Stephen and Wenceslaus

 

Finally, it's the last Saturday in 2020. It has been a long, anxiety-producing, isolating, fearful year, one that most of us are glad to see the end of. We don't know yet what 2021 will bring, but we can only look forward and hope for better things to come.

In addition to being the final Saturday of the year, it is also the day after Christmas. It's usually a reasonably laid-back day (except for those who insist on rushing out to grab up specials on Christmas items to be put away for next year and to exchange the awful sweater Aunt Louise gave us or the duplicate of something we already had). Otherwise, it's a day to sit around, watching football, letting the kids play with their new toys, eating leftovers, and perhaps wondering where the packages are that were supposed to be delivered in time for Christmas. Although Christmas Day is over, the Christmas season continues for another eleven days.

The day after Christmas is the feast of St. Stephen. He was an early convert to the group of followers of Jesus the Christ based in Jerusalem after the Ascension. The apostles who headed the group were swamped with preaching, teaching, healing, traveling, and counseling. Those duties included arranging for the care of the widows and the elderly by making sure they were adequately fed and clothed. The apostles finally decided it was all too much, so they decided to create the office of deacon to take over some of the more hand-on duties.

One of the first in the elected group of deacons was a man named Stephen, who had been both caring for the poor and elderly as well as preaching. His work came to the attention of Jerusalem's hierarchy, thanks to Saul of Tarsus. Stephen was arrested and tried for being Christian, which meant denying Caesar's divinity and following what the Jews felt was heresy. With Saul overseeing the event, Stephen was stoned to death and has been commemorated ever since as the first martyr for the faith.

Perhaps the first line of the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslaus" with its notation of "…on the feast of Stephen" sets the stage for the story of the King who saw an old person gathering wood on the day after Christmas. Wenceslaus, the Duke of Bohemia (b. ca. 911, Duke 921-935), was known as a Christian who religiously followed the teachings of Christ, especially through caring for the poor and elderly. His piety and kindness won the hearts of his people. His brother and his faction assassinated him because of envy, jealousy, and his Christian faith. His legend and hagiography were such that the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, gave him the title and style of King, which is why Wenceslaus is referred to as "King" in the 1835 carol by John Mason Neale.

The cult of Wenceslaus increased after his death not only in Bohemia but also in England. Perhaps that is where the British Commonwealth countries' custom began to celebrate December 26 as Boxing Day, a national holiday. In the past, it was the custom for masters of the households to give their servants the day off from work. The workers were also given food and clothing boxes as thanks for their service during the year, especially Christmastime. The custom of providing boxes has somewhat died out. However, many still thank milkmen, postal workers, newspaper deliverers, and the like with small gifts of money on Boxing Day. Thus the legacy of both Stephen and Wenceslaus carries on.

We do a lot of giving at Christmas and often at Epiphany, but what about the rest of the year? Stephen and Wenceslaus gave not only during the winter holidays. Hunger, poverty, and such are year-round problems. Jesus's teachings included the care for the less fortunate whenever and wherever it was needed.  

As we go through the Christmas season and look forward to Epiphany, let us remember to give to others. It doesn't necessarily have to be money or tangible things; it can be as simple as a welcoming smile or hug, a period of listening, helping with rides to doctor's appointments, or meeting whatever needs might present themselves. Opening a door, giving a hand to steady someone on a curb or step, or maybe paying for a cup of coffee for the person behind us in the queue might start a chain that reaches others.

Happy St. Stephen's Day and a continued blessed Christmas season. Even if the snow isn't deep or even if the leaves on the trees are just now falling, be kind to one another, today and every day. Love your neighbor – wear your mask

God bless.

P.S. Love your neighbor – wear your mask!

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, December 26, 2020.

Leveling Mountains, Exalting Valleys

 

Tomorrow is the fourth Sunday of Advent. It's almost Christmas, with only six days to go. I wonder, how different is this last week from the more usual weeks before Christmas in times when we don't have to worry about pandemics, masks, social distancing, and statistics about new cases and deaths? I'm sure there's a lot less running around, looking for the last few gifts to be purchased and the trimmings for the family Christmas dinner procured and prepared.

One thing that is missing this year is the annual Christmas presentation of Handel's Messiah, the oratorio written and first presented 279 years ago. Although only half of it is directly related to Christmas and the prophecies surrounding the coming of the Messiah, the entire three-part oratorio is presented most often during the Christmas season by professional choirs and orchestras as well as volunteer church choirs and musicians. It is a marker of the season and a tradition that has continued for centuries.

The daily office gospel is a familiar passage from Isaiah 40:4, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." The first three verses of the chapter are sung as a tenor recitative and continue with the singer continuing with the lovely and melodic aria with the fourth and fifth verses.  

In the gospel of Luke, John the Baptist repeated Isaiah's words to reiterate to the crowds that he was not the Messiah, nor was he the prophet Elijah, the one said to be the forerunner of the Messiah on earth. John was a messenger, like the master of ceremonies who sets the stage for the leading performer. His job was to encourage repentance and cleansing that came from ritual immersion in the living water of the Jordan river. He was to get the crowd ready, and he was successful at it.

I find that hearing the tenor air makes me think of what the world would look like if the mountains and valleys were suddenly equal. I know I've watched enough documentaries on mountains' geology and the various natural phenomena that either build them up or tear them down. I also remember seeing images of villages wiped out through avalanches and mudslides so that the valleys where whole villages suddenly became elevated by mud, rocks, and sometimes snow. It is impossible not to think of the loss of human life and the destruction of decades or even centuries of domestic inhabitance.

Still, the metaphor of the mountains flattening and the valleys rising reminds me of how perhaps God wanted the earth to be: an even playing field with no rich and poor but only equals in every sense. The early church tried this utopian idea by putting all their wealth and worldly goods into a repository for the common good. There have been many civilizations and groups who have attempted this since then. Still, most have not succeeded for one reason or another. Yet the dream remains, and the metaphor continues to be food for thought.

With its geological and meteorological drifts, the earth is diverse. Its different climates and cultures have adapted to those cultures and locations.  I know that diversity is an unshakeable reality, but too many seem to find this unacceptable to their beliefs or status. Just as there are mountains and valleys, many status divisions depend on culture, religion, economic and financial positions, even health or disability. How do we lower the mountains and raise the valleys to make all equal without destroying some of the very things that make diversity in our world today? Perhaps the key to the solution is found in the words of the prophet Micah, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (6:8)." Or, as Jesus taught, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37b-40).

As we prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, we might give some time to personally reflect on what all this means, what loving neighbors, humility, being merciful, and above all, loving God with everything we have inside us. Perhaps the leveling of mountains and valleys is an internal job that we need to do to get ready for what is to come.

We can't change the past, only repent of whatever wrongdoing we have done. However, we can resolve to try to live as God wants us to, even sending God's Son to earth to provide us an example. If we can watch videos to learn how to do new things, reading scripture, and using Jesus as a model can help us become the people we are intended to be.

COVID-19 or not, we can still celebrate Christmas and resolve to be present to God throughout the season. We can also be mindful of the needs of others and work to meet those needs. We can do some interior landscaping with our prejudices, faults, and sinfulness to make them grow less as we grow in grace and attitude. We can't wrap that and put it under the tree. Still, we can accept those two gifts, especially the grace, and use it to change our mountains and valleys to peaceful, useful, and godly plains.

Happy Fourth Sunday of Advent and Merry Christmas.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café  Saturday, December 19, 2020.

riginally 

The Imperfections of Advent

 

It's almost the third Sunday in Advent and the sort-of halfway point through the season. We're still lighting the candles every Sunday, reading the Bible stories that lead up to the birth of Christ, maybe listening to Advent carols along with YouTube or Zoom church services, and so forth.

Probably many Episcopalians and others have been busily shopping online with the hope that gifts will arrive on time while shielding themselves from the virus that has plagued us for months. Kitchens are beginning (or continuing) to fill the air with scents of sugar cookies, pies, different kinds of bread, and all sorts of goodies. Probably every flat surface in the house sports candles, wreaths, swags, elves, or other holiday decorations, or perhaps is covered with boxes, wrapping paper, ribbon, bows, and other gift-covering materials. Christmas is coming soon. Everything has to be as perfect as an imperfect holiday can be, given our need for masks, social distancing, and isolation this year.

Usually we are almost always searching for perfection, whether it is a car, house, outfit, shoes, gift, or presentation of self or surroundings. The table has to look just so. Each impeccably-chosen gift wrapped exquisitely. The tree must be symmetrical to a fault and faultlessly decorated with nicely spaced ornaments, enough lights but not too few or too many, and ribbons and garlands strategically placed to bring the whole together. Heaven forbid that there should be a hole in the tree's foliage left uncovered by an ornament or some other concealer.

I confess that my tree has been slow in being decorated this year. It sat in its scuffed box for several days before I could get up the energy to put it together on the bachelor's chest in front of the window. It took even longer to add ornaments, a job I've only partially completed over many days. Almost from the beginning, I noticed that I could look at the tree when I sat at my desk and see a hole straight through to the window frame. Since it is an artificial tree, I can always bend the branches in an attempt to cover such things. This year I didn't have the strength or the enthusiasm to move the chest to get to the gaping part to fix it. I couldn't find an ornament to cover it sufficiently, and so I still have a hole. It's an imperfection that, even though I realize the tree is just for me and that I love it for the colored lights and white crystal-like ornaments, it is still not the tree I would typically have for Christmas.

That tree has made me think a lot over the past two weeks about imperfection and how I've come to accept it in one sense. Granted, the pandemic has had a lot to do with it. The continuing hijinks of the current administration have far from reassuring me that come January 21, life will hopefully start to change for the better. I think I've just lost that lovin' feeling, to quote an old song.

During Advent, we do a lot of focussing on Mary, the expectant mother of the Messiah. She must have been a perfect candidate—pure in body, soul, spirit, and mind, obedient, knowing her place in the household and society, and so on. Why else would God have chosen her as the vessel for such a miraculous child? We concentrate on her song of humble acceptance, "Let it be according to Your will." We are encouraged to be like Mary, accepting whatever it is that God wants from us, and we may expect to do whatever it is perfectly. How could we do less?  How could we present a less-than-perfect gift to God, who has done so much for us?

Thinking of the Bible's characters, there seem to be a lot of flawed people contributing whatever their gift might be. Noah, Abraham, Abraham's sons and daughters-in-law, Saul, David, Solomon, many of the prophets, the Samaritan woman at the well, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and more were imperfect people acting in imperfect ways which seemed best to them at the time, even if unaware of what the bigger picture was. Those imperfections helped us understand that they were people like us and that even Jesus was a human, although more spiritually guided and obedient than we are.

Leonard Cohen wrote a song some years ago that said in part:

 

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack, a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in. * 

This portion of the complete poem brings us a metaphor that reminds us that perfection isn't everything. The story of the cracked waterpot that the gardener faithfully fills every day and, in so doing, waters one side of the path so that flowers might grow and bloom is another reminder. Some who practice various crafts leave tiny imperfections in their works to remind admirers that nothing made by humans is perfect.

For the rest of Advent, I'm going to focus on recognizing the importance of seeing imperfections not as blemishes to be covered up but as places where the light shines in. Of all the gifts I could give God, the one God seems to want most is my putting my imperfect self in God's hands. Like the hole in my tree's branches, it lets in the light of the world outside, not just colored electric ones that I plug in when it gets dark. It's a reminder that even if Mary had some imperfections that we don't hear about, but that doesn't make her gift any less valuable or perfect. It's the offering of self that is the most wanted gift of the season.

Have a blessed Rose Sunday.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café, Saturday, December 12, 2020.

Scotosis vs. the Teachings of Jesus

I have always loved words, I believe, quite often the bigger, the better. I was better than most of my classmates in spelling bees. I learned words like the term for the miner’s lung disease or silicosis (Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicosis) in about fifth or sixth grade for extra credit. Reading lots of books of different types, from textbooks to science-fiction, historical, fantasy, thrillers, and sometimes religious tomes increased my vocabulary, as did my work. I worked for a priest once who not only became a good friend, but consistently drove me to open a dictionary at least once a week to learn a new word he’d thrown out in dictation or conversation. That was the best job I’ve ever had.

Education for Ministry (EfM) has taught me many things, including lots of big, sometimes exotic words. I had somewhat run across the term scotosis quite a few times throughout my EfM life. This year, somehow, it struck me because of its applicability to the world we seem to be living in now.

Just about every dictionary I consulted defined scotosis as “intellectual blindness” and “hardening of the mind against unwanted wisdom.” After living through the year 2020, with its pandemic, political and social divisions, speeches full of hatred and encouraging violence, protests over brutality and racial stereotyping, and more examples of other kinds of divisiveness than I can count, I would have to say scotosis is a word all too applicable.

In the theological sense, scotosis usually refers to factionalism that refuses to acknowledge common ground or even the possibility that more than one belief, opinion, or stance. The Reformation began with Martin Luther’s 95 theses, but also with translations of the Bible being made and printed in the language(s) of the people, changes in the language and performance of the liturgy, and even rejection of some aspects of doctrine and replacement with new ideologies and teachings.  Scotosis still shows itself in the theological realm with the splitting of traditional denominations into conservative, liberal, and moderate forms. Nondenominational churches are growing by the bushel basket full.

In our cultural life, treaties are made and broken. Ancient wars continue, and the hope of unity of thought and purpose seems to have flitted away like a butterfly in the breeze. Our country used to pride itself on being a melting pot of people seeking freedom and what we called the American Dream. Now it builds walls and reduces the quotas of refugees. Some groups seek to marginalize those already here in any way possible through denial of aid, healthcare, employment, housing assistance, education, and even social programs.

Scotosis gives me a word to describe those I feel are unwilling to be open to the concept of equality of any sort. Even something as simple as wearing a mask to help prevent the spread of a deadly disease is something that some people flatly refuse to do because they feel it infringes on their lives and freedom. Never mind that they risk infecting others – or even themselves. What is worse, in my opinion, is that when they gather, whether for church events, a party, dinner out, or even shopping without a mask, other like-minded people are infected and can become critically ill or even die, just because they wanted to assert their right to freedom from governmental, medical, or even common-sense restrictions.

Jesus met up with many people on his journeys and in his teaching sessions who exemplified scotosis. The Pharisees and many Jews, both religious hierarchs and laypeople, rejected his teachings because Jesus’s words didn’t agree with the orthodox tradition and practice of Judaism. Jesus used teachings such as the Good Samaritan to show how the common teaching of “love your neighbor,” also a fundamental concept in Judaism, should be displayed. The idea of an unclean and unorthodox Samaritan helping a Jewish man while priests and their followers walked by the injured man on the road, expanded the idea of who one’s neighbor truly was.

I wonder how Jesus would view our current situations were he to walk the earth right now (as he might be, who knows?) Would he approve of the hard-heartedness, greed, in-fighting, cruelty, and ignoring of just about every teaching he gave? Would he find the intellectual blindness simply to be being human? What would he think of the homeless, especially the homeless veterans, sleeping under bridges in the cold winds of winter? Or the children going hungry at school because social programs to help feed them have been cut?  What about the penalizing of churches and organizations that set up feeding stations for the hungry? I seem to keep thinking of the same situations, time after time, and wondering why nothing ever seems to change – much, if any.

During Advent, as we wait to celebrate the birth of the one who taught love, kindness, and empathy, could it be a project simply to love without requiring reciprocation or expectation? Could we help calm the anxieties and tone down the rhetoric that have been so much a part of our year so far?  Could we remember to give to the needy instead of focusing on how many gifts we can pile under the tree at our own homes? Can we crush the scotosis and open the minds to peace and hope? Can we practice the teachings of Jesus without regard to the race, culture, religion, political affiliation, orientation, or any other box we would typically put others in?

Scotosis is a kind of disease we need to cure, and its victims are those we need to heal. What better time to start than now?

God bless.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, December 5, 2020.