Home for the Holidays?

The popular holiday tune has travelers chuckling to one another "from Atlantic to Pacific, gee the traffic is terrific!" How like the original Christmas story, everyone is on the move.

 

Joseph and Mary are headed south for the census. The wise men caravan west out of Baghdad. The shepherds, already away from home at night, start off on a side trip to verify what angels had reported. Herod would be travelling, but his GPS is on the fritz and he is awaiting directions. (recalculating...)

 

After the child is born, they are off again, not home to Galilee, but to Egypt. What a travelogue! How many visas and border crossings would there have been if Messiah had come instead in 2011? Imagine how stressed TSA would be if every April 15 we all had to go home to pay our taxes.

 

There is so much movement going on in the Christmas story that we gloss right over the most amazing journey that happens. The Prince of Heaven comes to a dark little corner of our planet. (Well, it's not ours really, we just live here. But you get my meaning.) Divinity gets off the throne and visits humanity. Majesty takes on our poverty. That's an amazing journey.

 

So holiday traffic is nothing new. Drive safely. Have a blessed season. Watch out for angels crossing against the lights. And who knows, if we play our cards right, maybe we'll get to see what Messiah looks like coming in 2011.

 

Maranatha! Merry Christmas!

Missional Christmas Carols - part 5

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day is based on Longfellow's wrenching poem written in the depths of the War Between the States. One of the verses that didn't make it into the carol holds this powerful image: "It was as if an earthquake rent the heathstones of a continent."

 

A unified whole, the carol nevertheless drops two verses that limit the scope to that war, and rearranges the remaining five. Here is the carol in its entirety.

 

 I heard the bells on Christmas Day
    Their old, familiar carols play,
        And wild and sweet the words repeat
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And thought how, as the day had come,
    The belfries of all Christendom
        Had rolled along the unbroken song
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And in despair I bowed my head;
    "There is no peace on earth," I said;
        "For hate is strong, and mocks the song
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

    Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
    "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
        The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,
    With peace on earth, good-will to men."

    Till ringing, singing on its way,
    The world revolved from night to day,
        A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

This carol is unusual in that it dwells entirely in the modern era, if you can call 1863 modern. It is included here among missional carols not for any instruction to care for the poor, or break chains of oppression, but for the ringing pronouncement that Wrong shall fail and Right prevail. While Longfellow rightly attributes this to the Living Insomniant God, our own participation with Him is certainly implied. Longfellow's poem ended with that potent verse. Seven years after the war Calkin wrote the tune and moved an intermediate verse down to the end, as by then the world had indeed finally revolved from night to day. At least temporarily.

Missional Christmas Carols - part 4

The missional turn in a carol happens when we leave Bethlehem and the shepherds (and the wee donkey too) and deal with the "so what?" for living today. Joy to the World gets at it down in verse 3: "No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow, Far as the curse is found." Here is wonderful balance between grace and action. He has seen our situation, the curse we have covered ourselves with as a blanket. And as deep and wide as those compounded sins go, he is pouring out blessings, his blessing, that will overwhelm and saturate all our sin. Our response? No more let sins grow. Inattention and careless living is complicity with the thorn bushes, as my garden shows clearly enough. The weeds have their own agenda. Laissez faire may work for the economy, but not for life. But when sins and their attendant sorrows are rooted out, then blessing is unencumbered and can roll where he will send it. Laissez faire, Let it be so.

Missional Christmas Carols - part 3

I remember every Christmas Eve program growing up we kids would sing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and get a bag of hard candies at the end of the program.   We never, however, sang the third verse: "No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in."   I was twenty one before I really got ahold of this truth.