In the first chapter of Matthew, there is an accounting of the birth of Jesus. It is not as long or as elaborate as the one found in Luke, but I happen to like it better. I have my reasons and would be happy to explain them to you, but I will save that for another time.
In Matthew’s telling of it, there is little fanfare, no harking of the herald angels or adoring shepherds. We are told briefly about Mary and Joseph being betrothed, which in those days was the first step of a binding marital covenant. Usually the bride and husband were called just that after this first step and it could not be ended without some legal process and without good reason. And we are told that Mary was “with child” i.e. PREGNANT! Under the category of “good reason,” that would have certainly qualified.
I have always assumed Joseph was a normal man; that he had the hopes of a normal man and the feelings of a normal man and was probably hurt and ashamed like a normal man would be and probably angry like a normal man. But Matthew tells us “Joseph was a righteous man,” (Mt. 1:19). It is given as a simple, forthright statement of fact. And every time I read it, it hits me right between the eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I have read that and wished he’d written something else!
Being righteous or upright is not about right thinking or even right feeling. It is about right doing. Here was a good man. Here was a right-doing man and he was confronted with something that sure seemed incredibly wrong. Now remember, he did not have the luxury of the explanation that Matthew supplies to us like a secret whispered in our ear. Would Joseph do the right thing? Would he shame her publicly? Would he allow his hurt feelings, his sense of betrayal, his sense of justice and perceived “wrong-ness” of another’s actions to drive his response? Joseph, the righteous man, had determined to do the right thing in the right way and because of that something even more right happened.
If we have chosen to care for people and care about people, we will soon be confronted with things that feel wrong, that are wrong and we will sometimes be wrongly treated even by the people we are trying to help. And it will surely hurt. And we will be tempted to respond in kind. Do right anyway. The angels are watching.
May you be blessed this Christmas season!
Jerald
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
Feed the Baby
Glimmers
On the occasion of Christmas, 2010
I searched for her name several times in my foggy memory over the past several days. She was a part of my clinical pastoral education residency group at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in 1993-1994. I was remembering her in the context of Christmas’ soon arrival as I thought about something she had said about the same time of year in 1993. It fell to her as the chaplain on-call for the day to deliver a brief devotional message in the hospital chapel on the Friday before the Christmas break.
I could have looked it up, I suppose. I still have all the evaluations for the residency in my files and the group members are included, but I stubbornly resisted. Today, as I donned my sweats for my morning walk, her name suddenly popped into my head. Shelly. Shelly was an Episcopal priest in her forties, with nearly black hair and piercing blue eyes. She typically wore a white clerical blouse with a clerical collar and a skirt. Most often she wore a red blazer with it.
Shelly had suffered a stroke years earlier and with a great deal of determination and effort, she had recovered most of what she had lost. What remained was a bit of aphasia. She spoke slowly and deliberately and it took a bit of work to put her thoughts into words. “Wait, wait,” she would say when someone gave her a phone number to call. She would ask the caller to slow down and she would write it down and read it back to them to make sure she had recorded it accurately.
In her Christmas message, she re-told the ancient account of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. She talked of how God loved us and reached down to us, came to us in the form of an infant. It was all lovely and wondrous, she said, but it also required something of no small cost to Mary and Joseph. Babies have to be fed. This one was no exception. He would not survive, would not grow, would not speak and would not have amazed the hearers in Temple at age twelve had he not been nurtured and fed. He would not have performed any miracles or delivered the Sermon on the Mount. He would not have died on a cross or been raised from the dead, as Christians believe, had they not fed the baby.
Song after song this Christmas season reference this special, “most wonderful time of the year,” and it truly is wonderful. People smile easily, ask about other’s families and if they will get to see them over the holidays. And even though it is sometimes characterized by economic over-indulgence, it is just as often characterized by dropping money in red kettles, adopting an angel on a tree, feeding the hungry and Toys for Tots. Why can’t this Christmas kind of living and giving last all year? Shelly delivered the zinger with the answer right at the end of her Christmas message. “You’ve got to feed that baby.”
Merry Christmas
Jerald
On the occasion of Christmas, 2010
I searched for her name several times in my foggy memory over the past several days. She was a part of my clinical pastoral education residency group at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in 1993-1994. I was remembering her in the context of Christmas’ soon arrival as I thought about something she had said about the same time of year in 1993. It fell to her as the chaplain on-call for the day to deliver a brief devotional message in the hospital chapel on the Friday before the Christmas break.
I could have looked it up, I suppose. I still have all the evaluations for the residency in my files and the group members are included, but I stubbornly resisted. Today, as I donned my sweats for my morning walk, her name suddenly popped into my head. Shelly. Shelly was an Episcopal priest in her forties, with nearly black hair and piercing blue eyes. She typically wore a white clerical blouse with a clerical collar and a skirt. Most often she wore a red blazer with it.
Shelly had suffered a stroke years earlier and with a great deal of determination and effort, she had recovered most of what she had lost. What remained was a bit of aphasia. She spoke slowly and deliberately and it took a bit of work to put her thoughts into words. “Wait, wait,” she would say when someone gave her a phone number to call. She would ask the caller to slow down and she would write it down and read it back to them to make sure she had recorded it accurately.
In her Christmas message, she re-told the ancient account of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. She talked of how God loved us and reached down to us, came to us in the form of an infant. It was all lovely and wondrous, she said, but it also required something of no small cost to Mary and Joseph. Babies have to be fed. This one was no exception. He would not survive, would not grow, would not speak and would not have amazed the hearers in Temple at age twelve had he not been nurtured and fed. He would not have performed any miracles or delivered the Sermon on the Mount. He would not have died on a cross or been raised from the dead, as Christians believe, had they not fed the baby.
Song after song this Christmas season reference this special, “most wonderful time of the year,” and it truly is wonderful. People smile easily, ask about other’s families and if they will get to see them over the holidays. And even though it is sometimes characterized by economic over-indulgence, it is just as often characterized by dropping money in red kettles, adopting an angel on a tree, feeding the hungry and Toys for Tots. Why can’t this Christmas kind of living and giving last all year? Shelly delivered the zinger with the answer right at the end of her Christmas message. “You’ve got to feed that baby.”
Merry Christmas
Jerald
Saturday, December 18, 2010
I couldn’t help but smile. On the way to school this morning, Christian, my grandson, was singing. “Deck the halls with folly jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la.” This is the stuff of Christmas. Christmas carols, children’s eyes filled with wonder, lights on palm trees (we live in Florida), Charlie Brown yard scenes, snowmen and Santa Claus.
I have always loved Christmas carols. When they were small, my three girls would wear us out singing them. One year we made a rule that they could not sing them until after Thanksgiving. Looking back, I think that was a mistake. Sure, we got tired of hearing them then, but I think we squashed some of the joy bubbling up from our children’s hearts. We should have let them sing.
Like songs sometimes do, another song took me back to my childhood yesterday. We had a luncheon and party with co-workers, a part of which was a “Yankee swap.” When my turn came and I had the choice of an unopened gift, or stealing one from someone who had gone before, I went for the steal. I took “Christmas with the Rat Pack” from Fran Garrett who had hidden the cd inside his shirt, hoping no one would remember it. The Rat Pack, of course, refers to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. It was “Silver Bells” sung by Dean Martin that took me back in time. It was one of my mother’s favorites. Suddenly I’m a 7 year-old kid admiring our spindly Christmas tree with the big glass bulbs with a gold and purple glass spire on the top.
At the time, my mother worked at Winn Dixie in Starke, Florida and my dad worked at the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford. We lived on the grounds of the State Prison in a three-bedroom concrete block house with terrazzo floors. I loved it there. On Christmas Eve, there was a party at the Community Center, a big log building with wooden floors. There was food and music and afterward we went home and opened our presents. Silver Bells, spindly Christmas trees, bicycles and roller skates. The stuff of Christmas past.
I’ll have some more to say about Christmas next week. But for now, let your mind wander back to your childhood Christmas days. Sure, all of the memories may not be heartwarming. Hopefully some will be. And if for whatever reason you find yourself having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit, listen to the children singing “Deck the halls with folly jolly.” That should do it.
Merry Christmas,
Jerald
I have always loved Christmas carols. When they were small, my three girls would wear us out singing them. One year we made a rule that they could not sing them until after Thanksgiving. Looking back, I think that was a mistake. Sure, we got tired of hearing them then, but I think we squashed some of the joy bubbling up from our children’s hearts. We should have let them sing.
Like songs sometimes do, another song took me back to my childhood yesterday. We had a luncheon and party with co-workers, a part of which was a “Yankee swap.” When my turn came and I had the choice of an unopened gift, or stealing one from someone who had gone before, I went for the steal. I took “Christmas with the Rat Pack” from Fran Garrett who had hidden the cd inside his shirt, hoping no one would remember it. The Rat Pack, of course, refers to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. It was “Silver Bells” sung by Dean Martin that took me back in time. It was one of my mother’s favorites. Suddenly I’m a 7 year-old kid admiring our spindly Christmas tree with the big glass bulbs with a gold and purple glass spire on the top.
At the time, my mother worked at Winn Dixie in Starke, Florida and my dad worked at the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford. We lived on the grounds of the State Prison in a three-bedroom concrete block house with terrazzo floors. I loved it there. On Christmas Eve, there was a party at the Community Center, a big log building with wooden floors. There was food and music and afterward we went home and opened our presents. Silver Bells, spindly Christmas trees, bicycles and roller skates. The stuff of Christmas past.
I’ll have some more to say about Christmas next week. But for now, let your mind wander back to your childhood Christmas days. Sure, all of the memories may not be heartwarming. Hopefully some will be. And if for whatever reason you find yourself having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit, listen to the children singing “Deck the halls with folly jolly.” That should do it.
Merry Christmas,
Jerald
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Christmas 2009
One of the truths of relationships is that a move toward someone, by risking self-disclosure, trusting them with a part of your life you share with trusted people, usually results in a corresponding move in your direction. I move toward you, you move toward me. If you move toward me, I am inclined to reciprocate. It is the basic stuff of human connectedness.
One November Saturday in 1979, I heard someone singing in the sanctuary of the Riverhills Church of God. At the time, I was teaching at Riverhills Christian School, operated by the church, in Tampa FL. I made a staggering $161.00 a week, if memory serves, and I worked part-time as the church janitor for some extra cash. That's why I was there on that Saturday.
I walked into the sanctuary through the side entrance, near the stage and I saw James Byrd, my pastor, sitting at the sound table in the back of the church. With earphones on, he was practicing his solo for the Christmas cantata, "His Love Reaching." I paused in my duties, unseen by the singer and listened to his clear baritone sing, "Love kept on longing, and Love kept on reaching, right past the shackles of my mind..." Believe me, it sounded wonderful.
I have thought of that moment and that song several times this week as I anticipate Christmas. Christmas is the story of God reaching for us, God coming to us, God with us. Emmanuel. Coming to us not because we were righteous, or good, or deserving, but because were weren't.
I meet people bound with skackles of their own everyday. You do too. It is easy to dismiss them, to catagorize them, to depersonalize them and dehumanize them. We can come up with all kinds of reasons why they may be entitled to healthcare, but not our care. But in my head I hear that song; Love longing...Love reaching. I am called to care, called to love. Christmas reminds me to move toward them, to reach out to them, to care for them and about them. That's what Love did. That's what Love does.
Merry Christmas
Jerald
One November Saturday in 1979, I heard someone singing in the sanctuary of the Riverhills Church of God. At the time, I was teaching at Riverhills Christian School, operated by the church, in Tampa FL. I made a staggering $161.00 a week, if memory serves, and I worked part-time as the church janitor for some extra cash. That's why I was there on that Saturday.
I walked into the sanctuary through the side entrance, near the stage and I saw James Byrd, my pastor, sitting at the sound table in the back of the church. With earphones on, he was practicing his solo for the Christmas cantata, "His Love Reaching." I paused in my duties, unseen by the singer and listened to his clear baritone sing, "Love kept on longing, and Love kept on reaching, right past the shackles of my mind..." Believe me, it sounded wonderful.
I have thought of that moment and that song several times this week as I anticipate Christmas. Christmas is the story of God reaching for us, God coming to us, God with us. Emmanuel. Coming to us not because we were righteous, or good, or deserving, but because were weren't.
I meet people bound with skackles of their own everyday. You do too. It is easy to dismiss them, to catagorize them, to depersonalize them and dehumanize them. We can come up with all kinds of reasons why they may be entitled to healthcare, but not our care. But in my head I hear that song; Love longing...Love reaching. I am called to care, called to love. Christmas reminds me to move toward them, to reach out to them, to care for them and about them. That's what Love did. That's what Love does.
Merry Christmas
Jerald
Thursday, December 18, 2008
In Praise of Tolerance
Glimmers
December 18, 2008
“Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers of at least what the saints are blinded by…” (Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life, p. 169)
It raises its head at Christmas time every year. I’m talking about the PC (politically correct) impulse to ignore Christmas at Christmas. It is manifested in the signage at malls, grocery stores, store clerks who can't seem to remember how to say the word "Christmas," and greeting cards. It is the “happy holidays” syndrome.
I understand the impulse for inclusion and sympathize with it to a degree. We are a society that purports to celebrate religious freedom. Persons are free to celebrate whatever religion they wish, or celebrate none. Under our Constitution, you are no less a citizen either way. Our culture has adherents to a wide variety of religious traditions. Some, mistakenly I think, uphold pluralism as a way for all who believe various and differing religions to get along. Religious pluralism is “the view that all religions are equally valid. According to religious pluralists, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, et. al., are all equally worthy, even equally true religions. Each of these is a legitimate expression of a unique cultural heritage, and to reject it as false is to reject that cultural heritage, to marginalise a people.” (ExistenceofGod.com, Dec. 18, 08)
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe,” the pluralist will say. It doesn’t matter, unless of course you really believe it. And that is the problem. Most adherents of a religion believe it. That is why they are adherents! And while there are some universal truths that many religions share, there are some contradictory truth claims too. To tell a believer of any faith that it doesn’t matter what they believe because all religions are equally valid belittles both the person and the religion they practice. Pluralism undermines tolerance precisely because it demeans the importance of religious belief. Tolerance is not required if what you believe doesn’t matter. Tolerance is required when persons believe differently about God and the faiths to which they belong and it matters to them.
The writer at the above website goes on to say, “We are in danger of losing the ability to disagree respectfully. Religious pluralism, which claims to uphold the virtue of tolerance, actually threatens to erode it still further. The solution to religious intolerance is not to pretend that we are all in agreement really, but to learn to disagree respectfully.” I couldn’t agree more.
So, with all due respect, no “Happy Holidays” from me. To my Muslim co-workers and friends, I hope your Eid al Adha was wonderful and that your Hijra-Muharram is blessed. To my Jewish co-workers and friends may your Hanukkah be the happiest yet. And to my Christian friends and co-workers, may all the blessings of Christmas be yours,
Merry Christmas,
Glimmer Man
December 18, 2008
“Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers of at least what the saints are blinded by…” (Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life, p. 169)
It raises its head at Christmas time every year. I’m talking about the PC (politically correct) impulse to ignore Christmas at Christmas. It is manifested in the signage at malls, grocery stores, store clerks who can't seem to remember how to say the word "Christmas," and greeting cards. It is the “happy holidays” syndrome.
I understand the impulse for inclusion and sympathize with it to a degree. We are a society that purports to celebrate religious freedom. Persons are free to celebrate whatever religion they wish, or celebrate none. Under our Constitution, you are no less a citizen either way. Our culture has adherents to a wide variety of religious traditions. Some, mistakenly I think, uphold pluralism as a way for all who believe various and differing religions to get along. Religious pluralism is “the view that all religions are equally valid. According to religious pluralists, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, et. al., are all equally worthy, even equally true religions. Each of these is a legitimate expression of a unique cultural heritage, and to reject it as false is to reject that cultural heritage, to marginalise a people.” (ExistenceofGod.com, Dec. 18, 08)
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe,” the pluralist will say. It doesn’t matter, unless of course you really believe it. And that is the problem. Most adherents of a religion believe it. That is why they are adherents! And while there are some universal truths that many religions share, there are some contradictory truth claims too. To tell a believer of any faith that it doesn’t matter what they believe because all religions are equally valid belittles both the person and the religion they practice. Pluralism undermines tolerance precisely because it demeans the importance of religious belief. Tolerance is not required if what you believe doesn’t matter. Tolerance is required when persons believe differently about God and the faiths to which they belong and it matters to them.
The writer at the above website goes on to say, “We are in danger of losing the ability to disagree respectfully. Religious pluralism, which claims to uphold the virtue of tolerance, actually threatens to erode it still further. The solution to religious intolerance is not to pretend that we are all in agreement really, but to learn to disagree respectfully.” I couldn’t agree more.
So, with all due respect, no “Happy Holidays” from me. To my Muslim co-workers and friends, I hope your Eid al Adha was wonderful and that your Hijra-Muharram is blessed. To my Jewish co-workers and friends may your Hanukkah be the happiest yet. And to my Christian friends and co-workers, may all the blessings of Christmas be yours,
Merry Christmas,
Glimmer Man
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