Sunday, December 14, 2008

Proclaiming Immanuel

I was 8. This year the Sunday School Christmas Pageant was going to be a no-fuss event. All us kids were going to stand up in a line each of us having memorized one verse from the Christmas story in Luke.

And when they had seen it, they made known ab
road the saying which was told them concerning this child.

That was my line.
I was disappointed!

My best friend, the pastor’s daughter, got to say the most phenomenal line in the history of the World: “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

and I was stuck with the most wooden and clunky line in the whole narrative:

17And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

From song to prose

From angel armies to a band of dirty shepherd

From the heraldic singing of Glory to God in the Highest

To throaty midnight shouts.

From celestial glory to a mundane excitement.

From divine revelation to human proclamation

This time when I read this story though I was particularly struck by the line about the Shepherds making know abroad the saying which was told to them concerning this child (even though I still think it sounds a bit clunky)

The passage nails a central movement in the Shepherds experience and reception of that very first Christmas—their comings and goings. If you will, their transition from: “O, Come Let us Adore Him” to “Go, tell it on the Mountains.”



From seeing to recounting.

From adulation to proclamation!

Today, I want to stress this movement towards proclamation.

I imagine the pounding of feet, heavy breathing, running, running and walking and running again…breathlessly… through the deep darkness and night air.



Did the night suddenly seem brighter after seeing the angels? Or did the darkness (which earlier their eyes had been accustomed to) suddenly seem umbearable?



I imagine that the dark was suddenly stark.





Yet, the shepherds believed that the world was turning….And with burning lungs and sweating brows they went out into the fields, and taverns, and inns, and byways, and hovels, and houses to proclaim this revolution.



What did they shout? I am not totally sure. I suppose that the messiah was here.

I am certain that they were greeted with looks of incredulity. Perhaps, some angry that they had been waken from a sound sleep. Some eyeing the shepherd suspiciously looking for signs of drunkenness or prankishness or madness. A few, perhaps, curious.



I suppose I have Christina Rosetti’s in the Bleak Midwinter in my mind when I imagine the scene.



frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron

water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

Because I imagine the shepherd running on ground hardened by frost their labored breaths visible in the night air….





Of course the snow and ice doesn’t fit in a historical or geographical sense but they certainly do express a metaphorical truth about the harshness of the world into which this baby had entered frail and vulnerable as all babies are. Snow on snow… A kind of cold and bitter poverty, Shepherds (as the NRSV puts it) living in the fields, life filled with the capriciousness of imperial edicts, the strange unkindness and inhospitality of strangers, The massacre of the innocents, the displacement of people from their homes and kindred…



This world is familiar to us particularly after 20 centuries of stony sleep.



Indeed, it is pretty much a Christmas tradition to remark that there is no peace on earth. No good will towards humankind. To say that the world has turned at Christmas seems to deny its revolutions of 2000 plus years. The turning and turning and turning of a weary world. the turning and turning into a widening gyre.

And whether we think that the world is much the same as it has always been or that it is something altogether new, something falling apart…



there still seems to be little room for the

Kind of proclamation that is so central to the Christmas story: Joy to the world the savior reigns! Joy. Jesus reigns.



Spoken eloquently in

Mary’s revolutionary proclamation:


he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
This is proclamation in its full sense of a public and formal announcement of the accession of a monarch;



Proclamation is at the very heart of Christmas story.


And it has been from the very first, or even before the very first. From the time of the prophet Isaiah, and his words to weary mortals, from a weary God. “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, a virgin, a young woman, an almah or parthenos, is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”



But what is the place of proclamation in our celebration of Christmas? How do we proclaim this ascendency of a new king? How do we go and tell about a world that is about to turn? And what does it mean to our proclamation that everywhere we look there seems to be things that deny the Lordship of Bethlehem’s Baby.



How do we proclaim? And What? And to whom?



What is this Christmas proclamation. Part of it is hope. Not optimism that things are going to go our way, not a confidence in our abilities or in our connections, not what is often disparaged as false hope, a pie in the sky, the hope that is just a kind of a pain killer that takes the harsh edges off of our collective despair and frustration…. But a restless hope. A striving hope… A moving hope. The kind of hope that does not explain away present injustices but instead renders them unbearable. I think that this is the inner meaning of so much Christmastime talk about the lack of peace on earth. Christmas proclamation is a thorn in the flesh of the unconsummated Christmas promise.
The promise that in his name all oppression shall cease, the promise that thorns will no longer oppress the ground, that the slave is our kin, that the Saviour reigns.
But, The Christmas proclamation is not just a promise that the Saviour will reign but the affirmation that the saviour does reign.


At Christimas we must proclaim not only the coming of.

but the actual arrival of the revolution

The future is here and now. In Toronto. On Yonge Street and in TUMC///



This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’

Yes.

Indeed.

This baby wrapped in Swadling clothes is a Sign unto us.

A sign of hope.

A promise.

But, this sign is more than just a sign.

It is the real, historical, physical presence of God with humanity.

Jesus Christ is not just a sign that God will be with us.

But that gOD IS with us.

This is revolutionary. This is evidence that the world has turned. Already. And what should we expect … but that there are signs of the kingdom everywhere we look. Some as small as a mustard seed; others, a marvel to our eyes:



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So how do we proclaim this revolution which is Immanuel--God with us.

What does proclamation have to do with our Christmases that will contain Carols, and presents and feast, candles, times with family and friends, fires. Perhaps, a snowball fight or a snow man… times of reflections. Times to come and adore Bethlehem’s baby.



How does proclamation fit into our Christmas celebration?

How would our Christmas celebrations change if we began to think of them as proclamations? How would our Christmas celebrations change if we began to think of them as signs?

As proclamations of God’s coming kingdom, of signs that surely, God is with us… all of us.

How would that change how we understood “us”? Who it includes and who it doesn’t?



Would this change the tone with which we said: “Merry Christmas.”

Would it change the manner of our invitations to Christmas merriment…. and who was invited to them?

Would it change what gifts we bought? wOULD it change who we buy them for?

And this shall be a sign unto you. Immanuel!

Would our New Year’s reflection change? What if we asked ourselves the question; “How can I live in the new year in such a way that my life is a sign of God’s kingdom? How can I live in the New Year in such a way that it proclaims Immanuel?



Truth be told, however, it is not just the God and the mortals of Isaiah 7 who are weary. The world itself seems weary. And one of the things with which the world seems long weary, is the proclamation that Jesus is supreme. We’ve been there and done that, and it wasn’t necessarily so good. Beginning in the fourth century, so the story goes, the entire world as then known to Europeans was ruled in Jesus name. Do we really want to belt out to the world “receive your king!”?



We live in a world, and among a host of Christians, who rightly doubt the wisdom of such a proclamation. But then there are these texts, these pesky Biblical texts around which we’ve ordered our convictions on peace and justice, grace and mercy, salvation as liberation . Those same texts unswervingly announce the reign of God in Jesus as being for every tongue, tribe, and nation.



So what happens? What now?



There are a number of possible responses to these trying questions:





Maybe a neo-conservative, neo-constantinian insistence on universal freedom of religion… that the US army is glad to back.







Another possible response, They got it all wrong, Jesus reigns like a baby or a man on the cross, humble, weak, extraordinarily vulnerable.





Or perhaps what we might call the default position of progressive, urban Mennonites. Pluralism is a non-violent gospel value, we’d rather deemphasize the proclamatory, universal, missionary impulse of Christianity. Jesus reigns, yes.

In a sense



In our hearts. In some as of yet undefined future. As a universal possibility but not necessity.







DRAMATIC PAUSE – as long as you can stand it



Oh Holy Night, was perhaps, one of the more controversial Christmas songs when it was first written, The author was known in his small community in France for being anti-slavery and a socialist. The song was banned for a time. Because of the reputation of the author its verses were read with the suspicion that it contained an insidious, revolutionary message. Eventually the song came to the US and was translated by a radical abolitionist and soon became a favourite amongst American socialists and communitarians. Can the singing of Christmas songs be proclamations! I guess it all depends on who is writing them and singing them. For this is the salvific message of Oh Holy Night:



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



Christ is the Lord, O praise His name forever!




PAUSE



Let us live our lives in the New Year in such a way that our Christmas singing makes worldly power and petty potentates uneasy.