Giving at Christmas

       We have just been through what the culture calls “The Holidays” with all of their festivity, the Christmas presents, the dinners, the guests, the madness of the malls and everything that goes with this year end celebration.  New Year’s eve is the last of it when we celebrate the renewal of God’s time full of hope for the coming year.

On Christmas Eve, I was privileged to be with Dr. Harold Lewis and The Rev. Leslie Reimer at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh for their glorious 11:00 service with their massive choir and brass septet, with a procession that wound all around the church to place the babe in the manger and then begin the celebration of Jesus’ birth including a great sermon and the Eucharist. We finished it all, were properly exhausted, went home and went to bed getting up late on Christmas morning because the kids are all grown and are dealing with their own Christmases.  We saw them all later in the day for a wonderful dinner and a second exchange of presents.

What are we to make of all of this?  I am attracted to the short Old Testament reading in Numbers that is essentially the blessing that we are offered at the end of our worship services:

    The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

      In this Christmas season, we have again been given the gift of the birth of our Lord, and also the blessing of our God.  What more could we want?

Well, we want a lot more.  Christmas has devolved into a season of wanting.  Kids ask for the impossible from Santa and the rest of us try as best we can to take care of their wants.

Christmas, though seems also to have an abnormal number of tragedies,  fires and robberies.  Even charities have been robbed this year.  People have put out boxes to collect for charity and have had what was put in those boxes stolen.  I think this is a sign of the terrible times that we are in.  Joblessness is rampant and there is just not enough money in many budgets to take care of the demands.  So when a festive time like Christmas comes along, the demands loom larger and desperate things are done to provide the means to get along.  It is particularly depressing when charities are robbed, whose aim is to take care of those who have nothing.

I think we ought not to be too quick or too harsh with our judgment.  I remember when the poor box at Trinity Cathedral was stolen, the Dean of the Cathedral was asked about it by one of Pittsburgh’s reporters.  He said, “Maybe the man who stole it was poor”,  an elegant answer that puts into perspective the terrible need that constantly has filled our city and continues to fill it today.

So what do we really want at Christmastime?  We want what God has always wanted for us all.  Peace and joy, certainly and providence in the face of need and poverty.  We are always impressed when the community rises up and provides for those who lose everything in our neighborhoods.  When fires and death ravage us it is helpful when our neighbors come to our aid.

But we don’t have to wait for obvious tragedy to do this.  There are desperate people all around us who are in a more silent need.  When we help them in their grief or their hunger, or their inability to provide for themselves, we add a bit to God’s peace on this earth.  That is certainly the design of Christmas and we fulfill it with our giving to those around us more than with our feeble presents under the tree.

In this Holy season, may we all be mindful of need, wherever we find it and be givers of God’s peace, not only receivers.  This is how our blessed Lord is seen in this world that is full of privation and want.  A small baby in a manger with nothing at all but poor shepherds to come to him is our model for Christmas.  Remember the words of The Little Drummer Boy:

                        What can I give him, poor as I am?
                      If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
                      If I were a wise man, I would do my part,  
                      So what can I give him? I will give my heart.

When we approach the manger in this blessed season, material goods are not what are required as a gift.  What is wanted by our God as a gift to the Christ Child is our selves, ready to be agents of peace in this strife-torn world.  If we can do this simple thing, God’s peace will reign and the angels will sing.

The Greatest Gift at Christmas

      When I was about eight or nine, as World War II was getting underway, my mother took me Christmas shopping.  In one of the large Pittsburgh department stores, in the toy department, there was a large wooden anti-aircraft gun with a seat on it and a wheel to turn it around.  I wanted that thing more than anything I could think of.  I never told my parents about it, but I told Santa at night in the silence and darkness of my bed.  On Christmas morning, I crept down the stairs knowing that large gun would be in front of the fireplace in our living room, and that it would be mine.

The living room had no gun in it, only the sparkling tree with unopened presents beneath it.  My heart sank in knowing that there was no gun for me.

It was, of course, a disappointing Christmas for me.  What I remember was opening packages with a sweater and probably one with a toy of some kind, but that gun was all that was in my mind.  I’m sure that nobody knew the deep disappointment that was deep inside me at that moment, but as the day went on, I slowly got over it.

What I learned that day was the limit of desire.  I’m not sure how I expected Santa to get that gun into the house, or what I would have done with it; but on many levels, I am glad that it didn’t happen.  I think that I never asked for anything so preposterous again, and as time went on, I think I began to wonder what might be a appropriate thing to ask Santa to bring me, or if really there was a Santa in the first place.

All of us grow up, become more mature and understand the world better.  As kids, I think it is a wonderful thing to think about the wonder of a man in a red suit with reindeer who brings presents down the chimney.  But that certainly isn’t the essence of Christmas.  Kids in extreme poverty think about Christmas differently and wonder where their next meal is coming from.  Kids with meals provided think about selfish things like wooden anti-aircraft guns.

So what is all of this gifting about?  What is it that we all want Santa to bring us?   Isn’t Christmas about more than gifts and giving?  Isn’t it really about humankind receiving the greatest gift that has ever been given?

When Jesus was born to Mary in a stable in Bethlehem, he was born into poverty and homelessness.  There was no room for his parents in the inn and we have no record at all of Jesus’ home anywhere.  It isn’t recorded how he got on in his childhood, except the story of his visiting the temple in his youth and being found there by his parents.

As his ministry began, he wandered all around the countryside healing and comforting, never staying in one place very long.  His disciples followed him and kept company with him, but their lives were lived without much comfort for them.  They listened to Jesus and marveled at what he did.  They learned from him and followed him because they couldn’t do anything else.  He was a captivating person with a deep faith that never waned.

We celebrate Christmas because it is the day of the birth of our Messiah, the incarnation of God who came to take human form and to know intimately what it means to walk this earth as a human being with the same yearnings and problems that we all face.  Often, we make a mockery of this by the way that we celebrate this colossal Holy Day.  I am certain that if Christianity disappeared off the face of the earth, that Christmas would go right on.  The economy demands it.  We need “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving and all of the shopping that goes on from that day forward.

There are certainly good things too.  Salvation Army kettles are outside our super markets, on the streets in the midst of the shopping crowds.  These provide funding for the Army’s excellent work.  Most churches have their pledge drives in the late fall, tapping into the hope that our charitable spirit will be touched in this season to help the church with its work.

But it is helpful to remember what giving is all about.  The giving of self is the key to understanding the depth of Christmas.  Our wealth is a small part of what is needed in this season.  Touching each other with our spirits is how we really give at Christmastime.

The point of the Christmas story is the giving by God of his only son to humanity for them to do with as they wished.  What we did with that great gift was to listen for a time, but to finally get so angry at him that we put him on a cross and took his life.  But the giving wasn’t yet finished.  God took that crucified savior whom we put in a stone tomb and raised him from the dead three days later, so that ultimately death was conquered and our salvation assured.

That is the great gift that our God has given to all of us.  Giving forgiveness and love to each other is a small reflection of that great Love that was provided to all of us on that first Christmas.  It is what Christianity teaches and what we all hopefully live out.  That is the only way that “His will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.

        May God grant you a wonderful Christmas and a joyous, happy 2012.

God as a Wanderer

       Rosie and I have moved twenty-seven times.  We started our marriage in a little apartment in Indiana, PA.  I was in radio at the time, working as a disc jockey at the local station.  We moved from that apartment at the beginning of a journey that took us first to Texas, in Longview and Sherman, then when I was drafted, back to Pittsburgh and then to Baltimore and back to Texas at Fort Hood.  In each of these places, we found apartments that were wonderfully adequate.  When I got out of the army, we moved again to Texas and I went back to work for the station in Sherman where I had worked before I was drafted.

I then forsook radio for television and we moved to Wichita Falls, then to Midland, where we finally bought a house, for $7500 with a down payment of $150, which I paid in three $50 monthly payments.

There were many other moves (our parents called us gypsies) and we took our kids with us and finally settled down in Johnstown, PA, where I worked in television for eleven years and we had only three houses.  We never thought that there was anything wrong with all of this, it all seemed all right to us.

The point of all of this is that not being settled was a perfectly natural thing for us.  We moved where life took us and found our community among the places where we lived.  I can remember some wonderful friends whom we met in each of these towns and the memories have lasted for us.

After I went to seminary, we came back to Pittsburgh and had two churches in my ministerial career.  The first was in Moon Township, where we stayed for six years, then to Christ Church, North Hills, where I was the rector for eighteen years.  This was the most settled that we had ever been in our lives.  Our youngest daughter, Heather was never in one school for more than one year.  She bounced around with us from place to place and finally graduated from North Hills high school.  Being gypsies was good for all of us.  We saw a lot of the countryside.

In the Old Testament lesson, David wants to build a temple for God.  He calls Nathan, the prophet and tells him See, I am living in a house of cedar, but the Ark of God stays in a tent.  Nathan tells David to go and do all that he has in mind because the Lord is with him.

But later, the Lord spoke to Nathan and essentially told him that David was not the one to build him a house, that God was a gypsy, and has lived in a tent since he had brought out the people of Israel from Egypt.  David had just brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and lodged it in the Tent of Meeting, uniting the tribes of the north with the tribes of the south.  The Ark had a home in the tent.  Finally, Solomon, David’s son would build the temple, but as things worked out, the temples stayed temporary.  All that we have at the moment is the ruin of Herod’s temple, the western wall in Jerusalem, where prayers are said constantly.  There is no permanent temple for God in all of the earth.

I have loved traveling through England where the ruins of old churches seem to be the most spiritual of places, where God has never left.  The old cathedrals seem to have a fragility about them, as do all churches.  I wonder if this is a message to us from God about putting our trust in bricks and mortar.

The apostles in the early church met in homes, where thirty or forty would gather to worship.  Large churches and cathedrals came much later after Christianity had become established.  The early Christians were on the run much of the time.  Being on the run kept them limber and aware of their surroundings.  When we are gypsies, we don’t have as much time to root.  I think it is interesting that narrowness in our culture is called “parochialism”, named possibly for parishes where people huddle together in their pews against those from the outside.

When God came to this earth to become incarnate and live like the rest of us, the way that this was done was to be born of a young woman, a poor woman in Nazareth who wasn’t yet married to the carpenter, Joseph.  When Jesus was born in a crude stable in Bethlehem, there was no home for these parents.  They didn’t even have a place in the inn.  It is fascinating that there is no “home” of Mary or of Joseph for all of us to visit, no residence here on earth of Jesus to attract tourists.  There is only the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with a silver star under an altar that is supposedly the “place” where Jesus was born.  But we don’t really know.

Even in his death, his supposed “home” is the crypt in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, where the Orthodox priests will give you a candle when you enter it.  There is even an argument over where Jesus was buried.  Is it in the crypt, or is it in the Garden (or Gordon, from the man who discovered it) tomb that looks more like a burial plot.  It is all a silly argument anyway because Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to be with God, leaving us with our memories and our arguments,

The truth of it all is that God has no earthly home, except in our hearts.  That is exactly, I think, what God has in mind.  Through all of his ministry, Jesus lived in no settled place.  He moved from town to town, blessed and healed and was known throughout the land.

So what are we to do?  If bricks and mortar isn’t the way to establish God in this world, what is the way?  I believe that it is only how our lives are lived that God is seen in our communities and in our circle of friends.  How we treat each other is the whole idea.  Our worship takes different forms and can be a wonderful means of keeping us in touch with our God, but it is in our actions that God can be seen by others.  One answer is for of us all to pay attention to Mary’s extraordinary praise in The Magnificat and work to lift up the lowly and the oppressed to continue God’s love for this world.

Our Problem with the Coming of the Messiah

         In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes to Nazareth to begin his ministry.  He goes to the temple and reads to them what we know as the beginning of the 61st chapter of the book of Isaiah:

                                   The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor. 

  This is a stunning summary of what became Jesus’ ministry:  binding up the oppressed, proclaiming liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners and taking care of all who are impoverished in any way.

This is also the mission of the church that was created after Jesus’ resurrection.  The eleven apostles gathered together, began the church that is described in the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul. Their efforts on behalf of those in need is clearly set out in the scriptures.   It worked well in those early years as the church grew and prospered even in the face of persecution.  I know that the center of the attraction of the early church was its mission to those who were poor.  There is the collection reported in Acts for the relief of Jerusalem, and many instances of healing and great care taken for those in need who were encountered by the Christians in the churches.

Christianity has gotten off the rails over issues of power and doctrine over the years.  We have frequently lost the incredible direction given to us by our Lord and have lusted after all of the things that organized religion has momentarily thought important such as power and ego.  We have lost our way more than once.  This has led to terrible fights within the church and an enormous loss of life.  The statistics on lives lost because of our religious wars are terrible.

At this moment in history, the focus of the fight seems to be against Islam, but there are still small battles being fought all the time.  I think of the people from the Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, who come and protest at the funerals of soldiers, and the atheists in Wisconsin who recently protested the display of a crèche on the courthouse steps in a local community, and triggered a mob of  “christians” who came out to support the crèche and who would have physically battled with the “atheists” if they had shown up.  We have a terrible record of facing down opposition.  We more often respond with power when we really need to show love.  That is why Jesus taught us, to turn the other cheek when we are facing opposition.

The past fifty years have seen movements of inclusion in our church.  Women have been ordained, and the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Kathryn Jefferts Schori, a well educated marine biologist who was previously bishop of Nevada.  She has brought a wonderful breath of fresh air to The Episcopal Church.  We have also had the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.  Bishop Robinson is a gay man living in a relationship with another man.  His consecration, as well as Bishop Jefferts Schori’s, have created battles in the church, and have sparked the defection of some numbers of priests and parishes to the Anglican dioceses that have sprung up around the world.  This is difficult for all of us, yet predictable.  In an inclusive climate, dissension is expected, though not particularly welcome.  It would be much better if we could all live in accordance with what Jesus taught to us by the example of his ministry.

We all yearn for peace in this world, and that is certainly our profound desire in this great season of hope, Advent.  The cry to our God to come into his creation again and provide us with the peace that somehow we find horribly elusive is unrelenting.

The problem, of course, is not anywhere but within ourselves.  We are the ones who by our prejudices and our unwarranted expectations keep peace away from our doorsteps.  I try to make peace within myself.  One of my Advent disciplines is to try to refrain from criticizing other drivers when I am on the road.  When I can do that and attribute goodness to them instead of deliberate evil when they cut me off, or pull out in front of me, I think I am getting somewhere.  I still fail in this very often, but the sentiment is still there.  I know deep within myself that the peace of God is still far from the center of my being.

In the Judean desert in the first century, John the Baptizer confronted the priests and Levites who came out from Jerusalem to challenge him.  They asked him if he was the Messiah, or a prophet or Elijah.  He told them that he was none of these.  They then asked him “Who are you?”  His response was eloquent:

      I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said.

Here was the promised herald from Isaiah’s prophecy, telling the world that the Messiah was coming, and was indeed here.  That is the continuing promise of the season of Advent.  We wait not only for the birth of Jesus, but for his coming again to make this world straight as God intended it from the beginning.  There is not a more glorious hope in all of the world.  It is the final revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven on this earth.  We need that more than any of the promised gifts at Christmas.

Where is the Hope?

     There is a powerful moment in the performance of The Messiah when the soloist steps forth and sings Comfort My People.  It is like the skies open up and the hand of God comes down on the stage and lifts up the whole of the orchestra, the chorus, the soloist and the audience.  It is exactly what Handel was trying to craft in that glorious oratorio; the sense that God is coming again among his creation to give us immeasurable hope in the middle of chaos.  Certainly the chaos is caused by ourselves, there is no doubt about that,  but God puts that aside and comes to us with great comfort.

     There is a space between the end of the 39th and the beginning of the 40th chapter the book of Isaiah in most bibles, a space that signifies the end of one thing and the beginning of another.  The scholars call that the break between first and second Isaiah, the first two parts of that great book.  What is at an end is exile,  sorrow and grief, and what is beginning is comfort and compassion.  Here in the expectant season of Advent, what better message could we hear?

     We have a wreckage of a political campaign in front of us.  The Occupy movements are being evicted from their campgrounds, and there seems to be no progress at all on issues that trouble this country; the deficit is still towering, unemployment is a horrible problem, and the average salary of an NBA player is estimated at around eight million dollars.  There only seems to be economic insanity out there.  Bridges and roads remain to be fixed, the public transportation system is in chaos, and US Air is raising the price of a ticket to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh by five hundred percent!

     There was a story on the news this week about a family living in a truck.  They have little money, no place to live and the kids still go to school.  There is not much help for them, they live hand to mouth, but they are very good people, trying as best they can to live their lives with some kind of meaning.  There was another story talked about families racing to the grocery store at midnight on the first of the month, because that is when their food stamp money is deposited.  Both of the parents have jobs at about eight dollars an hour, but they just can’t make ends meet.  The father said that he would go and get a second job, but that would mean that they would lose their eligibility for food stamps.  We don’t live in very hopeful times.

     When I was a kid in the great depression, my parents were feeding people who came to our back door.  We didn’t have very much money either, but we were better off than those who were poor and homeless in that terrible time.  It seems to me that we are in a similar time now.  The strange thing is that we had a better “black Friday” this year because people flocked to the stores after Thanksgiving to pick up bargains.  There were fights over some of the items, one woman used pepper spray on another shopper, another sign of the greed that seems to be rampant in our community, instead of compassion, which it seems to me is an outgrowth and a reasonable expectation of community.

     Comfort, O Comfort my people, says the Lord.  The time of strife is over, the time for healing has begun.  Here in Advent, we are again reminded that the only place that we can with certainty look for hope is the God who created us, who loves us with an immeasurable affection, an affection so strong that he came to this earth in human vesture as our Lord Jesus, and walked among us to know the reality of humanity; to feel the sorrow and pain that we feel and the ultimate joy of relationships.

     One of the most poignant moments in the story of Jesus for me is that moment at Lazarus’ tomb, when John’s Gospel says simply: Jesus wept, when the tears rolled down his face and stained the  ground in sorrow over the death of his dear friend.  He then raised Lazarus so that we could all know that death is only a moment in time and is certainly not permanent.  There is the embodiment of hope eternal, the final answer of Jesus to all of the desperation that dogs humankind.  It is that hope that we carry with us in expectation this Advent as we wait for the coming of our Lord in flesh, that the worries that we all carry rest in the heart of our God, who will redeem us utterly from all of the turmoil of this world, and bring us finally into our true home.