Reflections on two Christmas Carols from worship on December 27, 2009 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Morning Readings
Luke 2:8-20 Philippians 2:5-11
Story of a Carol – "Once in Royal David’s City"
We’re going to hear the story first, and then sing together “Once in Royal David’s City.” In invite you to turn to the hymn now, to have the lyrics in front of you as I tell at least a part of its story.
“Once in Royal David’s City stood a lowly cattle shed.” In just ten words, the first two lines of this hymn express one of the mysteries of Jesus the messiah. Bethlehem is Royal David’s city. David: who protected Israel from all harm, beginning from the time when he was a young shepherd who defeated Goliath to end the Philistine threat, through his later victories as a leader of armed men, and the prosperity he won for Israel as King, when he established the capital Jerusalem on mount Zion. David’s rule was the height of Israel’s peace and prosperity. In the twenty-eight generations since David, as Israel’s fortunes declined, as the people were fractured, taken into exile, and returned home only to be ruled by the Roman empire, people longed for another David, a messianic heir to the throne. Like the beleaguered people of middle earth in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the people of Israel awaited the “Return of the King.” Then Jesus came, and his closeness to God was obvious in his teaching, his healing, his power over the raging sea, and his confrontation with injustice. They began to call him the Christ, which is simply the greek word for messiah: the new king. But Jesus was not exactly what they all had had in mind. Most of them expected the messiah to overthrow Roman rule and restore the greatness of the nation of Israel, much as David had conquered their enemies long ago. That’s why, when the soldiers arrested Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, his disciples were wearing swords. They kept waiting for him to be a new King David, and he kept showing them that there is a different way to overcome hatred, injustice, and oppression. Jesus overcame it with grace, with compassion and mercy. He said to turn the other cheek. He said that if a soldier forces you to carry a load for one mile, carry it for two, just to show him that your grace is more powerful than his order. He transformed the tax collecting cheat Zacchaeus by befriending him, and he overcame the brutality of violence by submitting to it. One way for us to understand all the writings of the New Testament is to read how all those people were trying to explain that the old idea of the messiah had been wrong.
And that’s what this hymn tells us in the very opening line. “Once in Royal David’s City stood a lowly cattle shed.” Yes, this is the messiah, born in Bethlehem and the heir to David’s line. But this is not the kind of king you expected. He was not born in wealth or comfort, but in a lowly cattle shed, and laid in a manger that was there for feeding the animals. The second verse compounds the irony. “He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all. And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall. With the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our savior holy.” There is a question lingering in the story of Christmas: What is God doing here in this poor and disadvantaged place? In a few minutes, Sandy will read for us a section of the letter to the Philippians, which may be the oldest section of the New Testament, because he is quoting a hymn from the very earliest years of the church. It is a hymn about this very mystery, that Jesus, who was equal with God the father, did not cling to his powerful divine status, but humbled himself and became one of us. This is not the way they expected to see God, but more on that later.
“Once in Royal David’s City” comes from an English poet, Cecil Frances Humphrey, the wife of a priest in the Church of England, and was originally published in a book for children. This carol is well known as the very first music of the Christmas Eve service at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England. It was at King’s College that the service designed around lessons and carols was first used for Christmas Eve. This service is broadcast live on radio around the world (it begins at 10:00 AM for us) and many churches have used this format as a model for their own Christmas Eve services, including our own 11:00 service. King’s College is famous for it’s choral tradition, including a boy’s choir who accompany the adults. “Once in Royal David’s City” has been the opening hymn since 1919, and, by tradition, the first verse is sung by a solo boy soprano. Imagine this old stone English Cathedral, on the festive day of Christmas Eve, with millions of people tuned in on the radio, and the service begins with one child’s voice piercing the silence. No pomp and circumstance, no triumphant sounds of trumpet and timpani, no blast of the organ, at least not yet. The service begins with one child’s voice breaking the quiet, just like the story of Jesus Christ.
A reflection on "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is a hymn that tells the story that we heard in Luke, the story of an angel appearing to the shepherds to tell the good news of Christ’s birth, and how the angel is joined by a heavenly host, who praised God, saying “Glory to God in the highest.” The magnificence of that moment inspired Charles Wesley to write this hymn with the original opening line “Hark how all the welkin rings, glory to the king of kings!” The word welkin means “vault of heaven, so “Hark, how all the welkin rings” was a reference to what a wondrous sound it must have been for the sky to be filled with a heavenly host, praising God. Luke’s gospel doesn’t say that they were singing, but, in the way that sometimes happens, someone else suggested a new line and now the carol is known as “Hark the Herald angels sing,” and we always think of the angels as singing. Change can be a good thing.
Other than the first line, this carol was written by the great hymnist Charles Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist Church, and the writer of so many of our favorite hymns, including “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” which we sing in Advent, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” which we all sing on Easter morning, and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” which I would like to sing as often as possible. Wesley is known for the poetry of his hymns, but also for the theological depth of them. In just a few lines, Wesley evokes and summarizes the richness of the scriptures and Christian theological tradition.
In these three verses, Wesley is focusing on that mystery we confronted in the words of “Once in Royal David’s City,” and which we heard in the words from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It is the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of God becoming, literally “enfleshed” as a human being. Think of that line in the second verse: “veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity.” What we sing of, at Christmas, is the strange and wondrous idea that God, the deity, the creator and ruler of all the universe, was incarnate in this baby Jesus, and came into the world in the same vulnerable, awkward, and difficult existence that we all share. For some reason, God was, again in Wesley’s rich words “pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.” God, as a human, dwells with the human family. If we were not so used to that concept, it would shock us. We might even find it heretical, as, indeed, many people did at the time.
And maybe it still does offend us. Maybe this isn’t what we really want from God, when we step back to think about it. Wouldn’t we rather have a God who sticks with the power and majesty? We want God from on high to fix things that cause us pain and grief. We want a God of power to vanquish disease and wars, to give us clear direction, and restrain those who would do us harm. We want a God of might to provide food for the hungry, clean water to dry places, and shelter for the weary. Why are we so pleased with Christmas and the baby Jesus? Why don’t we take that Nike slogan and throw it back to God “Just do it!” “Just wave your hands or speak a word and make things right!” What was this business of becoming one of us? We’ve got plenty of us – what we need is God the powerful and mighty to shake things up!
So, you can see why some people found Jesus to be blasphemous. The thing is, we may think that we want God to come in power and remake everything – many of our prayers sound a lot like that – but what we really need is for God to love us right through the midst of the most painful, darkest parts of our lives. We need God to love us when bad things happen to us and when we are the ones who have done bad things to others. And the best way for God to love us was to show us that we are worth more than all the power and glory of heaven, to show us that when all is said and done, and when death itself has passed, then all will be made well. When we sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” notice that reference to Easter in the third verse: all will be well. God showed us by putting aside the status of divinity and becoming one of us. “Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.” What a wondrous mystery, that God would do that for us.
In her book about raising her infant son, Anne Lamott tells the story of a friend of hers who was traveling with her own two-year-old son. They had rented a condominium on a lake, and one morning the mother put her son down for a nap in his playpen, pulled down all the shades to make the room dark, and went into the next room to do some work. A little later, she heard her son knocking on the door from his room, so she could tell that he had awakened and climbed out of the playpen to the door. When she got to the door, she found that it had locked. He had somehow pushed the button on the knob and then leaned on the door to make it close and latch. She called to him to jiggle the doorknob, but it was dark in the room and it was quickly dawning on the child that his mom wasn’t able to open the door and get to him. Panic set in, and he began to cry. The mother ran around, trying everything, left messages for the building manager and rental agency, poked and jimmied at the door, all the while calling out “I’m here, I’m here.” Finally, the only thing she could think of was to lie down on the floor and stick her fingers through that inch of space underneath the door. Lamott writes that “She kept telling him over and over to bend down and find her fingers. And somehow he did. So they stayed like that for a really long time – connected, on the floor, him holding her fingers in the dark” (Operating Instructions, 220) This was the only way she could reassure him during their wait.
The name Immanuel means “God-with-us.” Jesus is Immanuel – Jesus is God-with-us, and that comes with all of the great and crazy things that it means to be with us. In a way, Christmas is God’s fingers jammed under a locked door to where we are, so often scared and sad and feeling alone in the dark. It is God telling us in the language we most understand that all will be well in the end. That is the gift we most need.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sermon - Cutting Down Trees
Preached on December 13, 2009, the third Sunday of Advent, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Luke 3:7-18
Dedicated to Harry and Margaret Craft, my parents-in-law; and always to the glory of God.
Introduction
Every year in the season of Advent, we read scripture passages about John the Baptist preparing the way for Christ. This may seem like a chronological mix-up, because while we are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, John the Baptist is preparing the way for Jesus to begin his public ministry in adulthood. It’s not a mix-up, but a good reminder for us that when we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, a large part of what we aer celebrating is who Jesus became as an adult: the way he healed bodies and relationships, the compassion he showed for people living hard lives, the anger he had for injustice, the forgiveness he gave with every breath - including his last, the way he taught us how to understand God’s character in parables, instruction, and in the very way he lived. All of it is what we celebrate on Christmas, and John the Baptist is here in the season of Advent, preaching to the people of Judea long ago, and preaching also to us, about what it means to get ready for Christ. He’s talking about an axe at the root of the tree: every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down. Cutting down trees. That’s an image that stays with me, because I want to see where it leads.
Prayer
O God, revealed to us in the Christ-child’s life, grant us in this time of worship a place for our souls to be at rest and time to re-center our lives. Surprise us with insight and affirm our deepest hopes in you. Amen
When we moved into our home five years ago there was, by the back fence, this wonderfully tall elm tree that gave shade over the entire back yard. Every autumn, for several years, it covered the yard with leaves. But then this past summer the leaves started coming down months too soon. An arborist confirmed our concern with his diagnosis: Dutch elm disease. The tree couldn’t take up water, and the leaves dried up and fell off. For our safety, and that of our neighbors, we had to cut it down. It was a sad reality, and our sadness caused us to drag our feet for a while. We just didn’t want it to come down. And now that it is down, I miss it. You see, there is this problem we have about getting from the head to the heart. In my head, I knew the tree was dead and it had to come down, but in my heart I was still very attached to it. Most of the time, the best way to move a message from our head to our heart is to act as we know we should, and the practice of those actions will change our heart. We will learn to love what comes next as we had learned to love what came before. In other words, I am learning to love the expansive sky view of clouds and sun that I see now where the tree used to stand, and I look forward to whatever will grow next in the newfound sunshine.
Or, to put it another way, and this is really what John the Baptist is saying to us, I believe: when we remove the things in our lives that are not bearing good fruit, we will have more time, more energy, more space for the things that do bear fruit, and what a gift that will be to us and to those around us. To prepare for the gift of Christ is to look at our own lives as if we were cultivating an orchard. Some of the things on which we spend our time, and thoughts, and money, and energy are not bearing fruit. They just aren’t. Maybe they once did; maybe they never did. But we keep doing them because, at some level, we have grown attached to them. That’s why we don’t want them to be cut down. But we need to change.
If the image of trees isn’t working for you, then try this. Think about the rotation of a fan, especially a ceiling fan with those long blades that stick straight out from the center. (We’ve got ceiling fans in this sanctuary, and they are on this morning because as hot air rises, we want the fans to push it back down to us. In a tall room like this sanctuary, these fans are for use in the winter.) I’m thinking about ceiling fans as a metaphor for our spiritual lives. Think about how the very tip of the blade moves at such a fast speed; when a fan is really moving, it’s hard to keep your eye on the tip of just one blade. But if you look at a spot close to the center, the fan blades are moving much slower, and your eyes can keep up with them. It almost feels restful to move from the outside tip down to the center, where the motion slows down. So, where do we live our lives: out at the edge, or close to the center? The closer we stay to our center, the more at rest our spirit will be. But we spend so much of our lives away from our center, out on the periphery, concerned with things that aren’t really central to our lives, and when we live like that, we can feel like we’re running just keep up; we have trouble focusing, and we wear ourselves out. To go back to John the Baptist’s image, we are putting a lot of energy into trees that don’t bear any fruit. Advent is an invitation to return to the center of our lives, and at the center of our lives we find a child who is Immanuel, God-with-us, who shows us that the center of life is love, compassion, mercy.
Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you exactly what you need to change in your lives. I don’t know what each of you can do to move toward the center of your lives. If I were a different kind of preacher, I’d pretend to know exactly what you need to do. (You, don’t spend so much time on this or that. And you, stop feeling like you’re responsible for everyone’s happiness, that’s not bearing any fruit for anyone.) Or maybe I could just give everyone a list of seven things you need to give up by Christmas. I can’t do that. Our lives are too different and complex for me to give you a simple, one-size-fits-all remedy. And even if I could, it would only rob you of the valuable work of discernment, which is a spiritual practice itself. I can’t tell you what you should do, but I think there are some guideposts to show us the way.
1. First, practice discernment. Take a clear look at your lives, and consider that which really deserves more of your time and attention than you have to give right now. Think about giving yourself to the trees with good fruit, and that will make it easier to figure out what can be given up in order for you to do that. Discernment is prayerful, thoughtful. Sometimes it works by trial and error, so give yourself permission to make a few mistakes and then to learn from them for next time.
2. Second, remember that this business of cutting down trees is not judgmental. The last thing John the Baptist had in mind was to say that some people are bad and others are good, and you are a bad person if you’re not bearing fruit. The truth is that all of us have parts of our lives that are fruitful and parts that aren’t. If John had wanted to condemn people, the first people he would have condemned were the tax collectors and the soldiers, the people who enforced the Roman oppression of Israel. But right there in this morning’s passage are soldiers and tax collectors, listening to John about the trees and then asking him “what should we do?” He tells them “keep your jobs and do them fairly; don’t use your power for gain at the expense of others.” All of us are complicit in injustice at some level. We can’t change the structural problems of the world by ourselves, but we can make changes in our own lives to live more justly, with more compassion for those who bear the heaviest burdens.
3. Finally, remember that we change in small stages. We live one day at a time. No one can cut down all the bad trees in one day, but we can think about this day, this week, this Christmas. What is one small change we can make that will allow more room for better fruit to grow, more room for Immanuel to be born within our lives? Begin there, and one step at a time, we will walk together to Bethlehem.
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Luke 3:7-18
Dedicated to Harry and Margaret Craft, my parents-in-law; and always to the glory of God.
Introduction
Every year in the season of Advent, we read scripture passages about John the Baptist preparing the way for Christ. This may seem like a chronological mix-up, because while we are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, John the Baptist is preparing the way for Jesus to begin his public ministry in adulthood. It’s not a mix-up, but a good reminder for us that when we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, a large part of what we aer celebrating is who Jesus became as an adult: the way he healed bodies and relationships, the compassion he showed for people living hard lives, the anger he had for injustice, the forgiveness he gave with every breath - including his last, the way he taught us how to understand God’s character in parables, instruction, and in the very way he lived. All of it is what we celebrate on Christmas, and John the Baptist is here in the season of Advent, preaching to the people of Judea long ago, and preaching also to us, about what it means to get ready for Christ. He’s talking about an axe at the root of the tree: every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down. Cutting down trees. That’s an image that stays with me, because I want to see where it leads.
Prayer
O God, revealed to us in the Christ-child’s life, grant us in this time of worship a place for our souls to be at rest and time to re-center our lives. Surprise us with insight and affirm our deepest hopes in you. Amen
When we moved into our home five years ago there was, by the back fence, this wonderfully tall elm tree that gave shade over the entire back yard. Every autumn, for several years, it covered the yard with leaves. But then this past summer the leaves started coming down months too soon. An arborist confirmed our concern with his diagnosis: Dutch elm disease. The tree couldn’t take up water, and the leaves dried up and fell off. For our safety, and that of our neighbors, we had to cut it down. It was a sad reality, and our sadness caused us to drag our feet for a while. We just didn’t want it to come down. And now that it is down, I miss it. You see, there is this problem we have about getting from the head to the heart. In my head, I knew the tree was dead and it had to come down, but in my heart I was still very attached to it. Most of the time, the best way to move a message from our head to our heart is to act as we know we should, and the practice of those actions will change our heart. We will learn to love what comes next as we had learned to love what came before. In other words, I am learning to love the expansive sky view of clouds and sun that I see now where the tree used to stand, and I look forward to whatever will grow next in the newfound sunshine.
Or, to put it another way, and this is really what John the Baptist is saying to us, I believe: when we remove the things in our lives that are not bearing good fruit, we will have more time, more energy, more space for the things that do bear fruit, and what a gift that will be to us and to those around us. To prepare for the gift of Christ is to look at our own lives as if we were cultivating an orchard. Some of the things on which we spend our time, and thoughts, and money, and energy are not bearing fruit. They just aren’t. Maybe they once did; maybe they never did. But we keep doing them because, at some level, we have grown attached to them. That’s why we don’t want them to be cut down. But we need to change.
If the image of trees isn’t working for you, then try this. Think about the rotation of a fan, especially a ceiling fan with those long blades that stick straight out from the center. (We’ve got ceiling fans in this sanctuary, and they are on this morning because as hot air rises, we want the fans to push it back down to us. In a tall room like this sanctuary, these fans are for use in the winter.) I’m thinking about ceiling fans as a metaphor for our spiritual lives. Think about how the very tip of the blade moves at such a fast speed; when a fan is really moving, it’s hard to keep your eye on the tip of just one blade. But if you look at a spot close to the center, the fan blades are moving much slower, and your eyes can keep up with them. It almost feels restful to move from the outside tip down to the center, where the motion slows down. So, where do we live our lives: out at the edge, or close to the center? The closer we stay to our center, the more at rest our spirit will be. But we spend so much of our lives away from our center, out on the periphery, concerned with things that aren’t really central to our lives, and when we live like that, we can feel like we’re running just keep up; we have trouble focusing, and we wear ourselves out. To go back to John the Baptist’s image, we are putting a lot of energy into trees that don’t bear any fruit. Advent is an invitation to return to the center of our lives, and at the center of our lives we find a child who is Immanuel, God-with-us, who shows us that the center of life is love, compassion, mercy.
Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you exactly what you need to change in your lives. I don’t know what each of you can do to move toward the center of your lives. If I were a different kind of preacher, I’d pretend to know exactly what you need to do. (You, don’t spend so much time on this or that. And you, stop feeling like you’re responsible for everyone’s happiness, that’s not bearing any fruit for anyone.) Or maybe I could just give everyone a list of seven things you need to give up by Christmas. I can’t do that. Our lives are too different and complex for me to give you a simple, one-size-fits-all remedy. And even if I could, it would only rob you of the valuable work of discernment, which is a spiritual practice itself. I can’t tell you what you should do, but I think there are some guideposts to show us the way.
1. First, practice discernment. Take a clear look at your lives, and consider that which really deserves more of your time and attention than you have to give right now. Think about giving yourself to the trees with good fruit, and that will make it easier to figure out what can be given up in order for you to do that. Discernment is prayerful, thoughtful. Sometimes it works by trial and error, so give yourself permission to make a few mistakes and then to learn from them for next time.
2. Second, remember that this business of cutting down trees is not judgmental. The last thing John the Baptist had in mind was to say that some people are bad and others are good, and you are a bad person if you’re not bearing fruit. The truth is that all of us have parts of our lives that are fruitful and parts that aren’t. If John had wanted to condemn people, the first people he would have condemned were the tax collectors and the soldiers, the people who enforced the Roman oppression of Israel. But right there in this morning’s passage are soldiers and tax collectors, listening to John about the trees and then asking him “what should we do?” He tells them “keep your jobs and do them fairly; don’t use your power for gain at the expense of others.” All of us are complicit in injustice at some level. We can’t change the structural problems of the world by ourselves, but we can make changes in our own lives to live more justly, with more compassion for those who bear the heaviest burdens.
3. Finally, remember that we change in small stages. We live one day at a time. No one can cut down all the bad trees in one day, but we can think about this day, this week, this Christmas. What is one small change we can make that will allow more room for better fruit to grow, more room for Immanuel to be born within our lives? Begin there, and one step at a time, we will walk together to Bethlehem.
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