The Big News of the Season

            Jesus was born of a virgin. It’s Christian dogma. If the first Adam was made from dust, there is nothing to prevent God from making the Second Humanity any way he wants to.  To deny such a possibility is to give in to a materialism which renders the world a dead and mechanistic machine.

        There are also religious people, who hold out hope for such miracles but who get squeamish about such dogma.  They generally think the mythical dimension of Christian truth can be pried away from God’s acts of historic redemption.  Hesitating about virgin birth suggests that they have doubts about the church’s historical claims.  Such folks are willing to defy the church’s primitive canon by reducing the faith to one more of Feuerbach’s socially constructed metaphors.

       For these reasons in recent centuries affirming the miracle of the virgin birth has functioned as an effective test of Evangelical orthodoxy. Yet, by using the virginity of Mary as a mere shibboleth, the church may miss the more profound miraculous sign in the story of the incarnation.  We haven’t grasped the message of Christmas if all we do is keep rationalism at bay.  Christians have to admit that the virgin birth is not included in Scripture’s creeds, and as such it did not function as a primitive test of orthodoxy.  The entire Pauline corpus makes no mention of virgin birth, and as such the virgin birth cannot be central to the most primitive form of historical Christian witness. 

     This is not in the least to suggest that Paul did not believe in the virgin birth; it is to insist that for Paul the important gospel matter was that Yahweh had returned to Zion in Jesus the Messiah-- that the Temple of the nation at last had been refilled with unveiled glory-- and that the name of Jesus was identical to that of Yahweh, the only name for a Jew which is “above all names.” What was central about the historical life of Jesus was that he embodied the very life of the God of Israel, sharing God’s name, and executing God’s will in redeeming Israel and then all creation.

    These are the big claims about Jesus.  Compared to this, the virgin birth is small potatoes. The ancient world was very familiar with widespread reports of kings being born of virgins.  Only after this faded from widespread public consciousness did the particular asexual means of Jesus’ birth seem to embody unique Christian claims. Just as one can find Hindus who are perfectly comfortable with affirming Jesus’ virgin birth, in the ancient world virgin-birth claims were made for historical figures without making any claim as astonishing as that made most explicitly in Paul or the Johannine literature.       

      In John the unique Christian claim is that the eternal communicative Wisdom which holds all creation together had interpreted himself by tabernacle-ing in Israel.   This One true God, who exists as eternal Word, uniquely entered the life of Israel as a human being.   This is no mere reproductive trick.  The incarnation is about the central mystery of creation.  Namely, it is about how the world exists within God’s own self-originating life, and how that self-sustaining, communicative Wisdom invests God’s self within the world.  For Christians this Transcendent mystery, this ever-near but elusive presence, is finally and singly interpreted in the concrete historical life of Jesus Christ.

      God redeems with vulnerable, baby-like presence.  The weakness of God is what ends up being stronger than all the political strength of mankind.  In a world of retaliatory political one-upmanship, the eternal Mystery which contains and permeates all things approaches us as vulnerable love.

     That’s the big news of the season—bigger than reproductive anomalies. 

Carrying Two Buckets

      Anybody who has mixed and carried mortar knows the truth of Seamus Heaney’s poetic line: "two buckets were easier carried than one."  The balance created by opposing forces hanging from both arms saves all the muscles in a person’s back and core.  A fellow spends much less energy trying to keep his balance when he allows gravity to pull in both directions.

     Of course Heaney is interested in more than helping people think about how best to carry in the groceries.  He is describing the task of holding different worlds together.

     Like Heaney, I grew up in a world that was very different than the one in which I now live.  I ran a buzz saw when I was 10. I stacked hay wagons.  I hunted alone by the time I was 11. Life was shaped by church, school, the seasons and by family rhythms everyone took for granted.  

      While it now seems inconceivable that I would let my 12 year old anywhere near guns and buzz saws, I still want to carry much of my childhood world with me.   I’ve sent my teenager across the world into Buddhist temples but I still want to explain such things to my 93 year-old grandmother. 

      My great grandma Ethel was scandalized by Television.  Even Little House on the Prairie was threatening because, while Charles and Carolyn Ingalls were married on the set of Walnut Grove, Hollywood’s Michael Landon and Karen Grassle were not married in real life. Grandma could not understand how unmarried actors could get under the same set of covers--even if they were in long underwear. 

       I want to carry my great-grandmother’s bucket to Harvey Weinstein’s Hollywood.   Sure, it’s true that without carrying a bucket of diversity my great-grandmother’s world could become narrow and inhospitable, but it’s also true that without carrying a load of strong convictions about moral deviancy our current culture descends into meaningless exploitation.

     Society today is imbalanced because so many folks insist on simplistically carrying only one bucket.  To carry two buckets between social rigidity and cultural chaos is to bear really good news.

Thanksgiving Conviction

      My family is full of convictions.  We can’t countenance Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.  We might make our Christmas lists, but we don’t share them until after Thanksgiving dinner.  We are really holding out against the consumerism of a secular Christmas. 

      We’re keeping Thanksgiving pure—Macy’s Parade, lots of football, and an extra indulgence for our gluttony.  My peeps are too full to go shopping on Thursday.  That is as it should be.  Sales attendants should not be required to work holidays.  Black Friday is when shopping is ordained.  And, even then, my clan tries to buy goods that do not take too much advantage of foreign workers… unless the price differential is just too much.      

       We constantly have to contend with the marketers who use all 12 of our household television and streaming devices. Everywhere we look Madison Avenue is in our face using our religious holiday to make us think we are not a cozy family unless we are in debt.  I’m particularly scandalized by these luxury car commercials wrapping a whole automobile up in a red ribbon. I thought about buying a car for my wife last year, but I finally choked on the price-tag.  We already have five cars for our four drivers, anyway. And be assured of this: you will not catch my family listening to Christmas music in the car before Thanksgiving.  Christians have to draw the line somewhere.

     Some of my friends get mad at me when they overhear me offer someone a “blessed holiday.”  Evidently by failing to use the word “Christmas” I’m participating in a conspiracy that is trying to disguise the Christian origins of Santa Claus.   

      I want to believe their convictions are sincere, because it would rock my world  to think that all of our little holiday convictions are meant to assure us that we still have some.   I don’t want to think about how difficult Jesus said it is for the rich.  I want to sleep comfortably in my 15 room house without being bothered that the Son of man “didn’t own a place to lay his head.” 

On the Reformation's 500th Anniversary

       I love the bells of St Christopher’s Parish.    From my prayer garden I can hear the tower chime out the hymnal's strength for my soul.  While I’m running in Leonard Park the bells will occasionally erupt announcing Jesus’ victory, and I always run faster and easier knowing that death can’t finally catch those hidden in Christ. 

     This week I’ve thought as much about my brothers and sisters in the Roman tradition as I have the Speedway congregations who have celebrated the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.   This 500 year-old divorce between Catholic and Protestant has been painful, but, as is often the case when relationships are strained, people on both sides of a break-up end up learning.  

      I’m glad we’re celebrating what they learned this week.  The Lutheran Reformation reminds us that while we may work for wages, life always is a gift.  Protestant traditions insist that God already has everything he needs.  We can do nothing to make him love us more.  God’s help for the world is exclusively received by trusting what the church calls “the grace of Christ alone.” 

      But there were Catholic Reformers, too.  These men and women remind me that my faith is not just an individual matter.  I function as part of a team in a program that has a long winning tradition.  I listen to coaches who help me see the gifts of God’s love.  I often pray for insight using the prayer exercises of the Catholic reformer, Ignatius Loyola.  So, both Catholic and Protestant Reformations continue to be blessings to me. 

      Catholic and Lutheran scholars have recently expressed wide agreement over the issues that once divided them.  So I take it as a sign that the bells of St. Christopher’s occasionally play A Mighty Fortress is Our God.  This was the banner hymn of the Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther who used it to gather support for the Protestant cause.  That today Catholics worship with a weapon once aimed at them, reminds me of Jesus’ assurance that all bitterness can be healed-- that faithful people will not be estranged forever.  

Walking with All the Saints

       I’ve always loved the summer’s care-free adventures.  But autumn seems to say the party is over. It makes us wonder where all the time has gone.  

      Walking through the fall-colored hills where I grew up used to fill me with nostalgia.  My old haunts would bring back difficult memories.  Is there anything more painful than the memory of unrequited love?  Are there regrets that run deeper than thinking we have missed opportunities for friendship?  Such autumn walks can be difficult because many of the people we would most like to walk with us are no longer here.

     Yet, the more I become acquainted with grief the more I appreciate my autumn walks and the longing they awaken.  As death approaches I’m assured my “redemption is nearer than when I first believed.”   Once I could not see Hallows Eve as anything but a morbid obsession with death.  Now, I see the celebration of All Saints Eve as an affirmation of the truth Jesus taught: “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” 

      Christians believe in something called the “communion of the saints.”  It means the dead are still present to us.  The Hebrew writer imagines us walking into an arena, where we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” who cheer for us.   When the church receives the Communion, (or the Lord’s Supper) we mysteriously walk into this crowd.  We hear their reassuring voices re-echoing in our hearts.  By mysteriously connecting with Jesus, we are ushered into the presence of a great host who are joined to Christ’s cause.  

      Eating at the Lord’s Table takes us “back to this future.” It is a foretaste of the family reunion we don’t want to miss. With Mary in the garden of Christ’s resurrection (John 20:16) we discover that those who love Jesus never have to say good bye for the last time.   Someday we shall see the departed just like Mary saw the dead and risen Jesus. And, like Mary, we will hear our loved ones greet us again by name.

A Halloween Walk

      In May of 2014 I set off from the village of Nether Stowe, past the remains of a Norman Castle and into the Quantock Hills.  Following the footsteps of the belated poet-philosopher, Samuel Coleridge, I hoped to glimpse what filled his imagination as he trampled over these English hills.  

     I followed a beautiful brook to a rise from which I could see West across the Bristol Channel into Wales.  But then I turned eastward into a thick, dark wood…   Stumbling onto the depressions of an iron-age fort, my sixth sense began to feel this place’s history of occult violence. The forest is literally rooted in thousands of years of bloodshed. 

     One spot is called Walford’s Gibbet, where in 1789 John Walford, murdered his pregnant wife.  The locals carted him and his sobbing mistress to this spot in order to restore the land’s equilibrium. They hung Walford on a gallows, leaving his body until it fell to the ground exactly one year from the day of the murder.

    I escaped out on a delicate meadow called a heath. But then, I remembered Shakespeare in Macbeth evidently believed witches were regularly out upon such heaths stirring the pot of history.  

       No wonder such a walk inspired Coleridge to write, “I readily believe there to be more invisible beings, than visible ones in the universe.”  Such walks inspired Coleridge to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in which a character kills an albatross.  The sailors in the poem blame the ship’s misfortunes on the killing’s ill-effects, and they hang the dead bird around the Mariner’s neck as a remedy.  

      Today, few sports fans are aware of this origin for the expression about an athlete “carrying an albatross around his neck.”  But the persistence of the expression suggests we do intuitively understand carrying around psycho-spiritual burdens from past mistakes.   

      Nobody escapes such burdens if they seek to navigate the spiritual world without guidance.  There are macabre realities that will weigh us down.  Often the only godly response is to pray and run to the one who frees us from nature’s haunting memories.

Braving Horror

         Don’t tell anybody, but when I walk with my children through the old Speedway neighborhood on Halloween I’m as frightened as any child over two years of age. 

        I suspect this discomfort stems from my own childhood.  Most of my Hoosier school friends grew up laughing at the local celebrity, Sammy Terry, who introduced horror movies on a local channel in the 1970’s. He scared me out of my wits.  While my friends giggled at modest fright, I suffered from nightmares.   They tried to reassure me that the fanciful supernatural elements in these movies “were not real,” but I knew the horror genre traded on fears which were all too realistic. 

      So, for twenty years I’ve hidden this discomfort, dressed the kids up in their costumes, and went into the neighborhood trying to play in the face of death.  There was only one year nobody took kids “trick or treating.”  In 2001 when the threat of mass terrorism was still only a month old, nobody came to my church’s long-planned Festival of Light. Horror was too real for the community to feel safe playing around with matters of life and death. At that time my old horror movie fears seemed well-founded. 

      Given all the cultural instability, I’m thankful my children can still go “trick or treating.” I’m really touched by the amount of trust which still exists in the American Midwest.  It takes a bit of good feeling to let your kids go door to door and eat hundreds of neighbors’ stuff. 

      My neighborhood still does this despite our modest fears. As much as we want to protect our families, we know that ultimately we have to place them in God’s hands.  While we may want to make our world moderately safer, we know we will seldom agree on how to do that.  We know ultimately the only fully safe place in the world is in the center of the will of God.  Only He has the power to swallow up death.  He is a refuge from the horrors of societal breakdown.  The fear of God is the only thing that will save us from the fear of one another.