Tag: Gospel of Mark

How To Be Joy To The World

I’ve got a few favorite Christmas carols. How about you? (And no, Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, and Here Comes Santa Claus does NOT count! haha!) One of my favorites is O Holy Night– I really love belting out the second verse:

“Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we
Let all within us praise His holy name.”

I also really like O Little Town of Bethlehem (this version by Kari Jobe) and Hark the Herald Angels Sing (especially by Charlie Brown and Friends). My second favorite carol, though, is Joy to the World especially the opening lines:

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.”

Here we are, the third week of Advent, remembering that Christ will come again someday to break our chains, and that all creation will sing sweet hymns of joy – even heaven and nature will sing with us! We don’t realize how potent, powerful and real are the lyrics we’re singing! All that is glorious and beautiful about Christmas will be fulfilled when Christ comes again –  it’s what we work towards everyday. Merry Christmas indeed!

To use an agricultural metaphor, we might think of Christmas as a perennial kind of plant, the ones that come back year after year. But it seems to me that Christmas is more like an annual, a flower that has to be replanted every year in our hearts. We change so much from year to year – so much happens in those twelve months that at least for me, I need to replant the seeds of Christmas inside, again.

Jesus tells a parable in the gospel according to Mark about a farmer who went out into his field to sow seed. Some of the seed falls on the hard ground, where birds come and snatch it away; some of the seed falls in rocky ledges, where it grows but with shallow roots, such that it can’t withstand the heat of the sun.

Some (seeds of Christmas) fall in among thorny ground, and the worries of this life, deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke it out. But some of the seed falls on good soil, and it produces a bountiful crop of joy and peace for all.

For some of us we hear the Christmas songs and they go in one cynical ear and out the other. Some of us listen to the carols, but once the season is over, we forget about them until next year.

Others sing the songs with gusto, but then when suffering strikes, we sadly wonder – are the lyrics rooted in reality? But some hear the carols with a trusting heart, and then work to live them out in this world as it really is, all year round. Who are we this Christmas?

How to be joy to the world? Believe what you sing! Live what you sing! Hear Christ’s word to you in these Christmas hymns. Join in song and soul with others who hear these words of joy, accepting them as true, and become open to a heaven and nature that sings!

What’s a Christmas hymn that you could really pay attention to this season? One that you could let the gospel of Christmas get sown into your soul? What’s one carol that you could dwell in, inspiring you to work Christmas joy into your everyday life?

How to be joy to the world? Make room in your heart for joy- even if it’s space for a seed – for the poetic, lyrical, beautiful words of Christ Jesus the Lord, by which he teaches us to love one another.

“Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.”

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

In this Advent season of peace, let’s be the ones to light the way, let’s stand with people and cultivate as much common ground as we can. It’s easy to focus on our differences, it can be darkly energizing to polarize our positions – but that will be our downfall.

What can the lights of peace look like in our world? Does peace mean the absence of violence? If so, can there ever be peace on earth? But what if we can choose a Christmas peace that illuminates and unites amidst the dark turbulence in our homes, our hearts, our nation?

What if being at peace was less about naively ignoring what is destructive around us, and instead, staring it straight in the face, trusting instead of despairing that even now the Jesus of Christmas is working for peace to prevail among us?

dont-give-up-quote-1As we walk through the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark in the New Testament, we read a fascinating story where Jesus is misunderstood by his own family– his actions of peacemaking are interpreted as causing dark demonic chaos. Just when you think you’ve struggled with being misunderstood!

In this story Jesus has once again entered a home with his disciples to share a meal together with the host. When the crowds realized he is in town, they swarm the home such that no one could dine. Jesus adjusts, stands, and turns the chaotic moment into a teachable one about the way God works in the world.

But Jesus’ family, and the teachers of the law from Jerusalem believe that Jesus must be filled with a divisive, impure spirit, maybe even a demon – possibly Satan himself! How else to account for the chaos Jesus causes when he comes into town? It’s interesting isn’t it, tragic even, how we can choose to interpret stuff.

If Jesus is really filled by an impure spirit, what advantage would he gain by casting other impure spirits into the abyss? Jesus calls the misunderstanders in close and then uses logic to dismantle their slanderous accusations.  He teaches, “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.”

Christmas reminds us of Jesus coming to tie up the evil one who was dividing and plundering the people of Israel. The season of Advent reminds us that Jesus will come again to finish what he started with the evil one in the world: Satan’s end will come.

dont-give-up-1So don’t give up on peacemaking. Despair divides.

Christmas teaches us that peacemaking is difficult, it means standing up to evil, not running away from it, it means forging unity among those who misunderstand, and it means patiently explaining yourself and proving yourself through your actions.

To make peace we will need to forgive all those who sin against us and every slander they’ve ever uttered, like Christ will do for us when he returns. Bitterness divides.

When Jesus comes again, there will be those who will see the just and merciful peacemaking work he’s done and accuse him of chaos-making, of causing dark evil, to be in league with the devil. There is nothing Jesus can do for them – if they see the Holy Spirit in him and call it demonic, they don’t want Jesus’ terms of peace. Yet….

Jesus mother, brothers and sisters eventually came to recognize him as the Lord of Israel and the whole world. It took awhile though for them to see the light and join God’s will to make peace. Reconciliation takes patience, persevering kindness, healing honesty, and sacrificial grace.

don't give up final posterSo if you’re feeling misunderstood, if it seems like chaos is creeping in on your life, if this season of your life isn’t turning out how you thought, don’t give up on being a peacemaker. Keep cultivating more common ground!

Stand by the power of Christmas: that same spirit of Jesus comes still to light our way and unite us, so don’t give up on him, others, or yourself.

 

Christmas Comes To Us In The Darkest of Days

Literally, Christmas comes on the ninth darkest day of the year. Winter Solstice in Fort Wayne will be Wednesday, December 21st at 5:44am – the shortest day of the year, with the least sunlight and the most darkness.

winter-solstice-2015-1

We make much of the Christmas season, barely waiting until Thanksgiving is over to break  out the decorations and holiday music. We wish people merriment and and happiness during the Christmas, which is great – but… the original Christmas story is also full of sorrow, grief, and darkness. Which is one of the reasons we celebrate it during the first week of the winter solstice. It’s also why we shouldn’t skip the season of Advent.

What is the season of Advent? The early church marked out the four Sundays leading up to Christmas for remembering the second coming of Christ to the world, as a way to prepare us to properly remember the first coming of Christ to Bethlehem. Advent is Latin for “to come” or “to arrive” –  it reminds us that Christ came at Christmas, Christ comes to each of us now by his Spirit, and someday he will come again to establish peace on earth.

And Advent helps us keep the enduring and fascinating story of Christ in perspective – not everything is rosy and cheery in it. When Christ came to Israel in the first century, it was a messy and painful season for their generation. Like us, they are yearning for someone to establish peace on earth and in our hearts.

We read in the gospel according to Mark that early one dark morning Jesus retreated up the rocky slopes of the mountains that ring the Sea of Galilee. On the beaches the previous day he had been nearly crushed by the crowds seeking healing. The day before that he had provoked murderous threats from the power-brokers of the region because of his healings. The coming of Christ, the coming of light into darkness, isn’t always the easiest season to endure.

On that mountainside Jesus called twelve disciples to him that he wanted to send out into the nation to preach the gospel of God’s kingdom and to drive out demons by the power of God’s spirit. This was why Christ came to Israel, this is what the first Christmas was for: light coming into the darkness, establishing peace in the world.

This is a glimpse of what Jesus does now, in every generation: calling men and women to be with him, that he might then send them out to proclaim good news and deliver people from evil. This is how the Spirit of Christmas lives on in the darkness: not just wishing merriment, but working for peace every day of the year by the power of Christ.

Like the church today, those twelve disciples called by Jesus to serve as apostles (sent ones) were men of questionable character or of no account. Simon Peter was impulsive and braggadicio, James and John were brothers with a fiery, vengeful temperment, Andrew and Philip were excitable, Bartholomew was a good guy, Matthew had been a traitorous tax-collector, Thomas was a doubter, Simon was a violent political activist (terrorist), James and Thaddeus stayed in the background, and Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus with good intentions and noble ambitions.

Scene 07/53 Exterior Galilee Riverside; Jesus (DIOGO MORCALDO) is going to die and tells Peter (DARWIN SHAW) and the other disciples this not the end.

The church still has disciples like this, men and women who in the name of Christ unveil their best and worst sides. But through Christ, in being sent by him to our communities with the power of the gospel to heal and establish peace, we are transformed too. Christmas becomes a reminder that Christ became like us, that we might become a peacemaker like him.

As we prepare to celebrate the Advent of Christ at Christmas (which coincides with the lengthening of daylight and shortening of nighttime), may you be called and sent by God to family and friends with the presence of Christ. It is Christ who delivers from darkness and who fills us with light – may we, through being present with Christ, be sent to bring peace to those that are ready for the light to dawn in their soul earlier and earlier each morning.

Be the light, be a peacemaker, be Christmas.