Do you hate Christmas?

I realised that many Christians hate Christmas. Here are some of the reasons:

1. The commercialism feels too hard to fight.
2. Gift-giving often functions self-centeredly. People give to not be shamed rather than generosity.
3. We watch our Christian brothers and sisters get sucked into this world shamelessly.
4. Families become such a power over people they act in ways they’d otherwise not.
5. Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed – although I was secretly impressed by my families this year.
6. People write off our faith as cute, cuddly, and irrelevant.
7. Our pastors preach to us as if we are non-Christians (TWTL).
8. ...
   

I’ve been thinking long and hard how to not hate Christmas. For many years I have ignored Christmas only surfacing for the day to remember Jesus birth thinking that was the godly thing. A couple years I even took a shift on Christmas day to avoid it. Being married to a non-ministry family where Christian festivals are not work days has slowly challenged me.

I preached on the first Sunday in advent on Jesus 2nd coming (advent). I realised that Christians are people of patient endurance. It is in the midst of waiting that peace, joy, hope, and love come. Surely advent reminds us of waiting for the saviour. During this season we focus on the beginning of Matthew or Luke – the waiting passages. The Christmas season is Christian not just Christmas, although we forget.

I found that patience enabled me to be joyful this Christmas – through crowds, repetitive music, pushy drivers, petulant family, etc – and I celebrated Jesus the saviour in this world, not closeted in a grotto or with my head in the sand.

Bara Din Mabarak Ho (as the say in Pakistan)

the office taketh, the office giveth away

mum, dad, old friends,
another snippet? Another glimpse?
The lord giveth, the lord taketh away.

A relax, some space, sanity
another conference, another roster
the office taketh, the office giveth away

john muir speaks scripture to the mountains
crag temples and forest altar.
City has no market for such heresy.

Come to me all you who are weary
and I will give you
away

academia

a bloody big black hole
when you left your soul for a few marks
then they take them from you.
so go and fill it
shovel shit and soil
empty in your flouro shirt
while they wonder why your ears are shut
on sunday

Tips for getting through moore college

1. Have a university education. Preferably in something handy like law, computing, medicine or teaching. This isn't because the course requires it intellectually, but it means you are less likely to have to do exhausting factory work in your 'holidays' to stay alive. Or alternately....

2. Have alot of money. (of course1. can lead to 2.) College is expensive. You need to be moderately middle class to survive. That way when you make a 'big sacrifice' to come to college, you'll still be living on more than a labourer You don't need to think you are rich, as long as you have access to the cash. Which leads to

3. Have private health insurance. The stresses and strains of college will make you sick. Days and days spent sitting round in public hospitals and the public health system are lost to your studies and you never get them back. Which leads to ...

4. Live near newtown. Not just during college, but before as well. That way you might still have a network of friends after moving home and church three to four times in three to four years. (they'll visit when you are sick too!)

any other tips?

Poetry and Preaching

During a recent interview I remarked that I wanted to improve my preaching by reading poetry. I got some rather bemused looks from my interviewers. For all our talk of wanting to be good communicators, poets seem to be overlooked. I guess poetry seems a little too high brow.

This weekend I found a great book that explores both classic and postmodern poetry, specifically in the USA, and the interaction between Jazz, folk and soul music and poetry. Some of the lines in there are exactly the kinds of things I'd love to be able to achieve with a sermon.

Try substituting "sermon" for "poem" in this paragraph


"...What the reader craves, and I've spoken here already about the reader's primacy, are beautiful accidents, surprise and astonishment in the poem, doors opening outward to true vistas for the first time. Something built up from within, not merely extracted from the exterior. The connective tissue is the evanescent need to become part of something that is larger than humans or mere language, but parts of both compressed into radioactive poetry; the right words in the right order, lending light. A poem is an animal big enough to ride, teeming with unexpected energy, charting a course into the unknown, moments of agility and delight that do not throw the rider off its back, but serve as reminders of the exquisite muscularity and nimbleness of the animal, and the reader is made more beautiful as well, by having ridden it."

The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
Keith Flynn

Vocation and calling

The idea of vocation, or calling, is not based on some deterministic social hierarchy that God affirms, but is based on the openness of every life to the Spirit of God, that saves and transforms every part the world, whatever limitations might otherwise be placed on that life. 'Vocation' is the dogged belief that God is not transforming some ideal or imagined world, but the very particular world that I find before my eyes (and behind them). It is the commitment that God has in fact saved me, in my strange and individual situation, and called me to serve him there. It is the commitment that that service will be judged by the Lord, and the Lord alone. Judged, not by the standards of the world, nor by the gospel-consequentialism of full time ministers, but by the very Lord who called me TO his service, IN my situation. (note this isn't called TO my situation, IN his service. Our situations may and probably will, and possibly should change, our calling to serve those around us as though serving the Lord won't). It is a commitment that the rewards of the Lords judgement are available to all, id indeed they live lives of loving service.

Approaches to 'vocation' that are about searching within for talents and then pursuing them at the expense of others are perversions of vocation.

The dropping of the idea of vocation for 'ministry' in protestant circles is perhaps behind the attempts of some full time ministry workers to serve an ideal pure (non-existent) church rather than accepting that the reward of the Lord is equally available for serving the messed up, broken church they find before them.

Exegesis and performance

When I used to do theatre type things, one of the things you learnt quickly was that you couldn't just memorise a script. As you rehearsed and wrested with a text, and shaped the meaning of a performance, you did have to know the text. But as you approached a performance, memorising the text wasn't so important. If you had done your job well, you understood the characters, the situation and the plot so well, that the words of the text were simply what HAD to be said at that point in time. You would remember the text because so much meaning was caught up in them.

Doing exegesis for an exegetical exam feels the same.

At first, you are confronted by a text, trying to remember whether the text form is an infinitive, or middle, or what ever. But as the message and internal logic gets drilled into you, as you think about the background, about what the writer is getting across, memorising the language or details becomes irrelevant.
In the end, I don't have to remember what a niphal passive participle looks like, because I know that the content and whole thrust of Ezekiels message demands one at this moment.
It's a nice feeling. (when it all comes together, of course when it doesn't it is like dying on stage)