Monday Morning Music Ministry

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

12-17-18

Bells, presents, decorations, smiles, carols, parties… is there anything about Christmas that is not happy – or Merry, the inevitably paired adjective?

A few things, we note with sorrow and regret. It is commercialized to the point of smarm, almost everyone admits; but kitsch increases relentlessly. It is the time of year when the incidents of suicide spikes; remember, therefore, the lonely and “forgotten.”

The holiday (holy day) itself, however, has a DNA of sadness, even grief. The Bible tells us that King Herod, aware of the prophesies of the Messiah’s birth in his time and his domain, ordered the death of baby boys. This horror was visited on a grand scale and was, as we know, the reason that Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with their Baby boy. Throughout Bethlehem and Judea there was widespread lamentation.

How can it be that a circumstance of God’s plan was not unalloyed joy? The simple answer is to help explain the complexity of God’s ways. As with Salvation itself, God’s gifts like the Incarnation of the Savior free, but not cheap or easy. Like a mother’s birth pangs, the world had to know the price of Jesus’s entrance into the world. Humanity ultimately would despise and reject Him; His difficult birth foreshadowed such sober reminders.

How can it be that a pagan ruler believed the prophesies about the Messiah – even if he rejected the theology in his heart – when many “Christians” 2000 years later question the Virgin Birth? Contemporary theologians, enablers of the secularists in society as they are, deny many divine attributes of Jesus. Surely Herod would not have ordered mass killings to forestall the coming ministry of a great teacher!

How can it be that the grieving, almost insensate, lullabies of mothers, their dead babies in their laps, or facing imminent slaughter, can reflect a matter of foundational faith? That is a question I cannot answer, as a man or as a reflective Christian. Yet the “Coventry Carol” tells the story of this awful occurrence in a way that is achingly haunting and beautiful.

Many people – many mothers – superficially think the ancient carol with its Old French roots of English, “By, by, lully, lullay…” is merely a bedtime song. Yet the lullaby (which word derives from the lament) is a reminder of what is aptly named The Slaughter of the Innocents, and commemorates the price, sometimes, of being a Christian.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day.
This poor youngling for whom we do sing By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging, Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight, All children young to slay.
Then, woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh For thy parting neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

As with Good Friday – the awful price Christ paid, over and above the worst that humankind could assign, even the death of the cross – we can linger at the sad aspects of God’s mysteries. But, as with Easter, Jesus’s life and ministry should be our focus. His atoning gift of Salvation.

“The world received Him not…” Birth pangs indeed, but born not only into the world, but into our hearts. Every day, not just that holiday otherwise known for bells, presents, decorations, smiles, carols, and parties.

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Click: The Coventry Carol

11-21-11

Thanksgiving. Let’s see… that’s the one between Halloween and Christmas. “Turkey Day!” The day before the big sales. Autumn decorations – think yellows and oranges. Football! Those big games out in the crisp air, or – one after another – on TV all day long.

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was a day of observance, set aside to thank God for His gifts. Now, the mention of God is an indictable offense in public schools, as proscribed as teaching that Christian Pilgrims gathered to give thanks for bountiful harvests. The closest children can be to a spiritual aspect of this “holiday” (holy-day?) outside the fortress-walls of their homes and churches, still, is a vague acknowledgment of Mother Nature. Thank… who? For… what?

So it is that Thanksgiving has become one more holiday in an annual American cycle where every month has the possibility of a long weekend built in (August is the slacker). But I invite us to step back a few steps, even a few years. Let us think about Thanksgiving.

When the Pilgrims had their feast, and prayers, it was indeed to raise praises to God for peace with the natives, for establishments of their communities, for a bountiful harvest. When George Washington proclaimed Thanksgiving, it was to bless God for the successful Revolution and for the foundations of a new nation. When Abraham Lincoln issued the first of the unbroken string of presidential proclamations in 1863, it was to ask forgiveness of God, and to thank Him for protection through a Civil War. In a Thanksgiving Proclamation of Theodore Roosevelt, he said: “The things of the body are good; the things of the intellect better; but best of all are the things of the soul,” and he besought Americans to respond to God’s gifts with gratitude and to fight for righteousness.

Without disregarding any of those ideals and values (contemporary culture is doing that, very well, by itself) I wonder if we can step back even further, so to speak. And thank God for more than harvests and prosperity and victories. Think about it – we thank God for Jesus (um, that’s our Christmas compartment); we thank God that Jesus died for our sins (check: Easter)… and so on.

Surely we don’t need a special day to thank God for being God (but Thursday will do), or to thank Him for things we don’t often think about.

This week I received a stunning video, produced by the group TED (Technology, Education, Design), forwarded to me by my friend Mike Atkinson. It features the imagist Alexander Tsiaras, and the title is Conception to Birth. Tsiaras has photographed, filmed, and recreated the development of a baby in the womb, and through the birth canal, to delivery. We see the tiniest cells and the most detailed pictures of beating hearts and evolving, folding brain components. He opens with an explanation of what we will see, and how he did it; and he closes with details of the miracle that is the human body, and the implausibility (for he is a mathematician, among other things) of the wonderful workings of the human body.

How do we react to such acts of God? The voluble scientist Tsiaras keeps returning to the words “Divine,” and “Divinity.” For me, I was awestruck. In my dank past I was one of those “blob” adherents regarding the unborn. Eventually, like Ann Coulter, I came to realize the logical challenge inherent in the question: “Why is it called Birth Control and not Blob Control?” And after watching this video several times, my additional reactions are also wonderment, and tears.

And can we not all respond to things we take for granted – life, the miracles of our bodies, everyday protections, health, simple blessings, friends, and communities of believers – with Thanks?

Maybe, this year, we can keep the decorations in the closet; the dinner-table harvest-sentiments at bay; and some of the football games at low-volume. And “automatic” prayers. At least for a little while… let us Think before we Thank.

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This video, likewise, should not be compartmentalized for, say, “Sanctity of Life” Day. Life is sacred every day – and this vid shows us how we all got here, surely a miraculous thing to contemplate every day of the year. If the video does not link, Google for Tsiaras and “Conception to Life” and you will find it. Its production is, itself, a miracle… for it brings us closer to the Creator God. By the way, I particularly appreciate the background music as the speed-motion development of a baby is shown: Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria. Glorious indeed.

Click: Give Thanks For the Divine Spark