Procrastinating with the Friday Five

I SO should be working on the Christmas Day sermon right now. I should also be writing that very last sentence for the Christmas Eve one - but I always get stuck on that last bit, so I'm procrastinating with holiday food questionnaires...

1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it's just not Christmas. Spritz and Peparkakor; both Swedish cookies, both Grandma's recipes. Must have both. Pretty much anything with almond flavoring, actually.

2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, both, or neither? My lovely in-laws host Christmas Day: this year I put my claim on Thanksgiving, which is about the only major holiday a pastor can host. Not much church involved. Then we head 300 miles west after Christmas to have another celebration with my family. Two Christmases! Gotta love it.

3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog. I'm going to add another: Glogg, the Swedish version of mulled wine. More like everything-you've-got-in-your-liquor-cabinet-plus-cloves. You can get drunk off the fumes. Not that I do that.

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist? Not a cane fan in general. But I say, stick with the classic. Nobody liked New Coke, either.

5. Have you ever actually had figgy pudding? And is it really so good that people will refuse to leave until they are served it? I cannot imagine that anything called "figgy pudding" is that great. But I have had a good fruitcake, so all things really are possible.

Same Old, Same Old

This is the greatest challenge of preaching on the Christmas story for me; that familiarity breeds contempt. And the particular sort of familiarity people have (including me, by the way) with the Christmas story makes it difficult to break through with something new. I trust that God is always doing something new, even through my preaching, but when it comes to preaching on a story everybody knows, that's hard stuff. Last year, a former colleague told me my sermon "sounded too much like last year's." When I vented about that comment to another colleague, he replied, "hey - Jesus gets born every year. How new can you get?"

On my bookshelf, above my desk, is a list called Wisdom for Pastors, written by Krister Stendahl. One of the pieces advised is this: "you shall not think you already know the message; pray, ponder, be still, and listen." Here's the one right below that: "don't underestimate the power of the Word by not waiting for it to speak."

He is so right about that, and yet during a week when - in perfect irony - there seems to be no time to wait for anything, how is there time to wait for the Word to speak? What if the Word has nothing to say until Monday morning? Too late then.

Simply a bit of homiletical venting, I suppose. There will be something to say - that, God has promised. And I could certainly tune up my listening. Wouldn't that be a change?

Late Friday Five

Somehow, I was not getting the right page on Rev Gals, so I missed the Friday five. But here goes, even if it's now the Tuesday five...

1) It's a Wonderful Life--Is it? Do you remember seeing it for the first time?
I never actually saw it until high school. And loved it immediately. My favorite scene is still the dance on the oops-there's-a-pool-under-there floor.

2) Miracle on 34th Street--old version or new?
Embarassingly, the new one. Mara Wilson is adorable. And truthfully, I've never seen the old one all the way through.

3) Do you have a favorite incarnation of Mr. Scrooge?
Not really. I'm big on the Muppets, though.

4) Why should it be a problem for an elf to be a dentist? I've been watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for years now, and I still don't get it.
You'd think all that Christmas candy would make for high dentistry need among elves.

5) Who's the scariest character in Christmas specials/movies?
Jim Carrey's version of the Grinch. But not scary in a good way; scary in the fact that he looks like crap.

Thoughts on Sunday's Sermon

Two disclaimers: one, in an unusual move, we are not following the Advent lectionary texts this year. We're reading through Luke 1 consecutively, so this week we pick up with the Magnificat. And two, the following by no means constitutes an actual sermon. Hey - it's only Thursday! Just some leanings.

Paired with the Magnificat is Hannah's song in 1 Samuel. The two women echo one another; or, more accurately time-wise, Mary echoes Hannah. One woman who has waited a lifetime to bear a child, the other who is barely a child herself.

What I will not preach on is the secret sisterhood between myself and Hannah. My husband and I are trying to conceive our first child, and we have been at this for a year. While I am not quite in the same league as Sarah (nor is my husband "as good as dead," as Paul so kindly describes Abraham), I know the waiting...and the waiting is more than hard. It raises questions that have no answers. It causes pain that has no cure. It breaks my heart almost beyond repair. It makes me anxious beyond words of comfort. And - most heartbreaking and yet life-giving of all - it does not quench hope. I doubt I have yet waited as long as Hannah. But I know a bit of her grief.

What I will preach on, I think, is something less private and more commonly known this season. A few weeks ago, my congregation held its annual Christmas hymnsing/talent show/reason to eat chocolate in disturbing quantities. (Though a self-described Advent Nazi, I find this Sunday afternoon event takes the edge off of the "no Christmas carols on Sunday mornings during Advent" rule). One soloist sang a piece called, "Going Home for Christmas," and yes - it was every bit as sappy as its title suggests. But I was sitting next to a woman I know to be undergoing a devastating divorce, and watching a woman across the aisle whose husband recently died, and thinking about a friend whose father died at the age of 58 on All Saints' Day, and thinking, "why the hell are we listening to this song at church? What about people for whom home is painful, or non-existent, or life-draining, or horrible in some other way? What about those for whom 'going home' suggests pain beyond measure? Shouldn't this worship space be a place of honesty, where we do not pretend that home is always Norman-Rockwellian?"

The desire to 'go home' at Christmas is indeed strong. Living some 300 miles away from my own family, I understand it. Yet Hannah and Mary do not sing about keeping the dear traditions, about returning to places of calm and peace, about Mother at the cookstove and stockings on the mantel. Their songs are of reversal, of turning the world upside-down, of disturbing the calm and breaking the traditions.

I'm not sure where this is going, entirely, except that "going home for Christmas" does not seem to be much of a biblical idea. My grandmother - I did not know this for years - always hated the song, "I'll Be Home For Christmas." She hated it because it came out during World War II, during which her brother was serving in France. She hated it because she did not know if her brother would ever come home for Christmas, and the song did not comfort her; it taunted her with an assurance she did not have.

God's ideas about "home for Christmas" are quite different than ours. Perhaps, if God indeed is our home, we ought to rethink the whole thing.

Hey, thanks!

To all who commented on earlier posts - thanks, truly, for the wonderful welcome to Rev Gals. It's so lovely to have others who resonate with the struggles and joys of ministry. Hospitality - even electronic hospitality - is always a gift. Seriously....thanks!

"Slow-Motion Grace," Indeed...

Sometimes you find an article, or hear a sermon or a song, or read a book, or even hear a passing comment, that speaks perfectly to you in that moment. Such is L. Gregory Jones' wonderful piece in the latest Christian Century. "Slow-motion grace," it's called.

He writes of Jayber Crow, the main character in Wendell Berry's novel of the same name. First off, I love Wendell Berry. Score one for Jones. But more than that, it is the piece of the storyline around which this article revolves - the enmity between Jayber and Troy, the man who married the girl Jayber loves - which strikes me to the core.

I wrote in an earlier post about church conflict, which continues into another week. I wrote that I hate church conflict, and this is still true. Something in me desires peace almost - almost - at any cost, and I particularly loathe being...well, loathed. It is distasteful, and disturbing, and more to the real point, it hurts. It hurts a great deal.

But the problem is that I can switch so quickly from hating the conflict to hating the person at its center. And though some of that is simply a natural human reaction, self-protection perhaps, it is nonetheless exactly the opposite of what Jesus calls us into, of what Jesus lived. I am no fan of the phrase, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," as it too often lends itself to a poisonous self-righteousness. But how shall we live together when we not only disagree, but do so painfully? And when the conflict is not clean and clear (as it rarely is), but hidden and vicious? What then?

All I have today are two quotes, the first from Berry:

Of all the trials I have experienced, [Troy] was the hardest. He was the trial that convicted me over and over again. I did not like him. I could not like him. Maybe I didn't need to like him, but I needed at least not to dislike him, and I did thoroughly dislike him. I also enjoyed disliking him. In his presence I was the perfect absence, the night shadow, of the charity that I sought for and longed for.

And the second from Jones:


....it is not enough simply to understand God's love in Christ, or even to absorb it into one's soul. It must be lived in the company of others; one must cultivate a way of life that bears witness to love through membership in a community.

Somehow, I doubt that I will live this vision today. But to have it before me is enough for now.

Letting It Go

So I'm joining the Rev Gals blog ring. Which is a way of being more public (in a deeply private, totally anonymous way) with this blog - and a way of being more accountable to myself, at least, for posting more often. And I already have the "Does This Pulpit Make My Butt Look Big?" mug, so I'm ready to go.

Angry Eyes

Toy Story is one of my favorite movies. Not that I watch it a lot, but I always enjoy it when I do see it. I love the sly humor hidden inside a basically-harmless children's movie. Like when Mrs. Potato Head is helping Mr. Potato Head pack for some toy adventure out in the world, and she says, "I've packed your angry eyes...just in case."

I am in full possession of my angry eyes at the moment, though I am trying to keep them hidden away in my backpack rather than frighten innocent bystanders. I hate church conflict. I hate it. I hate feeling like people are talking behind my back (because they are). I hate it when people won't just come to me and tell me what the problem is so we can work on it. I hate it when they behave like children and then expect me to just...what? Turn the other cheek?

Crap. There's the rub. How do you know when it's time to turn the other cheek, and when it's time to do something for the sake of the whole community? And yes, I realize that Jesus did not offer any exceptions to the "turn the other cheek" thing, but then again, Jesus never had to run a congregation. I am not a fan of my own thought there, by the way.

But it does seem like there are times when you need to stand up, when others are being unnecessarily cruel and hurtful, and do something to protect yourself. I just worry that my angry eyes are going to take over at that point and that I will do something to regret later.

So today, my prayer is for patience. For kindness toward all. For the ability to pray for someone who is hurting me intentionally. For the humility not to get on my high horse and let them have it - and for a change of heart, that I might stop wishing for revenge with such vicious fervor. And I don't know if I will pray to be able to turn my cheek. Not all suffering accomplishes something, a seminary professor used to say. May there be some wisdom to guide me, and them, and us all, into a better day.