“HERE HE IS – DAVID STROUPE”

About a decade ago, David and Erin and Emma and Zoe were visiting us for the Christmas holiday.  It was one of those weird Atlanta and Southern Christmas seasons when the weather was warm enough to spend lots of time outside.  In this particular holiday, David and Emma and Zoe went out in the backyard to turn over rocks and look in the vines to see what creatures they could find.  They found salamanders and snakes and many other crawling creatures, and sure enough, soon our youngest Zoe came up to me with a small snake entwined around her harm.  “Here, Grandaddy, I found a snake for you – take it and feel it!”  I don’t have a great fear of snakes, but they are not my favorite either.  Yet, I didn’t want to wimp out in front of my 5 year old granddaughter, so I took the snake and let it wrap around my arm too.  I looked over at David and nodded my head at him, as if to say: “You’re the cause of this.”

And, he was the cause of it – he is a huge snake advocate and fan.  This Sunday, January 31, marks his 41st birthday, and we give thanks for him and all his gifts to us!  I still remember that snowy night in Norfolk when I drove Caroline to the Catholic Hospital (the only one at that time that permitted birthing rooms and the Lamaze breathing method.). It took him 12 hours to make that night passage out of the womb, but here he was – our first child!  He was snorting weirdly as he came out, and the doc told me to cut the cord and walk with him to the special nursery to check out his breathing.  It turned out to be fine, and we took him home in a few days, only to discover that he never slept!  That trait later served him well, as he got his graduate degrees while working and raising a family.  

He majored in biology at Davidson College, and he came by that part naturally.  We lived on Kirk Road in his early years, with a creek running in front of the house, and here he learned to develop his love of creatures great and small.  He also worked at the Atlanta Zoo every summer for a decade, so animals were a central feature of his growing awareness of himself and the world around him.

    One of his great gifts is his gentle and compassionate heart, given to him by his genes, by his nurturing, and by his growing up at Oakhurst Presbyterian.  When he was thinking about applying to Davidson, I tried to discourage him because I had gone there for a year and had a hard time.  When I told him that it would be a bunch of conservative folks at Davidson, he replied:  “Dad – there are other folks at Davidson, and I’ll find them.  I’ve grown up at Oakhurst, so I know how to find people, and I can get along with a lot of different kinds of people.”  He got a good scholarship, and off he went.  There he met his sweetheart, Erin Graham, and they built a life together.

    When he got out of college, he began teaching in a poor middle school in Houston, where Erin was from.  His school district was poor, and as he began teaching middle school science, he discovered that there was no commitment to teaching the kids:  there was no lab equipment, nothing to help the students learn about science.  He began to rectify that, but then and there, he made a commitment to public education and to ensuring equity in public education, that all students would have significant opportunities to learn and to expand all their horizons.  In order to do that, he got a Master’s Degree in Education at University of Houston, and a doctorate at University of Washington in Seattle, all the while working, being married and raising two daughters – all that practice at not sleeping served him well!

     In 2013 he got a job in the education department of Michigan State, and when we went out to Seattle for his PHD graduation, I thanked his mentor for helping David to find a job.  He replied:  “It’s not just a job – it’s THE job. It is the best job out there this year.  You should be very proud.”  And, of course we are!  Today I looked at the MSU summary of his academic history and accomplishments, and it is over 24 pages long – wow!  Just last November, Harvard University Press published his book on preparing teachers to seek equity in STEM education – here’s the link to the book https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/preparing-science-teachers-through-practice-based#  On February 4, he will be among a panel of presenters who will give updates to new Congressional aides on the STEM program.  

     We are most proud, however, of his development as a person – son, student, husband, father, teacher, professor.  He has always been well coordinated, and he was a good soccer and tennis player.  When he was in middle school, his soccer coach came to us to tell us:  “David is a fine soccer player, and he can be even greater.  But, in order to do that, I’d need to teach him to have the killer instinct, which he currently does not have.  It is a big step, so I wanted to ask you about it first.”  Our reply:  “We really appreciate your talking with us – but, no, we like him like he is.  No killer instinct, just a wide heart and a keen mind.”

    That wide heart and keen mind– even for snakes – makes him such a great son, dad, husband, teacher, mentor, friend, and human being.  So many memories, so many stories to tell, so many stories to come!  We give thanks for him being in our lives!  Happy Birthday, David!

"PERSISTENT INSISTENCE"

 “THE PERSISTENT INSISTENCE OF MLK”

Over the weekend, I had the privilege of talking with Pastor Andreas Holzbauer and member Dietrich Gerstner of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Lutheran Church in Hamburg, Germany.  We were discussing the life and witness of MLK, especially in these crazy and dangerous times.  I had met Dietrich through the Open Door Community, and they invited me to join in a conversation about King’s influence in my life and in current times.  It was a helpful reminder that Dr. King is not only a great American – he actually belongs to the world;  he influences people all the world over.

Many of you know my story of growing up in the belly of the beast of white supremacy on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River delta.  I not only grew up in it – I believed it.  I believed that those males classified as “white” were meant by God and by nature to dominate the world.  I believed it because it was taught to me by people who loved me and whom I loved:  my mother, my extended family, my church, my segregated schools.  I received this belief and appropriated it long before I knew anything about it.  it just described the way the world is – an idea and a reality like gravity.  I say this not to diminish the terror and crushing oppression of white supremacy.  I say it to emphasize why it is so difficult to eradicate in individual and communal life:  it is a core belief of people classified as “white.”

I give thanks that God was sending other voices and stories into my life to begin to offer me freedom in the midst of my captivity to white, male supremacy.  There were – and continue to be – many voices that called to me, telling me of a different world.  On this MLK Weekend, I want to remember that Dr. King was one of those voices, whom God sent to us all to help us to see a different vision, to help us dream of a different world. 

     I remember watching Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on a hot, August day in 1963.  As we approach the armed fortress of Washington, DC, for the Biden/Harris inauguration this week, I am reminded that King and his colleagues scared the white leadership to death.  In preparation for that march in 1963, some 4,000 regular US Army troops were stationed in Washington, with another 15,000 on standby in the DC suburbs.  Different motivations from this week’s events, but armed forces nevertheless.  I watched King’s speech by myself in my home.  It was the week before my senior year in high school began.  Coming into that speech, I had begun to wander from my bedrock belief in white, male supremacy.  I wanted to see for myself if he was a charlatan and a communist, as I had been told.  I also wanted to see if his followers were all fools, as I had been told.

    When I watched the speech, I was astonished by two things:  first, the size of the crowd – 250,000 – wow!  I told myself that they could not all be fools.  Second, was King’s speech itself.  That powerful voice, the soaring images that he drew from American history and from Christianity, the insistent demands that the great American ideal of equality be brought into flesh in the lives of African-Americans – all of these and more spoke to me.  I wanted to be inspired by this speech;  I wanted to let it flow into me and into those spaces captured by the hideous power of white supremacy.  I did not dare, however.  To let that happen would be to put me into direct conflict with my mother, my family, my church, my school.  Yet, something happened to me on that hot August day – the wall of race, with its hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, that wall began to crack in my heart.

    I continued to encounter Martin Luther King, Jr. over the rest of his life and continue to do so in my life.  I even had a chance to hear him speak in person in his last sermon before he was assassinated, but I chose not to go.  For more on that story, here’s a link to an article that I wrote for The Atlantic about my time in Memphis.  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/.   King’s ideas and his life created great controversy – the sanitized version that we have now of him was not the reality of his life.  The people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were desperate to deny and destroy the ideas at the heart of King’s life:  we are all children of God.  It’s a dangerous idea.

    As I think about Martin Luther King, I’m thinking  that part of his enduring is his courage and his vision.  It was based in his persistent insistence that we are each – and that we are all – children of God.  He was willing to put his life on the line to seek to weave justice and love together in such a way that we could all touch the reality of the Beloved Community.  That Beloved Community is not merely a gathering together of diverse people.  It is rather a community rooted in the power of equality and equity.  

       As we gather to begin another momentous week – celebrating the life of a great saint among us, observing and participating in the idea of democracy, in the “peaceful” transfer of power despite the efforts of a would-be-autocratic president – let us give thanks for the life and courage and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He reminded us with a persistent insistence of the power of equality in our individual and communal lives, and he invited us to join with him in seeking to make that idea a reality in this country and in so many others.

 “WOW - WHAT A WEEK!”

Last week I compared the Trumpdemic rage to that of King Herod’s rage in sending the soldiers to kill the baby boys of Bethlehem.  Though I feared the crowds that were gathering for the Day of Epiphany (and the certification of Biden/Harris), I did not imagine that they would storm the Capitol as they did.  Given the militaristic response to the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, I also assumed that there would be a comparable force stationed for the Trumpdemic crowds that gathered on January 6.  When I saw the lack of security around the Capitol as the afternoon began, I thought to myself, “Boy, if they try something, there is not enough security to hold them back.”  And there wasn’t.

Given my roots in Southern white supremacy, my first thoughts as I watched the crowds storm the Capitol was that it was similar to the fury of a lynch mob.  Trump had stoked them up, just as previous demagogues had done with white crowds about Black people in their communities.  The result was the same – chaos, destruction, and death.  I was grateful the Congress was determined to reconvene and do the original business:  to certify that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the new president and vice-president.  Now, we have to find a way to get through the last 9 days of the Trump presidency and the days of rage.  As I shared with some friends, I hope that the worst thing that Trump does in these last 9 days is to pardon himself.  

Surviving the Trump presidency will not end the Trumpdemic, however.  It will not end it because it is rooted in the systemic white supremacy and racism that have been with us since the European beginnings of the country.  The election of Barack Obama, the changing demographics of the nation, more diverse people turning out to vote – all of these are great signs of the potential for justice and equity.  Yet, they also strike at the heart of white supremacy, as noted by all the Confederate flags that the Trump crowd carried in their attack on the Capitol.  For them, Trump’s voice is one which affirms white supremacy and which calls us back to the time when no one disputed white, male rule.  Diminishing Trump’s voice does end the Trumpdemic  because this pandemic is deeply rooted in us.

Yet, it was a “wow” week also because Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won the runoffs for the Senate seats in Georgia, a big surprise to many of us.  I had predicted that Warnock and Perdue would win, so I was so delighted to be wrong on that prediction.  And, Warnock and Ossoff won by even greater margins than Biden did in Georgia.  On January 20, the Senate will move into Democratic control, though I know that Mitch McConnell is skilled enough and ruthless enough to seek to tie  things in knots until the 2022 elections.  Still, it is a powerful victory, and we give thanks to all the people who worked and organized and voted to make this possible, most especially Black women like Stacey Abrams and so many others.  It is this kind of organization and dedication that scared the Trumpdemic gathered in Washington on Wednesday.  It also is the skillful power that has frightened Georgia legislators, whose session opens today.  Many bills are forthcoming to limit voting in Georgia, and the violence at the US Capitol and the legislative energy to limit voting are a reminder of the deadly combination of these powers that stripped Black people of many rights, including voting rights, after Reconstruction.  

This week reminded us of the dynamics at work in American culture, with the powerful idea of equality always wrestling with the demonic powers of race and gender and class.  Even in the wrestling, the idea of equality continues to call out to so many people.  My good friend John Vodicka sent me a Tweet from Stacey Abrams from January 6, originally posted by The Bitter Southerner.  It reminds us of America at its best potential:  

“While today’s terrible display of terror and meanness shakes us, let us remember:  Jon Ossoff, Jewish son of an immigrant, & Reverend Warnock, first Black Senator from Georgia, will join a Catholic POTUS & the first woman, Black and Indian, VP in our nation’s capital.  God Bless America.”  

Hard and difficult days ahead, but right now the democracy is holding and even shining (sort of) brightly.  The forces of white, male supremacy are never far away – that lion never sleeps tonight – but this past fall and this week tell us that it may be possible to bend that stubborn arc of history towards justice.  May we find our places in that parade of witnesses who have taken hold of that arc of justice.  

"WONDER AND RAGE"

 “ WONDER AND RAGE”

The Christmas Season in the West officially ends this Wednesday, January 6, on the Day of Epiphany, the day that the church celebrates the arrival of the Wise Leaders, the Magi.  Although the culture has left Christmas behind, and passed on to New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day, we would do well to linger a little longer with the season.  We should linger because it emphasizes both the wonderment and the rage of the Christmas season.

As Howard Thurman emphasizes so well in his fine book “The Moods of Christmas,” Christmas is a time when we are invited to consider the wonder of life and the wonder of our lives.  Whether we believe in the literal truth of the biblical stories of Christmas or not, they invite us to consider what is at the heart of life – Christmas invites us into the questions of the meaning of our lives.  The biblical stories assert that love and justice are at the heart of life, not in a sentimental way, but in a realistic way:  a teenage girl pregnant before marriage, a baby born on the streets, the holy family fleeing for their lives as immigrants and political refugees. 

     In the midst of these contemporary issues comes the wonderment of the star.  I’ve read about the Star of Bethlehem, but I usually dismissed it until this year when Jupiter and Saturn lined up so closely together in the night sky.  On a couple of nights, they looked like headlights on a car, so I can get a sense of the astrological magi watching this and seeing it as an omen.  It was cool to experience this and get an idea of what the magi saw many centuries ago. The star of wonder became just that for a few moments.  Christmas asks to reflect on this aspect of life, that it is a wonder.  Christmas asks us to think about movement towards love and justice in our lives and in the rest of the year also.  We won’t be able to sustain the “Christmas spirit,” but we can seek to keep the values of love and justice at the center.

    The Christmas story does not allow for easy sentimentality, however.  In Matthew’s gospel, the story closes out not with wonder and worship, but with genocide.  When King Herod hears about the news of the birth of Jesus from the magi, he does not respond with joy and worship but rather with rage.  He sends soldiers to kill the boys of Bethlehem.  The soldiers carry out those orders, causing Matthew’s story to end with Rachel weeping for her children.  Matthew knows how the world works, and he urges us – as the angels urged the magi – to go on another route to find home and to find ourselves.

    As the Trumpdemic rages against his election defeat, I am drawn back to this Christmas story.  I am drawn to it, not because it gives me comfort in the present age, but because it seems so precisely to understand the rage of the powers of the world in reaction to the values at the heart of the Story.  I am not comparing Biden to Jesus, but in many ways,  Biden represents the return to some sort of decency in American politics.  A return that may allow us to consider how to act with love and justice in American culture.  Biden’s and Harris’ election does not guarantee love and justice, but it at least opens the door to the discussions.

    The Trumpdemic rage, like Herod’s rage, is very dangerous and may yet prove to be even more destructive than it already has been.  The Day of Epiphany takes on more importance this year than usual.  On this day Wednesday, January 6, the Congress will be asked to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and as of now, it looks to be a big fight.  Trumpdemic does not look to have the votes in Congress, but we’ll all be glad to get by January 6 (and maybe the 7th if the debate goes long enough) and then hold our breath until January 20.  In these crazy days, may the wonder of Christmas sustain us, and may we be spared the rage of Herod.  Whatever way it goes, may we keep our eyes on the prize, as did those magi of old, who close out the Christmas season in awe and wonder.  Let love and justice center our hearts and imaginations – may that be the 2020 Christmas legacy for us.

"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.