WHEN THE STAR IS GONE THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS BEGINS

Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-23

What happens now? Although according to the Christian calendar Christmas continues for another week, for the commercial world and many of us, Christmas celebrating ended on the afternoon of December 25th. The New Year is upon us. One of the spiritual giants of the twentieth century was Howard Thurman. Born in 1900 of parents who had been slaves, Thurman was Dean of Chapel at Boston University in the middle decades of the twentieth century. When I arrived there for graduate study, Thurman had just retired. He died in 1983, but his eloquence and spiritual insight continues through his writings. He wrote these words for the moments after Christmas:

“When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the wise men and shepherds have found their way home,
[that's when] the work of Christmas is begun.” [1](1)

What is the “work of Christmas?” After their visit to the stable where the Christ child had been born, the shepherds returned to their sheep on the hillsides "glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen." Now everything they did had new meaning, even the daily routine of caring for the sheep on lonely hillsides. They would never really be lonely again.

One wonders about the innkeeper who was perhaps too preoccupied with making a living to extend much hospitality to Mary and Joseph. Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on him; maybe he gave what he had—a place in the stable. I wonder if he had any idea of what went on in that shed that night. Like many other busy people before him, he might have lived the rest of his life having missed the opportunity of a lifetime only a few feet away.

The Magi, who had read the signs, followed the star, and found their way to Bethlehem, offered their gifts and worshiped the Christ child. Their first "work of Christmas" was to go home "by another road." They had been warned in a dream to stay away from Herod. One suspects that it was not just the danger of Herod, but that all who find their way to the Christ child cannot but go home "by another way." These educated scholars could never be the same after the visit to Bethlehem. Would that it would be so for us after our visits to Bethlehem.

And, then, there was Herod. The "work of Christmas" for Herod was to find the Christ child, not to worship him but to destroy him. And just as he had murdered members of his own family because of his jealousy for power, so he didn't hesitate to order the murder of all the boy babies of Judea to get to the Christ child. Ironically, soon after the birth of Jesus Herod would be taken from the throne not by a rival but by death, a rival he couldn't kill. There are still those who are willing to trample on others in order to protect their positions and status.

What of Mary and Joseph: what was the "work of Christmas" for them? They had to go into hiding and become illegal aliens in a foreign country in order to protect the Christ child.

But what is the "work of Christmas" for us? The two Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke are like great paintings. We look at the paintings and see different things. We look at the paintings from different angles and in different light and see new things. As the writer of the Gospel of John struggled to find words to express the heart of the Christmas story he wrote, "And the Word became flesh and lived among us…" In some way that words can never express, God risked all the vulnerabilities of being human so that we could hear the message of love. God did not have to take this risk, but did because this God loves us. And because God loves us, we can love others.

This is not some kind of sappy sentimental love; it is love that takes risks; it is love that can give with no thought of receiving; it is love that can act on behalf of others even when it is not in our self-interest. If the expression of this love was God's work at Christmas, is not our "work of Christmas" -- now that the song of the angels is stilled, the star in the sky has gone, the kings and the shepherds have found their way home -- to tell the story of this great love, especially by modeling it in the way we relate to other people?

Modeling this kind of love is a challenge, isn't it? You can probably think of a hundred places where this love is needed. I hope you will also think about our nation after five years of war. The human toll these wars—both among families of soldiers here in this country and among the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan—is immeasurable. How do we model real love in the face of these realities? And then there is the presidential primary season that is upon us? How do we model real love in the face of this reality?

For people of good will who want to be good citizens and trust the political process, the question has been raised anew, "Is it possible for a person to act apart from his or her own self-interest?" Take care how you answer the question. If your answer is "No," then the promise of Christmas is a lie and we have no hope of modeling the love that God has shown us. If the answer is "Yes," then I think we know what the "work of Christmas" is.

In 1932 a theologian by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a book titled, Moral Man and Immoral Society[2] Niebuhr taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, but he was not an "ivory tower" theologian. For thirteen years, he was pastor of a church in downtown Detroit where he ministered to all kinds of people and also learned about economic and political realities in a large city. Like many others of his time, Niebuhr was frustrated by developments in Europe after World War I. The "war to end all wars" not only didn't end war, but Niebuhr could see Europe and the rest of the world moving toward the catastrophe that would be Holocaust and World War II.

In his book, Niebuhr argued his thesis that while individuals have the capacity to act morally, organizations do not. What Niebuhr meant by "moral" was the capacity to act beyond and even contrary to one's own self-interest. "Society," he argued, did not have that capability: organizations always act in their own self-interest, whether nations, political parties, or churches. That does not mean that they always act badly. For Niebuhr, though, it meant they could not act contrary to their self-interest. Only individuals have that capability, he argued.

Do not conclude that Niebuhr was an "idealist." He was not called a "realist theologian" for nothing. He was very critical of the liberalism of his day and the optimism of the pre-depression years that things were just going to get better and better. He wasn't an idealist when it came to the individual, either. He was fond of saying that "the doctrine of sin was the one Christian doctrine which could be empirically verified." An individual, he argued, has the capability to act morally, which is to act beyond and even contrary to one's own self interest.

Niebuhr died in 1971 at the climax of the Vietnam War. It should not surprise you to know that Niebuhr was vilified both by the political right and the left. He was unsparing in his criticism of the war, but he was equally critical of the "peace movement." Those who felt the sting of his criticism tended to dismiss him as old and tired. In retrospect, it seems clear that he simply understood the situation. No other theologian has had the impact on the social sciences that Reinhold Niebuhr had. You may not have known Niebuhr's name before today, but you probably knew these words of his, known as the "Serenity Prayer:"

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." [3]

We began today with Howard Thurman's lines about the "work of Christmas. In the conclusion of his poem, he describes that "work:"

“to find the lost and lonely one to heal the broken soul with love,to feed the hungry children with warmth and good food,
to free the prisoner from all chains, to make the powerful care,
to rebuild the nations with strength of good will,
to bring hope to every task you do,
to dance at a baby's new birth to make music in an old person's heart,
and, to sing to the colors of the earth!”

Niebuhr reminds us that we can and should expect more of our political leaders and judges, that we can and should expect more of our pastors and church leaders, that we can and should expect more of ourselves; and that we should not expect more of others than we expect of ourselves. God has given us the capability to love, not just to love in safe ways, but to take risks and even to transcend our own self-interests in order to do what is right. When you do that, whether the matter is great or small, you will be doing the "work of Christmas."

[1] Howard Thurman, "The Mood of Christmas," adapted by Jim Strathdee into a song titled, "I Am the Light of the World," © 1969 Jim Strathdee, Desert Flower Music, Ridgecrest, California, 93555.

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932).

[3] "The Serenity Prayer," The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989, # 459.

THE UNQUALIFIED 'YES'

Luke 1:26-38: Galatians 4:4

Advent is about waiting and preparing to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child. It is also about waiting and watching for the God who has come in our past, who will come in our future, and who, even as we speak, comes in our present closer to us than the breath in our lungs. And when in some mysterious or plainly humdrum event that presence bursts in on us, how do we respond? Advent is about that too.

In your imagination travel with me once again back to the centuries before Christ was born. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and the people were carried away into exile in Babylon six hundred miles away, it seemed as if that might finally be an end to the people who Moses had lead out of slavery in Egypt and had come to be called “Israelites.” Nations and peoples with their own unique identities have disappeared from the earth, like creatures who move from the column of “endangered species” to “extinct.”

But it was not to be for the people of Israel. In a miracle of epic proportions, the people taken away in exile were granted the freedom to return to their homeland. Some of them did. They rebuilt the Temple and the Jerusalem city walls. But they did not find a restored political kingdom of David with the wealth of Solomon’s Empire. What their children’s children found was Persian rule replaced with Greek rule and then, about a hundred years before the birth of Jesus, incorporation – against their will, of course – into the Roman Empire.

Through the years of domination by one great power after the other the prophets’ visions of a Messiah kept the people’s hope alive. The great prophets -- Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel -- had seen visions of a Messiah, but it was the writings of Isaiah that captured the imaginations and kept the attention of most people. There are four or five poems in the book of Isaiah which envision the entrance of one called “the servant of the Lord” onto the stage of history.[1]

Although you may not have recognized them as “Servant Songs,” you are probably familiar with some of them:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
He will bring forth justice to the nations.” (42:1)

And in 49:6

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

If not these, then probably these lines often read around Easter:

“He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.” (53:3)

The identity of this servant has exercised the minds of scholars perhaps more than any other single Old Testament issue. The "servant of the Lord" is sometimes clearly identified as the nation Israel,[2] while in other passages Israel is not mentioned and the reference seems to be to an individual.[3] It seems clear that the poet meant the "people of God," Israel, to be the servant of God, or a faithful remnant of them. And at some point(s) in time that faithful remnant might be reduced to one faithful servant. Think about it: a remnant of one listening for God’s direction. This was not pessimism, but rather confidence that in any given time there would be at least one person on whom God could count. There are those who look at Jesus as the one person remnant of Israel, the one person who was faithful to God.

These visions of the “Servant of the Lord” were so powerful, and so present in the hopes of the people down through the centuries before Christ, that when the New Testament writers looked back on the life, death and resurrection of Christ, nothing else so described him as these poems. Was the prophet Isaiah looking ahead over five hundred years to the coming of Christ? Or was the prophet simply faithfully describing the One God would send sometime? And why was it when Augustus was Caesar in Rome, when Quirinus was governor of Syria, when Herod was the puppet king in Judea, that was the time when God fulfilled the promise made to Isaiah? The apostle Paul said it this way: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent [the] Son, born of woman…” (Galatians 4:4)

In her book, The Gospel According to Abbie Jane Wells, Abbie Jane offers an interesting and important perspective on Paul’s notion of “the fullness of time:”[4]

“Paul…and just about everybody else tends to forget that it took a “yes” from Mary before God could “sent forth his Son” – and if there is any truth to that “when the time had fully come,” it is that Mary’s time had come when she went into labor at the end of her pregnancy: that’s when the time had fully come – that is when Jesus’s time to be born had fully come!

“As for ‘Had Jesus come to a different people in a different place at a different time…’ I don’t think you can juggle his place in history – or Mary’s – that way; and since Jesus was born of Mary, you’d have to get her as well as Jesus into ‘a different people in a different place at a different time’ – which isn’t humanly, or Godly, possible.

“Of course, it is possible for God to have a Son of a woman ‘in a different people in a different place at a different time’ – but that wouldn’t be Jesus, for Jesus was Mary’s son as well as God’s – which lotsa people tend to forget at times.

“For all I know – for all anybody knows – God may have ‘proposed’… through the ages but, as far as we know, Mary was the first one to say an unqualified ‘yes.’… ’When the time had fully come,’ and the ‘Time had fully come’ only because the woman Mary said ‘yes.’”

That seems to be the way God works in history. God waits for “the unqualified ‘yes’” from the most unlikely people to fulfill God’s promises in the world. That should give most of us who see ourselves as “unlikely people” some hope. It should also give us some pause. For what unqualified “yes” is God awaiting from us?

That seems to be the way God works in history. God waits for “the unqualified ‘yes’” from the most unlikely people to fulfill God’s promises in the world. That should give most of us who see ourselves as “unlikely people” some hope. It should also give us some pause. For what is God awaiting an unqualified “yes” from us?

In the early 1870s, a young partially sighted girl known as ‘Little Annie’ was kept locked in a room in the basement in a mental institution outside Boston. This was the only place, said the doctors, for those who were hopelessly insane. In Little Annie’s case, they saw no hope for her, so she was consigned to a living death in a small cell, more like a cage than a room, which received little light and even less hope. About that time, an elderly nurse was nearing retirement. She felt that there was hope for all God’s children, so she started taking her lunch into the basement and eating outside little Annie’s cell. She felt that she might be able to communicate some love and hope to the little girl.

In many ways Little Annie was an animal. On occasions, she would violently attack the person who came into her cell. At other times, she would completely ignore them. When the elderly nurse started visiting her, Little Annie gave no indication that she was even aware of her presence. One day the elderly nurse brought some brownies and left them in the cell. Little Annie gave no hint she knew they were there, but when the nurse returned the next day the brownies were gone. From that time on, the nurse would bring brownies when she made her Thursday visit. Soon after, the doctors in the institution noticed a change was taking place. After a period of time they decided to move Little Annie upstairs. Finally, the day came when this ‘hopeless case’ could return home.”

This elderly nurse, without a name, said an “unqualified ‘yes’” to God and to Little Annie. She reminds me of so many nurses, teachers and parents I have known, persons whose “unqualified ‘yesses’ went far beyond what anyone might have expected of them.

There is one other thing about “Little Annie.” Although free to return to her parents’ home, she did not. She chose to stay at the institution so that she could help others. And she did. She gave an “unqualified ‘yes’ to God and another girl somewhat like her. And through her teaching of a little girl who was blind and deaf, the woman known as Little Annie became the teacher of Helen Keller. Little Annie’s real name was Anne Sullivan. She was able to break through the silence and darkness that surrounded Helen, and gave the rest of her life to teaching and caring for her, enabling Helen Keller to become a distinguished lecturer and one of the great heroines of this century. It was “Little Annie’s” unqualified “yes!” that made it possible.

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, we give special thanks for Mary’s unqualified “yes” to the angel Gabriel: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) We also give thanks for all those others who have gone before us whose unqualified yeses have contributed to who we are today. What unqualified yes is God asking of you for some task that only you—remember the remnant!—may be able to accomplish? Will you respond as Mary did with “let it be with me according to your word”?

[1] The “Servant Songs” are generally considered by scholars to be the following: Isaiah 42:1-4 (or 1-9); 49:1-6 (or 1-13); 50:4-9 (or 4-11); 52:13-53:12; and sometimes 61:1-3.

[2] 41:8ff; 43:8-13; 49:1-6; and others.

[3] 42:1-4; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12; and sometimes 61:1-3.

[4] The Gospel According to Abbie Jane Wells. (Thomas Moore Association, 1985) quoted in Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck’s A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People (Upper Room Books, 1990), pp. 32-33.

THE SEASON OF CHANGING OLD SCROOGE'S PERSPECTIVE

Ebenezer Scrooge had a heart colder than winter and a spirit dreary as the London fog. It’s been said even blind dogs crossed the street to avoid the man who preferred the company of money to all else. But, as Scrooge would discover, some of the world’s most profitable riches aren’t found in bank accounts.

After his journeys with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, Ebenezer Scrooge finally learned this lesson. His last journey, the one with the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come,” was a confrontation with his mortality. More fearful than a vision of his death, the ghost showed him a future that was shaped by his actions in the past. We may be more uncomfortable with that vision than with the journeys through our pasts, however painful they were and are. What Scrooge learned is that we can’t change the past, and the future is not here yet. All we can change is the present, but changing the present creates the future. And that made all the difference for Ebenezer Scrooge.

From the sleep of dreams or a ghostly journey, Scrooge awoke. “Yes! And the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own in which to make amends! ‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this!’”

I don’t know why it is so hard for us to hear this word from God. Maybe it is because we are ashamed, ashamed of all the time we’ve spent going to the markets where we thought we could buy happiness or buy our way out of disappointments. "I'd like to buy a friend," we said. "Well, we don't have any friends for sale, but we can sell you a companion for the night." "I'd like to buy a home." "Well, you can't buy a home, but we've got a nice house on the market." "I'd like to buy a little time," we said. "We can't sell you any time, but we've got a nice clock here." "I'd like to buy some happiness," we said. "We can't sell you any happiness, but the wine shop is just around the corner." "I'd like to buy some peace of mind." "Well, you can't buy peace of mind, but we can sell you some life insurance." "I'd like to buy some salvation." "Well, you can't buy salvation, but we have this nice Bible here we'll sell ya." It is embarrassing to go through life with a fist full of twenty-dollar bills only to discover at the end that the most important things in life are absolutely free by the grace of God. And it is true!

We can’t control everything that happens to us in life—the bad, the good, the indifferent—but we can control how we respond to whatever happens.

This year the week after Thanksgiving, I was sitting in a doctor’s office with Connie as she waited for her name to be called. The cell phone rang and it was news of the death of her mother in Fairbanks. It was not unexpected, but it happened twenty-five hundred miles from where we sat. Connie’s name was called. I watched other patients and their families come and go, none of them looking any more joyful than I felt. Besides that, there didn’t seem to be any interesting magazines with which I could pass the time. When the woman waiting a few seats down from me had her name called, she laid her magazine down on the table between us. It was a large print edition of Reader’s Digest. I’ll read the jokes I thought as I picked up the well worn magazine.
Instead of the jokes, my attention fell immediately on an article titled, “The New Science of Thank You.”[1] Although I was not feeling particularly grateful, it was the week after Thanksgiving. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.

I was especially interested in a study conducted by two professors of psychology, Robert Emmons, at the University of California, Davis, and Michael McCullough, at the University of Miami. They took three groups of volunteers and randomly assigned them to focus on one of three things each week: hassles, thing for which they were grateful, and ordinary life events. The first group concentrated on everything that went wrong or was irritating to them. The second group focused on situations they felt enhanced their lives and for which they were grateful. The third group simply recalled what they did through the week.

The results of the study were striking! The people who focused on gratitude were “flat-out happier.” They saw their lives in favorable terms. They reported fewer negative physical symptoms such as headaches or colds, and they were active in ways that were good for them, spending almost an hour and a half more per week exercising than those who focused on hassles. “Plain and simple, those who were grateful had a higher quality of life.”

People around the participants noticed the difference. Of those who focused on gratitude, “they noticed that these people had more joy, more energy. They could see that they were becoming more optimistic.” The grateful group “even seemed to be perceived as more helpful toward others.” This surprised Emmons: “This is not just something that makes people happy… A feeling of gratitude really gets people to do something, to become more pro-social, more compassionate.”

After their study was published in 2003, the professors took their project a step further. Instead of having people focus on hassles or blessings on a weekly basis, they rounded up a group of college students to do it every day and had similar results. In a follow-up study, those who found something to appreciate every day were less materialistic—less apt to see a connection between life satisfaction and material things. They were more willing to part with their possessions. The bumper sticker that reads ‘The one with the most toys wins’ was unlikely to be found on any of their cars.

According to the Christian calendar, tomorrow, in the middle of the season of Advent, is “Gaudete Sunday.” Some folks know only that in some churches the Advent candle for this day is pink, not purple. That candle is always lit on the third Sunday of Advent. In the ancient church Advent was intended as a time for abstinence, self-examination, fasting, and penitence, all as a part of the preparation for celebrating Christmas. In Latin gaudete means “to rejoice.” Gaudete Sunday was intended as a break in the serious inner preparation of Advent to remember the joy of the event for which we are preparing.

Just in case Thanksgiving passed by too quickly, maybe Gaudete is an occasion for us pause in our Christmas preparations to be grateful. As I sat in the doctor’s office I decided I would follow up with one of the final suggestions in the article.

“Take a moment during the day—right before bedtime is usually best—to jot down three things that happened that day for which you are grateful. Anything that made you feel uplifted, that brought a smile to your face or your heart, or will contribute toward your future happiness, works.”

Writing before bedtime doesn’t work for me, but writing first thing in the morning does. There is now a special section of my daily journal reserved for remembering those things for which I was grateful on the previous day. It does have a way of making the day ahead look different.

But you already knew that, didn’t you? You probably learned it from Ebenezer Scrooge. If not, let this Gaudete weekend be a time of “Advent Attitude Adjustment.” You just might be changing the future!

[1] Deborah Norville from her book Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You. (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, 2007). Reader’s Digest, October 2007.

CHRISTMAS CELEBRATING - NEW GROWTH FROM OLD STUMPS

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-6

Is there going to be anything new in your Christmas celebration this year? I don’t believe the old saying that “there is nothing new under the sun,” but I have a suspicion that new growth may well come out of old stumps.

The prophet Isaiah knew about “old stumps.” He saw the destruction of Israel at the hands of Assyria in 722 B.C., scattering whatever survivors there were to the ends of the empire. He then lived in the shadow of the threat that this most barbaric of all ancient powers would do the same thing to his tiny nation of Judah and its capitol Jerusalem. In the face of this threat and desolation all around, the prophet spoke for God: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”

I think what the prophet Isaiah meant was that something new was going to come out of the old stump of David’s kingdom. Jesse was David’s father. David’s kingdom ended after his son Solomon’s death and the split of their empire into the two small nations of Judah and Israel. Although the two nations had their own kings, they were too small and weak to defend themselves against their more powerful neighbors, like Assyria and Babylonia. What the prophet saw is that out of the old dead stump of David’s empire will come something new, not just something but also “someone.”

Whether Isaiah is speaking about a king just coming to power, like Hezekiah, or perhaps speaking words written for the inauguration of such a king, is not clear. It may also be that this is Isaiah’s vision for a king in some unspecified future who would embody the Davidic royal ideal. Eight hundred years later followers of Jesus would see in Isaiah’s words a foretelling of Jesus’ coming. In either case, something new was coming from something old.

In the Gospel of Mathew, John the Baptist, like Isaiah, believed that something new was happening: the kingdom of God was coming near. It was John’s role to prepare the way by calling people to repent, or “turn around”, to pay attention to the new thing that was about to happen in history.

Can there be anything “new”? The people of Israel came to being in a world that was locked into a circular view of history, a view of life in which there was never anything new but just a recycled part of the past. The future would necessarily be a repetition of the past. In this world even gods couldn't do anything new. This worldview of endless cycles was not just in the Middle East, but worldwide. If we are to believe Thomas Cahill in his book, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, we and the rest of the world are in debt to the Jews for the concept of “new.” The God we worship is a God who does new things in history. Because of that, the future is not predetermined, but open to new possibilities.

The question about new possibilities is not so much a question about God as it is about us. In this season of Advent God seeks to break through our jaded and cynical spirits to remind us that NEW is possible; and we may be in special need of that word in this season as we approach Christmas.

If we are to believe Isaiah, the new does not just come out of the blue, but it comes out of the old. I would like to suggest that there are some old stumps in our Christmas traditions from which new growth is appearing, if we have the eyes to see.

The first old stump is our gift-giving tradition. Christmas is about giving; we remember with gratitude God’s great gift to us in Jesus Christ. The Magi brought gifts to give to the Christ Child. Gifts are ways we express love to one another. But in our society, I wonder if our practices have not become old stumps that need new growth. Given human nature and the commercialization of Christmas, "getting" sometimes seems more important than "giving," and giving to "our own" sometimes has more importance than giving to the one whose birthday we celebrate. Our practices of gift giving have also been affected by consumerism. As even The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette recognizes, "Today, in our materialistic society, the custom [of gift-giving] has grown to exaggerated absurdity...." I suggest that “exaggerated absurdity” might be the name for this stump: giving gifts that aren’t really needed; gifts that are given out of obligation instead of love; giving gifts that harm the environment, giving gifts that we cannot afford, etc. The list can go on and on. Is anything new possible, or are we forever locked into an old way of doing things?

Many people are discovering that genuinely needed gifts are ways to express love and caring. For that “person who has everything,” which is a euphemism for people who have more than enough and that includes a lot of us, an appropriate gift is a contribution to a good cause honoring the recipient and the one who’s birth we celebrate on December 25th. In one family I know well, the adult children are all receiving shares in scholarship for a young woman in Uganda in training to become a nurse. She wouldn’t be in school without it. The scholarship is in the form of a loan to be paid back and held for a future similar loan. Could it be that changing our gift-giving practices are new growth from an old stump?

What would happen if you talked with your larger family about doing something like this? You might be surprised. I can almost guarantee two different responses from different family members. First, there will be one who says that there shouldn’t be any change in “the way we’ve always done it.” But second, there will be one who says “Why haven’t we considered this before?” Are there any new shoots coming out of the old stumps of your gift giving traditions?

The second old stump is our Santa Claus tradition. Can anything new come out of that old stump? That tradition began with Saint Nicholas. Little is known about him except that he was the Bishop of Myra, in present-day Turkey, in the fourth century. Of the many stories about this saint, one of the most popular tells about his generosity in giving gifts anonymously to the poor. According to the story, this young monk learned of a poor family who had no money for dowries for their three daughters. Without dowries the daughters could not marry and would have to be sold into slavery because the family couldn’t afford to feed them. Nicholas, so the story goes, learned about the families plight, took gold from the monastery where he lived, then dropped three bags down the chimney of the family’s home so the daughters would each have dowries. From this came the Christmas tradition of giving to those in need and giving gifts anonymously.

Is it possible that something new might come out of recovering this tradition with our children? Perhaps this story of St. Nicholas could be told again to our children, highlighting the importance of imitating St. Nicholas instead of simply waiting for gifts from Santa. Perhaps children could be involved in family decisions about special gifts that honor the one who's birthday we are celebrating. Are there any possibilities for “new growth” in the “old stump” of our Santa traditions? You might be surprised.

The third old stump I think about is our family gatherings at Christmas. Can anything new come out of that old stump? Gatherings with families and loved ones at Christmas can be renewing; they can also be depressing. Part of the problem is the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves for these celebrations. After all, we are daily bombarded by the mass media with scenes of “blissful happiness” of families gathered for the holidays. I call it the “Happy Family Syndrome.” Even though we know life isn’t like that, under the bombardment we may measure our families’ behavior by these false images. Is the new growth to lower expectations of these occasions? Is it new growth to find new ways to gather and find ways to include in our celebrations persons who would otherwise be alone? You might be surprised.

This past summer we stopped for the night in Squamish, British Columbia (think “Men in Trees”) on our way to Alaska. We planned on waking up for an early start but we were waked up by noise outside in the park next to the motel. Tents were being erected and fires were being built under large black pots filled with oil. The women were dressed in saris and many of the men wore turbans. A contingent of twenty-five or thirty Indians were preparing for an annual holy day for their God. They were doing it by preparing all manner of Indian food that they would offer free to the townspeople all day.

When we were packing the car to get on the road, they invited us to come have some of the delicacies they were preparing. A group of women were cooking an Indian version of tempura in large black pots. They insisted that we take some of the goodies with us and filled a large paper plate to overflowing and gave us cups of hot sweet tea with milk. I asked one of the men if they were all from Squamish and he said they were. They intended to have some kind of ceremony at ten o’clock but for the most part they were celebrating their most holy day by offering wonderfully prepared food for the town. Such hospitality! I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if on one of our most holy days (Christmas Eve or Easter morning) we went to the center of town, prepared our most special foods, and serve them to the people where we live.

The fourth old stump is holiday busyness. Do you suppose the term “multi-tasking” was coined in the Christmas season? Being frantic having to do so many things at the same time, or at least be thinking about them, may be a cherished holiday tradition for some. Recent studies of multi-tasking suggest that the result is that few of the tasks are done well.

I wonder if this old stump may result in what Susan Monk Kidd has called “an attention deficit disorder of the soul.” The author of the bestselling novel, The Secret Life of Bees, (one of the best novels I have read in the past ten years), has just published First Light, some of her early inspirational writings. She tells about arriving at the airport in Atlanta in the midst of an ice storm. The airport shuts down and she has to find her way to a relative’s house on MARTA, the city rail system. As she comes closer to the end of the line she notices a middle age woman sitting across from her who is crying. She wipes tears with the back of her hand and gazes at Susan. “She’s asking for my attention. She wants me to fling open my heart and take her in. I feel sad for her, but what can I do? She’s carrying her troubles and I can’t fix them. My inhibitions rise sharply, then blend into tiredness, anxieties about the storm, disappointment about not getting home. I look away from her, retreating into the murmur of the train. Quietly, uncomfortably unavailable.”[1]

For the next two days, locked in away from home in the ice storm, she can think about little but the woman on the train. Even when the ice melts and she goes home, she can’t forget. One morning she comes on the words of the great Christian mystic, Mechtilde of Magdeburg:

“How should one live?
Live
Welcoming
to all.”

She decides to practice being utterly available to the one before her, whoever that might be. She calls it “mindful availability.” “When you sit with a crying woman on a train, just sit with her. Do it with all your mind and heart and soul. Be fully present to her without this other agenda going on at the sidelines. In other words, do it without passing judgment on her, wanting to convert her to your point of view, desiring her appreciation, wondering what others on the train might think, worrying about the weather, or getting caught up in one’s feelings, desires, and opinions of the moment. Do it the way Mary sat at the feet of Jesus—with an undivided heart.”[2]

Mindful availability is the new growth from an old stump that I want to nurture this season of Advent. How was it that some ancient in the 15th century put it in words translated from German:

Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming, as those of old have sung.
It came a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
when halfspent was the night.

This beautiful carol reminds me that God’s great gift to us was in the form of new growth from an old stump. Because God is a God who does new things in history, who brings new sprouts from dead wood, even life from death, I won’t be surprised to see new shoots even in the middle of the night in deep winter, even in the Christmas season. As we prepare to celebrate God’s gift, will you be watching and ready to nurture the new growth with which God is surely ready to surprise you?

[1] Susan Monk Kidd, First Light: The Early Inspirational Writings, (New York: Penguin Books, 2007) p. 48.

[2] Kidd, pp. 50-51.

WORLD AIDS DAY - REMEMBERING

On Saturday, December 1, for the twentieth year, communities and congregations around the world will be pausing to reflect on the impact of HIV/AIDS. Statistics reveal the stark reality:

57 million people will have died from AIDS-related diseases in 2007; 68,000 are still being infected daily, of whom 12,000 are children under the age of 15 and about 29,000 are women 15 years and older. http://www.worldaidscampaign.info/

I know the numbers are important, but this year my observance will be to remember faces, faces of people I knew, faces of people with the disease, as well as people who cared about them.

The disease is often identified with homosexuality, especially homosexual men, but even at the outset of the epidemic in 1981 health authorities learned that nearly half of those infected were not homosexual men. Fear of the disease and homophobia flowed together to create near panic in the first decade of the epidemic. In that hysteria I learned about what was then a unique church in Atlanta.

Someone asked me if I had heard about a United Methodist Church where gays were welcome. I hadn’t and was doubtful. My son and I visited this church near downtown which itself was the result of bringing together two small churches that had been casualties of urban decay in the area surrounding downtown.

What I discovered on my first Sunday at Grant Park-Aldersgate United Methodist Church was that half the congregation was over sixty-five, and as I would learn later "straight," as was their pastor, Sally Daniel. The other half of the congregation was made up of young and middle aged gay men and women. The church was not dying; it was thriving!

I asked Sally to lunch in part because I was curious about why she had chosen to commit “vocational suicide” by opening the church to gays and lesbians. She was a tall blond former ballet dancer who had come into the ordained ministry at mid-life. She told me that she hadn’t done anything special. Two years before, the Metropolitan Community Church in the city had been burned to the ground by arsonists. An appeal went out to the clergy of the city to show up at the site in solidarity with the people of the church. Only four clergy showed up. Sally was one of them. She told me that one of the members of the burned out church asked her if he could come to her church. She said, “’Unaccustomed to being asked if someone could attend the church where I was pastor,’ I said ‘Of course!’” That man came and was followed by many others.

Years later I learned that hadn’t been the beginning of her special ministry. When she was doing her pastoral care training at a local hospital as a student at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, she found a young man dying of AIDS in one of the beds. The panic over the developing epidemic made even the medical personnel reluctant to be around him. He was dying alone. Against the warning of the floor supervisor, Sally entered the room, sat beside his bed for hours holding his hand, mopping his brow, and leaning close to his ear telling him that he was loved. She refused to leave until the young man had taken his last breath.

On our third visit to Grant Park-Aldersgate, my son and I sat a few rows back from a young man whose appearance you couldn't miss. His head, face, and hands were covered with lesions, or sores. "Horrible" was not too strong a word to describe his appearance. The young man had AIDS, and not too long to live.

After the sermon, he was called down to the front where the pastor baptized him and received him into the membership of that church. Then, as she always did when new people were received into membership, she invited the congregation to come forward to give this new member "a real Grant Park-Aldersgate welcome." I was transfixed as I watched the entire congregation of about 50 or 60 get up out of their seats and go down the aisle. Older people, young people, middle-aged people, one by one, took this young dying man into their arms and hugged him. No handshakes, just hugs and warm embraces. And, it was almost as if I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "Pay attention, Milo, this is what the church is supposed to be." When this man died a few weeks later, he died knowing that there was a place and a community of people who loved him, who didn't treat him like a leper, who weren't afraid of his disease, who didn't condemn him because he was gay, and who treated him as the precious child of God he was. After that experience I could never be the same again.

Sally died in 2006 at the age of 75. On Saturday I will be remembering and giving thanks for her.

Not long after my experience at Grant Park-Aldersgate, in 1992 I became pastor of a church in Juneau, Alaska. The church had half the name of Sally’s church. I took that as a good omen. Aldersgate was a five year old United Methodist Church the majority of who’s sixty or so members didn’t have previous experience in any church. Linda was a member of the congregation.

Linda was sick with the flu and felt terrible, but she was on the plane coming home to Juneau, Alaska from Seattle. Her husband and their six and nine year old girls were waiting for her. It’s bad enough having to fly when you feel that bad, but to fly “the local” – making stops in Ketchikan and Sitka before landing in Juneau – might be regarded as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Besides that the plane was full and the only seat she could get was a middle seat between two men. They introduced themselves as Jim and Tom. Somewhere along the way, somewhere between stops, somewhere between bouts of nausea, Linda learned that both Jim and Tom were HIV positive; they both had AIDS. She told them about her church in Juneau and asked them about theirs. They didn’t have one. Jim had never been in church. Although Tom was raised in a Christian family, he felt that his family disowned him when he contracted AIDS.

Linda always invited people to church, and she invited Jim and Tom. They lived ten miles from the Mendenhall Valley where the church was and where Linda and her family lived. Jim and Tom didn’t have a car. Never mind! Linda and her husband Steve went into town to pick them up – Sunday after Sunday. In the small congregation Jim and Tom were welcomed. They shared freely about their medical condition. Within a couple of weeks, they asked to be baptized and to become members of the church. And they were. Transported by Linda and Steve, they came to worship regularly.

Within a year Jim died, and in another six months Tom was dead. As both of them said many times, in this congregation they felt they had “come home.” We believed that they had – all because a woman sick on an airplane didn’t hesitate to reach out to them. The members of the congregation also welcomed them. None of them had had any experience with persons with AIDS, but they wrapped their arms around Jim and Tom in such a way that the word got out into the AIDS community and the church found itself in ministry to others with the disease. They learned that this was a place and people where they would be welcome.

On Saturday I will be giving thanks for Linda, Jim, Tom, and the Aldersgate congregation.

Another member of the congregation—Gay was in her 80s—told us about her neighbor, a young man with AIDS. She asked him if he would like a visit from her pastor. He said he would and one afternoon Connie and I went to see him. He looked up at us from his bed and said, “I have AIDS. I want you to help me learn to pray and how to die.” We visited with John regularly and when he felt up to it he had someone bring him to the church where he would sit in the sanctuary by himself meditating. He told us he wished he had started this process earlier in life. He was all of twenty-five. He never joined the church. That wasn’t important to him or us. He had learned to pray and was ready to die.

We had his funeral at Aldersgate. Since he had never attended a service there, except for his neighbor, the people in the church didn’t know him. Four elderly women from the congregation prepared a lavish reception with all kinds of salmon spreads, cookies, cakes, and coffee. The friends of John who came to the funeral were about twenty scruffy looking bikers. They joked about never having been in a church before. Others might have been intimidated, but not these four seniors. Before the afternoon was over they had charmed the guests with their food and hospitality. The young men didn’t want to leave.

On Saturday I will be remembering John, Vi, Vickie, Mae, and Gay.

"An old rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.

'Could it be,' asked one of the students, 'when you see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it's a sheep or a dog?'

'No,' answered the rabbi.

Another asked, 'Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it's a fig or a peach tree?'

'No,' answered the rabbi.

'Then when is it?' the pupils demanded.

'It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.'"

SEVEN GOOD REASONS FOR HOLIDAY DEPRESSION

No Christmas season is complete without psychologists and therapists of various sorts hitting the airwaves to give advice about coping with the "holiday depression syndrome" (HDS). Unfortunately, the "season of joy" becomes for many a season of sadness and depression.

I have no quarrel with what I usually hear on these programs, but it seems to me that there are some important contributing factors to HDS that the holiday experts seem to ignore. Those factors are all related to our cultural images of the "good Christmas" that begin to rain down on us like an artillery barrage just about the time we are carving scary faces on pumpkins. What does this have to do with HDS? A lot! I suggest that there are several good reasons for holiday depression:

First, if you are going to be alone, you must confront daily reminders from ads and programs that celebrating Christmas is for family and friends. You don't measure up to this society's standard for "a good Christmas." Being lonely is bad anytime, but being constantly reminded of your situation is worse. This may be a good reason to be depressed.

Second, even if you are going to be with family and friends, you have to contend with the images of "happy family and friends." What many of us know is that when our family gets together there are tensions. We know that when Aunt Minerva and Dad get together there will be hostility. If we measure ourselves by the "happy family" images, of course, we come up short and feel guilty. "Why can't my family be like that?" we wonder. This may be a good reason for depression.

Third, if you want to observe Christmas as a holy season, you realize that all around you the center of attention is the advent of Santa Claus, not the birth of a baby two thousand years ago. It's more than Santa Claus. Our most sacred symbols and images are exploited to get us to buy. Advertising's behavior modification specialists have taught those who sell that playing "Joy to the World" in the mall in November and December will bring joy to the producers and sellers, and that "Silent Night, Holy Night" will do it even better. Even though we know better, we are seduced by the manipulation year after year. And that makes us feel used, and a little dirty. This may be a good reason for depression.

Fourth, if you happen to be Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or profess no religious faith, you may well feel under a religio-cultural attack during the month of December. Three quarters of the annual advertising dollar is spent in the last quarter of the year. Christian religious songs and symbols are the “weapons” used in this “campaign.” Under such pressure, your children may be asking why you can’t celebrate Christmas like everybody else. This may be a good reason for depression.

Fifth, if you can't afford to spend money at Christmas, you're in trouble. Although we are told that Jesus' coming was "good news to the poor," the way we celebrate his coming in this society could hardly be so described. As a friend of mine once wrote, "No, Virginia, Santa doesn't come to the ghetto." If you have some money you may feel pressured to spend a lot more than you can afford. Sometimes it is only when you see all of the stuff under the tree that you realize just how far you have gone into debt to provide a "good Christmas." If Christmas morning doesn't do it, the arrival of the bills in January will. This may be another good reason for depression.

Sixth, finally, even if you have money, and can buy whatever you want, joy at Christmas does not automatically follow. We fall prey to advertising's insidious suggestions that buying things brings happiness. And we are disappointed when they don't. Once the packages are all opened on Christmas Day, instead of joy there is often a void. But our culture has an answer for that, too. We are programmed to think: "If I had just bought that bigger and better model..." This may be another good reason for holiday depression.

Seventh, if you are a woman, and if as is often the pattern in our society, you bear the responsibility for preparing for Christmas at home -- cleaning the house; buying, wrapping, mailing the gifts; preparing a Christmas dinner for family and friends, all on top of your other responsibilities -- you may express those oft heard sentiments, "I'll just be glad when it is over." That may be another good reason for holiday depression.

All in all, there are many good reasons to be depressed at Christmas time. I suggest that the Holiday Depression Syndrome is like the red warning light in our car: it comes on to let us know that something is wrong. The problem with many of the HDS advice programs is their common assumption that the problem is inside our heads, that there is something wrong with us to make us depressed during the holidays. I am sure that there is some truth in that. I am just as sure that HDS is also caused by a sickness in our society. Our spirits are smothered under an avalanche of expectations that have little to do with the real world, or the real sources of joy and fulfillment.

With the holiday season now upon us, I suggest that if folks begin to get a little sad and depressed, they might consider that the screw that's loose might not be in their heads, but in our society. If it is true that much of depression is a cover for unexpressed anger, I suggest they might even consider getting mad and that they begin with those who attempt to manipulate their emotions and exploit Christmas for profit. I suggest that they save some of that anger for churches and religious leaders that have not helped them recognize the commercialized Christmas scam for what it is. Instead of turning their anger inside so that it becomes depression, I suggest that they direct it where it should go.

I’m not big on sloganeering about the “commercialization of Christmas.” We cannot be held responsible for what our culture does around Christmas, and I, for one, give thanks that the religious community does not have the authority to enforce the kind of “blue laws” that were enforced around Christmas in Puritan England and New England. What we are accountable for is for the way we celebrate in our households and in the household of faith. In both of those places, we can change the way we celebrate Christmas.

This is the time to remind ourselves that we don't have to measure ourselves by our culture's unreal Christmas expectations. You may not be able to change the culture, but you have a lot to do with how Christmas is observed in your household and in your heart. Look again at the seven causes of HDS and see which of those expectations you can change this year. Then, perhaps, just before you go to sleep on Christmas Eve, you will hear the voice of the angel from long ago saying, "Do not be afraid [or depressed]; for see -- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people…" That "you" also means you! Merry Christmas!

THANKSGIVING, NOT SELF-CONGRATULATING

So you’ve bought your turkey, the cranberries, and pumpkin pie filling. The guests have already been invited. You’re almost ready for Thanksgiving.

Or, are you?

Harvest festivals have been part of human history since the beginning of agriculture. With harvesting completed and food stored away for the winter months, those early tillers of the soil celebrated the results of their labor. They also recognized their dependence on elements and forces beyond their efforts that made harvest possible.

Jews celebrated harvest thanksgivings in several periods throughout the year. In medieval times many Europeans observed the Feast of St. Martin of Tours on November 11, and in England "Harvest Home" celebrations began in the sixteenth century. Today, we no longer call these "Harvest Home" celebrations, but "Thanksgiving." Thanksgiving Day is observed on the second Monday of October in Canada, while in the United States it is on the fourth Thursday of November.

At Thanksgiving, we sing hymns like "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come"[1]:

"Come, ye thankful people, raise the song of harvest home;
all is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin."

Let's face it, at this time of the year here on the high desert in central Oregon, let alone Alaska, it is a little difficult to enter into the spirit of an agricultural "harvest" festival. Here, the harvest was gathered in September and October. And, if the truth be told, the celebration of a "harvest festival" at the end of November is late, even for Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Actually, the "first" Thanksgiving in America is subject to debate. Some Native American tribes had been having harvest thanksgiving festivals for centuries, as had the Europeans who came to these shores. Perhaps the first observance of the latter was entirely religious and involved neither harvest nor feasting. On December 4, 1619, 39 English settlers arrived at the mouth of the James River in Virginia. Their charter required that their arrival date be observed yearly as a day of thanksgiving to God. Their thanksgiving was not for bounty, but for the fact that they had survived. That was reason enough for an annual observance of thanksgiving.

Most people, however, associate the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims who arrived a year later on November 11, 1620. Escaping religious persecution in Europe, these colonists attempted to reach the Virginia colony. Their sixty-seven day voyage ended instead several hundred miles north on Cape Cod -- in what is now Massachusetts. At a recently vacated Indian settlement, they discovered corn set aside for spring planting. Already on a starvation diet, they were more concerned about their immediate need for food than for anyone's future crop, so they took ten bushels of the Indian's seed corn in order to survive the winter.

In the summer of 1621, less than a year after their arrival and after a terrible winter when half of the colonists died, hope was renewed by a good corn crop. Squanto, a member of the Wampanoag nation who had previously visited England and knew how to speak English, helped the colonists during their first winter and spring, showing them how to prepare the fields and plant corn. He was also the Pilgrims' go-between with other tribes, helping arrange the pact that allowed the Pilgrims and Indians to live in peace.[2]

The first corn harvest brought rejoicing, and Governor William Bradford decreed that a three-day feast be held. Chief Massasoit was invited to share the celebration, and share he did. Ninety members of the tribe came with him -- probably to celebrate their traditional harvest feast. The Pilgrims didn't have enough food for three days of feasting with such numbers, so the Indians went out and brought back most of what they ate at the feast: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish, beans, squash, corn soup, corn bread, and berries.[3] Sweet strong wine from wild grapes supplemented the feast.

The feast lasted for days, with little attention to religious services. Some believe that the Pilgrims chose to keep their harvest festival secular because they disapproved of mingling religious and secular celebrations. It seems to have been a one-time occasion, with no thought to future celebrations. Although not a religious observance, the Pilgrims celebrated their surviving that first disastrous year and the bounty of the land they had discovered. It was also a celebration with the people who had made their survival possible. It was a grateful acknowledgement of the way their life, indeed survival, was dependent on the Native Americans.

Serious questions have been raised about the nature and purpose of Thanksgiving Day observances in the subsequent one hundred years. William B. Newell, a Penobscott Indian and former chair of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, says that the first "official" Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 -- fifteen years after the Pilgrims' celebration at Plymouth. The purpose of this celebration, says professor Newell, was to celebrate the massacre of 700 Indian men, women and children at their annual Green Corn Dance (their Thanksgiving) in the previous year.[4] The murder of a white trader and Indian-kidnapper had been the excuse for the Puritans to make war on the Pequots.[5] After that there were massacres on both sides. For the next hundred years, says Newell, "every Thanksgiving day ordained by a governor of Massachusetts was to honor a bloody victory thanking God for the battle won."

One hundred and fifty years later on November 26, 1787, President George Washington issued a proclamation for a day of thanks, but for many years afterward there was no regular national Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Thanksgiving did not become an annual observance until 1863, during the darkest days of the Civil War, when President Lincoln proclaimed it an annual national observance.

If celebrations give voice to the values and ideals by which we are trying to live, perhaps -- in view of the history of the way Thanksgiving has been observed -- it may be easier to first think of how we ought not observe it.

First, let it not be a day for thanking God for our affluence while others go hungry. The notion that it is God who gives affluence to some and poverty to many not only ignores the role that humans have played in arranging patterns of affluence and poverty, but flies in the face of the Biblical God of love and justice.

Second, let Thanksgiving not be a time to claim God's special blessing on any nation. As a persecuted minority religious group in Europe, the Pilgrims knew only too well the problems that occur when the interests of God and nation are identified by a dominant religious group. It was a lesson they themselves forgot as they became the dominant religious group in New England, and it was the Native Americans who suffered.

Third, let Thanksgiving not be an occasion to romanticize the cooperation between the Indians and the settlers, unless to recall as well—and in sorrow—the subsequent centuries' genocide of Native Americans.

Fourth, let Thanksgiving not merely be a day of rest and football before the two largest shopping days of the year, when giving thanks is swept out the back door so we can "shop till we drop."

If we want Thanksgiving as a day that gives voice to our values and our highest ideals, how might we observe it?

First, let Thanksgiving be a day to remember with gratitude and humility that we alone are not responsible for whatever bounty is in our lives. Let us not forget to be grateful.

Second, let Thanksgiving be a day to acknowledge that part of our bounty has come at the expense of others, including Native Americans, slaves, farm workers, family members and hosts of others we do not even know. We might even try to consider how illegal immigrants contributed to our Thanksgiving dinner—on the turkey farms, in the processing plants, in the harvesting of the vegetables,…you get the idea—and give thanks.

Third, let Thanksgiving be a day when we share what we have with others, and include in our celebrations those who might otherwise be alone.

Finally, let Thanksgiving be a day when we anticipate a world like that hoped for in 1621 when Native Americans and Pilgrims sat down at table together, a world where hungry children are fed; the homeless have homes; and those who suffer from discrimination because of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or age are respected; and where we live peacefully with those who hold different opinions about important matters.

If this can be what we celebrate, then we will recapture the all-too-short-lived spirit of that Thanksgiving in 1621. Happy Thanksgiving!


[1]"Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," Words: Henry Alford, 1844; George J. Elvey, 1858. The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989, P. 694.

[2] Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," the letter of Edward Winslow dated 1622, pp. 5-6. (The Center For World Indigenous Studies Project, c/o The Fourth World Documentation Project, P.O. Box 2574, Olympia, Washington USA 98507-2574)

[3] Ibid.

[4]Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation. Vol.12 - August 1980, p. 3.

[5]Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980. p. 14.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS CONTROVERSY

A CONCLUDING POSTSCRIPT

The good people at Chugiak United Methodist Church, just outside Anchorage, endured a ten-part sermon series on the Ten Commandments that began on September 2nd. Well, they didn’t have to endure them all because I had to leave when I was only half finished, I agreed to write and post the last five as I might have delivered them had I been there. Now that I’ve done that I probably ought to leave well enough alone. But I did the series without once mentioning the great “Ten Commandments Controversy.”

Unless you have been living on another planet over these past ten years, you know what I’m talking about. The controversy has not been about our failure to observe the commandments, nor has it even been about our making a key cultural and economic value out of violating the last one, the one about coveting. No, the controversy hasn’t been about any of that; it’s been about whether plaques of the Ten Commandments should be hung on the walls of courthouses and in public schools.

This is a matter about which people of good faith can and do disagree. There can be little doubt that the Ten Commandments played an important formative role in the history of western civilization. Some folks say that the Ten Commandments should be posted in public buildings because this nation was founded on “Christian principles.” Others have argued that the practice would violate the separation of church and state. Still others have argued that it wouldn’t violate that principle because as State Senator John Andrews of Colorado said, “the commandments are not religious, but educational and civic.”

You remember the saga of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama, don’t you? Back in 2003 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ordered Moore to remove his two and a half ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments removed from the courthouse. He refused. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary then removed Judge Moore from the Bench. Moore ran for governor in the 2006 but was defeated in the primary. Professor Marcia Hamilton is an internationally recognized on constitutional law and frequently advises Congress and state legislatures on the constitutionality of pending legislation. She clerked for Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Hamilton wrote that Moore was not a fit justice, wouldn’t be a fit governor, and belonged in the private sphere. Check out her article on “Judge Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments” at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20031118.html.

Alabama hasn’t been the only state where there have been attempts to put the Ten Commandments in public places. Kansas, Kentucky, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and I’m sure others. When a bill was put forward in the Colorado legislature to put the commandments in the public schools, the faculty members of United Methodist Iliff School of Theology in Denver protested. They argued that the posting of the Ten Commandments was a violation of the separation of church and state. They offered eight reasons why the commandments should not be posted.

1. The commandments make numerous references to God.

2. The commandments are part of a covenant God makes with a particular people.

3. There are two different versions of the commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5), so who would decide which would be posted?

4. Jews and Christians don’t agree on what counts as the first commandment, so who decides?

5. The commandment to observe the Sabbath causes confusion for Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians.

6. Posting the Ten Commandments without reference to all of the 613 rabbinic laws is an insult to Jews.

7. Most commandments are stated without explanation; would explanation be provided, and who would provide it?

8. The consequences of violating the commandments (frequently death) are given elsewhere in the Bible. How will teachers answer questions about consequences?

On “Judaism 101,” a website designed to answer basic questions about the Jewish faith, the “Ten Commandments Controversy” is addressed. Agreeing with the reasons put forward by the faculty at Iliff, “These may seem like trivial differences to some, but they are serious issues to those of us who take these words seriously. When a government agency chooses one version over another, it implicitly chooses one religion over another, something that the First Amendment prohibits. This is the heart of the controversy.”

It goes on to add, “But there is an additional aspect of this controversy that is of concern from a Jewish perspective. In Talmudic times, the rabbis consciously made a decision to exclude daily recitation of the Aseret ha-Dibrot from the liturgy because excessive emphasis on these statements might lead people to mistakenly believe that these were the only mitzvot (commandments) or the most important mitzvot, and neglect the other 603

(Talmud Berakhot 12a). By posting these words prominently and referring to them as "The Ten Commandments," (as if there weren't any others, which is what many people think) schools and public buildings may be teaching a message that Judaism specifically and consciously rejected.” Check out this site at http://www.jewfaq.org/10.htm.

While the concerns expressed by Marcia Hamilton, the Iliff faculty, and the Judaism 101 website might surprise some Christians, I don't think they would have surprised Thomas Jefferson who drafted our Declaration of Independence. As suspicious as he was of the unchecked power of government, and he was, Jefferson was even more suspicious of the power of unchecked religion to coerce others. He knew well the history of the intolerance of churches that were “established” or identified with the state in Europe and he feared for what might happen in America. He wanted a high “wall of separation” between church and state so that neither infringed on the responsibilities of the other. In 1817 when Congress passed the Elementary School Act, Jefferson insisted on this provision: "No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination." I think we can guess where he would have stood in this controversy.

However important the Ten Commandments are to Jews and Christians, the posting of them on the walls of public schools or courtrooms seems to me not only a violation of church and state, but also a misuse of God's name. Don't misunderstand me! I think it is important that Christians know the Ten Commandments. The commandments should be taught in churches and synagogues and by believing parents in their homes. We should not, however, want the state in the business of teaching them. More important, it seems to me that the very best way we can commend the commandments to others is by obeying them ourselves.

I would like to know what you think.

10. NO COVETING

The Ten Commandments as Grace and Law

Exodus 20:17; Micah 2:1-2; Matthew 6:25-34

Since September 2nd we have been on a journey exploring the Ten Commandments. From my conversations with you, my mail and my email, I know that some of you have at least been thinking about the commandments. Several of you gave me copies of an ad for a wall hanging under the title, “Country Commandments,” with these as the ten: “There is only one God, No False Gods, No Cuss’n, Gather on Sunday, Mind your Ma and Pa, No Kill’n, Cheatin’ is forbidden, Ya’ll Don’t Steal, No white lies or gossip’n, and No hankerin’ for others stuff.”

One of you gave me a cartoon in which a child says to the Sunday School teacher, “My Mom says the Ten Commandments are ‘settle down, stop that, wash your hands, be quiet, go to sleep, eat your vegetables, drink your milk, sit up straight, pick up your room and listen to your mother and father.”

Today, we have come to the Tenth Commandment -- "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Exodus 20:17) According to the dictionary, the word "to covet" means "to desire eagerly, especially something that belongs to someone else." There was an expression common when I was growing up in Texas that seems to have the sense of what it means to covet: "I wish I had [something that belongs to you], and that you had a wart on your nose." That expression was probably limited to West Texas.

We need to be clear: there is nothing wrong with the act of "coveting" itself. The term is used in a positive sense in the expression, "I covet your prayers," which means, "I eagerly desire your prayers." So what does this commandment actually prohibit? One of the most respected Biblical scholars in the world, Walter Brueggemann, on whom we have depended at several points in this series, says that the text knows that humans are driven by desire and that the commandment itself does not regard desire in and of itself as good or bad. Whether the desire is good or bad depends on its object and how “eager” is our desire for it. The prohibition in this commandment, says Brueggemann, is the neighbor’s "house," which in a patriarchal society included the wife, slaves, and working animals. The commandment expects that within the community of faith ”the drive of desire will be displaced by the honoring of the neighbor, by the sharing of goods, and by the acceptance of one’s goods as adequate.”[1] This commandment is not focused on general envy but on a kind of acquisitiveness that disrupts the lives of others.

When the prophet Micah interprets this commandment, he focuses on its implications for “the development of large estates at the expense of vulnerable neighbors.”[2] Read again his words: "Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance." (Micah 2:1-2) Just as Jesus' comments on the commandment on adultery -- "whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart" -- were addressed to men who had the power to take women for their pleasure without regard to their wishes, so the tenth commandment seems especially addressed to the "eager desires" of those who have it within their power to take vulnerable people's property.

So then, for example, what does this commandment say about "hostile takeovers" in the corporate world? There may be no other point where the Ten Commandments are more in tension with the operative values of our society than with this tenth commandment. We live in a consumer society where consumption is based not on need but on the need to consume. The purpose of advertising is less to inform about products than to generate "eager desire" for new products, whether we need them or not. While few of us do not want the newest products -- whether food, cars or computers -- we know that they come at a high price, not just to us but also to the rest of the world. While citizens of the United States make up only 6% of the world’s population, we consume 25% of the world’s energy. While, of the nations of the world, we have some of the most stringent laws to protect the environment, our rate of production and consumption make us the largest producers of waste and garbage in the world. There is a popular assumption in our society that we should be able to have these products, no matter the consequences to other people or the environment. Or, as James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communications at Rutgers University, has put it, "If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.".

This ideology – and it is an “ideology” -- has its own history in our society. Other societies have their own ideologies. At this point I am not interested in comparison but simply to understand how we got the one we have and its implications for us today. In 1776, the year the Thirteen Colonies declared independence from Great Britain, a Scottish economist and philosopher published a book that became the classic statement advocating free market economics. Adam Smith (1723-1790) in his book, The Wealth of Nations, argued that market forces should be allowed to operate without interference. Smith said that the well being of all would be best served as everyone pursued their own self-interests. The market forces were guided, he said, by an "invisible hand." Smith's "invisible hand" was not a theistic notion, but simply a mechanism of the market. Smith's conclusion was that each person should pursue their own self-interest, regardless of how those interests affected others, because in the end the well being of all would be best served.

That the well-being of all was best served by everybody pursuing their own self-interests without restraint proved to be wishful thinking. Another rationale was added to justify the unrestrained pursuit of one's self-interest. In the nineteenth century Adam Smith's ideas were merged with those of the "Social Darwinists." "Social Darwinism" held that society evolved on Charles Darwin's biological model -- an inference, by the way, not at all shared by Darwin himself. Social Darwinists explained economic inequalities among people as natural and inevitable by the law of the "survival of the fittest." The result was a popular ideology, which held that persons should pursue their own self-interests no matter the cost to other people. One of its main advocates in the United States, William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), said that such a system resulted in the "beneficent elimination of the ill-adapted." That is, no tears should be shed for those who were vulnerable and hurt by others pursuit of their self-interests. The world was better off without such "weaklings."

Today, not many economists or industry leaders would advocate "the unrestrained pursuit of self interest" as the best economic or social policy. Even among the most ardent supporters of a free market economy, some restraints are seen as necessary. The tenth commandment is a warning against the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest, whether at the level of corporate or government policy, or in how we use our resources as individuals and families. Just because you want something that belongs to someone else doesn't mean that you have the right to get it.

The positive intent of this commandment may well be what we learned as Jesus’ “Golden Rule:” “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) While there is nothing wrong with pursuing our own self interests, when those pursuits impinge on others, people of faith will not do anything to others that they wouldn’t want done to themselves. That sets the bar pretty high, doesn’t it?

The commandment not to covet may be the last of the Ten, not because it is least important, but because "eagerly desiring what belongs to others" may be the primary path that leads to the violation of the other nine.

This brings us to perhaps the most critical questions of this series. Do the Ten Commandments require so much that we can’t possibly hope to live by them? Or, are they the necessary boundaries for the full and meaningful lives we have been created to live? In every age obeying the commandments has meant living out of step with the values and practices of the prevailing culture. It is no different today. If we believe the commandments really are God’s expectations of us, we will do our best to obey them, won’t we?

In his book, The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill writes that the commandments are written not for the past nor for the future, but for the present. Listen to his words: "… this gift of the Commandments allows us to live in the present, in the here and now. What I have done in the past is past mending; what I will do in the future is a worry not worth the candle, for there is no way I can know what will happen next. But in this moment -- and only in this moment -- I am in control."[3] We can decide that in this day we will obey the commandments. Recovering addicts of all kinds have learned that the only way to recovery is "one day at a time."

Perhaps our prayer today should be in the words of Marijohn Wilkin who wrote a country gospel song with that title. "Yesterday's gone sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine. Lord help me today, show me the way" [to obey the commandments], "one day at a time."


[1] Walter Brueggemann, "Exodus," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 1(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 849.
[2] Ibid. p. 852.
[3] Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews (New York: Nan A. Talese / Anchor Books Doubleday, 1998) p.146.