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
My Nativity Project:
