Saturday, December 26, 2020

The Two Sides of Being Jesus' Mother

 

In the days following the Holy Night of Jesus’ birth, I think about how Mary must have delighted in seeing that her child looked and acted just like the other children.  “I can do this”, she thought. 

Then came the traditional trip to the Temple, presenting baby Jesus to the Father. Here Mary was so soon made aware of what must have haunted her the rest of her baby’s life. (Luke 2:22-40)

Being a mother means that you live with the happiness your child produces in life. But it also means living with the sorrow that your child produces in life. Mothers best relate to Mary’s shock upon hearing that her precious Infant Holy would also be the sword which would one day pierce her soul.

“Jesus was still in diapers when his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem as the custom was, and that’s when old Simeon spotted him.  Years before, he’d been told he wouldn’t die till he’d seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out.  When the moment finally came, one look through his cataract lenses was all it took.  He asked if it would be all right to hold the baby in his arms, and they told him to go ahead but be careful not to drop it.  ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation’ he said, the baby playing with the fringes of his beard.  The parents were pleased as punch, so he blessed them too for good measure.  Then something about the mother stopped him, and his expression changed.  What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend.  ‘A sword will pierce through your soul,’ he said.  He would rather have bitten off his own tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice.  Then he handed her back the baby and departed in something less than the perfect peace he’d dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.” (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. Harper & Row, 1979, pp. 156-157. S. Hoezee, cep.calvinseminary.edu)

There are always two sides to saying ‘yes’ to God.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Like Believing in Santa Claus

 Do you believe in Jesus like you believe in Santa Claus?

 Or maybe you are like that little girl in the Meijer commercial, setting out her plate of cookies and milk in front of a perfect fireplace and Christmas tree while the voice says, ‘Believe. You have everything else.’  Are you missing your belief this Christmas season?

 You probably watched and sang along with the closing scene in the modern movie classic, Elf. You know, the one where Mary Steenberg is singing loudly off key as she and the assembled New Yorkers sing “You’d better watch out, you’d better not shout.’ Their singing, and the belief their singing represents, gets Santa’s sleigh off the ground just in time as they cause the ‘believe-o-meter’ to reach it’s critical point. 

 What is the ‘belief’ to which their singing points?  That they believe in the ideas that “Santa” represents, the ideas of kindness and sharing and love of people more than profit.  But I wonder, is that also a picture of how so many of us believe in Jesus and the Christmas story?

 We probably believe in the idea of a stable and an innkeeper and shepherds, and we relish the emotions tied to dark, starry nights. But is that it? Is that believing in Jesus? Or is that believing in Jesus just like believing in Santa Claus? Believing in Jesus is about believing in a person. A person who is God in human flesh. That is more than an idea. It is more than an emotion.

What gives flight to the angels wings and the shepherds feet on Christmas Eve is not a belief in sentimental thoughts but a belief that a long-promised, physical birth of Emmanuel, God with us, finally happened in Bethlehem.  To believe in that Christmas Story is to believe in a real birth, witnessed by only two people and a collection of barn animals, none of whom are talking.

 This Christmas Eve I invite you to consider with me whether you believe in Jesus, not like you maybe believe in Santa Claus, but like you believe in gravity, sunburn, electricity.  You cannot see those things happen, but you sure can see evidence they are real, right? Let us help you rediscover what you really believe. 

This Christmas Eve, worship the One in whom you believe.

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Disappointment, Doubt and Jesus

 the mother who is hanging onto her last thread of hope for a "problem" child;

…the spouse who stares at the wall wondering what happened to the marriage;

…the sick person who wonders when, if ever, healing is coming;

…the child who struggles to find some way to understand that Mom won’t be here this Christmas;

...the survivors of the storms of life, who wonder why the tragedy happened, why their lost loved ones were there.

December, the church’s season of Advent, highlights the disappointments of life in a stark way.  The month in which we are supposed to celebrate Hope, Peace, Joy and Love seems to instead be filled with news or memories of just the opposite. And when disappointments persist to those locked in prisons of despair, the mind moves to doubt. Is Jesus really the Messiah we seek?

We can relate, a bit, to John the Baptist who was so fired up to announce the coming of the Messiah, but who finished his days in prison, waiting for the end of his life, which ended with a decapitation. How exactly was Jesus being the Messiah for his prophet, John?  Are you the One we have been waiting for, or is there someone else?  John’s inquiry of Jesus becomes our question.

The mission of Jesus, then and now, and the concurrent mission of the Church, is to encounter life’s disappointments and doubts with pictures and stories that people with eyes of faith can see. The child who was to die but now is scheduled to graduate from college.  The people with “incurable” cancer who instead become cancer “survivors.”  The poor being fed and clothed. The unjustly punished receiving justice.

Advent’s message is that if you look with eyes of faith, you will see just enough; just enough to see disappointment filtered through the lens of Joy; just enough to replace doubt with Hope. The almost hidden beauty of Advent is the promise that Christ is real, here still, and coming again.  Until then, the faithful, today's prophets, can be excused expressions of doubt generated by cruel disappointments, for staring at the empty manger and wondering, Jesus, where are you?  Until then the prophets need to still go and tell it on the mountain, Christ(mas) is coming. Just you wait...