Tell me the old, old story...

…of Jesus and his birth.  Luke’s words are super-familiar.

My favorite telling of the natal story was prepared by a Portuguese web presence firm Excentric in 2010.  It’s called “Nativity 2.0” and is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHNNPM7pJA. Go there.  Now.  I’ll wait for you to watch it and come back.

Fun, huh?  It’s filled with internet in-jokes and memes, but it’s still pretty good theologically despite the liberties it takes with the scriptural story and with two millennia of church traditions.  Here’s my serious point, though:  If the story of God’s incarnation of love doesn’t live and breathe and move and evolve, Jesus is just a tiny porcelain figure tucked away for 11 months and not a savior, guide, and friend, not an incarnate God-with-Us for every moment of our lives.

We have to keep Jesus real.  That’s hard, because even the nativity 1.0 stories are suffused with legend and intended to be edifying and picturesque.  That’s why so many preachers and movies over the years have reminded us that the pretty tableau smelled like a barn, that childbirth is a sweaty, painful, tedious, blood-and-amniotic-fluid-streaked process even in a 21st century hospital, much less for a young mother two millennia ago.  In this culture, it’s hard to keep the story real, but that’s the only way it has any meaning for us… for our families… for our neighbors… this week, 2013.  Thursday night at the Words and Music service we heard a reading from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson which riffs on the too-often sanitized, child-friendly un-reality show in most churches by interjecting a very human element into a memorable reenactment.

Recasting the old, old story into new words is, of course, the ongoing business of Christianity.  Mary and Joseph have traveled through time as much as through Palestine, through minds and hearts, and there has never been a single reference point for Christmas— despite what modern commentators would like— but a series of snapshots in a 2016-year-old family album.  Now we tell this life-giving story on computer screens.  Now Joseph and Mary and magi would carry smartphones.  Now our neighbors google Christmas on their smartphones.  But Tuesday we need to help them look up from their smartphones and look up at God’s star and around at other worshippers; we need to get them actually into worship.  So take your smartphone and text their smartphones and send them the link to our building so they can follow yonder maps to our living version of the Christ Child’s arrival.  The old story, new approach, new souls.

I like that web video retelling exactly for the reason it brings Mary and Joseph and their thwarted travel plans into our context… and imaginatively puts us in their sandals, bringing their story into our experiences, so they seem real… for this really real world.  Jesus is not frozen in porcelain but still alive in Ithaca, in our hearts.

I hope you will invite your family, friends, and even acquaintances to our Christmas Eve candlelight worships (family service at 6 pm and traditional service at 8:30 pm).  Help the light of Christ shine!

                                                                 In the Joy of Christmas,

                                                                      
                                                                                David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible         Isaiah 7:10-16
      From the Gospels                 Matthew 1:18-25

What’s Up with the Different Color Candles??

      A slightly lighter word this week!

      People keep asking me about why there is a pink candle in the Advent wreath.  And lots of people are confused when it turns out to be the candle lighted on the third Sunday of Advent; most figure it is the last one.  Or the first one.  But not the third one.  And why pink??? What’s up with that?

      Well, it goes back before the middle ages, when the third Sunday of Advent was celebrated as Gaudete Sunday, Latin for “Joy” Sunday.  The Scripture lessons in the Lectionary tend to include words like “joy,” and “rejoice” and “exult.”  Many traditions use Mary’s world-overturning joy in what we now call the “Magnificat,” named because she starts, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  And the introit to Roman Catholic Mass this week begins with “Rejoice!”  (Or in Latin: “Gaudete!”)  It corresponds to Laetare Sunday at mid-Lent, which also refrains on “Joy” in the middle of the penitential season and also often uses rose for vestments and paraments.

      Most liturgies for Advent and for lighting the four candles on the wreath use variations on peace, hope, joy, and love, but while the other ones may move around depending on the congregation, we all observe Joy Sunday on the third week.  Incidentally, although the season of Advent is attested in the fourth century as preparation for Jesus’ birth, the wreath traces back to 16th century Lutherans in Germany (home of the Christmas tree, too) but quickly was adopted by protestants and Catholics and enjoyed something a renaissance in the US in the 60s and 70s to become our beloved custom.

      So why pink?  OK, the liturgy geeks point out that it is actually a rose candle, but low-church Presbyterian Ashby keeps calling it pink!  Well, it began informally as an option in the Anglican tradition to the four purple candles, as a reference to rose being the color on Laertare Sunday in Lent.  Purple is the color of royalty in anticipation of the King of Kings and the color of penance in preparation for our Savior.  Blue for advent became more common in Lutheran circles and in Anglican/Episcopalian circles in the last few decades, largely to distinguish Advent from the more sober Lenten violet.  And, to be honest, I believe many churches use blue candles for the other Sundays because it looks good!  And certainly, the striking blue quilted pulpit and lectern hangings and communion table cloth totally rock in our sanctuary!

      Spread some joy this week.  Be sure to come to church this week to enjoy (!) the sounds of the Ithaca College Brass in worship and the joyful pink candle as it is lit by a church family.  Further, I hope you will invite your family, friends, and even acquaintances to our Christmas Eve candlelight worships (family service at 6 pm and traditional service at 8:30 pm).  Let the light of Christ shine!

                                                    In the Joy of Christmas,

                                                                      
                                                                                David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
            From the Hebrew Bible              Isaiah 35:1-10
            From the Epistles                     James 5:7-10
            From the Gospels                     Matthew 11:2-11

Hymns of Heaven

      If there is anything that puts us in a Christmas frame of mind more than the aromas (baking, pine, candles) it has got to be music.  It’s everywhere, and it is a powerful emotional trigger, like tastes and smells of the season.

      We are starting to hum or sing along with Christmas hymns when we hear them. Of course, worship planners like me and Bill Cowdery try to minimize true Christmas hymns and emphasize the classic Advent hymns during Advent, but we even we can’t help it during the last few weeks before Christmas!  Then there are wall-to-wall Christmas carols everywhere you go.  Some are familiar ones celebrating Jesus’ birth that aren’t exactly churchy, and some are the silly songs enjoyed by children about reindeer and snow people and sleigh bells.  Some, like Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song and the Karlofian You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch just don’t quite fit any category but bring a smile.  Seasonal good fun.

      Until advertisers get a hold of them.  Each year there are cringe-worthy remakes or re-uses of holiday music to sell all sorts of… ….all sorts of….  of “stuff.”  I don’t talk back at the TV often, but those I complain to the screen about!  And the thing that really gets me snarling are Christmas hymns bastardized by advertisers.  This year’s horrible, very bad, misuse of Do You Hear What I Hear has me shouting, “Really?” during the ad.  I guess my line in the sand is that if it’s in a hymnal, it shouldn’t be used to sell things!  Not that JCPenney is taking my advice on anything.

      Such aberrations actually don’t bother me much because the power and the glory and the refreshment for the soul brought by so much Christmastide music is far more wonderful.  Little kids singing the simple children’s hymns remind us of the whole point of the Christ Child’s birth.  And that shining moment in history has inspired some of the greatest and most substantial music of generations of composers.

      This Sunday the First Congregational choir and guests will be sharing Vivaldi’s Gloria in worship.
           
            Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will towards all.
            We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee.
            We give thanks to thee for thy great glory
            O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.
            O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
            For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord;
            thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost,
            art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

    I truly hope you can attend this week so you can get the right sort of music running around in your head to displace all the silly songs!

    And then, I hope you will invite your family, friends, and even acquaintances to our Christmas Eve candlelight worships (family service at 6pm and traditional service at 8:30pm).  That’s when we all join the heavenly chorus, echoing their joyous strains: Gloria in excelsis Deo.

                                                                           In the true Spirit of Christmas,

                                                                                      
                                                                                           David



 
Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible         Isaiah 11:1-10
      From the Epistles                Romans 15:4-13