Know Tea

I had a sermon prepared for today, the Second Sunday after Epiphany.  It was all about Jesus turning the water into wine, and about the New Wine that God promises us in the Bible.  I think it was an interesting, entertaining, and compelling sermon.  I hope it was.

That was before the earthquake.  Before you and I saw those devastating images on TV.  It is estimated at this point that around 200,000 people have lost their lives in this disaster.  In terms of the percentage of Haiti’s population, that would be like 1.3 million Americans losing their lives in a single event.  That has never happened. Not at Pearl Harbor, not at Normandy, not on 9/11. [Read more →]

What is Christmas?  You may think you know the answer already, and maybe you do.  After all, you’re here, right?  Preaching on Christmas Eve can be the proverbial preaching to the choir.  But we are creatures of our time and of our culture, no matter how hard we try not to be.  Because of this, I’m afraid that, at least in part, we don’t really get Christmas, and that’s a shame.  It’s a shame because the angel of the Lord is standing right in front of us, as God’s glory shines all around, proclaiming good news of great joy for all people.  What a shame it would be if somehow we missed this news, or only partially got it.  What is the angel talking about?  What is Christmas?

I can tell you what it’s not.  Christmas is not a divinely-instituted mechanism to set the U.S. economy to rights at the end of the fiscal year.  Every year, we hear about  “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving.  We wring our hands with the people on CNBC and the Nightly Business Report, hoping that Americans spend more this year on Christmas presents than they did last year, so businesses will end the year in the black.

There was a terrible TV Christmas special in the 1970s—no, not the Star Wars Holiday Special—although this one was almost as terrible—in which a child travels into the future to see what Christmas will be like in our time.  In the 1970s version of now, Christmas has been renamed “Commerce Day,” and the whole focus of the holiday iss on buying gifts and supporting the economy.  They even topped the Commerce Tree with a big, glittering dollar sign instead of a star.  As I said, a really bad, really dumb TV special, but was it that off the mark?

You know this is why the stores decorate for Christmas so early, don’t you?  They want us to get “in the holiday mood” earlier and earlier so we’ll shop earlier and, they hope, more often, too.  You also know this is why some radio stations start playing non-stop Christmas music right after Thanksgiving too, right?  It’s not peace and good will that motivates them.  The radio station has sponsors.  Those sponsors are businesses that want you to—you guessed it—shop early and shop often.  The earlier they can fill your head with multiple versions of “Little Drummer Boy” and “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the earlier you will be in a “holiday mood”:   translation, a buying mood.  Sorry to break it to you in so cynical a fashion, but that’s just the way it is.  No, Christmas is not the shopping season.  Not even remotely.

Christmas is also not National Sentimentality Day.  Take a listen to our most-loved holiday songs.  “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.” “Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore.” “There’s no place like home for the holidays.” “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”  If Christmas isn’t Commerce Day for us, it’s Sentiment Day.  Norman Rockwell painting day.  Home and hearth day. “Just-like-the-ones-I-used-to-know” day.  It’s all about looking back, all about nostalgia, all about trying to recapture a time, whether real or imagined, when things were simpler, brighter, happier.

In contrast to this backward-looking nostalgia, the Church has just experienced the season of Advent, which is the complete opposite of nostalgia.  Advent is all about looking ahead.  “People, look east!  The time is near of the crowning of the year.” Advent is partially about looking forward to Christmas, but it’s mostly about looking forward to the Second Advent, the Second Coming, of Christ. Advent seeks to reorient our thinking away from nostalgia and to get us looking out and up, for our redemption draws nigh.

The real downside of the nostalgic Christmas is that today never measures up to yesterday.  Yesterday is idealized:  it seems better in our fuzzy memories as compared to today.  This Christmas dinner isn’t as good as last year’s.  This year’s tree isn’t as big as last year’s, or as the ones we used to get back when.  Nostalgia can be fun, but it can also sour us on the present.  Don’t dream of a Christmas like the ones you used to know:  celebrate Christmas in the here and now, where you are, and praise God for his wondrous gift in Christ!  You can’t go back and eat sugar cookies your great-aunt Frances baked in the 1950s.  They’d be very, very stale by now anyway.  Living in the past can mean disappointment in the present.  Let Bing Crosby dream about the Christmases he used to know.  Let’s celebrate this Christmas, and do so joyfully!

Christmas is not even, primarily, about “Little Baby Jesus.” “Little Baby Jesus” is the perfect window dressing to the sentimental, nostalgic Christmas, although he’s pretty uncomfortable in the Commerce Day Christmas.  While Commerce Day Christmas wants to push Little Baby Jesus aside in favor of something flashier, like the aluminum trees in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Nostalgic Christmas is perfectly happy pasting Little Baby Jesus on top of its collage of sticky memories.  After all, what could be better to add to the mix of syrupy-sweet images of White Christmases we used to know, of our happy golden days of yore, than the cuteness of a perfectly clean, immaculately styled, blonde, curly-headed, rosy-cheeked, socially-smiling newborn in a Martha Stewart manger filled with 100% hypo-allergenic hay that no animal has ever been near?  Little Baby Jesus is a perfectly sweet motif for a perfectly sweet, nostalgic Christmas.  But the real Jesus wasn’t like that, and the real Christmas isn’t like that either.

Christmas is Incarnation.  Christmas is Emmanuel:  God with us.  Christmas isn’t just “Jesus’ Birthday.” It’s much grander, much more momentous, than that.  I know some families bake a cake, write ‘Happy Birthday Jesus” on it, sing the happy birthday song, and blow out the candles, but that sells Christmas short:  it cheapens it.  Christmas is this:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Christmas is “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the Incarnate Deity.”  Christmas is the eternal God becoming one of us and living among us.  A momentous, cosmic event that’s a little beyond cake and ice cream.  We usually refer to Christmas as “The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and it is that, but perhaps we should call it “The Feast of the Incarnation.” Perhaps that would give this occasion the weight, the importance, that it deserves.  God could have left us all to perish in our sin, but instead he came among us, became one of us, to rescue us.  “To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.” Tidings of comfort and joy, to be sure. Good news of great joy, for all people.  Christmas is Incarnation.

Christmas is also Eucharist.  Christmas is not just about the event that it marks—God with us—but also about the way that God’s people mark that event.  And the way we mark that event is in the Eucharist.

Perhaps you are aware that we celebrate two holidays simultaneously every December:  Christmas and Yule.  Christmas is a 12-day feast on the Church’s liturgical calendar.  It begins tonight and lasts through January 5.  On January 6 the church will celebrate Epiphany:  the coming of the Magi to worship the newborn Christ.  That is how Christians have celebrated Christmas since at least the fourth century AD.  Yule is a winter-solstice festival from our pre-Christian Celtic/Nordic/Germanic tree-hugging past.  Holly and ivy, wassail, the boar’s head, mistletoe, the Yule log, a lot of our carols—are holdovers from Yule.  Yule is a happy time, a time of making merry, a time of rich food and strong drink.  A fun time.  The problem is, some people celebrate Yule and never get around to Christmas, including many Christians.  Christmas means “Christ’s Mass.” That is to say, the way Christians celebrate Christmas is through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist.  We celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation through the Great Thanksgiving to God for our salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving for Americans was a month ago.  But for the church around the world, this is one of our two Great Thanksgiving Days, the other being Easter.  We gather tonight for Eucharist: Thanksgiving.  We gather to thank God that in Christ, the Word became flesh, and we do that by participating in the Sacrament that reminds us that he is with us still, feeding us with his very self!  He is still Emmanuel:  God with us.

When I was in seminary, I was talking with a friend about my plans for Christmas.  I told him that the highlight of the season for me was the Christmas Eve service at the cathedral downtown.  This friend had grown up in a Christian home, but nevertheless he said, “I can’t imagine going to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  That was never a part of my experience.” Christmas for him was simply Family Day.  Christmas that isn’t Christ’s Mass is Yule.  It might be happy, it might be fun, but it’s not Christmas.

Christmas is here.  This is the Christmas Feast.  This is Christmas Dinner:  the Feast of the Incarnation of our God.  This is far beyond singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, far beyond striking the harp and joining the chorus, far beyond shopping, spending, giving, and getting.  God is with us. Christ, in this Feast, this Christ-Mass, gives us His own self with His own hand.  Good news, of great joy, for all people.

If you listen to people like Bill O’Reilly and/or listen to Christian radio (and I’m going to assume there’s a whole lot o’ overlap there), you’re used to hearing about the “war on Christmas” this time of year, every year.

This year, American Family Radio (a Christian radio network based in Tupelo, MS) published its “naughty and nice” list of stores that they deemed “Christian-friendly” or “Christian-hostile.”  Top of their list of “Christian-friendly” businesses:  Wal-Mart.  As Craig Ferguson would say, “WHAAAT???”  I guess things like paying a living wage, providing health care, ethical supply-chain practices, etc., don’t figure into AFR’s criteria.  So what did they base this decision on?  (Wait for it . . . ) Whether or not stores say “Merry Christmas” between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day (the “shopping season”) or  if they say “Happy Holidays” instead.  Those who say “Merry Christmas” get on the “nice” list, while those who say “Happy Holidays” get on the “naughty” list.

In the words of that great theologian, Garfield the cat, big fat hairy deal.

I’ll try to keep this brief.

1) No one “needs” to say “Merry Christmas” during the “shopping season” because it emphatically is not the Christmas season.  It just isn’t.  Look it up, AFR, Focus on the Family, and O’Reilly.  Now, if I see someone at this time of year and I don’t know if I will see them again before Christmas, I am very likely to say, “If I don’t see you before Christmas, have a Merry Christmas!”  But getting all hot under the collar because a cashier doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” when it isn’t the Christmas season makes no sense.  (For those of you just tuning in, the Christmas season begins–not ends–on Christmas Eve and runs through Epiphany:  January 6.  It is not the Christmas season right now any more than it is the Easter season.)

2) While it emphatically is not the Christmas season right now, it is indeed the “holiday season” if we remember that the word “holiday” simply means “holy day.”  There are plenty of holy days during the Advent and Christmas seasons.  We just celebrated St. Nicholas’ Day on December 6.  St. Lucy’s Day is this coming Sunday, December 13.  Of course there is Christmas on December 25, but there are also the 12 Days of Christmas (December 25 – January 5), and that period includes St. Stephen’s Day (December 26), St. John (December 27), Holy Innocents (December 28), and Holy Name of Jesus (January 1).  Then there’s Epiphany on January 6.  Add to that the civil holiday of Thanksgiving that has already passed, and you’ll see that it truly is a holiday season, and that “Happy Holidays” is most appropriate.  Then consider that other faiths have their own holy days during this time of year:  Chanukah, Islamic New Year, and many others.  Christ calls us to live in charity with everyone, not only the people who are exactly like us.  Good Christians are good neighbors, and that includes neighbors who are a different religion from you.

So, as a Christian, let me say, “Happy Holidays!”

I ended my first on this topic with this thought:

This is the shape of the Church Calendar that has been in place since the Fourth Century.  It not only predates the Reformation of the 16th Century, but it even predates the Great Schism (between East and West) of 1054 by almost 600 years!  So this ordering of time, the rhythm of the Christian Year, properly belongs to all Christians.  It is the heritage of the unified Church:  it is not a “Roman Catholic thing” versus a “Protestant thing,” or even a “Western thing” versus an “Eastern thing.” It is our common heritage, a part of our common life as Christians.

So, if the Church Year is not just a Roman Catholic thing or even just a Western thing, if it’s our common heritage as Christians, dating back to the Fourth Century AD, what happened?  Why do most Evangelical Protestants have little or no experience whatsoever with the Church Year?  Why are most Protestants in America, at most, “CEOs” (Christmas and Easter only)?  Why do most Evangelicals, when hearing someone mention Advent or Lent, for example, say “isn’t that something the Catholics do?”  How, and when, did we toss aside one of the most ancient and, arguably, spiritually beneficial elements of Christian tradition? [Read more →]

The last post gave some background on the origins of the Church Year and why Christians have celebrated the seasons of the Church Year since at least the Fourth Century AD.  In short, observing the seasons and rhythms of the Church Year gives believers a sacred sense of time:  a way to celebrate God’s mighty acts in history.  We celebrate the seasons of the Church Year because our faith is not a timeless mythology.  It is based in historical events, particularly the Christ event:  his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return.  By celebrating these events in a systematic fashion, at the same time every year, the church witnesses that we confess these events to be of such importance that they shape our daily lives.  The Christ Event gives our lives its order and structure.  This is what it means to live the Christian Year.

I think it would be helpful, for those who were not brought up to live the Christian Year, to give a brief overview of the seasons. [Read more →]

This post is mainly for the great group of talented musicians we have at our church now, but if the rest of you want to listen in, that’s fine.

Being a liturgical church in a mostly non-liturgical part of the country, visitors usually run into some things that require explanation.  On the most basic level, there are usually questions about the mechanics of worship:  Why do you have kneelers in the pews?  Why do you read prayers in unison?  Why is the pastor in a robe?  Why do you celebrate Communion every Sunday? etc.  But if you stick with us longer than one Sunday, then the questions turn to the ordering not simply of the service but of time itself:  that is, the ordering of the calendar. [Read more →]

. . . and what it is, is wrong.

A friend sent me this link last night.  I of course had heard some of what had gone on at Coral Ridge.  It’s hard not to hear about it if you’re in church circles at all.  I had heard rumors that the music director and organist had resigned, but until I read this on the organist’s own blog, it was just that:  a rumor, and I didn’t want to comment or speculate on a rumor.

There are quite a few things that really bother me about this, but this is at the heart of it: [Read more →]

This Sunday, as you probably already know, is World Communion Sunday.  This year, I’d like to display on a bulletin board in the narthex some of your stories about Communion.  How do you “do” Communion in your church?  What about the church of your childhood or your youth?  What makes your church’s way of celebrating Communion unique or particularly memorable?

We have Presbyterians of all stripes who read this blog, including (but certainly not limited to) PC(USA), ARP, PCA, EPC, OPC, Church of Scotland, Free Church of Scotland, and EPCEW.  We also have Baptists of many different kinds, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and probably some more that I’m leaving out.  Every tradition “does” Communion a little differently.  Furthermore, even within a particular tradition, individual congregations have their own ways of doing things.

On this World Communion Sunday, I think it will be encouraging to our congregation to read the stories of what makes Communion special in your church.  If you have pictures, send them along with your stories.  The more stories and pictures, the better!  Even if you have only one or two sentences to share, such as the name of a song you always sing at Communion, send it in.  Don’t imagine that everyone does Communion the way your church does.  For example, the first time I played for a Methodist church, I discovered the tradition of leaving money at the altar rail for a special Communion offering for the poor.

Send your stories and pictures to knowtea-at-knowtea-dot-com (writing the address properly, of course).  But please send it to me by Friday so I can print your story for the board.  Thanks, and I pray that this World Communion Sunday is a special one for all of you.

Laurel, are you reading? How ’bout you, Tim? (Banks, that is, but Horn can horn in if he wants to. Sorry, really bad pun.) All you other musician types (Bruce, Morris, David, et al), I want your input too.

Take a look at this video (and read the original poster’s thoughts on the subject too). Then come back here and let’s talk.

I’ve seen Bobby McFerrin in concert before. (At the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, with my cousin Lela, who has yet to comment on this blog!) He did this very experiment with us that night, and everyone instinctively responded as this audience does, with a pentatonic scale.

Pentatonic folk tunes about all over the world. Some of our best-known and best-loved hymn tunes fall into this category, such as NEW BRITAIN (”Amazing Grace”) from Scotland by way of Appalachia, WAYFARING STRANGER, also from Appalachia, JESUS LOVES ME, based on a Chinese folk tune, etc.

Shaped-note singing enthusiasts will immediately think of MORNING TRUMPET, BEACH SPRING, and many others such as “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal.” The Celtic tune SLANE (”Be Thou My Vision”) is one of the most deeply-loved hymn tunes we have: also pentatonic.

So, what is it about the pentatonic scale. Why does it resonate so deeply with us? (I’m not using those words figuratively, either.)

Several days ago, a friend sent out a request on Facebook for people to send in the order of worship from their churches. His church is in the midst of changing their worship service and he was looking for ideas.

Here are two of the responses:

Ours is a regular service – a praise song before greeting and then 2 hymns or praise songs, then offering, then the choir does 2 songs – mostly Southern Gospel – message, and invitation… for your youth services – which are the 5th Sundays – We sing contemporary praise and worship songs – big ones first and slow down to worship preparation – then the message and then invitation.

Well we usually have an opening hymn and after we sing the first and last verse, we have the musicians play through a verse and chorus or just a verse while everyone shakes hands and greets, then we sing the last chorus. Then it’s announcements followed by two more hymns. Then we have offering. then the choir will sing one or two songs (depends on how long they are). Then we sing amazing grace (that’s every sunday at this time), sermon, then invitation.

The first one is introduced with, “Ours is a regular service.” Is it? I know I’m in my own world, but is it? Now these are not liturgical churches, so I’m not going to say anything about the absence of Communion (oops! I just did). But why is there no confession of sin? Why no Assurance of Pardon/Declaration of Forgiveness? Regardless of denominational bent (and these churches are admittedly of a different one from mine), I think all believers need to acknowledge in worship that sin disrupts our relationship with God and needs to be acknowledged and, more importantly, that we all need very much to hear, from Scripture, the promise that our sins have been forgiven through Jesus Christ. Without the cycle of confession/assurance of pardon, the entire concept that we are approaching a holy God in worship is lost.

On an even more basic level, however, are these two questions:

1) WHAT ABOUT PRAYER? Don’t Christians pray anymore? Didn’t Jesus say something about his house being “a house of prayer for the nations”?

2) WHAT ABOUT SCRIPTURE? Both mention a sermon or message, but nothing about the public witness of Scripture. Our tradition (and the tradition of most liturgical churches) is to have a Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) reading, a Psalm (either read in unison, responsively, or antiphonally), an Epistle lesson, and a Gospel lesson each Sunday. The sermon will only be on one of these selections–usually the Gospel–but we believe the public reading of Scripture is as important a part of worship as the sermon, if not more so. It certainly isn’t something we would consider optional or dispensable.

So, those of you in more broadly evangelical churches, more “contemporary” churches, etc., do the above really describe a “regular service”? If so, how do you account for no prayer and no public reading of Scripture? Call me a stick in the mud, but I consider those two things to be non-negotiable.