A Christmas Memory

I grew up in a small town where, for whatever reasons, my church became the center of my life. I have thought about it so often, and I think of the people, the Sunday school teachers, our pastor, my scoutmaster, most of whom are gone now. It was a community where we kids were accepted as we were, and I think that is really true, because even the kids who were picked on in school were treated lovingly at the church. One of my fondest memories there is of a Christmas Eve service when I was thirteen years old. The church may have had such services for years, but this was the first that I ever attended. What made it even more special was that my whole family attended, which indeed was a rare event. The church was packed, and it seemed as if everyone was happy and radiant. At the end of the service, we sang "Silent Night" as the lights were extinguished, and I remember seeing the faces of the senior and junior choir bathed in candlelight. It was a beautiful event, and is a very warm memory. Three months later, the church was destroyed by fire, never to be rebuilt. Members of the congregation fought over the judicatory's decision not to allow us to rebuild. Within a year, the congregation split, with two-thirds of the membership founding a new church. I remained with the original congregation, even though the rest of my friends went with the breakaway group. As a result, I learned a difficult lesson about human nature. I learned that church people are human beings who are imperfect, who bicker and gossip and take sides. Years later, after I had graduated from divinity school and was serving my own churches, I learned from the man who had been our pastor at the time that we could have rebuilt the church, if only members would have agreed to install an outreach ministry in the new building, since our church lot bordered what is now known as a transitional neighborhood. But the folks in power at the time refused. And some of the most obstinate were the very people who had nurtured the members of the youth group so lovingly. Members of my extended family now attend the church that broke away, and my home church, or what was left of it, merged with another congregation in town. A parking lot now occupies the space where a church had stood for one-hundred-fifty years, with no marker or anything to indicate that a house of worship had once stood there. I was the last in a long line of youth from that church who entered the Christian ministry, and I am the last who is still serving actively. The very real and hard lessons I learned about human nature since the fire have not dimmed the mental picture I retain of the beautiful candlelight service in that gorgeous edifice, when I felt as if we were all members of one family. Truth is, we were, and remain so. That, I think, is the heart of the Christmas message: God came to earth that we all might be one. Merry Christmas.

Forgive My Rant!

I have been doing some hard thinking, so I am about to sound-off. Don't say you weren't warned. With all of the lights and sounds (tacky, for the most part) of the season around us, why is it so hard to get the attention of people who claim to follow the Christian faith, but who have little time to participate in it? Perhaps the warm weather has made it difficult for some to get into that holiday spirit that was never present at the original Christmas event, but shall forever be identified with it, thanks to Irving Berlin and White Christmas. Many of the students and faculty with whom I work are quite tired at this point in the semester. Soon, classes will end, and finals will conclude and we will all go home. Then it begins all over again next semester. Such has been the rhythm of my professional life for the past twenty-five years. I spend most of my time working with young adults, whose attention spans have been forever shortened by our electronic culture and its demand for immediate answers. Who can blame them if they have little interest in listening to the story of a man who lived, and died, long ago? Nor are they easily impressed with talk of his still being with us, though in a form not easily seen. This problem with attention span lies not only with young adults, but also with a large portion of the American church, at least. One can read voluminous material about why the old ways the church reached out are not longer relevant, and why new ways have to be adapted to the contemporary realities in which we find ourselves. I do not disagree; I have had to adapt the ways in which I relate to students, and they have changed over time. But the basic need for them to hear the story has not changed, though it is difficult to get folks to take the time to listen. And so, sometimes we pander, to young adults and older adults, enticing them with the promise of much in exchange for little demand on them. I recall asking a campus minister if he spent much time talking about the controversial issues facing our denomination, and faith, with his students. His reply was, "Well, I could do that, and have maybe forty students, or I can avoid it and have two-hundred." And that is what he chose to do. With thinking like that, is it any wonder that American Christians tend to have a theology that is skin-deep? Our Christmas message focuses on the baby, because it is easier to love a baby who never made any demands on anyone, save for his mother and father, than it is to talk about the man that baby would become, a man who made people uncomfortable for the sake of a cause greater than himself. So, we have mainline churches who have stood by their social justice-infused theology struggling to keep their doors open. And we have mega-churches that emphasize "Jesus and me" and individual salvation, instead of the salvation of all people, and they are packed to the rafters. When did the Advent season lose its punch? As it is, those who attend church during Advent see it as the season when the pastor won't allow them to sing Christmas carols as early as they would like. So, Advent is simply that annoying time, leading up to Christmas, that we have to wait out. Many folks who fill churches on Christmas Eve were not in church doing the Advent season, which helps us to make sense of the holiday. We don't like having to wait for the payoff, we want it right away. Why in the world don't people want to hear the Advent message about God "breaking into" our world so that the kingdom may come for all people? Perhaps the trouble worsened when it became legal to be a Christian. Prior to Constantine, Christians were a marginalized people who existed on the fringes of society. When Helen, Constantine's mother, made it clear to her son that she expected him to follow her into this new faith, his subsequent conversion meant that Christianity was now legal, and the oppressed became the oppressor. The closest some American Christians come to feeling persecuted is when they are criticized by others for their intolerance of persons who they believe live outside the house of faith. In America, the Christian faith and the culture wars have become almost indistinguishable from one another. Christians are the "haves" and all others are the "have nots." Well, this Christian believes that Advent is the time to shout out that business as usual is not the will of God, not according to the early witnesses of the faith. I would rather run a small campus ministry that struggles with the tough issues, than have a large one that has no idea what it means to step outside the comfort zone of spiritual security. Advent should fill us with excitement, and make us "stand on the tiptoe of expectation" as the prophet Isaiah once stated. I won't give up on my recalcitrant students, and I believe, with all of my heart, that God has not given up on us, either.