"MOVING INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD"

 “MOVING INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD”

When I was growing up and celebrating Christmas, I would often get depressed on Christmas afternoon when all the presents were opened and Christmas dinner was over.  My mother often compounded that sense by insisting that we take down the Christmas tree the day after Christmas – it was over and done.  I loved Christmas  presents and the decorations, and for all the religious atmosphere which permeated my consciousness as a child,  it became clear that the spiritual power of the holiday was tied to the secular ideas about Christmas – presents, pretty lights, and decorations.    

Over the years (and especially in this crazy year of 2020), I’ve thought a lot about the Story that undergirds this season, a Story that often gets lost in sentimentality and a sea of materialism.  As I think about this process, the verse that comes to heart and mind is John’s Gospel 1:14:  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Translated more literally, it is the Word pitched His tent among us, but the most helpful translation to me is “the Word moved into our neighborhood.”  I like that one because it emphasizes the power of the idea of the Incarnation, but also because it brings me the warm fuzzies of Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.   The spiritual power of Christmas is that it makes an astonishing assertion – the center of all that is, God (by whatever name we call Her) has committed Herself to us in a way that is new and different.  This idea also assumes that we believe in God, which many of us do on some level.  

The Christmas Story offers us the opportunity to consider the meaning of our lives – who are we?  Whose are we?  What centers our lives?  What fires our lives?  Whatever the answer may be, we are asked to consider that love and justice are at the center of life and of our lives.  What would it mean to try to live in the neighborhood with those twin values at the heart of individual and corporate life?  For all the warm fuzzies of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, that production still was permeated by a radical and demanding idea:  each of us is loved, and all of us are loved.  In Christian language, we would say that each of us and all of us are children of God.

That sounds simple on one level, but we have all found that concept difficult to live out.  Three movies that I’ve seen recently have helped to provoke these thoughts.  First there is Pixar’s “Soul” which asks these very questions in a way that was surprising to me.  Who are you?  What is the meaning of your life?  How do you learn to live for others, especially when that life conflicts with your view of yourself and your needs?  All of this is wrapped in the life and permutations of jazz.  The second movie is “Wonder Woman 1984,” which was a disappointment in that it seemed to drop the theme of the powerful women.  It did, however, dramatically share the theme of materialism and power run amok, with only a slightly veiled portrayal of the villain as a snake-oil salesman named Donald Trump.  The rage and deep hostility of King Herod in the Christmas Story is displayed for all of us to see.  

The third movie, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” struck me the most deeply.  It is an adaptation of one of August Wilson’s plays – part of a series of his plays that are being produced by Denzel Washington as movies (the first was “Fences”).  It is set in the 1920’s in Chicago, and it focuses on an historical character named Ma Rainey, who was one of the driving forces behind the development of the blues.  Powerful actors, including Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman (in one of his last performances), drive a tense and provocative script.  The scene that stays with me in connection with the Christmas Story is one in which Boseman’s character Levee rails and curses and wrestles with God, because God refused to intervene when Levee’s mother was raped repeatedly by white men, when he was a boy.  

These movies and that scene remind us of the problem with saying that God has moved into the neighborhood with us.  If She has, where is She?  Why these 330,000+ people dead from Covid?  Why the continuing power of racism and white supremacy?  Why the continuing oppression of women?  These questions are always with us and with this Christmas Story.  Yet, as John put it in another verse, “The Light of the World was coming among us, and the confusion and craziness of human life has not extinguished it.”  That is our hope and our dilemma.  Where do we center ourselves?  This Christmas Story asks us to consider these questions once again and to find our places in the Story.  That’s the work of Christmas.  

"MY SIN"

 “MY SIN”

Thanks to Barbara Jung’s leadership, there is a good poetry group at North Decatur Presbyterian Church, which  I joined it earlier this year.  Since I am a member, there are obviously no high qualifications to get in, though there are people in it who write fine poetry.  Barbara asks us to share poems twice a month or so – we can write our own, or we can share poems from others, famous and not-so-famous.  Earlier this month, she asked us to share poems related to the Advent and Christmas seasons, and I remembered one by Ann Weems, a Presbyterian elder whose poems Caroline and I often used at St. Columba and Oakhurst churches.  This one is not a religious poem, but it carries religious weight for me.  Here it is – it is “Giving” by Ann Weems:

"GIVING"

I gave my mother Evening in Paris,

   sixty-five cents at the five-and-dime,

        A Christmas Special.

Everybody knew ----in the second grade----

    that ladies longed for perfume.

I wanted to give her something special.....

     no Christmas chocolates she'd share with the others,

     no crayoned creation to hang in the kitchen, 

     no photo of me with a snaggled-tooth grin, 

     but a gift that on one else would use,

          a present just for my mother.

I wrapped it in tissue

          adorned with red reindeer

     and wrote "I LOVE YOU!"

          and signed it in cursive.

I thought that it was the grandest gift anybody could give.

She thought so, too."

When I engaged this poem many years ago, it seemed so close to my experience with my own mother.  Mother loved all things Christmas.  When I was an infant, we had moved in with her great aunt (whom I called “Gran”), who had a strong puritanical streak.  Gran loved cooking a big meal for Christmas, but she did not permit any Christmas decorations in the house because she felt that it was un-Christian to be so “secular” about Christmas.   Mother’s infectious attitude about Christmas, however, eventually won Gran over, and the whole house was decorated.

  We  had very little money for Christmas, but my mother scrimped and saved all year in order to provide decorations and presents.  She also asked her beauty shop customers to give me presents rather than give them to her.  So, I was often showered with presents at Christmas – a great time for me!  Mother’s attitude also permeated my consciousness – unlike many men, I like Christmas!  As a boy, I would also save up my meager monies (that I wasn’t spending for comic books and movies during the year) in order to buy presents for Mother.  I got her many trinkets, but her main desire every year was My Sin dusting powder  by Lanvin.  To my regret, it was much more expensive than “regular” dusting powder, and on one occasion I bought a less expensive brand for her for Christmas.  While she said she like the less expensive brand when she opened the present, I could tell that she was disappointed.  After that, it was always “My Sin” for me and for her!  Indeed, she wanted “My Sin” dusting powder until she was in her late 70’s, and it became very hard to find.

When I first engaged “Giving” by Ann Weems, it brought back a rush of memories for me, and when I re-engaged it this year, it did the same.  I generally have pleasant memories of Christmas, though two memorable ones pop out that are unpleasant.  One was in 1969 when my fiancé broke off our engagement.  The other was in 1993 when my mother almost lost her life in a terrible auto accident.  Whatever you think of Christmas and the commercialization of the season and the emphasis on presents, remember the love that flows underneath and through the Christmas season.  Whether you believe in the God or in the biblical versions of the Christmas stories – there is an emphasis on love that undergirds our lives. It is the fire that warms us all, even in the midst of “My Sin.”

"STAYING CLOSE TO THE FIRE"

 “STAYING CLOSE TO THE FIRE”

When I was growing up in small town Arkansas, our house did not have central heating.  The house was heated by a big gas space heater in the living room/dining room area.  It was located where the coal chute and coal fired heater previously was.  It heated the house unevenly, and on cold winter days and nights, we would back up to the heater to get enough warmth built up in order to go into the other parts of the house.  To this day, I still feel much warmer when I can back up to a source of heat.

I sometimes think of the Christmas season as this metaphor of fire and heat for our lives.  It is a story of a central location of love in our lives, and during this time, we are invited to come close to the fire of God’s love, so that we can get warmed up enough in order to go through the remainder of the year, seeking to live with love at the center of our lives.  As the calendar year goes on, and life gets complicated, we long to get back close to the source of the fire.  The idea of Christmas as a time of renewal takes root here.

There is another part of the metaphor of fire that burns in these Christmas stories:  John the Baptizer.  Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus begins not with Jesus but with the backstory for the birth of John the Baptizer.  John’s conception is not quite as stunning as Jesus’ conception, but it is miraculous nonetheless.  The mothers of John and Jesus are cousins, and they become cousins, some scholars arguing that Jesus becomes a disciple of John the Baptizer.  Other Gospel accounts, like John’s, portray them as rivals, but whatever their relationship, all four Gospels see John as the precursor for Jesus, as one who prepares the way for Jesus.

John the Baptizer was a man on fire.  He took the warmth of the love of God and channeled it into a burning call for repentance and justice and equity.  He challenged the Temple as a site of renewal and religious sanctity.  He offered the idea of baptism in the river as a source of renewal and repentance.  By “repentance,” he didn’t mean only the ceasing of doing bad things – he meant a complete re-orientation of our will and imaginations, a re-orientation towards God and not towards the powers of the world.  It was here, in this idea of death and rebirth that is part of the ritual of baptism, that people could find the fire to renew their lives.

John not only used fire as image of renewal – he used it also as an image of consequences and punishment.  His sermon went like this in Luke 3, as he chastised the religious leaders who came out to hear him:  “You children of snakes!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?......Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;  every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  When the leaders and the people asked him what they could do to escape this kind of fire, he told them to share food and clothes with the poor, to refrain from cheating people and to stop robbing people.  For John, the warmth of God’s love was a fire that burned for justice and for equity.

    Later on in his own ministry, Jesus would pick up this image of John’s fire, as seen in Luke 12: “I came to set the earth on fire, and would that it were already burning.”  John is remembered as being more fiery than Jesus, but both of them were executed by the state, though they burned for justice in different ways.  

    “Stay close to the fire” is a central meaning of Christmas.  One of its meanings is what we saw at the beginning, like that space heater of my youth:  radiating God’s love to sustain us through the coldness of the year.  A second meaning, however, mitigates against our tendency to make Christmas s sentimental and sweet season, when we forget all the troubles of the world and seek to make nice for awhile.  This second meaning reminds us that Christmas is a fire that burns for justice, that the story itself is offensive in so many ways:  a teenager pregnant before marriage, subject to the death penalty;  a male asked to move from the center of life to the margins; a baby born on the streets; the Holy Family forced to flee as refugees to another country in order to escape political persecution and execution.  

    As we gather (even remotely) for this Christmas holiday, let us remember these aspects of the Christmas fire:  warmth and burning for justice.  As I write this, I am waiting for the results of the Electoral College vote, and that political weight tempts me to move towards the warmth of the Christmas fire.  Yet, this very political day reminds me of the need to stay close to the fiery nature of the Christmas fire, to Mary’s Magnificat.  As Rory Cooney put it in the words to the great Christmas song “Canticle of the Turning”:  “My heart shall sing of the day you bring, let the fires of your justice burn.  Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn.”  Stay close to the Christmas fire.  

"LOOKING FOR VISIONS"

 “LOOKING FOR VISIONS”

We are in an extraordinary time, with the nation groaning under a King Lear like President who refuses to acknowledge that he was defeated in the November election.  I’m feeling good that he will be out, but I’ll be glad to get past the Electoral College vote on December 14.  I am surprised but gratified that the relevant Republican leaders in Georgia are thus far standing up to King Lear, and I hope that it will hold.  For those who remember their Shakespeare, the raging of King Lear and others leads to great suffering for all.  I fear this the most about the raging of Trump.  In his last 44 days, he will seek to make all of us pay for not re-electing him, and it gives me pause as I think about what such a price may entail.

And, that brings me to the Advent/Christmas season.  My mind immediately goes to the raging King Herod, who sends the troops to execute the baby boys of Bethlehem in order to eliminate the threat of a rival.  That is the end of the Christmas story in Matthew’s Gospel, but we are at the beginning, so I want to pivot to the beginning to seek to find some hope in these crazy days.  It begins in Luke’s gospel with a young peasant woman, engaged to be married, having a vision of God calling her to serve.  This vision will put her in a very dangerous place – as a woman pregnant before marriage, pregnant by someone other than her fiancé.  As a woman, she is already marginalized as property of her father until she marries, and then she is property of her husband.  

The angel Gabriel asks Mary to allow herself to become pregnant with God’s Chosen One, pregnant not by having intercourse with her fiancé Joseph but rather by the Holy Spirit.  To say ‘yes” will put Mary in danger of the death penalty, so it is no small ask from Gabriel.  Mary is both afraid and skeptical – she knows if she says “yes,” it likely will mean an end to the engagement to Joseph, and it could mean a severe punishment.  Yet, she is a courageous visionary, and she says “Yes.”  Her first move after that is to go to visit her cousin Elizabeth, whom she has heard is also miraculously pregnant.  It is in this community of women that Mary finds the strength to continue in the vision and indeed to sing the stunning song that we heard in last week’s blog.  We give thanks for her vision and for her willingness to say “Yes.”

Joseph faces the same kind of decision.  There may be extra-biblical books that have the conversation when Mary tells Joseph that she will become pregnant by someone else – that “someone else’ will be God.  We can imagine Joseph’s reaction – “Wow, I’ve heard a lot of stories, but getting pregnant by God is a new one.”  We can also imagine Joseph’s anger and hurt when he hears this news.  He is a liberal, though, so Matthew’s gospel tells us that he is thinking of a way to end the engagement without causing Mary too much pain.  He too is a visionary, though, and he receives his own vision from God, telling him to get with the plan and to support Mary in this crazy venture.  Again, we can imagine the consternation that his vision causes him – he will have to move to the margins of life with Mary.  Indeed, he will have to support her at the margins. 

     Joseph decides to say “Yes” to the vision – he joins his scandalous fiancé in seeing a new way, in being willing to move to the margins in order to carry out God’s vision.  And, at the margins he will be – he is forced to the streets of Bethlehem, with his child born on those same streets.  He will become a political refugee, an immigrant fleeing Herod’s rage and murdering soldiers.  And, as a male at the center of things, he moves to the margins – we never hear him speak in the Bible.  Mary, the one who should be silenced in patriarchy, becomes the one who speaks for the family.  

In these crazy times, let us recall these stories and the visions and courage of Mary and Joseph.  There are visionaries all around us in our time, and one of our callings is to seek to hear and see God’s voice in those visions.  And, wow, think of it -we too can have visions from God!  The murderous rages are all around us, but we give thanks that God is on the move in our time too – let us keep our hearts open for the visions of God.