Telling the Story

Throughout Ireland, and to a more limited degree in Scotland and Wales, a traveler will often see what are called “high crosses,” a picture of one is included in this blog. Most high crosses contain runes and/or pictographs on each side of the cross which help tell the story of the covenant God effected with his people. In a land of few books, a high cross was often seen as “a Bible in stone” or “a Sermon in Stone” as Celtic artists chiseled out the symbols where the people could understand the gospel of their salvation. These crosses were erected in villages and fields; near monasteries or in wooded glades; wherever people could gather for the reading and/or the telling of the story.

As we move into the season of Advent, that time of preparation of the Christmas event, I wonder about the telling of the Nativity story in our world today. How do you tell the story of the already, but not yet revelation of the Incarnation? How do you build expectancy for someone who has already come? Do you just put theology on the shelf once you have put out your crèche characters on the mantle or the hall table? Do you just let the story tell itself, assuming that since this is the Christmas story, everybody gets it because it has been so prevalent in our Christian culture for generations?

I have a friend who, when she lived in Houston, would host a really great party early in the Christmas season, and in attendance were a number of Presbyterian clergy. Of course, like so many of us when we decorate for our families and guests, there is often the “Nativity Scene” with all the principals of the Christmas story being present from shepherds to magi to angels to sometimes (gasp!) even a little drummer boy! And there is little baby Jesus asleep in the hay of the tiny manger. Well, true to form, as part of the festive decorations around her home was her own personal Nativity Scene. The day after this one particular party, my friend realized that baby Jesus was missing! Thinking through her guest list from the night before, she narrowed the culprit list down to one or two possibilities. “Where is baby Jesus?” she demanded. “I confess,” one of her clergy friends admitted, “I took Jesus out of the manger, and put him out of sight up on a shelf in your bookcase. There you will find him. But I took him so you can do a better job of telling the story of the birth of God’s son. This is Advent – this is not the time for him to be in the manger …”

For those of you who have a Nativity Scene; a crèche, a manger tableau, however you may describe it, and are planning on putting it out as part of your Christmas decorations this season, consider this possibility: think about this as an opportunity to use these three dimensional characters to be a “high cross” for telling a more authentic story of the Christ-event. Make it a true Advent experience for those who live in your home or for those who will visit. Start with an empty stable (if you have one) if you don’t, just start with an empty space, but one which is designated to be “where it all happens.” In the parlance of Celticcrossings, this is a “thin place” where the sacred and the profane brush up against each other. Here is the place where hope shall blossom where before there had been no hope; there was no story to be told; no eyes to see, nor ears to hear the story God would soon announce to the nations. When the time is right, add the animals which are at home in this place, and add the manger from which they feed. A few days later, Joseph and Mary might be seen in close proximity to the animals, and although it cannot be seen, the story is that Mary is pregnant by the power of God at work within her, and she waits, as do the rest of us to be delivered of this child. When family or guests in your home ask about the emptiness of the crèche, or wonder why this or that piece is missing, tell the story that this world is empty when the presence of God's grace revealed in Jesus is missing, but be patient, let God's Spirit sustain you, for by faith, we all wait for the hope of righteousness which is surely coming.

And, in the fullness of time, Mary was delivered of this child whose name shall be called Emmanuel – God With Us. NOW, the baby Jesus lies in the manger, and the donkey, and the cow, and the other animals begin to have a proprietary interest in this interloper in the stable. The next day, perhaps, you bring the shepherds in to make their appearance on the scene, and you tell their story as well; how they came, ragged, impoverished herdsmen, to see that which had come to pass. And now, perhaps an angel hovers near by, and if angels are there, now is the time to tell their story as well. Like scarlet ribbons, angels are woven throughout the nativity narrative, a plot device whereby they bear the glad tidings which is the message from God to all those of us who have dwelled in a land of great darkness of despair or depression or loneliness or hopelessness, upon us now a grace-filled light has shone forth; to poor, lonely people like you and like I, a seed of hope has been planted.

The story is almost told – but not quite. What of the magi, the wise men from the East? Well, they don’t belong at the stable, truth be told. They did not arrive on the day of his birth, but came along some time later. Theirs is a story of persistence and patience and also one of obedience and expectancy. Theirs is also a story of non-Jews who come to play a prominent place in the story of salvation which unwinds in the life of this young child. As Simeon said in the Temple when Jesus was presented eight days after his birth, and before the wise men showed up astride their camels, “my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” There is a place for the wise men, but it is a place when the frenzy of the nativity night has given way to making a home for the young child and his mother. It is to this place that the men bearing gifts arrive. And it is in that context that we tell their story as Matthew meant for it to be told, for the gifts that they bring are not just any gifts, but connote the symbolism of a life of sacrifice, and of service, and, ultimately, of death, The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh point to the offices of king, priest, and savior: gold speaks of His kingship; frankincense was a spice used in the priestly duties; and myrrh was an embalming ointment anticipating His death.

So now, on the cusp of Advent, you are ready to tell not just one story, but the multiple stories which emerge from the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. And somewhere in the midst of it all, is your own story of how you came to believe; and in the midst of it all, is my story of how I came to believe. And as we tell our natal stories of new life and new hope we continue to hold on to a fresh anticipation of what this Advent will bring both in us and through us. Perhaps others will hear our stories and may also come to believe that there is indeed someone coming who can bring light into their darkness, hope into their despair, presence into their loneliness. But how will they hear lest someone tell them?

Do you truly believe that they will get the point –or know the true story - just by admiring that crèche that you so proudly display throughout the month of December?

Can I get a word of Thanksgiving?

Given the increasingly dour news about our economy and the need to cut back (expenses) and to cut up (credit cards), I wondered as we move into this season of Thanksgiving, how and why people would feel a sense of thanksgiving. There are so many people caught up not only in a foreclosure crisis, but also caught up in job layoffs. There are so many people who have seen their savings dwindle or completely disappear; who have watched retirement funds telegraph the message to keep working – retirement is not in your future for some time to come. There are people who cannot get credit, or if they can, pay a high premium for it. Will there be people attending church on Thanksgiving Eve, as was our custom throughout our 20 Thanksgivings at Southminster Presbyterian Church, or will they think “why bother; there is so little left in my life for which to offer thanksgiving?” I haven’t gotten completely cynical about human nature, but as a Christian, I have been awed at the spiritual ennui that is gripping the hearts of so many people I see and hear around me.

After departing in recent blogs from the basic premise of Celticcrossings, I return to that concept that gave birth to this blog and which in so many ways gives focus and direction to my sense of what we should be about within our Christian faith. In the worship services that I attended in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and those which were part of our worship ministry at Southminster from time to time, the celtic worship liturgy has a free-flowing quality which embraces all of life as both sacred and sacramental. So, at this time of Thanksgiving, even when things seem dark and getting darker, I wanted to share some liturgical prayers drawn from the Celtic traditions upon which you might choose to reflect at this season. The following prayer comes out of the oral, gaelic traditions of the Scottish Highlands:

Thanksgiving

Thanks to Thee, O God, that I have risen today,
To the rising of this life itself;
May it be to Thine own glory, O God of every gift,
And to the glory of my soul likewise.

O great God, aid Thou my soul
With the same aiding of Thine own mercy;
Even as I clothe my body with wool,
Cover Thou my soul with the shadow of Thy wing.

Help me to avoid every sin,
And the source of every sin to forsake;
And as the mist scatters on the crest of the hills,
May each ill haze clear from my soul, O God.

You may not have heard of a Scottish civil servant by the name of Alexander Carmichael, but he did a great service for his native country by collecting and preserving the oral traditions that abounded in the Highlands and the Hebrides in the late 19th century. His work was published in a volume known as the Carmina Gadelica; it is a Latin phrase which means “Gaelic songs, hymns, and incantations.” Carmichael says this about his work:

Whatever the value of this work, it is genuine folklore, taken down from the lips of men and women, no part being copied from books. It is the product of faraway thinking, come down on the long streams of time. Who the thinkers and whence the stream, who can tell? …These poems were composed by the learned, but they have not come down through the learned, but through the unlearned – not through the lettered few, but through the unlettered many – through the crofters and cottars, the herdsmen and shepherds of the Highlands and Islands.

Out of more recent liturgical traditions in the Ionian Community of Iona, Scotland, I offer two more Thanksgiving prayers. For me, they seem so timely and appropriate for those who need both a sense of community and a sense of hope.

Thanksgiving for Community

Thank you for our time in community,
For deep, if fleeting, friendships.
For those conversations late at night,
For the vulnerable intensity lubricated by laughter,
For the freedom to serve others,
And to affirm ourselves
In the face of all that you know and we know of our lives.
And we thank you for all the signs that the churches
With which so many are disaffected
Can yet be your body on earth in the community of creation.

All Shall Be Well

For the greening of the trees
And the gentling of friends,
We thank you, O God.

For the brightness of field
And the warmth of the sun,
We thank you, O God.

For work to be done
And laughter to share,
We thank you, O God,

We thank you, and know
That through struggle and pain,
In the slippery path of new birth,
Hope will be born

And all shall be well.

And it shall all be well, for those of us who keep our eye on prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There is always an opportunity to give thanks, even if it is only for the freedom to think on these things with a degree of ... gratitude.

To each of you, may this season of Thanksgiving be for you and yours a time of thanksgiving as well…

Being Elected

On the day after the election, I found myself thinking about what just happened in this country of ours. I supported Barack Obama, but that should not surprise most of you who read this blog. I admired and still admire John McCain, and, under different circumstances, could have supported his candidacy. But the direction of this posting has little to do with the individuals and more to do with the process and the significance of being elected. In our Reformed tradition there is a lot of investment in our doctrine of election, and on these first days of a new administration on a national level, and the newly elected officials wherever you live, let’s give some thought to what it means to be among the elect.

My Reformed Theology professor at seminary John Leith wrote these words: “The doctrine of election establishes a community that is not constituted by race, nationality, ethnic origin, gender, or even history. Election takes precedence over every other activity.” In our political process, we Americans use our free will to cast a ballot, and the collective wisdom(?) of that free exercise of will brings about a winner. In the doctrinal idea of election our will does not enter into the picture at all. Out of God’s sovereignty, there is an election the results of which come to us by grace - not by vote nor by an electoral college.

The doctrine of election can have a galvanizing appeal to stir people out of their inherent political apathy to a new or renewed sense of awareness of what God is doing, and, in fact, what God has already done. On Tuesday night, Senator McCain closed his concession speech with “… God bless America,” and President-elect Obama closed his address with the words “… and may God bless the United States of America.” It is standard practice for politicians to invoke God’s blessing on the nation. But what if they, and we, had a strong sense that God is involved in the what, when, why, and who of our political process. Suddenly we are jarred by the radical God-centeredness of the Scriptures and the frightening ego-centrality of our own hearts. Suddenly we are put on a quest to build a way of thinking biblically about God and the world that we haven’t attempted before. In this postmodern era within which many of us have come of age, we have allowed our leaders, both locally and nationally, to let the power of God become relegated to the power of ideology, and we have allowed the basic scriptural mandate that we have been blessed that we might be a blessing to all nations to be sacrificed upon the altars of fear mongering and political expediency. As a Christian community who holds onto, however tenuously, a doctrine of election, how tragically ironic it would be if we continue to embrace this postmodern illusion just when the broader culture has figured out it's a dead end.

A theological understanding of election enables us to better embrace our political understanding of election. What are the issues involved in the doctrine of election? If the issues of a political candidate are important to us, then the issues that God lays out for you and me need also to be important. For us, the issues that confront us in the doctrine of election have to do with aligning our agendas with Christ. And what does that mean? Scripturally, there are numerous answers, but I will draw on this one from Colossians 3: 12-14:
As God’s elect, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another … forgive, just as you have been forgiven …
You are called, justified, and glorified so that all things do work for your good so that you may be conformed to Christ. God is at work within us, writes Paul to the Philippian church, to will and to work his good pleasure.

It is my belief that a grasp of the doctrine of election helps produce a thoughtful, resourceful, and informed Christian electorate who are not swept away by trendy, politically-centered ideas. Rather, it tends to press onto our minds and hearts a God-centered worldview built on the Truth that has been revealed to us, not by the media but by the wind and flames of God’s Spirit.
I believe that God does indeed bless our country, not because politicians ask him to, but because it is in his nature to bless. I further believe that it is in his nature to chastise, to rebuke, and to restore. That is also part of the doctrine of election.

Being elected, in a political sense or a theological sense, carries with it a sense of accountability. It is my hope and my prayer that we as Americans – Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, etc. - expect that accountability from our elected leaders. Because, in the final analysis of who and what we stand for as a nation, we have to understand that the phrase “being elected” says more about the sovereign grace of God than it does about the vote totals on Election Day.