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

12-24-18

I invite us to think of the manger scene, the Nativity creche, which despite the hostility of judges and hatred of some types of people, we all still see uncountable times throughout this season.

But let us try to think of the real Nativity group – not the shiny plastic, bright colors, or even inflatable angels, shepherds, animals, and Babe. How humble it was. How very humble. The root word of manger means “to eat”; and even if new straw was placed in the stable’s manger to receive Jesus, there likely were bugs and dirt and spittle that received Him too.

Aside from the fulfillment of prophecy, why did God orchestrate a situation where Joseph and Mary were rejected in all the inns? (In a city where the census was planned and held, I have often wondered if innkeepers did not want an unmarried young pregnant girl in their rooms…) Why were lonely shepherds and random animals the witnesses to Jesus’s first cries and naps? Could Mary have wondered, for a second, that the Savior of mankind deserved something a little less… humble?

The child she carried was conceived supernaturally. Behind the shepherds and next to the animals were angels. There were miracles aplenty in that lonely stable. But…

Jesus the Messiah could have descended from the clouds, just as, thirty-three years later, He would ascend to the Father.

God could have sent His only-begotten Son into the world full-grown, with the shout of angels and sound of trumpets, as He will come His second time.

The Christ did not necessarily have to be a Christ-Child; He might have appeared as a man from the wilderness where, after all, He often would go to pray.

Such appearances surely would have affirmed His divinity, no? Perhaps the world might have received Him better, believed in Him more, not be so skeptical.

Is that so? Think ahead to those thirty-three years, when even His disciples, who lived and ate and traveled with Jesus, and saw miracles and healings and raisings from the dead… they abandoned Him when things got tough, scattering like dry leaves on a windy street.

No, we should consider it a miracle that the Incarnation – Jehovah, God-with-us – was in the most unlikely Form possible. It was not God’s sense of humor or irony, but the most gentle yet powerful means of reminding the world that He identifies with us. God Almighty, Creator of the universe, Holy and August Lord… reached down.

At that moment, that first Christmas as we call it, God did not need to remind us of how omnipotent He was… but how humble He could be.

Indeed, no other Jesus could have laughed and cried and thirsted and hungered and loved and been disappointed as He was to be. No other Jesus could, later, have suffered betrayal and endured pain like we experience. No other Jesus would have submitted to crucifixion.

Another Jesus – still looking ahead to the Easter counterpart – might have summoned 10,000 angels as He loosed Himself from the cross. But He didn’t; God’s way is always the right way, and instructive to us, if we listen.

How pathetic that the world shakes its collective fist, and spews hatred, at scenes that remind us of a humble Baby in crummy, smelly, yet holy, hay. How mysterious that the most humble setting and circumstance of the Nativity yet thunders though the centuries: the nexus of history; the reminder of God’s identification with us; the confirmation of His love.

How much like Him, however; right? As he chose humility, and Jesus ultimately was humble, even unto the cross, we are humbled by His workings.

Merry Christmas, and Humble New Year!

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Click: Flash – O Come, All

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

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