Traveling in Place

Learning About Advent

Raised in a non-liturgical tradition, I didn’t learn much about Advent until I attended seminary.  The word was not entirely unfamiliar to me, but my first introduction to it came from Advent calendars my mother purchased at the local supermarket.  There were 25 tiny cardboard double doors, one for each day of December until Christmas.  The doors hid pieces of chocolate in the shape of various seasonal symbols that increased anticipation for the big day when – Santa Claus appeared!

The pastor of my Southern Baptist home church knew about Advent, and tried to find ways to gently introduce it to our congregation, but I don’t recall that he got any farther than a “Hanging of the Greens” service on the first Sunday of December.  An Advent wreath with candles would have been considered “too Catholic.”

Yet More Truth and Light

President Franklin Roosevelt first declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1935.  It was the President’s way of kick-starting a sluggish economy (one that makes our current economy look like a boom).  He announced Thanksgiving as the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season. But the holiday served a greater purpose.  Unemployment was around 25%; money and food were scarce.  Nevertheless, Americans paused to give thanks.

The national holiday formalized an observance that had been a part of American life for 72 years.  In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln called upon Americans to observe a day of thanksgiving.  Lincoln wasn’t trying to boost the economy – he wanted to boost national morale. The Civil War was 2½ years old.  Blood ran through our rivers and streams.  Corpses and body parts polluted the nation’s landscape amid the costliest war of our nation’s history.  By the fall of 1863, people were wondering if it would ever end.  Fatigue and despair threatened the nation.  In the midst of this gloom, the President called upon Americans to give thanks.

And of course, Lincoln’s thanksgiving observance was inspired by an important event in colonial American history.  In 1621, early English settlers who had come to this land by way of Holland shared a harvest meal with members of the Pokanoket tribe of Massachusetts. In our popular remembrance of this meal, turkey was the main course.  More likely, the main course was deer meat brought to the pilgrim settlers by the Pokanoket.  Whatever was on the menu, it was a significant moment when people of two very different cultures broke bread together and gave thanks to God for their blessings.

Elected by Grace

Voting ended two over two weeks ago, but the election is still not over.  All across the country, local, state and federal races remain undecided pending recounts and tabulation of absentee ballots.  Here in Central New York, the race for Congress ended in a virtual tie.  It appears we will not know the winner until well into December.

We seem to have settled (or unsettled) into an era of popular discontent that guarantees many more evenly divided races and fragile majorities.  Our two-party system is failing us miserably, however well it may have served us in the past.  Because the two parties have moved toward ideological purity, there is no center, where most Americans really are politically.  That means the broad middle is always voting against rather than for candidates, because they do not have a positive alternative.  We need a viable third party that would force the other two into compromise, rather than misinterpret victory as a mandate for their ideology.  But that would require major structural change, and I don’t see it happening any time soon.

I cherish my right to vote, but Winston Churchill’s deadpan observation that “democracy is the worst form of government in the world except for all the rest” rings true.  There is no political system capable of saving us from our sinful condition.  I am thankful that the kingdom of God does not operate by popular vote.

The Letter to the Hebrews & the Supremacy of Christ

Since September, I’ve been leading a Bible study on the book of Hebrews, and we’re nearing the end.  A hearty group of about 20 people have stayed with me as we walk through this often-overlooked New Testament book verse by verse.  In some ways, Hebrews seems odd to us.  The author uses philosophical language unique to the Christian scriptures.  He gleans from Old Testament stories details that we cannot find in the actual text (because he’s relying on later writings that aren’t part of our scripture).  And he rhapsodizes about Melchizedek, the King of Salem mentioned in Genesis 14, as one with “no beginning and no end.”  What is this book all about?

Scholars debate the identity of Hebrews’ audience, but the traditional view – that they were Palestinian Jewish-Christians – makes the most sense to me.  I believe that these words, which really constitute more of a sermon than a letter, were addressed to Jewish-Christians from Jerusalem who fled the city after the Roman invasion in A.D. 66.  Remembering the words of Jesus in Mark 13:14 (cf. Matthew 24:15), “when you see the desolating sacrilege…those in Judea must flee to the mountains,” these followers of Jesus took flight as the Romans breached the city walls and desecrated the Temple.  They journeyed down to Jericho, then followed the Jordan River Valley north until they reached a hilly area in present-day Jordan called Pella.

Spirit-led Worship

After the late worship service on Sunday, one of our members came out of the sanctuary with a big smile on his face.  “I felt an energy here today,” he said with animation in his voice.  “Did you?”

“Yes, I did!” I responded enthusiastically.

It was a good day, evidenced by the facial expressions of worshipers as they greeted me after the service.  It was one of those Sundays when all the various parts of the worship service added up to a greater whole.   It helped that attendance was good.  (The Sunday when we set the clocks back often yields the highest worship attendance since Easter, perhaps because people don’t have to choose between sleeping in and going to church.)  But it’s more than that.  We’ve felt that energy during lightly attended services as well, even in the summertime.  There is no explanation other than the Holy Spirit.

In Defense of Reformation Day

I am truly grateful for the end of this year’s election campaign, which reached new lows of incivility.  But I don’t care to write about it, because it’s already been analyzed to death, and I’m quite sure I have nothing new to add to the discussion.  Happily, there is more to life than the sorry state of affairs in American politics. 

This past week, Halloween fell on Sunday. A few of our younger children came to church dressed in their Halloween costumes. I was in costume as well. I appeared before my congregation in a monk’s robe and a tonsured wig as Martin Luther. I entered the sanctuary holding a hammer and nail and a long piece of paper.  I mulled over the 95 protests I was preparing to post publicly, and I told my story of being emboldened by God’s grace to protest the practice of selling indulgences.

I almost always make some mention of the Reformation on the last Sunday in October. When that last Sunday is October 31, Reformation Day, I bring more attention to it. Sunday was fun for me. The congregation enjoyed it as well. Imagine that – history and theology during worship and nobody went to sleep.

Reformation Day has fallen out of favor and out of fashion in most churches (even most Lutheran churches!). In recent years, ecumenical sensitivity has dampened attention to any differences between Protestants and Catholics. I think this is a mistake.

Let Me Have November!

It is the first day of November, and exactly the sort of day I associate with this month. It’s cold but not bitterly cold. The sky is overcast, birds are flying south in formation, and most of the hardwood trees are bare. The stubborn leaves clinging to the lower half of their trees provide the only color. Leaf raking is in full swing. Lawn-care specialists tell us to just mulch the leaves, thus saving a lot of work and enriching the soil. That advice is good to a point. When half a dozen or more maples tower over your lawn, it doesn’t work. My neighborhood is the oldest planned suburb in Central New York. It is heavily treed. There is no alternative to raking, at least for a while, until the leaves are sparse enough to mulch before putting the mower away for the winter.

Not everything about this day reminds me of November. I refilled a prescription at the pharmacy this morning and had to make my way around a gaudy new display of Christmas merchandise. One of the radio stations I often listen to began playing round-the-clock Christmas music. Yuck. I’m not ready for this. I know that these last two months of the year are critical for the retail world and even more so in a weak economy. But two solid months of Christmas? That’s 1/6 of the whole year. I don’t want to be sick of Christmas carols before Thanksgiving.