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056<previous< Issue
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Table of Contents - Christmas 2005
ACCIDENTAL OR PROVIDENTIAL?
A DIALOGUE WITH THE SHEPHERD - Reflections on Psalm 23 By Jerry Barnes In Remembrance of John In the majestic prologue to the Gospel of John, eternity is described as entering into time with this simple statement: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” (1:6). Today we are gathered to celebrate the life of another “man sent from God, whose name was John,” not John the Baptist but John Claypool. Having cherished him as the dearest of friends for more than fifty years, I offer four reflections on how the divine strategy of sending a forerunner to prepare us for Christ was repeated in his ministry. The Gospel as Radical Grace
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I Learned My Ethics in Sunday School I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in a Brethren In Christ congregation in southern California. As part of the Mennonite family, Brethren In Christ churches were clearly out of the main stream of American culture. We were few in number, puritan in our ethic, austere in our life style, and “plain” in our attire. I didn’t much like my minority, sub-culture identity. I felt different in the worst sense—weak and foolish. I felt like I didn’t belong. But everything I learned from my parents, my church, and my Sunday school told me this narrow way of life was the right way.
Samuel’s Gift: A Christmas Story The old man with a white beard sat out on a rock and looked at the children around his feet. His story began: “My name is Samuel. I was born many years ago when my father and his two brothers raised sheep on this hillside. I had four cousins who helped with the sheep. When I was a boy, I could not walk. I was born with a withered leg. One day my father brought me a crutch. It was made from the fork of a tree limb. I could raise myself and follow my cousins as they tended the flock of sheep. I was always behind because I could not go as fast as they could. So it became my job to watch after the sheep when they bedded down at night. There was a full moon that
night as I sat on a rock watching the sheep. My father and the others were
sleeping near the campfire. It was cold. We had blankets made from the wool of
the sheep we raised. Lessons from a Hurricane As I watched the bumper-to-bumper traffic streaming out of the city of New Orleans just two weeks ago, my identification with the occupants of those vehicles was incredibly strong! I knew that scene well. I understand being vulnerable in a hurricane differently than most people who watched the story unfold. I was in Hurricane
Camille in 1969, living in New Orleans with my husband, who was a student at
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The horrors of 1969 were especially
surreal for us, as we drove in the standstill traffic for hours. We weren't
just waiting for a hurricane. Our first baby was due to arrive that very week!
Solstice Like Jerome Kern’s ole man river that “jus’ keeps on rolin’ along,” old man sun just keeps on running its successive journeys across the sky, east to west, day in and day out, from winter through spring to summer and then through fall and back again to winter, so on and so forth. Now, in this circadian rhythm there is, as we all have been taught, a winter solstice and a summer solstice with points in between which observers of such natural phenomena have named the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox, spring and fall. Of all these observable events, none is quite as portentous as the winter solstice. Which at last gets me somewhat closer to a point which is loosely lodged in my little mind. We’re not there yet, to be sure, but we’re moving on. Solstice means literally sun standstill. It is a stage in the sun’s apparent movement in which the days in the winter stop getting shorter and begin again to get longer and conversely, of course, in which the nights stop getting longer and begin again to start getting shorter. The winter solstice is reached each year in the northern hemisphere about December 22, while the summer solstice occurs about June 22. All around the world ancient observers marked the solstices carefully and with astounding accuracy. Anasazi, Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, Babylonians, Chinese, Greeks, Persians, and Romans all seem to have found special ways to mark the winter solstice with celebrations. The early inhabitants of the smallish island that was to become known as England seem to have been particularly cognizant of the winter solstice. Far more than their southern European neighbors in Greece, Italy, and Spain, those early Anglos focused on December 25 as a time for special celebration. The long winter nights were beginning to be gradually shortened and the days began to grow gradually a little longer. Darkness began to be overcome by light. Cold began to give way to the sun’s welcome warmth. Accordingly the solstice was celebrated with bonfires, merrymaking, feasts, and non-lite versions of mead. The festivities were apparently not unlike those of other cultures around the world. As Christianity spread, the formerly pagan celebrations related to the winter solstice came to be gradually appropriated as a natural occasion for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Within a few hundred years after his advent, there was absolutely no consensus as to the actual date of Jesus’ birth. Wide, and often wild, speculations about the date went on for many decades. Finally, however, the rather arbitrary date of December 25 came to be generally accepted as a good time to mark the anniversary of his birth. Because it was tied so closely to the time of the winter solstice, there was general satisfaction about the timing; and the old customs and policies and practices gradually segued into today’s Christmas celebrations. Our Christian beliefs related to Mary and Joseph, the incarnation, the actual birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, the guiding star and the visit of the wise men with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh for the new born baby Jesus were all melded into the winter solstice celebrations which were already in place. Old pagan festivities marked by feasting, lighted candles, the giving of gifts, singing, decorated evergreen trees, yule logs, and rejoicing were all assimilated into our Christian celebrations related to the birth of Jesus Christ. Why not? Our great and good God who kindled the fire in the sun, who tilted the earth on its axis, who started it to spinning, and who ordained its orbit around the sun is the same great and good God whose redeeming grace in the fullness of time manifested itself in the incarnation, a baby in a manger. In celebrating Christmas, there is a good reason to be still a while and ponder the wonders related to the natural phenomenon of the winter solstice. Christians can not only affirm but also celebrate the astronomy, mathematics, science, and all the impressive learning that explains the solstices. The Encyclopedia Britannica elucidates the matter: “Each solstice is upon the ecliptic midway between the equinoxes and therefore 90 degrees from each” and my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition further obfuscates the subject by defining solstice as “either of the points on the ecliptic at which its distance from the eclestial equator is greatest and which is reached by the sun each year about June 22nd and December 22nd.” Well, DUH. I really didn’t want to know that much about the solstices. Still, without benefit of a graduate degree in astronomy, we can celebrate the handiwork of God in fixing the solstices as he has done; and we can celebrate the hard work of scientists in trying to help us understand the general workings of the system. At this special season, then, consider a couple of closing thoughts. Celebrate the solstice. It’s Creator has given humanity a fantastic gift. To this gift we have attached all manner of accouterments and appendages which we do not necessarily have to reject or even complain about and, indeed, to which we may rightly say a joyous YES: Christmas trees, colored lights, fruitcakes, fireworks, roast turkeys and figgy puddings, peppermint candy, roaring fires, and Santa’s ubiquitous Ho-Ho-Hos. Focus on the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus, God means to be reconciling the world to himself. Dayspring from on high has visited us. Humanity itself has been touched with a miracle. It is the miracle of redemption, of new heavens and a new earth. So, at this solstice season, “Remember Jesus Christ” and mind him. Merry Christmas.
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