A Jekyll And Hyde Christmas

I am schizophrenic every Christmas. And I am determined to stay this way. No medications accepted! In fact I cannot think of a healthier way to celebrate Christ’s birth.

Christmas excites joyful anticipation every year in me. And it should.

That God would love a sinner such as I so much that he would come into my world to make a way for a personal relationship with God, well, “how wonderful a love like this!” Now that’s a perfect gift.

I am ecstatic that God isn’t Santa who checks his “Naughty and Nice” list twice to determine who gets the lump of coal instead of a precious gift. God knows I have been naughty! I don’t deserve anything good from him. Yet by his grace I have been saved rather than by my own merit. “Joy to the world!” Pull out all the organ stops and let the sound reverberate until the Christmas Eve crowd can’t stand the volume. Then quietly sing “Silent Night” as candlelight spreads through the congregation and we bask in the glow of the spreading hope Jesus brought with him.

Sometime during the preparation season of Advent, something usually stirs in my spirit, like a strange chemical reaction. It transforms a joyous man into a brooding one. Dr. Jekkyll becomes Mr. Hyde. The potion that produces the unpleasant change? It spills from the pages of Matthew and Luke.

There is a dark side to Christmas that we fail to celebrate at great risk to the experience of God’s work in us and in the world. So I welcome Mr. Hyde and celebrate an unsung and little recognized triad of Christmas qualities.

Christmas exalts personal sacrifice and loss. Yes, Jesus left heaven, not considering equality with God something to be grasped. But he did not accomplish this great humiliation except through Mary’s own significant loss. Lost dreams of what life would hold for her and Joseph. Lost respect from neighbors who knew better than to believe a teenager claiming to be pregnant and a virgin. We could discuss Joseph’s losses when he agreed to proceed with the marriage. And what of the losses to both sets of parents?

Very often God only accomplishes his work in the world through the willing sacrifice and personal loss of devoted people. No carol celebrates this holy calling of sacrifice. Yet we must celebrate it. Emanuel came not to fulfill our dreams but his. Without this realization Christmas becomes only another occasion for self-amusement or self-pity. Christmas can become a time when we ask ourselves, “Is my Christian life all about me or all about God?”

Christmas, fully told, heaps suffering onto sacrifice. Imagine Mary’s late term donkey ride to Bethlehem and her giving birth attended by sheep and rodents. Now imagine the agony Bethlehem’s parents soon suffered at King Herod’s hand. The Magi visit and the presence of an infant king precipitated the slaughter of their youngest sons. Then came the difficult refugee years in Egypt.

A fellowship rooted in suffering describes the first Christmas context. All year Christians seek God for the elimination of suffering. And we should. It’s biblical. Yet, Christmas offers a time to celebrate the fellowship of suffering that comes to God’s people. Here is wonderful opportunity to meditate on the value of suffering, even its necessity to God’s Kingdom. Paul claimed a desire to “know…the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” Christmas is an ideal time to ask “What suffering do you need me to experience in order to advance your Kingdom plans?”

Who has not experienced the connection between loss and suffering, and vulnerability? Who of us has not built strong defenses even offenses as a result? We work hard to become invulnerable as persons and as groups.

Christmas flies in the opposite direction. Here an all-powerful God nurses in total vulnerability at Mary’s milky breast. Martin Luther reminded us that we have not begun to grasp the mystery of the incarnation until we have bent close enough to the manger to smell Jesus’ dirty diapers. And God chooses to enter the world through two vulnerable nobodies who must flee to Egypt for their lives.

Dare we celebrate vulnerability at Christmas? What assumptions might the Spirit of Christ begin to unravel if we shift from operating out of strong defenses to risky vulnerability? Dare we celebrate a God who hangs on a breast?

I don’t like my Mr. Hyde Christmas. But I need it. I need the whole truth. Even when I don’t fully understand it or know how to practice it, I need to celebrate it. Only this way can I open my spirit to God’s Spirit and experience the gradual transformation of my life in his image.

Three women, three deadly battles, only one healing

Cancer cells marauded from one organ to another like the barbarian hordes spilling across the Italian Alps on their way to sack Rome. These bloodthirsty invaders ravaged three precious women this past autumn.

Mary always sat next to her sister toward the front of the church. One could tell by her face that worship was more than punching a religious time clock. Then, one Sunday, Mary disappeared. Surgeons had to saw through her skull to remove a tumor full of those microscopic marauders. Captured, some were taken to a laboratory where specialists discovered they had migrated from another part of her body. There would be more enemies to face after Mary regained her strength. Meanwhile, the enemy was free to conquer.

Mysteriously, sometime during her recovery, the onslaught stopped. Finally, strength returned and technicians performed additional scans in preparation for a new battle. But the cancer had disappeared!

Today, Mary sits next to her sister singing and smiling as she worships a healing God.

Neither Marilyn nor Georgine sit next to their husbands anymore. Nobody knew cancer had launched a massive invasion of either woman's body, until one organ began to wither under the assault.Marilyn and Bob had just joined the church. In fact, Marilyn was the reason he was back in church after more than 20 years spent gambling life and loved ones away. His laugh and her sweetness perfectly complemented each other. Then the pain came. And the surgery. The cancer diagnoses. More cancer. And death, barely after we had begun to pray for healing.

We had more time to ask God to heal Georgine. She and her husband, Jim, worshipped and fellowshipped regularly at Calvary, but had connections to many churches. People from all over joined in the prayers. Sadly, as the prayers ascended, her body descended ever closer to death until it finally took her.

Both husbands doted. Cared. Prayed and loved. But the deadly cells spread, unstoppable by any earthly force, and unstopped by any heavenly force.

The Calvary Wesleyan family just began using a beautiful new Welcome Annex with a spacious Fellowship Foyer. Before anyone had a chance to fully appreciate the facility, these newly painted walls and beautifully carpeted floors enfolded the casket beds of two women we'd come to love.

Three women. Three deadly battles. Only one healing.

Praise God for one healing. I don't understand why there weren't three. I think I understand the prophet Isaiah's words better today. ''For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.'' They sure are.

Doubt could define me today, even bitterness. I'm not one for blind, irrational faith. One can rationally expect an all-powerful and perfectly loving God to heal three out of three cancer-invaded women. Disappointment with God is not easy to stomach.

Yet, while God's ways often confuse me, he chose to reveal himself in a way that has convinced me that he is trustworthy, even when he is confusing.

Thinking about all the possibilities, I have concluded that the four Gospel writers recorded firsthand and reliable accounts of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. If this is so, then the One we sing about at Christmas as ''Immanuel.'' God with us, has revealed a God who personally experienced a horribly ravaged world, embraced the worst such a place could dish out when he died, and conquered it when he returned to life in a resurrected body.

So, sorely missing two women and rejoicing with a third, with renewed appreciation, I will sing the Christmas carol refrain, ''Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth.'' Only, this year, I'll sing about three daughters of earth and the One born that all three would live forever!

The Good News About Santa!

Thank God for Santa! The jolly ‘ol fellow, everywhere present this time of year, would not exist were it not for Jesus. In reality, every time you see a Santa, he’s pointing you to Jesus!
Santa got his start is misty Christian antiquity.

A boy named Nicholas was born to a wealthy family sometime in the second half of the 3rd Century AD. His parents were devout followers of Jesus who brought salvation to the world just about 230 years before. Though they died in a plague while Nick was still young, he caught their faith and made it his own. In fact, so devoted to reflecting Jesus was he, that he gave all his inheritance away to the poor. After all Jesus had said to another rich young man, “sell all you own and give the money to the poor.”

Giving his life to serve Christ and the Church, Nicholas soon became Bishop of Myra in what is today southern Turkey. However, the Roman Empire still had not officially recognized Christianity. The Bishop was imprisoned and tortured under Emperor Diocletian. Only when Constantine made it legal to be a Christian in 313 was Nicholas released and returned to his flock.

Bishop Nicholas was so generous toward the poor and cared so deeply for vulnerable children that he earned an enduring reputation of the consummate protector and helper of those in need. Out of this reputation grew many legends of his gift giving generosity. His reputation so moved medieval Europe that communities from Russia to England named hundreds of churches in his honor.

December 6 became the day Christians celebrated this saint’s life since that was the day he died in 343. In time, this became the day set aside to give gifts to needy children. Beginning in the 16th Century the Protestant reformation tried to stamp out reverence for the saints, including Nicholas. But common folk wouldn’t let go and continued giving nuts, fruit and sweets to their children on his special day.

The Pennsylvania Deutsch (German) and the New York Dutch (Holland) brought the celebration of Saint Nicholas to the American Colonies. With the help of Washington Irving and the unknown author of “The Night Before Christmas” in the early 19th Century, Saint Nicholas evolved into a jolly elf. Then, with the help of Norman Rockwell and 1930’s Coca-Cola Santa artistry, he became the red-suited, full-sized man we know today.
Interestingly, the name Santa Claus is simply the anglicized version of the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas; Sinterklaas.

Santa’s life centers on giving, especially to the young and vulnerable. That’s agape love. He focuses on the young and vulnerable, the least of these as Jesus put it. That’s God’s heart! Yes, he checks his list of naughty and nice, but even the naughty get good gifts. That’s grace. He doesn’t tell the kids what they’ll get for Christmas. Instead, he gladly accepts their lists, subtly reflecting the psalmist’s reminder that God is one who gives us “the desires of our hearts”.

Many rigid secularists think they are getting away with a non-sectarian Christmas exhibit when only Santa is displayed or celebrated. Now that you know better, pass along the story. No Jesus. No Santa. Truly know Santa. And you have the opportunity to know Jesus.

Santa really is an opportunity for Christians to witness about this Jesus who so inspired an ancient youing man that others recognized him as a "santa" - saint! If Christians stopped grumbling about Santa, they just might discover that they have a truly sacred symbol available to them everywhere!

SHOCK JOCKS & FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Shock Jock, Don Imus is back on radio, December 3. Hurray for the freedom of speech victory!

Not.

In the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, we citizens gave ourselves one of our most valued rights, freedom to speak our thoughts as individual persons and to assemble and speak out corporately. That amendment also gives us the freedom to speak religious thoughts and to commit our thoughts to more permanent and public written forms.

Very often, those who push hard at the envelope of socially acceptable speech appeal to their rights based on this amendment. But envelope pushers such as raunch radio icons like Don Imus, pop musicians broadcasting vulgar and demeaning lyrics, or, for that matter, anyone spitting insulting and injurious words, are lousy free speech role models.

Sure the 1st amendment protects that kind of speech, just as it does the increasingly foul speech that infects so much of our daily conversation, even with children. But just as surely, refusing to self-censure the thoughts and ideas that enter our heads smothers the more important aspect of this amendment; the freedom to wisely govern ones own speech.

Freedom of speech is not only the freedom to choose what we will say, but also the freedom to choose what we will not say.

You’d think we would instinctively catch this as we grow into adulthood. It’s small children who indiscriminately blurt out whatever enters their little heads. That’s why kids say the darnedest things. And the most embarrassing things! But somewhere in the evolution of our culture, we seem to have lost the ability to develop the filter gizmo that is supposed to grow somewhere between our brains and our mouths.

Our generation seems to have left behind the advice of Abraham Lincoln. He said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” The more we speak and publicly record whatever dribbles into our minds, the more foolish we have become.
Our lopsided focus on free speech as saying everything we *@#&@ well please, sets us on course to growing legal restrictions on speech. And of necessity such rules are vague and consequently dangerous.

The danger begins innocently enough. In the process of redressing rigid and sometimes silly self and social censorship in our Victorian past, instead of recalibrating our internal filters, we gradually allowed them to decay until they became completely useless. So we not only give ourselves the freedom to openly discuss the facts of sexuality but ended up hip hopping about “doin” the “hos” or degrading a women’s basketball team as a bunch of the same.

Our insistence that free speech gives us the right to not filter our thoughts, poisons every sphere of culture. We don’t just debate political ideas, we demonize politician’s character. When another person inconveniences us, we feel obligated to generously offer a piece of our minds. Even in our religious institutions, though we use more pious words, we free ourselves to verbally cut and slice one another.

Writing about the Imus affair, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, lamented, “In the end, it's all about public standards, and the fact is that we hardly have any anymore.”

Without giving adequate weight to free speech as freedom not to speak any and every thought, we resort to the legal authorities to protect those we perceive to be especially vulnerable to verbal brutishness. Thus the rise of hate speech regulations in universities and corporations around the country.

And with the advent of such language rules we wade into a dangerous legal quagmire sure to wreck much havoc on our 1st amendment rights. This is a cure worse than the disease. And an unnecessary one. That is, if the American people, said to be self governing, will in fact begin to govern their own speech, on their own.

It’s time to once again embrace the old truth, ‘everything entering the brain does not need to gush out the mouth.’ It’s time to reinsert the filters! We might begin with just a basic one. Nothing too complicated. Perhaps Model 429.

This model originates in ancient Christian spiritual wisdom, though any religious or irreligious person will find it useful. It’s found in the New Testament, Ephesians 4:29.

“Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.”

Not a bad filtration system for the new Don Imus show.

Grammy winning rapper, Chamillionaire, discovered this ancient wisdom quite by accident. He’d decided to clean up his language but still reserved for himself the right to use the N-word insisting, "I've always used the N-word." That is, until one concert this past year when he noticed a mostly white audience lip-syncing his own word back to him! Something clicked.

"I was like, 'You know what? I'm not going to say the N-word on this one because when I go back on the road, and I start performing, I don't want them to be saying it, like me teaching them.'"

Would that all of us realize the negative force of our own freely chosen words and take at least one step toward freely limiting our words to the good and helpful ones.

(comments welcome - responses not guarenteed)