take and take, never replenishing, never satisfying, never bringing me closer to where God wants me to be.
Who will we welcome during Advent?
I pray that we can all carve out a piece of our time to be with our Lord, to welcome him, to enjoy him, to discover the extraordinary thing it is to be with him. Jesus is not a commodity to be consumed, but rather a savior to be worshipped and enjoyed.
Praise God for quiet moments to meet with him.
Praise God for his patience and grace.
Praise God for the moment of surrender.
With so many shootings–both in Omaha and Colorado–in so little time, we have much to mourn and much to think about.
First of all, there is the unexpected tragedies that have torn families apart in a season when families usually come together. My heart aches for these victims.
Secondly, there is another tragic element in which two people decided that the only option left in life was a violent end that brought about death, chaos, and fear. How does this happen? As we pray for the victims, we should also pray for the tormented souls out there who are imprisoned by this kind of thinking.
After the tears dry and the wounds begin to heal, we also have some big issues to think about. Having just finished reading an article about nonviolence by Shane Claiborn–in which he is attacked by a gang, refuses to fight back, and comes out of it relatively unharmed–I have been thinking a lot about the use of force and issues of self-defense.
In the case of New Life Church, I was surprised to hear they had an armed guard on campus. It was clearly the right call, especially after the first shooting incident at YWAM, but it is saddening to hear that churches need to think about security now. The matter of using violent force will be a tough one Christians to consider. Now is not the time to figure this out, but we cannot avoid this discussion in the near future.
Another big issue that we will have to consider soon is gun control. When is enough, enough? Will several high-profile suburban shootings finally catch our attention, or will gun control advocates hold their ground as they did after Virginia Tech? Can we learn something from the gun laws of nations such as Germany in which gun ownership is linked with a club in which the members of the club bear part of the responsibility for each member?
Church security and gun laws will have to wait, but in the wake of these tragedies and the terror they have caused, they will need to be part of our discussions in the near future.
::IN A MIRROR DIMLY::
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