The Best Christmas Art Ever?

(I have no idea as to the original source of this. If you know, please clue me in.)

I am Not an Imposition, Part 5

I’m still in Portland, and still snowbound until probably tomorrow. Now that Portland has officially recorded the snowiest December on record - 16 inches, so far (and a drift of 21 inches outside my mom’s front door) - it seems like a good time to continue my series on environmentalism, a series that obviously has relevance to global warming and how we talk about it.

I’ve been offering excerpts from the book, Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition. The previous installment can be found here.

Here’s the conclusion of the Jewish point of view:

If…there is a God, then everything changes. If there is a God who has created us, then each and every human person has infinite value, and none can be sacrificed for the sake of nature or some abstract cause. (p. 31)

The chapter on the Catholic view offers this:

Nowhere does revelation suggest (as do some contemporary religious and secular environmentalists) that creation, undisturbed by human intervention, is the final order God intended…. The human person and the natural world are never ascribed the same dignity.
…
Some would argue that if man refrains from exercising dominion over nature, nature would be better off. Yet the issue bearing the greatest importance is whether man would be better off. When man does not exercise dominion over nature, nature will exercise dominion over man and cause tremendous suffering for the human family….We alone, of all God’s earthly creatures, have the power, intelligence, and responsibility to help order the world in accord with divine providence and thus minimize the effects of natural evil. (pp. 39-40)

And this comes from the Protestant/Evangelical view:

Some environmentalists, especially those in the “Deep Ecology” movement, divinize the earth and insist on “biological egalitarianism,” the equal value and rights of all life forms, in the mistaken notion that this will raise human respect for the earth. Instead, this philosophy negates the biblical affirmation of the human person’s unique role as steward and eliminates the very rationale for human care for creation. The quest for the humane treatment of beasts by lowering people to the level of nimals leads only to the beastly treatment of humans. (p. 69)

In the three months since my previous installment from this book, it seems that the clamor about global warming has subsided. The current economic crisis has shown that the environmental “emergency” has become less of one in the face of joblessness and recession. But I have little doubt that the subject will heat up again once the economy does, too. Here are some of the key points I wish we’d keep in mind as the discussion continues:

• Man(kind) is the pinnacle of God’s creation.
• As such, we are superior to all plants and all animals. We have value, dignity, and eternal consequence that nothing else in creation has.
• We have been given earth to manage for the benefit of mankind; we do not manage the earth for the benefit of the earth, per se.
• All environmental discussions should consider the cost to humans of recommended policies.
• Some costs are in fact too much to pay.
  
  I’m sure that’s not all, but it’s a good start.

And since this is Christmas, let's consider: Does not the incarnation of Christ itself say something about the exalted status of mankind in creation?

Reclaiming the Baby From the Bathwater

The following thoughts are not theologically rigorous. They are more along the lines of sentiment. But I don't think they're baseless . . .

I think the Reformation was a necessary corrective to a church that had become wacked out and blatantly corrupt. I also think the Reformation was an over-corrective and we need to reclaim a few things.

In our aversion to legalism, we've made everything optional. Reformed churches, curiously, maintain the primacy of the Sabbath even while insisiting there is no sacred-secular divide in life. But aside from that exception, days, feasts, and observances are optional. So, too often, is discipleship to the Master Whom we profess.

The Passion week and Easter weekend that just passed have left me thinking that we could use a few "Holy Days of Obligation" in our evangelical churches.

No Christian holy day is more important than Easter. True, Christmas is essential, because if Jesus hadn't been born, then nothing that followed could have happened. But why was He born? He was born to die. And the Passion Week is our time to reflect more deeply on these truths and mourn our sin more fully and, on Sunday, rejoice more truly.

I was surprised this year at the number of friends I have - friends whose walk with God I respect - who treated Easter weekend as just another weekend. Concerts, dates, dinners, even skipping church(!).

I admit that I hardly spent the entire weekend, myself, in prayer, meditation, and fasting. I was on a plane returning from a business trip when my church held its Maundy Thursday service, I spent Good Friday working, and the omelette I cooked up on Saturday was absolutely incredible. But I did set aside time Friday night to attend a presentation (recitation) of the Gospel of John as a way to focus more intently on the person of Christ. At home and driving, I sought out music throughout the weekend that related to the Passion. And on Sunday morning I went to the Episcopal Cathedral for my high church fix before heading off to my own church to celebrate with my friends (surprisingly, the two services were much more congruent - the liturgy, the creed, even the sermons - than I would have expected from such different churches).

I say all this not to hold myself up as a paradigm. Rather, I'm simply trying to express my belief that this last week (my Catholic friends would say 40 days) is not just another week to be punctuated with better-than-usual music on Sunday. It is the ground of our existence, the sine qua non of our faith, and something deserving of intense focus.

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"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead" (1 Corinthians 15.17,19,20).

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Isn't that worthy of some extra attention?

Why Bach is a Genius

If you've read my 6 previous posts about Bach, you know that he's the greatest composer who ever lived. As I listen through my 155-CD set of his complete works, I'm repeatedly impressed and often amazed at his skill. I'm only about two-thirds of the way through the set, and even hearing something once (or multiple times) hardly means that I understand all the mastery that went into a piece.

Which leads to last night, and the Bach concert I was able to attend in Portland. The Bach Cantata Choir, a local group of mostly amateurs, presented Parts 4-6 of the Christmas Oratorio, and a few excerpts from Parts 1 and 2. There were 200-300 people in the audience . . . not bad at $20 a pop. We got our money's worth.

Bach wrote these 6 cantatas for the Advent and Christmas seasons. Each one lasts 20-30 minutes, covers part of the Christmas story, and includes a mix of solos, duets, trios, quartets, and choruses/chorales. It's all in German, of course, but the program we were given provided both the German text and an English translation.

OK, that's enough background. Now, why is Bach a genius? It was most clearly demonstrated at the very end, the final chorus of Part 6. The orchestral part is festive, joyous, celebratory. The text rejoices at the coming of Jesus and remarks on how He has pulverized death, devil, sin, and hell and brought man to the side of God. Delightful, but what makes it genius? The tune the choir is singing is "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden," which we know as "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," a hymn that we sing around Good Friday. It talks about our sin and Jesus' suffering in our place (for example, "Mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain").

So here is Bach, writing some of the most joyful orchestral music you can imagine, using a text of rejoicing, and yet introducing a tune that foreshadows the death of Christ. It is as if to say, "Yes, we're happy now because our Saviour is born, but don't forget that this baby is born to die . . . and don't forget that you're the one who will murder Him." That is genius.

You can hear a brief excerpt by going to this link, then clicking on Disc 2, Track 29.

So Merry Christmas. As we remember the birth of our Lord and Savior, may we also remember why this little baby took on human flesh . . . and how this innocent child, later to be an innocent man, will meet His death.

Kentucky Christmas

Here's the video I mentioned in last Friday's post about a member of our church who felt led by God to help a poverty-stricken county in the Appalachians. Enjoy:

O Come, O Come Emmanu-WHO?

There are times I really love my church.

Sunday morning we saw a video about one of our members who felt led by the Lord to start an annual toy drive for a town in Kentucky that was devastated by the closure of its coal(?) mine. She's quite a dynamo, and it's amazing how much she collects from her neighborhood and beyond - it looked like at least 3 big U-Haul trucks' worth. There are ladies in the Kentucky town who were praying for help, and they never imagined it would come from a rich Atlanta suburb they probably never had even heard of. And many in the town have now been touched by the love of Christ that compelled this housewife to do something she would never have dreamed of, either.

As I watched this video, I thought how wonderful it is that I go to a church where people take the initiative to meet needs and don't just sit back and wait for the paid professionals to do something. And I also love how the church was willing to praise this venture to the congregation, even though this wasn't a "church-sponsored" outreach. That's a sign of being more concerned about spreading the kingdom of God than the kingdom of Perimeter Church, and that's a good thing.

And then, Sunday evening, I was back at church, sitting next to a new Christian during our Christmas program. This guy grew up Hindu but came to faith in Christ while working on a graduate degree here in the U.S. He moved to Atlanta recently to take a job and somehow ended up going to our church. As the program went on, we listened to songs and monologues and watched some ballet. Toward the end, he turned to me and asked, "What is 'Emmanuel'?"

What, indeed? Emmanu-El, "With us is God," "God with us." Since childhood, I've sung the song. "Emmanuel" is part of my culture, but a new term to this new believer. Shortly after his question, a singer sang about how children see Jesus as white, Asian, or black, according to what they are. And the dancers were white, Asian, and black children. I love how the Gospel is not a "Western" thing or an "American" thing, but a "World" thing. And I love how we have a number of people from around the world in our congregation. And I love how some of them have only recently met Jesus. And I love how new believers remind us of the wonder of the faith, when we "old hands" take so many things for granted. May their number increase among us.

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" - which means, "God with us." -- Matthew 1.23