It Was Mostly an Ordinary Christmas

 

Before I get too far into a New Year and the tree comes down, I usually spend some time reflecting on the Christmas past. This year I've finally admitted what I've been afraid to admit for so long.

Christmas is not "the most wonderful time of the year." Not for me, anyway.

It's hard to admit. I don't want to sound like a Scrooge, muttering "Bah, humbug" under my breath, then feeling guilty about being unsentimental. I understand the sadness that so many feel when a loved one has died or a marriage has ended; it certainly wasn't a Merry Christmas for the residents of Newtown. But even as an ordinary month, I just can't find and maintain some unique joy every single day.

It's too much work.

For far too many years I've tried to recapture, even if just for a moment, the magic excitement of my childhood Christmases. The lights seemed prettier then, the trees taller, the gifts more enticing, the anticipation more palpable. We counted down the days - "T minus 8!" - and found it hard to sleep. I know that's a typical childhood experience of Christmas, and as I got older it began to slip away.

So I looked up old childhood LPs on CD. I re-started some traditions that I'd forgotten. I tried to gather small groups for caroling and even rang the bell for the Salvation Army (which I did as a Kiwanis kid). I wanted scenes around the fireplace with my closest friends, passing around the coffee and the pumpkin pie. When our boys were in that "sweet spot" of childhood it came back vicariously. Now it's a season where again my emotional expectations have become - well, burdensome.

What I have found is that, in the midst of a month that's always more demanding than the other eleven, there are moments of light that break through with a special holiness. The Burke Family Christmas was one of those this year: the families, the children, the music, the sheer grace of the Praise Hula Dancers fed my soul powerfully in those post-Newtown days. An evening with my sons was another. The Christmas Eve services - especially the children's pageant and "O Holy Night" - were another. Most everything else seemed just ordinary - which in the Christmas hype is blasphemous.

But when I go back to Scripture, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be! Maybe the evening of Jesus' birth really was that glorious - with light and angels and awestruck shepherds and a heavenly chorus. But inside the stable I think it was anything but.

The straw - damp and ordinary. The animals - loud and ordinary. The atmosphere - smelly and ordinary. The baby - wet, colicky, cold, fragile - a lot of work. The whole month leading up to that night wasn't clean and holy and glorious by a long shot. That's not the Christmas message.

The message is that the light shines out through the darkness - in the midst of the ordinary - and that light will never be totally swallowed up by it. The message I hear in a fresh way now is that the monthly work of Christmas - buying and wrapping, cooking and decorating, planning and preparing, writing and mailing - is often burdensome. (Joseph and Mary's month before wasn't all that magical and giddy either! ) But the flicker and flash of that light - the glimpse of grace in church, the moment at the table, the laugh in the car, the smile through the sadness - that's what we celebrate.

If I get this and live it, I can put fewer burdens on the entire month and what I wish it could be again. I could set my expectations aside and welcome instead what God does give. And I think what God will give is just the flicker, just the glimpse.

Next year there may only be two or three of those in the whole month. But I want that to be enough to remind me of the heart of Christmas. Ordinary darkness is not vanquished. But "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." That's what I will wait for.

Now May & June - that's the most wonderful time of the year!

I think.

Pastor Larry

Guns & Jesus Part II

(This is a followup to my late December posting down below.  It was on Facebook in several places but was inadvertently omitted from this blog.              -- Larry) 

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I confess.  I confess, as time has passed, that my earlier Tidings posting about Jesus and Guns was in some ways over the top – or painted with too broad a brush. Hyperbole has its place, but only for a time.  For me, I think it was a cry of outrage over what’s happening in this country now. 

But our critics often force us to re-think what we want to say more clearly. They also teach us.  I have been both encouraged and taught.  Thank you. And while I have no illusions that the world is eagerly waiting for more of Larry Buxton’s opinions, here is a brief and more nuanced credo-in-progress:

1.      I believe that one can be a Christian and use guns in wartime. 

2.      I believe that one can be a Christian and own guns for hunting and marksmanship.

3.      I believe that one can be a Christian and own a handgun for personal protection.

4.      I believe that one can be a Christian and a police officer.

5.      I believe that the arms our Founding Fathers intended in their amendment (e.g., a single shot flintlock powered by black powder) should be clearly legal constitutionally. Everything else is up for debate.

6.      I believe that not all gun-owners support the official position of the NRA.

7.      I believe that the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” mantra is offensive.  Why don’t we say “Cars don’t kill people” or “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people” or “Drugs don’t kill people”? It’s elementary to acknowledge that an inert object can be safe.  But any number of inert things can become excessively deadly when used wrongly by people. That’s why we regulate them, restrict them, and act to restrain their use.

8.      I believe that the NRA’s position on guns, as articulated by Wayne LaPierre, is obscene.

9.      I believe there is no justification whatsoever for assault or semi-assault type weapons to be available to anyone off the battlefield.

10.  I believe that one thing that can stop a good person with a weapon is a bad person with a weapon. Weapons are not the solution.

11.  I believe that for our nation to survive the 21^st Century, we must let go of some of our “rights.” Our responsibilities must trump our rights. The welfare of the nation must trump what’s good for me. Compromise is not a bad word. We’re all in this together.

12. I believe the truth of the story about the Boston cab driver who told his passenger that he was a Democrat. His daddy was a Democrat, all his uncles were Democrats, and all his brothers and sisters were Democrats too.  “So,” said the passenger, “I assume you’re voting for the Democrats this year?” “Heck no,” said the cabbie.  “Sometimes you’ve got to put aside your principles and do the right thing.”

The Man at the Gate of the Year

One of the Buxton family traditions I’ve adopted over the years is a brief quote with an interesting history.  My Dad used to say it at dinner every New Year’s Day.  All throughout my ministry – or at least for as long as I can remember – I’ve used it as a benediction on the Sundays closest to January 1.

It’s a snippet from a longer poem by the little-known British poet Minnie Haskins.  Published in 1908, it came to public attention when King George VI (father of the current Queen Elizabeth) quoted it in his 1939 Christmas address to the British Empire on the eve of World War II. 

I recently learned that when the Queen Mother was buried in 2002, the words of this poem were read at her state funeral.

The quote I learned is:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

       “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied: “Go forth into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

       That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

What has spoken to me over the years is this assertion:  that going forward into the unknown, accompanied by God, is safer than going into the known without God. God alone makes the journey into unknown territory better than following a well-lit path.

Our prayer is so often for certainty. “If I could only see what’s ahead! If I only knew!”  But that’s more dangerous than we realize.  A false sense of security breeds inattention, which trips us up time and again. 

But here’s fresh wisdom:  Go by the way of not-knowing – hand in hand with God.  Walking in companionship with the Lord is safer than traveling a well-lit path by ourselves.

May you walk closely with God into the new beginning we call 2013.

 

Pastor Larry

Guns & Jesus

It becomes increasingly obscene to balance the American desire to cling to guns with the message of Christmas. We observe a holiday centered in the birth of a powerless and vulnerable child who lived a life of nonviolence. He chose weakness over power, love over force, sacrifice over self-will. How this life squares with the insistent demand to own weapons without restrictions is beyond me.

And while today’s church is obviously made up of human beings who live in the “real world” of the 21^st Century and not first century Palestine, trying to square the message of Christmas holiness with the “God-given” right to arm ourselves grows increasingly offensive.

We are confronted with two stories to live. There is the “American” story that offers violence, force and self-protection at all costs and that clamors for our rights as means to our salvation. And there is the story of Jesus Christ, one who was born in vulnerability and lived in trust. That story insists that ultimate victory belongs to “the lamb who was slain” by the violence of the world. That story insists that our responsibilities trump our rights, that community trumps self, and that forgiveness trumps retaliation.

Only one of these stories is true and worthy of our commitment. We cannot have it both ways.
 

Pastor Larry

Grace in the Twinkling of an Eye

I had a minor outpatient procedure this week, one that involved anesthesia for a brief time.  (Actually, I wasn’t planning to say “colonoscopy” here at all. But it’s an opportunity to say to you:  Please do not neglect this!  If you’ve never had one or are overdue, it’s no big deal – and it could save your life.  I’ve done too many funerals to believe otherwise. Go. You are too precious to God not to.)

Okay – now back to Tidings.  The most wondrous thing about this to me was the experience of the anesthesia.  I said it’s really a form of time-travel:  One second you’re in this room; the next second you’re in another room and an hour has gone by.  Zip!   It’s that immediate – and that amazing.  So many of you have had the same experience, maybe more often and for longer than mine.

But it got me pondering.

I give God great thanks for the gift of anesthesia and God’s trained practitioners. I also wondered if the gift of death is anything like this experience.  Your eyes close involuntarily.  Consciousness drops away. You lose any conception of earthly time.  You trust others to take care of your body. You are not in pain. You awaken in another location, seemingly immediately and yet much later.  You’re beckoned by soft voices that welcome you into a different reality from the one you left.

I take this as a glimpse of the mercy God has prepared for us. I know the reality is probably far more complex.  I believe in a time of judgment, for example (which this experience didn’t include).  But even in preparing for that moment we’re urged to remember that the One who judges us most finally is the same One who loves us most fully.

Christmas is obviously about the birth of Jesus, not his death. But our final encounter with Jesus can come at any moment.  A lot of us have lost family members over these past weeks, too, so any musing about death is always timely.  

So Paul writes to the Corinthians: 

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye… and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Cor. 15:52)

Amazing things happen in the twinkling of an eye. Much to give thanks for.

Think Small

The opening verse of our Scripture reading for Sunday is a word of hope from Isaiah:

            A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

          and a branch shall grow out of his roots.   (Isaiah 11:1)

Odd words, aren’t they?  There’s a lot of hidden metaphor in that verse.  Jesse was King David’s father.  His “family tree” had come to an end.  Jesse’s clan was no longer the “royal family” – David was gone, his sons were dead or disgraced – and the prophet Isaiah likens his once-great family tree to a stump.

But Isaiah is saying that the longed for Messiah – God’s special chosen one who would lead Israel back to glory – would be a descendant of David nonetheless. He would come from this stunted family tree. The dead stump would send out a shoot.  Hope would peek out like a small bud or a twig or tendril.  This tentative growth would develop into a branch, and that branch become the lineage of the unexpected Messiah.

Notice the littleness of this new beginning.  A small shoot of new growth. A tender bud. Fragile, barely noticeable, easily overlooked. These are the ways of God. The world of commerce constantly shouts and screams; it tries to shock or dazzle or outrage.    But God enters quietly.  Jesus is born in a hidden stable, far away from the royal power brokers of the capital city.

That’s why Jesus constantly says, “Watch.” Hope will be born in your midst. 

You just have to think small.

 

Pastor Larry

Don't Believe Everything You Think

I saw another thought-provoking bumper sticker this week:  Don’t Believe Everything You Think.

It speaks on several levels, doesn’t it?  Don’t Believe Everything You Think. 

It could mean Don’t Close Your Mind, Stay Open to Truth. The things we think we know for sure always need to be tempered with humility.

It could mean Give the Benefit of the Doubt.  You may think you understand the whole situation, but the odds are very good you don’t.

And it could mean Watch What You Let Into Your Mind.  Modern culture barrages us with advertising, celebrities, bad news, and trivia. We need to control what comes into our inner world.  It’s incredibly hard to keep your view of the world from growing cynical in 60 minutes once a week (at best). Worship alone isn’t enough.

I’m not striking the stereotypical anti-commerce “Feel guilty for buying Christmas presents” note here. Just a reminder that if you’re not intentionally devoting time to Jesus, you’re more susceptible to the junk all around you. You may find yourself believing everything you think.

Take time for quiet.  Find times and places of solitude.  Read the Gospel of Luke, or the Psalms, or devotional books, or anything reflective and uplifting.  Make time for music (such as Handel’s Messiah here Sunday morning) and for worship. Pray, no matter “how bad” you think you are at it.   Hold on to all that is good and holy and true this season. Believe the good news of God.

 

               Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,

so that you may discern what is will of God – good, acceptable and perfect.

                                                                 (Romans 12:2)

 

Pastor Larry