The Seventh Day of Christmas: New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

The Seventh Day of Christmas

 Thursday, December 31, 2020

     Psalm 148

Hallelujah.

Praise the LORD from the heavens,

   praise him on the heights.

Praise him, all his messengers,

   praise him, all his armies.

Praise him, sun and moon,

   praise him, all you stars of light.

Praise him, utmost heavens,

   and the waters above the heavens.

Let them praise the LORD’s name,

   for he commanded, and they were created.

And he made them stand forever, for all time.

   He set them a border that could not be crossed.

Praise the LORD from the earth,

   sea monsters and all you deeps.

Fire and hail, snow and smoke,

   storm wind that performs his command,

the mountains and all the hills,

   fruit trees and all the cedars,

wild beasts and all the cattle,

   crawling things and winged birds,

kings of the earth and all the nations,

   princes and all leaders of earth,

young men and also maidens,

   elders together with lads.

Let them praise the LORD’s name,

   for his name alone is exalted.

      His grandeur is over earth and the heavens.

And may he raise up a horn for his people,

   praise of all his faithful,

      of the Israelites, the people near him.

         Hallelujah.

translation: Robert Alter

Auld Lang Syne

by Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

And surely ye’ll be your pint stowp!

And surely I’ll be mine!

We twa hae run about the braes,

And pou’d the gowans fine;

But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,

Sin’ auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,

Frae morning sun till dine;

But seas between us braid hae roar’d

Sin’ auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!

And gie’s a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,

For auld lang syne.

Should auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

The Sixth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Time

 

The Politics of Time

The Sixth Day of Christmas

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

2 Peter 3:8-13

“With the Lord,” writes the author of 2 Peter, “a single day is like a thousand years, and a 

thousand years are like a single day.”

This, we might say, is kingdom time.

And kingdom time implies a certain politics, a certain way of living together.

“In the kingdom,” argues John Caputo, “the best way to raise the question of time is to begin 

with forgiveness.”

Because part of living together is the fact that we sometimes hurt each other, whether on 

purpose or on accident, the past holds a certain power over us. And this leads to a toxic 

and vicious cycle of resentment and revenge that undermines community.

But forgiveness, Caputo observes, “involves a readiness to wipe away the past in some way, 

a willingness not to hold on to it, to dismiss it.”

“I must give up the power,” says Caputo, “forgo repayment, or give away the advantage I have 

over you. I wipe the ledger clear so that the offense is gone, actively wiped away, wiped out, 

and you are released.”

But how does this relate to time?

Well, this is where things get interesting. 

“The wonder here,” according to Caputo, “the amazing grace, is not annihilation, for what is in 

the past is still there, but re-formation or transformation, where the offense is transformed in 

the moment of forgiveness into something that is no longer hanging over us, no longer between 

us, not anymore.”

Caputo calls this “the as-if time of forgiveness [because] we proceed as if it never happened.”

“Of course it did happen,” he is quick to remind us, “and it is retained, otherwise there would 

be nothing to forgive, but it is retained as forgiven.”

The past is still the past, the harm is still a harm - forgiveness is not forgetting. We can’t wipe 

our memory clean, but we can give it new meaning.

Caputo points back to the beginning of time, to the seventh day of creation, after God has said, 

good, good, very good, and then takes a sabbath rest. 

But, knowing how creation quickly turns into a bit of a mess, he argues that, for Jesus, “the 

seventh day is a day dedicated to healing and mending what has gone astray in creation, for 

reforming things first formed in creation.”

And so, in an interesting twist, he says that the past depends upon the future, for the “good” 

of creation is “both a proclamation and a promise.”

Creation is not over and done, but is still being formed and re-formed. And Caputo says that 

we are called “to make good on” God’s “good.”

At the beginning, God declared creation good. But creation depends on - God depends on - us 

to make it so today.

And that starts with forgiveness, letting go of that which is past.

By holding on to the past, we ensure that the future will be nothing but more of the same. 

Likewise, by holding on to the future we can see, the future we can predict, we prevent God 

from acting and prevent the kingdom from coming.

On the other hand, when we let go of time, when we let go of yesterday and tomorrow, we 

allow God’s newness, re-creation, to break through today.

And so Caputo points to the Lord’s Prayer: “Abba, give us today.”

“The kingdom lasts but a day,” he says, “but that day is every day, and it starts today.”

And that’s the key: “The time of the kingdom is neither a line nor a circle, but a new beginning, 

a fresh start - now.”

The Fifth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Family

 

The Politics of Family

The Fifth Day of Christmas

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Matthew 12:46-50 

“Jesus of Nazareth,” observes Dale Martin, “was not a family man.”

With such a “focus on the family” in American churches over the past century, this 

statement might surprise or even offend. 

But scripture is clear, says Martin, that Jesus “rejected marriage and family ties and taught

 his disciples to do the same.”

We see this in today’s gospel reading:

Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”

He stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, “Look, here are my 

mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my 

brother and sister and mother.”

As Martin observes, “Jesus refused to identify with his traditional family and instead 

substituted for it the eschatological community that shared his vision of a new, divinely 

constituted family.”

This is not an isolated incident either. As Stanley Hauerwas notes, “Jesus has already 

challenged loyalty to family through the calling of the disciples, his refusal to let the one 

desiring to be a disciple return to bury his father, and his prediction that in the coming 

persecutions brother will deny brother and fathers will rise up against their children and 

children will put their parents to death.”

And so: “If there was any doubt…,his identification of his true family as the disciples 

makes clear that his challenge to the family is radical.”

It’s not just Jesus. “Contrary to most contemporary opinion,” Martin argues, “there are 

many more resources in Christian Scripture and tradition to criticize the modern family 

than to promote it.”

And that’s why Martin says that contemporary American Christianity is in a state of 

“idolatry.”

Let that sink in for a minute.

American churches have made an idol out of “traditional family values.” Nevermind that 

this “traditional” family didn’t even exist until the 1950s.

The result: An increasing number of people don’t feel like they “fit” at church. According 

to Pew, only half of American adults are married, down 9 percentage points since 2000, 

and down from the 72% peak in 1960. Meanwhile, divorce rates are up, Americans are 

staying single longer, and the number of unmarried partners living together has risen 

sharply.

Is there any wonder that these groups have found church, with its increasing “focus on the 

family,” largely irrelevant.

It’s not just some accident of history, by the way, that Jesus never married. He would have 

been expected to marry and have children. But as Martin explains: “The household was part 

of the world order he was challenging.”

And so, for the church, family is no longer defined biologically. Likewise, the religious 

community is no longer an extension of the family or tribal unit.

Rather, the church is now family, a family of strangers transformed and joined together into 

one body, for a common purpose, where Hauerwas says “we are all called to be parents, 

brothers, and sisters to and for one another.”

This is a huge shift.

And it’s political. Let’s call it the politics of family. 

Remember, at its core, politics is simply a group of people figuring out how to live together. 

And living as family is a radical way to live together.

Even before COVID-19, America was experiencing what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy 

calls a “loneliness epidemic.” According to Kaiser, over one-third of adults over 45, and nearly 

half of adults over 60, say they always or often feel lonely, posing a health risk similar to 

smoking 15 cigarettes per day. And so the family found in church can be a protective health 

factor. 

Also, many of us in recent years have lost jobs or otherwise experienced financial hardship. 

And we’ve received meals, Kroger gift cards, help with bills, and more. Lest we take this for 

granted, know that this is not normal. Not in a dog-eat-dog world of competition and scarcity.

And this politics of family reveals what true family is about. It’s not about what you can contribute. 

It’s not about productivity. This can sometimes be hard to see; I learned it from children, as well 

as persons with disabilities, in church.

Contrary to the message our culture hammers home daily, we don’t give our lives meaning. 

Rather, as Hauerwas argues, “our lives are located in God’s narrative.” And the politics of 

family is living together within that narrative.

 

 

The Fourth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Grief

 

The Politics of Grief

The Fourth Day of Christmas

Monday, December 28, 2020

Jeremiah 31:15-17

Matthew 2:13-18 

“Too often,” argues Stanley Hauerwas, “the political significance of Jesus’s birth...is lost.” 

He explains: “the birth of Jesus is not seen as a threat to thrones and empires because 

religion concerns the private.”

But the idea of religion as private and personal, as opposed to public and political, is foreign 

to the world of scripture. 

And so “Jesus...is born into Herod’s time...in an occupied land, a small outpost, on the edge 

of a mighty empire.”

Already, yesterday, we saw that Simeon and Anna both recognized the baby Jesus as the 

Messiah. Then in today’s reading, Magi from the East have followed a star and come looking 

for the King of the Jews.

But there is already a King of the Jews. And he is none too pleased to hear the news about 

this child.

Herod’s response is what is now known as the Massacre of the Innocents, the hunting down 

and killing of all male children 2 years-old or younger.

“Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction 

of Christmas,” says Hauerwas, “than the death of these children.”

But this is nothing new: “Matthew reminds us that Jeremiah prepared us for such a horror, 

warning of the loud lamentation that would come from Ramah.”

It’s not just Rachel who is grieving, though. A few verses later, notes Brueggemann, “Yahweh 

himself is grieving and will not turn loose.”

According to Brueggemann, “The prophet is engaged in a battle for language, in an effort to 

create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge. The prophet 

is not addressing behavioral problems. He is not even pressing for repentance. He has only 

the hope that the ache of God could penetrate the numbness of history.”

And that numbness of history is something we know all too well.

We have grown numb, for example, to the incredibly high infant mortality rate in the Mid-South. 

With 8.3 deaths per every 1,000 births, Mississippi has the highest rate in the nation. Arkansas 

is third, at a rate of 7.5 per 1,000. And Tennessee, with a rate of 6.9 per 1,000, ranks ninth. 

Here in Memphis, the infant mortality rate has been cut in half in recent years, but we still have 

9.3 deaths per 1,000 births. Most of these infant deaths are preventable.

And now, we sit by and watch the COVID-19 pandemic ravage our nation, with Tennessee 

recently leading the world in new cases per capita. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi 

all rank in the eight states with the most per capita covid deaths in the last week. In Memphis, 

we’ve experienced 849 deaths, with 188 so far in December, our deadliest month yet, with 70% 

more deaths than the next highest month. And over the past six months, we’ve consistently 

prioritized businesses over the wellbeing of our children and families.

Hauerwas calls this “the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.”

But we’ve grown numb. We don’t even notice these deaths - we don’t hear their names, don’t 

hear their stories - much less grieve over them.

 

 

“In the time of Jeremiah,” writes Brueggemannn, “the pain and regret denied prevented any new 

movement either from God or toward God in Judah. The covenant was frozen and there was no 

possibility of newness until the numbness was broken.”

And so Brueggemann points to Jesus weeping and says that it “permits the kingdom to come.”

Grieving is political.

“Such weeping,” says Brueggemann, “is a radical criticism...because it means the end of all 

machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones.”

But here’s the kicker: “Yet the loss of thrones is exactly what is called for.” You should hear an 

echo here of the Magnificat, where Mary sings of bringing the powerful down from their thrones.

May we learn to practice a politics of grief. 

And may we join with the Rachels in our community, who weep and refuse to be comforted, for 

as Brueggemann says, “[t]ears are a way of solidarity in pain when no other form of solidarity 

remains.” Together, our tears can expose and challenge the Herods in our world today.