Remembering Christmas

We go trudging in the cold searching for the perfect tree. We labor over decorations and straighten every bow a dozen times. We rack our brains trying to come up with the perfect present to give someone special. We spend days slaving in the kitchen hoping to put together the feast that nobody will ever forget. Why is it that we work so hard to get everything perfect for Christmas?

Back in 1954, E.B. White was feeling that Christmas perfection pressure when he sat down at his typewriter to write his annual Christmas column for The New Yorker magazine. He wanted to say something new and fresh that would inspire his readers at Christmastime. But nothing he wrote seemed to do it. And while he was struggling to find the perfect words to say, he thought about a conversation he had with his 92 Aunt Caroline, who lived with White and his wife. He described his Aunt Caroline as a woman from another century, who always seemed to know what to say.

The White family lived in New England, which was known for its beautiful fall color and Aunt Caroline loved to go for drives in the country and take in the changing colors. But this particular year they hadn’t had the opportunity to go, and when he realized this, E.B. White felt terrible about it. He went to his aunt and said, “I’m so sorry we didn’t get out for a ride to see the leaves. I know that’s your favorite thing.”

Aunt Caroline looked at him and she said, “Why my dear --- remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.” It was such an unexpected answer that he said it felt like a bird had just flown into the room. She didn’t need a new experience – she just needed to remember what she had already seen. That was enough for her. Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.

How do you remember Christmas? Re-membering is the opposite of dis-membering. To dis-member is to take something apart. It’s to divide it up into pieces. But to re-member is to bring all the pieces back together again into a whole picture. Another word for remember is recollect, and that gives us an even better visual. It’s re-collecting the parts of the story. That process of bringing the story together again is what we’re called to do at Christmastime.

That seems to be the way Mary celebrated the first Christmas. We read in Luke’s gospel that Mary “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” It’s a great description of what it means to remember. Mary treasured “all these things.” She gathered up all the different pieces of the story and put them together, not just in her mind, but also in her heart. She pondered in her heart. What an oxymoron that is. How do you ponder with your heart? Well, that’s what remembering is. You take the details you have filed away in your brain and filter them through your heart. Then your experience becomes more than just a collection of facts. It takes on significance and meaning. That’s what happens when you ponder with your heart.

I remember Christmas in a way that is unique to me. At this time of year I’m pondering with my heart all the many pieces to my Christmas story. Pieces like the last Christmas I had with my father and he gave me a Shirley Temple doll. When my shiny blue Schwinn bicycle was standing by the tree on Christmas morning. Christmas Eve parties at my aunt and uncle’s. Homemade shortbread from Grandma Johannsen. As a teenager, playing my flute for the Episcopal church and discovering that some people actually go to worship on Christmas Eve. Rocking my three week old baby to sleep singing “Silent Night” to the light of a Christmas tree. Going into my mom’s house after she died in November 29 years ago and finding the Christmas gifts she had already wrapped for us. Looking out into a sea of candles on Christmas Eve and seeing my children’s faces glowing back at me. Waking up on Christmas morning completely alone for the first time after my divorce. My first Christmas at Holy Trinity when we had over a 100 people at worship for the first time in recent history. When the usher went to the balcony to count the people she got so excited that on her way back down she fell down the stairs. Those are among the pieces of my Christmas story.

But then, there is another story that gets thrown into that mix. It’s a story that has also become a part of my life. So much so that it overshadows all the other pieces of Christmas that I ponder in my heart. This is a story that is not unique to me. I share it with all of you. It’s the story of how our God came to live as one of us. Beginning his life the way we all do, as an infant. Small, vulnerable, hungry for the milk and the love of his mama. And as his life unfolded, he showed us the very essence of God: grace, mercy and truth. Into the darkness of this world, he shone with the light of God.

Although none of us were actually there when it happened, we can still re-member that story as we ponder it in our hearts and connect it with our own personal Christmas stories.

We spend so much time, energy and money at Christmastime trying to create a perfect moment, when all we really need to do is remember. We don’t need a brand new experience; we need to remember what we already know. There’s such beauty and truth in the story of Christmas that it doesn’t require a lot of embellishment or special effects. All we have to do is remember it well. Because when we do, it speaks to that deepest part of us. When we do, it’s still as surprising as if a bird just flew into the room. Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.

I'm Not the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Really.

It’s Advent once again and time for our annual reminder that we are a countercultural community in the world around us. We may know that all year round, but at no other time do the values of the dominant culture so obviously clash with our own. The secular world has stolen our sacred observance of the Word made flesh and turned it into a time that is the antithesis of Christ… a time filled with busy-ness, consumerism and superficial sentiment.
I think of the Easter story where a bewildered Mary Magdalene is sobbing in the garden outside the tomb, telling a man she supposed to be the gardener, “Sir, they’ve taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they put him!” We know that the gardener was none other than Jesus himself, so there is great irony in Mary’s lament. But, imagine Mary Magdalene transported in time to Concord Mills during the month of December. In this context, her words would ring oh so true, “Sir, they’ve taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they put him!”
Often we hear people grumbling over the fact that we don’t sing Christmas hymns during the season of Advent. As a Lutheran pastor I sometimes feel as if parishioners consider me the enforcer of an arbitrary rule that makes no sense to them, and I have become like the “Grinch who stole Christmas.” They ask, “Why can’t we sing Christmas songs when they’re being sung all around us?” But this is precisely why we don’t sing them in the church… because we follow a different calendar than the world around us. And we decide how we will celebrate the incarnation, not those who run retail stores.
I suggest that we sing our Advent hymns with gusto, voicing them to the very world that would convince us of their futility. We don’t sing these hymns because the pastors insist we must; we sing them because we are a community of faith that is bound together by the gospel and we will not be intimidated into following the world’s agenda. Every time we sing an Advent hymn it defines us; we are declaring who we are and who we are not. Singing Advent hymns is in fact an extreme act of Christian defiance! We are not like the rest of the world. We will prepare for the birth of Christ in our own way. We will proclaim a message that stands in direct opposition to the perversion of Christ’s life and teachings that the popular culture would have us believe. So there!
Thank God for this time of the year when we are called upon to take a stand by singing songs that the dominant culture doesn’t appreciate. Our own discomfort with Advent songs reminds us of our calling to embody an alternative community of faith in a world that doesn’t get it. Ironically, the world that we would resist with our songs is the very world that needs to hear those songs the most. And so it’s not just in stubborn defiance that we sing our Advent songs, but it is in bold witness to the love of God for the world. The same world that would obliterate the message of the gospel with this holiday that bears Christ’s name is, after all, the world that Christ came to save. It’s with Christ’s love in our hearts that we sing our Advent hymns as if the whole world depended on them. Perhaps it does.

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti is a book written by a psychiatrist at the state hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He had three schizophrenic patients all claiming to be Jesus Christ and, in a somewhat sadistic move, he decided to put them together and force them to interact with one another. In this experiment the patients were confronted with each other’s conflicting claims. I think it was the psychiatrist’s intention to break through their delusions, but all that really happened was that each one became even more convinced that he was Jesus Christ and the other two were mental patients in a hospital.

It reminds me of the conflicting ideas about Jesus that are present in the world today, especially among Christians. I certainly have my ideas about Jesus and they don’t coincide with the ideas a peddler of the prosperity gospel has about Jesus as a good luck charm who will make all your dreams come true. Nor do I share the ideas of Jesus that you might hear from a preacher who is all about the blood of Jesus washing away your sins so you can get into heaven someday. How can we follow such different Jesuses? Sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m the one who’s being delusional.

This Sunday we liturgical-types will be celebrating the festival of Christ the King. At Holy Trinity, for our gospel procession we’ll be singing the hymn that proclaims, “Crown him Lord of all.” In between verses of that glorious hymn we’ll hear a passage about a guy who was nailed to a wooden cross. My hope is that the juxtaposition of the two will strike our worshippers as bizarre. After all, what kind of a king is this? He’s a king who showed us that the life abundant we so long for is a life given in love. He’s a king who offers us an alternative reality to the one that so obviously dominates our world of fear, hatred and violence. When he taught us about that alternative reality he called it the kingdom of God.

It seems to me that worshipping Christ the King may not have a whole lot to do with what we believe about Jesus. We may not all see Jesus in the same way. We may not agree with the preachers we see on T.V. or even our family members we’ll be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with this week. But Christ is King whenever and wherever we are about the business of living into the kingdom of God that he inaugurated. That kingdom is not some future utopia, but it’s here and now for all who recognize it as a radically different way of being in relationship with God and with one another. Do you see it? Are you a part of it? Is it a part of you?

The Best Eclair I Ever Tasted

It’s called the golden rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” A principle offered in every major religion in one form or another, it calls forth a certain amount of empathy for other people.

We teach it to our children so they can learn to be decent human beings who are considerate toward others. If Tommy punches Julie in the nose, we say, “Now Tommy, you wouldn’t like it if Julie punched you like that, would you?” Well, of course not. So we learn to give others the same consideration we would like them to give us.

But I’m not so sure that’s quite what Jesus intended when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Not when you look at that verse in its biblical context. It seems to be not so much a guideline for how to get along with other people as a description of what it means to live a way of life that manifests the love of God.

The way we love is usually such a poor imitation of the way God loves. We may love out of guilt, because we feel crummy if we don’t. Or we may love out of obligation, because we know it’s the right thing to do. Or perhaps we love as the result of an intellectual exercise. Like the Christian who looks on someone who is hungry and thinks about the passage where Jesus says, “I was hungry and you fed me.... As you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.” And they'll say, "I need to think of this person as I would think of Jesus, and how would I treat Jesus?” That’s love as an intellectual exercise.

Mother Teresa was known to say on many occasions that she saw Jesus in every human being, no matter how unlovable that person might have been. She didn’t have to go through the intellectual exercise and decide to love every time she encountered a person who was difficult to love. She didn’t have to convince herself that somehow the way she treated that person was like the way she would treat Jesus. That person wasn’t like Jesus to her. That person was Jesus. When she saw the person, she saw Jesus.

Understanding the difference is a key to understanding what Jesus meant when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” If we have to filter this through an intellectual exercise that takes us to the point of considering how we might like to be treated by others and then offering that same treatment to them, we’re not quite there yet. The intent of doing unto others as you would have them do to you is not to treat others the way you would like them to treat you. The intent is to love others because in doing so you are loving yourself. That is to say that when you love others, you are actually loving yourself because you are connected. They are not like you. They are you. The same love of God that fills you to overflowing fills them to overflowing and it all spills together into one big sea of love. We’re a part of that. So that whatever we do for another, we do for ourselves.

Back when my kids were living with me, we all had a great love for chocolate éclairs. Sometimes I would go to the bakery and pick one up for each of us and we’d all indulge in ecstasy. And sometimes I’d just want to have an éclair for myself. Especially if I was going through a stressful day and I had to do something I hated, I’d pick myself up an éclair and have it waiting for me in the fridge when I got home, as a reward. Of course, when I did that I had to be sure to hide the éclair so neither of the kids saw it or it wouldn’t be there by the time I got home. And when it came time to eat it, I’d have to sneak off someplace by myself so I wouldn’t have to share it.

Well, it was one of those times. I was on my way home after a grueling day and I knew there was an éclair in the fridge waiting for me with my name on it.

I arrived home to find my daughter frazzled. She clearly had been crying. We sat at the kitchen table and she told me about a terrible disappointment that day in school that broke her heart. After we talked I asked, “Gretchen, would a chocolate éclair help?”

She smiled broadly. “A chocolate éclair always helps.”

I went to the fridge and got the éclair I had hidden away and presented it to her. “Well, I just happen to have one right here. Enjoy!”

I handed her a fork and watched while she ate my éclair. And the weirdest thing happened. I could actually taste that éclair in my mouth while Gretchen ate it. And it tasted soooo good.

Had that been a sacrifice? Perhaps it appeared that way to someone on the outside. But from the inside, it was no sacrifice at all. In fact, I couldn’t ever remember that any éclair I had ever eaten in my life tasted as good as that one.

We have this idea of loving the way Jesus loved as being connected to sacrifice. And, from the outside, that’s what it looks like. It’s a sacrifice to give yourself in love. But from the inside, that’s not how it looks at all. Because when you truly love another, you are truly loving yourself. That’s why Jesus can say that we’re blessed when we become poor for the sake of the poor, when we hunger for the sake of the hungry, when we weep with those who weep. It may seem like a sacrifice for those who don’t get it, but for those who are in tune with the love of God and the way it works, there is no sacrifice. “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy,” Jesus says. When you offer yourself in love, there is no sacrifice. Only joy. It’s the sort of thing Jesus was talking about when he revealed that the secret to life that eludes so many people is quite simply this: If you give your life away, you’ll receive more than you could ever imagine. And if you hoard your life and keep it all to yourself, that’s a sure fire way to lose everything.

Who Could Have Known?

“Funeral! Funeral!” my friend Fritzie shouted, as he rode his bike through the neighborhood. We all came running. There was going to be a funeral. Yippee! This was one of my favorite times as a kid.

My neighborhood friends and I were in the funeral business. Whenever one of us found a dead animal (usually a bird), we reverently wrapped it in a rag and had a procession to the Little Woods at the end of the street. We took it to a small clearing among the trees where there was an animal cemetery with tiny crosses made from tree branches marking the graves.

After digging a hole, we carefully placed the dead critter inside and covered it with dirt. Then it was time for my part. I was the one who said what needed to be said. It was always the same. I would fold my hands and bow my head and declare, “May he rest in peace.” I believe it was something I had picked up from old cowboy movies, the words spoken after they covered a dead guy, still wearing his boots and spurrs, with a mound of rocks in the desert. I always figured that they wanted him to rest in peace because they were hoping and praying that he stayed dead and didn’t start moving those rocks or he was going to be pretty upset with his buddies who had buried him without his consent. (Maybe this was why they never buried them with their guns.)And although waking up with a bad hangover only to discover you have been buried alive didn’t seem to be a big issue with the dead animals we buried*, still, “Rest in peace” was all I knew to say.

I think about those animal funerals often when I conduct human funerals now that I am a bona fide pastor. As a kid doing animal funerals, never once did I entertain the thought that I would one day grow up to be doing this as a professional holy person. But there I was in the Little Woods, playing the role of the pastor without realizing the significance of my actions.

It’s funny how childhood moments often foreshadow greater themes in our lives. I’ve been noticing a lot more of them lately. I suppose it takes having some years behind you to be able to look back and see the great ironies of your life. It’s all rather amazing and delightful and scary at the same time. A clever novelist couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s hard for me to imagine that it’s all random, so can I say that it’s been God’s doing? That seems to be as good of an explanation as any, although I have trouble believing God is involved in the details of my life like that. And yet, somehow I know God is in the mix in some way. It doesn’t really matter if I understand it. The unfolding adventure continues to amaze, delight and scare me. I can’t wait to see how the story continues to unfold.


*This was back before I read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.

Bizarre Airport Behavior Never Reported to the Authorities

Why do people pop up out of their seats and crowd the aisles as soon as an airplane lands, waiting for the door to open so they can escape as quickly as possible? Is there someone handing out prizes to the first ten people who emerge from the plane? (I’m never at the front of the line, so I wouldn’t know.) Are they all burdened with ever-expanding bladders, and an aversion to the closets with the gasping toilets on the airplane? Are they afraid that the plane is going to explode at any moment? I don’t get it.

Come to think of it, people board airplanes the same way. As soon as they announce that it's time to start taking tickets, all the passengers crowd around and they push their way in front of you like the fate of the universe depends upon them getting on that plane. I used to think that maybe they were worried that there wouldn’t be enough seats for everyone, so they had to grab one before they lost out, kind of like the game of musical chairs where the slow ones end up on the floor. Really. What’s the rush? It’s not like the plane is going to take off while half the people are still at the gate, standing in line.

The fact is, you can hurry to be the first one on the plane, but we all end up leaving at the same time. You can push your way into the aisle to get off the plane, but nobody goes anywhere until they open the door.

Is this bizarre airplane behavior a variation on the scarcity principle, perhaps? Are we afraid that if we’re not first, or somewhere near the front of the line, we’re going to miss out and somebody else is going to end up with something that should be ours? But what would that be? Maybe if they gave free peanuts to the first to be seated, I’d be motivated to push my way to the front. I do miss those free peanuts.

I think that they should sell raffle tickets to passengers when they arrive at the gate to board the plane. Then they can draw tickets to determine who goes first, second, and so on. They could use the money they make on the raffle tickets to pay for our peanuts.

I Hear Music, Therefore I Am

Am I the only one who listens to the music being played in the supermarket? I find myself singing along, throwing cereal boxes in time with a thumping bass, doing a little Fred Astaire move behind my cart, preferably when no one is looking, which is one of the reasons I tend to shop at times when other people are sleeping or working.

Wherever I am, when I hear music in the background, I feel compelled to “Name That Tune.” I usually can, but when I can’t, it will just about make me bonkers. Such things have kept me awake at night. Do you realize that you can’t google a tune? Lyrics, yes. But never a tune. If someone should invent such a device, I would definitely be willing to pay for it. And I suspect there may be other musical OCDs in the world who would pay big bucks for one, too. Just imagine. You could hum a tune, and it would tell you what the heck you’re humming. Oh, I know it’s a brave new world I’m envisioning, but I believe it can happen. I only hope it’s within my lifetime.

In restaurants, music that most other people probably don’t even notice can make or break the dining experience for me. Certain music goes with certain food. When I go to a the House of Wong and have to listen to Hip-Hop, it becomes the House of Wrong for me. Or there’s a nice family restaurant I go to that plays Jimmy Buffett; it works on “Cheeseburger in Paradise” but when he starts crooning, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw?”… well, it just ain’t right. Especially when the kids start singing along. And then there are those times when the musical style fits the venue, but they pair it with a song that just doesn’t work. I was in an Italian restaurant where a delightful little man strolls around playing the accordion. Now, anybody who has ever seen Lady and the Tramp knows that accordion music is truly the best for eating spaghetti. It just makes you want to slurp up long noodles and stare into the eyes of your… dog. However, the last time I was at this restaurant, I heard a rendition of “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” and I couldn’t control my laughter. That’s a song that shouldn’t be played on an accordion. Especially when people are trying to eat. It was almost as bad as the time I was in a Mexican restaurant and heard a mariachi band playing “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It became quite a challenge to stuff my face with chips and salsa between giggles.

Of course, there are also those times when I find music personally troublesome. Particularly when it seems to be mocking my life. I’m driving along the highway and suddenly my engine dies, while on the radio Willie is singing, “I can’t wait to get on the road again.” Or I’m having a tiff with a parishioner who is being totally unreasonable and I am driving home from the church, fantasizing about slapping her silly, when suddenly I’m snapped back to reality with the strains of “All we need is love.” That’s when flipping the radio dial is futile because the song continues bouncing around in my brain. I’m aware of the fact that this doesn’t sound all that different from saying “Make the voices stop”, does it? Am I just a little bit crazy, perhaps? Nah! Not in the Patsy Cline sort of “Crazy” way. (FYI – Now I’m humming that song as I write this.)

I don’t like feeling as if I’m at the mercy of the music in my environment. It’s always best for me when I can control what I’m listening to. When I’m home, I make it work for me. I have learned that there is certain music that goes with certain tasks. House cleaning: classic rock. Sermon writing: baroque. Soaking in the tub: Gregorian chant. Wallowing in self-pity: country.

What would my life be like without a soundtrack? It would be like perpetually living in the library, which, quite frankly, I can only take in small doses before I want to start screaming, “I can’t stand it anymore!” and run for the door. There really ought to be music in libraries. That’s the nice thing about iPods. You can take music with you everywhere you go, including the library, if you so choose. But even without an iPod, no matter where I am, there is always music. When I’m not hearing it externally, I always seem to be creating it internally, so there’s never a time when a melody isn’t massaging my gray matter.

I suspect that when I stop hearing music I will be dead. Or maybe that’s just when it starts getting really good.