Rise and Shine!

December 25, 1960: 

The soundless video images jerk with the limitations of the 8mm camera and an amateur filmmaker’s unsteady hand. Blazingly illuminated by two lamps affixed to the top of the tiny camera like a buck’s antlers, the little boy in a Christmas-red onesie pajama fights back against the morning, burying his head in the pillow, then rubbing his eyes open, and finally smiling broadly as he sits upright, undoubtedly responding to a voice we cannot hear in the soundless home movie: “Rise and Shine!  It’s Christmas!”

I’ve watched this home movie so many times.  The excitement of waking on Christmas morning, full of wonder (as Kathy so perfectly described yesterday).  What did Santa leave in the living room?  Did I get everything I asked for?  In my mind, I watch today and fill in the missing dialogue, imagining what my brothers and parents might have been saying as each gift was opened…a BB gun, an electromagnetic football game, a new robe for each of us.

But there is no need to imagine the words spoken by my father, the “cinematographer.” There is no doubt, no guessing at his words, because he said the same thing every morning with unwavering consistency whenever he would wake my sleepy head:  “Rise and Shine!”

Long before the birth of Jesus, the Christ, which we celebrate this Christmas Day, the prophet Isaiah brought words of hope to the exiled people of Israel.  “Arise, shine, for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” (Isaiah 60:1) These words to people who had been living in the darkness of separation are both a message of hope and a call to action.

Just as the Gospel writer, John, has proclaimed that the Christ is the light, and that the light is life, there is certainly good news in Isaiah’s prophetic message: the light is good, it’s here (or it’s coming), it’s yours, and you no longer are sentenced to wander in the darkness.

But Isaiah does more than bring that good news.  This is more than a prophet’s feel-good, Hallmark-card sentiment to people with the “Exile Blues.”  He begins with a command, an exhortation: “Arise, shine!”

“Get up!” Isaiah seems to shout.  “This is too good to stay in bed!”  Like my Dad’s wake-up call on Christmas morning, the message is that there is something great out there, but we must get up out of our comfortable places and do something about it!

“Shine!” Isaiah commands.  “The light has come, but no one will see it unless it is reflected in you! You must both rise and shine!”

Most of the light we use to see is reflected light, not light from an original source.  Often, the light from the original source is too intense, too bright for us to take in.  Instead, it is the reflection of that light off another object that creates the illumination. It seems Isaiah is calling the people of Israel (and us, too) to be the reflectors of that light, to “shine” so that all can see.

The warm, cozy ambience of Christmas Eve is gone.  It is Christmas morning.  Just like those bright, hot lamps affixed to my father’s 8 mm camera, the Light of Christ has come bursting into our comfort zones.  Get up!  Time to get going!  Rise and Shine!  The world needs The Light, the light only we can reflect!

Rise and shine, indeed!

Merry, merry Christmas--

Scott

Are you in Wonder?

Wonder in a child's eyes is a spectacular sight.  The open amazement and awe is so very beautiful to behold.  In fact, one of my Christmas joys is to see our children experience the wonder of their gifts.  I look to see if they 'really like' their gifts; I look to see the wonder in their eyes.  And I know immediately if we have slightly missed the mark for the look of appreciation is so very different from the look of wonder or awe.  And today, even with our grown children I want them to experience wonder!  Perhaps they are too old now.  Perhaps wonder is a child-only event.  In fact, in looking for a picture to express 'wonder' for this writing, I struggled.  And it perplexed me that all the pictures labeled as 'Christmas wonder' were of children.   I could not find one single picture of an adult expressing wonder.  Why is that?  Are we so mature, so hard-hearted, so immune that our wonder has vanished?

Do you feel wonder in your life?  Will you feel wonder on Christmas Eve at your church service or on Christmas Day as you formally celebrate Christ being born into our world?

I daresay that we've lost our wonder.  Michael Yacconelli in his book Dangerous Wonder, said "the most critical issue facing Christians today is dullness. ‘We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn’t change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore, He changes them into ‘nice people’.  But radical Christianity wasn’t nice; it was category-smashing, life-threatening, anti-institutional; it spread like wildfire through the 1st century and was considered by those in power to be dangerous. ‘I want to be filled with an astonishment which is so captivating that I am considered wild and unpredictable and ... well ... dangerous’. I want to be dangerous to a dull and boring religion. I want a faith that is considered dangerous by our predictable and monotonous culture.’

We've somehow lost the wonder of Christmas.  We've lost the wonder of what we celebrate!  We have embraced Baby Jesus coming into the world but have we let him remain as a baby in our hearts and minds?  Yes, He came humbly, He came quietly, He came in human form - all so that we could somehow begin to comprehend Him and welcome Him into our lives and hearts.  BUT....we cannot keep Him in the manger.  Our wonder today rests solely on who He is today, was yesterday and will be tomorrow.  And who is He?

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And the government will [a]rest on His shoulders;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.  Isaiah 9:6

He is our Wonderful Counselor. He is our Mighty God.  He is our Eternal Father.  He is the Prince of Peace.  These are not just words from 2700 years ago.  These are the personal qualities of the Christian God.  I ponder today whether I've sold him short?  That's right, have we sold God short?  To sell short = to underestimate the true value or worth of something or someone.  Is your God still in a manger scene?  Has your God been defeated and destroyed amidst all the chaos in the world today?  In those dark, lonely moments have you forgotten that He is your Counselor?  Did you leave Him at your church last week, last month, last year?

The God I strive to serve IS the Counselor.  He IS a mighty God.  He IS eternal.  He IS Prince and King of Peace.  And you know what else, He's waiting to see me on Christmas morning.  He waiting to see if my eyes behold wonder as I open my gift from Him.  Just like us parents, he too desperately wants to see the wonder in our eyes.  He waits to see if we truly have wonder in our eyes on Christmas morning!

We may offer Him the look of appreciation but it's WONDER He wants!  And it is wonder we desperately desire.

PRESS TO LISTEN: May We Never Lose Our Wonder, Bethel

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Light of the World

It’s that time again!

No, I’m not talking about the Christmas season; rather, this week brought us the premiere of the latest soon-to-be blockbuster, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Thousands of people will spend millions of dollars to see the film, and I will probably join them at some point.  I fall into that category of people who like the movies well enough, but wouldn’t consider myself to be a hard-core fan. 

Nevertheless, even I am aware of the underlying theme of all the Star Wars movies:  the battle between “The Force” and “The Dark Side.”  The characters and their motives are well-known after four decades of moviegoing:  Jedi knights like Luke Skywalker rely on “The Force” in their struggle against the dark forces of Darth Vader and his “Dark Side” co-conspirators.  The balance of power shifts from one side to the other throughout the series.

A variation of this theme transcends era, culture, and spiritual tradition.  “Good versus Evil,” “Right over Wrong,” “Truth trumps Deceit,” and “Love Always Wins” are the stuff of story, as well as the foundation of many of the world’s religions.

John echoes the same thing in his “mystical” introduction of the Christ in his gospel:

In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it (John 1:4-5, NIV).

The scholarly notations in my edition of the New International Version of the Bible point out that John refers to Jesus as “life” more than any other gospel writer by far—36 times, in fact.  John relies heavily on this type of metaphorical language to describe Jesus to the reader:  life, word, and light, to name a few.

Richard Rohr, the noted Franciscan contemplative and author of numerous books that emphasize the mystical nature of the Christian faith, writes that the only way one can write or speak effectively about spirituality and the nature of God is through the use of metaphorical language.  How else can one describe something that cannot be experienced directly through the five senses than to make good use of rich and illustrative comparisons?

The metaphors and similes work well.  When John likens Jesus to “light,” we should know what that is, and what it isn’t.  And when he goes further to say that the light shines in darkness, “but the darkness has not understood it,” we can comprehend—or at least begin to comprehend—what that means as we reflect on our own experience.

I remember being afraid of the dark as a child, as are many youngsters.  “What might be lurking under the bed, or just outside the window?” We worry and obsess, and the darkness and all it obscures begins to draw us into a widening, deepening vortex of worry and fear.  We toss and turn, we cry out, we find ourselves paralyzed with anxiety until the morning light comes.

So great was my fear at one point, I asked my parents to put a heavy blanket over the curtains to block out the moving shadows of the shrubs and trees outside my window.  Of course, this just made the interior of my room darker!

As much as we fear the darkness, sometimes we are inclined to deepen it, to magnify it, to empower it! The darkness is something we understand, and even though we know there is an alternative—light—we don’t understand it as well or accept it as easily.  Better to be restless in the darkness than to risk that which we don’t fully understand, it seems.

The nativity narratives of the other gospels, particularly Luke, are rich in images that convey deeper symbolic meanings than those we would see on the surface.  A baby in a manger (innocence), born of a virgin (purity); kings and shepherds worshipping together (equality in the eyes of God), and, of course, a brilliant star.  Again—a light shining in the darkness.

There is so much worry, fear, despair, and hopelessness in the world today.  Regardless of how one leans politically, there is no denying that there is darkness all around, from Aleppo to Pyongyang…from the uneasy feeling that “truth” is negotiable, to the apparent death of respectful discourse…from the glorification of ego and greed, to the blind eye turned toward pain and suffering throughout the world.  As I write this, I think of the families and friendships that have been irrevocably broken by the hateful words spoken and written in the context something as temporal as a presidential campaign. 

Darkness, indeed.  We live in it, we accept it, we deepen it, we choose to succumb to it, we even identify with it, rather than to turn to something we don’t yet fully “understand”—the light.

Perhaps that is the real spiritual work of this Advent, of any Advent: to simply turn to the light, which is life.  It is a light that was manifested in the manger of Bethlehem, but which has been with us from the beginning and will be until the end.

No Room

Whew!  What a few weeks we've had in our family! We've experienced overwhelming joy and overwhelming tragedy.  And yet, life keeps moving, the sun is still rising every morning.  And a Christmas tree stands in my den so here we go again!  The turkey is still in my freezer and the calories are still on my hips but I've got to make room for more activities.  And if my Christmas activities and happenings are not enough I can also work on our daughters upcoming wedding plans!!  (we are so excited for those two to be wed).  But truly, I find myself thinking I have no room for anything else.

Or do I?  I certainly have no room for another scone or piece of pie....but somehow I make room!  I certainly have no more room on my calendar but somehow things keep appearing and we make room.  We make room for what's important to us or expected of us, right?

Mary made room...certainly her life was interrupted but she made room.  Joseph did too and they were clearly going waaaaayyyyy against the norm!  But, why didn't the Innkeeper make room for Joseph and Mary?  If he had only known Whom he had turned away...

While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.  Luke 2:6-8 New American Standard Bible

In the book, Christmas from the Backside, Ellsworth Kallas offers a good picture of what 'inn' life was like 2000 years ago. The inn: "It was probably a series of thatched rooms built around a central courtyard-looking more like covered porches than like rooms.  Travelers brought their own food-and the pot in which to cook it-their own bedding, and often their firewood.(Handel Brown, "When Jesus Came," in The Light of Christmas).  The hotel in Bethlehem was probably a shabby sort of place, perhaps several hundred years old.  They were usually dirty, uncomfortable, badly kept, and badly managed.  Innkeepers in those days had a generally unsavory reputation, probably because their places were so often use for immoral and criminal purposes. (A. C. Bouquet, Everyday Life in New Testament Times).

So what are we to think?  Poor, foolish innkeeper?  Poor Mary, Joseph, and unborn Jesus?  Perhaps we are to see that Jesus' entrance into the world was humble.  His entrance was rather quiet but His entrance was for everyone.  He came to this world in an unlikely manner and in an unlikely place.  It was a place full of unwanted people, unsavory characters.  Yes, even the Innkeeper.  And yes, even you and me.

When you read the Bible do you jump into the cast?  Can't we do that?  Isn't the Bible called the LIVING Word of God.....active today, tomorrow, yesterday, forever??  So when we read let's not just read an old story and barely see the words but instead let's jump into the story and find ourselves.  How are we the Innkeeper?  Or more personally....in my life today, who have I shut out?  When the Christ-inside-of-me knocks on the door of my heart, do I say, 'Sorry, no room'.  Or more truth here...how often do I say, No Room.

Or am I so used to my deep-south, American life that when Jesus comes to people who look different than me or who are unsavory or who live in other countries with other faiths, I simply walk-away and say No Room in my heart and attitude.

This baby born of Mary came for e v e r y one of us.  And He came in love not in condemnation.  Is there room inside of you?  Can we stop the Christmas music, the shallow Christmas celebrations and scream from the top of our lungs.....YES, THERE IS ROOM INSIDE OF ME.  COME LORD JESUS COME.  COME IN.  COME CHANGE ME.  COME FILL ME WITH YOUR TYPE OF LOVE.

Thank you Lord God, that your Love is unconditional.  Thank you that you came to save me, the innkeeper....the unsavory one.

Cosmic Christ

I love the Nativity story as much as anyone.  In my family, we had a Christmas Eve tradition of gathering in the living room around the tree and hearing the story retold by whomever was the youngest family member able to read from the tattered children’s Bible we had. 

In our small-town Methodist church basement, there was the annual Christmas pageant staged by the children’s Sunday School classes, complete with shepherds’ crooks and costumes fashioned from bed sheets.  Told and retold in story and song, the narrative of the birth of Jesus is so much a part of the Christian upbringing, so enmeshed and embellished with different cultural and family traditions, that we are likely encounter it at some point each year with nostalgia, misty eyes, and a lump in the throat.

It’s certainly a compelling story, with elements of young love, a grueling journey, political intrigue, and special effects.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke each share a version of the “arrival of Jesus.”  Matthew establishes the context with a recitation of Jesus’ lineage, Joseph’s dilemma in accepting the remarkable circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy, the birth of the child, and finally a sadly familiar and contemporary plot twist taking the young family on a refugee odyssey to Egypt as they escape political power run amok (Mt. 1:1-2:23).

Mark, on the other hand, leaps forward in the chronology, introducing us to a young adult Jesus being heralded by John the Baptist (Mk 1:1-12) and baptized in the Jordan river.  Finally, Luke provides the most memorable version with Mary and her betrothed, Joseph, obediently following the command of the state to leave home at the most inconvenient and uncomfortable of times, giving birth among the animals in a stable, being visited by shepherds and wise men, all illuminated by a brilliant star and heralded by a chorus of angels (Lk. 2:1-20).

Different as these three accounts are, what they share is the elements of narrative.  We see the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and even a bit of “why.”  If you took the three versions apart and reordered them from how they are presented in our 21^st century Bible, you’d see a complete “Point A to Point Z” story.  And this story is the one that touches all the “sentimental buttons” for many of us, the stuff of Christmas carols and Midnight Masses, the inspiration for many a Christmas card.

But what if we didn’t have this version of the coming of Christ into our world?  What if we our only introduction to the arrival of Jesus was something more mysterious and mystical?  What if Matthew, Mark, and Luke were removed from the canon, leaving us only with the Gospel of John?  Imagine for a moment that our tradition taught us nothing of stables and stars, wise men and shepherds.  Would we experience Advent (and maybe even the whole of Christianity) differently?

While the other Gospel sources focus on the narrative facts, John plunges us deep into the mystery of the Christ from the first word.  John uses language that is symbolic, figurative, not so easy to understand.  It is John who reminds us that the arrival of the Christ in the form of Jesus, the person, is not just a sweet story to warm our hearts and inspire Hallmark cards. 

This arrival is cosmic!  It is filled with mystery, timelessness, metaphor, and juxtapositions of light and dark.  Kathy quoted John last Sunday as she concluded her entry.  Let me share more:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:1-5).

Wow! That’s some heady stuff!  We read, we wonder, and we read again. Exactly what do these words mean?  Do we have the wisdom to understand?

You can’t take John’s gospel introduction and create a “Little Golden Book” version for easy consumption.  John’s account of the arrival of the Christ seems to not be meant for children—so abstract are his words that one would think that most youngsters are not developmentally capable of grasping all that he conveys.  This should be marked “Warning:  Adult Spiritual Content—Your Mind May Be Blown!”

Are we guilty of settling for a “Little Golden Book” version of Christianity?  Are we reluctant to take the leap to explore the mystic, mysterious, cosmic nature of Jesus? It’s easier to live in the safe and sentimental stories of faith; however, while they are instructive to children, they are not necessarily transformational for grown-ups, or people seeking maturity in faith.  Without transformation, the story risks being minimized to religious folklore, a pleasant fable, a quaint account of a simpler time long, long ago.

I do so love the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in the stable, the tableau of the Holy Family with all the animals, shepherds, wise men and angels.  But I already know that old, old story.  I need an extreme Advent makeover.  I’m looking for the light that shines in the darkness, because this world is feeling mighty dark these days.  My Advent plan is to continue thinking, writing, and praying over John’s version of the coming of the Christ into the world.

I want to walk as a child of the Light

I want to follow Jesus

God set the stars to give light to the world

The light of my life is Jesus

In Him there is no darkness at all

The night and the day are both alike

The Lamb is the light of the City of God

Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

-Kathleen Thomerson