The Poem of Christmas
The following Sunday Morning Service was broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster on 31.12.2006 at 10.15am... Below I have included the Script but it sounded better than it reads...
Good morning so…
Children's nativity plays are over
The food has all been eaten
The presents have all been opened
The toys have all been discarded
The cards and the tinsel have been packed away
And the tree is back in the attic
The carols are off the hymn sheets for another year
They think it's all over
It has only just begun.
Now the shepherds are back in the fields
The wise men are on their way home, the long way
The star has left the Bethlehem sky dimmer
The angels have left it quieter
The mother is recovering from the pain of birth
The baby is safe in his daddy's arms
And there is even a room in the Inn
They think it is all over
It has only just begun.
SONG – BRUCE COCKBURN - Go Tell It On The Mountains
(trad. Arr Bruce Cockburn, Golden Mountain Music Corp (SOCAN) from Christmas, Columbia CK 53026
It easy to think that it is over for another year… I’ll bet the shepherds didn’t. I bet they told it on the mountains… and the wise men. I would love to have heard their stories. And Mary… well Scriptures tell us she pondered it all in her heart. Jesus… well it was far from over for him as well… Oh how we have confined it, contained it, captured Christmas in a little corner of the calendar… I believe more and more every year that we have got it wrong… This morning as you expect me to move on to New Year and resolutions and rebirth let us just stop for a moment and look again… let us ponder what we have just been through… let us ask ourselves if we might have missed something… … let us see if in this manger scene we can find the spark to all that we hope for the year ahead… a revolutionary idea that if we released it from its captivity could change the world
Let us hear a carol… here is the perfect example of confined, contained and captured… No one thinks twice about singing Easter hymns of atonement all year round but sing about Christmas songs of incarnation in August and you’ll get a shocked, dumbfounded stare… As we throw the tinsel and lights into the attic let us just hold the carols back… This truth of Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem is for all year round…
SONG : SARAH MCLACHLAN Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
(trad arr. Sarah McLachlan, Sony/ATV Songs LLC/Tyde Music (BMI/SOCAN) from Wintersong, Arista 82876815042)
POEM: - Steve Stockman -Through Congested Traffic
We drive through congested traffic
Stop for a day outside the door
Sentimental beginning to bigger things
We don't see anything more
The blinding bright revelation
Of God's wild and holy nerve
Baby's heart pumping out the love
That none of us deserve
There is a gift to be opened
But we just stare at the wrapping
In a room crammed full of food and lights
We miss the wonder of what's happening.
We drive through congested traffic
Park for a day outside the stable
We think we know the story well
But treat it like a children's fable
When He tells us all there is to know
Before He utters His first word
Wisdom in this foolish dirty straw
Sense meets us in the absurd
There is a gift to be opened
But we just stare at the wrapping
In a room crammed full of food and lights
We miss the wonder of what's happening.
About 18 months ago I had Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross in the BBC studios to do an interview about his solo album Pale Rider. He knew that a song on the album would be of particular interest to me. It is called Calvary but as we played it and he spoke about it I realized that it was, strangely, not about Easter but about Christmas. Ricky explained that he was always fascinated by songs in Church at Christmas that had Jesus on the cross before he had lived his life. So, he wrote this song as a pondering on the life of Christ before he got to the cross… He felt there was a lot we needed to get to grips with in the life of Christ before we got as far as Calvary…
SONG: RICKY ROSS – Calvary
Ricky Ross, Warner Chapel from Pale Rider, P3 Music, P3M013)
It was another rock star Bono was the first I heard speaking of Christmas as a poem. In his book which records interviews with French journalist Michka Assayas he recalls a moment in St. Patricks Cathedral…
“On Christmas Eve, I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s a kind of tradition on Christmas Eve to go but I’d never been. I was given a really bad seat, behind one of the huge pillars. I couldn’t see anything. I was sitting there, having come back from Tokyo or somewhere like that. I went for the singing, because I love choral singing… but I was falling asleep, being up for a few days, traveling, because it was a bit boring, the service, and I just started nodding off, I couldn’t see a thing. Then I started to try and keep myself awake studying what was on the page. It dawned on me for the first time, really. It had dawned on me before but it really sank in: the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself in amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw… a child… I just thought: Wow! Just the poetry… Unknowable love, unknowable power describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hasn’t struck me before, but tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, the utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this. Love needs to find form, intimacy needs t be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical. It’s pure logic. Essence has to manifest itself. It’s inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.”
I wondered for a time what Bono was on about and then as with many of Bono’s utterances I eventually realized how right he was. I believe the events of last weekend to be real and true. I believe that this was a moment of spiritual power, world changing. Let us listen real close to the poem of Christmas as God has written it to us and even if you don’t believe in God or who we believe that baby to be I ask you too to listen to too.
And for those of us who believe in it and have celebrated it for years and years and years let us not be complacent. Listen afresh. Carefully. There is something askew, amiss, out of kilter. In many ways there is an antithesis of what goes on around us this past week.
POEM : Steve Stockman - Christmas As A Poem
As we draw in close to the Christmas rhyme
We cannot help but be provoked by something
Out of kilter, amiss and askew
Instead of a throne in heaven
We are aware of a manger of straw
Instead of robed religious dignitaries
We are aware of cattle, sheep and shepherds
Straight from the fields
Instead of incense and bells
We are aware of pungent stenches and animal noises
Instead of theology graduates in gowns
We are aware of eastern mystics
Following stars and accidentally stumbling over religious truth.
And even more bizarre and disturbing
We are aware of the people of God
Who should know better
Who know enough to search the Holy Scriptures
To find the truth of such events
Using their knowledge
Not to approach you in worship
But to flood the streets of David’s city
With the blood of innocent children and babies
And sending the long awaited and yearned for Messiah
Fleeing his life to Egypt as a refugee…
How bizarre
How mysterious?
What a revolution.
PRAYER :MARK
Almighty God
We approach you and worship you as
The Omnipresent
Omniscient
Omnipotent God
But as we approach you in this Christmas poem
We approach a God who emptied himself
Who gave up his safety and comfort
Who made himself nothing
And left himself vulnerable
God as we approach such wonder
Such a mystery
Such an upside down view of the world
Force us to ask ourselves
Why
Give us a snippet of history’s greatest refrain
The greatest news to be sung to humanity
That God loved us and demonstrated his love for us in this
That while we were still sinners
He was born and lived and died for us
So God as we approach you today
We are acutely aware of a God who gave up everything
For us
And if we listen closely we can hear you whisper to us
From the straw of the manger
From the road to Egypt
From the seashore of no reputation
From the mountain of the sermon
From the journey to Calvary
From a cross of wood
Follow me… follow me… follow me..
As the Father sent me so I am sending you
You are the light of the world
The salt of the earth
God as we approach you in this Christmas poem
Give us the courage, the bravery
To follow you…
To give our lives…
To be servants of others…
God we thank you for the wonder of the poetry and transforming power of Christmas…
Make these words flesh in us…
In this baby name
AMEN!
Yes, a closer look around the Christmas poem will show us the grittier side. The stable was not wall papered, Joseph did not do extra mural studies in midwifery, the cows had not been shampooed that morning and the straw had not been hospital sterilized before they laid the baby down. The hymnal idea that the baby “no crying he makes” is an indicator of how we’ve missed the reality of the situation. For Mary this was no Christmas Card scene. There was no hindsight theological understandings in her village as to the scandal of her pregnancy, she was now along distance from her mother at a time when mother’s are such a comfort and then there is the birth itself. (0.40)
ANDREW PETERSON – Labour Of Love (4.30) 24.45
(Andrew Peterson, New Spring Publishing Pub. (A division of Brentwood Benson Music Pub. Inc.) (ASCAP), from Behold The Lamb Fervent Records, 79143-0060-2)
POEM – Steve Stockman - For God's Sake Give Me Some Reality
Nicely rounded explanations
Safe and sanitised solutions
A magic text for every doubt
A definitive answer for every mystery
A band aid for a life that’s torn asunder
“There, there everything is going to be all right”
FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY
The woman abused and left divorced, used and lonely
A teenage widow behind the love of her life’s coffin
A child whose legs have been blown off by a land mine
A township orphan to Africa’s HIV/AIDS pandemic
A father whose child has been found assaulted and strangled in a forest park
FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY
A recently wallpapered stable
Freshly washed cattle
Hospital perfumed straw
Carpenter with an extra mural in midwifery
Theologically sound eastern stargazing mystics
A perfect little baby “no crying he makes”
FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY
Impoverished and homeless
Germs breeding in the filth and squalor
Death squads in the dawn’s first light
Children’s blood flowing though the streets
Refugees running for the fear of their lives
FOR GOD'S SAKE, BORN IN THE MIDST OF REALITY
So why this particular reality; what is God whispering or shouting at us from the vividness of this poem? I have come to believe that everything that Jesus would say and do in his life and ministry is right here in this scene.
“Blessed are the poor”
he would say… it makes more sense in this picture.
“You must deny yourself”…
well this is as good an illustration of that as you can have.
“Don’t store up treasure on earth”…
point taken.
“Love your neighbour”…
…so even the shepherds then.
“Love your enemies”
So even those of different culture and beliefs then…
“Woe to you Phsrisees because you give God a tenth of your mint rue and all kinds of garden herbs but you neglect justice and the love of God.”
Oh those battles with the Pharisees… the ones who hold the Scriptures in their hands and in their traditions don’t always see the truth or maybe they do but aren’t prepared to pay the cost that the verses they have memorized demands…
“the first will be last and the last will be first.”
Ah just like the Lord of the universe being the least little homeless birth in the world… it is all here in this poem, the nativity scene… and as we lean in you can hear the baby… follow me… follow me… but who are we to follow God… surely we are too unworthy… no… the baby in the straw is God’s gift of grace that welcomes all who approach him into the new world that is being born… even shepherds… even eastern mystics… even me… even you… invited by grace… to follow.
SONG : DEREK WEBB – Rich Young Ruler
(Derek Webb, Derek Webb Music (admin. by Copycare Ltd) from Mockingbird, INO Records)
So by God’s grace we are invited, challenged, commanded to follow the baby in the straw… As we start another year this is another perfect time to commit to that… what would following look like if we read this Christmas poem right, if we glean the clues from the scene…
Well first is the lack of care about self and the giving of self for others… as Paul wrote to the Church in Philippi… (0.30) 32.10
READING : PHILIPPIANS 2 v 5-11 (TNIV)
5In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
6 Who, being in very nature [a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature [b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The picture, the rhyme of Christmas is about losing self… knowing that when we do we find ourselves whereas when we live our lives to gain the world we lose our very souls… I guess that is a good time to stop ourselves in our tracks as we head for New Year and ask if our own Christmas scenes reflected a losing of self or if the whole commercialized roar doesn’t scream lavish decadent luxury with not even a thought for those in our world whose very survival depends on our sacrifice of comforts… you wonder if the message of the baby Jesus could be anymore of an antithesis to what we have done to the season and whether what we have done to the season is not an accurate reflection of how we in the west live our lives. The Christ child demands a radical revolution in our living. A turning around. From getting more to giving more. From me first to others first. To create a place, a culture, a kingdom where the first become last and the last become first…
SONG : RAGAMUFFIN BAND - You Did Not Have A Home
(Rich Mullins, Liturgy, Legacy Music, (admin by Word Music) (ASCAP) from The Jesus Record, Myrhh Records 080688559229)
Where else can we follow. The recent tragedy among the Amish community of Lancaster county Pennsylvannia tipped me off to another lesson from the straw. If you remember they had some of their young children callously murdered by a family man whose wife was at the prayer meeting while he shot the girls dead. Literally within minutes the Christ believing Amish people were in the woman’s home to offer forgiveness and in the days that followed even opened a fund for the murderer’s children. One of them interviewed on TV put it plainly and matter of factly “Jesus asks us to forgive so we will have to forgive.” It was like a light shining out over the world. A revolutionary attitude of grace that the Christmas morning story declares…
And yet… when you read Jesus words about light in the Sermon on the Mount he doesn’t say that his followers are only light… (0.50) 37.55
READING: Matthew 5 v 13 - 16 (The Message)
13"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
14-16"Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
No we are also to be salt too. Indeed the salt comes first. And it made me ask if we had needed that wonderful Amish community to be salt and if they had been salt what might have been averted. Light shines from a distance. It can warn from far away. The lighthouse on Rathlin Island. The point is not to get close to it! But salt. Salt is no good from a distance. Salt needs to be on the meat to preserve it or flavour it or on the wound to heal. We needed that authentic Christian worldview of the Amish seeping into the society around them. As David Gray sings, “into lies, ruin, disease/ into wounds like these let the truth sting.”
And again that is the message the baby Jesus challenges us with as we turn this calendar date of January 1st into a new beginning. We need to be nestling in the dirty straw of our society. As John tells us in the prologue to his account of the rest of that baby’s life, “The word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood.” “Follow me” says Jesus into that neighbourhood. Into incarnation. Where love becomes action. Where the truth of the eternal Word becomes flesh. Where there our wounds, soak in and bring healing.
PRAYER
Lord show us the wounds of our world
The wounds of our society
The wounds of our communities
The wounds of our Churches
The wounds of our friends
Lord show us our own wounds
Show us the lies
The ruin
The disease
And Lord like the incarnate Christ in dirty straw
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
The truth of your love
The truth of your mercy
The truth of this amazing birth
The truth of your cross and resurrection
The truth of your radically alternative Kingdom
As the new year dawns
May we give ourselves like the baby in the straw gave himself
May we follow him
To be salt and light
To change the world forever.
AMEN
SONG: DAVID GRAY – Let The Truth Sting
(David Gray, Warner Chappell Music Ltd from A Century’s End, Hut, CDHUT9)
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