The War on Christmas (or, Tired of Muscular Christianity)

            Let’s be honest. If our children or grandchildren thought that three wise men visited Baby Jesus on Rudolph, the red-nosed camel, we would smile but hardly be surprised. 

            Or, if the kids thought that angels serenaded shepherds in the field with jingle bells, we would  smile, but hardly be surprised.

            Christmas, the religious celebration of Jesus’ birth, is pretty much history. The Grinch has stolen it, big retail has monopolized it, and now Santa delivers it. 

            Starbucks knows this. A few years ago, they began celebrating the season by serving its Ventis in red cups. Some sippers were outraged, claiming that this—failing to mention Christmas on the cups—amounted to war on Christmas.

            Donald Trump addressed the cup controversy on the campaign trail. “Maybe we should boycott Starbucks,” he said. “If I become president we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” Maybe. Maybe not. But this year Starbucks cups say, “Merry Coffee.”

Hipster Christmas Creche

            I liked the Hipster manger controversy even better. As soon as Irene, my spouse, saw it, she had to have it. Mary has a Starbucks in her hand. The Wise Men bring baby Jesus Amazon packages on Segways and Joseph is taking a selfie with his iPhone.

            Casey Wright, who created this product, told CNBC about how people react.  “It’s usually, ‘This is hilarious. I need one.’ Or ‘This is sacrilegious, I hope you burn in hell,’ and almost nothing between those two extremes. 

           How do you feel about the commercialization of Christmas? We could fight it. This Christmas we could be muscular Christians ready for a fight.

            But personally, I am not interested in a Christianity forever offering its theological biceps to be felt, thumping its “holier than thou” breast, thanking heaven that it will, ultimately, with an inquisition or two, finally enforce religious uniformity and make North America great again. 

            Similarly, I am not interested in a Herod-type Christianity that insists every wise guy must worship at his alter, in obedience to Fundamentalist pressure politics. I am not interested in a Gilead-type Christianity, as described in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, where what you sing, and how you dress and what you are allowed to think is decided by politicians merely pretending to be religious. 

            I’ll be blunt here. Religious power corrupts and absolute religious power that coerces people either by law or social pressure corrupts absolutely. Too much power for religion looks like residential schools training First Nations kids to pass for white. Too much power for religion looks like social mores that force LGBTQ people or atheists into their closets. And absolute power for religion looks like crusades and pogroms and prison for unbelievers and nonconformists.

            No. we should not defend any attempt to officially put Jesus back into Christmas. There is a reason, according to our stories, that Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger. There is a reason he had, according to Isaiah, no form or majesty that we should desire him. There is a reason Jesus chose to be despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, who suffered and died rather than submit to the power of the priests or Romans. There is a reason Jesus fled to Egypt when Herod roared, instead of calling F-18s with angel pilots to blast him away.

            You see, the very character of Christianity is that its persuasiveness never lies in power as Herod or Franklin Graham or Justin Trudeau might conceive of it—the power of a lobby or a union or a corporation to coerce.

            No, Christians choose to sing Advent songs in a minor key. Christian persuasiveness turns on a voice crying in the wilderness. 

            The Christian way, when it comes to the war on Christmas, is to do as Jesus did, to turn the other cheek while clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and providing good-paying jobs in vineyards. Christians choose to let their care and concern turn heads, if there are heads to be turned.

            Christianity is no longer the religion of the mostest for the apparently holiest. Our faith is being marched out of the public square. But that’s okay. We don’t need to be a politically or culturally powerful religion to change the world. Christians are invited, rather, to imitate Jesus, wherever and whenever we can—to bring Christ’s values to our families, workplaces, corporations and politics. With kindness for the leastest and lastest left over.

            So never mind about the war on Christmas. It isn’t a battle Jesus would fight. In fact, I’d say that if you can stand it, you may as well try to enjoy a month’s worth of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Camel.” In fact, go shop till you drop and open gifts on Christmas morning. Why not enter into the general frivolity and generosity of the most secular season at its best? Tis the season to have fun and family and festivity and who could argue with that?

            Just do it all with the attitude of Christ in your heart rather than with a “Jesus is the reason for the season” chip on you shoulder.

            

Before Christmas; After Easter. (And the Virgin Birth)

            Let’s be honest. Most of us smile, knowingly, when we think of the virgin birth. I mean, you don’t have to have been taught Ontario’s Sex-Ed curriculum to see the problems here. Even Mary understands. She says, “How can this be, since I am a virgin.”

            It’s much the same when we think about the resurrection stories. Luke says that when Mary—yes, the same Mary, Jesus’ mother—when Mary and some other women told the disciples that the grave was empty, the disciples thought it was an idle tale and did not believe the women. 

            So, a virgin birth. A dead man walking. Either way, “How can this be?”

            It’s a big, serious question. And so, every Christmas and every Easter, in liberal churches like mine you will hear sermons about how Bethlehem stories are a metaphor for the possibility of new life; and you will hear that empty grave stories are, well, a metaphor for the possibility of new life. 

            Meanwhile, in more conservative evangelical churches sermons will argue for the literal truth of these stories. Preachers will explain how, after not breathing for three days, Jesus gasped, wiggled his toes, and then walked out of his grave without being a zombie. 

            I don’t say so to mock either liberal or conservative Christians. Like I said, “How can this be?” is a weighty question, a teeter-totter sort of question at the heart of our theological playground. We ought to toss this question around, from time to time.

            And yet I want think we focus far too much on such questions of historical fact. In fact, if we become too preoccupied with, “how can this be,” we might miss the rest of the story, the heart of the story, the bulk of Jesus’ life. My best friend, Nick, pointed this out to me. Nick is interested in the philosophical challenges surrounding the writing of biographies, and how this relates to the gospels. In that connection, Nick recently recalled an event that many of you will remember.

            It’s like this. You will remember, the Nixon White House tapes. President Nixon 

Rose Mary Woods demonstrating how she allegedly
erased 18 1/2 minutes of Nixon's Whitehouse tapes.

recorded all of his conversations on a tape recorder. Later, these tapes became evidence for the Grand Jury that was investigating Nixon for the Watergate break-in. The tapes were damning conversations about Nixon’s ruthlessness, his disregard for the law, and so on. 

            What really led to President Nixon’s resignation, however, was not the tapes themselves, but an 18½ minute gap in the tapes, during a conversation between Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself. At the very moment where Nixon was most likely to confess how much he knew about the Watergate break in, the tape goes silent. Rose Mary Woods, his secretary, took the blame for erasing the tape, but Nixon took the fall. He resigned soon after.

            It’s not the beginning and end that matter most, in the Nixon Tapes, but the missing piece in the middle.

            And, before Christmas and after Easter, it sometimes feels to me that much of what really matters, everything between Jesus’ birth and death, has been erased from our Christian consciousness, and we are far poorer for it.

            It is the same in the Apostle’s Creed. The Apostles’ Creed describes Jesus’ life this way: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his son, who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.”

            Nothing is said here about Jesus’ baptism by John. Nothing about the parable of the Good Samaritan or the Lost Coin. Nothing about Zacchaeus in his tree or Mary Magdalene forgiven or dinner at Mary and Martha’s. Nothing in the creed about riding a donkey into Jerusalem as an argument against conquering Roman emperors who rode their war horses into Rome.

            The Apostle’s Creed moves from Bethlehem to Golgotha as if Luke chapters 3-22 don’t exist. It’s an 18 ½-minute—no an 18½-chapter gap—which, if we read it, would convict us, but in an entirely different way than the gap convicted Nixon. 

            So, let’s move beyond controversies of beginning and end, about how such things could be, about whether or not Mary was a virgin, whether or not wise men came from the East, whether or not there was a census while Quirinius was Governor of Syria. Let’s consider the whole gospel, and especially everything between the beginning in Bethlehem and the end at Golgotha.

            You will find there, in the missing 18 ½ chapters, that Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”

            You will find there that Jesus also says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

            You will find there, in the excluded middle, a divine longing to heal the sick, to bind the wounds of the broken hearted, to call out hypocrisy; a longing to forgive people who messed up and to live for the love of your neighbours.

            You will find there, in the missing chapters, that Jesus prays, “give us this day our daily bread.”

            You will find there, that Jesus says, “Do not worry. Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. . . But seek first the kingdom of God and these things will be given to you as well.”

            You will find there, in the middle passages we have erased mostly through neglect, that Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.”

            It’s beautiful stuff, as moving as ant star in the east or manger filled with straw.

            A final, concluding thought. I have to laugh sometimes about the movement to put Christ back into Christmas. I suppose, at some level, I get it. Santa Claus and his pretty elves in their scarlet miniskirts sitting for pictures in the mall, and Season’sGreetings, and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells playing on an endless loop, and of course, the “ka-ching!” of our credit cards getting their annual workouts—it is all a bit too cute, too hollow, too distracting. It can be hard to focus on Jesus when so much is going on.

            But actually, we shouldn’t blame our culture for doing what it wants to do, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for joining in on the fun. Jesus wasn’t a killjoy. But, if we really do want to focus on Jesus, like the first Gospel of Mark, we actually don’t need any of Christmas or much of  Easter. In fact, instead of worrying about taking Christ out of Christmas, let’s try to think, instead, about how to bring the missing 18 ½ chapters back into the rest of our year.

What's Even More Miraculous than Jesus' Miracles?

            The second most common reason that Canadians lie awake at night, at least according to an Abacus poll from last year, is Health Care.

            Fully fourteen percent of Canadians (compared to over 50% in the United States) sometimes lie awake worrying about health care: whether they will get it, whether it will be high quality, whether they will be able to get a doctor, whether they have to wait too long, and whether or not they will be able to afford the meds that are prescribed. 

            I’ll get back to that fourteen percent in a minute. But first, I want to put it in the context of a story found in the Bible. In Mark 8, Jesus heals a blind man in Bethsaida. People had brought him to Jesus and asked Jesus to touch him. That’s it. They thought that would be enough.

            But it isn’t. Jesus has to spit into his hands, and rub the saliva in the man’s eyes. Then, when Jesus asks him if he can see, the blind man doesn’t say, “Yes, thank you Lord!” No, he says, “well, sort of. A little bit.” So, Jesus tries again. He lays hands on him—whether with or without more spit isn’t clear. Then Jesus stares at him. And finally, the man can see again.

            It is all a bit strange. Jesus seems to fumble this miracle. Instead of a fancy deke at the end of a breakaway, Jesus has to bang at the puck a few times in front of the net to make it go in. It isn’t very pretty. Bible scholars scratch their heads and wonder what this story might mean, why it is told this way.

            Mostly, they think the story of the blind man is actually a parable that Mark has made up for Jesus to act out. The blind man, in this reading, is really a stand-in for the disciples. You see, like the blind man, the disciples can’t see Jesus for who he really is; or they can only make out Jesus vaguely, as if he were a tree rather than a person. Both the story before this healing, and the story after, focus on the stubborn blindness of the disciples when it came to seeing who Jesus is.

            So, before the healing of the blind man, Jesus is upset because in spite of the fact—according to the story Mark tells—in spite of the fact that he has miraculously fed 4,000, and then 5,000 people on a single sack lunch, the disciples are worried about food. They don’t get it. So, Jesus asks them: “Do you have eyes and fail to see?”

            And then, after this miracle, Jesus asks the disciples who he thinks he is. Their answers are ridiculous. John the Baptist. Elijah. Maybe a prophet. Maybe someone else. All the answers are wrong! Even after being reminded of the miraculous feedings, and even after the healing of the blind man, the disciples don’t see Jesus for who he is, and what he has done. And the rest of the chapter, which we didn’t read, is more of the same. Peter finally says, “well, you might be the Messiah.” But when Jesus says he is going to be a suffering Messiah, Peter says, “no way!” And Jesus, disgusted, says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”

            The disciples live with Jesus, listen to Jesus, watch Jesus, but they don’t see who he really is, and they don’t see the bigger picture. They want a wonder working magician Jesus. But the real Jesus turns out to be a savior by example, who demonstrates in his life and in his death that people are worth dying for. It is one of the hardest Biblical lessons, one that we, like the disciples don’t much like. But there it is. Do you see it?

            But now I want to get back to the whole “lying awake about health care” thing. Like the disciples, one of the issues we sometimes struggle with is a failure to see the miracles all around us. We are, are usually surprised when things don’t work out as quickly or as easily as we would like them to. So perhaps some context will help.

            In the New Testament, Jesus does about forty miracles, including about 30 or 35 healings, depending on how you count them up. And then, depending on whether we are a United Church person or a Fundamentalist Baptist or maybe a Roman Catholic, we sometimes sit back in our arm chairs and argue about whether or not these miracles really happened. That’s okay, as far as it goes.

            But forget those forty miracles for a minute. What I’d like to ask, this morning, is this. What about the millions, perhaps billions of healing miracles in Canada and around the world that we take for granted every day? Do we stop, often enough, to admire what is happening all around us?

            Here is what I mean—just a brief little story. When William was about three years old, and Irene and I were both graduate students, we visited some friends for an evening of Risk—a board game. The tea pot was on the floor, beside a couch, on a hot air register. Meanwhile, William, was climbing the couch like a monkey, wrapped in three layers of pajamas because it was cold.

            The next thing you know, William falls off the couch, onto the tea pot, and is badly burned, to the third degree, around his shoulder and under his arm. We couldn’t help him at first, because we had to take the PJs off, and that took a while, and it was excruciatingly painful for William and we rushed him to the hospital which was a few blocks away. It was awful.

            What happened next is interesting. Though there were ointments and meds, tears and bandages, hand wringing and regrets for weeks after, the one thing we never worried about was whether or not William would live. Of course, he would live. We never doubted it.

            But here is the thing. One hundred years ago, in the 1920s, simple burns like William’s were the third leading cause of accidental death in the USA, and so probably in Canada too. Just 100 years ago, in the 1920s.

            But there is more. One hundred years ago the number one cause of all deaths in the was diarrhea, followed by TB and pneumonia. Do you know anyone who has died of diarrhea?

            There is more. Two hundred years ago, nearly 50% of children worldwide died by the age of five from diseases and accidents. By one hundred years ago, mostly due to the discovery of germs and the need for cleanliness, that had dropped to 33% of children who died, worldwide, from diseases and accidents before the age of five. Today—including the whole world, not just the developed West, that number is less than 5%. Do you see this miracle of bread and loaves, of the blind seeing? Do you understand its import and significance? Have you, unlike the disciples, stopped to think what it means?

            Of course, we lie awake with our personal worries about medical care—most of us, in fact, lie awake with such worries well into our eighties or nineties, and almost unheard-of age to live to 100 years ago—but an age we all reasonably hope for now. Our mortality, our aches and pains, our worries about health and health care shouldn’t be minimized or dismissed.

            But what also ought to keep us awake at night is the real miracle of what we do have. Amazing, incredible, nearly unimaginable—at least 100 years ago—health care.

            Our health care system—like Jesus’ bumbling cure of a man’s blindness, in our text—is not perfect. Our system is not always speedy, especially when it comes to elective care. Yes, meds are expensive, and achingly out of reach for too many Canadians. And naturally, we can always count on the newspapers to focus on a few medical cases that went wrong, sometimes spectacularly so, rather than the millions of people who are patched up, healed, or sent on their way better every year.

            But no one today is dying of polio, or small pox, or typhoid, or diarrhea. Heart attacks are not a death sentence. Cancer, a disease of old age, mostly, is being beaten back, bit by bit. Most infections do not kill. We think of kidney transplants—even heart transplants—as almost routine.

            It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s a health care system that isn’t perfect—just as none of us is perfect. But still, wow. Look around. This is a good time to be alive. We don’t have merely 40 or 45 miracles; modern medicine has given us billions.

            It’s a beautiful, reassuring thing. Thank God.

Torture Is a Moral Issue

         

         Yesterday, I was walking by the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, past a United Methodist Church, when I noticed a huge banner hanging over the front door. It read, “Torture Is a Moral Issue.”

         I didn’t know what to think.

         On the one hand, I know that torture is an issue that has a moral dimension. I’ve gone to seminary. I know that scripture says we should turn the other cheek, that love does not remember wrongs, that we need to forgive, that we should not kill, that we need to be peacemakers, and so on. All of which suggests to me that far from merely being a moral issue, torture should probably be thought of as an old fashioned, unadulterated sin—that is, if you mostly try to take the Bible at its word. Or is it more complicated than that?

         My spiritual intuition says, “no.” But maybe not everyone agrees with me. Perhaps that is why we need a discussion, and we need a banner on a church to initiate the discussion. Except that there is something odd about this. You see, more Christians believe you can justify torture than non-Christians.

         According to a Pew Forum survey in 2009, the less you go to church, the more likely you are to oppose torture. So, while 54% of churchgoers (and 62% of Evangelicals) thought torture is “often,” or “sometimes,” justifiable, only 42% of those who rarely attended church thought so.

         So, since more church goers than non-church goers think torture is okay, maybe this banner was hanging over the front door of this church for the sake of that church’s members. Maybe the pastors of that church thought that it was the Christians who entered those doors who needed to be challenged to rethink their attitudes about torture.

         On the other hand, given that this was a liberal United Methodist campus church, I thought—my gut told me, actually—that the sign was not meant especially for that church’s members. It was probably meant for anyone who thinks that torture is merely a means to an end, Christian or not. It was meant for the pragmatic majority, to suggest to them that “no—it isn’t just the end that matters, it is the whole thing, from beginning to end. And it is the principle that matters.” The people who hung the sign would then mean by it something like, “torture is a moral issue, not just a pragmatic one.” Even when the end that the means is supposed to justify is something as sacrosanct as “the national interest,” the morality of torture in and of itself still matters and must be discussed.

         Or maybe the people who hung the sign just wanted people to ask what they meant—by torture, that is. Water boarding? Sleep deprivation? Solitary confinement? Not letting you speak on the phone to your loved ones more than once a week? Being subject to rape, abuse, violence that is a normal part of prison life in North America? Being forced to live in the most efficient gang-education institutions in the world? Is that torture? Or are just some of these things torture?

         Or maybe the people who hung the sign wanted to reacquaint people with the word “moral,” as being a word that has a life beyond its use by the (so-called) moral majority—a word, for example, about God’s gracious attitude to prisoners. It is before him, after all, that scripture says the groans of prisoners will finally arrive (Psalm 79:11, 102:20). And perhaps it was a divine response to those groans that Jesus died on a torture rack himself, also groaning.

         And perhaps it was in anticipation of that death that before he died, Jesus said something like, “If you want to find me, go to a jail. I’m the prisoner (Matt. 25:36).