Two Christmas Crackers: 2006

This year's Christmas sermons from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Durham are quite good, as were last year's. The amazing thing -- and this may reflect that Christmas is a slow news day as much as anything -- is that the Archbishop's sermon and the Pope's are each summarised and remarked on in the news.

Here is ++Rowan's. If you need encouragement, here is a preview of coming attractions:

We are used at Christmas to singing about the poor helpless child of Bethlehem whom we will rock and keep warm and cradle. But the great mystery of the day,
the joy and shock of it, is that it is Jesus Christ who picks us up, helpless children, abandoned, ruined, and promises us everything that he can give. And as he gives, he makes us grow, and sends us to make the same promise in his name to all, whatever the conflicts, whatever the guilt. To all he offers the authority to be children of God; from his fullness we may all receive, grace upon grace.

Pure gold.

In fact, I've often wondered about the dynamics of seeing Jesus as a baby without grappling with what his adulthood looked like. Those who attend church only on Christmas and Easter tend to only see Jesus as a newborn child, or dead and risen and gone ahead of us. Now, clearly these two mysteries are at the heart of our faith as Christians, and please don't hear me saying otherwise, but it seems to me that the whole of his life gives those events a context within which to understand them and more deeply enter and live them.

N.T. Wright's Christmas 2006 sermon is here. An excerpt:

...grace and truth must meet together; if it really is grace, it really must
produce truth, a rich, deep personal, moral and ecclesial integrity which is
deeply true to the created order and to its recreation in Christ, to the deep
structures of God’s wise and loving ordering of his world and of us human
beings.

And his Christmas Eve sermon is here.

Ain't no sunshine when [it's] gone...

Things have been sort of tough around here recently, owing to the fact that we haven't seen the sun since Tuesday -- that's five going on six days for those of you keeping score at home. This is partly due to our getting less that eight hours of sun in this part of the year; but it is also because we had four solid days of thick fog, and the last two have just been severely overcast. I never realised that the weather -- or at least the sun -- has such an impact on me until I moved here.


So I thought I would post some pictures from some of the (other) most beautiful (and sunny) places in the world, namely, Barbados and the Maldives. Which, by the way, if I ever go walkabout and you need to find me, give me a few days and then try one of these two places -- you'll probably find me there. Not that I ever will, I'm just saying...


And tomorrow -- today, actually -- will be Christmas, which will hopefully help my spirits. And if not, I've got a bottle of Merlot that might help. (And a happy Christmas to you all!)


And then the next day, Boxing Day, we're going with some friends to see the County Beer Barrel rolling contest in Grantchester. We'll be cheering on our lads from the local, the Red Bull in Newnham. It should be a good time for all.

Stock the coffers with our profits! Fa la la la la la la la la!

Here it is Epiphany already, and I'm still thinking about Yuletide and the vexations surrounding greetings of the season. Sometimes my mind moves slowly. But I have a proposal that will surmount the hurdle of religious/cultural specificity and get right to the heart of the matter.

First, I thought I would share with you a sentiment that I shared with an atheist friend of mine in a card I sent to him around Christmas of 1990:

Dear Xxxxx:
I would wish you a merry Christmas, but you're not Christian.
I would say Happy Hannukah, but you're not Jewish.
I would say I hope you had a restorative Ramadan, but you're not Muslim.
I would say Happy New Year, but the year is calculated from Jesus' birth and, as I mentioned,
you're not Christian.
I would say Happy Holidays, but of course a holiday is a "holy-day", and I'm pretty sure you don't
believe in that.
So...Happy Groundhog Day!

(You do believe in groundhogs, right?)

Thankfully, he thought it was a riot. (I was worried it would just sound cranky, and who needs that?)

Now for my proposal, offered more-or-less in the same spirit:
We have been getting into all sorts of hot water trying to figure out how we can greet people near the end of the year. Is Christmas too specific or oppressive? Is Happy Holidays too offensively bland? Does my African-American friend keep Kwanzaa or not? What does my atheist friend celebrate? There are some real questions here.

One of the grandest traditions of Christmas -- from the very beginning of the modern celebration in the nineteenth century -- is complaining about how commercial it has gotten. These days especially, though, this seems rather disingenuous. We speak openly (and often) of how important the fourth quarter is for retailers, many of whom apparently make a sizable chunk of their annual profit in the run-up to holiday celebrations. There are newspaper and radio reports (maybe TV, too, but I wouldn't know) immediately following the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush depicting sales as lagging or disappointing or not quite up to snuff -- oddly they never seem "generous" or "surprisingly good". News stories tell of stores having to run (gasp) pre-holiday sales to boost the bottom line. There is an ongoing public conversation that sees that time of year primarily in commercial terms. The complaint is not "Look how commercial Christmas has gotten!" but "How much more commercial can we make this thing?" We've ditched the commercial carping and come clear out on the other side.

Despite such stories being mostly confined to the business reports, I think we are all implicated in this to some extent. Think of it: our insurance, our retirement plans, our investments all ride on how much we spend, because they are largely involved in the stock market. And with the service and retail segments of the economy increasing in importance over segments such as heavy manufacturing, you'd better believe that we're on Dow Jones' Christmas card list. So spend!

So here's my humble suggestion: since in the public realm money and commercial pursuits are one of the few things that we can talk about and hold in common, I suggest that we just chuck any mention of "Christmas" or "Holidays" or "cultural celebrations" or what have you -- even Festivus can go. Instead, let's just greet each warmly, saying "Happy Q4!"

It has much to recommend it. For one, it is honest that the season really starts around the beginning of October. Also, it 'fesses up to how much the money means to us (think of movies: how did we measure a movie's value or success before we started reporting the amount of money it grossed over the weekend?). Maybe it will even encourage us to go out and do our patriotic duty and continue spending -- you wouldn't want them to win, would you? Plus, it's non-sectarian: your money is as green as mine!

So, I think I might be on to something. But let's sit on it for a while; we can roll it out next fall.

In the meantime, may you enjoy this blessed season of Q1, as we prepare for our annual day of atonement on April 15th.

Centering, Prayer

A sermon preached on December 31st, The Feast of the Holy Name (tr.)

At St. Paul's Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, MI

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Well, here it is New Year’s Eve, we’re getting ready for another new year. I’m sure that many of us, if we stay up tonight to welcome in the New Year, will do so in the company of Regis Philbin, filling in for Dick Clark as the great crystal ball comes down in Times Square.

It’s a little funny that our attention should be simultaneously focused on something happening so far away. After all, the year changes here, too. Even when we lived in Chicago, and hour earlier than New York, we would watch as the year changed in Times Square and celebrate the New Year at eleven p.m. People gather in Times Square hours early, jockeying for good position to see the ball come down and maybe even be seen on national T.V. A friend of mine from seminary who grew up in Brooklyn is fond of calling New York City the center of the universe. If that’s true, then Times Square, especially on New Year’s Eve, must surely be the center of the center of the universe.

Continue reading Centering, Prayer

But contrast all of this hoopla and fanfare and nationally televised hubbub with the scene in the stable near Bethlehem. Jesus’ arrival isn’t broadcast or choreographed; in fact he comes on the scene accidentally, as it were, at the end of a long trip back home for Joseph. They aren’t able to find accommodation suitable even for peasants, much less the King of Kings. Once the umbilical cord is cut, Mary lays her unlikely baby in the closest thing to hand, an animal food trough. Commentary to this odd scene is not provided by the first-century equivalent of Dick Clark, but rather by shepherds, rough unreliable yokels who report seeing angels. For some reason, the angels themselves do not put in an appearance.

And then we have eight days of silence. Where did the Holy Family stay? What did they do? We are not told. But we do know that during these eight days, their child did not yet have a name. That would wait until he was circumcised according to the requirements of the covenant. And that then immediately precedes another thirty years or so of silence and anonymity when even the relatively dim lights of the gospels are not trained on the man. Jesus’ humble origins can hardly be overstated.

How much more amazing is it then, that Christians believe that this child is not only special but is God incarnate? In the reading from the letter to the Philippians tonight, Paul has just finished talking about the profound humility of Jesus. He says that Jesus, “though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

In this story is revealed a God who so completely and thoroughly loves us that he willingly adopts the dependence and vulnerability of being a human baby, who so identifies with us that he willingly takes on anonymity and silence, who is so patient with his creation that he does not come among us with cataclysmic and overawing power, but comes among us in the form of a nameless child and waits for thirty-some odd years before he begins his three or so years of ministry that we hear about in the gospels.

The philosopher Nietzsche claimed that Christianity celebrates weakness, when what ought to be celebrated was strength. In this day, when places like Times Square seem to be the center of the center of our universe, and when our sights seem habitually placed on the wealthy and powerful, maybe we might suspect he’s on to something?

And yet the story of Jesus’ birth shows us otherwise. For this weakness, this anonymity is willingly taken on for the sake of the world’s salvation. God’s strength is shown in this: that in his longsuffering patience, in his identification with fallen humanity, in his thoroughgoing love, there is no sacrifice of God’s limitless power. We might feel insecure in being dependent or anonymous or longsuffering: God does not. This is not a sacrifice to his ego or somehow threatening to his status as creator of the universe. Instead this is a manifestation of his profound love and endless generosity.

And through this there is a promise, too. Paul mentions it, that alongside Jesus’ humility, he is also highly exalted, with an authority which is above all others. He says that in time – again, that patience! – everyone will bow to him and confess that he is Lord of all.

All of which suggests that Times Square might not be the center of the center of the universe after all. Nor is any of us the center of the universe; narcissism is a complete dead end. Nor is any other person, place or thing the center of the universe; that is to be distracted by idolatry. The center, the dead center of it all is Jesus Christ.

He is the humble one who is exalted by God. He is the nameless one whose name is above every name. He is the obscure one who will one day be known and revered by all. He stoops down to us so that we might bend the knee towards him. He takes on silence so that we in turn may speak and claim that he is Lord of all to the glory of God the Father. He is the one who so thoroughly shows us God’s patience, compassion and love that we confess that Jesus himself is very God of very God.

And so as we enter 2005, we give thanks for the year which is drawing to a close. We remember and lift before God those moments of light and love and grace which we have experienced, and we also lift before him the struggles and losses of our lives and the upheavals and suffering throughout the world. We also come before God in hope for another year of growing in God’s love, another year of serving others in Christ’s name, another year of grace.

And now, at this very moment suspended between memory of the past and hope for the future, we give thanks and recommit ourselves to the one at the center of it all, our Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Street Preaching: Two Cracking Good Christmas Sermons

I realize that many of those who read Gower Street may have already run across at least one of these two fine sermons, not least because I am so late in posting the links! Nevertheless, here are two Christmas sermons from two rather different bishops who are both scholars, great preachers, and Godly servants of Christ and the church. They make me proud to be an Anglican.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams preached this sermon at Canterbury Cathedral on Christmas Day, 2005. A preview:

It ought to shock us to be told year after year that the universe lives by the kind of love that we see in the helpless child and in the dying man on the cross. We have been shown the engine room of the universe; and it ought to worry us – us, who are so obsessed about being safe and being successful, who worry endlessly about being in control, who cannot believe that power could show itself in any other way than the ways we are used to. But this festival tells us exactly what Good Friday and Easter tell us: that God fulfils what he wants to do by emptying himself of his own life, giving away all that he is in love....

...Morality, said one prominent modern Greek Orthodox theologian, is not about right and wrong, it’s about reality and unreality, living in Christ or living for yourself. Being good is living in the truth, living a real life, a life that is in touch with ‘the fire in the equations’ and that lets the intense creativity of God through into his world. The goodness of the Christian is never a matter of achieving a standard, scoring high marks in a test. It is letting the wonder of God’s love knock sideways your ordinary habits, so that God comes through – the God who achieves his purpose by reckless gift, by the cradle and the cross.

Wow! And Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, in his Christmas sermon, chose the interesting theme of drawing together Christmas and the DaVinci Code. Among other standard Christmas-story unpacking and discussion of evidence, he says:

Conspiracy theories are always fun: fun to invent, fun to read, fun to fantasise about. Truth is sometimes a bit bleak and harsh by comparison. That's part of the point; real life sometimes is bleak and harsh. And God came to share it, to take the worst that it could do on to himself. That's the point of the Christmas story.

Take and read -- and enjoy these two Christmas crackers.

Rumors of Love

A sermon preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in St. Joseph, Michigan

on Friday, December 24th. (Christmas 1)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I… love… you.

Three magic little words. Throughout our lives we long to hear these words. We yearn to hear them from our parents, from our mates, from our spouses, from our friends, from our children.

Yet they’re not simple words. We use them to mean all sorts of different things. There’s an old saw that goes “I love my wife, I love my baby, I love my biscuits sopped in gravy.” It can mean all kinds of things. Sometimes we might say it and mean something as mundane as “good-bye” on the telephone, or “good night” at the end of the day. Or maybe we just mean “Boy, isn’t this silence between us awkward?”

Or sometimes we might use it to say, “I want to love you.” Or maybe “Is everything okay between us?” or “Do you love me?” or “I don’t want to be alone.” It seems that the one thing we might be least likely to mean by it is simply “I love you”.

I don’t know all the reasons why that is. But I think part of it is our own defensiveness. It can seem a great risk to say to someone “I love you” and mean it. To truly love someone is to make yourself vulnerable to them. Parents, children, spouses, friends, might all go away, might reject us, might fail us, in one way or another. To love someone can be incredibly difficult, because it means letting go of our own power for ourselves, and using our power for the good of another. And we can be torn between attending to our own needs and the other’s.

We so badly want to hear it, and yet we feel reluctant or incapable of saying it and meaning it in the way we intend. We stutter and stammer, we mumble, we equivocate, we evade. It is a hard thing to say, “I love you”.

And yet tonight, angels bring rumors of love to a group of terrified shepherds. An unlikely mother in a little town on the margins of the Empire has given birth to a son. This baby is Savior, Messiah, Lord. And more than that, as the gospel of John says, he is the Word of God.
That phrase “Word of God” is wonderfully rich and suggestive, I think. One thing it might mean is that in the life of Jesus, God speaks to us. And what God says is “I love you”.

Because God is God, he alone is able to profess that without any ambiguity or reserve. He alone can clear away the self-interest and defensiveness completely. In Jesus, he addresses us directly and disarmingly and says to us unconditionally, “I love you”.

And he doesn’t do this at a distance, but draws near to us, taking on all the vulnerability of genuine love. “We see this as he is wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger; we see this as he is wrapped in grave clothes and laid in a tomb.”[1] Jesus embodies God’s love for us without reserve.

The great good news of tonight about the birth of a baby is that he is more than a baby, that he is God’s Word, God’s address to us, saying “I love you, unconditionally”. And I believe we know, deep down, beyond our defensiveness or evasion, that this is what we most need, what we most desire, and that this – beloved of God – is most truly who we are.

Of course we might be tempted to make this into a slogan – smile! God loves you! – or to sentimentalize it. But these are only other ways of trying to control God, to only accept God’s love on our terms, or to evade his love altogether. That will not do. God’s loving Word comes to us on his own terms, and is not content to let us transact business as usual.

The great good news of tonight is that this baby is not only God’s Word, but also a real, live child. How is that good news? Those who have had babies of their own or spent much time around them will testify that while babies are indeed quite vulnerable and dependent, they are anything but quiet and passive. That is true of this wise baby, Jesus, as well. As Augustine memorably said, “He is the God who penetrates my deafness by his violent loud crying.”[2] Rather like a baby, the love we find in God is both simple and demanding.

God loves us completely, and this searching, unrelenting love is not satisfied to leave us alone. When we encounter that love, when we say yes to that, the Spirit transforms us, gradually, into the very image of Christ. That is to say, we are changed into God’s own love for the world.

Nor is this love only a matter of self-realization, or personal improvement. God’s powerful love forms us into a new people, a conspiracy to spread the angels’ rumor of love to others in the world. This isn’t a private relationship of love, but a public, political, even cosmic love, for in Jesus Christ God is renewing and redeeming the whole creation.

So as we hear the angels tonight and draw near to manger where the baby lies, may we hear God say again through his son, “I love you.” It is direct and disarming, it is unambiguous and unconditional, and it renews and redeems not only us but the whole creation. And through it, we make our response to God, and to our neighbor. Haltingly, imperfectly, simply: I…love…you. Amen.

[1] Although this is not a direct quote, the ideas and much of the phrasing comes from Mike Higton’s book Difficult Gospel: The Theology of Rowan Williams, p. 30.
[2] Mike Higton, ibid., quoting Rowan Williams, quoting Augustine, p. 50; original source unknown.

Yule blog

Doug Wood pointed out an op-ed column to me earlier today from Kathleen Parker, which can be found here. Having read it, I feel rather torn by it. On the one hand, I am not particularly excited about much that passes as politically correct (although some of it is quite good and the "anti-pc" backlash generally horrifies me), and I tend to support efforts to bring out specifics of people and their cultures, rather than bland homogenizations. On the other hand, Parker writes:

Let's just say the "Merry Christmas" backlash has officially begun. After years of politically correct "Happy Holidays," and the annual assault on all things Christian in the public square, many Americans are declining to turn the other cheek.

The MC backlash isn't only for, by or about Christians. It is a quintessentially American revolt against absurdity, the inevitable result of narcissistic, nihilist ninnies pushing too far....

[she goes on to say...]

"Merry Christmas" means different things to different people, obviously. To devout Christians, the greeting conveys a profound spiritual connection to the seminal event in Western civilization. To non-Christians, the words at worst evoke a season of music, decorations, shopping and gift giving; at best, they bespeak a vacation day.

Absent religious content, Merry Christmas otherwise is a universal expression of our best stuff: charity, forgiveness, generosity and hope. What's to complain about?

Well, what I might complain about as a Christian is that she, by making "Merry Christmas" into a pious nationalistic shibboleth, "absent religious content", is that she has repaid the favor of bland homogenization by evacuating Christmas of its ostensible content. That is to say, if by "Merry Christmas" she only intends "a universal expression of charity, forgiveness, generosity and hope", then why not simply say "Season's greetings" or "Happy holidays" or some other heartfelt expression of good cheer?

(This is the same sort of problematic move that some folks made when the presence of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was called into question this year. The reference to God was referred to as a cultural artifact, not a religious affirmation, and that people were free to fill in that word with whatever content they wished, or no content.)

Eric Zorn, writing in today's Chicago Tribune, sees something more sinister afoot in this resurgence in seasonal specificity. He writes:

More than ever this season I'm hearing "Merry Christmas"--used defiantly, pointedly--as an in-your-face sack dance of a greeting meant to underscore Christian dominance in American society.

Now I have not seen this, although I live in a rather culturally sheltered area, and, frankly, I don't get out much. So this might be true, I don't know. If it is, I must say that this is deeply, deeply unfortunate, as this practice (and Parker's suggestion) seems to co-opt the gospel (in this case, Christ's birth) into purely nationalistic and ideological terms, which would be idolatry.

For my money, I dislike expressions such as "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" because they are so generic. They are a way of navigating in the world without getting to know another person in their specificity. Nobody celebrates "Holiday" or "Season" (and not many celebrate "Festivus", yet).

Moreover, by publicly resorting to only these banalities and banishing any specifiable religious content to the private realm (whether that is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or more cultural celebrations such as Kwanzaa), it would seem then that the only thing that we (publicly) have in common is spending and consumption and that is, frankly, pathetic. I do try to say Merry Christmas to friends who are Christian or are otherwise celebrating Christmas in one way or another. I gladly say Happy Hannukah or similar greetings to Jewish or other friends as appropriate (although hopefully, with my Jewish friends, I will keep in mind that holidays such as Rosh Hoshanah, Yom Kippur, and Pesach are more important holidays to them than Hannukah). If I have a friend that I am unsure about, I will ask him or her "do you celebrate Christmas?" as an opportunity to get to know them better and offer them appropriate warm wishes for the end of the year, which to me seems vastly preferable to either the bland pablum of "Happy Holidays", or using Christmas as a cultural bludgeon.

Here's another Christmas-season writing that might interest Gower Street readers:

Why is Christmas so often reduced to "X-mas"? Is it some vast, ominous conspiracy by (fill-in-the-blank) to remove Christ? Not at all! Check out Ralph the Sacred River's helpful post on this issue.

Joanie loves tchotchkes

(Okay, I cribbed the title from an article on Smartmoney.com, but it was too delicious and I couldn't resist...)

As some who know me face to face will vouch, I not only love Christmas, I love to talk about the history of Christmas. I could pretty easily fill a couple of hours just talking off the top of my head about the evolution of the various elements of our celebration: overindulging, tipping the paper boy, gift-giving, Santa Claus, you name it. I generally try to stifle this impulse, of course, because people tend scuff their feet and look around nervously for an exit when I start. Nevertheless I was delighted to find on the NYTimes Op-ed page, a brief history of Christmas gift-giving that others might find interesting, too. It is entitled Christmas Past and Presents by William B. Waits (sorry, free registration required). Waits is the author of The Modern Christmas in America: A Cultural History of Gift Giving, which I confess I have not yet read. (If you are looking for an excellent history of Christmas in America, I can recommend -- on the basis of having read it, loved it, and used it in Christmas-keeping workshops -- Stephen Nissenbaum's book The Battle for Christmas.)

I particularly liked the quote that Waits included, unattributed, which described early twentieth century Christmas gifts: "tawdry and gaudy gimcracks, flimsy gewgaws, ephemeral and unbeautiful; purchased often with lassitude, received with distaste, and soon relegated to the limbo of attic or ash heap."

Waits sums up his essay with a solid conclusion: "The general success of the Progressives in reforming Christmas, as well as previous efforts to mold the festivities, supports the notion that the celebration can be changed, just like any other cultural phenomenon. So don't accept current complaints that Christmas has spun out of control and dictates our holiday behavior, driving us to ever-higher levels of spending. People can and should run the celebration, not the other way around."

I think this is a very solid point, and I would make a similar argument about all of our cultural practices -- in fact, I have been trying to make such an argument in previous posts such as "Europe Rising".

Moving back to Christmas, this year my wife and I actually decided not to give each other gifts. Our rationale was that during the year, if we want something, we have little compunction about simply going out and getting it. So there is nothing we particularly want, even less that we need, at least in terms of "stuff". Instead, we decided to give each other the gift of time: we sat down and figured out a list of ten or so things we want to do together in the next six months. Some of these activities are as a family, some are just the two of us. But as two people who both have demanding fulltime careers, we realized that this sort of thing would be the true gift.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with gifts per se. Our daughter, for example, will receive a pile of them from us and her grandparents. But part of the reason it is so magical for little children is that they don't have the power during the rest of the year to go out and purchase whatever they want. When they do, say during their teen years or later, the Christmas present is less of a gracious gift and more just another thing they get.

Sure, we won't be doing our all to support the economy during the crucial fourth quarter, but I honestly don't care. That's not what Christmas is about, anyway, and the more we think it is, the more we get away from an enjoyable, refreshing, humane (and, yes, Christ-centered) Christmas.

So, Joanie may love tchotchkes, gaudy gimcracks, and flimsy gewgaws -- but Joanie doesn't live in our house.