Christmas

The Nativity of Our Lord
Christmas Day

Shepherds, Nativity at Our Saviour, Ocala

Beloved in Christ, in this Christmastide, let it be our care and delight to hear again the message of the Angels, and in heart and mind go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, and the Babe lying in the manger.

From "A Bidding Prayer" Festival of Lessons and Carols

Ia Orana Maria - Paul Gauguin

This little Babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All heel doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarméd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field
His named breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior's steed.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little Babe will be thy guard;
If though wilt foil thy foe with joy,
Then flit not from this Heavenly Boy.

From "New Heaven, New War" by Robert Southwell

The Holy Family, Nativity at Our Saviour

Of the three Wise Men
Who came to thy King
One was a brown man,
So they sing.

Of the three Wise Men
Who followed the Star,
One was a brown king
From afar.

They brought fine gifts
Of spices and gold
In jeweled boxes
Of beauty untold.

Unto his humble
Manger they came,
And bowed their heads
In Jesus' name,

Three Wise Men
One dark like me –
Part of his
Nativity.

"Carol of the Brown King" by Langston Hughes

The Magi, Nativity at Our Saviour, Ocala

May Christ, who by his incarnation gather into one things earthly and things heavenly, fill you with joy and peace.


May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

THE LAST OF ADVENT

I’m posting a day early because Thursday, December 17 marks first of the last seven days of Advent. Since around the sixth century the Christian Church in the west has recognized these last days by using what are called the Great O Antiphons with the Magnificat at Vespers. Vespers is the evening prayer service. The Magnificat is the song Mary sang in Luke 1:46-55: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” An antiphon is a short verse sung before and after a psalm or a canticle like the Magnificat. The seven for the ending of Advent are called the “O Antiphons” because each one starts with the word “O”.  

Here are the seven antiphons in English translation with the Latin title which is the first two words of the antiphon.

17 December - O Sapientia - O Wisdom

O wisdom, coming forth from the Most High, filling all creation and reigning to the ends of the earth; come and teach us the way  of truth.

18 December - O Adonai - O Lord of Lords

O Lord of Lords, and ruler of the House of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and gave him the law on Sinai: come with your outstretched arm and ransom us.

19 December - O Radix Jesse - O Root of Jesse

O root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the nations; kings will keep silence before you for whom the nations long; come and save us and delay no longer.

20 December - O Clavis David - O Key of David

O key of David and scepter of the House of Israel; you open and none can shut; you shut and none can open: come and free the captives from prison, and break down the walls of death.

21 December - O Oriens - O Morning Star

O morning star, splendour of the light eternal and bright sun of righteousness: come and bring light to those who dwell in darkness and walk in the shadow of death.

22 December - O Rex Gentium - O King of Nations

O king of the nations, you alone can fulfil their desires: cornerstone, binding all together: come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust of the earth.

23 December - O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, hope of the nations and their saviour: come and save us, O Lord our God.

Each antiphon address God by a different title and asks him to come–that’s what Advent means.

Recently I discovered something odd about the antiphons. If you arrange the Latin titles in reverse order, the first letters after the O forms a Latin acrostic

O Emmanuel

O Rex gentium

O Oriens

O Clavis

O Rex gentium

O Adonai

O Sapientia

ERO CRAS

Which means “I will be tomorrow” and indeed the day after the last antiphon is Christmas Eve.

Last comment. Some sharp people will have found the O Antiphons familiar even though they haven’t used them. In the middle ages they were arranged into a hymn with a refrain. We know it in English as O come, O come, Emmanuel.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

    Rejoice! Rejoice!

    Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

It’s time to pray now so I have to go. Maybe I’ll try singing the antiphon in Latin. Then again, it’s been a while since I had to read Gregorian chant notation.

Doesn’t matter. God understands every language and even no language.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

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ADVENT MAN: JOHN THE BAPTIST

John the Baptist has long been one of the figures associated with Advent since he was the one who pointed the way to Christ. This coming Sunday, the Third Sunday in Advent the story pf John baptizing in the Jordan will be read from Luke. While the same account appears in Mark and Matthew, it has a different context in Luke, for this Gospel tells us John’s background–how the angel Gabriel told Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth that they would have a son. No sooner is that story finished than another one begins. Once again Gabriel delivers the news of a coming birth, but this time the news comes to Mary the betrothed wife of Joseph. The child is Jesus. At the end of the story we learn that Elizabeth and Mary are relatives, so John and Jesus are also relatives.

The revelation changes the context for the Baptism of Jesus by John. As relatives John and Jesus must have known each other. And there’s the frustration of the Gospel account. We know absolutely nothing about the relationship between John and Jesus. Some scholars have wondered if Jesus were a disciple of John’s at some point since at least one of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, had also been John’s disciple. That’s all speculation.

Human imagination being what it is, people have filled in the blanks in the relationship between Jesus and John with their own ideas. One of my favorite flights of fancy is Sir John Everett Millais’s painting “Christ in the House of His Parents (1850). Millais was one the nineteenth century English painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood–a group that rebelled against academic painting of their day. Modern artists often regard the Pre-Raphaelites as terribly quaint and old-fashioned, but they regarded themselves as the cutting edge of art. Here’s the famous painting.

A young Jesus stands at the center about to kiss his mother. Reaching out to him is Joseph and behind him Ann, the mother of Mary. A closer look reveals there is a puncture wound in Jesus’ hand. Some of the blood has fallen on his foot. Immediately, we see the symbolism of the crucifixion. 

To the right is another child–John.

We recognize him because of the animal skin he’s wearing. He’s also carrying a basin of water, a symbol of baptism. Did John ever visit at Joseph’s carpenter shop? Who knows.

We do know something about Millais’s painting: it was vilified by the critics. They hated the realistic portrayal of something religious.  Perhaps the most severe criticism came from none other than Charles Dickens:

You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest ginshop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles’s.
"Old Lamps for New Ones." Household Words 12 (15 Jun. 1850)

It strikes me odd that a man who could write with such gritty realism should be appalled by the realism of a painting. It might be comprehensible if Dickens had been a very traditional-minded Christian who took offense at portraying Jesus in such humble mein, but he wasn’t an orthodox Christian. To be sure he had respect for Jesus. Remember that wonderful scene in A Christmas Carol when Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim return from church on Christmas Day?

"And how did little Tim behave?'' asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content. 

"As good as gold,'' said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.''

Yet the description of the Angel’s message to the shepherds in Dickens’s Life of Our Lord very much shows his Unitarian leanings.

There is a child born to-day in the city of Bethlehem near here, who will grow up to be so good that God will love him as his own son; and he will teach men to love one another, and not to quarrel and hurt one another; and his name will be Jesus Christ; and people will put that name in their prayers, because they will know God loves it, and will know that they should love it too.

Long, long ago after watching a movie version of A Christmas Carol, I realized how it skirted the essence of Christmas. To be sure there were themes of good-will, kindness, generosity and other commendable qualities. And Scrooge does put in an appearance at church on Christmas Day, but we are left to wonder what it is they are celebrating.

It is much like that favorite Christmas carol, “It came upon a Midnight Clear.” You sing through the whole song with almost no hint that it has something to do with the birth of Christ. The closest it gets is the first stanza, third line: “Peace on the earth, good will to men, From heaven’s all-gracious king.” Any surprise that the author Edward H. Sears was also a Unitarian, an American contemporary of Dickens?

Well, I started off on John the Baptist, and I’ll end there with the wonderful Advent hymn by Charles Coffin, Jordanis oras praevia translated “On Jordan’s Bank”

        1. On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry
        Announces that the Lord is nigh;
        Come, then, and hearken, for he brings
        Glad tidings from the King of kings.

        2. Then cleansed by every Christian breast
        And furnished for so great a Guest.
        Yea, let us each our hearts prepare
        For Christ to come and enter there.

        3. For Thou art our Salvation, Lord,
        Our Refuge, and our great Reward.
        Without Thy grace our souls must fade
        And wither like a flower decayed.

        4. Lay on the sick Thy healing hand
        And make the fallen strong to stand;
        Show us the glory of Thy face
        Till beauty springs in every place.

        5. All praise, eternal Son, to Thee
        Who advent sets Thy people free,
        Whom, with the Father, we adore
        And Holy Ghost forevermore.


May the One who is to come bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne












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ADVENT SERENDIPITY

Here’s a happy coincidence I could never have anticipated. I was watching the new Star Trek movie listening to the director and who not else talk about the film. During a scene on the planet Vulcan, someone mentioned that the set was actually a church in a cemetery. I immediately knew the location because that very morning I had been looking at pictures of that church in a new book I had purchased. The book: Craftsman Style. The church: Skyrose Chapel in Whittier, California, designed by Fay Jones.

So you can see what I’m talking about, here’s a shot that appeared in the movie with Spok.

And here is a view from the balcony toward the front of the church.

If the church picture had been shot upwards toward the ceiling from the back of the balcony, it would have looked like the Spok scene.

Here's a picture of the balcony. This is used at closer range in some other Vulcan scenes (Spok with his mother).

And for good measure, here’s the outside of the chapel.

I admire the work of the late E. Fay Jones who was for a short time a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Jones is noted for his church designs, most notably Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

He is a contemporary architect so it is rather strange that his work would be included in a book on the Craftsman Style which was primarily late 19th-early 20th century. The book, however, has several modern buildings in it, so I guess Jones’s work could be included.

What I pondered in all of this was that when the film makers wanted and other-worldly set, they chose a church.  Although a lot of churches are based on the model of a theater (I’ve been reading a book on that also, When the Church became Theatre ), other churches are meant to transport a person to a heavenly realm. Fay’s designs are like that.

In Star Trek the Vulcan people are devoted to pure logic. And yet there is something spiritual about this devotion. As a matter of fact, the Vulcan’s are the only humanoids that seem to have a spiritual dimension. Does that sound contradictory for a scientific culture? It needn’t be. Science can lead a person to marvel at the universe, or it can lead a person to treat the universe as mere raw materials needing to be transformed into an object of practical use. If you think about it, both a Walmart store and Skyrose Chapel are the product of scientific engineering. One, however, is a ugly, utilitarian object, a temple to “stuff.” The other is a thing of beauty and inspiration, a temple of a very different sort.  When future archeologists dig up our artifacts, will they conclude we were a spiritual culture or a material culture. I know where I’d place my bet.

Many years ago when I was starting out on my own and bought Christmas cards, I noticed there was about a 50-50 split between sacred designs and secular designs. Now it’s hard to find anything with a religious theme. And sometimes the religious cards are bizarre like Santa Claus kneeling at the manger.

A frequent concern of mine in the season of Advent is the confusion between Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ and The Winter Holidays celebrating I-don’t-know-what. Excess, maybe. The Holidays are winning. I am saddened by the many well-meaning Christians who think the solution is to make sure clerks in stores say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” when they ring up your sale. Good night! All the buying and selling has absolutely nothing to do with the birth of the Savior. Nor does hanging things on fake plastic tree-like objects. Nor do Holiday Spirits in 1.5 liter bottles. Why should we want to attach Christ’s Holy Name to that nonsense?

In the Star Trek film, Spok’s father tells him he will have to choose between following his human or Vulcan nature. Maybe we have a similar choice, to follow our material nature or our spiritual nature. In the end, which will benefit us more, an hour in a place like Walmart or an hour in a place like Skyrose Chapel?

Stir up our hearts, O Lord,
to prepare the paths of thine Only-begotten Son:
that we may worthily serve thee
with hearts purified by His coming:
Who livest and reignest with God the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end. Amen.

–Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne







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