Holding Hands with Jesus

It doesn't seem so long ago that I was in their living room, praying and talking.  It was a difficult diagnosis.  Terminal cancer.  Three to six months, was what the doctor said.

They had had other plans for the future.  He wanted to build a house for his wife and their teenage daughter.  But he thought he had more time.

It wasn't so long ago that I was in their living room, talking about how they were going to spend the next three to six months, hoping to find a treatment that would give them just a little more time, and just a little less pain.  Time to have friends help them finish a house -- their dream.  Time to see children and grandchildren.  Time to be alive.

And then this week I was there again, because he had decided to stop treatment, and go on hospice. We talked, and shared communion.  He was on hospice, but he still had time.

Yesterday I was back.  He was no longer talking.  We prayed with him, and sang to him, and read scripture.  Romans 8.  Isaiah 43.  John 10.  "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me," we read.  "As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul length after thee," we sang.

His wife pointed out one of his hands.  It was outstretched, and clenched, as if he was holding someone's hand.  With one hand, he would hold on to us.  But with his other hand, he was holding on to Jesus.  Or Jesus was holding onto him.

It is December 21st.  Just three days until we light the candles, and sing Silent Night in the dark.  Just four days until the Feast of the Nativity, December 25, when the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.  I think about what I learned in Greek class about the word "dwelt", and that it meant "tabernacle".  It was a reference to the Old Testament, when God lived in a tent, a tabernacle, a temporary shelter.  In Jesus, God tabernacled with us, in a temporary shelter, human flesh, like ours.

I think about this man who was dying, and his savior, who also wore our mortal flesh.  He is a Savior we can hold hands with.  That is what the incarnation means.  It is about the baby in the manger, the baby we can hold, and it is about the one who holds us, really and truly.

It is so close to Christmas I can feel its breath, I can almost see the flickering flames of the candles that we hold while we sing.  It is so close to Christmas, so close that I can almost reach out and hold hands with Jesus.  I can feel his small fingers around my finger, I can see his hands touch a blind man, I can see his hand grasp the hand of a dying man -- and hang on.

Maybe this is all we can do in life:  hold hands.  Hold hands with one another.  and hold hands with Jesus.

Searching for Christmas

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas," was one of my songs, growing up.  My dad and I would sing it in the car, while we were going to get the Christmas tree.  We would drive along the snowy roads of suburban Minnesota, past twinkling lights and shopping malls, and we would sing "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" with all of the gusto we gave to the sacred songs.

Back then, I thought I knew what Christmas looked like.  It looked like the creche in our living room, with the figures I loved to move around, so that I could tell the story.  It also looked like the snowflakes on the window, the ribbon candy and peanuts they gave us in Sunday School, the angel wings and haloes, the tinsel on the tree.  It looked like the eighth floor of the department store downtown where we bought each other presents.  It looked like the whole extended family gathered around the table, a tree full of presents.  It looked like the new clothes we wore to the Christmas eve service.  It looked like snow.  I was dreaming of a White Christmas, even while I was singing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."

This year I am serving a congregation in a different region of the country.  It doesn't look much like my conception of Christmas here.  Most of my Christmas decorations are still in Minnesota.  There is not room for a tree in my apartment.   I will not be surrounded by extended family this year; there will be no snow.  And I have caught myself wondering:  what does Christmas look like?

I would like to know it when I see it.

It is still Advent here, but not for long.  Soon people will be gathering to sing the carols and to hear the story, snow or not.  Some of them will be coming with extended family, reunited for the holiday.  Some will come alone.  Others may not come at all, will stay at home, wondering what Christmas looks like.  If the children aren't coming home, if there is no snow, if you don't have a festive meal with family, if you don't have a tree, if your Christmas this year doesn't look like the Christmases you remember:  What does Christmas look like?

I would like to know it when I see it.

So I am searching for Christmas right now, which is to say I am searching for a light in the darkness, the door that is open, the hand that will not let go.  I am searching for a pure note in the silence, tears of joy and grief, an unexpected gift, the word 'yes.'  I am searching for Christmas, by which I mean the smell of fresh hay, new babies and night air, the sound of whispers, the sight of snow, or a star, or a lightning bug.  The Word made flesh.  Where I am.  Not just memories.

I am searching for Christmas right now.  The Word made flesh.  Where I am.  Where you are.

Other Voices

Holy Week is one of those aerobically challenging times for pastors, a marathon of liturgies to plan, sermons to preach, services to choreograph and to lead.   I remember back to past Holy Weeks:  frantic calls to people to request that they consider getting their feet washed or read a portion a scripture, rehearsals for midweek worship services, nestled in the midst of communion visits with shut ins and occasional emergencies.

So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself sitting at our Good Friday service at 3:00, listening to members of my congregation read portions of Matthew's story of the passion.  I had not called any of the readers, assigned the readings or helped rehearse the readers.  My assignment for the service was to pray, to listen, and occasionally, to sing.

I could do that.

I have been in this congregation for a long time.  I know these voices, having heard them for years.  Some of them have been reading and assisting in worship for a long time.  There were a few who I had never heard read scripture before.  I recognized quiet intensity, faith, passion and pathos in their voices as they read.  They each, in their own way, inhabited the scripture reading.  

I heard one man's voice crack as he relayed Peter's denial.  Another woman's voice rose as the crowd roared, "Let him be crucified!"  

I sat, and I listened, less encumbered than usual with a sense of responsibility for making worship happen.  I sat and I listened and tears collected in the corners of my eyes, partly because it was Good Friday and partly because I could allow myself to be in the story, listening to other voices, voices I knew so well, as they told it.  So well.

Your voices, I want to tell them, your voices are more powerful than you even know.  You can do it.  You can embody the love of God.  You already do.  You have.  For me.

Anonymous

I've been reading the New Testament all this summer, reading a few chapters a day and writing about them.  I decided to use a version of the Bible I hadn't read before (just to mix it up a little), so chose the Common English Bible.

Of course, at some point, I also decided that if I'm going to read the whole New Testament this summer, I should get some sort of reading credit for it:  the New Testament is a Book, after all, so I posted in "Goodreads" that I was reading the New Testament, the "Common English Bible."  You know who the author of the New Testament (CEB) is, according to Goodreads'?

Anonymous.

It's not "God"; it's not even "various."  Nope, it's anonymous, which seems somehow an odd thing to say about our holy book.  We don't know who wrote it.  (Well, actually, anonymous is not quite right:  we do know that the apostle Paul wrote some of the letters in the New Testament.  But, what do we know about Paul, really?)

Though mostly, when I think about it, it's accurate:  we really don't know for sure who wrote most of the New Testament, or even the Bible.  Most scholars don't think that Matthew wrote "Matthew" or Mark wrote "Mark".  And part of me wonders if it isn't somehow embarrassing to trust the contents of a book written (for the most part) by anonymous.  No wonder people are skeptical (and more and more people are skeptical these days, if you haven't noticed.)

When I think about it harder, though, it's absolutely fitting that "anonymous" wrote the Bible, embarrassing though it may be.  It's fitting given what we say we believe:  that God is made manifest not in the proud and the mighty, but in the humble and the ordinary, the anonymous.  Bread, wine, water are holy.  Ordinary people are holy.  Ordinary words are holy.

There's this odd divide in Christianty right now between traditional Christians who believe that the Bible is a divine book, and more progressive Christians who believe that the Bible is a human book.  But it seems to me that actually the right answer to the question, "Is the Bible a divine book or a human book?" is "Yes."  The Bible is a human book written by anonymous, ordinary people but which somehow reveals God.   The Bible is a holy humble book about a God who came to inhabit flesh and blood in Jesus, and who still inhabits flesh and blood today, humble, anonymous, stumbling flesh and blood.

There's something embarrassing about this.

And there's something wonderful, too.