Eight days after any male Jewish baby was born, he was to be circumcised. Thus, January 1 marks the eighth day after Christmas.
Luke 2:21-32 reads:
"On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.
"When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord"), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons."
"Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel."
In Simeon, we recognize some of the themes we wrestle with around the beginning of the New Year: questions about the purpose of life, arrivals and dismissals, and time as it passes. Jesus, the one who came down from heaven, submits thoroughly to a holy passing of time as prescribed in God's law: "on the eighth day..." Simeon also finds that time is not a secular, meaningless thing, but is shaped by holy arrivals and dismissals, and namely by God's coming to his people.
I am fond of Robert Burns' song, "Auld Lang Syne," which is Scottish for "Old Long Since." It is essentially a defense for raising a toast to the past, the times that have been. This is a good song to sing in a time of festivity, when there is a collective pause in life's achievement and people ask, "why not sing and raise a glass to all that has been?" Simeon's song gives us a picture of fulfillment that won't require looking to the past. It brings to mind the sense that if we meet the face of Jesus, there will be no lingering regrets, no love lost over achievements that were not attained. The narrative of Simeon's life is the pursuit and the finding of the Messiah who is real, who is there, who has a name. His acknowledgement of death and the waning of his years is not morbid or suicidal. It is a reminder to us that death brings an end of sin and brings us to God.
This reminds me of the verse in Genesis when God creates the starry host:
"And God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days, and years..." Morning. Night. Days. Months. Years. And in a precise second, one year turns to the next. The Genesis text shows us that even the stars in the sky are there, in a sense, to mark "sacred times." They are not created out of randomness, but for festivity, for joy, to mark seasons, for growth, maturity, so that we may see more of God's face, and that he may see more of ours.
Finally, George Grant shares a "Prayer for the New Year:"
O Lord,
Length of days does not profit me except the days are
passed in thy presence,
in thy service, to thy glory.
Give me a grace that precedes, follows, guides, sustains,
sanctifies, aids every hour,
that I may not be one moment apart from thee,
but may rely on thy Spirit
to supply every thought,
speak in every word,
direct every step,
prosper every work,
build up every mote of faith,
and give me a desire
to show forth thy praise,
testify thy love,
advance thy kingdom.
I launch my bark on the unknown waters of this year,
with thee, O Father, as my harbour,
thee, O Son, at my helm,
thee, O Holy Spirit, filling my sails.
Guide me to heaven with my lamp burning,
my ear open to thy calls,
my heart full of love,
my soul free,
Give me thy grace to sanctify me,
thy comforts to cheer,
thy wisdom to teach,
thy right hand to guide,
thy counsel to instruct,
thy law to judge,
thy presence to stabilize.
May thy fear be my awe,
thy triumphs my joy. Amen. (George Grant, Christmas Spirit, 188-189)
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Sunday, December 31 - What Child is This?
William Chatterton Dix was an insurance executive by vocation and a poet by avocation. He wrote the lyrics to What Child is This?:
What child is this, who, laid to rest
On Mary's lap, is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary?
Why lies he in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian cheer for sinners here
The Silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through
The cross be borne for me for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!
So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant king to own Him,
The King of kings, salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise the song on high,
The Virgin sings her lullaby:
Joy, joy, for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!
The first two stanzas explore questions. The first stanza, taking account of the fanfare surrounding this child, looks again a second time, asking "what child is this?" The second stanza, now finding the humble surroundings to be discordant with regard to what we now know about the child, asks 'why here?' The rest of the second stanza provides the linchpin answer: it is not for himself, but for sinners that Christ is in "such mean estate", just as it is not for himself that he ultimately goes to the cross. The third stanza now imagines that these questions were asked by the Magi, and encourages them to bring their gifts. Or, it imagines that all singers of the hymn come to Christ as the Magi do: with questions, and it is in asking the questions that we find - not answers - but Christ. And in Christ we find the answer.
Compare this with the stunning hymn, Who is This, So Weak and Helpless? by William Walsham How:
Who is this, so weak and helpless
Child of lowly Hebrew maid
Rudely in a stable sheltered
Coldly in a manger laid?
'Tis the Lord of all creation
Who this wondrous path has trod
He is Lord from everlasting
and to everlasting God.
Who is this, a Man of Sorrows
walking sadly life's hard way
Homeless, weary, sighing, weeping
Over sin and Satan's sway?
'Tis our God, our glorious Savior,
Who above the starry sky
Is for us a place preparing
Where no tear can dim the eye.
Who is this? Behold Him shedding
Drops of blood upon the ground!
Who is this, despised, rejected
Mocked, insulted, beaten, bound?
'Tis our God, Who gifts and graces
On His church is pouring down
Who shall smite in holy vengeance
All His foes beneath His throne.
Who is this that hangs there dying
While the rude world scoffs and scorns
Numbered with the malefactors
Torn with nails and crowned with thorns?
'Tis our God who lives forever
'Mid the shining ones on high
In the glorious golden city
Reigning everlastingly.
In How's hymn, we are initially struck by the contrast between Jesus' humble appearance as child, and his divine nature. Over the course of the hymn, through the consistency of this scheme and the rising intensity of what is taking place, they don't seem to contrast so much. Christ's humility comes to have a towering, divine, glorious quality of its own. There is might, vigor, and strength to these questions, so filled with the riveting details of Christ's ministry. The questions don't shrink before the answers, but anticipate them. The answers come as an 'Amen!' to what we perceive that the questioner already knows!
Dix teaches us to ask questions at the scene of the manger. How teaches us not to stop there, but to keep asking through the course of Jesus' ministry, particularly the primary question which comes to the disciples' lips so often, and which turns out to be the central question of the four gospels...
..."who is this?"
What child is this, who, laid to rest
On Mary's lap, is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary?
Why lies he in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian cheer for sinners here
The Silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through
The cross be borne for me for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!
So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant king to own Him,
The King of kings, salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise the song on high,
The Virgin sings her lullaby:
Joy, joy, for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary!
The first two stanzas explore questions. The first stanza, taking account of the fanfare surrounding this child, looks again a second time, asking "what child is this?" The second stanza, now finding the humble surroundings to be discordant with regard to what we now know about the child, asks 'why here?' The rest of the second stanza provides the linchpin answer: it is not for himself, but for sinners that Christ is in "such mean estate", just as it is not for himself that he ultimately goes to the cross. The third stanza now imagines that these questions were asked by the Magi, and encourages them to bring their gifts. Or, it imagines that all singers of the hymn come to Christ as the Magi do: with questions, and it is in asking the questions that we find - not answers - but Christ. And in Christ we find the answer.
Compare this with the stunning hymn, Who is This, So Weak and Helpless? by William Walsham How:
Who is this, so weak and helpless
Child of lowly Hebrew maid
Rudely in a stable sheltered
Coldly in a manger laid?
'Tis the Lord of all creation
Who this wondrous path has trod
He is Lord from everlasting
and to everlasting God.
Who is this, a Man of Sorrows
walking sadly life's hard way
Homeless, weary, sighing, weeping
Over sin and Satan's sway?
'Tis our God, our glorious Savior,
Who above the starry sky
Is for us a place preparing
Where no tear can dim the eye.
Who is this? Behold Him shedding
Drops of blood upon the ground!
Who is this, despised, rejected
Mocked, insulted, beaten, bound?
'Tis our God, Who gifts and graces
On His church is pouring down
Who shall smite in holy vengeance
All His foes beneath His throne.
Who is this that hangs there dying
While the rude world scoffs and scorns
Numbered with the malefactors
Torn with nails and crowned with thorns?
'Tis our God who lives forever
'Mid the shining ones on high
In the glorious golden city
Reigning everlastingly.
In How's hymn, we are initially struck by the contrast between Jesus' humble appearance as child, and his divine nature. Over the course of the hymn, through the consistency of this scheme and the rising intensity of what is taking place, they don't seem to contrast so much. Christ's humility comes to have a towering, divine, glorious quality of its own. There is might, vigor, and strength to these questions, so filled with the riveting details of Christ's ministry. The questions don't shrink before the answers, but anticipate them. The answers come as an 'Amen!' to what we perceive that the questioner already knows!
Dix teaches us to ask questions at the scene of the manger. How teaches us not to stop there, but to keep asking through the course of Jesus' ministry, particularly the primary question which comes to the disciples' lips so often, and which turns out to be the central question of the four gospels...
..."who is this?"
Friday, December 29, 2017
Saturday, December 30 - Once in Royal David's City
Cecil Frances Alexander wrote two particularly famous hymns during her life. One is "All Things Bright and Beautiful." The other is "Once in Royal David's City." According to George Grant, Alexander reportedly "wrote this carol for her godchildren when they complained that their Bible lessons were dreary." (Grant, Christmas Spirit, 116)
It's a shame that Bible lessons would ever be dreary. It is a wonderful thing that people like Cecil Frances Alexander would indwell Scripture so much that they could produce works of art that not only teach those in their lifespan, but continue to teach us today. Grant notes that this carol has become the traditional opening for the Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols Service from King's College, Cambridge. It was always the opening hymn in the Christmas Eve service in the church of my upbringing, and those warm opening half notes of the hymn always feel like the perfect prelude to the Scriptures and stories of Christmas.
Here is the hymn:
Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed:
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child.
He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all,
And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall:
With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
Lived on earth our Savior holy.
And through all his wondrous childhood he would honor and obey,
Love and watch the lowly maiden in whose gentle arms, he lay:
Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he.
And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love;
For that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heav'n above,
And he leads his children on
To the place where he is gone.
Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by,
We shall see him, but in heaven, set at God's right hand on high;
When like stars his children crowned
All in white shall wait around.
Two things strike me. First, songs of faith that are too focused on the lesson to be learned, or with proper behavior tend to take our attention off God and put it on ourselves. In that sense, the third verse feels quaint to me. The third verse makes me want to sigh and paraphrase Mary Poppins: "If they must, they must." Second, consider how she guides us from the child in the manger to beholding the Risen Christ, reigning from the right hand of God. If children and adults alike would learn to be "mild, obedient, and good" as Christ, this is exactly where they ought to look: our royal King who has conquered all sin and death, and in sure authority, "leads his children on to the place where he is gone."
Here, I feel I must raise my egg nog and say a prayer for all those who teach the Christian faith to children. They do a lot all year...and also at Christmas time. For them, the third verse is very important. Yelling children can't listen or sing a song. Children who are looking to impress their friends won't look for the Light of the World. But one also can't win every battle. This is a great art. One must understand the ways of children to then be able to show children the richest truths of the faith. Great childrens' teachers are like Christ in this way: they draw the children near like a magnet, and the children want to please them, want to make them happy, want to impress them. Children want to be with Jesus. They want to be with great childrens' teachers too. And I've been blessed to know quite a few. Then, maybe just maybe children will catch the teacher pointing steadfastly to Christ. The way Cecil Frances Alexander did.
It's a shame that Bible lessons would ever be dreary. It is a wonderful thing that people like Cecil Frances Alexander would indwell Scripture so much that they could produce works of art that not only teach those in their lifespan, but continue to teach us today. Grant notes that this carol has become the traditional opening for the Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols Service from King's College, Cambridge. It was always the opening hymn in the Christmas Eve service in the church of my upbringing, and those warm opening half notes of the hymn always feel like the perfect prelude to the Scriptures and stories of Christmas.
Here is the hymn:
Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed:
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child.
He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all,
And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall:
With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
Lived on earth our Savior holy.
And through all his wondrous childhood he would honor and obey,
Love and watch the lowly maiden in whose gentle arms, he lay:
Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he.
And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love;
For that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heav'n above,
And he leads his children on
To the place where he is gone.
Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by,
We shall see him, but in heaven, set at God's right hand on high;
When like stars his children crowned
All in white shall wait around.
Two things strike me. First, songs of faith that are too focused on the lesson to be learned, or with proper behavior tend to take our attention off God and put it on ourselves. In that sense, the third verse feels quaint to me. The third verse makes me want to sigh and paraphrase Mary Poppins: "If they must, they must." Second, consider how she guides us from the child in the manger to beholding the Risen Christ, reigning from the right hand of God. If children and adults alike would learn to be "mild, obedient, and good" as Christ, this is exactly where they ought to look: our royal King who has conquered all sin and death, and in sure authority, "leads his children on to the place where he is gone."
Here, I feel I must raise my egg nog and say a prayer for all those who teach the Christian faith to children. They do a lot all year...and also at Christmas time. For them, the third verse is very important. Yelling children can't listen or sing a song. Children who are looking to impress their friends won't look for the Light of the World. But one also can't win every battle. This is a great art. One must understand the ways of children to then be able to show children the richest truths of the faith. Great childrens' teachers are like Christ in this way: they draw the children near like a magnet, and the children want to please them, want to make them happy, want to impress them. Children want to be with Jesus. They want to be with great childrens' teachers too. And I've been blessed to know quite a few. Then, maybe just maybe children will catch the teacher pointing steadfastly to Christ. The way Cecil Frances Alexander did.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Friday, December 29 - She'd-a Rocked Him in the Weary Land
Robert Darden's book, Nothing but Love in God's Water, is a treasure trove of insights into black sacred music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. The slave spirituals mined the Bible and found so many oppressed heroes to sing about like Daniel and Joseph. Moses was a common person for them to sing about:
"To overcome an institution as heinous as perpetual slavery, enforced by the armed might of a powerful nation, calls for equally powerful, spiritually compelling heroes. The Moses narratives from the Old Testament provide such a hero. In the course of leading his people out of slavery into the Promised Land, the reluctant hero Moses endured many trials and hardship, ordeals that gave him the "spiritual knowledge and power" necessary to confront the Pharaoh and his vast armies. At the same time, the "empowerment of Moses" represented for African-Americans slaves the "rewards" of maintaining a relationship with God: "Inasmuch as converted Africans believed that "de God that lived in Moses' time jus' de same today," they also believed that He would answer their prayers and empower a deliverer hero from one among their number." (Darden, Nothing but Love in God's Water, 29)
And of course, slaves sang about Jesus too. An extremely limited list of songs from some of the earliest collections would include titles like: "Tell My Jesus 'Morning'"; "Jesus on the Waterside"; "Jesus Won't You Come By-and-By?"; "No Man Can Hinder Me"; "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Had", songs which are all very Jesus-focused.
These songs were deeply Jesus-centered, and in lifting up the authority of Jesus, were very subversive to the temporal authority of the slave-master:
"John W. Work, who also directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, recounts the story of a group of slaves on a plantation on the Red River in the early 1800s who crossed the river each Sunday to worship at a nearby mission in the Indian Territory. In time, the slave owner heard that the missionary was from the North and, fearing that the man put ideas of freedom in their heads, ended the practice. But the slaves began sneaking away at nights to attend the services, singing "Steal Away to Jesus" as their cue. When the missionary heard the soft singing, he would go to the river's edge to help the slaves ashore." (Darden, 39)
The song vividly illustrates the transfer of authority to Jesus in a way that carried a profound double meaning for slaves. The song conveyed both the sense of stealing away from the sway of the sinful world, and also a literal stealing away by night from their oppression so they may worship the Lord.
Many of these spirituals found their theme in the birth of Jesus:
"It is then not difficult to understand the slaves' attraction to the Nativity spirituals, where the helpless infant and the refugee parents in an occupied land find shelter in a cave or barn, surrounded by animals. The infant Jesus is tenderly, lovingly presented in these spirituals: "Sister Mary had-a but one child, Born in Bethlehem / And every time-a baby cried, She'd-a rocked Him in the weary land."
Even the birth narratives of Jesus had, for slaves, a quality that subverted the existing order. Darden continues:
"But there is sometimes a note of defiance even amid the most tender depiction of Jesus as a baby. The "sentimental image of a baby in a manger" in a spiritual like "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," Mitchell suggests, should not "be confused with a faith without teeth":
Sweet little Jesus boy, they made you be born in a manger.
Sweet little Jesus boy, they didn't know who you was.
They treat you mean, Lawd; treat me mean, too,
But that's how things is down here; they don't know who you is. (quoted in Darden, 41)
From the mere fact that Christ was ill-treated in this world, the song opens up on the hope for an entirely different realm than we find "down here" in this world. Songs like this carry the sense so powerfully that people in this world are not often recognized for who they are, and that their true worth and dignity often goes hidden, and that this was above all true of the incarnate Lord. Accompanying this is the sense that the judgment will bring with it a right ordering of everything. This is vividly captured in a song called "Had No Room," recorded by Mahalia Jackson and The Staple Singers among others. It begins in the inn:
Had no room
Had no room
Had no room at the inn
When the time had surely come
For the Savior to be born
Had no room at the inn
Had no room, had no room
But then it moves to a heavenly courthouse where the servants at the inn will give account as to how the innkeepers withheld compassion from Mary:
Well, there was a bellboy, and a porter, and a waitress, and a maid, and a cook
I know they'll be a witness.
In that great judgment day
When we'll all hear them say
How they turned poor Mary away
Had no room at the inn
Had no room, had no room
These songs are resources for us to remember that in Christ, God became poor and rejected. Similarly, the slave experience of Jesus' infancy reminds us that the existing power structures of the world are opposed to this baby King, and that if we want to stand with Jesus, we need to be prepared to be uncomfortable.
"To overcome an institution as heinous as perpetual slavery, enforced by the armed might of a powerful nation, calls for equally powerful, spiritually compelling heroes. The Moses narratives from the Old Testament provide such a hero. In the course of leading his people out of slavery into the Promised Land, the reluctant hero Moses endured many trials and hardship, ordeals that gave him the "spiritual knowledge and power" necessary to confront the Pharaoh and his vast armies. At the same time, the "empowerment of Moses" represented for African-Americans slaves the "rewards" of maintaining a relationship with God: "Inasmuch as converted Africans believed that "de God that lived in Moses' time jus' de same today," they also believed that He would answer their prayers and empower a deliverer hero from one among their number." (Darden, Nothing but Love in God's Water, 29)
And of course, slaves sang about Jesus too. An extremely limited list of songs from some of the earliest collections would include titles like: "Tell My Jesus 'Morning'"; "Jesus on the Waterside"; "Jesus Won't You Come By-and-By?"; "No Man Can Hinder Me"; "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Had", songs which are all very Jesus-focused.
These songs were deeply Jesus-centered, and in lifting up the authority of Jesus, were very subversive to the temporal authority of the slave-master:
"John W. Work, who also directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, recounts the story of a group of slaves on a plantation on the Red River in the early 1800s who crossed the river each Sunday to worship at a nearby mission in the Indian Territory. In time, the slave owner heard that the missionary was from the North and, fearing that the man put ideas of freedom in their heads, ended the practice. But the slaves began sneaking away at nights to attend the services, singing "Steal Away to Jesus" as their cue. When the missionary heard the soft singing, he would go to the river's edge to help the slaves ashore." (Darden, 39)
The song vividly illustrates the transfer of authority to Jesus in a way that carried a profound double meaning for slaves. The song conveyed both the sense of stealing away from the sway of the sinful world, and also a literal stealing away by night from their oppression so they may worship the Lord.
Many of these spirituals found their theme in the birth of Jesus:
"It is then not difficult to understand the slaves' attraction to the Nativity spirituals, where the helpless infant and the refugee parents in an occupied land find shelter in a cave or barn, surrounded by animals. The infant Jesus is tenderly, lovingly presented in these spirituals: "Sister Mary had-a but one child, Born in Bethlehem / And every time-a baby cried, She'd-a rocked Him in the weary land."
Even the birth narratives of Jesus had, for slaves, a quality that subverted the existing order. Darden continues:
"But there is sometimes a note of defiance even amid the most tender depiction of Jesus as a baby. The "sentimental image of a baby in a manger" in a spiritual like "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," Mitchell suggests, should not "be confused with a faith without teeth":
Sweet little Jesus boy, they made you be born in a manger.
Sweet little Jesus boy, they didn't know who you was.
They treat you mean, Lawd; treat me mean, too,
But that's how things is down here; they don't know who you is. (quoted in Darden, 41)
From the mere fact that Christ was ill-treated in this world, the song opens up on the hope for an entirely different realm than we find "down here" in this world. Songs like this carry the sense so powerfully that people in this world are not often recognized for who they are, and that their true worth and dignity often goes hidden, and that this was above all true of the incarnate Lord. Accompanying this is the sense that the judgment will bring with it a right ordering of everything. This is vividly captured in a song called "Had No Room," recorded by Mahalia Jackson and The Staple Singers among others. It begins in the inn:
Had no room
Had no room
Had no room at the inn
When the time had surely come
For the Savior to be born
Had no room at the inn
Had no room, had no room
But then it moves to a heavenly courthouse where the servants at the inn will give account as to how the innkeepers withheld compassion from Mary:
Well, there was a bellboy, and a porter, and a waitress, and a maid, and a cook
I know they'll be a witness.
In that great judgment day
When we'll all hear them say
How they turned poor Mary away
Had no room at the inn
Had no room, had no room
These songs are resources for us to remember that in Christ, God became poor and rejected. Similarly, the slave experience of Jesus' infancy reminds us that the existing power structures of the world are opposed to this baby King, and that if we want to stand with Jesus, we need to be prepared to be uncomfortable.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Thursday, December 28 - The Holy Innocents
In Dorothy Sayer's cycle of plays about the life of Christ, she depicts the scene when Herod sends troops to Bethlehem to kill every male child, hoping to end the threat of the newborn King:
HEROD: Good. Here's another order. Take a band of Thracians. Go to Bethlehem. Search out every male child in the cradle ---
PROCLUS: Children, sir?
HEROD: From twelve days old --- No. I don't trust them. No. Take all the male children from two years old and under and put the lot to death. All of them. The whole brood of adders. Do you hear? Let none escape. Kill them all.
PROCLUS: Sir, I am a soldier, not a butcher.
HEROD: You will obey orders.
PROCLUS: I won't, and that's flat. I am a Roman, and Romans do not kill children. Send one of your own barbarians. (Sayers, The Man Born to be King, 65)
Other research on ancient civilizations would suggest that this is being overly generous to the Romans. All sorts of ancient civilizations killed their children. George Grant writes:
"Virtually every culture in antiquity was stained with the blood of innocent children. Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were abandoned outside the city walls to die from exposure to the elements or from the attacks of wild foraging beasts. Greeks often gave their pregnant women harsh doses of herbal or medicinal abortifacients." (Grant, The Christian Almanac, 758)
Grant goes on in ways that are so disturbing that I am troubled to quote them. That something so terrible to us should have seemed so normal to the ancients is extremely disorienting.
Adam C. English speaks to how normal this was:
"As if disease, malnutrition, unhygienic conditions, and poor medical treatment were not dangerous enough, children were regularly threatened by infanticide. It is almost impossible to know with certainty how frequently infanticide was practiced, mainly because it was a matter for the paterfamilias, the father, to decide. Because it was not a state matter, it was not reported. The head of the house, not the government, decided the fate of the child. Roman law did not regulate or in any way prohibit fathers from exposing their children to death. Acceptable reasons for abandoning children included the following: the child was "maimed or monstrous from birth," not the preferred gender, or physically uminpressive, or the family was simply unable to feed one more mouth." (English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 41)
The Christian revolution was ultimately good news for women and by extension, for babies. Church historian Rodney Stark writes: "Widespread female infanticide had reduced the number of women in society. "If you are delivered of a child," wrote a man named Hilarion to his pregnant wife, "if it is a boy, keep it, if it is a girl discard it." Frequent abortions "entailing great risk" (in the words of Celsus) killed many women and left even more barren. The Christian community, however, practiced neither abortion nor infanticide and thus drew to itself women. More importantly, within the Christian community women enjoyed higher status and security than they did among their pagan neighbors. Pagan women typically were married at a young age (often before puberty) to much older men. But Christian women were older when they married and had more choice in whom, and even if, they would marry." (Rodney Stark, "Live Longer, Healthier, and Better: The Untold Benefits of Becoming a Christian in the Ancient World", from Christian History, 1998)
This continued into the Middle Ages. In a cycle of plays that were put on by various guilds in medieval Great Britain, the story of the birth of Christ was told. One of the few surviving songs from this cycle is called "The Coventry Carol." In it, the story of the massacre of the infants is told through the perspective of mothers who sing their children to sleep lest the soldiers of Herod locate them by their crying:
Lully, lulla, thow littel tyne child,
By, by, lully, lulla, thow littel child,
By, by lully, lullay.
O sisters too, How may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor yongling For whom we do sing:
"By, by, lully, lullay"?
Herod the King In his raging
Chargid he hath this day
His men of might In his owne sight
All yonge children to slay.
That wo is me, Pore child, for thee,
And ever morne and say
For thi parting Nether say nor singe:
"By, by, lully, lullay." (Grant, Christmas Spirit, 172-173)
The event recounted here in this way is, of course, unfathomably sad. This, being the artistic expression of it, is also the way that societies are transformed. The stories of Scripture, such as that of the murderous, raging Herod sabotaging his peoples' own heritage by destroying an entire village of youth, had so clearly shaped the people of this British city of Coventry by the year 1300 that they expressed in music all the fear, lament, tenderness, and horror of what Herod had done. This is a song, and to that extent, a society (which produces and sings the song) that has a new vision of what it means to be pro-child.
In Dorothy Sayers' play, the Roman soldier protests that Romans aren't butchers and that Romans don't kill children. But of course they did. On the surface, no culture seems as child-affirming as the United States. But it is important not to be ignorant as the Roman soldier is in the presence of Herod. Is there a dark underside to our ways? To be sure. Richard John Neuhaus was a young priest whose activist heart was set on opposition to the Vietnam War and to racial discrimination. He spoke at Democratic conventions in the 1960s. But, as his political tribe came to embrace freedom to abort children in the early 1970s, Neuhaus was stunned. Though his life is the story of a man who transcended political typecasting, he was always the sort of person who could be counted on to speak his mind, whoever it would offend. Though in the 1970s, he offended his friends on the left, he would offend his friends on the right in the mid-1990s when he threatened that the generation to come would find "the government that rules them is morally illegitimate." Harshly rebuked by friends at the time, Matthew Schmitz writes that the twenty years since then have proven Neuhaus to be right, especially in light of new research from the World Values Survey, which shows that belief in democracy is in decline:
"Today, even those undisturbed by the fact that sixty million Americans have been aborted since 1973 should be able to see that all is not well. Real average hourly wages have not increased for fifty years. A national increase in deaths from suicide, alcohol, and drug abuse has caused overall life expectancy to decline for the first time since the AIDS epidemic.
"We are told that these outcomes are simply the result of individual choice; to stop them would be an intolerable infringement on the rights of privacy and private property. This is the logic that has done so much to discredit liberal democracy. Economics is now treated as less a question of justice than a narrow and technical science. Politics is confined to policy questions rather than competing visions of right and wrong. Our regime hopes to maximize happiness by encouraging individual choice. It accepts abortion and overdose as the price for free love and free trade. It offers us every personal satisfaction, but nothing we can share. Even if our regime did maximize individual preference, that would not be enough. It is not good for man to be alone. Our good is necessarily common rather than merely personal and private." (Matthew Schmitz, "Neuhaus was Right", published in First Things, January 2018)
When questioned by Herod, the Roman soldier said "Romans don't kill children." But we know better. All societies have been caught up in this cruelest of cruel tendencies to sabotage their own heritage. So have we. In our complicity with this most broken quality of human life, we allow the Christmas story to re-orient us in the plight to lift up human life, no matter what the cost. I close with George Grant's paragraph on the contemporary meaning of the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents:
"It has always been the focus of the Christian's commitment to protect and preserve the sanctity of human life - thus serving as a prophetic warning against the practitioners of abandonment and infanticide in the age of antiquity, oblacy, and pessiary in the medieval epoch, and abortion and euthanasia in these modern times. Generally set aside as a day of prayer, it culminates with a declaration of the covenant community's unflinching commitment to the innocents who are unable to protect themselves." (Grant, The Christian Almanac, 758)
HEROD: Good. Here's another order. Take a band of Thracians. Go to Bethlehem. Search out every male child in the cradle ---
PROCLUS: Children, sir?
HEROD: From twelve days old --- No. I don't trust them. No. Take all the male children from two years old and under and put the lot to death. All of them. The whole brood of adders. Do you hear? Let none escape. Kill them all.
PROCLUS: Sir, I am a soldier, not a butcher.
HEROD: You will obey orders.
PROCLUS: I won't, and that's flat. I am a Roman, and Romans do not kill children. Send one of your own barbarians. (Sayers, The Man Born to be King, 65)
Other research on ancient civilizations would suggest that this is being overly generous to the Romans. All sorts of ancient civilizations killed their children. George Grant writes:
"Virtually every culture in antiquity was stained with the blood of innocent children. Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were abandoned outside the city walls to die from exposure to the elements or from the attacks of wild foraging beasts. Greeks often gave their pregnant women harsh doses of herbal or medicinal abortifacients." (Grant, The Christian Almanac, 758)
Grant goes on in ways that are so disturbing that I am troubled to quote them. That something so terrible to us should have seemed so normal to the ancients is extremely disorienting.
Adam C. English speaks to how normal this was:
"As if disease, malnutrition, unhygienic conditions, and poor medical treatment were not dangerous enough, children were regularly threatened by infanticide. It is almost impossible to know with certainty how frequently infanticide was practiced, mainly because it was a matter for the paterfamilias, the father, to decide. Because it was not a state matter, it was not reported. The head of the house, not the government, decided the fate of the child. Roman law did not regulate or in any way prohibit fathers from exposing their children to death. Acceptable reasons for abandoning children included the following: the child was "maimed or monstrous from birth," not the preferred gender, or physically uminpressive, or the family was simply unable to feed one more mouth." (English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, 41)
The Christian revolution was ultimately good news for women and by extension, for babies. Church historian Rodney Stark writes: "Widespread female infanticide had reduced the number of women in society. "If you are delivered of a child," wrote a man named Hilarion to his pregnant wife, "if it is a boy, keep it, if it is a girl discard it." Frequent abortions "entailing great risk" (in the words of Celsus) killed many women and left even more barren. The Christian community, however, practiced neither abortion nor infanticide and thus drew to itself women. More importantly, within the Christian community women enjoyed higher status and security than they did among their pagan neighbors. Pagan women typically were married at a young age (often before puberty) to much older men. But Christian women were older when they married and had more choice in whom, and even if, they would marry." (Rodney Stark, "Live Longer, Healthier, and Better: The Untold Benefits of Becoming a Christian in the Ancient World", from Christian History, 1998)
This continued into the Middle Ages. In a cycle of plays that were put on by various guilds in medieval Great Britain, the story of the birth of Christ was told. One of the few surviving songs from this cycle is called "The Coventry Carol." In it, the story of the massacre of the infants is told through the perspective of mothers who sing their children to sleep lest the soldiers of Herod locate them by their crying:
Lully, lulla, thow littel tyne child,
By, by, lully, lulla, thow littel child,
By, by lully, lullay.
O sisters too, How may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor yongling For whom we do sing:
"By, by, lully, lullay"?
Herod the King In his raging
Chargid he hath this day
His men of might In his owne sight
All yonge children to slay.
That wo is me, Pore child, for thee,
And ever morne and say
For thi parting Nether say nor singe:
"By, by, lully, lullay." (Grant, Christmas Spirit, 172-173)
The event recounted here in this way is, of course, unfathomably sad. This, being the artistic expression of it, is also the way that societies are transformed. The stories of Scripture, such as that of the murderous, raging Herod sabotaging his peoples' own heritage by destroying an entire village of youth, had so clearly shaped the people of this British city of Coventry by the year 1300 that they expressed in music all the fear, lament, tenderness, and horror of what Herod had done. This is a song, and to that extent, a society (which produces and sings the song) that has a new vision of what it means to be pro-child.
In Dorothy Sayers' play, the Roman soldier protests that Romans aren't butchers and that Romans don't kill children. But of course they did. On the surface, no culture seems as child-affirming as the United States. But it is important not to be ignorant as the Roman soldier is in the presence of Herod. Is there a dark underside to our ways? To be sure. Richard John Neuhaus was a young priest whose activist heart was set on opposition to the Vietnam War and to racial discrimination. He spoke at Democratic conventions in the 1960s. But, as his political tribe came to embrace freedom to abort children in the early 1970s, Neuhaus was stunned. Though his life is the story of a man who transcended political typecasting, he was always the sort of person who could be counted on to speak his mind, whoever it would offend. Though in the 1970s, he offended his friends on the left, he would offend his friends on the right in the mid-1990s when he threatened that the generation to come would find "the government that rules them is morally illegitimate." Harshly rebuked by friends at the time, Matthew Schmitz writes that the twenty years since then have proven Neuhaus to be right, especially in light of new research from the World Values Survey, which shows that belief in democracy is in decline:
"Today, even those undisturbed by the fact that sixty million Americans have been aborted since 1973 should be able to see that all is not well. Real average hourly wages have not increased for fifty years. A national increase in deaths from suicide, alcohol, and drug abuse has caused overall life expectancy to decline for the first time since the AIDS epidemic.
"We are told that these outcomes are simply the result of individual choice; to stop them would be an intolerable infringement on the rights of privacy and private property. This is the logic that has done so much to discredit liberal democracy. Economics is now treated as less a question of justice than a narrow and technical science. Politics is confined to policy questions rather than competing visions of right and wrong. Our regime hopes to maximize happiness by encouraging individual choice. It accepts abortion and overdose as the price for free love and free trade. It offers us every personal satisfaction, but nothing we can share. Even if our regime did maximize individual preference, that would not be enough. It is not good for man to be alone. Our good is necessarily common rather than merely personal and private." (Matthew Schmitz, "Neuhaus was Right", published in First Things, January 2018)
When questioned by Herod, the Roman soldier said "Romans don't kill children." But we know better. All societies have been caught up in this cruelest of cruel tendencies to sabotage their own heritage. So have we. In our complicity with this most broken quality of human life, we allow the Christmas story to re-orient us in the plight to lift up human life, no matter what the cost. I close with George Grant's paragraph on the contemporary meaning of the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents:
"It has always been the focus of the Christian's commitment to protect and preserve the sanctity of human life - thus serving as a prophetic warning against the practitioners of abandonment and infanticide in the age of antiquity, oblacy, and pessiary in the medieval epoch, and abortion and euthanasia in these modern times. Generally set aside as a day of prayer, it culminates with a declaration of the covenant community's unflinching commitment to the innocents who are unable to protect themselves." (Grant, The Christian Almanac, 758)
Wednesday, December 27 - John
December 27 has traditionally been a feast day for the Apostle John. Many words could be used to describe the Apostle John. My current favorite is that he is the Apostle of abiding, or 'remaining' in Christ.
From John's gospel, Jesus says:
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." (John 15:5-8)
John is also linked to Mary, the mother of Jesus. When Jesus was on the cross, he addressed Mary and John together:
"Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home." (John 19:25-27)
Richard John Neuhaus reflects upon this passage:
"Mary is the model of discipleship in her total availability to the will of God. She had no business of her own. She was always on call. To the angel's announcement, she says, "Let it be as you say." She was dependent on others, on Joseph, for example, and now on John. By saying yes to the angel and agreeing to be the mother of the Messiah, she had created a situation beyond her control. Who was to pick up the pieces? God provides by sending an angel to say, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife." Now at the cross she is once again alone in the world. God provides. "Son, behold your mother.' And from that hour John took her to his own home." In her total availability to God, Mary is totally independent and totally dependent upon God's providing. True availability to God overcomes the fear of being dependent on others, for God provides. It is our determination to be independent by being in control that makes us unavailable to God." (Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, 90)
John begins Revelation 12 this way:
"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." (Rev. 12:1-2)
David Chilton comments:
"This Woman, St. John says, is the Mother of Christ: She is seen to be with child (the same Greek expression used of the Virgin Mary in Matthew 1:18, 23), carrying in her womb the Messiah who is destined "to rule all the nations with a rod of iron" (v. 5)." (David Chilton, Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation, 298)
More:
"St. John thus brings together all the Woman-imagery of the Bible for this composite portrait of the covenant community, laboring to bring forth the Messiah: She is Eve, the Mother of all living, whose Seed will crush the Dragon's head; she is also Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Jochebed, Hannah, and the other women of the covenant who gave birth to deliverers, forerunners of the Seed; she is the Virgin Mary, through whom the promises to the fathers met their fulfillment." (Chilton, 299)
We get a hint here how densely John layers biblical symbolism to tell us about Mary, and thus to tell us about Christ.
Here is how Malcolm Guite's sonnet about John ends:
This is the Gospel of all inner meaning,
The heart of heaven opened to the earth,
A gentle friend on Jesus' bosom leaning,
And Nicodemus offered a new birth.
No need to search the heavens high above,
Come close with John, and feel the pulse of Love. (Malcolm Guite, "John" from Sounding the Seasons, 6)
From John's gospel, Jesus says:
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." (John 15:5-8)
John is also linked to Mary, the mother of Jesus. When Jesus was on the cross, he addressed Mary and John together:
"Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home." (John 19:25-27)
Richard John Neuhaus reflects upon this passage:
"Mary is the model of discipleship in her total availability to the will of God. She had no business of her own. She was always on call. To the angel's announcement, she says, "Let it be as you say." She was dependent on others, on Joseph, for example, and now on John. By saying yes to the angel and agreeing to be the mother of the Messiah, she had created a situation beyond her control. Who was to pick up the pieces? God provides by sending an angel to say, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife." Now at the cross she is once again alone in the world. God provides. "Son, behold your mother.' And from that hour John took her to his own home." In her total availability to God, Mary is totally independent and totally dependent upon God's providing. True availability to God overcomes the fear of being dependent on others, for God provides. It is our determination to be independent by being in control that makes us unavailable to God." (Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, 90)
John begins Revelation 12 this way:
"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." (Rev. 12:1-2)
David Chilton comments:
"This Woman, St. John says, is the Mother of Christ: She is seen to be with child (the same Greek expression used of the Virgin Mary in Matthew 1:18, 23), carrying in her womb the Messiah who is destined "to rule all the nations with a rod of iron" (v. 5)." (David Chilton, Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation, 298)
More:
"St. John thus brings together all the Woman-imagery of the Bible for this composite portrait of the covenant community, laboring to bring forth the Messiah: She is Eve, the Mother of all living, whose Seed will crush the Dragon's head; she is also Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Jochebed, Hannah, and the other women of the covenant who gave birth to deliverers, forerunners of the Seed; she is the Virgin Mary, through whom the promises to the fathers met their fulfillment." (Chilton, 299)
We get a hint here how densely John layers biblical symbolism to tell us about Mary, and thus to tell us about Christ.
Here is how Malcolm Guite's sonnet about John ends:
This is the Gospel of all inner meaning,
The heart of heaven opened to the earth,
A gentle friend on Jesus' bosom leaning,
And Nicodemus offered a new birth.
No need to search the heavens high above,
Come close with John, and feel the pulse of Love. (Malcolm Guite, "John" from Sounding the Seasons, 6)
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Tuesday, December 26 - Stephen and Wenceslas
Legend has it that the day Christ was born was a day of peace, when there was no war in the world. Be that as it may, Malcolm Guite reminds us that Christ was already under threat from powerful people almost immediately:
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else's quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load (Guite, "Refugee" Sounding the Seasons, 16)
A good tonic against too much sentimentality at Christmas is to remember Stephen, the first martyr, on December 26. Though at first puzzling (he doesn't appear in the Scriptures until after Jesus' ascension!), it reminds us immediately how threatening the message of Christ is to business-as-usual. What are we doing when we pay attention to such things as the liturgical calendar? It's for the sake of the church. The church is the body of Christ. Christ, of course, still has a body. But the church's life is such that it participates in Christ's life. And this is what the liturgical year is: a tracing of the contours of Christ's life. And at every stage, we the church find ourselves addressed about our own life. Thus, as soon as we are reminded at Christmas that we are bearers of the message that the King of Kings has come to us, we are also reminded of the cost of bearing that message: the cross, always the cross. Herman Bavinck has said that the life of the church is always "under the cross" until Christ comes again. This makes for a joyful festival season of Christmas, but only as we make Christ our joy. December 26 gives us two great examples of Christmas joy over and against the hatred of the world: Stephen and Wenceslas.
Over and against the threats of Saul the persecutor, Stephen testified vividly to Jesus Christ. As his tormentors stood with stones poised for the throwing, Stephen joyfully beheld the Lord Jesus and forgave his accusers. The fallout from his murder was the spread of the church around the Mediterranean region, and the conversion of his persecutor, Saul. Guite writes about/to Stephen:
Witness for Jesus, man of fruitful blood,
Your martyrdom begins and stands for all.
They saw the stones, you saw the face of God,
And sowed a seed that blossomed in St. Paul. (Guite, "St. Stephen," Sounding the Seasons, 17)
King Wenceslaus was a king in the Slovak regions of East Europe in the 900s. His reign was remarkable for being characterized of a particularly biblical form of justice: care for the poorest, prison reform, the sort of compassion for the least which was always enjoined upon Israel - to remember that they had been slaves who were then redeemed. Indeed, the source of all Christian love, of fulfilling the Golden Rule, is to remember how much God has shown his love to us. Wenceslaus is linked with Stephen in two ways: first, when he was killed by his brother and an angry mob on his way to church, he forgave them all with his dying breath, as Stephen did. The joy with which he gladly used what he had for the poor, was the joy with which he died. Second, through the Christmas carol, "Good King Wenceslaus." It tells a vivid story of Wenceslaus' determination to feed a poor beggar he has seen on December 26, St. Stephen's day. When his page hesitates on account of the bitter cold, Wenceslaus' encouragement helps the page to press on through the literal cold of the bitter Eastern European winter and also through the figurative cold of his own heart, which puts up excuses to not serve the poor, rather than persevering for the blessing. As I write this, it strikes me that both the story of Stephen and Wenceslaus together provide a picture of how we should look for Christ: in the persecuted, for Christ told Saul that when he persecuted Stephen and the rest of the church, he was persecuting Christ. And, in the poor, for Christ told a parable in the Gospel of Luke about how when people were generous to the poor, they were being generous to Christ.
Here are the lyrics to "Good King Wenceslaus:"
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gathering winter fuel.
"Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou knowest it, telling;
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes' fountain."
"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear them thither."
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together;
Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather.
"Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, my good page,
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."
In his master's steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
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