Thoughts and Ruminations

“God made us in his own image and likeness and we have never stopped returning the favor.”

In a different shade of the same habit, we have recast St. Nicholas completely in our cultural image, ascribed to him God-like qualities, and religiously sung and spoken of our mythical cultural invention for generations.

If our mythical figures are reflections of our cultural values, what does this picture of Santa Claus reveal about us?

Truth be told, I’ve been struggling to feel meaning this year in Advent leading up to Christmas. I suspect it’s because I’m in the transition time away from a prior perspective on Christmas and toward something more hopeful. There’s always, always a period of blahdom between places of meaning.

But maybe I’m just not feeling it.

Maybe I haven’t done enough.

Maybe I don’t care enough.

Wherever all this shakes out, I am convinced of this;
Any celebration of Christmas that isn’t consistent with Mary’s song
which includes the poor, the marginalized, the weak being blessed
I will no longer value.

Therefore, a season being immersed in consumerism,
a season where gift-giving has been twisted to enslave us rather that free us,
I will no longer value.
I will need to remind myself of this 1.2 million times before I die
because I will keep forgetting.

I will value the heart of Christmas.

I believe it to be
God with us.
God surprising us.
Kingship and power shown in service and weakness.
Surprising honor shown to people without honor.
These things are worth valuing deeply and feeding our lives.

But what do they look like in practice?
In repetitive action?
In habits that form our character?
In practices that bend our wills out of rebellious ruts and into faithful pathways?
Three years ago, the Advent Conspiracy drew me out of what I would call a “holy discontent” with Christmas status-quo that had become a deep cynicism.
I knew what I was against….kinda….but I didn’t know what I was for.
The process continues.

What meaningful practices have you found for you and yours?

From the daily lectionary today;

“Jesus called (his disciples) to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

- Matthew 20:25-28

Disciples of Jesus stand today just two days from the beginning of Advent.  It is one season of two in the year (Lent being the other) where disciples are encouraged to step back, reflect, and consider our lives under the gaze of a holy God.  Both are seasons of stripping away, of thoughtfully engaging in deprivation rather than sense indulgence, taking away things that provide us comfort and meaning in order to focus in on the meaning of the upcoming time.

Advent, and Christmas, then, are about remembering God’s great love for us, which is so great that he sent his Son as the fullness of truth.  Jesus emptied himself of power, and chose to embrace the human experience, beginning as a deeply vulnerable child.  He was such a threat to the powerful even as a child that a king committed genocide to seek to remove the threat.  He was not born to the elite, but to a common man and his wife.  And over the course of his life, he proclaimed this simple message from the lectionary today;

“Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.”

Why?

“Because the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

That last phrase has come to mean so much more to me over the past year.  Jesus gave his life as a ransom.  In his life and teaching, he ransoms us from our selfish, rebellious way of life that makes us comfortable but spits on and denies the dignity of God and his creation.  He redeems us to be people of radical humility, unconditional love, and simple obedience.  In Jesus’ death, he ransoms us from the fear of death; facing his conspirators and his eventual murder with quiet strength.  In this act, even as we crushed him in our rebellion, he showed the love of God and the depth of God’s commitment to forgive and reconcile us.  And we are to do the same.  In his resurrection, he ransoms us further from the fear of death, revealing the power of a God more powerful than death; a God who rewards his people in life with abundant life and meaning, and a God who rewards his faithful people in death with life that extends into eternity.

Jesus ransoms us.

In the absurdity and sadness of what the Christmas season has become.
In the detached time of busyness, complexity, stress, and insane spending.
On this day, Black Friday, the day where we are encouraged to wait for stores to open at absurd hours so we can give them our money to “save.”
This official beginning of the Christmas season, the season where we follow the example of Santa Claus, raining down gifts everywhere in blissful disregard for the cost later,
may one single voice, the voice of the reason for the season,
whisper through,
“One’s life is not found in the abundance of possessions. Cease your striving. Simplify. Give your life, your energy, your money, to those who need it most. Spend your time and money primarily among the marginalized.”
Few will listen to this voice,
in a world where for Christmas, our parades sing the theme, “I believe in imagination. I believe in childlike hope. I believe in love. I believe in…
Santa Claus.”
Yet may disciples of Jesus strip away the stress of the season, taking on the resentment of friends and family who have grown used to the way of materialism, gathering that burden on our shoulders for the sake of our King, and say;
“Jesus is enough.”
Quiet.
Still.
Listen.

“God’s kingdom isn’t about our successes or failures; it’s about God’s movement in this world.  We must learn to simply join in, wait, and hope.”

-Russell Jeung

The folks I have considered my closest brothers and sisters in Christ in recent years, the Church of the Brethren, are in crisis.  Membership rolls are dropping, budgets are being slashed, and everyone has an opinion about why it’s happening.  I’m not writing here to add another opinion, though I have mine.  And besides, I really don’t have a dog in this fight, as denominations (in my book) are very secondary to the larger call of Christian brotherhood.

But I found this email interesting that I received from said Church of the Brethren.  You let me know if you find mixed messages in this email.  I’ll give you a photo montage of the place of meeting to help stimulate your imagination to see the mixed message.

The Church of the Brethren invites stewardship leaders to consider attending the “Steward Leaders in Changing Times” conference this November.

In the midst of challenge and change, congregational steward leaders are asked to provide answers and solutions. Plan now to attend:

“Steward Leaders in Changing Times”
Hilton Marco Island Resort, Florida
November 30 – December 3, 2009
The Ecumenical Stewardship Center, of which the Church
of the Brethren is a member, is sponsoring this event.

It’s questions like this that deserve to be paid attention to.  This is a question of goals, of what matters most, and whether the church we often see is one with proper and wise goals, with a strong sense of what matters most;

“Are our churches and broadcasts and books and organizations merely creating religious consumers of religious products and programs?  Are we creating a self-isolating, self-serving, self-perpetuating, self-centered subculture instead of a world-penetrating (like salt and light), world-serving (focused on “the least and the lost,” those Jesus came to seek and save), world-transforming (like yeast in bread), God-centered (sharing God’s love for the whole world) counterculture?  If so, even if we proudly carry the name evangelical (which means “having to do with the gospel”), we’re not behaving as friends to the gospel, but rather as its betrayers.  However unintentionally, we can neuter the very gospel we seek to live and proclaim.” 

Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo;  Adventures in Missing the Point, pg 11-12

Perspective on unfettered capitalism’s toxic consequences.  GREAT education.  A few stats are cooked a bit to seem more extreme, but by and large, this is a great video. Annie Leonard is full of wise, generative, hopeful comments. Listen in! You’ll be glad you did.

I just have one extended thought in response to the video. It’s funny how far we will go to defend our way of life, even when it results in disaster. I say this because my first response to this video is a sense of deep guilt, which I generally try to massage away by either ignoring critiques or continuing to believe my way is better. I’m learning not to do this, but when the system Annie critiques in the video is as powerful and all-consuming (pun intended) as it is, people will look for any way to justify why we continue to feed the system.

Ex. 1.  When unfettered capitalism feeds the bloated corporations that make the system go, and these corporations make massive amounts of money off the average consumer, and when those corporations in their short-sighted actions refuse to adapt and get to the point where they are no longer solvent, who do we blame?  And who bears the cost?  Ask these questions about Ford or GM.  Who, generally speaking, in our society, gets the blame for Ford and GM’s problems?  Answer:  The UAW taking up too much of the bottom line.  And who pays to keep Ford and GM solvent?  The average taxpayer.  And who’s laughing all the way to the bank?  The corporate elites, who continue to be enabled in their greed.