In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.      ~Luke 1:39-44

This week I was able to drive up to Williams to look at the camp for next years All Church Family Camp. When I take these sort of road trips, I typically take one of my children with me. One reason for this is to provide a little stimulation for me while I drive, and another reason is to let them experience something new and exciting. This trip to Williams was no different, and the child of choice was my youngest, Jude, as he was the only one not in school. 

After dropping off my older two at school, Jude, my father (he wanted to see some of Arizona he hadn’t seen before too), and I headed up to Williams. As we prepared for the journey, we grabbed light jackets in preparation of the slight change in temperature from Scottsdale to Williams. As we were driving north on the 17, it didn’t really hit me until it was too late that it had rained in Scottsdale this past weekend, meaning there would probably be snow on the ground in Williams. 

Although I have not lived in a place where it has snowed in over 10 years, growing up in the Mid-West snow is something I am accustomed to. It is something that is nice to look at from a distance, and even nicer to drive to when you want to enjoy it, but snow is not something that really excites me as much as it did when I was a kid. When I was a kid, snow brought joy because it often meant a snow day. In Indiana, we didn’t get a lot of snow days, a day it snows so much they cancel school, but when we knew it was going to snow, we would wait up late at night to see if our school had been canceled the next day. Finding out that it had been canceled the day before was the best because it meant you could sleep in the next day. However, it was no less spectacular to get up in the morning and see that your school day had been canceled.   

My kids they have never known this joy. Of my three children, only Trey, my oldest, has been in real snow before. They have been in the man-made kind at parks or winter festivals, but only Trey has seen the real stuff.  Snow, for my children, is often looked at as a mythical creature, something that they have only heard stories and rumors about, but haven’t ever witnessed for themselves. Because of this, my daughter has made me promise to take her to see real snow this year.   

When we first pulled into the camp, Jude was asleep so he didn’t notice the snow we passed on our drive. So when I woke him up to get out of the car he was taken aback to see snow on the ground.  When he got out of the car the first thing he did was run over to the snow - and the smile on his face was priceless.  He poked it at first. Then he grabbed it in his hand. Then he proceeded to throw a snowball at Grandpa, then at Dad, and then at a tree and a rock. It wasn’t too long before the realization of how cold snow is started to sink in, as his hands started to get cold. Do you think that stopped him? No. I warmed them up for him and back off he was to play in the snow. The pure joy that snow brought to Jude brought joy to me in a way that snow hadn’t since I was a kid. Snow was once again was something that I no longer took for granted, but something I looked forward to seeing again. 

After the angel of the Lord told Mary that she was going to have a child, the first thing she did was go she her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who was much older than Mary, and who was barren, was also going to have a child. Despite the excitement that Elizabeth had for her own pregnancy and planning for the birth of her own child, John the Baptist, when Mary arrived she didn’t make it about herself. Elizabeth made it about Mary, and we are told that she was excited for Mary. She didn’t let her own life distract from the importance of what was happening through Mary in the birth of Jesus. In fact, we are told that even Elizabeth’s unborn baby leapt with joy at the sound of Mary’s voice.   

Often in the hustle and bustle of being adults we lose sight of the joy that surrounds Christmas. We get busy making travel plans, buying presents, going to parties and we get distracted. As we get older, we often start to take Christmas for granted and it becomes something else to add to our to-do list. The “joy” of Christmas often gets replaced by the reality and the busyness of our lives leading up to Christmas. We find ourselves looking forward - getting beyond Christmas to a time when things settle back down and become less hectic. But that is not what Christmas is about. 

This week we lit the Advent candle of Joy in anticipation of the joy that Christ’s birth will bring. As we approach Christmas, don’t let what is going on in our lives take away from the joy that is Christmas.  No matter how many times you have heard the Christmas story, I hope that this year you will find joy as we celebrate the birth of our Savior. 

Click photo to see videoThis "flash mob" of the U.S. Air Force Band at the Smithsonian is good fun. In the spirit of Advent, I thought to link to it as my BLOG this month. As great as it is to watch, it also raises a couple of ideas for me. One is a delightful picture of Advent and it's hope. The other is about the little paradoxes with which we live.

The first is just how much like the feeling of faith this is. We walk around living life like all the world around, and yet we hold inside ourselves an awareness that there's a song of beautiful praise and joy always just about to break out in the world. God is always here, ready to stop us up short, move our hearts, shape our imagination, give us a new melody to sing—even while we're just going about our business. The question is whether we'll notice or not, and what we'll hear, and how we'll let it change things. That's what this time of year should feel like, I think.

Second is maybe a bit more controversial, even though I think actually less radical than my first idea. It's the interesting questions raised by the fact that it's the Air Force band. What are we to do with that? Is that a good thing, underscoring those parts of our national values that are rooted in Christian ethics and piety? Is that a bad thing, forcing non-Christian musicians to play sacred music or overly identifying church and state? I know that I love it. I just don't know quite how to think about it. Someone from, say, a predominantly Muslim country would understandably infer from the fact that the Air Force band is playing and singing a Christian hymn proves that the American army is a Christ's army. I, for one, don't want to say that. I prefer to believe that even while we defend certain Christian values we, as a nation, are also critiqued by those same values. The church certainly does more than uphold. It also undoes, and recreates, and humbles.

And maybe that's exactly why this whole thing is so interesting. It's the very ambiguity with which we live—wanting something new and beautiful and life changing while living within all the difficulties and ambiguities of our lives. That's Advent, isn't it? Mary and Joseph slogging to Bethlehem, with hope for relief and yet within the realities of their day. Making their way. "The joy of our desiring . . ."

As Wes, Frank and I stood in front of the sea of candles held high singing Silent Night I couldn’t help but think about how wonderful it was to begin our ministry together with the sign of the light of Christ surrounding us. As the light twinkled around us illuminating the glass windows, pews, walls, and faces it was as is if we were in the midst of the ocean made of light and everything came alive because of it. 

Since I was a child I have always loved this portion of the Christmas Eve service. The way Christ’s light goes from one person to the next is beautiful uniting young or old, single or married, new to church or a seasoned member. The moment we share the light of Christ with your loved one, a friend or maybe a stranger is the beautiful symbol of the way Christ light spreads through us. As the light gets brighter the words from John 1 seem to come alive, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”  

The light of Christ is always spreading though conversations, smiles, hugs, and relationships we have with others. It moves through us and around us lighting up the dark world but too often we miss it. We are surrounded by the shadows of darkness found in war, hurt, and loss and the light becomes distant. This is why we celebrate with the simple candles at Christmas Eve, to once again cast out darkness and recognize the signs of light in us.   

Together we stood with Christ before us as the light was passed down the rows of people until everyone’s candle was lit. The light enveloped each person not only lighting the wick of the candle but lighting up each person’s face. And before us was a sea of God’s family. It was a beautiful night of worship, praise, and celebration of Christ’s birth and a wonderful way for us to begin this New Year.

As we begin 2014, let us begin remembering the light of Christ that lives in each of us. I can’t wait to see the light of Christ working in each of you. May this year begin with the light of Christ surrounding you!

Ok, I was thinking about the selection by US News and World Report and others of “selfie” as the 2013 Word of the Year, beating out "twerking" and a couple of other contenders.  But Geoff Nunberg from UC Berkeley has written on this in a far more subtle and interesting way than I would have, so I'll link his article (also available as an audio commentary on www.npr.org).  It all still begs for some theological response, though–but maybe later . . . I'm thinking about Christmas now.  

 Patrick Blower, Daily Telegraph, 12/12/13

Christmas! That’s it, our celebration of the divine “selfie” imaged in the face of that swaddled baby in whose face we see God–redeemed of our narcissism, perfected of our brokenness, God depicting Godself through a self-gift of love.

Obscure?  Well, maybe worth a little Christmas thinking.  Look at Patrick Blower's cartoon from England's Daily Telegraph above.  Can you imagine?  Funny, but poignant.  

The great 20th century Jewish thinker, Martin Buber, once wrote that the dilemma of the modern person is that we're doomed to attend our own actions as spectators.  And he wrote that before "selfies."

Don't know what a "selfies" are?  They're those photos we take of ourselves on our smartphone with front facing lenses in various situations of our lives--ostensibly to post on social media sites so everyone else can see us spectating our own lives.  They're the new, pervasive, high tech version of the "wish you were here" postcards of the last century.

Beth McDonald on FM 99.9 in Phoenix pointed out one morning the way our selfies are often so distorted, with funny looking faces, torsos bigger than they are, arms strange because of the angel of the lens.  We only come into view from a further distance.  Up close, we are out of wack.  There's a sermon there, of course. 

Are there any experiences that are so authentic, so real, that a "selfie" could never hope to show what you're really experiencing in them?  Can we see ourselves more clearly in relationship to something other than a screen containing our image?  Does God relate to us free of the narcicissm that so devastates our abilities to relate to each other, free of the insecurities that force us to try to record our "place" in life, free of the endless abstractions and self-deceptions that can sometimes come when we feel like we are always looking at ourselves (or when we lack healthy self-awareness, out of some kind of fear)?  Yes.  I'm thinking of the image of God in the face of the one baby born in God's image (and seen through our eyes) in Bethlehem.  We have no snaphot image of that baby except as an imageless act of pure love--in the image of babies of many colors and faces inspired by our imagination of this one baby we have come to know (or may yet come to know) as God.  The wisefolk who came to see this baby weren't watching themselves watching him.  They were searching, and were found.  They were giving, and were given to.  They were watching, and were seen by the One they were watching.  And so by being seen, they finally saw themselves--and they saw themsleves in a way no camera could ever catch.  The baby is God's image of Godself, given to us as love.

This Christmas, take a moment and put the smartphone cameras down and sing a hymn, say a word of thanks to a presence you can't see, and see yourself in the face of the Love that created you.  Then you can wave and point and make a funny face!

Here's the Geoff Nunberg article, if you're interested:

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/19/255294091/narcissistic-or-not-selfie-is-nunbergs-word-of-the-year