I know the following and some previous posts are not poetry but now that I am not preaching every Sunday, it still is good to work in the homiletical medium:

ChristMass 

The message “some assembly required” comes on many of the boxes gift wrapped for all ages.  The manger is in a simple sense a box for God.  Certainly the blessed Virgin’s womb earlier was perhaps a warmer and friendlier wrap, that is, if the infant had been only human… but the packaging of God, the wrapping of glory with the tangles of time’s ribbons crammed into all the containing surfaces and corners of space, no matter where, must not have been comfortable for the God-man, Jesus the Christ.  Nevertheless he comes because some disassembly is required.  The God who created all things in perfection and peace and who watched all things be refit together for the human will and desire and not God’s intents and plans must now disassemble evil’s contortions, sin’s turns away and the change into the curvatus in se that the human heart finds acceptable and good.  The reassembly of the God and human relationship begins anew in the feed box at Bethlehem.  Sadly we use the tools of ropes, nails and hammer and he only his love, an open gift for us.  

Advent in North Carolina

Ever since I saw Ben Long’s fresco in the Roman Catholic church in downtown Charlotte, NC a few years back I have been interested this artist’s religious works.  The fresco which covered a whole large chancel wall which spanned from one side of the church to the other— is no more, fallen from the wall, thanks to some demolition at a nearby construction site.  But other smaller, earlier frescos adorn the chancel areas of several Episcopal parishes north of Boone, NC.  The Last Supper fresco is well worth seeing at one of them but during Advent his two smaller frescos depicting St. John the Baptizer and St. Mary mounted on either side of a rural chancel come to mind.  I had opportunity to see them in person this fall.  John is portrayed in a full sense of a wild prophet.   The blessed Mother of God is depicted in full pregnancy, about as round as possible.  Some might say, “She is really showing.”  It is after all Advent.  Much demolition is going on and many murals of the faith have fallen.   His comings— then, now in Word and Sacrament and again in the fullness of the eschaton— should be as evident in us and in our lives to encourage some to comment on our living portraits, “You are really showing… showing forth the Messiah, the Jesus, the Lord of the Universe.”

Christmas Eve with John and Luke

after the last gospel

driving home

dismissed among 

the night snow showers 

lit by a lantern moon

small clouds passing 

among the stars on the deep

between the altar’s high hung crucifix

and home around 

the balsam tree’s glittering globes 

and lights for the eve of the entry

of the first gospel procession

Adventuring Days

The newborn in California was an abandoned baby girl found in the debris of asphalt and rubble near a river on a bike path.   Read as a news headline, online:  “Newborn in stable condition after being found 'buried alive' in Los Angeles”   In the context of a day in Advent reading, it first sounded like, “Newborn in stable…  condition after being found buried alive….”  Drop the Los Angeles for a hillside full of Angeles and you have the incarnation at Bethlehem.   Christ the Son of God buried in a girl’s womb in the whereabouts of barn animals and the vast multitude of earth’s sinners.  

Buying into December Days

The catalog of religious items for Christmas, features— with free shipping (although Mary must have noticed the weight during the nine months, a rather long Advent wearing blue as she traditionally does!)— a “Vintage Nativity.”  Vintage has the meaning of something to do with grapes or wine (or maybe in this context, blood?) and also something to do with the period in which something (or someone) was made or begun (or again in the context of Advent, the only begotten conceived of the Virgin spring by the wind of the Holy Spirit).  Anyway, is this too much symbolism?  But the ad for the nativity notes the it is a wire construction and brings to mind the wire that often surrounds securing the cork in a bottle of wine.  (sorry for the symbol stuff again)  Then again the ad says that it can be easily molded back into shape if becomes distorted in storage.  Ahh…  it just begs, does not the words of the ad in the Word of the season, for talk about the distortion of sin and how the one stored in the womb comes in the manger to mold us back into the shape of the sacred.  So far the distortion of the ad reading.  What do you think, do you buy into more than symbolism and the wire held nature of the season?

COVERING THE STORY

The cover photo on the ELCA’s December edition of “The Lutheran” magazine is a nativity by He Qi, a Chinese artist who along with Japanese print artist Sadao Watanabe are personal favorites.  The vibrant pink-clothed blessed Virgin holds the infant Lord on her lap under the watchful eyes of dimly lit purple animals, Joseph and perhaps a shepherd holding a lantern.  The swoop of an angel curved above is also more muted than the Madonna and child.  While the piece is all is done in more Oriental motifs than the usual Western paintings normally traditional on Christmas cards and postal stamps one thing is out of place for any traditional, realistic nativity scene.  (Although this year’s US “religious” stamp is several years old because one might assume they haven’t sold out of it and exhausted supplies in a couple of years.  Does that say something about the phasing in of electronic greetings or the phasing out of religiosity in our greetings… at least on our envelopes?)  Here’s the thing that is noteworthy:  the baby holds in his tiny hand a bright, round, red apple.  Hardly soft infant fare.  He is bringing it back for the tree.  Obediently he will replace himself, as fruit for the forbidden bitten, on its branches, bright, red juice of his veins running down its cut grooves and trunk.  

In the jargon of philately envelopes are called covers…  this is a season of uncovering as the story is covered of our God covered with flesh.