Risky Gifts

While the commercial world rushes recklessly toward its version of Christmas, the church’s world, when its heart is right, prepares for the more sober, reflective season of Advent, Christmas joy to follow. This approaching Advent my spirit is struck by a new-to-me Christmas poem, Francis Chesterton’s, “Here is the Little Door.” I believe it was written around the First World War, though I haven’t been able to confirm that.

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift!

We need not wander more but enter with our gift;

Our gift of finest gold,

Gold that was never bought nor sold;

Myrrh to be strewn about his bed;

Incense in clouds about his head;

All for the Child who stirs not in his sleep.

But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep.

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift;

See how his eyes awake, lift up your hands, O lift!

For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword

(Defend with it Thy little Lord!),

For incense, smoke of battle red.

Myrrh for the honoured happy dead;

Gifts for his children terrible and sweet,

Touched by such tiny hands and 

Oh such tiny feet.

I do not pretend to understand this poem completely, which is the way of fine poetry. But I think that Chesterton is getting at the risks inherent in giving and in receiving great gifts. Are we up to handling them?

The first stanza gives voice to the Wise Men and their gifts to the infant, sleeping Jesus–gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The second stanza places gifts in the hands of a sinister and cynical Jesus, who seems to return those gifts to "his children" in drastically altered form. Instead of gold he gives a sword; instead of sweet incense he gives the smoke of battle. And Jesus gives myrrh to anoint the bodies of “the honoured happy dead,” not his own body. That strange pairing of words suggests something “terrible and sweet.” But I am not sure: are the gifts “terrible and sweet,” or are Jesus's children, who receive those gifts, "terrible and sweet"? What has his touch made of them?

It is not hard to imagine that Chesterton, writing in a time of war, was reflecting on how easily we succumb to misusing the gifts we give and receive. Like children, we turn gifts, including the gift of faith, into reasons to compare ourselves to others, and to prove either that we are more worthy than others or that we just have not been given what we are due. We fight to keep what we have or to get what we deserve.

Blogger Charlie Warren hears the poem as a caution against the “ever-present possibility for bold faith to be used in the service of deadly hate.” His warning resonates deeply in me tonight.

Fine gifts divide us. We’d perhaps be better off if there were no such gifts given, if we were just simply free to receive the tiny touch of the humanity that is our common gift.

The community choir I am rehearsing with these days is singing Herbert Howell’s sensitive 1918 setting of Francis Chesterton’s poem. It is the musical highpoint of our concert for me, and it haunts me as Advent begins. What am I to do with the Gift that I am preparing to receive? What is the world to do with it?

A Sin Too Deep?

A couple of days ago as we drove through Zelionope PA, I noticed a sign at a car wash that warned, “Thick mud not permitted.”

Feels like a ready-made sermon illustration to me.

Adventures in Downsizing

What do I do with a career-worth of sermons?

Of course, I cannot do much about the sermons themselves, not as they were preached. They have long been absolutely free of my ability to retrieve them. Like all spoken words, once they were said they could not be taken back.

But the manuscripts and/or notes from which I spoke them are in several large cardboard file boxes stowed in our attic. Being who I am, I’ve kept them all. The earliest are from my college days (mid-1960s). The latest is from two weeks ago. All neatly stapled along with the worship bulletin for that service, which usually includes announcements about life in that congregation. In a way all of this paper is not only a record of my preaching, but of my whole ministry.

What do I do with a career, perhaps even, if I dare, a calling?

It has seemed too hard to me to simply pitch the whole lot of them. I guess I have too much invested in how I spent much of my time on this earth. But I know I will never go through them all, Sunday by Sunday, in order to learn what I can about me and my ministry from their witness. I certainly do not want anyone who survives me to have to decide what to do with them all, although it would probably be easier for them to decide to pitch them than I want to admit. And publishing some of them, as some have most graciously suggested? Nope…too much work, too little pay-off.

So I came up with a grid whereby I select four sermons from each year in an ordered yet random way, one from each quarter of each year, but from different Sundays in each quarter. That’s the best I can explain it. This method most likely leaves me with a mix of the good, the bad, and the indifferent. In order to allow myself some freedom of choice, if I see a title or topic that somehow sticks in my memory as worthy of saving, I keep that one. But then I move forward according to my pre-ordained plan.

I’ve culled my sermons through 1996, so only a couple more decades to go. A very small box holds the blessed remnant of 32 years of my pulpit wisdom. I feel good about that.

It’s been a worthwhile process so far, reminding me of many things I’d forgotten. I’ve found some memorable correspondence from folks and some interesting articles I saved filed between the manuscripts. It’s been a quick review of my career, of my calling. And in some ways going through all those boxes is clearing space in my brain and heart for the writing I am doing these days.

But I haven’t yet pitched all the manuscripts my systematic approach has determined I shall not keep. I moved them back into the attic, until… And I know all of the sermons from the 90s on are saved in my computer, so what about them? They are sadly easy to keep. And what will become of the invaluable but small box or two of the saved sermons that I will likely want to carry to smaller quarters one day? What do I really expect anyone to do with them? Who will have to decide about them if I do not?

A career-worth of sermons is no small matter to me.

For Kindness Day

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

And, BTW, I Am Not the Antichrist…

If you support President Donald J. Trump because you believe he has been ordained by God for his office, then I assume you are voting for candidates who hitch their wagons to his star. Permit me a word or two with you.

You are wrong.

Donald Trump was not ordained by God to be President of the United States. He was elected by enough citizens to win the electoral college. It’s as frustratingly simple as that.

The idea that political leaders are somehow specially sent and put in place by God was once known as “the divine right of kings.” There was a war fought in North America back in the latter part of the 18th century that many think pretty well buried that notion. The leaders of that war of revolution were convinced that political leaders served at the will of the people, not because God had designated them to lead. A person who is “godly” in some ways might well be elected and serve, and that’s okay. But he or she is not in that position because God put her or him there.

The idea is popular in some circles that Mr. Trump is a new chosen one of God destined to save the United States from something, I’m not sure from whom or from what (impoverished trekkers in Mexico perhaps). The particular God they have in mind most often sounds as if they are thinking of the Christian God. They defend Mr. Trump in terms that sound vaguely Christian. I recently saw a picture of him holding up a “Holy Bible” – that is, a Christian Bible.

How do they make this connection? Because of Mr. Trump’s exemplary personal life, a life so morally and ethically beyond the reaches of “sin” that he is a Christ-like model for the rest of us? I cannot see this as remotely close to being true of Mr. Trump and his life.

Fortunately, moral perfection is not a requirement of serving in public office. But I do think moral honesty is quite necessary. Moral honesty of the Christian sort is absent from a person who claims, as Mr. Trump has, that he is not sure he’s ever asked God for forgiveness because he’d rather just move on and make things right. That way of dealing with moral failure perhaps has merits, but it’s not particularly Christian. Besides, Mr. Trump has given us little reason to think he’s done much to “make (moral) things right” in the two years he’s been in office.

I am pretty sure that many Christians feel Mr. Trump is called by God to the office of President for two big reasons. First, that he seems to be with them on the so-called “social” issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc., which they see as the main issues that define being Christian. And second, that he promises to restore the USA’s pre-eminent place among the nations, which is to them where the USA belongs because of the “exceptionalism” that has been granted us by God.

I respect other Christians’ right to understand the “social” issues in ways far different than I understand them. But as Americans together, I resist their attempts to force their particular understanding of such issues upon us all based upon their reading of our Bible. And I am deeply opposed to the idea that our nation is in any ultimate and decisive way “exceptional,” especially when that notion is used to justify militarism, racism, xenophobia, and the like.

Back to Mr. Trump himself: Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” What “fruits” has the Trump presidency produced? The Christian scripture’s fruits of love, peace, justice, patience, truth, and the like? I do not see them on his tree. Rather, I see hatred, distrust, threats…the list goes on. Currently, in his violent rhetoric against immigrants and asylum seekers, he is gleefully and disdainfully rejecting the many biblical commands to welcome the stranger. Mr. Trump did not invent the rotten fruits he is producing. But in his words (and words DO matter) and in his actions he surely has made it okay to practice them publicly.

You may be among those who like what Mr. Trump has done policy-wise, and therefore are willing to overlook the way he’s accomplished those things you like. So, the end justifies the means, is that what you are telling me? “We had to destroy the village to save it,” as they sometimes said in Vietnam? In time, wrong ways employed in the pursuit of supposedly good ends eat at the heart of a person or a nation, and can destroy both from within. When you have to tell lies to get what you want, when will the lying end?

If Donald Trump’s kind of moral and ethical output is what you like and think is good for us as a people and for the world, go ahead, support him, and vote for his defenders. You and I are still Americans together. But don’t you ever call it Christian, or pretend the results it is producing reflect the life and ministry of Jesus. You cannot get there from here. And in your heart, you know it.

Good Reasons Not to Vote

One of the truly GREAT things about America is that you do not have to vote. There are no fines, no penalties, no jail time…nothing to harm you or hold you back you if you do not vote.

In fact, it’s no shame if you do not vote. Truth is, it’s kind of cool not to vote. Like, voting is so much trouble and just shows that you are bit hung-up on doing things that take effort. That’s not cool. Old people vote, and who wants to be in that bunch? You’ve got better things to do with your life than vote, and your friends respect you for the way you live your life. Why bother to vote?

You know that in some parts of the world people are so desperate to choose their own leaders that they risk even their lives to agitate for their right to vote. Polling places themselves might be dangerous – bombs and the like. You feel kind of sorry for people who live in places like that, but it’s not your worry. You live in the good old USA, and you’ve got the right not to vote, and by golly, you are going to exercise that right!

You’ve heard that some people – mostly Republicans – are trying all kinds of tricks to make it harder for some people to vote. You do not know if they are targeting you, but you really don’t feel like finding out if they are. It doesn’t matter anyway because they’re all crooks, whatever their party. Vote the Democrats into power, they’ll pull something out of their own bag of tricks. You don’t want to be responsible for that.

What’s really the problem is that you haven’t heard of any candidates you can really get behind. You’re told this person or that person has some ideas you like, but then you don’t agree with them on one thing, so how can you be expected to know whether to vote for them? Plus there are stories about their personal lives that are kind of creepy. So long as there are no candidates who think exactly like you do, and who always are admirable in their behavior, why should any of them expect your vote? You’d rather keep yourself and your ideals far away from such imperfect people.

Besides, politics these days is all about money. And you don’t have any money, so forget voting.

So, go ahead, leave worrying about politics, and voting, to others. Someone will fix things so they’ll come out okay and you can live your life on your own terms. It’s the American way, and America is GREAT, isn’t it?