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 

Which One?

      Yikes!  It’s almost Christmas!!! I’ve been seeing Christmas decorations since Columbus Day! “Santa Claus is coming to town” earlier and earlier.  Some years, I can’t even tell who to expect!  Santa Claus?  Scrooge? ...or the Grinch?!

      About every two or three years, it all gets on my nerves and I retreat into my “Scrooge mode,” grumping around at how all the moneymaking has obscured the true spirit of the season, how “wishbooks” and singing fish plaques and artificial trees and comic movies about Santa Clauses and his relatives(!) have turned the holiday into utter humbug.  Acquisitiveness runs rampant!

      In my anti-commercialism mood, my favorite figure is “a mean one... Mr. Grinch!” (The only Christmas television special I will watch is the animated Dr. Seuss “Grinch!”)  We all relate to the Grinch’s annoyance at the effervescent materialism of the merchants in Whoville and how you can’t get sappy seasonal songs out of your head.  If we’ve had a bad year, we hate everyone who’s happy and carefree; if we can’t enjoy Christmas, we don’t want anyone else to, either.  Dr. Seuss picked a perfect “jealousy green” for his furry felon.

      Another gripe constricting our “too small” hearts is our suspicion that lots of our neighbors are only in it for the presents and stuff.  If joy irritates the Grinch, joyful hypocrisy irritates the Grinch-y Christian in us even more!  We distain the superficial happiness of “the consumer Christmas,” grousing that money seems to be “the reason for the season.”  OK, so we don’t actually want to steal all the materialistic trappings of everyone’s celebration like the Grinch, but we, like him, have a hard time seeing much of anything beyond materialism in most of the faces at the mall.

      However, in a good year, we do, in fact, discover that there really is a strong, hope-filled, truly joyous spirit in the hearts around us, a depth of understanding which surpasses the carol sung by the Whos around their empty tree.  Mercifully, we in the church are not as baffled by discovering a genuine “Spirit of Christmas” out there as the Grinch.  If anything we’re rather relieved that it hasn’t been totally submerged by the mass merchandisers and advertisers.

      In a very good year, we can help some scroogely grinch we know discover the wonder of the holiday, or at least, like Max the dog, look on with amused satisfaction while someone’s heart grows a couple of sizes.

      But this year, maybe we can look beyond the shadows cast across December 24th by the jolly old elf and his gift-laden sleigh and by Ebenezer Scrooge and by the Grinch and lift our eyes high enough to see the star in the East casting its holy light over all the earth.  We’ll know anew the birth of Jesus in our souls.

      It’s not the gifts, it’s not a saccharine secular “Spirit of Christmas,” it’s not humbug, it’s not the ghost of past, present, or future, it’s not trees and lights, but it’s the presence of the God who loves us enough to be born among us.  It’s not at the mall; it’s at the stable.  It’s not a cartoon character; it’s the real hope of the world.

      But deep down inside us, we know that already, don’t we?

                                                        In the true Spirit of Christ,

                                                                          
                                                                                    David

Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible          Isaiah 2:1-5
       From the Epistles                  Romans 13:11-14
      From the Gospels                  Matthew 24:36-44

Thanking Give

      This is the week when we as families and a nation take a moment to pause and express our thankfulness for what we have.  Even people who don’t necessarily come from a religious background who thank the divine for their well-being celebrate the Pilgrim’s 1621 celebration of harvest.  Many may not believe their blessings flow from God, but they certainly will appreciate that they have them.  Whether as a fall harvest festival or as gratitude to the Almighty, many feel thankful for what they have.

Of course, not everyone is in a good place from which to be thankful.  Many people have had hard years, with troubles and difficulties.  Many are economically beaten up.  Their celebrations are modest, sometimes helped by others.

This year’s huge holiday irony is the Ohio Walmart having a food drive for its own workers who cannot afford Thanksgiving meals.  Low wage employees are being asked to help low wage employees while six members of the Walton family collectively are worth $144 billion, more than the bottom 42% of US families combined.  There is something not right in our national social contract when both the stock market and the numbers of people hungry and homeless and un- or under-employed are at all-time highs.  

So it seems to me a bit facile for many of us in good places of thankfulness to simply thank God for our blessings.  “Giving thanks” may not be enough when our neighbors are stressed.  So my challenge to us this thanksgiving week is to go further and give and give thankfully.  Take the recognition that (as the psalmist says) the lines have fallen pleasantly for us, be thankful, and express your gratitude for God’s goodness by doing for the least of our neighbors (remember Matthew 25:31-46?).  And do at least one thing seriously, more than the usual token donation to the myriad of causes clamoring for our dollars between now and Christmas.  Do one thing (yes, “do,” not just write a check.  Do something.).  And give something substantial, something over and above, something that you will notice.

To get you thinking of ways you might respond thankfully, I’ll remind you of the various causes available, beginning with the gifts of conscience and compassion and justice like through the Church World Service or Heifer gift catalogs.  Other things are happening denominationally.  Help with Philippines Relief; the UCC is supporting early response and recovery efforts of partners in the ACT Alliance and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines.  To see how you can help or make a donation, go to http://www.ucc.org/disaster/philippines_typhoon_appeal.html or write a check to our church and indicate that it is for Typhoon Haiyan, and we will send it to the conference.  Feed My Starving Children Philippines relief effort: To read about the efforts being made by FMSC and to donate toward additional meals in the Philippines, visit https://www.fmsc.org/Philippines. There are simple things really close to home.  Christmas Shoeboxes for Catholic Charities of Tompkins County should be returned to the church by Sunday, December 8 for the youth to gift wrap the boxes.  Thanksgiving Meal Basket Project: Children’s Ministries is collecting food items to create six Thanksgiving Meal baskets to be distributed to local families through Family and Children’s service of Ithaca.  Heifer International fund raiser: The youth will be selling organic and fairly traded chocolates, coffees, teas, dried fruit and nuts from Equal Exchange during Advent. Please support sustainability and make a difference in the lives of small farmers and artisans across the globe.  Look for their display in the Narthex starting Sunday, Nov. 24.  Heifer gift cards will also be available for sale. Our Warm Wooly Tree is up earlier than usual this year because we want to get warm items to the folks who need them before cold weather hits.  Bring in new hats, mittens, gloves, scarves and socks for kids and adults to decorate our tree. At the end of the month, the items will be donated to community members in need through the Salvation Army.  There are individuals you may know who could use a bit more money, or some time with you being a friend, or a ride somewhere or some few minutes or hours of your time.  Something will nudge at you this week or month; respond in thankfulness.  Stretch yourself a bit this season.  Do and give to others because God has been good to you.  God has made a difference in your life; make a difference in someone’s life.

                   It’s more than thanksgiving.  It’s thankfully giving!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                          
                                                                                    David

Texts For Sunday Worship:        

From the Hebrew Bible          Jeremiah 23:1-6
From the Epistles                  Colossians 1:11-20
From the Gospels                  Luke 23:33-45

When I Survey the Wondrous…

            I admit that I am not a big fan of all the telephone or online surveys that pop up in front of my face.  For most, I tend to hang up or click the window closed with no twinge of guilt!  Some seem worthy, and I will do them.  I was selected one year as a pastor respondent to the Presbyterian Panel, for which questions ranged from “what statement best matches your theological perspective,” to how often you exercise and do you have pets.  If a company I do business with asks, or certain organizations ask and really make a good case that my input matters, I will make an effort.  And, honestly, if filling out a customer survey on a register receipt might get me a gift certificate or enter me into a drawing for a free iPad, I’ll do those, too.

            The U.S. Congregational Life survey we will take this Sunday during worship falls into my well-worth-doing category.  It is a clear, relatively short, well-normed, broadly-based instrument which will give us not only useful demographic data but a very useful thumbnail sketch of our congregation, our composition, and our thoughts about our faith community.  What sets it apart from most other processes is that it shows us where we are on the spectrum for several key factors.  We see where we fit among other congregations and denominations in the U.S.  I find it one of the clearest, sharpest mirrors in which to see ourselves and our expectations.  As I have said often, the Ithaca community is rather unlike most other communities(!), and this survey gives us a national baseline to measure ourselves against as we prepare to undertake a national search for a pastor.

            The survey will have great utility for the search committee when we elect one, perhaps more than most surveys.  It will really help our self-study and our search to have the best information possible, and this has a lot of value for our process, so I really encourage you to add your information to our data.  Your input matters.  Really!  The more who participate, the better our results will be.  Yes, it is worth your time.  It will help!  It will give back a lot more to our congregation than a coupon for a beverage from doing a fast-food survey.

            Most people who have taken this survey have found it interesting and somewhat thought-provoking, and it is pretty quick to take.  Quite a few have mentioned, “I hadn’t thought of it that way” about some of the questions.  I was the interim at a church which needed to do a self-study survey, and while we were considering options, we were randomly selected by the U.S. Congregational Life Survey computer to be part of the original norming.  Providence.  After church, several of the members were so impressed by it that they came back on Monday to hand tabulate the questionnaires before the UPS truck came for them on Tuesday.  They didn’t want to wait the extra time for the computer to crunch all the national data!  Since then USCLS have even added powerpoint presentations of results to their excellent reports and charts. I have had very good experience with this and wish to reinforce how useful it is, even to a reluctant survey-taker like me!

            Well, yes, maybe sticking in a “Golden Ticket” in one survey for an Equal Exchange chocolate bar is more for fun than an actual bribe, but I truly encourage you to attend worship Sunday and help all of us view more clearly what and who we are as First Congregational.  We’ll see you then!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                          
                                                                                    David


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible          Isaiah 65:17-25
      From the Epistles                   2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
      From the Gospels                   Luke 21:5-19

Harvest Gratitude

      This is the time of year, leading up to Thanksgiving, when we in the mainstream northeast culture tend to get really nostalgic about our agrarian roots… at least decoratively.  Glorious piles of pumpkins and squashes and vegetables and different colored ears of maize tumbling from cornucopias perch perfectly on straw, perhaps with a few cornstalks in the background.  Makes us feel like the pilgrims at their first harvest celebration.

      Of course, what we really pick up in Tops or Wegmans is more prosaic, wrapped in plastic, generally.  And unless you live around really old-school Mennonites who sometimes do stack shocks of corn after handcutting it on smaller, more uneven patches, most of the corn is sucked up by big green John Deere harvesters and loaded in bulk transport trailers.  Even most of the Mennonites around Dundee use mechanical harvesters; the only difference is that they have steel lug wheels like their big green tractors.  So even agriculture is a lot different from the Thanksgiving season pictures.

      Supporting the work of the church has changed a lot from the images of the favorite thanksgiving and harvest hymns we sing.  The Biblical images of supporting the temple are based on hand- and animal-based agriculture which in the ancient near east was mostly year round, and the faithful brought foodstuffs and offerings to the temple or sent money with which the needs of the temple staff could be purchased in Jerusalem.  People brought a portion off the top to the temple, the “first fruits.”  There were alms taken for the poor, as well.  In the middle ages, and in more northern Europe, churches and abbeys and such owned land which was farmed and the produce stored, as well as monetary offerings, but a significant portion of church income came in late fall at the harvest, when farmers sold their crops or brought bags of grain or whatever to the church warehouses.  For much of church history, in fact, most income (cash or goods) arrived in the fall, and the church used that through the year.

      In the “new” world, without the establishment of church properties but with a by then very well developed currency and banking system, most churches in the American colonies were using offering plates passed during worship for mission and support of the poor and for paying clergy.  Building upkeep was typically paid by pew rentals.  And most congregations got their influx of giving with the first fruits of harvest, less in kind and more in coin, and still mostly in autumn.

      Lots changed with the industrial revolution.  For purposes of a history of church giving, the biggest was that more people were receiving weekly paychecks than getting seasonal farm income.  So instead of getting several hundred dollars in October from the landowners, things shifted to weekly donations from many workers.  Pew rents began to fall out of favor around the U.S. Civil War.  Personally, I think that had to do with central heating in sanctuaries in the northeast that got us away from box pews to the auditorium style seating of churches built since the Second Great Awakening.  Predictable paychecks meant predictable offerings and tithes through the year.

      In the 20th century, churches became more “businesslike” in their operation, and the managerial types wanted to be able to prepare annual budgets, and it helped to get indications from church members about how much they might contribute for the year.  With predictable family income, members could make annual pledges, and “cash flow” in general for most churches evened out, and we ended up with the system now familiar to us.

      So that’s the long way around to why we have a fall stewardship push and pledge cards!

      The thing to remember, however industrialized our giving has become since the Plymouth colony, is that our human, spiritual impulse remains the same: sharing with others and God part of what we earn so that the gospel of God’s love and human justice and compassion are spread to others.
We share because we are grateful for what God has done for us and our families and our world.  That has not changed, no matter how we get those symbols of our thanksgiving to the front of our sanctuary.

      Be generous as God has been generous to us!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                          
                                                                                    David

      A quick reminder: on the 17th, we will be doing the U.S. Congregational Life Survey at the end of worship.  Please make an effort to attend on November 17 to contribute.  We can make special arrangements for you if you cannot attend that day, but even the blank surveys must be returned, so we have to make sure they are accounted for.   Call the office at 607-257-6033, and we will work something out for you.  In one of the surveys there is hidden a “Golden Ticket” for a chocolate bar from the Equal Exchange project the Youth Ministry Team is doing to support the Heifer Project.  How’s that for an extra incentive!?!


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Haggai 2:1-9
      From the Epistles             2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
      From the Gospels             Luke 20:27-38