Christmas Is Not What We Think

Listen to the hymn Mary proclaimed when her world was turned upside down; listen for the Word in the words when she was told, by an angel, she would bear a child out of wedlock:

Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν Κύριον
My soul doth magnify the Lord,

καὶ ἠγαλλίασεν τὸ πνεῦμά μου ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ τῷ σωτῆρί μου
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Did you listen? Did you hear those subversive words in there? Do you realize how much challenge is in those words to our well ordered world, and how it would change business as usual? Why, they would turn it upside down. Upside down! Oh sure, we celebrate the warm and fuzzy feelings we get at Christmas, but listen to Mary‘s hymn, and then think about how Jesus was received by the world once he came into his maturity. This same baby, this same love incarnate, this same one who makes us feel all warm and good inside is the One who got nailed to a tree because his teaching was turning everything upside down. In fact, this is the very charge that society brought against the early church because it was trying concretely to live the teachings of Jesus. In the book of Acts, as they were dragging Jason off to prison his accusers
said, and I quote, "These people have been turning the world upside down." What kind of church is THAT, I ask you? Scripture is filled with some mighty upside down thinking.

One of the remarkable messages of incarnational theology is the startling reminder that we are created in the image of God, and if that doesn‘t turn our image of ourselves, and each other, upside down, I don‘t know what will. You, and the person you like least in this world, are both created in the image and likeness of God. And God is love. We are created in the image of love: that is our deepest humanity, our deepest identity, and THAT is why Christmas turns us upside down because it reminds us that that is who we are expected be, how we are supposed to behave.

Incarnational theology changes us, everyone, it changes us. It scatters our pride in the imaginations of our hearts and it exalts our humility. Christmas fills our hungry souls with good things as it starves those areas that we mistakenly think should be right side up. We come to the manger expecting to find what we think we are going to find, what we think we always find, only to discover that this cute little baby can, and does, turn our well ordered world upside down.

Standing in the Middle

There is an old Hassidic tale of a student who asks the rabbi, "Teacher, why does the Torah say, 'place these words upon your hearts'? Why does it not tell us to place these words in our hearts?" And the rabbi responds, "It is because, as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in."

Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan said much the same thing: "God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open."

The way of Christ—the way of keeping the heart open—is, in its own way, quite simple. But never, ever, ever make the mistake of thinking it is easy. As G.K. Chesterton once said, "Christianity has not been tried and found lacking. It has been found difficult and left untried." And it is difficult because it demands that our hearts be willing to be broken and yet to stay open as Mary's, to be wounded and yet forgive as the prodigal father, to be fearful and yet face Pharaoh with the courage of Moses, to give all we have yet live in abundance as the impoverished widow, to fail miserably and yet try again as Peter, to proclaim life and yet die as Jesus, to walk the wrong path, and yet turn around as Paul. It is to love in and into the cruciform way of life, and to resolve that we will be part of the world's needed healing and not part of its continued wounding. It is to stand in the gap between a world that glorifies power and violence and in response to proclaim a message that is perceived as weakness and to walk a Way that is understood to be unrealistic. Christianity has not been tried and found lacking. It has been found difficult and left untried.

If we are to be a church where no one will look at us and see the impression of what has hurt us but rather the image of the one who called us, then we must be willing to stand in the gap: to stand in the gap between the world's violent reaction to its pain and God's loving response to that same pain. We must be willing to stand in the gap between fundamentalist beliefs that violently condemn others as wrong and a faith of light and love that teaches that the Way of Christ is more about behavior and less about creeds. We must be willing to stand in the gap between a world that glorifies the tomb of shock and awe and the God that offers the womb of grace and awe. We must be willing to stand in the gap between our own fear-based reactions and our faith-based responses, and have the courage to be, and to choose, and to walk with Christ and all faithful pilgrims who choose life over death, love over fear, generosity over scarcity. The Christian Church must ever be willing to stand in the gap between the ways and values of the world, and the Way and Value of Life.

May it be ever so.

The Mountain Of God II

In my last post I spoke of the Mountain of God, and of humanity's attempt to scale that peak to discover union with the Holy. I would like to expand upon that a bit.

In this admittedly limited metaphor, the base of this mountain is so vast that it spans a huge portion of the globe. That being the case part of its base is found in a jungle, and another part in a desert. Part of its base is found in an archipelago and part of it in a large city. Obviously, to begin to climb the mountain from those different places takes radically different skill sets. A person skilled in the jungle would perish in the desert and vice versa. Likewise the person from an archipelago in a bustling city. The path up the mountain looks different in each place. In fact, one way up might not even look like a path to someone from a different part of the globe.

This is an apt metaphor for religion. Because of historical circumstance and cultural differences the paths up the Mountain of the Lord look very different from each other at the base. And because they look so different people get to thinking that THEIR path is the only path and the others lead nowhere. People will fight, even kill, to prove themselves right.

It is only those who climb high enough up the mountain and thus who leave their ecosystems of origin behind who begin to catch a glimpse of other paths making it up the mountain. And it is only then that we realize that we have been climbing the same mountain all along.

Part of the solution to this religious internecine warfare is to help people climb: climb away from the security of the base of the mountain; climb to where the air is thinner and the view more expansive; climb to an understanding of religion that recognizes that we need paths up the mountain, and that there are other paths more suited to other people and their context.

So we climb, looking out for others coming from different directions and encouraging them on the way.