Finding the Tucked-Away Message

I’ve noticed that some of the best and most powerful messages that are to be found in books, music, and even the Bible can sometimes be tucked away and often missed.

Some of the best lyrics in classic Christmas songs come in later verses. “O Holy Night” was originally written in 19th century France by Placide Cappeau, and translated into English by John S. Dwight. The third verse is incredibly rich but doesn’t even appear in some hymnals.

Truly He taught us to love one another

His law is love and His gospel is peace

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother

And in His name all oppression shall cease

I would also venture a guess that very few people know the eighth verse of the old English carol “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” but it’s the best verse of the song:

Good master and good mistress,

While you're sitting by the fire,

Pray think of us poor children

A-wandering in the mire.

© 2013 cathy andersen, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio

If you’re connected with me on social media, you may have seen that I’ve been posting daily quotes from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I didn't read the book until after many years of watching the movie but, as these things often go, some of the best quotes are only to be found in the book. In the scene where Scrooge and his nephew Fred are arguing about whether Christmas is beneficial, I have not yet seen a movie that uses Fred’s observation that the season helps people to “think of those below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave.” What a powerful statement, easily missed when reading, that represents an approach to others that would drastically change everything from our individual behavior to our public policy. (If you’re curious to read more about why I like this story so much, click here).

It’s even true of our Holy Book. One of the most powerful statements in the Bible about worship is found tucked away in a story in 2 Samuel 24 that very few have read. It’s here that David says: “I will not sacrifice to the Lord an offering that costs me nothing.” Worship and service to God is meant to cost us something, not simply to be a method by which we get something or self-vindicate.

So it is of that ancient story of the first Christmas. The people to whom the birth was announced were not anything close to prominent religious leaders, household names, etc. but instead shepherds "tucked away" at the outskirts of the towns and magi hailing from some unknown place in "the East." The "prophecies" to which we would later look as foreshadowing the birth of Christ were not the standard Messianic texts to which those Jewish readers looked but were tucked away in pronouncements that originally addressed a different context.

And Jesus himself, not in a palace or even a guest room, but in some dirty place (probably a cave) where animals were likely kept, tucked away.

In my life so far, I have rarely found God in the places I expected to find Him or hear from Him. God's presence may be in the shadows. God's voice may be in the whisper. God's might and power may be found in a baby. It's worth noting that "Mary's song," recorded in Luke after she and Elizabeth meet, says some very interesting things about what she saw God doing through this birth. She says,

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.

In this announcement, Mary saw a God who was about to turn things upside down. This baby would grow up to be the one who said, "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first."

God stands ready to help us see a different world through His eyes - a world in which, among other things, the most important things are to be found "tucked away" - once forgotten, but no more.

Stoking the flames of Advent [excerpt]

We’d rather talk about the easier and safer things. What do we do when we come face to face with the raw pain present in many lives? Such pain and grief may be all around us — behind us in the checkout line, in front of us at a stoplight, beside us in church.

In my living room, we also have a fireplace that we like to use in the winter. Just several feet from the artificial lights on our tree that eventually burn out is a place for God’s natural gift of light and heat that will burn for as long as it has wood and oxygen. Fire is a much more apt image and one that is used in scripture for God. Throughout centuries of Christian tradition, a simple flame on a candle has symbolized the presence of Christ. If God is indeed “a consuming fire,” it is God who provides the light; we simply allow our lives to be consumed.

I have to wonder if we sometimes have expectations of ourselves and others that are too much like the artificial lights. We’re expected to shine bright, so long as we’re plugged in. We are expected to produce our own light, and if not, we could get discarded and replaced.

[Read the full article at Baptist News Global]

Hope is for the Hopeless

Years ago, I was asked to provide a special song for a "memory tree" service, a gathering time done every December at a local hospice for the families of patients who had passed away within the last year. I was told to choose something that I thought would speak to that kind of an audience.

I had a problem. I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find a song that I thought truly expressed the depth of their grief while still offering a word of hope. I still remember being in the room for the memory tree service. It was oppressively solemn. The small room was full; roughly 75 people. No matter who you looked at, you saw the same expression: a grief-sick, staring-into-nothing kind of look that's hard to describe. Every person in that room had lost a loved one, a piece of their heart, within the last year, and the dread in the room was palpable: the dread of facing the holiday season in the midst of their loss.

There are plenty of Christmas songs that try to cheer the listener up or have all the touchy-feely sentiment. I actually like such songs. I've always loved Christmas time, but I've also never lost someone I was truly close to or someone I couldn't imagine my life without. In my work as a pastor, I've seen the grief people go through. Although I use my training to minister to them and help them through it, it is more often a learning opportunity for me; a chance to let them try to teach me what it's like to be in that place.

I think "awful" may start to get at it. The thing is, grief on its own terms is hard enough, but the pain feels ignored and unacknowledged by the rest of the world seeming to rush by with their own busy lives, or friends and family who mean well but say things that make a grieving person feel guilty for grieving. "You have to be strong." "At least you have this or that." "You've got to move on."

So, it is particularly sobering to think about what the Christmas season must be like for someone who is going to have to go through it, for the first time, without a loved one who recently passed.

I have not been able to find a song that expresses this kind of grief with brutal honesty, yet at the same time offers some word of hope to go forward. The closest I know of is the hymn "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," which is a very good and under-appreciated hymn, but still didn't quite seem to capture it.

So, I guess someone had to write one. A song dedicated to those who grieve at Christmastime. The grief expressed in the song is a best attempt at giving voice to what people experience.

But as I thought about what the word of hope might be, I thought about the Advent candles that are lit in Christian churches everywhere this season. In most settings, the four candles we light during Advent (before the white Christ candle) represent 1) hope, 2) peace, 3) joy, and 4) love. As I thought about those candles and what they mean, it struck me that the Advent wreath should stand in opposition to the songs, festivities, and decorations that can seem like they are geared towards people who are already there/have already arrived.

When we light the Advent candle of hope, do we light it because we all live with a sense of hope and are simply celebrating that, or do we light it especially for those who feel hopeless? When we light the candle of peace, do we light it because we celebrate our peaceful world, or do we light it precisely because we are still desperate for peace? When we light the candle of joy, do we do so because we're all bubbling over, or is it lit especially for those who can't seem to find any? And don't we light the candle of love as a reminder that even when we feel loved and understood by no one else, the love of God "never fails" (1 Cor 13:8)?

Hope is for the hopeless. Peace is for the heart that is war-torn. Love has never left us. And joy, one day, will return.

If you are one of the grieving ones this Christmas, I pray it will speak to you in some way. For the rest of us, I pray that it will awaken our spirits to the pain that may be right behind us in the checkout line, right in front of us in the car, or right beside us in the church pew.