The Most Wonderful Time of the Year- Pastor's Version

I love Christmas as a pastor, I really do. Much of what happens is entirely independent of my efforts or skill. Last night was an amazing case in point. It was our annual Music Fest, a programmatic brainchild of my predecessor. Rather than have all of our musical groups hold separate Christmas performances, they are gathered into one program for an great evening of music. Even better, soup (prepared by the UMW) and chili (prepared by the UMM) are served, with tables set up in the sanctuary. People could eat, mingle, and come and go as they listened to some great music. Besides the outstanding music, the best part of the evening from where I was sitting was that I was not necessary to the proceedings at all.

Much of the Advent season is like that. Carols are sung, parties are held, and good cheer is held by all, with or without the pastors. I remember one December over a dozen years ago when I had a sick child, hospitalized for all sorts of testing that revealed no answer to the mysterious symptoms. My attention was not focused on church that year, and that was okay. I knew that Christmas would arrive even without my daily input, and it did. It is the season of music and lights and lessons and carols.

Yes, I still can count 5 different sermons that I will preach (a total of 10 different times) between now and New Year’s Day. I have plenty of planning and writing yet to do, in addition to other pastoral duties. The gift of this time of year is that it reminds me that, ultimately, Christ comes regardless of my efforts or preparation. Christ comes, and it’s not up to me to do anything besides get out of the way and watch with wondering eyes and listen with open ears and heart. Christ comes, and sometimes all we need to do is stop our doing and pay attention.

Making It My Own

We put up our Christmas tree today, since my son will be returning to his Seattle home tomorrow. It’s a fresh tree, which will be decidedly un-fresh by the time Christmas Eve rolls around. No matter, I love the smell and feel of our tree and will enjoy it every day that it’s up.

There are many new-old additions to my tree. Last January, my sister and I divided up most of my parents’ ornaments after their move into an apartment. This year, it feels special to hang ornaments made my grandmother and my mother. There are some glass ornaments that are older than I am. A new layer of memories now hangs on my tree.

As soon as we were done decorating, I called my mother to tell her that her ornaments were now on my tree. “Oh,” she said, “but you need to make the tree your own.” One of the things I love most about my mother is her ongoing concern for me, even in the midst of her own concerns. I look at my tree again, with her comment in mind. There are first, tenth, and twentieth Christmas together ornaments, and baby’s first Christmas ornaments. I see ornaments made by my children at every age. We have ornaments from Andy’s childhood. There are even some questionable ornaments that we wonder about each year, where they came from and why they’re still on our tree.

My mom told me that I need to make the tree my own. As I look at it now with my mother’s ornaments, I feel confident. I see past, present, and maybe even some glimpses of future. It is indeed my own, my very own.

Bane or blessing

I’m sitting in the dealership, having brought my car in for their “Fall Service Special.” They opened at seven this morning, and I felt very virtuous about getting my car serviced in advance of the winter season. When the service person summoned me, I assumed it was for what my husband terms the “visiting the patient;” that part of the oil change where I am made to examine my dirty air filter and- if I care about my car and have any human decency- agree to pay for a new one.

“Your battery is dead,” the service guy informed me in low tones. I looked at him blankly. “When we tried to take it back to the service area, we had to jump it to get it back there, and now it tests at 0%.” Huh? “Are you sure you’re talking about my car? I haven’t had any battery problems.” I ended up going out to the service area and trying to start my car, simply to see for myself that it really was dead. To be fair, the battery is over 4 years old, and it had taken a little longer to crank a couple of times. I had never, though, wondered if it was going to get going. Now it is dead in the dealership, beyond any hope of life support. Or so they tell me.

As I sit here while my new battery is installed, I have a couple of choices. It could be that I have just had the wool pulled over my eyes, something I fear in general when getting my car serviced. (“You say that my floozefluffer is misaligned . . .uhhh, sure, better repair it, whatever the cost . . .”) If that is the situation, I could snarl out of here angry about the %^&* crooks at this dealership, which I would start naming all over cyberspace.

Or I could tell myself, “Wow. There are so many awful times and places to be stuck with a dead battery. How wonderful it is that it was actually sitting in the shop when it died.” That mindset transforms me from someone who was ripped off into someone who was blessed. I think I prefer to start my week off blessed.

So, today I am blessed. If my floozlefluffer goes out anytime soon, though, I may have to rethink this position . . . Nah, even then, I’ll still be blessed. It turns out that blessing- the real kind- has absolutely nothing to do with circumstance and everything to do with God. I am blessed.

Asking for Trouble

In worship this weekend, I encouraged people to be singleminded in loving God with all of their minds, and I urged them to read the Bible daily. In fact, I offered specific suggestions of online resources to assist them in the habit of daily Bible reading, including one which takes you through the entire Bible in the course of the year. (Bibleplan.org.)

In one of those God-chuckling moments, I opened my email yesterday to read the daily Scripture. I found myself enmeshed in one of those crazy, is-that-really-in-the-Bible stories. 1 Kings 13 tells of a prophet that follows God’s command to travels great distances and speak harsh words to an evil king. The prophet is successful in his efforts and, mission accomplished, heads home. After all of that work and travel, however, prophet is under a command of God to not eat, drink, or follow the same path home. A false prophet lies to him, “God told me to tell you to come back to my house for supper.” As a result of being lied to by this false prophet, the first prophet ends up killed by a lion on the road. The false prophet then, in mourning, collects the body to bury in a tomb that they will one day share. The end. Uh, the word of the Lord thanks be to God? I pondered what to make of this story. Clergy may work their hearts out and still get chewed up while on the journey? Watch out for colleagues who will mess you up? Someone suggested that the point of this story is as simple as it sounds- don’t get led astray. That might be, but I think it’ll take a better preacher than I to unravel it fully.

The thing of it is, anyone who took my sermon seriously and took action (and I hope there were some) had the same story delivered to their email inbox yesterday morning. Asking people to read the Bible all the way through is asking for trouble, because they will encounter messy stories that have teachings that are oblique at best. The Bible is neither as blandly spiritual nor as clearly logical as most of us have been led to believe. Encountering the entire thing is going to expose us to things that mystify and confuse and maybe even worry us. Which sounds like what life does to us each day.

Maybe it will be okay for people to see what all is contained in the Bible. It’s not a simple book to read, but, then again, life’s not always simple, either.

Miracles

In the morning paper today, I read about a miracle. A communion wafer fell on the floor in Sokolka, Poland, and when it was picked up, it had a black spot on it. The wafer is now housed in a reliquary for people to see. At the risk of sounding cynical, in my world I would consider that a sign of bad housekeeping more than a miracle of God. Don’t misunderstand me. I believe that God is at work in our world, both within and at times beyond the natural order of things.

If God were trying to speak to me through dropped communion elements, I would be out of luck. One of my favorite choir members uses an assistance dog, and I process in behind Ginger and her master weekly during the final service of the weekend. Ginger is a canine vacuum cleaner, and she pauses as we go up the steps into the chancel to clean up any stray bread crumbs. (I’ve always considered that a value-added service that she provides us.) If there were any miracles to be found in the pieces of crumbs, Ginger would scoop them up long before any crowds had a chance to gather.

And yet. A canine enables a human to do things that she would be unable to do otherwise. A miracle occurs before my eyes each week, if I’m not too blind to notice.

9/11/11

The tenth anniversary of Sept. 11th fell on a Sunday, and the question that faced me was the same question that faced every pastor- how to best deal with 9/11/11 in worship. Knowing that there would be ample civic and media remembrances, I did not feel a need to dedicate the entire service to the anniversary. Instead, I decided on a beautiful prayer litany written by the National Council of Churches and a sermon that focused on how God’s call to us to continue to live the best hopes and dreams that have grown out of that day. The rest of the service would be normal, I decided.

As each of the four services unfolded with the contributions of our musicians and visual artists, it became apparent that the focus was clearly on the anniversary. We sang about our pain, God’s comfort, and our prayer for peace. The visual imagery on the screen continued these themes. We prayed, we lit candles, we cried, we even smiled. By the end of each service, I pray that we left more hopeful than when we had entered. It was much more than I had planned, and it was much better than I had planned. As is often the case.

After worship, the day settled into a blessed Sunday afternoon normalcy. Lunch out, then home for nap and a little yardwork. Since I brought home a lot of fresh heirloom tomatoes from church, I tried out a new recipe, “Moroccan-Style Tomato Soup with Chickpeas” that is simmering on the stove at home as I type. I’m not sure what I think of the blend of ginger, cinnamon, cumin, onion, and tomatoes in the soup, but I know that Andy will eat bravely whatever is put in front of him. As I said, it has been a blessedly normal Sunday afternoon.

This evening, I will teach the first session of our confirmation class. These young people know about 9/11 only from what they read in history books and glean from anniversaries such as these. As I said in worship, these young people grew up knowing that you can’t carry drinks onto airplanes, and that firefighters and police are the ones who run into buildings when everyone else is running out. These things define “normal” for them.

As far as difficult anniversaries go, this one has been good. May we remember once again what a gift a normal September 11 is, even if "normal" does not mean the same thing that it meant 10 years and a day ago.

The Phone Call

I was meeting with a couple about joining the church and baptizing their baby when my cell phone rang. Not just once, but it rang again a few minutes later, each time registering a fresh voicemail message. Few people beyond my family have that number, so I glanced at it. My parents’ number. “Excuse me for a moment, I need to check this message.” As I listened to the message, an unfamiliar voice began with the words that every adult child dreads hearing, “This is a nurse, calling from your parents’ apartment.”

The crisis was not as bad as was feared and has mostly passed. And there have been blessings out of last night’s phone call: wonderful understanding from the couple whose meeting with me was cut short, an unexpected day with my parents, and an increase in outside care that will help them both maintain their health.

Aging. No matter our age, we are all doing it. Every age and stage brings its own challenges, its own aches and pains, its own joys. Sometimes the pains we bear are our own, sometimes they are the pains of those we love. Sometimes we are the ones who serve, sometimes we are the ones who are served. Often, it seems, we are all of those things at once.