Dear Santa,
I know you represent all that is wonderful about Christmas, a spirit of goodness where people treat each other with love and fairness, a spirit of jolly friendship to every girl and boy, and most of all, a spirit of giving to reflect the gift of Jesus.
Dear Santa,
I don’t want to “have-to” this year.
Can you make shopping be without an eye to ‘what I want’, but with the philosophy that “The gift of Christ is so meaningful to me, I want to repeat that in the gift I am about to give . . .”
Can you block out the Capitalist Religion from the news, where the headlines will be full of stories about ‘how the stores are doing’ and ‘how much people are spending’, and fill the news with stories where people are helping people, where giving is the lead, not spending, where the Spirit of Christ governs, not the spirit of money?
Can you help keep our focus on Jesus and not have our energy sapped by politically correct debates of “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas”, or letting us get all upset with mocking terms like “Chrismahanukwanzakah”?
Can you dim the lights of the crazy consumer Christmas to let the inner light of Jesus shine forth?
Dear Santa,
I want to marvel at the baby. I want to be filled with the wonder that God loved us so much that He sent His Son to us as a baby. I want to be amazed to see Jesus in the manger. I want to smell the hay and see the animals in the stable where he was born. I want to see the angels singing to the shepherds, and worship with the shepherds at the manger. I want to see the star of Jesus and I want to follow it to see the King.
Dear Jesus,
I’ve been writing a letter to your Christmas guy. Now I pray, please make this letter come true.
Love, Your annoying henchman
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Walking Dead
I can't help myself watching this show. The vampire shows out there annoy me but the zombies appeal to me. I am definitely a fan of slow zombies. The shambling creatures, gathering in numbers, slowly pushing you to where you can't go no more, that scares me. The fast, overrunning zombies, a la "28 days", it messes with the myth.
I think the appeal of the show is similar to what makes "Jaws" so scary. It isn't the shark, its the water, the open, unassuming, wide expanse with death lurking just below the surface. Now, you can be in the city, you can be in the country, you can be anywhere, and you don't know when the next creature is going to show up. And the next step from Jaws is that this isn't a monster, this is us turned into a monster.
And then I ask myself the question, "Is this something you would show your youth group pastor?" The answer is no. But there are youth group members watching it. What am I prepared to say about that?
Question 1: Is it wrong to watch shows like that?
No. I think watching shows that romanticize drug use, encourage sexual promiscuity without responsibility, that demonstrate violence without recrimination is wrong. I think watching stuff that attempt to blunt the edge of our God-given conscience, that try to file down 'right and wrong' to some personal agenda of what "makes me feel good" is bad for the soul.
The Walking Dead is attempting to put real people into an impossible situation to see what would happen. It is a powerful attempt to look into our own souls. And it does a pretty good job.
Question 2: Would you preach on this stuff?
A qualified yes. Preaching is engaging the gospel and the culture to help people know the beauty of Jesus and the power of the Christian faith. If "the Walking Dead" is an active part of the culture I am preaching to, it is fair game. If it isn't, if it is an esoteric piece of the media landscape, then I'm not fairly engaging the popular culture of my congregation by referring to it, so I would only use it sparingly.
Question 3: Is there a gospel response to the premise of "The Walking Dead"?
I believe there is. I've talked about this before in movies where some 'evil' takes over the will and actions of the characters. I believe God's mercy is what we need to consider here. When we are responsible for our actions, our only recourse is to seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ, because we cannot choose not to sin. God, in God's mercy, will forgive us. When we are not responsible for our actions, I believe God's mercy gets cranked up. In the language of the show, God would forgive the actions of the zombies because they are no longer human beings.
But now the big questions: Is a zombie responsible for its actions? Are they in control of their choices? The question behind those needs to be: "Is God really in control?"
I think the appeal of the show is similar to what makes "Jaws" so scary. It isn't the shark, its the water, the open, unassuming, wide expanse with death lurking just below the surface. Now, you can be in the city, you can be in the country, you can be anywhere, and you don't know when the next creature is going to show up. And the next step from Jaws is that this isn't a monster, this is us turned into a monster.
And then I ask myself the question, "Is this something you would show your youth group pastor?" The answer is no. But there are youth group members watching it. What am I prepared to say about that?
Question 1: Is it wrong to watch shows like that?
No. I think watching shows that romanticize drug use, encourage sexual promiscuity without responsibility, that demonstrate violence without recrimination is wrong. I think watching stuff that attempt to blunt the edge of our God-given conscience, that try to file down 'right and wrong' to some personal agenda of what "makes me feel good" is bad for the soul.
The Walking Dead is attempting to put real people into an impossible situation to see what would happen. It is a powerful attempt to look into our own souls. And it does a pretty good job.
Question 2: Would you preach on this stuff?
A qualified yes. Preaching is engaging the gospel and the culture to help people know the beauty of Jesus and the power of the Christian faith. If "the Walking Dead" is an active part of the culture I am preaching to, it is fair game. If it isn't, if it is an esoteric piece of the media landscape, then I'm not fairly engaging the popular culture of my congregation by referring to it, so I would only use it sparingly.
Question 3: Is there a gospel response to the premise of "The Walking Dead"?
I believe there is. I've talked about this before in movies where some 'evil' takes over the will and actions of the characters. I believe God's mercy is what we need to consider here. When we are responsible for our actions, our only recourse is to seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ, because we cannot choose not to sin. God, in God's mercy, will forgive us. When we are not responsible for our actions, I believe God's mercy gets cranked up. In the language of the show, God would forgive the actions of the zombies because they are no longer human beings.
But now the big questions: Is a zombie responsible for its actions? Are they in control of their choices? The question behind those needs to be: "Is God really in control?"
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sermon: Nov. 28, 2010 “Jesus Versus Capitalism?” 1 John 2:1-17
How many people got up before their normal work day schedule to go shopping on Friday? How many were seduced by the promises of insanely cheap prices if you were at the store by 6 or 5 or 4 or 3 am, or even earlier? Was it worth the time and trouble?
Welcome to the war for the heart and mind of Christmas. On the one side is the truth, that God sent his only son into the world that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. On the other side is the entire economic capitalist free market system at its most powerful telling us to buy, buy, buy, to make this holiday something really special. That’s what John calls the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches. I challenge anyone to tell me when you could buy enough to make Christmas truly special.
In this letter from the apostle John, it is all about a new commandment. It is about living unto God and not unto the world. It is about when we screw up, we have forgiveness. Jesus is our Advocate, Jesus is our Atoning Sacrifice, it doesn’t get any better than Jesus. But John knows the struggle between what is to be-a life obedient to Christ and what is-a life of sin and struggle in the current world. And Christmas may be the most obvious battlefield for that struggle.
Where we’ve messed things up, I believe, is where we’ve made Santa Claus the bad guy. I am talking about the church when I talk about “we”. There are many Christians who look to Santa as a secular symbol of all that has gone wrong with Christianity, commercialism, materialism, greed, a culture of more, more, more, that Santa is somehow responsible for displacing Jesus to a smaller and smaller corner of the Christmas landscape to make room for more and more toys.
I don’t buy that. We have a decoration on our Christmas tree at home. There is Santa, on his knees at the manger, worshipping Jesus. That’s the truth about Santa, I think. There is an origins story that appeals to me. The man who gives gifts every year to all the children of the world, he was there to bring gifts to the greatest gift the world has ever received. How about that for a Christmas miracle? One of the magi lives on, bringing gifts to the world every year to celebrate the greatest gift we’ve ever received? That’s a Christmas movie I would watch.
It’s not about Jesus versus Santa. There is no knock down, drag out fight about who owns Christmas. No, there is another enemy out there, an enemy to both Jesus and Santa. We know it as one of the seven deadly sins. If we are going to call it a demi-god, lets name it for what it is, Greed.
Greed is what turns an enjoyable time of letting a child’s imagination wander through the toy catalogues that come to the house into a nightmare of I want, I want, I want, I want. Come back to that phrase “the desire of the eyes”. If they can see it, they seem to want it. The children who you love and want to provide for become these media savvy consumers who can quote extensively from the commercials they see on television and online.
Greed is why the news reports at Christmas time are going to be about the numbers. How did the box stores do? How did the malls do? How did the online stores do? How much money did we wring out of the American population for the purposes of buying stuff? How well do we know that the vast majority of the stuff we buy is stuff we will never use or we don’t need?
You know what statistics I would like to hear? How much of the world’s population could receive clean drinking water with the money America spends for one Christmas Season. How many people could be fed? How much pollution could be cleaned up? How much global warming reversed? How much sustainable growth in a country that has not? Don’t want to go overseas? How many jobs could be provided for in this country with that money? Could we make unemployment go extinct?
I love it when people say that is not how the system works. That is not how the free market system works. That is not how a global capitalist system works. John calls that the “pride in riches”. What I want for Christmas is a different system.
I think that is why the season is so busy. That’s why it feels like riding a surf board down Mt. Everest. The proponents of Greed, the powers behind that power, those seeking to undercut the real feeling and knowledge of Christmas, the last thing they want is for us who love Jesus, we who are saved by the birth of Jesus, those of us who love this Season for all that it could and should represent, the last thing they want is for us to take a moment at the manger and say “Hey, here I am. Here is Jesus. Here is the Reason for the Season. Here is the reason I have received life eternal. Here is the reason why the rest of it is nonsense.”
If they gave us enough time to figure that out, we could chuck the junk and enjoy the wonder. But who has the time?
But consider what we have to stand against the corporate industrial capitalist retail empire that calls us forth to celebrate the season with the expenditure of the almighty dollar.
We have the story of a couple of homeless people.
Against all the glitz and glitter and lights and sound and smells and tastes that will bombard and overwhelm our senses during this holiday season, what do we have?
We have a baby, born among animals, whose first bed was where the animals eat.
Hundreds and thousands of voices are going to whisper and talk and scream into our ears about what we should be buying to make ourselves happy, about what to make our children happy, to make our pets happy, to make someone, somewhere, happy. Every one of those voices is going to be tinged by the evil one, trying to pull us off the true focus of our lives, off our relationship with Jesus Christ.
To that, I respond with the words of John. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.”
Merry Christmas. Let us pray . . .
Welcome to the war for the heart and mind of Christmas. On the one side is the truth, that God sent his only son into the world that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. On the other side is the entire economic capitalist free market system at its most powerful telling us to buy, buy, buy, to make this holiday something really special. That’s what John calls the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches. I challenge anyone to tell me when you could buy enough to make Christmas truly special.
In this letter from the apostle John, it is all about a new commandment. It is about living unto God and not unto the world. It is about when we screw up, we have forgiveness. Jesus is our Advocate, Jesus is our Atoning Sacrifice, it doesn’t get any better than Jesus. But John knows the struggle between what is to be-a life obedient to Christ and what is-a life of sin and struggle in the current world. And Christmas may be the most obvious battlefield for that struggle.
Where we’ve messed things up, I believe, is where we’ve made Santa Claus the bad guy. I am talking about the church when I talk about “we”. There are many Christians who look to Santa as a secular symbol of all that has gone wrong with Christianity, commercialism, materialism, greed, a culture of more, more, more, that Santa is somehow responsible for displacing Jesus to a smaller and smaller corner of the Christmas landscape to make room for more and more toys.
I don’t buy that. We have a decoration on our Christmas tree at home. There is Santa, on his knees at the manger, worshipping Jesus. That’s the truth about Santa, I think. There is an origins story that appeals to me. The man who gives gifts every year to all the children of the world, he was there to bring gifts to the greatest gift the world has ever received. How about that for a Christmas miracle? One of the magi lives on, bringing gifts to the world every year to celebrate the greatest gift we’ve ever received? That’s a Christmas movie I would watch.
It’s not about Jesus versus Santa. There is no knock down, drag out fight about who owns Christmas. No, there is another enemy out there, an enemy to both Jesus and Santa. We know it as one of the seven deadly sins. If we are going to call it a demi-god, lets name it for what it is, Greed.
Greed is what turns an enjoyable time of letting a child’s imagination wander through the toy catalogues that come to the house into a nightmare of I want, I want, I want, I want. Come back to that phrase “the desire of the eyes”. If they can see it, they seem to want it. The children who you love and want to provide for become these media savvy consumers who can quote extensively from the commercials they see on television and online.
Greed is why the news reports at Christmas time are going to be about the numbers. How did the box stores do? How did the malls do? How did the online stores do? How much money did we wring out of the American population for the purposes of buying stuff? How well do we know that the vast majority of the stuff we buy is stuff we will never use or we don’t need?
You know what statistics I would like to hear? How much of the world’s population could receive clean drinking water with the money America spends for one Christmas Season. How many people could be fed? How much pollution could be cleaned up? How much global warming reversed? How much sustainable growth in a country that has not? Don’t want to go overseas? How many jobs could be provided for in this country with that money? Could we make unemployment go extinct?
I love it when people say that is not how the system works. That is not how the free market system works. That is not how a global capitalist system works. John calls that the “pride in riches”. What I want for Christmas is a different system.
I think that is why the season is so busy. That’s why it feels like riding a surf board down Mt. Everest. The proponents of Greed, the powers behind that power, those seeking to undercut the real feeling and knowledge of Christmas, the last thing they want is for us who love Jesus, we who are saved by the birth of Jesus, those of us who love this Season for all that it could and should represent, the last thing they want is for us to take a moment at the manger and say “Hey, here I am. Here is Jesus. Here is the Reason for the Season. Here is the reason I have received life eternal. Here is the reason why the rest of it is nonsense.”
If they gave us enough time to figure that out, we could chuck the junk and enjoy the wonder. But who has the time?
But consider what we have to stand against the corporate industrial capitalist retail empire that calls us forth to celebrate the season with the expenditure of the almighty dollar.
We have the story of a couple of homeless people.
Against all the glitz and glitter and lights and sound and smells and tastes that will bombard and overwhelm our senses during this holiday season, what do we have?
We have a baby, born among animals, whose first bed was where the animals eat.
Hundreds and thousands of voices are going to whisper and talk and scream into our ears about what we should be buying to make ourselves happy, about what to make our children happy, to make our pets happy, to make someone, somewhere, happy. Every one of those voices is going to be tinged by the evil one, trying to pull us off the true focus of our lives, off our relationship with Jesus Christ.
To that, I respond with the words of John. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.”
Merry Christmas. Let us pray . . .
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