Happy New Year's - why January 1

Happy New Year’s Day

New Year’s - - Why is it on January the First?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Ushering in New Year’s at Times Square, New York, New York.

            What made Pope Gregory, creator of our modern Western calendar choose January the first as the day to change from an old year to a new year in our Western calendar?  An older calendar had New Year’s Day in March.  That is why our calendar’s numbered months of the year are: Septem (7) Octo (8) Novem (9) and Decem (10); even though respectfully these are actually the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of the year.   Why would a Pope move the beginning of a new year from March to January?  Why would he put the New Year’s celebration in Christmastide, so much in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas?  By putting New Year’s Day on January the first, Pope Gregory put New Year’s Day on what was then and in some traditions still is the eighth day of Christmas.  I suspect that Gregory recognized the great event that took place on the eighth day of Christ’s life and its profound implications for the whole world.

            St. Luke’s Gospel account tells us without the bloody details what happened on the eighth day.  “And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Luke 2:21)  The eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life was the day appointed by the Scriptures for a Jewish boy’s circumcision.  That was the day when a Jewish boy was officially named and through circumcision was initiated into the covenant which God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The sign of circumcision was connected to the promise that through Abraham’s seed the nations would be blessed.  Luke points out, in accordance with Jewish law and custom, that Mary’s child was named “Jesus” when he was circumcised.  Before he was circumcised he may have been called “Jesus” by his parents, but until he was circumcised he was without a name in God’s covenant.  So on the eighth day of his young life, our Lord Jesus was brought to be circumcised and he was formally made one with the people of God in the covenant God had made with Israel.  As he entered that covenant he was given the name angels had revealed to his mother and his guardian Joseph.  He was given the name Jesus for he would save his people from their sins.

Jewish boy presented for circumcision (bris)

            From a Christian perspective when Jesus was presented by Joseph and Mary and placed under the law through circumcision, the great transition between covenants began to take place.  Jesus was born and on the eighth day placed within the Old Covenant, under the Law, so that he might through his obedience to the point of death on the cross, fulfill the Old Covenant and thereby become the foundation for the New Covenant.  The day that Jesus was initiated into the Old Covenant was the day that the transition from the Old covenant to New began.  He was the one who would fulfill the Old Covenant and therefore the one who would be the cornerstone and foundation of the New.

            Jesus came to save us from our sins.  The Law, St. Paul told us had no power to perfect a man.  It could show by its statutes and by the spirit of it that we fell short of the Law and the righteousness of God, but it did not have the power to transform those of us who had become sinners to turn around and become righteous or holy.  The Law was like a bathroom scale.  It can tell me what I weigh, but it cannot make me either skinny or fat.  The end of the Law, according to the Apostle Paul, was Jesus.  The Greek word was “Telos.”  The sort of end described in the Book of Romans was the end as a goal, the finish line; the proper destination.  The law’s goal was Christ.  The Law looked over every man and woman born and found none that fulfilled it.  But then on the eighth day, Mary and Joseph brought their child to be circumcised.  He began that day to fulfill the Law and the Old Covenant, and in fulfilling it he became worthy of becoming our Savior, our salvation, and the foundation for a new covenant wherein He became the cornerstone and foundation for a new covenant wherein we are granted forgiveness of sins and perfection of righteousness and the fruit of the Spirit in him.  That was what began to take shape on the eighth day of Christ’s young life.

            I think that is why Pope Gregory moved New Year’s Day to be recognized on the eighth day of Christmas.  The day Christ entered the covenant God made with his people, we began to move from the old to the new; from a Law that condemned us for our sins to a Law that celebrated our fullness of salvation in the glorious Savior who came on our behalf.  Thus the first of January celebrates the changing not only of one calendar year to the next, but of an old covenant to a new, and of humanity’s condemnation to humanity’s eternal hope.  On that day, as the young Jesus was circumcised his name was announced as “Jesus”.  His parents, and perhaps no one else that day, understood the implications of that name.  He was Jesus who would save his people from their sins.  This eighth day of Christmas is indeed a wonderful day to celebrate the coming of a New Year.

 

Our Lord

Alpha and Omega

Our Origin and Our Destiny

Our Past healed + our future sealed 

            So I say to you

                        HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

 

2013 a review of my year

2013:  A Look Back into what Happened in my Life this Year

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            When I was a bit younger there was a popular song with the line “time keeps on slipping into the future” and so 2013 being spoken of in the present tense is rapidly coming to an end.  Like I do most years I began 2013 with some New Year’s resolutions and will end the year with not much success in those resolutions to lose weight or keep a neat and organized house, and the other resolutions that I don’t remember probably met with about as much success.  Still I look back and believe that overall it has been one of the best of years in many years.

            I will attribute “social networking” to making 2013 one of my better years.  Before 2013 I had a couple of internet websites I would often read, but it was not until my nephew declared at Thanksgiving in 2012 that I needed to be on Facebook and began entering me on Facebook rather than waiting for me to do so, that I was involved in social networking.

            My life, up until that point was trending towards the life of a recluse.  I had my job, I went to church on Sunday, and besides that I was at home unless I was running some necessary errand.  I am sure of some of the causes, unsure of others, and admit a simple personal tendency to being something of a recluse.  That is something I can probably discuss in another blog.  But by the end of 2012 my world had become small, somewhat safe, but more stoic than happy or fulfilled.  With Facebook changes began to take place.  I reconnected to people I had lost track of during the years.  Sometimes the reconnections were with people where our friendships had been tested, harmed, or simply neglected so these reconnections weren’t always easy.  Some of these reconnections are still sort of in that stage.  We’ve reconnected but there are differences to be first respected and we are looking towards a sort of normalization to a friendship.  That will take more time in some relationships than others.  But those first cautious steps have been taken.  There have also been new friendships.  Both sorts of friendships are important.  The painful reconnecting process should make us more careful to tend with kindness our new relationships.  So Facebook helped me to reconnect to some old friends, to begin dealing with some broken relationships, and to make a few new ones.  Those were all pretty important for me in 2013.

            I began to write blogs.  Some of my first blogs were on movies I had watched.  A Netflix subscription in 2012 led me to begin watching more movies.  My low spiritual condition led me to watching some movies that I probably wouldn’t otherwise have watched.  One of these not very wholesome movies was the sort of movie that as a Christian you cringe at a couple of scenes, but the movie was a profound look at someone who is struggling to arrive to a point of having a stable self-identity.  The French movie “Don’t Look Back” is a sort of philosophical / psychological /horror genre movie.  It is a story of a woman seeking to discover who she really is.  She has virtually no memories of her life before she was eight years old and she struggles with a sense that she does not know who she is so she begins to question the stories of who she was before she was eight years old; the stories others told her of herself and she depended on for a link to her past.  I had always been the sort of person who saw self-esteem or self-identity as categories that had been created by modernists that could well be discarded in a world of feely touchy sort of handling of things.  But this movie showed me that ultimately such issues are the screams or muted concerns that something really important about the story of our human life has been left out, and is missing from our understanding.  There was an echo of that understanding of human life, especially of modern human life in our Western Civilization that resounded throughout many of the things I saw and felt in 2013.  I feel as if I see multitudes of people saying to those they depended on for the story of their lives, “I feel like you left something out of the stories you told me of my life.”  That is I believe a central theme to understanding modernity.  We feel as if something has been left out of our story.

            Through Facebook and then later Twitter I began to read a lot of blogs by people with perspectives I had never before considered.  On Facebook most of my contacts were people near my age.  On Twitter, some circumstances led me to forming contacts mostly with people much younger than I.  Many of them were disenchanted children of Conservative Evangelicals.  I had this interesting split world of speaking in one forum mostly with convinced conservative Evangelicals and on this other forum I was having conversations with those who felt that when they had questions they had become unwelcomed threats to the Evangelical and Conservative sub-cultures in which they had grown up.  If ever there were a group of people who felt that someone had left out important elements to their life story it was these twenty and thirty-something year old young adults disenchanted with their conservative upbringing.  I did not find them to be self-centered narcissistic brats unthankful for what they had been given, just people seeking answers to questions that bothered them.  I suspect that some within their generation will discover answers that fit the needs of their generation.  But I felt like I was connected to people asking important questions even if their questions did challenge my way of life and thinking.

            Towards the end of this year I commented to one of the people I met on Twitter how I was using some of what she said in my writing of a blog.  She paid me a compliment on my writing.  I realized as I read the compliment that my writing had started changing this year because this was the year that I came into contact with such a diverse group of people such as I had never known before.  My thoughts and ways of life were challenged.  I have had to adapt to write to a more diverse group of people.

But perhaps the greatest change to come over me this year was how I see these diverse people.  A little more than a year ago I would have tried to categorize people with whether or not they fit into my small place in life.  But now it has sunk in to my mind and heart that I am and others around me are people who are trying to sort out the things in life because they and I too have this sneaking suspicion that something is missing in regards to the stories that were told us to explain our lives.   To every one of you involved in with me this year, you are a part of how I learned this.  Thank you so very much.  May your 2014 be a year in which you get a sense that you are coming to understand some of the stories that explain your life.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

“For Unto Us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            For the one whose Christian life is at least somewhat guided by the tradition of the church calendar; advent has morphed into Christmas.  We have waited in memory of the believers from the Old Testament, and with those like Anna and Simeon, and some certain poor shepherds, and Magi from the East for this news “Unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given.”

Of course, no season of the church calendar is meant only to express a truth to be loved or contemplated on one day or in one season of the year.  On this Christmas Day we might write our most conscious words concerning our Savior’s birth, but throughout the year we remember and think upon how he became one of us for us.  The season of advent comes to an end but we still wait, hope, anticipate, and set our focus on the one for whom we wait in life.  This is as St. John wrote. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (I John 3:2-3 RSV).  Advent is over yet we continue to wait because he is building a house for us.  That is in accord with an ancient Jewish tradition.  A man was to leave his father and mother, and take a wife.  In the ancient Jewish custom, a betrothal process began before the marriage was consummated.  The vows made in preparation for marriage, the groom went away to build a house for his bride and when everything was ready then they were married and entered their new home.  A son was given unto us, for us and he entered the world in the womb of Mary and was born on Christmas Day, whether in December when we celebrate it or on some other day in the year.  The ancients waited earnestly for that day.  It has come.  We wait for another time when we shall see him, shall be like him, and will celebrate our unity with him eternally in a world without tears, without sin, without foibles; with individual characteristics sanctified in perfection so no one will doubt if our oddities are eccentricities or faults, for our unique traits will solely be the markers of individuality within a unity of righteous, holy, and perfected diversity.  Advent is over, but we still wait.

I love the sureness of the prophetic voice in Isaiah’s declaration.  It was hundreds of years before the fact, but still it is spoken of as already having taken place.  “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” (Isaiah 9:6 KJV)  The prophetic voice is one that sees into the future an event determined in the mind of God.  Sometimes the prophetic voice speaks like Dickens’ spirit of Christmas future about the sort of things that may be, the judgments of men and women whose lives have forged their chains.  Thus Jonah was upset when given the prophetic message that Nineveh would be destroyed for its sins.  Jonah did not like his feeling that God intended to use the message to spare Nineveh for a space, the very Nineveh which would after that time of repentance carry ten of Israel’s twelve tribes into judgment.  Yet let us learn something from this.  God is inclined to mercy, judgment is his strange work, but mercy is his desire.  For the truth is, God may publish a prophecy regarding someone’s coming judgment, and if that person or people turn from their sins he will have mercy.  But he did not alter his plans for revealing mercy towards a sinful and fallen human race.  In the midst of our sins and rebellions against God’s good ways, so that we who had corrupted a beautiful creation, our heavenly Father intervened by sending us a son, gifting us with a child born unto us.  He does not retreat from his plans of mercy, only from his warnings of judgment.

This child was born unto us.  Mary bore him into the world, blessed be she above all women.  Blessed be she among and beyond all born of mankind.  But this child was not born only to Mary but also to us, and for us.  She was the Theotokos, the one who brought the Redeemer into the world, but this Redeemer was as much for you and me, as for Mary and Joseph.  This was the wonderful message Isaiah declared.  This was the certain prophecy of God’s intention to have mercy upon a people who had fallen, had deserted God, and had been separated from the ways of God.  It was his intention to start over not by eliminating the fallen human race but by giving that fallen human race the possibility and the reality of a second birth.  It was a second line of the mystery of the prophetic voice.  The line of warning was probationary that if we continued such things would fall upon us.  The line of promise was different speaking to us “Look, see, behold, live, love, overcome, and be set free."  The second promise was the greater promise capable of overcoming the lesser warning.

I have this day looked over two blogs rejoicing in Christmas Day.  One was sweet, pleasant, and beautiful.  It was written by Christie Purifoy, who has been a source of much blessing to me, in her blogs this Advent season.  There are times when someone seems to exist to speak to you, although we know God’s plan for another is much greater than merely their usefulness to us.  But this Advent season, no one has spoken more to what I needed than she has.  She writes with the words of beauty of one who has made a lifetime study of the finest of literature.  You can read her pleasant words regarding Christmas here.

A second blog to catch my attention was written by Grace Biskie.  Grace Biskie has a tough background and knows some people with tough backgrounds.  She also knows a Savior who was born to us on Christmas Day.  You can read Grace’s sometimes brutal words here.  I believe her words are as important to remember on Christmas Day as Christie Purifoy’s.

How do we respond to the child given to us?  There are varieties of ways isn’t there?  We may be moved to express our joy in the sweetest of poetry, or to remember the brutality our Savior entered into on our behalf and how went the distance to allow himself to feel the betrayal of trust, mocking and sadistic torture; all for us that by his death our stripes might be healed and our sins forgiven.  He entered the world which was falling apart because one cannot separate themselves from God without separating themselves gradually from the goodness, beauty, and life of God.  However much God is actively involved in the judgment of sin, sin has in its own way the power of separating us from God, and turning human life into a gradual return to the emptiness and meaninglessness of the chaos and void of separation from God.  That existence is a brutal existence.  It is that existence into which a child was born and given unto us.  He entered that brutal world that we might be given the mercy of our merciful God.  So this Christmas I am rejoicing that it is not either Christie’s beautiful words or Grace’s brutal words that express Christmas, but both of their words beside millions and perhaps billions who will today rejoice that unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Christmas: Holy Communion, Tea and Toast

Christmas: Holy Communion, Tea and Toast

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The Christmases I grew up with as a little child were mostly family gatherings.  My father described Christmas as a celebration for children.  It was a magical moment when children would find a toy, a train, a sled, a bicycle under the tree left there by a magical person who could travel the whole world in a single night.  Later in the day we would have cousins coming to join us and have a big dinner with lots of pies and even soda pop.  In our family having soda pop in the house was an occasion for maybe three or four family celebrations in a year.  We might get soda pop when we went to the store, but having it in our house well that was for special occasions only.  I grew up knowing Christmas as a family gathering.

            Then after I became a Christian I knew it as a remembrance of how Jesus came into the world.  I suppose after a while I sort of joined in the chorus of religious folks wanting everybody to remember who the reason for the season was.  Now I realize that for a lot of families, there is not a lot of a connection to Christian truths in their view of Christmas.  A lot of people, I don’t know if a minority or majority of Americans celebrate Christmas far more as a moment for saying we believe in something even if we do not know in what we believe.  Maybe we simply believe that hope paves the way for children to become adults and to be the sort of adults worthy of paving the way for more children to enter the world.  It only takes a little humanity looking into the face of a child to see there is magic and hope to be experienced in the little life of a child looking upwards at his or her parent’s face.

            I’ve realized something in a young Englishwoman’s song this year.  Lucy Spraggan, a young lady from Sheffield in England wrote a song dedicated to her grandfather (see corrective note below) called “Tea and Toast”.  This has sort of become one of my new favorites to listen to.  She wrote it in honor of her grandfather (see note below the main part of this article).  It tells a story that helped cement four or five generations of a family.  It tells a story of how when “your hearts’ lost all its hope, after dawn there will be sunshine … and in the morning I’ll make you up some tea and toast.”

            I think now I am beginning to understand that the family gatherings we enjoy are part of the sprout generated from the earthen soil of our original creation.  We are meant to be individuals but we were never meant to be “alone” much less “lonely.”  We were always meant to be men and women connected to humanity, in society, in love, in families, in tribes, in faith.  The family gathering is an echo of our creation in God’s image as the Holy Communion is a promise of our full redemption of that unity for which we were created.

            Lucy Spraggan’s song has its darkness.  Many families this Christmas will have lost someone from their table.  This is something which makes her song so beautiful for this time of year.  There will be empty chairs around many a family gathering, where last year someone sat and spoke and laughed.  They will have departed.  So this Christmas families will tell the stories of what such a one would have said, and there will be a word so similar to what Lucy Spraggan sings “and in the morning I’ll make you up some tea and toast.”  I suppose this is where I find the hope of the Holy Communion to be a much greater, hope, for we keep his table to remember his death until he comes again.  We remember that he has already risen and ascended and overcome death.  This hope of incarnation is meant to take root in our hearts and through us to spring to life within our family gatherings.

            Those who grew up somewhat like me often moved into understandings of Christian community that felt like the spiritual and the secular had to be radically different.  But are their approaches so radically different?  I don't think so, not humanly speaking.  The biologists tell us human beings are pack animals, community is part of our being human.  It is in our blood, it is part of the way we were created.  So we create traditions, and celebrate around tables eating foods we associate with the celebration whether bread and wine or tea and toast.  The distinction between the spiritual and familiar is not a distinction between valid and invalid humanity, but a distinction between acting out our nature as we are and being brought into the fullness of the hope and promise of our redemption.  But when we celebrate the birth of Christ we celebrate incarnation and the incarnation (God becoming one of us) makes sense of and helps sort out all the sorts of celebrations of community that matter to us as human beings.  So a song like "tea and toast" does not compete with the incarnation, but rather the incarnation validates the experience every songwriter and poet reveals who tells a story of a lasting human connection.

            So for this Christmas I will start a new tradition and keep an old one.  The old one is that I will attend the Christmas Eve vigil where we wait for the Christ child to be born.  Our church will darken until a single candle is lit showing forth the incarnation.  That candle will light the next one; and that one the next one, until the whole church is lit by the candles of the congregation for Christ has brought light into the world.  On Christmas morning, for my new tradition, whether for a year or a lifetime, I will make a simple breakfast of tea and toast.

Note:  Following writing and posting this blog, I discovered that my notion she wrote this of her grandfather had been incorrect.  But it was written in honor of a real couple.  Still worthy I think of waking up on Christmas morning and honoring this song's story with a breakfast of Tea and Toast.

Finding a Nativity Set for Christmas

Finding a Nativity Set for Christmas

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            This is the first Christmas that I have been actively following blogs I learned about through Facebook and/or Twitter.  I’ve had my thinking challenged, but also at times have thought that maybe I had something to say to some of the various conversations taking place.  I think of one of the persons whose twitter messages I follow who is into “enneagrams”.  I had no idea what she was talking about, so searched the internet and discovered it had to do with a system for categorizing various people’s character traits.  I have a double-minded view of such things.  Yes, I think that behavior traits often come in groups of strengths and weaknesses such as how introverts may have a hard time making a lot of friends, and how they often are quite serious in their thoughts.  So there is something to psychologically categorizing how people behave.  I think sometimes we understand ourselves just a little better by seeing ourselves through such prisms.  But still people are individuals who defy ultimate categorization.  We are developing who are becoming tomorrow from what we are today.  Someone shy, fearful and lacking confidence may one day become confident and assertive because of their newfound confidence.  Our personalities change with growth.  There was something in the enneagram categories I found that is a part of the reason I wrote this blog.

            I looked over the categories of one of the enneagram systems.  I didn’t take the test, but a category grabbed my attention.  It was a category for “peacemakers.”  I’d like to imagine I am a peacemaker.  I have some of the weaknesses mentioned.  But I know I am a flawed peacemaker, if I am one.  Still, sometimes in these past months of trying to figure out where I am on some of the issues dividing modern Christians, I have felt like I needed to stand in the middle and say to everyone else “Do you ever simply listen to one another?”

            It’s taken me awhile to get to the topic of my title.  But this year, in the blogosphere, and on Facebook and in Twitter Land we’ve been rethinking our cherished nativity sets.  I spent many years in my younger days being a real Scrooge when it came to nativity sets.  I was an iconoclastic Calvinist that viewed nativity scenes as idolatry.  I wasn’t declaring everyone lost who had nativity scenes but I thought they had an incomplete view of sanctification.  I thought they were like those generations in the history of Judah when God’s people got rid of their idols but not their high places.  Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the view of the ancient church which recognized that something dramatic took place with the coming of Christ, something so dramatic that it caused a change in how that commandment against graven images would be kept following Christ’s coming in the flesh.  Before he did so it was inappropriate to express and portray God within the creation.  God created the creation and was distinct from it – end of discussion.  But then Jesus became one of us.  He was conceived by the Holy Spirit as the Nicene Creed testified and took up residence as the fully human and fully divine son of the Virgin Mary.  That is part of why there is a mystery that surrounds Mary, her person, and how she should be viewed as the one blessed above all women.  To some degree, every woman has a right when they are with child to realize that their bodies have become a temple to bring forth a being created in the image of God.  But Mary’s pregnancy was distinct according to the Scriptures, she was carrying one who was fully God and fully man, truly God and not just in the image of God.  She was the temple in which God had chosen to dwell as he entered the creation in preparation to his birth and arrival into human society.  Many of the ancient theologians thought this changed everything about God’s relationship with the creation.  God, in the person of Jesus Christ, became a part of the creation like he had never been before the incarnation.  That is why the ancient fathers, for the most part, took the view that it was permissible and maybe even advantageous to use the various forms of art to present Biblically described perspectives of the life of Christ in human flesh.  God had entered his creation in the person of Jesus Christ and this made a great difference.

            The debate over nativity scenes and how one ought to present Christ as come into the world became heated this advent season.  Megyn Kelly, a commentator on Fox news became part of the news and the story of the day when she tried to assert that Jesus was white.  She has come around to acknowledge that wasn’t as certain as the assertion she had voiced.  For that reason, I don’t want to have much to do with lambasting what she said.  Still, how many of us with our white European styled nativity scenes and paintings of Jesus have come to think without questioning the thought that Jesus was white, maybe not Swedish white, but certainly French or northern Italian white?  We’ve thought of Jesus in a European style without ever questioning it, at least too many of us have.  There is some reason to believe that he probably resembled more a middle-Eastern man than a European.

            Rachel Held Evans is another person I follow on Twitter.  She has described the difficulty she has found in finding anything resembling a historically accurate rendition of the nativity scene.  She found mostly European nativity scenes.  Some had a blonde-headed Virgin Mary, and others had definitely historically questionable portraits of the holy family in their original Bethlehem setting.  She found one nativity set from the nation of Peru, in which the holy family was dressed complete in traditional Peruvian clothing and appeared Peruvian instead of European or Middle Eastern.  She found that she looked seemingly in vain for what might likely be an accurate artistic expression of the historical first Christmas.

            I can remember reading Jaroslav Pelikan’s first two volumes of his history of Christian dogma.  In those two volumes Pelikan pointed out that theologically the early church came to view Christ as the representative of “everyman.”  There was a recognition among the Church Fathers that Jesus, while coming into the world born in a Jewish family, had come ultimately not just for the Jewish people but for all humankind.  Therefore, there was a sense if not historically accurate, that it was theologically accurate for people to view Christ as come into their form of humanity.  He was born for each and for all of us.  That is something to remember this Christmas season.

Given that sense of things, I am not one to say toss out your European based understandings of the nativity scene.  But there is a real problem when we who are white have begun to claim an exclusive right to have Christ viewed as one of us, in our own skin color, in our own cultural perspectives, etc.  We have to pull back and ask if our nativity scenes, so many millions of them portraying Jesus, the European Jesus, haven’t become something sending a message most of us never intended to send.  We wanted to see Jesus come into our culture and among our people, and theologically that was alright.  But if that conveys the message that he did not come for other races, tribes, and cultural perspectives, then something is dreadfully wrong.

            For this reason, Catholicism and also Eastern Orthodoxy has been content to have Christ portrayed within Christian art as one of us, in whatever tribe or nation we have existed.  There have been oriental forms of Jesus placed in cathedrals in Japan and China.  It is probably not historically accurate that Jesus is portrayed as a European or as a Peruvian in a nativity set, but theologically it is essential for Jesus to be understood as having come to be a living participant in our culture, among our people, in our skin color, whatever that may be for each of us.  We must escape this “Jesus is white” mentality that we may foster “Jesus is one of us, one of all of us” mentality.

            So, I am wondering now what would be the best nativity set.  Would it be to find a historically accurate nativity scene?  Or maybe we should begin a collection of all the varied nativity sets showing how the artists of each culture have perceived Jesus' birth as being a birth into their culture.

            In the midst of such discussions, and I think predating the Megyn Kelly fiasco, Rachel Pieh Jones took some time to describe how her view of the nativity has taken shape since she moved from Minnesota to Djibouti, a small nation existing along the Red Sea between Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.  I hope everyone that enjoys this blog will read hers.  See her take on the nativity scene.

            In conclusion, God’s peace and good will toward all for Jesus Christ was born on that first Christmas Day – “He was born to become one of us, born for Jews and Gentiles, whites, blacks, aborigines, natives, and Orientals across the globe, and he has intended to be known by and to dwell with every tribe and people on this earthen ball.  That is what I would like to focus upon when I buy my next nativity set for Christmas.

Cultivating an Advent Perspective

Cultivating an Advent Perspective

Even if you don’t follow a Church Calendar

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I spent a large portion of my Christian life in churches which paid little attention to the historic church calendar, except for Sunday, Christmas and Easter.  In the last decade I have worshipped in an Anglican Church, where one’s life begins to revolve around the church calendar, like the earth revolves around the sun and brings a series of seasons into our lives on a yearly basis.  Regarding a church calendar I have my preferences and I am sure you have your preference as well, and I am not much interested in trying to persuade or be persuaded.  But we can learn from one another.  I can tell you, if you don’t follow a church calendar how much I have learned from recognizing the season of Advent.  You can tell me how one day is not different from another and that every Christian truth is not just for one day or one season in a church year.  Guess what?  You are right.  So here is why I am writing this blog today.  In my journey through this season of advent, I am realizing that advent is probably only important in the sense that it leads me to a perspective of the Christian life that can characterize how I live life that 24 hour- 365 days a year.  So if you will allow me to describe Advent for someone who doesn’t keep the calendar, I will tell you how it shapes how I think about the Christian life 365 days a year.

            First, I know a lot of Christians that don’t know what Advent is.  There are different levels of not knowing what Advent is.  This isn’t such a big deal in some ways, Christians live within so many differing perspectives of Christian experience that I would not be surprised if you knew nothing about the Advent season recognized by a number of ancient churches.  Some of you probably know that Advent starts sort of right after Thanksgiving and lasts basically to Christmas Eve.  Some of you probably think Advent is a long Christmas celebration.  But historically it was a time to prepare our hearts and souls for Christmas.  That sort of sounds strange to some of you, since Christmas, the one that really mattered already took place and we are living our lives based on the fact that Christ was born into the world more than two thousand years ago.  So why do we have a period of time preparing our hearts and souls for a Christmas Day that in all reality happened two thousand years ago?  A good question, I think.

            Here’s the thing.  Advent is a season where we focus our Christian thought and life on two realities of the Christian life.  The first focus is historical.  During Advent we remember that from the time when our human race first fell into sin until Christ came, humankind waited for thousands of years for God to fulfill His promise of sending his Son into the world for our redemption.  Remembering this helps us to realize that we have been granted grace, mercy, kindness, and life in a Son who being equal with God, was yet willing to become one of us and die as one of us, and die that we might live, and came to be resurrected to life that we might become resurrected to eternal life.  The historical focus is important.  If God had not become man in the person of Jesus Christ, there would be no Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For hundreds and thousands of years, mankind in sin’s grasp looked unto vague promises and hopes for a promised redemption.

            But that historical remembrance is really one aspect of Advent.  Advent is a word composed of Latin roots.  It is made from the Latin preposition “Ad” which means “to” and the Latin verb, “venio” which means “come.”  Advent means “to come.”  The early church recognized during Advent that Jesus had come to set men and women free from their sins.  But Jesus was also going to come again to bring completion to what he began in coming to earth as a human being to free us from our sin.  We recognize not only that Jesus came long ago to be born in Bethlehem to save us from our sins, but also that Jesus is coming again so that when we see him next time, we will see him as he is and will be like him.  That is a beautiful promise to cling to 24 hours a day for 365 days a year.  We remember that like the Old Testament people of God and the various people living throughout the world in the years before Christ that something special and wonderful and glorious took place on that first Christmas morning when Jesus Christ was born into the world to save sinners.  But we do not just look back to that time with a fond historical recollection that Jesus came in the fullness of time to set men and women, sinners all; whether Jew, Greek, no matter what continent or language or color each of us saw as our personal identity, Jesus came to be born to set us free from our enslavement to sin and the injustice of a fallen humanity.  He came to be born in Bethlehem as Charles Wesley said that we might be given a second birth.

But if we look around at the world now, we see lots of things still wrong with the world.  We see deadly wars, diseases, human misunderstandings, injustices, evil, bigotry, and all sorts of things that can depress, discourage, and even destroy us.  That is why that second focus of Advent is so important.  We look forward to when we shall as St. John said, see him and we shall be like him.  We realize when we remember how the Old Testament people of God had to wait patiently and faithfully for Christ’s first coming, how we have to wait patiently and faithfully for his next coming, that coming that will culminate when we will see him as he is and shall be like him.

We wait not passively as if there is nothing we can do until that time in the future, but we wait actively even as St. John says that everyone who has this hope of seeing Jesus in the future has a hope that makes them purify themselves as Jesus is pure.

Jesus, if I understand the Christian life that we live between his first coming and his second coming, has invited us to take an active part in what he is doing to turn the world around, to set us free from our sins, to reshape us towards his perfect righteousness, to enlist us in seeing his justice and mercy brought into our world and perfected in that glorious day to come.  St. Paul described to the Colossians how his sufferings were helping to fill up what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  That almost sounds heretical and blasphemous.  But the Christian is called to be Christ’s co-laborer.  What Jesus came to begin to do in his first coming he will complete in his second coming, and we who are called to be his co-laborers in the Gospel participate in what Christ is doing to turn our humanity and our world from being dominated by sin and death to being a place of love, life, and beauty forevermore where there no longer dwells a hint of sin.  We are called as Christians to prepare ourselves for this sort of life between Christ’s two comings.

So you see, while the season of Advent lasts only a few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, its lessons and applications are meant to be extended throughout the whole year.  We understand that as the world waited for Christ’s first coming, we wait expectantly and actively for his second coming participating in his desire of turning our lives and our world from lives shackled to sin and death, to lives and a world characterized by resurrection, life, and the beauty of Christ’s own perfection.

I am going to close out this blog by asking you to look at a very brief blog that inspired me to write this blog.  A lady named Christie Purifoy introduced her readers to an Advent song entitled “Canticle for Turning” which was written by a man named Rory Cooney.  It is a song based on the words of the blessed Mary as she looked forward to the promises regarding her son that God had given her.  Mary’s hope as she looked forward to her son’s birth has become our hope as we look forward to Jesus’ coming to complete and perfect what he came to do when he came two thousand years ago.  You can read Christie’s very brief blog here, and you can also hear this wonderful advent song here.  I hope you both enjoy and are edified by the experience.

Inequality - Moral or Mathematical

Is Inequality a Moral or Mathematical Term?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            We learn in mathematics that 2 + 2 equals four, while 3 + 2 equals five.  One of the assumptions we learn in a mathematical view of the world is that three does not equal two, they are not equal.  Is one morally superior and the other inferior?  We do not ascribe three-ness as morally evil and two-ness as morally superior.  They simply are.  That is a mathematical world, a world that is hard and unfeeling because things simply are.

            I believe that the mathematical truth of this first statement is an important aspect (but not the only aspect) of how the Scriptures deal with matters of equality and inequality.  Inequality is explained to some degree both as a mathematical description of what is true, as well as a moral reality that something has gone wrong in human society.  St. Paul’s understanding of inequality was one which focused on what persons ought to do with their unequal gifts of property and talents rather than seeing those unequal distributions of property and talents as evil.  I believe if someone in St. Paul’s day had accused him with being a man of privilege, he would have taken a look at his situation in life and would have replied: “Yes, of course, you are right.  I am a man who came into this world with a privileged life.”

            St. Paul imagined himself to be privileged as a Jew, because the Jews as he explained in Romans had the Scriptures which he believed was a superior viewpoint in understanding God from that of those who did not have the Scriptures.  But he labored to prove that did not mean that Jews were better as people than the Gentiles, for both the Jew and the Gentile dealt with sin, and all were leveled at the truth that both Jew and Greek had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Still, he would not deny that the Scriptures were a great advantage in understanding God.  He would accept the charge that he was a privileged man.

            Secondly, St. Paul would accept the charge that he had abilities to function in Roman society with freedom that most of the other apostles did not have.  He was a Roman citizen, one born into a family with Roman citizenship.  That gave him freedom to travel and speak and gave him legal advantages to spread the Christian faith to non-Jewish portions of the Roman Empire that were not as readily able to be done by the other apostles as St. Paul could do.  Functionally, this was likely part of the reason why St. Paul, an apostle born out of time, was given the task of taking the Gospel to the non-Jewish portions of the world, especially within the framework of the Roman Empire.  It was recognized that his privilege gave him protections and opportunities that the other apostles did not have.  He would use those privileges and push the envelope by spreading the Gospel to the point that the authorities within Rome would see his Gospel as a threat to the Roman Gospel.  Rome came to understand its Gospel, the good news of Roman law and Roman rule, to be threatened by St. Paul’s message of a Lord who did not rule in the same manner as the lords of the fallen world system.  So, St. Paul proved to be one who understood that his privilege allowed him opportunity to proclaim the declaration of a lord who was superior to Caesar, with a superior form of righteousness that came into this world as a gift of God that would forever change the equation of those who had privilege and those who did not.

            St. Paul understood, I believe, that inequality was a part of life.  Inequality had two causes.  On the one hand it was undeniable that man’s sin played a role in the structure of society as it existed within the Roman Empire and within every era of human history since the time of man’s fall into sin.  As one perhaps wise but cynical observer noted of the difference between capitalism and communism in a former time of our history: “In capitalism man oppresses man and in Communism it is just the opposite.”  Inequality partially has its roots within man’s sinful tendencies to take advantage of others through greed and envy to the extreme of building armies.

            But St. Paul saw another reason for there being inequality in human affairs that was mathematical and therefore did not require a revolution aimed at eliminating all inequality.  He recognized that God had given differing gifts and talents to men and women.  This is something Jesus described when he spoke of the lord giving one man five talents, another two, and another one.  The greater privilege afforded one brought that person under a greater responsibility to use wisely the gifts he had been given.  The radical teaching of the Gospel was that inequality could be addressed through men and women taking responsibility to use their privilege for one another because men and women in Christ were meant to share the mindset of Christ.  One could have more property than another, but if all had the mind of Christ, no one would be overlooked by the one whose possessions were seen as treasures possessed for the service of Christ and the needs of God’s people.

            In the building of society, it might even be argued that inequality is the engine upon which human trade and involvement with each other is built.  If each of us owned the same amount of property and things and had the same gifts and abilities then societal teamwork would be less advantageous.  For example, if everyone on a football team had the same ability to pass and run a football, who would be the quarterback and who would be the running back?  The team is better if it has a great running back who is strong and quick and a great quarterback capable of extremely accurate throwing ability, than if both persons were equal in abilities.  The more a running back is known to be exceptional in his running ability compared to a quarterback being gifted in his position the better the team is.  Equality of ability would be a detriment; whereas a variety of unequal gifts and abilities brings a dynamic to the backfield that mere equal ability could not produce for the team.

Put it in another way.  I grew up in Illinois and whenever I am there I look across the prairie with its rich soil and favorable weather conditions and I understand how blessed we were for growing grain.  I live now in the northeastern part of Oklahoma and know that my region of Oklahoma will never be able to raise the corn and soybeans that can grow in central Illinois.  But when I drive by a field with some livestock grazing and see a pump pumping oil out of the ground, I know that is one of the ways my present state was blessed.  My brother-in-law and nephew farm in central Illinois.  I work in an oil refinery in Oklahoma.  We have inequalities of economic advantage that when traded help each other much more than if we had all been given the same gifts, talents, and resources.  The modern farmer uses machinery that enables large segments of our national population to be freed from the subsistence farming method that kept a majority of our ancestors down on the farm.  The modern farmer needs a means to energize such equipment that allows modern civilization the luxury to follow so many more pursuits than when more than half of a population was required simply to produce the food that fed a population at subsistence levels.

            This is not meant to convey a view that modern life is utopian.  Within our world of inequalities which allow for the enrichment of the greater society, there is the continued problem of human sin, and the temptation we each have to try to position ourselves for an advantage against others in life.  St. Paul understood something Jesus taught in saying that sometimes the wheat and tares need to be allowed to grow together until the final harvest.  We have been given differing gifts, talents, abilities, privileges.  Some of that is the result of sin.  Some of that is the result of a wise God who has made us need one another if we are to grow together, each brother and sister conveying a spiritual blessing upon another.  The field that is white for harvest is a field with wheat and tares.  That is the reality.  But the one with privilege (we all have some privileges don’t we?) is to look to his brother and sister with the mind of Christ so that we might be a blessing to one another.  That was how Paul saw and lived his life.  He was a man privileged, and as a privileged man he gave himself as a drink offering to be poured out into the soil of humanity for the sake of Christ and the people of God.  That is why he could encourage others to imitate him even as he imitated Christ.

            So we can conclude by answering the question of whether inequality is a mathematical or moral description of human life and we can answer the complex question with a simple “yes.”  Yes, inequality is a mathematical description of the human condition and yes it is a moral description of a humanity plagued by sin, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the possibility that we can mutually share in the mind of Christ remains the single best remedy to the moral problem and the single best way to make the mathematical formula add up.  I know this doesn’t answer all the questions, but it is I believe the beginning of a way to think through the issues in a way that begins to equip us to make use of our privileges while also remembering our brethren in the process, for we are all answerable to the one true Lord through whom we have been created and redeemed, and granted to know and experience the love of God.