Monday Morning Music Ministry

12-18-23

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but there are some things about Christmas that manage to rankle us. It is not the fault of the little baby Jesus but let’s be honest, a lot of us register annoyance about a lot of things a lot of times around Christmas. I’m making a list and checking it twice.

“Christmas is just getting too commercial.” “Why do the stores start putting Christmas stuff out earlier and earlier?” “We have to fight the crowds again?” “Oh, gosh, half the lights are out!” “Where did we pack the decorations?” “Wasn’t it our turn last year?” “Oh! I forgot to get her a present!” “Those dumb songs on the radio again!”

… and so on. Notice that none of these familiar complaints is about God becoming incarnate to live among humankind, to offer us a means of salvation, eventually to die for our sins. No recorded complaints from Mary and Joseph, who found no place to stay, no clean or comfortable place to give birth. We know that story.

I have a version of that story, not in the Bible but plausible – that there was “no room in the inn,” or any inns in Bethlehem, not because the town was crowded during tax-season. Perhaps the innkeepers did not want a girl who was pregnant before she was married staying in their establishments. If that is the case, we can add that such indignity to Mary, the virgin miraculously bearing the Son of God Almighty, brought forth no complaints from her.

A manger is something unknown to most contemporary folk. It was not a place where animals lay, as this Baby would, which would be humble enough. It was where animals ate; so in the straw where Jesus was placed there was spittle, chunks of old food, and bugs.

Yet that familiar scene is abstract to people today; or at least it is sanitized. Our mangers are neat folding cribs in displays. The stable is an organized crèche in paintings. The animals are now depicted as Disney-like four-legged witnesses; but at the time they were smelly creatures that left their droppings on the nearby ground.

So it all seems abstract, despite the best efforts of Hallmark cards and inflated-plastic front-yard arrangements. The abstractions are seductive: 2000 years ago; a faraway land; donkeys as transportation. Not to mention the history and theology: how would most of us react if a poor couple showed up at our doors, the young unmarried girl about to give birth; perhaps even claiming to bear the Savior of humankind?

I invite you to think of this familiar-but-abstract story in another way.

Women can imagine, but scarcely identify, with Mary. We know from her prayer called the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”) that she could hardly comprehend the miracle. Some men might be able to identify with the surprising news that confronted Joseph, that his girlfriend was already pregnant. However, he and Mary both knew what the angel shared; and they knew Scripture (as recorded later in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mary and Joseph had separate bloodlines, of course, but each fulfilled ancient prophesies about the ancestry of the coming Messiah).

But I suggest that the easiest member of that young family with whom we can identify is not Mary, not Joseph, but… Jesus Himself.

The birth of Jesus was foretold. God planned for that Son to be born.

God knew each of us, too – before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs.

Jesus was the Son of God.

We, as Christians, are the Children of God.

Jesus came to earth with a Holy Mission to fulfill.

Each one of us has a calling, too; God has a will for our lives.

Despite coming from Glory, Jesus was a Man of Sorrows, destined to suffer and die.

As followers of Christ, our lot is to endure persecution for His Name’s sake.

Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world; He prepares a place for you in Glory.

“This world is not our home”; we trust in life eternal, in Paradise with the Savior.

We might not have been born in mangers, yet during this Christmas season let us more closely identify with “our elder brother Jesus.” He came to earth, after all, to identify with us… to know temptation and pain and suffering and sorrow. Being without sin Himself, that Holy Child would eventually reach out and take our sins upon Himself.

Marys can’t do that. Josephs can’t do that. Even angels can’t do that. Jesus did. Jesus does.

Imagine the Savior of your soul in the virtual manger next to you. The only difference? He is the Son of God. But imagine at the same time something not so abstract: We have the opportunity to have Jesus live within our hearts. The Messiah came to earth, born a humble Babe, in order to reconcile you in that matter too.

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Click: Jesus At the Mall

12-25-17

I want, as I am wont to do sometimes, to offer a different point of view on topics. Sometimes we, as Christians, need a reminder that matters of faith are more joyful than we realize. When I was a young boy, it struck me how worshipers reciting prayers or the liturgy, or singing hymns, spoke “Hallelujah” as if it were a funeral dirge. No smiles, nor louder voices.

And sometimes we need to realize that things that we celebrate – or observe – and about which we prepare in festive modes… are far more serious than we think, or don’t think. I am not saying they are grim; but are worthy of spiritual contemplation. Those second thoughts, deserving of meditation, is what I aim for here.

So. Not a “downer,” not at all. But if we realize some things about Christmas, for instance, that we seldom think about, we might appreciate the day in a new way.

It is interesting to note that Christmas – “Christ’s Mass” – was not a major holiday in the church for most of its history. Yes, it was observed; it was a holy day (holiday); but it did not eclipse the other church holy days as it does today, with the exception of Easter. Ascension Day, marking the absolute confirmation of Christ’s divinity, scarcely is observed in most Christian churches, and is more significant. Despite the Magnificats and Christmas oratorios, Christmas had not the dominance it does today.

Cards, children’s activities, and commercialism changed a lot of this beginning about 175 years ago. I have a dear friend who works for Hallmark Cards, and I truly appreciate the role of greeting cards, seasonal cheer, and the “sentiments” they generate in Kansas City… but they and Norman Rockwell and Haddon Sundblom, illustrator of the Coca-Cola ads, likely have shaped peoples’ impressions of Christmas as much as the angels and shepherds did.

Do we realize that the birth pangs of the first Christmas were not Mary’s alone? Herod believed the Prophecy of the Savior’s birth – even if people today are more indifferent – and decreed that all baby boys in a wide perimeter of Bethlehem be slaughtered? Historians’ numbers vary wildly on the number of slaughtered sons – from triple digits to multiple thousands, mostly based on population estimates and the area stipulated in Herod’s sweeping decree – but it was a frightening time, whether mothers hid in fear or mourned. Birth pangs that accompanied the Nativity.

The haunting Coventry Carol is not a beautiful lullaby but a mothers’ lament for their slaughtered babies… what history records as the Slaughter of the Innocents.

I have made the point (my own imagining, really) that Bethlehem surely had rooms during the Census, but were told, as the Bible relates, that there were no lodgings. I have a suspicion that that couple were denied rooms because Mary, likely still unwed and at any event a young teen very pregnant, were not respectable to innkeepers. The manger, despite the fluffy, antiseptic setting in Hallmark cards, was a trough of straw from which animals ate, therefore full of bugs and spittle.

Mary and Joseph had to escape the slaughter by fleeing ignominiously to Egypt. Christians seem little concerned about that escape or the subsequent years (although Anne Rice has written interesting speculative fiction about Jesus’ boyhood there). Much in the Bible is symbolic, even down to numbers (3, 7, 40 – you must notice), certain metals and woods, and of course symbolic places: the Promised Land, Crossing Jordan, and the Land of Egypt. The world Moses left and where Jesus found escape.

And so forth. Other symbolism we might draw ourselves, without being in Bible concordances or commentaries. For instance, we might – I say we must – consider more carefully the Slaughter of the Innocents.

We can look at the symbolism to the Slaughter of Innocents today. The abortion nightmare kills babies too – in a scenario crueler than under Herod. Today, mothers sanction the murder of their own babies. Today, these deaths occur not to accompany the birth of a Savior, but to reject His saving power, His miracles, His ability to bless in the face of hopelessness. I am in no way callous to the angst of these mothers when they make tortured decisions; believe me I am specially tender, but always opt for life.

Can that view of the widespread slaughter of babies not be a learning experience from the Christmas Story when we stop, in this busy world at this busy time? To open (metaphorically speaking) the greeting card, beyond the pretty manger scene, and think of the many other implications of the Christmas story? …what really happened back then? …and what can happen in our hearts today, seriously, because of that Birth?

Look to the Bible, friend; not to greeting cards.

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The lyrics Coventry Carol were written in 1534 for the Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors Guild in the English town of Coventry. The mother’s soothing words over a sleeping baby, “Lully, Lu Lay,” are the basis of “lullaby.”

Click: Coventry Carol

12-26-16

One of the things a lot of us like about Christmas is the comforting security and tradition of it. Right? The one time of year, we are wont to think, when conflicts and arguments are suspended; when families gather; when people go to church for time-honored services and familiar hymns bathe our souls. Even if it is the only day of the year that some people go to church.

I am not going to be Scrooge here, but the Christmas we know so well would have been a mystery in many ways to history’s generations of Christians.

Christmas cards really commenced, in thoughts and printed versions, in the 1840s. The image of Santa Claus as we know him – know him?? – dates from about the same time. Thomas Nast depicted the basic Santa we know; illustrator Haddon Sondblom created the definitive version for Coca-Cola ads in the 1940s. Many familiar Christmas songs were written in the past few decades; and the “old favorites,” with only a few exceptions, were unknown before two or three centuries ago – a blip in 2000 years of Christian worship.

Most of us know, even if we do not dwell on the facts, that Christmas trees, red-and-green, probably the exchange of gifts, and certainly the date of December 25, all are of pagan origins. “Gifts” can be grafted onto God’s purpose of the Incarnation; and various Christian faiths disagree on the date of the Christ’s birth.

But the actual observance of Jesus’s birth was for centuries one of the Church’s minor festivals and commemorations. Easter was, of course, a focal point of belief and believers. At one time Ascension was – I think properly – the major holy day that Christmas was not, quite. Pentecost, also.

So, am I a Scrooge after all? I have no problem, at all, with observing all the “traditional” cultural trappings of Christmas. Yes, I am glad that many people feel free to say “Merry Christmas” again. I never stopped; and I am fine with the presents and the colors and the decorations and the food. Street lightings in October, and radio marathons, annoy me.

What annoys me a lot, however, is the mandatory cheer of this “season.”
If some people, some Christians or well-intentioned revelers, try hard to be cheery at Christmastide, it is not bad… but only to the extent that we should always be charitable and exercise good will to men.

But we should all – all of us – temper our cheer. Stick with me. There are many aspects of Christmas that should turn us contemplative, not into elves with frozen smiles. The Incarnation was the most incredible miracle of God, the greatest gift to humankind. And we should be joyful. Scrooge has left the building, OK?

But. God became flesh and dwelt among us… because the human race was corrupt and lost, headed for damnation, loving sin more than God. That is sobering, especially because so many of us are still lost in sin; still needing a Savior after 2000 years.

Hallmark cards have sanitized the Birth story. I personally am persuaded that there was “no room in the inns” because inn-keepers rejected providing rooms to teenage girls who conceived before marriage. Abuse and calumny likely followed Mary and Joseph through the streets of Bethlehem.

The stable was “humble”? Certainly, but it was less than that. The manger is where animals’ food was placed, so the Baby Jesus lay amongst old food scraps and the spittle of various animals. If frankincense were needed, it was then… because that stable undoubtedly reeked of excrement.

The advent of Jesus into a needy and hurting world was, sadly, akin to the birth pangs of a mother, all mothers in painful labor. Herod knew of the prophecies about a Savior (isn’t it odd, by the way, that even Herod believed, in his way; yet millions of our contemporaries think that Christianity is a fairy tale?) – and Herod, fearing a rival to his authority… ordered the deaths of boys under age two, throughout his realm.

That is what history came to call the Slaughter of the Innocents. One of the most beautiful-sounding Christmas tunes is the lullaby we know as the Coventry Carol. Mother sings to child, “Bye, bye, lully lu-lay,” a transliteration of ancient French. It is sweet, certainly; but many have forgotten that the mother in this lullaby is whispering good-bye to her son, about to be slaughtered.

And so forth. We dishonor God when we willfully neglect the full meaning of Christ’s Mass. We are happy to assert that Jesus is the reason for the season: just so. But the ancients pondered the truth that “God, with a heavy heart, His Son did impart.” Heavy heart? Yes… God was Incarnate in order to suffer and die for us.

At least we humans have learned much in these two thousand years.

No… we haven’t. That is what I have been arguing. We have managed to sanitize, subvert, corrupt, and disguise Christmas. We make it about our memories, not God’s meaning. The Lord made it all about His Will; and we make it all about our wants. Ultimately, His focus was on us, His beloved children, and our salvation; and we make it… also all about us. Something’s not right.

Indeed, something is not right. After two thousand years of “doing” Christmas, this is still – perhaps more than ever – a needy and hurting world. More Christians were persecuted, tortured, and martyred in the last century than in all the centuries, combined, since the Holy Birth. Around us, here at home, we are beset by hate, injustice, infidelity, apostasy, self-delusion, materialism, and corruption.

Abroad – well, we can just look at the lands where Jesus was born, walked, preached, died, and rose. And loved. Let us just look at Aleppo, where the world has been looking… and looking away. Again, slaughter of innocents.

The “Middle East” is comprised of countries where Christians recently have been in the minority, but sometimes in substantial numbers. Those numbers are depleted, diminished, decimated now. “Ethnic cleansing,” refugee purges, forced conversions and rapes, beheadings and slavery.

Herod was an amateur.

After 2000 years we still await a Savior without really knowing why; or knowing He already has come. Or how to greet Him if we were to meet Him.

If Jesus showed up at your house for Christmas dinner, would you set Him an extra place at the feast, or would you fall at His feet? Would He have to remind you why He came to earth? Would we rethink just what it is we celebrate? Should we accept the present of His Birth… or make a gift of our lives and hearts? And would we cover it up with wrapping paper and fancy ribbons?

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This video is dedicated to all displaced children and in particular Assyrian children who have suffered the most by war and bloodshed in the Middle East. The familiar carol is sung here by people of Jesus’s neighborhoods and languages, Assyrian-Aramaic. These faces like Jesus knew, loved, and was.

Click: The Coventry Carol (Acapella)

12-19-16

Last week, our essay was about the “Little Town of Bethlehem,” the village where God chose to become flesh and dwell among us. Last month, there were violent clashes and civic friction there. Last year, we recalled the sad story of a simple Palestinian Christian who served his church there, gunned down in crossfire in Manger Square. For the last generation, we almost have gotten used to – no: we have not – news stories of hatred, violence, oppression, persecution, and blood in the streets of the birthplace of Jesus.

NOT filled with pilgrims, worshipers, locals, as once was the case for 2000 years. Violence between the Israeli forces and Palestinians had broken out, harshly. Again, this year. As before, during random days of the years. Again this year, but at Christmastide.

There is a powerful song about a heart-wrenching story that was in the news a dozen years ago. Britain’s Independent newspaper reported then: “For 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman had made his way dutifully to his task as bell ringer and caretaker at the fortress-like stone-and-wood church revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”

Salman “crossed Manger Square to get to the church to climb the steps to the fourth-century bell tower” as he did every day of the year. “Minutes later, Samir was struck by a bullet in the chest. It was an hour before an ambulance could reach him but by then, he was already dead. The Palestinians claim he was killed by an Israeli – the Israeli army says they did not fire a shot near the church. Samir, who was mentally disabled, may have been unaware of the danger.”

It was a time when Palestinian fighters, running from advancing Israeli troops, took refuge in the church. They and 40 Franciscan brothers, four nuns and approximately 30 Orthodox and Armenian monks, were trapped in the basilica complex. There were also disputed claims about damage to the holy site, which was built over the manger – reportedly where Jesus was born.

This story about hatred, violence, and bloodshed in Jesus’ hometown, perhaps over the spot where He was born, has resonance this Christmastide.

I shared with some friends that I would be writing this message. “Why make a martyr of an Islamic person, especially at this time of year?” some responded. “Why cite a song that talks about ‘Palestine?’” asked others. “That’s provocative!” However, Salman was an Arab, but not Islamic – he was a Palestinian Christian. How many Americans realize that Bethlehem was traditionally governed by a Christian mayor and majority Christian council; and that there is a higher percentage of Christians there than in Israel — or was, before “Christian cleansing” became the Mideast Mode? Concerning ‘Palestine,’ Bethlehem is not even in Israel but in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority with Israel’s full sanction.

But I want us to return again, remembering the Christmas season, to Nativity Square in Bethlehem. Samir Ibrahim Salman lay there alone. He died in the pool of his blood, maybe instantly, maybe slowly… no one was brave enough (or simple enough, as he was) to go out in the open and tend to him. He had been beloved of the town, and special to the church, because he rang those bells as a volunteer every day of the year for decades, different bells for different occasions, serving Christ and his neighbors.

Let us not lament only the hatred that shatters the calm of Bethlehem, or the peace of Jerusalem. Christians today are being slaughtered by the thousands, and driven from Iraq, which the US has “stabilized.” Likewise from Syria; areas that ISIS touches; Christian parts of Africa, north and south of the Sahara.

In a brilliant but deeply disturbing report for World Magazine a few years ago, my friend Mindy Belz provided details of the US military’s (and NATO representatives’) answer to a question about whether persecuted Christians would be pr rotected in Iraq. By us, the United States. Their answer even then was “No.” Under Saddam Hussein, 1.5-million Christians lived in relative security; today, fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq, many in fear. Likewise, in Syria, the Alawite Bashir el-Assad was the Christians’ protector.

Protected by the US? By our military security? “No.” Mindy correctly calls this “extermination by any other name.” If American Christians betray Christians in Iraq (and Syria, and Egypt, and Nigeria, and China, and Myanmar, and…) we are not merely ignoring the wrong, or decrying the wrong; we are on the side of the wrong.

Back to Bethlehem, where God chose to come in human form to reconcile ALL men unto Himself. This holy ground is where God chose to fulfill His promise from ages past, that through Him “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the simple Christian Bell Ringer of Bethlehem? To those of us who are ignorant of the issues, who blindly perpetuate stereotypes, who support missions we don’t understand – and don’t support missionaries and aid workers we ought to – we can shudder at the thought that we might have been closer, in commitment of spirit, to the triggerman than to the Bell Ringer that morning. God forbid.

As children of God, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation, to be ambassadors to a fallen world – peoples of all faiths, and no faith. Now THERE is a peace treaty!

For the little town of Bethlehem. For everywhere.

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The news story from The Independent was picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, where the Australian singer-songwriter Carl Cleves spotted it and was moved to write this song:

The Bethlehem Bell-Ringer

An ancient church in Bethlehem,
A target in a battle of men,
Stands on the ground where Christ was born
Trapped inside the eye of a storm

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine
Turn all that blood back into wine
Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design
Please bring peace to Palestine.

12-12-16

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.

From all appearances, nothing was happening in the quaint little town of Bethlehem. Businesses had closed, and residents shut themselves in for the night. Mary and Joseph had arrived and settled in a stable because there was no room for them in the Inn.

In the fields nearby, shepherds made themselves as comfortable as possible on the cold, hard ground as they guarded their sheep. An inky sky stretched above them like a never-ending wrap of peace and tranquility.

But, suddenly, great activity stirred the shepherds from their rest. Peace and tranquility, instantly replaced with fear and trembling. For among the silent stars above, the Christ star appeared, remarkably distinct from any other.

At the same time, a brilliant light blinded the shepherds. They dropped to their faces, acknowledging the glory of the angel of God standing before them.

The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people! Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:10-12).

Then, before the shepherds could even process what the angel had said, the very heavens opened, and a great number of heavenly hosts joined the visiting angel in celebration and praise. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”

The shepherds probably looked from one to the other when the angels had gone; joyous, giddy laughter bubbling from their souls. Could this really be true? The Messiah they’d learned about as children? The Messiah promised to come to Bethlehem to be ruler over Israel?

“Come,” they said to one another. “Let’s go see this Child in Bethlehem. For the prophets have said that ‘a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace’” (the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6).

Can you imagine the shepherds’ joy and excitement as they tromped across the fields in expectation of witnessing the birth of the promised Messiah?

Today we sing Christmas carols and music that retell this miraculous story of Christ’s birth. One begins, “For unto us a Child is born.”

But unto us isn’t enough, for the value of a gift is nothing until the gift has been willingly received.

A verse in O Little Town of Bethlehem changes the wording just slightly, but the change makes a significant difference in application to our personal lives. The verse says, “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in. Be born in us today.”

I love that. Enter in. Be born in us today.

We, too, can witness Christ’s birth. Not in a stable far away in another country, another era. Here, today. In my heart. In my life. And in your heart and your life.

Our response? Let’s hearken and respond to the timeless call of the heavenly hosts, saying, “Come and worship. Come and worship. Worship Christ the newborn King.”

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Today’s essay is a Guest Blog by my friend Barbara E Haley, gifted in words and music. She is an educator and Reading Interventionist, and lives in San Antonio, Texas, where she enjoys writing at IHOP, playing classical piano, and spending time with her grandchildren. www.barbarahaleybooks.com

Click: O Little Town of Bethlehem

The ancient town of Bethlehem, whose story is very real and very true, is also eternal as Barb’s essay reminds us. And in that sense, picturing it in a later context is worthwhile. This drawing is by the German cartoonist Wilhelm Schulz, who, early in the last century, depicted the Story and its holy players in the setting of a rural German town. Schulz’s collaborator was the poet Ludwig Thoma; the book was “Heilige Nacht: Eine Weihnachtslegende.”

12-28-15

On Christmas Eve, the news stories were filled with stories about Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, NOT being filled with pilgrims, worships, locals, as usually the case for 2000 years. Violence between the Israeli forces and Palestinians had broken out, harshly. Again. As before, during random days of the years. Again this year, but at Christmastide.

There is a powerful song about a heart-wrenching story that was in the news a dozen years ago. Britain’s Independent newspaper reported then: “For 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman had made his way dutifully to his task as bell ringer and caretaker at the fortress-like stone and wooden church revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”

Salman “crossed Manger Square to get to the church to climb the steps to the fourth-century bell tower” as he did every day of the year. “Minutes later, Samir was struck by a bullet in the chest. It was an hour before an ambulance could reach him but by then, he was already dead. The Palestinians claim he was killed by an Israeli – the Israeli army says they did not fire a shot near the church. Samir, who was mentally disabled, may have been unaware of the danger.”

It was a time when Palestinian fighters, running from advancing Israeli troops, took refuge in the church. They and 40 Franciscan brothers, four nuns and approximately 30 Orthodox and Armenian monks were trapped in the basilica complex. There were also disputed claims about damage to the holy site, which was built over the manger where Jesus reportedly was born.

This story about hatred, violence, and bloodshed in Jesus’ hometown, perhaps over the spot where He was born, has resonance this Christmastide.

I shared with some friends that I would be writing this message. “Why make a martyr of an Islamic person, especially at this time of year?” some responded. “Why cite a song that talks about ‘Palestine?’” asked others. “That’s provocative!” However, Salman was an Arab, but not Islamic – he was a Palestinian Christian. How many Americans realize that Bethlehem was traditionally governed by a Christian mayor and majority Christian council; and that there is a higher percentage of Christians there than in Israel — or was, before “Christian cleansing” became the Mideast Mode? Concerning ‘Palestine,’ Bethlehem is not even in Israel but in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority with Israel’s full sanction.

But I want us to return again, remembering the Christmas season, to Nativity Square in Bethlehem. Samir Ibrahim Salman lay there alone. He died in the pool of his blood, maybe instantly, maybe slowly… no one was brave enough (or simple enough, as he was) to go out in the open. He had been beloved of the town, and special to the church, because he rang those bells as a volunteer every day of the year for decades, different bells for different occasions, serving Christ and his neighbors.

Let us not lament only the hatred that shatters the calm of Bethlehem, or the peace of Jerusalem. Christians today are being slaughtered by the thousands, and driven from Iraq, which the US has “stabilized.” Likewise Syria; areas that ISIS touches; Christian parts of Africa, north and south of the Sahara.

In a brilliant but deeply disturbing report for World Magazine a few years ago, my friend Mindy Belz provided details of the US military’s (and NATO representatives’) answer to a question about whether persecuted Christians would be protected in Iraq. By us. Their answer even then was “No.” Under Saddam Hussein, 1.5-million Christians lived in relative security; today, fewer than 400,000 Christians remain in Iraq, many in fear. Likewise the Alawite Bashir el-Assad was the Christians’ protector.

Protected by the US? By our military security? “No.” Mindy correctly calls this “extermination by any other name.” If American Christians betray Christians in Iraq (and Syria, and Egypt, and Nigeria, and China, and Myanmar, and…) we are not merely ignoring the wrong, or decrying the wrong; we are on the side of the wrong.

Back to Bethlehem, where God chose to come in human form to reconcile ALL men unto Himself. This holy ground is where God chose to fulfill His promise from ages past, that through Him “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the simple Christian Bell Ringer of Bethlehem? To those of us who are ignorant of the issues, who blindly perpetuate stereotypes, who support missions we don’t understand – and don’t support missionaries we ought to – we can shudder at the thought that we might have been closer, in commitment of spirit, to the triggerman than to the Bell Ringer that morning.

As children of God, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation, to be ambassadors to a fallen world – peoples of all faiths, and no faith. Now THERE is a peace treaty! For the little town of Bethlehem. For everywhere.

+ + +

Click: The Bethlehem Bell-Ringer

An ancient church in Bethlehem,
A target in a battle of men,
Stands on the ground where Christ was born
Trapped inside the eye of a storm

Soldiers move from door to door
Mortar fire, it’s all-out war.
Army tanks patrol the street,
They treat civilians with conceit

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine
Turn all that blood back into wine
Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design
Please bring peace to Palestine

Samir Ibrahim Salman
Fulfills his task the best he can.
Each day at dawn he tolls the bells,
While all around the army shells

He walks across the Manger Square
For thirty years he’s lived near there,
A simple man who spends his time
In quiet prayer at Jesus’ shrine

Upon the roof a sniper aims
His bitter heart with hate inflames
Samir walks slow, his back bent low
And is struck down by the bullet’s blow

For many hours Samir lay there
Bleeding on the Manger Square.
No ambulance permitted near,
And so the bell ringer died here

An ancient church in Bethlehem
The bells of peace won’t chime again
The people now all live in fear
Grieving wails are all you hear

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine
Turn all that blood back into wine
Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design
Please bring peace to Palestine.

Another early Christmas message. But the best Christmas and Easter and Annunciation and Ascension messages can, and should, be shared every week of the year. Down with pigeon-holing.

There is a powerful song about a heart-wrenching story that was in the news in 2002. Britain’s Independent newspaper reported at the time: “For 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman had made his way dutifully to his task as bell ringer and caretaker at the fortress-like stone and wooden church revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”

Salman “crossed Manger Square to get to the church to climb the steps to the fourth-century bell tower as he did every day of the year. “Minutes later, Samir was struck by a bullet in the chest. It was an hour before an ambulance could reach him but by then, he was already dead. The Palestinians claim he was killed by an Israeli – the Israeli army says they did not fire a shot near the church. Samir, who was mentally disabled, may have been unaware of the danger.”

It was a time when Palestinian fighters, running from advancing Israeli troops, took refuge in the church. They and 40 Franciscan brothers, four nuns and approximately 30 Orthodox and Armenian monks were trapped in the basilica complex. There were also disputed claims about damage to the holy site built over the reputed manger where Jesus was born.

This story about hatred, violence, and bloodshed in Jesus’ hometown, perhaps over the spot where He was born, has resonance this Christmastide.

I shared with some friends that I would be writing this message. “Why make a martyr of an Islamic person, especially at this time of year?” some responded. “Why cite a song that talks about ‘Palestine?’” asked others. “That’s provocative!” However, Salman was an Arab, but not Islamic – he was a Palestinian Christian. How many Americans realize that Bethlehem has been governed by a Christian mayor and majority Christian council; and that there is a higher percentage of Christians there than in Israel? Concerning ‘Palestine,’ Bethlehem is not even in Israel but in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority with Israel’s full sanction.

But I want us to return again, remembering the Christmas season, to Nativity Square in Bethlehem. Samir Ibrahim Salman lay there alone. He died in the pool of his blood, maybe instantly, maybe slowly… no one was brave enough (or simple enough, as he was) to go out in the open. He had been beloved of the town, and special to the church, because he rang those bells as a volunteer every day of the year for decades, different bells for different occasions, serving Christ and his neighbors.

I do not lament only the hatred that shatters the calm of Bethlehem, or the peace of Jerusalem. Christians today are being slaughtered by the thousands, and driven from Iraq, which the US has “stabilized.” Jeremy Reynalds has written a news story revealing the truth for Assist New Service: http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2010/s10120042.htm

And in a brilliant but deeply disturbing report for World Magazine, Mindy Belz provides details of the US military’s (and NATO representatives’) answer to a question about whether persecuted Christians would be protected in Iraq. By us. Their answer was “No.” Under Saddam Hussein, 1.5-million Christians lived in relative security; today, fewer than 400,000 Christians remain in Iraq, many in fear.

Protected by the US? By our military security? “No.” Mindy correctly calls this “extermination by any other name.” http://www.worldmag.com/articles/17400 If American Christians betray Christians in Iraq (and China, and Myanmar, and…) we are not merely ignoring the wrong, or decrying the wrong; we’re on the side of the wrong.

Back to Bethlehem, where God chose to come in human form to reconcile ALL men unto Himself. This holy ground is where God chose to fulfill His promise from ages past, that through Him “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

Who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the simple Bell Ringer of Bethlehem? To those of us who are ignorant of the issues, who blindly perpetuate stereotypes, who support missions we don’t understand – and don’t support missionaries we ought to – we can shudder at the thought that we might have been closer to the triggerman than to the Bell Ringer that morning.

But as children of God, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation, to be ambassadors to a fallen world – peoples of all faiths, and no faith. Now THERE is a peace treaty! For the little town of Bethlehem, for everywhere.

Click: The Bethlehem Bell Ringer
(words are below)

Rick Marschall

The Bethlehem Bell Ringer
Carl Cleves / the Hottentots

An ancient church in Bethlehem,
A target in a battle of men,
Stands on the ground where Christ was born
Trapped inside the eye of a storm

Soldiers move from door to door
Mortar fire, it’s all-out war.
Army tanks patrol the street,
They treat civilians with conceit

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine
Turn all that blood back into wine
Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design
Please bring peace to Palestine

Samir Ibrahim Salman
Fulfills his task the best he can.
Each day at dawn he tolls the bells,
While all around the army shells

He walks across the Manger Square
For thirty years he’s lived near there,
A simple man who spends his time
In quiet prayer at Jesus’ shrine

Upon the roof a sniper aims
His bitter heart with hate inflames
Samir walks slow, his back bent low
And is struck down by the bullet’s blow

For many hours Samir lay there
Bleeding on the Manger Square.
No ambulance permitted near,
And so the bell ringer died here

An ancient church in Bethlehem
The bells of peace won’t chime again
The people now all live in fear
Grieving wails are all you hear

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine
Turn all that blood back into wine
Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design
Please bring peace to Palestine.

The Christmas story has become really sanitized.

I mean literally. How many depictions do we see, how often do we think, of the Christ Child in the manger, surrounded by shining angels, kindly shepherds, pretty sheep… and bugs and worms, rotted bits of feed and dung, dirt and moldy straw?

The manger was likely in a rough, dark, musty cave, not in an open-air lean-to that the greeting cards portray.

We can also wonder whether Joseph and Mary were told “no room in the inn!” not only because the city was crowded… but perhaps because innkeepers innkeepers greeted the newlyweds and asked when they were married, and reckoned she had been with child…

Homeless… a mother who was single when she conceived… rejected… forced to the humblest place in the city to be born, farm animals as attendants: the Bible accurately called it a lowly birth.

What has NOT been scrubbed clean from the story is that the Bible called it a lowly birth hundreds of years before it happened, in every particular – these details and many more. Truly this was the Son of God.

But we should not turn to the next pretty greeting card this Christmas season. Linger in that stable, and you will see more. You will see children today born in similar circumstances. Parents in distress. No place to live. Little to eat. Rejected and despised.

When God chose to humble Himself and become flesh, He emptied Himself of His royal nature, and became… middle class? A suburbanite fretting over student loans? Someone managing a household budget and hobbies? OK, those might not be profiles of average Bethlehemites of that time… but they are not profiles of millions of babies born around the world today, either.

God identified with the most basic level of humanity. He meets us at our humblest places, conditions, and realities.

When we think of this unsanitary and unsanitized picture of the Nativity, does it change our attitude toward Jesus, the Incarnate Lord, who came to live with us?

Does it change our attitude toward homeless, rejected, vulnerable, hungry children being born every day?

Does it change our attitude toward our own hearts?

Click: No Place To Lay His Head

Christmas week approaches, and many of try to brush off news stories that Jesus was born in April or November, according to studies; and we also try to cut through the crowded shops and the gift-sale e-mails… hoping that, by focusing on the simple truths and modest imagery of Jesus’s birth, we can connect with the profundity of the Incarnation — God living amongst us. Coming first as a helpless baby.

Two thousand years later, Hallmark has us thinking that to be born in a manger was some sort of Green bonus, the happy family surrounded by squeaky-clean animal friends and shiny angels. More the truth was that the stable was a step up from a dung-heap. Swaddling clothes were essential, else the baby would have been delivered and lain on musty straw, animal spittle, and bugs.

Think of it: Jesus came into this world rejected and despised, and that is how, as a man, He left it.

Isaiah knew it would happen this way. Eight hundred years earlier, the prophet wrote:

“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

The rest of Chapter 53, of course, foretells the Easter story. But I think it is significant, too (otherwise God would not have ordered its occurrence and recording) that we remember the challenges to Joseph, the abuse Mary endured, the difficulties of Jesus’s birth… and His entire life. “Despised and rejected of men.”

Yet this “undesirable” was also THE JOY OF MANKIND’S DESIRING. As sinners today, we still esteem Him not sometimes… yet we desire Him, our souls are only complete when He lives within us!

Here is a performance of that ethereally beautiful movement from Bach’s Cantata Number 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” It is sung by the group Celtic Women, in an arrangement that is both touching and revealing of how adaptable Bach’s music is. Here are the words the ensemble sings:

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,

Holy wisdom, love most bright.

Drawn by Thee, our souls? aspiring,

Soar to uncreated light.

Word of God, our flesh that fashioned

With the fire of life impassioned,

Striving still to Truth unknown,

Soaring, dying, ’round Thy throne.

Click: Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring