Friday, December 4, 2009

Get there before Christmas…

Something caught my eye in the post office the other day; a sign with a message about Holiday expectations. The basic gist was that if you wanted your package to arrive in x part of the country by Christmas Eve, you’d have to send it by y date; if z state, you must send by w date, and so on. Of course, the farther it had to travel, the greater need to plan ahead. But what piqued my attention was that for packages traveling in the Midwest- to Denver, or even Kansas City- the sign demanded two weeks lead time (if my memory serves…). “Wow,” I thought, “That same letter during other times of year takes only two days!” And if you’re shipping Christmas gifts to California, add another week or two as well.

So pray for our postwomen and men! I’m sure Christmas packages take this long because of increased Holiday volume. USPS employees (and UPS, FedEx…) will work extra hard, but hopefully those signs will help. Better preparation will make customers less anxious about the punctuality of gifts (how’s that for optimism!). At the very least, I’m happy they make these dates available. It’ll help my planning in years to come.


It got me thinking- Why do we go through all this trouble during Christmas? Why do we work so hard to get everything together in time, travel such long distances, spend so much money? What makes any holiday, but this holiday especially, worth so much effort?

Honestly, I bet a big part of that answer is obligation, or if you prefer, tradition. It’s our cultural and religious tradition to, every year, make a big deal about these holidays and the few weeks prior. Families have always gotten together, whether they particularly wanted to or not. Gifts are always searched for and bought, sometimes elatedly, sometimes grudgingly. Some years, fulfilling these traditions, and the associated obligations fill us with joy and mirth. Other years, not so much. But we do them because we’ve always done them, and feel like we should take it seriously.

I don’t want that to sound like a bad thing. Tradition and obligation, in many respects, are wonderful. They prompt to actions that may seem burdensome at first, ultimately are worthwhile, meaningful, even fun. My junior year in High School, I told Mom I didn’t like my teammates, and thus was quitting soccer. She said, “No,” made me play, and we won the State Championship. Some obligations really work out just fine.

Nevertheless, for any tradition or obligation to remain meaningful, something important must be behind it. Mom told me to play soccer because she thought, regardless how I felt about my teammates at the moment, my love for the game and athletics was deeper. And she was right. The same goes for the Holidays, I suspect. Behind the traditions and feelings of obligation lie important, life-giving values. For many, the values of family connectedness and intimacy make all the fuss and bother of travel, presents and dirty, dirty kitchens well worth the struggle. That’s true during years you’re angry with your relatives as much as those years you’re feeling good.

But the Christmas Holidays are more than family reunions. They’re religious festivals, so presumably the deeper meanings derive from faith-inspired values too. Back in the day, these festivals broke up the monotony of cold, post-harvest winter months, by providing spectacle and beauty to otherwise dreary days. They reminded poor peasants and wealthy nobility alike that the glory of God, and the glorious nature of what God did for this world through the little child Jesus, overcame all things tedious or ugly, and transcended even the best we humans could imagine for ourselves. Sure, it took a lot of work for these festivals to go just right, but from a religious person’s perspective, that effort paled in comparison to what God and Jesus did, and still does, for us. So they were happy to reciprocate, in whatever small measure. I pray that’s as true for our Christmas this year as it has been in ages past. It’s a grand tradition, I’d say. In all things,


Grace and Peace,

Shane
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Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Welcoming the Stranger…

I blame Hallmark, although- perhaps- Christians helped perpetuate the lie. My enlightenment about this issue came from a pastoral colleague. A couple years back, a group of us were discussing some Christmas passage about the manger, when the lie popped up. Someone (me) said, “Isn’t it sweet to think about Jesus, in the manger, lying in hay, amidst all those cute sheep?” And while now I know how wrong that statement was, I feel completely justified in having said it. After all, I’d grown up with Hallmark’s many nativity scenes, and all those fluffy sheep on their cards, etc. But my colleague spoke up, “Oh, young man; let me learn you something. Sheep are not cute. If you’d lived in a farming community like me, you’d know how smelly, loud and dirty the manger of Jesus’ birth truly was.”

Sure, this may not be the most grievous error that religion or the greeting card industry could perpetrate on humankind, but it does shift one’s imagination about the beloved Christmas story. Think of Jesus, wrapped in swaddling (and scratchy) cloth, lying in a rickety manger, surrounded by baying barn animals, Mary doing her best to calm the child’s anxiety. And suddenly, Scripture suggests, shepherds appear, having spent the whole day (and probably the past couple days) wrestling their smelly sheep in nearby fields. Not as idyllic and serene as other portrayals of that landmark event, but it’s a telling of the story saturated in theological riches.


Remember Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25? It’s a vision of the Last Judgment, where the Eternal Judge separates “the sheep from the goats.” To both camps, Jesus pronounces the following words: Whatsoever you do unto these my children, even the least, you do so unto me. The rest of story goes that some had clothed the naked, fed the hungry and welcomed the stranger, while others had not.

That final notion, welcoming the stranger, had a long history in the religious life of Jesus’ people. Genesis tells of Abraham and Sarah sitting around the tent, when some strange fellows walk up to them. Turns out they’re angels, and they’ve come with the message this couple had waited upon for decades, “Sarah, you’re about to be pregnant.” That story says as much about welcoming the stranger as it does about trusting in God’s providence. Jewish law makes provision for certain cities in the nation of Israel to be cities of Sanctuary, where asylum would be offered any stranger who needs help and a new start to life. Christians for millennia have practiced, as essential to our faith, numerous acts of welcoming the stranger. We call it hospitality. And from the Disciples of Christ perspective, the hospitality we’re called to extend is open to any and all, to every person that would come share the bounty of the Lord’s Table in our midst. You might say that at the core of our faith is a value we at Plymouth Creek hold dear. Indiscriminate hospitality. Welcoming each and every stranger God brings our way.

But we don’t think of that concept very often when we’re talking Christmas, right? Indiscriminate hospitality gets practiced during Communion, in remembrance of Jesus’ final meal with his Disciples. Christmas, rather, is all about fluffy sheep and wealthy wise men laden with presents. Think again. Those sheep and their shepherds were not the most illustrious of houseguests. The wise men are a different story, though I’d imagine the conversation via interpreter proved rather halting. As strangers to Bethlehem, of course, Mary and Joseph had received welcome when no room was found at the local Inn. Then, it seems the Holy Couple responded in kind and welcomed other strangers, shepherds and foreign dignitaries and more besides, to share the joy of their newborn child. They practiced indiscriminate hospitality at the beginning of Jesus’ life, setting him on a path that would extend God’s open-armed adventure to more than anyone would’ve dared imagine.

So Merry Christmas! May you receive abundant welcome at many tables, and even find time to welcome a stranger or two who needs it. You never know when God might drop in.

Grace and Peace,

Shane
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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Now that’s impressive…

The other evening, I attended an art exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art- The Louvre and the Masterpiece. As you’d expect, the exhibit featured four rooms filled with artistic “masterpieces” from the world’s most famous museum- Paris’ Louvre. I know many of you have heard of this exhibit, or even been yourself. I found it wonderful. If you like staring at old paintings and sculptures, that is.

And as it intended, the exhibit got me thinking about masterpieces. That word pops up occasionally, presumably to describe something particularly praiseworthy. There are masterpieces of painting and sculpture, of course. But there’s also books and films (Masterpiece Theatre, anyone?). Some athletes’ bodies get described as ‘masterpieces,’ which I’d call an awkward type of objectification (as if kids of both genders don’t have enough body image pressures already). There’s even a famous, self-described ‘masterpiece’ BBQ sauce. And if you go to Kansas City soon, pick me up a bottle.  

       Would you describe Christian faith as a religious masterpiece?  Is it even appropriate to use that word in such a context?  Of course, some Christians would claim our faith is the only religion worth considering for that distinction, but I certainly wouldn’t go that far.  It’s also true that some non-religious folk would contend that no religion, especially Christianity, has any worth, let alone deserves ‘masterpiece’ status.  And I’d respond with, “Boooo.” Of a more challenging nature, I believe, are those many who would claim that all religions are valuable, to the exact degree as every other one.  So each religious tradition neither is nor is not a masterpiece.  It just is.  Hmm…

      I find that final way of thinking quite prevalent in my generation.  Indeed, in some ways, I’m inclined to agree.  After all, if you were giving out medals for which religious tradition is the closest to ‘masterpiece,’ what criteria would you use?  Truth?  Whomever tells the best stories?  Whomever has convinced the most people, or done the world the most good, or respects its clergy the most (I like that one…)?  And really, would any of us know enough about all the choices to actually decide?  Yeah, me neither, and I’m the professional here!

      Still, as open-minded about this stuff as I try to be, I’m inclined to think there’s something rather remarkable about Christian faith.  If religions could be ‘masterpieces,’ I think Christianity would get a nod (while the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, though irreverently funny, would likely miss out).  I’m sure one reason I say that is I’m paid to say that.  And also because I grew up in the church, etc, etc.  But I’d like to think I’ve better, less personal reasons for dubbing Christian faith a masterpiece religion.

      Try this one on for size- Two thousand years ago, a poor, oppressed peasant in a volatile, but otherwise unremarkable province of the Roman Empire, convinced twelve or so guys to be his disciples, and this year we are spending a month singing and worrying about his birth.  As have billions before us.  What’s remarkable about that, for me, isn’t the sheer size of Jesus’ influence.  Any person or set of stories can gain power, whether those people or their stories are worthy or not.  Rather, two things stick out- 1) Jesus shouldn’t have made a difference, but he did.  ALL the odds were stacked against him and his followers, and somehow they changed the world.  That’s smacks of God to me.  2) Whenever, he gets talked about, people use the words love and goodness, i.e. stuff that makes the world better.  Surely, not every Christian embodies those words, and all too often we’ve contradicted the values at the core of the Jesus story.  But every Christian learns that “love thy neighbor” part of the story.  Which tells me it’s a pretty good story, at least, and that too smacks of God.

      Those are just some simple, brief thoughts.  This is too large an issue for one letter to clarify.  But what do you think?  Can religions be masterpieces?  What makes one masterful or not?  What about Jesus?  What makes him so impressive, to you?  In all things,
 
Grace and Peace, 

Shane
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