My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#8 - The Shepherds) Here it is the third, and final, sermon installment for the My Nativity Project. It is a sermon I delivered this past Sunday at Crosspoint Community Church (Anchorage, AK) as part of the "Christmas Visions" series. You can listen to "The Shepherd's Vision" here. (You will need to search for it under the series title "Christmas Visions" or for me as a speaker). Happy New Year!!! Joel K BONUS: If, on the this New Years Eve, your not totally done with Christmas I can highly recommend Rob Bell's discussion of Christmas with Alexander Shaia here. This podcast blew my mind - like everytime I listen to Alexander Shaia. Also the audio of Rob Bell's "Revolutionary Christmas - Live at Largo is available for download here. It is TOTALLY worth the $5 (which is being donated in full to Charity:Water). This was another mind blowing look at Christmas
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#9 - The Star - Bonus Christmas Day Edition) NOTE: #8 The Shepherd's - will be available soon. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Often at the top of the nativity sits a star. We don't talk much about the star at Christmas other than to mention it in the Magi story. I once heard a sermon that was preached from the perspective of the star. I remember it being rather good, but I can't tell you one specific thing that was said. Such is that fate of even the best work of preachers, I guess. In my defense, and the preacher's, it was over twenty years ago. Speaking of the Star atop the manger scene, reminds me of one of my favorite songs from this Advent - "Another Christmas" by the Ohio-based band Over the Rhine. This melancholy holiday song offers some memorable and thought provoking lines such as:
"This old world so sweet and so bitter
Seeds of violence we humans have sown
And these weapons we still love to handle
May our children have strength to let go
When we look at the stars after midnight
Sparkling rumors of redemption at play
Can we still hear the echoes of angels
Who were singing that first Christmas day"
The lyrics speak directly to the current state of the world and offer the hope of redemption brought by Jesus moving into our neighborhood. However, it is the refrain that has drilled it's way into into my mind and spirit this Christmas...
" ‘Cause I’ve committed every sin
And each one leaves a different scar
It’s just the world I’m livin’ in
And I could use a guiding star
I hope that I can still believe
The Christ child holds a gift for me
Am I able to receive
Peace on earth this Christmas"
While we often seek feel good songs at Christmas, it is the depth of reality that is sung by Linford Detweiler that strikes me. As he confesses his need for a guiding star I sense my turn in the confession booth making the same claim. When he asks if he is able to receive a gift from the Christ child, I too wonder if I can trust that the baby Jesus still has a gift for me.
So as we finish this exploration of the nativity I find myself placing this hope of a guiding star on top of the manger scene residing in my blistered soul in hope that a true guiding star will take the place of that hope. That guiding star would be a gift I would be glad to receive.
Joel K
You can find the lyrics for "Another Christmas" here.
BONUS TRACK:
The second song I fell in love with this Christmas is Sam Phillip's "Cold Dark Night." It is just a great track and I offer it to you as a gift on Christmas Day!
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#7 - Jesus) For a few years I was a Bible teacher for a small Christian school. The main subject I taught was the Gospels. In that class, each week, the students were assigned to write a single page on Jesus. All the prompts began with "Jesus is / was __________" with some provocative word of phrase in the blank. Today we turn our thoughts to the child in the manger at the center of the nativity. In doing so I offer these two statements for consideration: Jesus is/was a rebel. Jesus is/was a refugee. Each with a song to guide our reflection. Back in the days before downloadable content I used to trade for bootleg live recordings a bit. One of my favorite trades was for a recording of Bruce Cockburn doing a live radio Christmas special (he did those for a few years). On that particular recording was a special guest appearance by Jackson Browne. The song Browne choose to sing solo is "The Rebel Jesus." That song is a critique of Jesus' followers. The third verse always strikes me with its bluntness and often needed rebuke: "We guard our world with locks and guns And we guard our fine possessions And once a year when Christmas comes We give to our relations And perhaps we give a little to the poor If the generosity should seize us But if any one of us should interfere In the business of why there are poor They get the same as the rebel Jesus"
But as we gaze into the manager at the center of our nativity and see a baby it is hard to see a rebel. A few weeks ago a Facebook friend of mine (Nate Bacon) posted this thought:
"Advent. The coming of the King…as a defenseless child. The age-old adage, ‘might makes right’ is literally undermined by the birth of a Child who had no place to lay his head…born at the margins of Empire whose local manifestation—Herod—teetered with insecurity at this threat from below, and responded with violence and infanticide. Terror has long roots in our world…the white-knuckled gripping onto transient power…the hatred and persecution of those who would oppose and subvert our regimes…the pitting of race against race…denying our common humanity and ignoring the common threats to our existence on this planet. Into this malaise comes a child who will lead the Way."
Looking at the child in that light begins to unlock the rebel-ness of Jesus and hints at another prompt I used to hand out - "Jesus is/was a revolutionary." Can we see in the Baby Jesus, laying in a manger, the subversion of a rebel and a revolutionary? Can we hear in the words of Jackson Browne the reality that often we, as Jesus' followers, are far from rebellious or revolutionary?
If I were still teaching high school students this Christmas season I would have assigned the prompt "Jesus is/was a refugee." All the talk of national security with Presidential candidates and politicians making statements daily about closing our borders and other responses to the crisis' at hand we forget that Jesus is born into volatile political environment. Luke's account of the birth starts by telling us who the Roman ruler was that was ordering the census and a few verses later Luke is stealing a title from that ruler - "The Lord" - and giving it to the baby in the manger. That is an act of political poetry that speaks to the unrest of the time. The birth account in Matthew tells us about how threatened Herod by this new King. Put another way, the situation was so tense that a king was put on guard by a baby, so much so that he kills any potential rival to his throne and power. It is at that exact moment that Jesus becomes a refugee as he and his family flee to Egypt.
Can we look into the manger this Christmas and see a baby refugee? Can we see Jesus in the faces of those forced from their homes and countries because of political unrest that often flood our TV news broadcasts? Can we see the story of the birth of a rebel, revolutionary, refugee has happening in a world much like our own?
I offer the song "If You Were Born Today" by Low as a soundtrack for mulling over the rebel, revolutionary, refugee who came as a baby to be "God with Us"?
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#6 - Mary) Here it is the second sermon installment for the My Nativity Project. It is a sermon I delivered this past Sunday at Crosspoint Community Church (Anchorage, AK) as part of the "Christmas Visions" series. You can listen to "Mary's Vision" here. Joel K
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#5 - The Maji)
As I have noted I don't typically put the Maji (also called the Wisemen or Kings, usually assigned the number 3 because of the gifts) in the nativity since it's likely that they arrived about two years after Jesus birth. However, for this exercise we are dropping them in the scene.
While we sing of these men and place them in the story each year it appears to me that we don't really know who they were - other than worshipers of the toddler Jesus from the East. The word Magi is explained in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible as "Oriental Scientist, by implication a magician; sorcerer." This definition strikes me in two ways. First, it sounds more than a little racist. Second, is the idea that these men may have been scientists. We don't sing, "we three scientists, of Orient are..." How would the story of Christmas be different if three scientists were next to the manger on our mantle?
Another way to define Maji is, "a member of a priestly caste of ancient Persia." Now if a group of scientists in the Manger Scene wasn't thought provoking, how about priests of a different Religion worshiping Jesus in the Nativity? But this definition makes some sense to me.
A few years back I was student in a class on Church History being taught by Dr. Ray Bakke. Ray, in speaking about the Magi, stated that 600 years before Babylon had carried off the royalty of Israel, including Daniel. He noted that in Matthew 2:18, the verse about Rachel weeping, it not just about the toddler genocide of Herod, but also the weeping of Rachel for those taken in exile. He went on to speculate that the wisemen were Rachel's children returning after being on mission in Babylon. With a bit more speculation about Daniel having prophicied about the coming Jesus, Ray stated that the first non-Jewish worshippers of Jesus were from a land and people that had nearly destroyed the Jews and had carried them off into exile. I don't know about you, but I find all that pretty thought provoking.
If the Maji were from Babylon and representatives of an oppressing army that carried Israel into captivity, its interesting thatas soon as they arrive a new oppressor kills all the toddler and baby boys forcing Jesus, Mary and Joseph to flee into exile. The paralell is stunning. It is also a part of the story we don't talk about. We put the wisemen in the manger scene, but maybe we should have a soldier with a bloody sword or a maniacal king lurking in the back.
Today in church services across the US and Canada some time will be given to talking about refugees, in particular Syrian refugees. There has been a lot of discussion recently (interestingly at the center has been a maniacal wannabe king) about what to do with refugees and what a Christian response should be. Matthew 2, and the Magi should tell us all we need to know. Jesus was a refugee. That is a song we don't sing at Christmas either. Jesus was a refugee.
A few years ago I added a Christmas ep titled simply Christmas by the band Low to my collection of holiday music. Their song "Take the Long Way Around the Sea" (above) offers the perfect atmosphere for reflecting on the Magi, Herod's toddler genocide, and Jesus the refugee.
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#4 - Zechariah) Here it is the first sermon installment for the My Nativity Project. It is a sermon I delivered this past Sunday at Crosspoint Community Church (Anchorage, AK) as part of the "Christmas Visions" series. You can listen to "Zechariah's Vision" here. After checking out my sermon, if you are not on sermon overload, I highly recommend Pastor Kizombo L. Kalumbula's (Tabernacle Community Church in Grand Rapids, MI) sermon on Zechariah. You can listen to it here.
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#3 - Bethlehem)
I don't pick up my guitar(s) much these days. Life is pretty full, so my collection of six strings sits in the closet, silent, waiting for some stolen moment when they will be played. When I do pick one up this Christmas season I will likely play very few Christmas songs. However, I know I will play On To Bethlehem by Vigilantes of Love. It is one of my favorite Christmas songs and one that strikes a deep chord in me.
The song captures the mood I often enter the holiday season with - a mix of weiryness and despair. This comes through in lines like:
and i'd like to say i'm faithful to the task at hand speaking gospel to a handful and others with their list of demands
The song also captures a bit of the hope Christmas offers in the refrain. There Bill Mallonee sings:
it's cold this year and i'm late on my dues it's cold in here ah but that's nothing new my heart's electric with your love again so it's on to bethlehem
Though I love the tone of the song, it is the lines in the middle and last part of the song that have bearing on this reflection of the nativity. In those lines we see a reluctance to approach the manger. We see a hesitancy to rush up to the newborn Jesus. We are drawn by the lyrics to experience our own humanity and the incarnated humanity of Jesus. First the middle: you might surmise that i ran there but i really only crept lead me to the place where love runs wild and then it dogs your every step
you know how fickle my heart is prone to wonder my Lord yeah we talk but it's at arms length always got one eye on the door Do we rush to the manger too easily each Christmas? Are we too much like Ricky Bobby (1) wanting to worship the "Dear Lord, Baby Jesus"? Do we truly love the baby Jesus the best? Sometimes I think we like Christmas more than the rest of the liturgical year because the baby Jesus doesn't come to us us and bid us to die (2). The baby Jesus doesn't command us to give to the poor, or lay down our lives, or rest on God's protection and provision. In fact we like that "The little Lord Jesus, No crying he makes" and sing it out loudly. Pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber expresses what I think our reaction to the adult Jesus often is in an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program: "I was at a Q&A recently and this really earnest young seminarian was like, "Pastor Nadia what do you do personally to get closer to God?" and before I even knew I was saying it I was like "What?! Nothing. Why would I do that?" Half of the time I wish He would leave me alone. Because if I'm going to try to get closer to God because I'm going to end up having to love someone I don't like again or give away more of my money or be confronted with some horrible inconsistency about myself and be called to repent. None of those things - I'm not interested in those things. They keep happening to me, but it's not because I've climbed some spiritual ladder and I'm constantly pursuing God. God is pursuing me." (3) Bolz-Weber was talking in that moment about having the gift of faith. How many of us have a faith - not even a faith, but a curiosity about Jesus - that is marked by or fickleness and having "one eye on the door"? I bet that most of us - if we are nakedly honest - creep, at best, to the manger and are ready to leave at any second. If Mallonee hasn't made us uncomfortable enough yet, now the end: God wraps Himself up in human skin for those who want to touch and God let them drive the nails in for those of us who know way too much
You come bearing all our burdens and take Your lovers for a ride but we stay holed up in our cages fashioned by our own design
so tell me what is your secret what's on your blister soul what is that one little secret you know the one that has taken its toll
'cause daddy's banging on your gate again yeah he won't leave you alone got a whole lot of dry warm rooms and the finest of homes
The mystery and the magic of Christmas is that God could somehow become human. In the Disney movie Aladdin the genie describes the situation of living in a bottle by saying something like, "UNLIMITED POWER!!!, tinny-weeny little living space." This always seems to me a statement of the incarnation at Jesus' birth. God becomes human, the ruler of the universe packed into the body of a newborn baby. Eugene Peterson put the incarnation this way in his translation of John 1, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." Jesus moves into our human neighborhood, and also the places where we live. Our being human and the world we live in leaves scars on us - scars that need healing. But while Jesus is coming to heal us, we insist on living with a blistered soul. I love the direct way Mallonee gets the listener to admit to that? "so tell me what is your secret, what's on your blister soul, what is that one little secret, you know the one that has taken its toll?" The question is not if you have a secret or if your soul is blistered, but what the secret is in that tattered soul of yours. In what way has being a human in this world left its mark on you?
Today we reflect on the setting of our nativity - our manger scene. Sure the birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem, and sure the representations we have of the birth of Jesus might set on a table or mantle, but as we set up the manger scene in our lives during advent the nativity is resting deep in our blistered soul.
Can we say, with our blistered soul, that our heart is electric and that we will creep up to the manger one more time seeking the healing of the baby Jesus?
(1) Will Farrell's character in Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby Talladaga Nights... (2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (3) http://www.npr.org/2015/09/17/441139500/lutheran-minister-preaches-a-gospel-of-love-to-junkies-drag-queens-and-outsiders
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#2 - Joseph) Maybe it is because I'm a man, or maybe it's because I'm usually drawn to the fringe characters of any Biblical story, but I have often pondered Joseph at Christmas time. Quite often he gets brushed to the side in our telling of the Christmas story becoming nothing more than Mary's husband and the guy leading the donkey. However, Joseph has got some real depth and gives us a lot to think about. First off Joseph has some decisions to make. He must to decide whether or not to follow through on his engagement to Mary. In order to do that Joseph has to choose to believe that Mary has not been unfaithful to him and is carrying God's baby which was created in her womb, somehow, but the Holy Spirit. This decision - to remain on course with marrying Mary - also comes with a choice to be an outcast. Joseph will be looked down upon by everyone for his union with the unclean, and seemingly untruthful, Mary. It's no wonder the Bible tells us that he thought about dismissing her quietly. It's my guess is the mention of this consideration - "he had in mind to divorce her quietly" (Matt. 1:19b) - is a bit of an understatement. The second decision Joseph needs to make is to leave what little support he may have had left and travel to safety. Following the visit of the Magi and just moments before Herod's murderous rampage against Bethlehem area toddlers Joseph scurries away with Jesus and Mary to Egypt. Joseph's story seems ripped right from the headlines. A man fleeing a tyrant to another country as a refugee seeking asylum is the experience of many in our world today. Both of those decisions needed a visit in a from the Angel of the Lord in a dream to take root in Joseph. I've always wondered what it was like to be Joseph. Did he ever doubt the story he was told about how Mary got pregnant after he had the dream? How did he feel having to leave home, and everything he knew, to protect his family? What was it like knowing you were the stepfather of the Messiah? I once preached a sermon titled, "Out on a Limb with Joseph." That sermon is long gone from my notes, papers and memory, but the feeling of Joseph being out on a limb as we read Matthew 2 persists. While there are plenty of risks being taken in the Christmas story...Joseph is certainly a man who is going out on a limb - risking it all multiple times. For the past decade the rock band The Killers has released a Christmas tune each holiday season. The third year of the run, 2008, they released with the help of Elton John and Neil Tennant, "Joseph, Better You Than Me." This excellent, and non-traditional, Christmas tune serves as a wonderful prompt for reflecting on Joseph as we place him in the Manger Scene. Better you than me indeed. Joel K
My Nativity Project: A Journey Through the Manger Scene in Sermon and Song (#1 - Introduction) When my wife, Stacey, and I got married one of the things we received as a wedding gift was a nativity scene. It was a collection of plastic people and animals that made up a representation of the birth of Jesus. Each year we set up the scene someplace in our home. We often set up two scenes since my understanding of the Christmas story (which is in line with the biblical/historical accounts) does not allow for the wisemen to be present with the shepherds at the manger. I even made a stop action movie one holiday season depicting our wisemen on a journey across our house to the manger set to the soundtrack of Fatboy Slim's "Praise You." Long gone is that nativity - replaced by a trio of nativity scenes from around the world. Some of the scenes have wisemen and shepherds, and one African scene is just Mary, Joseph, and the Baby. Gone too is the plastic. Each of the new wave of manger scenes in our home is made from a natural substance - wood, banana leaves, and coconut shell. This Christmas season I will again drop my persnickety persistence about the placement of the wisemen, this time to place that energy towards a series of reflections on the principle players in the nativity scene. The form of this reflection take two parts. The first part is a series of sermons I will be preparing and delivering at my home church (Crosspoint Community Church) December 6, 13, & 20. Those messages will reflect on Zechariah (John the Baptist's dad), Mary, and The Shepherds (with the Angels). The audio of those sermons will be posted to the blog the week after the message is delivered. The remaining reflections will be short written reflections on other characters - Bethlehem, Joseph, the Wisemen, and Jesus himself - all tied to some of my favorite Christmas music from Low, The Killers and Vigilantes of Love. I invite you to set up a nativity scene in your house (ours will go up today) and join me as I journey through that nativity over the next four weeks of Advent.
Sunday, November 1, 2015, I landed in Guatemala City for the Synergy Conference, a gathering of people from around the world seeking to love their cities. It seemed fitting to be arriving at a gathering of ministry practitioners - some working in very hard places - on All Saints Day. All Saints Day is the celebration of all the saints, known and unknown, who have gone before us. In protestant churches it is not much remembered other than the very loosely connected Halloween night on the Eve of All Hallows Day (another name for All Saints / All Souls day). It is further obscured by the remembrance of Reformation Day coinciding with the celebration. As the wheels hit the ground that Sunday morning my mind was bleary, foggy from a red-eye flight, I was excited to be joining with my friends, teachers and colleagues, from around the world. Little did I know that the significance of our gathering being on week of All Saints Day would only grow as the days went on. After a day of the conference being contained within the walls of the hotel we ventured out into the city. The first stop was the Guatemala National Cemetery where were learned on a tour a bit of the history of the country and the wounds that exist from that history. A key part of the history is the 36 year civil war (1960-1996) that ravished the country. During that conflict an estimated 300,000 people "disappeared" as part of a terror campaign. The next stop on the tour that afternoon was FAFG (The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation) a non-governmental organization that recovers the remains of the disappeared (many found in mass graves) and seeks to identify them and return them to their families. To date they have recovered around 1% of these non-combatant victims of the war. As we stood in a laboratory that contained around two dozen skeletons, hearing about the work of the FAFG, it struck me that these executed people are a portion of the saints that have gone before us. In the cemetery we also heard the very personal story of a young man who was one of the workers in the dump just over the bluff. During the rainy season he was caught in an avalanche of garbage and swept 12 miles away by the storm water that is drained into the landfill. That young man, who labored in the shadows of the graves of the most famous and wealthy of the country, is now in a simple grave in that same cemetery among the common people. There he is unknown to most of the world just has he had been largely unseen in life. But he is not forgotten by his friends (those leading our tour) or by his God. Another Saint that has gone before us. (for more thoughts about this saint see my friend Annette's Blog here). The next day we were back out in the streets of Guatemala City. This time I was involved in meeting pastors from around the city and hearing about the churches role in transforming the city. One of the stops was to hear about the peace and justice work of the Catholic orders in the city. During that time we were told the story of Assistant Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera. He was the Bishop that delivered to the government the report from the Catholic Church exposing their findings about the "disappearances" during the civil war. Two days later, April 24, 1998, he was found beaten beyond recognition in front of his home. Another Saint that has gone before us. That second day of the tours began in the conference room of a western style mega-church listening to Shorty who is a pastor and church planter in some of the hardest areas of Guatemala City. Shorty explained that he often calls his daughters before who goes into one of the neighborhoods, in case he is killed. He challenged us by asking, "Are you willing to die where God has asked you to go?" Again, my thoughts returned to those Saints who have gone before and found myself thinking about my commitment to the place(s) God has called me. Will God, and my bothers and sisters in Christ, see me as a saint that went before? Peace and All Good from Guatemala. Joel K
I had the privilege to preach on Galatians 3:1-14 this past week at Crosspoint Community Church. You can listen to the sermon, “Mirror or Mosaic or Do you have to be like me to be saved/a
Christian?”,here.
This past Monday morning I drug myself to the gym. I was starting the week tired, but that didn't keep me from the gym. I climbed onto the stationary bike to get my heart rate up before some circuit training and opened the book I have been reading for the past week or so. I cracked the binding of Accidental Saints: Finding God In All The Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber looking for some inspiration to jolt me into some energy. That would not be the case. As I began reading chapter 5, You Are Not "The Blessing," the story of the author pastoring a Bishop she had just met through his wife dying of cancer, a wave of emotion began to seep up from my very foundation. Because of my experience of having my wife battle cancer (she survived) cancer stories always swiftly dredge up lots of feelings and empathy. As I read I was resonating deeply with Bishop Bruce's story. However, it was a scene later in the chapter that caused me to breakdown into tears - in public - again(!). Following the death Bishop Bruce's wife Bolz-Weber found herself at the visitation and funeral. She relays this moment in the book: "...Bruce approached me at the funeral reception and asked if I would stay until everyone had left, I said yes. As we stood in an empty church fellowship hall next to the drained coffee pots and empty cheese trays, I asked, "So, Bruce, who pastors bishops?" "No, one," he said in almost a whisper, not out of secrecy or shame but out of the weighty truth of it." Reading Bruce's answer, that no one pastors bishops, is the exact spot where I burst into tears - once more relating on a very deep level. Pastors find themselves in a unique position as the spiritual caregivers of others. Our spiritual leaders are often the givers of care, but far too often not recipients themselves. Bolz-Weber muses on why this might be the case: "Maybe we simply don't want our leaders to have needs. Maybe it's not only the leaders who think they should be perfect; maybe it's also the followers who expect them to have it all together. Maybe we want the people who care for us and lead us to not be like us, to not struggle like us, because if we realize they, too, are hurting and needy, then maybe the spell - the illusion that we're okay, and in good hands - breaks. Like how distressed I was when I saw Miss Kramer, my third grade teacher, walking out of the teachers' bathroom. Wait. You mean teachers also go to the bathroom? You mean, like me? I never saw her the same again." October is Pastors Appreciation Month. I wonder if this isn't a good time for leaders and followers alike to think about the nature of being a leader. It's not an easy job being a Pastor. I know first hand the pressure of feeling like I need to have all of my stuff together. I also know that shock I once felt when my leaders shared their shortcomings. I was once floored by a Professor's admission that he struggled his entire life with wanting to do daily Bible reading and prayer. Can we not only appreciate our Pastor's this month, but also think through how we can best be the community of Christ together? Do we expect our leaders to be the perfect people Bolz-Weber describes? For the reason she offers? Do leaders buy into that culture of leadership perfection as well? And maybe the most important question, who pastors the pastors? Joel K
"I'll be working here forever, at least until I die" - Huey Lewis We all have one day a week that knocks the wind out of us. For a lot of people it's Monday, but for me it is Tuesday. I've really begun to hate the second day of the work week. Due to the nature of my work schedule Tuesday often feels like the real start of the week. Most weeks as I slowly decompress over Saturday night and into Sunday I manage to forget the loads of work I need to get done. Monday I am usually hyper-focused on teaching Monday night at the dinner and discussion gathering we do at the teen center where I work. So when I wake Tuesday morning the to-do list I mentally put away sometime over the weekend comes roaring back into my consciousness. Adding to my Tuesday reality slap is a weekly mid-morning staff meeting. If I'm not feeling totally overwhelmed already by 11am Tuesday, I feel like I'm drowning by the end of this meeting. And so it was today. I really am starting to wish Tuesday didn't exist. Recently, I have started doing yoga occasionally. I have made a couple of discoveries as I have tried to contort myself in to higher flexibility, strength and a relaxed mind. First, I am not flexible!!! Second, I dig the focus on breathing and that does help me clear my mind. But the biggest discovery is something the yoga instructor on the cell phone says during the session I have been doing with my wife. At one point the voice on the app says, "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation." Did you catch that? "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation." In the middle of days that feel very overloaded - days like Tuesday - I keep thinking about that simple phrase. What exactly does it mean to "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation?" For nearly all of my life I have operated on one side of that equation, effort. I have always approached challenges, struggles or problems in life with effort. I would simply take the issues that presented themselves and work harder. It comes from being a part of a family, and sub-culture, where working hard and being busy were the things that got you into heaven. As I have gotten older what I have discovered is that all the effort has a price. The price you pay for being almost exclusively on this side of the equation comes to you when you least expect it. For me it comes out in tears and anxiety. I have a simple indicator from when I am overloaded - I cry. I don't "have a good cry." It is not something I plan. Crying sneaks up on me. I cry at something I hear on the radio, or some mildly touching song lyric, or while singing in church. It happened recently as I wrote a letter to a friend in a coffee shop and I found myself bawling like a baby. Crying is not something I do too much, especially in a public space. So I knew something was up. But the crying is not a big deal, or at least not as big as the toll all the effort takes in the long run. All the years of pushing through, powering on, working harder wears down one's soul. For me that slow sanding on my soul has left me tired and filled with anxiety. The product of always fighting, is that you end up with no fight left in you at all. The other side of the equation is relaxation. I've never been too good at this. A couple years ago as I sat on a beach in Hawaii my wife asked me, "Are you OK? I've never seen you do nothing." That pretty much sums up my experience with relaxation. So how does one "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation?" A clue might be found in the Biblical idea of Sabbath. God takes a day off after his work, and expects us to do the same. This practice is meant to teach us that God is in control and doesn't need us to make things happen every single day. God is perfectly capable of providing all we need without us making it happen. When we stop working - stop putting in effort - we are trusting that God will take care of it - whatever it is. The motto of the college I graduated from is "ora et labor" (meaning pray and work). Is it possible that my alma mater's motto and "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation" are connected? Could they be the same thing? Are we to work / put in effort and also simultaneously relax into what my counselor calls "a restful reliance on God?" All I know is this. On a day like today, where I feel like I am barely keeping my head above water, I find my mind wandering to that yoga voice saying, "Try to find the balance between effort and relaxation" and praying that I can find that balance in my life. Joel K
I wrote in today's square (Sept. 8, 2015) on my calendar months ago, "Colbert starts the Late Show" noting that in tonight's broadcast of The Late Show on CBS Stephen Colbert will take the reigns from the legendary David Letterman. My daughters have commented on my calendar note with some concern. They might have a good reason to query me after witnessing my nearly daily viewing of Colbert's former show - Comedy Central's The Colbert Report - a daily satirical news show with Colbert's character, "Steven Colbert," parodying the bombastic style of political TV pundits.
I have always watched late-night TV. On the weekends I tuned into Saturday Night Live and still flip it on in time to catch Weekend Update most weeks. As for the weeknights, I was first drawn to Carson, then Leno and Letterman, and then O'Brian. However, once Leno lost his edge my interest wained and I boycotted him all together after he had O'Brian fired so he could re-join the Tonight Show. Subsiquently, O'Brian moved out of my reach since I don't have cable. Letterman settled in at CBS and ultimately began to just coast, then I drifted away. I have never really given Jimmy Kimmel a chance. So finally in recent years my late-night viewing moved to streaming late-night shows of a political bent during daylight hours. Having always loved satire and I found Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I fell completely in love with them during the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaigns.
After the election I stayed, and I became an even bigger fan of Colbert. Two things sealed the deal. An interview on NPR where Colbert shared that he teaches Sunday School (when asked to share something people might not know about him), and a 2010 Christmas rant about faith, politics and poverty that ended with: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.” I have been trying to figure out how to get this TV sermon into conversations, sermons, classes, and worship services ever since.
So now, as Colbert takes over The Late Show, there has been a lot of interest and speculation in who will show up - the real Stephen Colbert, or the finely crafted character used on his former show. The fascinating thing here is how well the satire has been done. With Colbert the satirical line between the real and the ridiculous has been blurred to a point that discussion about the nature of the real Stephen Colbert is a necessity. The irony for me is that in recent years what has made me admire Colbert the most has been his transparency in interviews - the times he has shown us who he really is. In particuar his openness about joy, suffering and humanity.
I have often quoted his statements in the 2009 RollingStone magazinefeature on him. Check out these truths:
"I have this on my computer [removes a piece of paper taped to his computer]. It says, "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."
"Not to get too deep here, but the most valuable thing I can think of is to be grateful for suffering. That is a sublime feeling, and completely inexplicable and illogical, but no one doesn't suffer. So the degree to which you can be aware of your own humanity is the degree to which you can accept, with open eyes, your suffering. To be grateful for your suffering is to be grateful for your humanity, because what else are you going to do – say, "No, thanks"? It's there. "Smile and accept," said Mother Teresa. And she was talking to people who had it rough. That's not how you make jokes, though."
" I have another little piece of paper back here [removes a piece of paper taped to the edge of his desk]. It just says, "Work," because nothing ever gets better unless you work. So I have "work" here and "joy" over there, and I try to put the two together somehow."
He was just as transparent over the summer in a GQ article. Note these insights:
“Tragedy is sacred,” he said. “People's suffering is sacred.”
"I'm very grateful to be alive, even though I know a lot of dead people.” The urge to be grateful, he said, is not a function of his faith. It's not “the Gospel tells us” and therefore we give thanks. It is what he has always felt: grateful to be alive. “And so that act, that impulse to be grateful, wants an object. That object I call God. Now, that could be many things. I was raised in a Catholic tradition. I'll start there. That's my context for my existence, is that I am here to know God, love God, serve God, that we might be happy with each other in this world and with Him in the next—the catechism. That makes a lot of sense to me. I got that from my mom. And my dad. And my siblings.”
Speaking on the death of his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was 10: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”
I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.
I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”
So tonight when Stephen Colbert takes over the The Late Show I'll be watching. I'll be watching to see which Colbert shows up, but I'll also be watching the Colbert that knows "I am here to know God, love God, serve God," and the fellow traveler who has learned "to love the bomb" because what else are you going to do – say, "No, thanks"?
Joel K
Stephen Colbert was also a guest in the most recent season of the excellent show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. You can see that episode here
