That was before the earthquake.  Before you and I saw those devastating images on TV.  It is estimated at this point that around 200,000 people have lost their lives in this disaster.  In terms of the percentage of Haiti’s population, that would be like 1.3 million Americans losing their lives in a single event.  That has never happened. Not at Pearl Harbor, not at Normandy, not on 9/11.

It was also before Pat Robertson weighed in.  And Rush Limbaugh.  I don’t think too many of us here put much stock in what Pat has to say, but Rush is the most popular radio personality in the country, and I’ve often heard him quoted around here.  I have been a loyal listener myself at various times.  I have two of his books on my shelf.  He is very influential in Conservative circles, including among Evangelicals, although Mr. Limbaugh doesn’t pretend for a moment to be a believer.

Pat does not speak for me, and neither does Rush.  I don’t believe they should speak for you either.  Most importantly, they certainly don’t speak for God, and I’m about to tell you why.

Pat says the earthquake in Haiti is payback from God because the Haitians “made a pact with the devil” to gain their freedom from France.  Pat’s idea of retributive justice is what I call the Maude Findlay School of Theology, named after the title character of a 1970s TV show.  Whenever Maude’s husband, the nebbishy Walter, would do something that angered her, she would throw him a withering look and say, “God’ll get you for that, Walter!”  This view of God is very widespread.  I read similar comments online this week:  God is getting those godless, voodoo-practicing Haitians for their sins.  There’s only one problem with that:  when God has specifically been questioned about such things, that’s not how he’s explained himself.

Take a look at Job. Job was a righteous man, the Bible tells us, yet Job faced one tragedy after another.  Along came Job’s friends.  First they stared at him for a week without saying anything (look it up!), then they chimed in with their opinions.  Most of them were of the Pat Robertston/Maude Findlay variety:  God is obviously punishing you for something you did, Job, so why don’t you just ‘fess up and get all this overwith?  Yet Job maintained his integrity.  The friends didn’t buy it.  Finally God comes along, and after he gets though telling off Job’s friends, he gives Job an answer, sort of.  Well, not exactly and answer.  OK, he doesn’t answer Job’s question at all.  Job’s question is, “God, why did all of these terrible things happen to me?” God’s response is “I am God.” That’s pretty much it.  “I am God.” God doesn’t begin to explain why.  Instead he reminds Job that he created the world and everything in it.  “I am God.” We need to remember that in times of disaster.  God is.  God is God.  We are not. Even if he were to explain why, we couldn’t begin to understand it, because we are not God.  But God is.  He is present.  He is present in disaster, present in trouble, every bit as much as he is present in joy.

Centuries later, some people asked Jesus, God the Son, pretty much the same question.  It’s found in Luke, chapter 13:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

The Galileans didn’t “get what they got” because they were worse than anyone else, nor did the people on whom the tower fell.  Jesus says we’re all sinners.  Apart from faith in him, which entails repentance, we all die.  How does St. Paul say it?  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And again, “The wages of sin is death.” That’s for everyone.  Again, “There is none righteous, no not one.” We are all the same.  When tragedy strikes, it should remind us that it could happen to any of us. Those to whom it happens don’t “deserve it” any more than we do.  Let’s not flatter ourselves by pretending otherwise.

Such a world view leaves out the cross.  Romans eight tells us that creation groans because it has been subjected to futility, and that creation longs for the revelation of the children of God.  In other words, creation longs to be liberated from decay and disaster, the state in which it has existed since the fall of humankind.  It was that state of affairs that Christ came to undo.  “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” I’ve said it before:  the cross is not just about “goin’ to heaven when you die.” It’s about new creation.  About new heavens and earth.  Christ is the great liberator not just of individual souls, but of creation, of nature itself.  One day that promise of a new earth will be fully realized and there will be no more earthquakes, no more floods, no more venomous snakes, no more stinging scorpions, no more thorns and thistles.  No more death, no more sorrow, no more tears.

In the meantime, we, as Christ’s people, are to be his representatives in this world, embodying those things that were close to his heart.  And what did he do? He fed the hungry, healed the sick, befriended outcasts and sinners.  Yes, Jesus did say “The poor you always have with you,” but don’t imagine for a moment that he followed those words with “So don’t bother.” “The poor you always have with you” is a quote from Deuteronomy 15:11, a verse that would have been axiomatic to Jesus’ original audience. There, the Lord God says, quite forcefully and unequivocally: “There will never cease to be poor in the land.  Therefore I command you, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor.”

And that’s where I part company with Mr. Limbaugh.  His philosophy, his Gospel, that he has stated many times in so many words, is “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Now that’s a well-known statement.  I’ll bet your grandparents used to say it.  Maybe you say it.  Maybe you’ve heard if from the pulpit a time or two.  But it’s nowhere to be found in the Bible.  Not only that, but it is the very antithesis of the Gospel.  The Gospel is not about God helping those who help themselves.  It is about God helping the helpless.  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  When we were without hope and without God in the world.  When we were dead in our trespasses and sins.  At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.  Not for those who could help themselves.  If they could help themselves, the cross truly is foolishness.  Mr. Limbaugh doesn’t get it.  Even those who can “help themselves” can’t.  Are we really so arrogant to believe that we possess anything that did not come to us from the hand of Providence?  The family you were born into, the country into which you were born, your physical and intellectual abilities, the educational and social opportunities you have had, the jobs you have held, the money you have earned:  is any of that your own doing, or is it all a gift of God’s grace?  Mr. Limbaugh may imagine himself to be a “self-made” man, but I hope none of us is so foolish to believe that there is such a thing.

The early church got it.  They got that everything we have, we have as a gift from God.  They got that as those who bore the name of Christ, they were to embody the values of Christ.  That’s why there were no poor among them.  They sold their possessions and shared with any in need.  They made sure the widows and orphans were fed:  those who had no means of support.  What about the practical widows and orphans of our own day?  The mother whose husband abandoned her and the children.  The children of alcoholics and drug addicts who lack the basic necessities of life?  Are we filled with compassion when we see them, as our Lord’s heart was filled with compassion?

Calvin’s Geneva got it.  The deacons there fed the hungry every day.  Convents and monasteries were turned into free church-run schools and hospitals, so that the “religious” (the former monks and nuns), instead of being sequestered from the world, were actually using their God-given talents to help the world.

We do not lack opportunities to behave as Christians.  There is a box in the narthex every week for food to go to Christian Community Action to feed the hungry.  There is one new bag of food in that box every week, brought faithfully each Sunday by the same church member.  I don’t say that to embarrass that one member for doing what is right, but to shame the rest of us for not doing it.  We had opportunity on Epiphany with the White Gift Service, and God bless those of you who availed yourselves of that opportunity.  We have an opportunity in a couple of weeks with the Souper Bowl of Caring.  I hope you are preparing for that now.

We had an opportunity during November and December with the brochures that were out there about sponsoring a child through World Vision.  One of our members, who was already sponsoring a child, requested those materials from World Vision.  We promoted it as much as we could.  My family is now sponsoring a child in Indonesia.  An eleven year old boy named Bagus.  Are you sponsoring a child?

You have an opportunity today. I’ve provided a list of Christian organizations (below) that are trying to bring the compassion of Christ into the midst of this terrible tragedy.  Take this list home with you today, go online or pick up the phone, and give.  Yes, pray for Haiti, but remember that the Bible calls us to love not in word only, but also in deed.  The words of our prayers need to be joined by the deed of giving.

The Gospel compels us to give as it has been given unto us.  “Freely you have received.  Freely give.” Because God has forgiven us in Christ, let us forgive one another.” Because God has had compassion on us, we should have compassion for the world.  Because God has been merciful to us, we should be merciful to one another.

How do we respond to the tragedy in Haiti?  For the Christian, there is but one answer:  we respond as Christians.  Not by pretending we can divine the inscrutable purposes of the almighty and assign blame to some “pact with the devil” as Pat did, and not by insulating ourselves with the self-righteousness of “God helps those who help themselves” as Rush does.  His heart overflowed with compassion when he looked out on the multitudes and saw them to be sheep without a shepherd.  Today we look out on the multitudes in Haiti and see children separated from their parents, hospitals that have collapsed to the ground, hundreds of thousands of people buried under mountains of rubble.  May God have mercy on us if we do not view these scenes with hearts of compassion, and may he give us grace to respond in compassion.

How We Can Help Now:

Haiti Earthquake Relief

World Vision – Christian relief organization that has had a presence in Haiti for over 50 years.  Providing food, clothing, blankets, and other needed services to earthquake victims.  Also working to reunite children with their parents:  many were separated due to the earthquake.  http://www.worldvision.org

MNA Disaster Response – Relief arm of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).  PCA ministers Dony St. Germain and Brian Kelso have been in Haiti for some time and have close relationships with key leaders in that country.  http://www.pca-mna.org

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance – A ministry of the Presbyterian Church (USA), PDA has been providing help and witnessing of the love and grace of Jesus Christ in Haiti for generations.  The Holy Cross Hospital in the town of Leogane, founded by Presbyterian missionaries and operated as a cooperative effort between the Presbyterians and the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, collapsed in the January 12 earthquake.  http://www.pcusa.org/pda

World Relief – A well-respected Christian relief organization that is supported by the PCA and other denominations as a part of the National Association of Evangelicals.  http://www.worldrelief.org

Church World Service - This organization has been ministering around the world for more than 60 years.  http://www.churchworldservice.org

Compassion International – A Christian relief organization that has been caring for children and others in need since 1952.  http://www.compassion.com

I can tell you what it’s not.  Christmas is not a divinely-instituted mechanism to set the U.S. economy to rights at the end of the fiscal year.  Every year, we hear about  “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving.  We wring our hands with the people on CNBC and the Nightly Business Report, hoping that Americans spend more this year on Christmas presents than they did last year, so businesses will end the year in the black.

There was a terrible TV Christmas special in the 1970s—no, not the Star Wars Holiday Special—although this one was almost as terrible—in which a child travels into the future to see what Christmas will be like in our time.  In the 1970s version of now, Christmas has been renamed “Commerce Day,” and the whole focus of the holiday iss on buying gifts and supporting the economy.  They even topped the Commerce Tree with a big, glittering dollar sign instead of a star.  As I said, a really bad, really dumb TV special, but was it that off the mark?

You know this is why the stores decorate for Christmas so early, don’t you?  They want us to get “in the holiday mood” earlier and earlier so we’ll shop earlier and, they hope, more often, too.  You also know this is why some radio stations start playing non-stop Christmas music right after Thanksgiving too, right?  It’s not peace and good will that motivates them.  The radio station has sponsors.  Those sponsors are businesses that want you to—you guessed it—shop early and shop often.  The earlier they can fill your head with multiple versions of “Little Drummer Boy” and “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the earlier you will be in a “holiday mood”:   translation, a buying mood.  Sorry to break it to you in so cynical a fashion, but that’s just the way it is.  No, Christmas is not the shopping season.  Not even remotely.

Christmas is also not National Sentimentality Day.  Take a listen to our most-loved holiday songs.  “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.” “Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore.” “There’s no place like home for the holidays.” “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”  If Christmas isn’t Commerce Day for us, it’s Sentiment Day.  Norman Rockwell painting day.  Home and hearth day. “Just-like-the-ones-I-used-to-know” day.  It’s all about looking back, all about nostalgia, all about trying to recapture a time, whether real or imagined, when things were simpler, brighter, happier.

In contrast to this backward-looking nostalgia, the Church has just experienced the season of Advent, which is the complete opposite of nostalgia.  Advent is all about looking ahead.  “People, look east!  The time is near of the crowning of the year.” Advent is partially about looking forward to Christmas, but it’s mostly about looking forward to the Second Advent, the Second Coming, of Christ. Advent seeks to reorient our thinking away from nostalgia and to get us looking out and up, for our redemption draws nigh.

The real downside of the nostalgic Christmas is that today never measures up to yesterday.  Yesterday is idealized:  it seems better in our fuzzy memories as compared to today.  This Christmas dinner isn’t as good as last year’s.  This year’s tree isn’t as big as last year’s, or as the ones we used to get back when.  Nostalgia can be fun, but it can also sour us on the present.  Don’t dream of a Christmas like the ones you used to know:  celebrate Christmas in the here and now, where you are, and praise God for his wondrous gift in Christ!  You can’t go back and eat sugar cookies your great-aunt Frances baked in the 1950s.  They’d be very, very stale by now anyway.  Living in the past can mean disappointment in the present.  Let Bing Crosby dream about the Christmases he used to know.  Let’s celebrate this Christmas, and do so joyfully!

Christmas is not even, primarily, about “Little Baby Jesus.” “Little Baby Jesus” is the perfect window dressing to the sentimental, nostalgic Christmas, although he’s pretty uncomfortable in the Commerce Day Christmas.  While Commerce Day Christmas wants to push Little Baby Jesus aside in favor of something flashier, like the aluminum trees in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Nostalgic Christmas is perfectly happy pasting Little Baby Jesus on top of its collage of sticky memories.  After all, what could be better to add to the mix of syrupy-sweet images of White Christmases we used to know, of our happy golden days of yore, than the cuteness of a perfectly clean, immaculately styled, blonde, curly-headed, rosy-cheeked, socially-smiling newborn in a Martha Stewart manger filled with 100% hypo-allergenic hay that no animal has ever been near?  Little Baby Jesus is a perfectly sweet motif for a perfectly sweet, nostalgic Christmas.  But the real Jesus wasn’t like that, and the real Christmas isn’t like that either.

Christmas is Incarnation.  Christmas is Emmanuel:  God with us.  Christmas isn’t just “Jesus’ Birthday.” It’s much grander, much more momentous, than that.  I know some families bake a cake, write ‘Happy Birthday Jesus” on it, sing the happy birthday song, and blow out the candles, but that sells Christmas short:  it cheapens it.  Christmas is this:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Christmas is “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the Incarnate Deity.”  Christmas is the eternal God becoming one of us and living among us.  A momentous, cosmic event that’s a little beyond cake and ice cream.  We usually refer to Christmas as “The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and it is that, but perhaps we should call it “The Feast of the Incarnation.” Perhaps that would give this occasion the weight, the importance, that it deserves.  God could have left us all to perish in our sin, but instead he came among us, became one of us, to rescue us.  “To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.” Tidings of comfort and joy, to be sure. Good news of great joy, for all people.  Christmas is Incarnation.

Christmas is also Eucharist.  Christmas is not just about the event that it marks—God with us—but also about the way that God’s people mark that event.  And the way we mark that event is in the Eucharist.

Perhaps you are aware that we celebrate two holidays simultaneously every December:  Christmas and Yule.  Christmas is a 12-day feast on the Church’s liturgical calendar.  It begins tonight and lasts through January 5.  On January 6 the church will celebrate Epiphany:  the coming of the Magi to worship the newborn Christ.  That is how Christians have celebrated Christmas since at least the fourth century AD.  Yule is a winter-solstice festival from our pre-Christian Celtic/Nordic/Germanic tree-hugging past.  Holly and ivy, wassail, the boar’s head, mistletoe, the Yule log, a lot of our carols—are holdovers from Yule.  Yule is a happy time, a time of making merry, a time of rich food and strong drink.  A fun time.  The problem is, some people celebrate Yule and never get around to Christmas, including many Christians.  Christmas means “Christ’s Mass.” That is to say, the way Christians celebrate Christmas is through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist.  We celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation through the Great Thanksgiving to God for our salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving for Americans was a month ago.  But for the church around the world, this is one of our two Great Thanksgiving Days, the other being Easter.  We gather tonight for Eucharist: Thanksgiving.  We gather to thank God that in Christ, the Word became flesh, and we do that by participating in the Sacrament that reminds us that he is with us still, feeding us with his very self!  He is still Emmanuel:  God with us.

When I was in seminary, I was talking with a friend about my plans for Christmas.  I told him that the highlight of the season for me was the Christmas Eve service at the cathedral downtown.  This friend had grown up in a Christian home, but nevertheless he said, “I can’t imagine going to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  That was never a part of my experience.” Christmas for him was simply Family Day.  Christmas that isn’t Christ’s Mass is Yule.  It might be happy, it might be fun, but it’s not Christmas.

Christmas is here.  This is the Christmas Feast.  This is Christmas Dinner:  the Feast of the Incarnation of our God.  This is far beyond singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, far beyond striking the harp and joining the chorus, far beyond shopping, spending, giving, and getting.  God is with us. Christ, in this Feast, this Christ-Mass, gives us His own self with His own hand.  Good news, of great joy, for all people.

This year, American Family Radio (a Christian radio network based in Tupelo, MS) published its “naughty and nice” list of stores that they deemed “Christian-friendly” or “Christian-hostile.”  Top of their list of “Christian-friendly” businesses:  Wal-Mart.  As Craig Ferguson would say, “WHAAAT???”  I guess things like paying a living wage, providing health care, ethical supply-chain practices, etc., don’t figure into AFR’s criteria.  So what did they base this decision on?  (Wait for it . . . ) Whether or not stores say “Merry Christmas” between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day (the “shopping season”) or  if they say “Happy Holidays” instead.  Those who say “Merry Christmas” get on the “nice” list, while those who say “Happy Holidays” get on the “naughty” list.

In the words of that great theologian, Garfield the cat, big fat hairy deal.

I’ll try to keep this brief.

1) No one “needs” to say “Merry Christmas” during the “shopping season” because it emphatically is not the Christmas season.  It just isn’t.  Look it up, AFR, Focus on the Family, and O’Reilly.  Now, if I see someone at this time of year and I don’t know if I will see them again before Christmas, I am very likely to say, “If I don’t see you before Christmas, have a Merry Christmas!”  But getting all hot under the collar because a cashier doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” when it isn’t the Christmas season makes no sense.  (For those of you just tuning in, the Christmas season begins–not ends–on Christmas Eve and runs through Epiphany:  January 6.  It is not the Christmas season right now any more than it is the Easter season.)

2) While it emphatically is not the Christmas season right now, it is indeed the “holiday season” if we remember that the word “holiday” simply means “holy day.”  There are plenty of holy days during the Advent and Christmas seasons.  We just celebrated St. Nicholas’ Day on December 6.  St. Lucy’s Day is this coming Sunday, December 13.  Of course there is Christmas on December 25, but there are also the 12 Days of Christmas (December 25 – January 5), and that period includes St. Stephen’s Day (December 26), St. John (December 27), Holy Innocents (December 28), and Holy Name of Jesus (January 1).  Then there’s Epiphany on January 6.  Add to that the civil holiday of Thanksgiving that has already passed, and you’ll see that it truly is a holiday season, and that “Happy Holidays” is most appropriate.  Then consider that other faiths have their own holy days during this time of year:  Chanukah, Islamic New Year, and many others.  Christ calls us to live in charity with everyone, not only the people who are exactly like us.  Good Christians are good neighbors, and that includes neighbors who are a different religion from you.

So, as a Christian, let me say, “Happy Holidays!”

This is the shape of the Church Calendar that has been in place since the Fourth Century.  It not only predates the Reformation of the 16th Century, but it even predates the Great Schism (between East and West) of 1054 by almost 600 years!  So this ordering of time, the rhythm of the Christian Year, properly belongs to all Christians.  It is the heritage of the unified Church:  it is not a “Roman Catholic thing” versus a “Protestant thing,” or even a “Western thing” versus an “Eastern thing.” It is our common heritage, a part of our common life as Christians.

So, if the Church Year is not just a Roman Catholic thing or even just a Western thing, if it’s our common heritage as Christians, dating back to the Fourth Century AD, what happened?  Why do most Evangelical Protestants have little or no experience whatsoever with the Church Year?  Why are most Protestants in America, at most, “CEOs” (Christmas and Easter only)?  Why do most Evangelicals, when hearing someone mention Advent or Lent, for example, say “isn’t that something the Catholics do?”  How, and when, did we toss aside one of the most ancient and, arguably, spiritually beneficial elements of Christian tradition?

The short answer:  ignorance of history happened.

It happened shortly after the Reformation, for starters.  Don’t blame the Reformers, though.  The Reformers were true radicals according to the true meaning of the word (from the Latin radica or root): they wanted to get to the roots of Christianity.  In their liturgical reforms, the Reformers took their cue from the ancient church.  They weren’t trying to blow everything up and start from scratch, but rather to get back to the practices of the ancient church, and those practices included the Church Year.  Yes, even Calvin.  He was not a fan of the sanctorial calendar (saints’ days), but he was in favor of the great Evanglical Feasts:  that is, the feast days that celebrate the great events of the Gospel story, which is nothing other than the Christian Year as we have outlined it in these articles.  The Second Helvetic Confession says,“If in Christian liberty the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s Nativity [Christmas], Circumcision [The Eighth Day of Christmas, a.k.a. Holy Name of Jesus], Passion [Good Friday], Resurrection [Easter], and of his Ascension into heaven [The Fortieth Day of Easter, a.k.a. Ascension Day], and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples [Pentecost], we approve of it highly” (emphasis added).

The Reformers knew that the rhythm of these “great evangelical feasts” was a heritage of the early church, and they treated it as such.  Unfortunately, many of their followers, especially in later generations, were not the students of history that the Reformers were.  Ignorant of this common history of the whole church, many Protestants removed from their churches anything that, to them, smacked of “Romanism,” including the Church Year.  Some of the Puritans, in fact, objected even to saying the Lord’s Prayer because the “Papists” said it too.

Most American Evangelicals today trace their lineage to those groups who jettisoned the Church Year back in the 17th Century for being too “Romish.” Christmas, for example, was decidedly just a “Catholic thing” in the early days of the United States.  It was not an official holiday in any of the States until Alabama declared it to be so in 1836.  Other States followed suit, but it was by no means unanimous.  Oklahoma, for example, did not make Christmas an official holiday until 1907.  Even after Christmas was a holiday in most of the States, most Protestants didn’t do much with it, still considering it to be a “Catholic thing.” Slowly, they began to celebrate it more, but not because they studied their history and got in touch with their Christian roots.  Instead, they began to make more of Christmas as retailers began to make more of Christmas.  The growth of Christmas as a holiday among American Protestants (with the exception of the Anglicans and Lutherans, who had never stopped celebrating Christmas or any of the other feasts of the Church Year) coincided with the growth of the commercialism of Christmas.

American Protestants owe far more to Macy’s than to church history when it comes to Christmas.  In 1862, Macy’s was the first store to have a Santa Claus for children to visit.  In 1870, Macy’s was the first store to stay open until midnight on Christmas Eve.  In 1924, Macy’s staged its first-ever Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is actually a Christmas parade, introducing the idea that the day after Thanksgiving begins the “Christmas shopping season.” Macy’s, not church history, planted that idea in the heads of American Protestants, and it has taken root in a big way.

After Vatican II (1962-65), many Protestants began to investigate the common history they share with the universal church, and a liturgical renewal movement began in earnest.  Among Presbyterians, the first major result of this renewal was The Worshipbook (1970), which helped reintroduce the beauty of the Church Year to many.  The Book of Common Worship (1993) is a further development of this movement.  Through the liturgical renewal movement, more and more Protestants have discovered how the Christian church has celebrated Christmas and other holy days throughout history, enjoying being a part of a tradition that is much deeper, much broader, and much more meaningful than they ever imagined.

As we begin a new Church Year soon (on November 29 to be exact), I hope that many of you will decide to reconnect to this rich history yourselves.  I’m working on some new resources for the upcoming Church Year to encourage you in thie rediscovery, so watch this space.

I think it would be helpful, for those who were not brought up to live the Christian Year, to give a brief overview of the seasons.

Advent – A new Church Year (or Christian Year, or Liturgical Year) begins with the First Sunday of Advent.  This is always the Sunday nearest to November 30.  This year (2009) that means the Church Year begins on November 29.  Advent is always the four Sundays before Christmas.  The Advent season is not the Christmas season.  Christmas is celebratory:  Advent is preparatory.  Advent places us in the shoes of God’s people long ago as they waited and longed for the birth of the Messiah.  Advent also causes us to look ahead to the Second Coming (or Second Advent) of Christ. Advent is as distinct from Christmas as Lent is from Easter.  It has its own hymnody, its own Scripture readings, its own color (purple or blue) and its own character:  that of longing and expectation rather than joy and celebration.  Please see this post for more on Advent’s hymnody.

Christmas – The last day of Advent is December 24.  At sundown on December 24, a new season of the Church Year begins:  the season of Christmas.  That’s right, by December 25, the Christmas Season has scarcely begun.  December 26 is not the day to take down the Tree:  it’s not the “day after Christmas.”  December 26th is the Second Day of Christmas.  The Christmas Season is a 12-day celebration, from December 25 through January 5.  Christmas carols, Christmas decorations, Christmas parties, Christmas food, Christmas presents, etc., are appropriate for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas, not just for the First Day of Christmas (December 25).  Each of us gets one day per year for a birthday:  doesn’t Jesus deserve more than one day?  Thanksgiving has nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the Christmas season.  Thanksgiving is a civil holiday in the United States only, and one that has been around as a national holiday only since the time of Abraham Lincoln.  The idea of the day after Thanksgiving being the start of the Christmas Season dates only to the 1920’s in the U.S. and is the invention of retailers, Macy’s in particular, in order to get people to shop earlier and buy more.  The Christmas Season, in Christian tradition, begins on Christmas Eve. Christmas’s color is white.

Epiphany – January 6 was celebrated in the East as the Feast of the Nativity and was adopted in the West as the celebration of the arrival of the Magi or Wise Men.  According to Matthew 2, the Magi did not arrive the night Jesus was born, but almost two years later.  The account in Matthew said they arrived at the house where Mary and Joseph were living, not at a stable.  (Jesus did not live in a barn for two years.)  Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, followed by Epiphany, helps us to remember the events as the Gospel records them.  It also gives us a chance to emphasize the Light of Christ going into all the world.  In Louisiana and all along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., Epiphany is the first day to eat King Cake, a dessert baked in a ring shape and festively decorated like a crown in honor of the “Three Kings.”  King Cake festivities continue until the beginning of Lent.  The color for Epiphany and the Sunday right after Epiphany is white, and the following Sundays are green.

Lent – This is a forty-day period of preparation for Easter, commemorating the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness.  Lent always begins on a Wednesday, called Ash Wednesday (ashes being a symbol of repentance going back to the Old Testament).  Now if you count out the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter on a calendar, you’ll find that Lent is 46 days, not 40.  This is because the Sundays do not count!  Every Sunday of the year, every one, is a feast day.  Every Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Christ, so Sunday is never a fast day. While Lent is a penitential season, the Sundays in Lent are feast days, as are all other Sundays.  That’s why we call them the Sundays in Lent, not the Sundays of Lent.  While they occur within the time frame of Lent, they do not actually belong to Lent.  The color for Lent is purple.

Holy Week – Although it is really a part of Lent rather than its own season, we consider Holy Week by itself because of the important events that happened during this week, beginning with Christ’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Holy Week also contains Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday), the night Christ insituted the Lord’s Supper, washed his disciples feet, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, was betrayed by Judas, and was put on trial.  Holy Week ends with Good Friday (the day of the Crucifixion) and Holy Saturday (the day Christ’s body was in the tomb).  The color for Holy Week is red or crimson, with Good Friday and Holy Saturday having no color (all decorations are removed from the church after the Maundy Thursday service).

Easter – This is called  “the queen of seasons” in one of the most ancient and beloved hymns for this feast.  Easter was the very first feast day of the ancient church, and the most important.  Fittingly, it is the longest celebratory season of the Church Year.  While Christmas is twelve days long (December 25 – January 5), Easter is fifty days long:  from Easter Sunday (or the First Sunday of Easter) until the Day of Pentecost.  As is the case of Christmas hymns being intended for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas, the hymnody of Easter is most appropriate for all of the Great Fifty Days.  Sadly, many Christians only sing of the Resurrection of Christ on one day of the year:  Easter Sunday.  Just as Christmas is more than one day, so is Easter.  Forty days into the Easter season is Ascension Day, because the book of Acts tells us that Christ ascended into heaven forty days after he rose again.  The color for Easter is white, the same as Christmas, Epiphany, and other joyful occasions of the Church Year.

Pentecost – Fifty days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles.  They preached to the crowds who were gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks, known in Greek as Pentecost, and over 3,000 people were converted and baptized.  Ever since, Christians have celebrated Pentecost as a “birthday” of sorts for the church.  The color for Pentecost is red, for the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The very next Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday that honors a doctrine rather than an event.  The season after Pentecost is a season of reflection (as are the Sundays after Epiphany) that extends through the summer and into the fall.  The very last Sunday of this season, and of the Church Year, is called Christ the King Sunday, celebrating the fact that Christ rules and reigns from his heavenly throne right now.  Following Christ the King is the First Sunday of Advent of a brand-new Church Year, and so the cycle begins again.

This rhythm of life has guided and shaped generations of Christians.  Over 1700 years of Christian wisdom and experience have shown that this rhythm is beneficial to our spiritual health.  Far more beneficial, to my way of thinking, than the typical “holy days” of many churches today:  Labor Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.  Such occasions are fine as civil holidays, but they tell us nothing of the redemptive work of Christ in his life, death, and resurrection.  Besides, when we gather for worship we gather as citizens of the kingdom of God, not simply citizens of the United States.  The kingdom of God transcends all boundaries of nationality, as well as race and the other things we use to distance ourselves from one another.

Being a liturgical church in a mostly non-liturgical part of the country, visitors usually run into some things that require explanation.  On the most basic level, there are usually questions about the mechanics of worship:  Why do you have kneelers in the pews?  Why do you read prayers in unison?  Why is the pastor in a robe?  Why do you celebrate Communion every Sunday? etc.  But if you stick with us longer than one Sunday, then the questions turn to the ordering not simply of the service but of time itself:  that is, the ordering of the calendar.

The way we mark time shapes our view of reality.  The calendars we live by circumscribe our reality:  they define what is and isn’t important to us.  I say calendars–plural–because most of us do live by more than one calendar.  We all are subject to some degree or another to the civil calendar, not only the twelve months, but the civil and national “holidays” as well (such as New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, etc.)  The civil calendar begins January 1 and ends on December 31.

Students, parents of students, and teachers’ lives are also governed by the academic calendar, which begins in late August (although it’s getting earlier every year, it seems) and goes through late May or early June.  Everything from family vacations to dental appointments have to be scheduled according to the dictates of the academic calendar.

Many businesses have their own fiscal year which dictates much of their planning.  There are other calendars too, such as the one I call the “Hallmark calendar.” That’s the set of holidays that have been promoted primarily by the greeting card and florist industry:  Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.   These too serve to order and shape our lives.

In the Hebrew Bible, God wanted the nation of Israel to mark time differently from the nations around it, and so he gave them feasts or holy days:  special days that celebrated God’s acts of Redemption.  Most of us are familiar with Passover (Pesach), one of the spring feasts, that celebrates the Exodus, but also in the spring there is Shavuot (the “Feast of Weeks”)–or Pentecost in Greek–which celebrates the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai.  In the fall, there are the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah (the “Feast of Trumpets” or New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of the Atonement) as well as Sukkot (the “Feast of Tabernacles” or Booths).  These holy days, to which were eventually added Purim (celebrating the deliverance of the Jewish people by Queen Esther) and Chanukah (celebrating the rededication of the Temple under Judah Maccabee), gave a distinctive shape and rhythm to the lives of God’s people.  In the Jewish community, they still do.  Celebrating these feasts, marking time this way, is an immensely important dimension of Jewish life.

In the early church, the first Christians looked to this tradition and saw the wisdom of marking time, as God’s people, in a manner different from the nations around them.  They first took the spring feast of Passover–Pesach in Hebrew, Pascha in Greek–and reinterpreted it as a celebration of the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, whom they understood to be the Passover (Paschal) Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world.  In the Germanic languages (of which English is one) we call it Easter, but in most other cultures the name of this feast is still simply a derivative of Passover:  Pâques in French, Pasqua in Italian, Pascua in Spanish, etc.  Soon, a Christian celebration of Pentecost (Shavuot) joined the celebration of Pascha or Easter, for it was on Pentecost that the book of Acts describes the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles and the baptism of over 3,000 converts to Christianity.  The forty-day period of preparation for Pascha, known as Lent in English (from an old word for “spring”), soon followed, culminating in Holy Week, which revisits the events of Christ’s last week on earth, including the Tritumphal Entry (Palm Sunday), the Last Supper and Gethsemane (Maundy Thursday), and the Crucifixion itself (Good Friday).

The grouping of winter feasts in the Church Year developed in the ancient church according to the pattern of the spring feasts.  In the spring feasts, there is a season of preparation (the 40-day season of Lent), a season of celebration (the Easter season, which lasts for fifty days, from Easter to Pentecost), and a season of reflection (the Sundays after Pentecost, sometimes called “Ordinary Time”).  The date of December 25 was officially established as the Feast of the Nativity in AD 354, although evidence shows it was being celebrated on that date in Rome as early as 336.   January 6 was celebrated in the Eastern Church as the Feast of the Nativity, called Epiphany (”Manifestation”) as early as AD 200.  The Western church adopted this date in the 300’s, quite soon after the establishment of Christmas as December 25, choosing to celebrate Epiphany as the coming of the Magi, which was the Manifestation (Ephiphany) of Christ to the Gentiles, and which of course did not happen the night Jesus was born.  So the period from Christmas (December 25) to Epiphany (January 6) was established by the church in the 300’s as the Christmas Season:  the Twelve Days of Christmas (see, it’s not just a silly song).  A season of preparation, akin to Lent in the spring, was added around AD 380.  This season came to be known as Advent (from the Latin for “coming.”)   In the East, the season of preparation was/is known as “Nativity Lent” instead of Advent.  As the Sundays after Pentecost served as a season of reflection on Easter in the spring, so the Sundays after Epiphany became the season of reflection on the Incarnation event for the winter feasts.

This is the shape of the Church Calendar that has been in place since the Fourth Century.  It not only predates the Reformation of the 16th Century, but it even predates the Great Schism (between East and West) of 1054 by almost 600 years!  So this ordering of time, the rhythm of the Christian Year, properly belongs to all Christians.  It is the heritage of the unified Church:  it is not a “Roman Catholic thing” versus a “Protestant thing,” or even a “Western thing” versus an “Eastern thing.” It is our common heritage, a part of our common life as Christians.

A friend sent me this link last night.  I of course had heard some of what had gone on at Coral Ridge.  It’s hard not to hear about it if you’re in church circles at all.  I had heard rumors that the music director and organist had resigned, but until I read this on the organist’s own blog, it was just that:  a rumor, and I didn’t want to comment or speculate on a rumor.

There are quite a few things that really bother me about this, but this is at the heart of it:

On Wednesday evening, an elder came to announce that choir members, who had signed the original petition calling for the congregational vote, were to be removed from the choir. (This was all done without due process as called for in the PCA Book of Church Order. Signing a petition is a congregation member’s right under the BCO.) Upon the announcement of the removals the choir was immediately ripped to shreds with people protesting, crying – it was awful and unthinkable that this was happening in a church. Some of the members have been in this choir for 40 years. Three elders in the choir stood up to protest this saying that it was not allowable without session action and that none of these people had been charged with any wrongdoing. [Music Director] John Wilson left part way through the announcement, having become too emotional to stay.

The three elders who stood up are 100% correct.  First, those choir members who signed the petition calling for a congregational meeting were simply exercising their right under the Book of Church Order (a part of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church  in America).  Second, simply because they signed a petition calling for a congregational meeting does not mean they were planning to vote to get rid of the pastor:  it simply means they wanted the issues discussed in a public forum rather than whispered behind closed doors.  (Several years ago, the session of the church we attended was trying to pass a controversial action and a petition was circulated for a congregational meeting to discuss it.  Those who signed the petition did not have their minds made up about the action:  they simply wanted the opportunity to hear both sides, to ask questions, and to let their voice be heard.  That is their right.)  Third, even if a majority of those who signed the petition did want the pastor removed, how does this sort of “scorched earth policy” advance the Gospel?  How does this square with “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you”?  It has been reported that a “culture of intimidation” has been the order of the day for several months around this church.  These actions toward the choir seem to lend credence to those reports.

There’s something else that disturbs me greatly about this.  Say that, a month from now, the session apologizes, saying that its actions were unconstitutional.  What then?  The damage has been done.  The organist is gone.  The choir is gone.  The choir director is gone.  It’s already been established, in the many reports about the conflict at Coral Ridge, that the new pastor “prefers rock bands to organs and choirs.’ Do we really think there will be a serious effort to re-establish the tradition of choral and organ music that has flourished at Coral Ridge for the past 40 years?  That is all gone.  It will continue, no doubt, at the new church (that had 65 people in the choir on its first Sunday), but at Coral Ridge, it’s gone.  (In related news, the director of the Coral Ridge Concert Series was also fired this week.) Proponents of “contemporary” worship used to complain about their views being shut out by traditional churches.  Now that those proponents are the decided majority in the evangelical world, what are they doing to traditional church music?  Practicing the Golden Rule?  As I have to tell my children almost every day, the Golden Rule is not “do unto others as they have done to you.”

Increasingly over the years, I have seen an arrogant Philistinism creeping over the evangelical landscape.  I’ve had pastors brag to me about their new church buildings that were being built in such a way as to ensure that there could never be a choir or an organ in the sanctuary:  just a rock band.  Pastors with little or no experience in, or appreciation for, music are making artistic judgments and ignoring the advice and the impassioned pleas of the musicians in their midst.  I know precious little about visual art.  I’m one of those people who would buy the painting that matches the couch.  Still, I wouldn’t suggest that a church that was full of Michaelangelo frescoes hire Thomas Kinkade to come in and paint over them in a style that “people today can identify with.”  Why obliterate such a heritage?  But that’s exactly what’s going on with church music around the country.  Sure, let’s do new music.  Let’s discover music of other cultures.  But let’s not chuck our heritage in the process.  There should be plenty of room at the table for everyone.  But then again, we’ve never really gotten the hang of inclusion, have we?

The denomination that Coral Ridge is in, the PCA, has now almost universally rid itself of this heritage of church music.  It is now almost universally opposed to any music that is more than 25 years old.  Ironically, this same denomination is, at the same time, almost universally opposed to any theological formulations that are less than 350 years old!  No one in the PCA would consider for a second the suggestion that they only pay attention to theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Why, then, is it OK to do that very thing to the artists of the church?  There are a lot of smart people in the PCA.  Have none of them thought through the possibility that our heritage of worship might serve to inform our theology?  Has no one wondered if worship that is completely cut off from the past might be at odds with the belief we espouse in “the communion of saints”?  That communion is not only catholic–reaching around the world–it is also timeless, reaching down through the centuries.  It’s not just lex credendi, lex orandi.  It’s also lex orandi, lex credendi.  Not only does our theology inform our worship practice:  our worship practice also shapes our theology.  What are we doing to ourselves by throwing so much of our history, and so much beauty, out the window?

Coral Ridge is not only about to jettison 40 years of church music heritage at that location.  They are about to jettison centuries of Christian wisdom and beauty embodied in that heritage.  And it’s not just music of the past that has been assigned to the dustbin.  Coral Ridge has been instrumental in introducing the music of many present-day church musicians to the world, through its TV presence as well as through its Church Music Explosion conferences.  Cindy Berry, Craig Courtney, Allen Pote, and my good friend K. Lee Scott have all had their music performed extensively by the Coral Ridge choir.  The same is true for hundreds of other composers living and writing today:  composers who are truly contemporary although not writing in a pop style.  Their gifts have been treasured and utilized by Coral Ridge.  I seriously doubt that they will be utilized, much less treasured, any longer.

I know that there were bad attitudes on the other side too.  I don’t believe it was right for people at Coral Ridge to be bad-mouthing the new pastor.  However, I also wonder why someone would go to a church only to dismantle its entire culture.  If I interviewed at a church that was 180 degrees away from my convictions regarding worship and ministry, I would not go there.  I would not be the right person for that church.  That is not a slam against that church or against me.  It’s just not a match.  Perhaps the PNC did not represent Coral Ridge or its desires for the future accurately to the candidates.  Perhaps the candidate did not represent his intentions accurately.  Perhaps it was a little of both.  No matter how it happened, now it just is what it is.

And what it is, is a terrible, terrible shame.

We have Presbyterians of all stripes who read this blog, including (but certainly not limited to) PC(USA), ARP, PCA, EPC, OPC, Church of Scotland, Free Church of Scotland, and EPCEW.  We also have Baptists of many different kinds, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and probably some more that I’m leaving out.  Every tradition “does” Communion a little differently.  Furthermore, even within a particular tradition, individual congregations have their own ways of doing things.

On this World Communion Sunday, I think it will be encouraging to our congregation to read the stories of what makes Communion special in your church.  If you have pictures, send them along with your stories.  The more stories and pictures, the better!  Even if you have only one or two sentences to share, such as the name of a song you always sing at Communion, send it in.  Don’t imagine that everyone does Communion the way your church does.  For example, the first time I played for a Methodist church, I discovered the tradition of leaving money at the altar rail for a special Communion offering for the poor.

Send your stories and pictures to knowtea-at-knowtea-dot-com (writing the address properly, of course).  But please send it to me by Friday so I can print your story for the board.  Thanks, and I pray that this World Communion Sunday is a special one for all of you.

Take a look at this video (and read the original poster’s thoughts on the subject too). Then come back here and let’s talk.

I’ve seen Bobby McFerrin in concert before. (At the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, with my cousin Lela, who has yet to comment on this blog!) He did this very experiment with us that night, and everyone instinctively responded as this audience does, with a pentatonic scale.

Pentatonic folk tunes about all over the world. Some of our best-known and best-loved hymn tunes fall into this category, such as NEW BRITAIN (”Amazing Grace”) from Scotland by way of Appalachia, WAYFARING STRANGER, also from Appalachia, JESUS LOVES ME, based on a Chinese folk tune, etc.

Shaped-note singing enthusiasts will immediately think of MORNING TRUMPET, BEACH SPRING, and many others such as “Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal.” The Celtic tune SLANE (”Be Thou My Vision”) is one of the most deeply-loved hymn tunes we have: also pentatonic.

So, what is it about the pentatonic scale. Why does it resonate so deeply with us? (I’m not using those words figuratively, either.)

Here are two of the responses:

Ours is a regular service – a praise song before greeting and then 2 hymns or praise songs, then offering, then the choir does 2 songs – mostly Southern Gospel – message, and invitation… for your youth services – which are the 5th Sundays – We sing contemporary praise and worship songs – big ones first and slow down to worship preparation – then the message and then invitation.

Well we usually have an opening hymn and after we sing the first and last verse, we have the musicians play through a verse and chorus or just a verse while everyone shakes hands and greets, then we sing the last chorus. Then it’s announcements followed by two more hymns. Then we have offering. then the choir will sing one or two songs (depends on how long they are). Then we sing amazing grace (that’s every sunday at this time), sermon, then invitation.

The first one is introduced with, “Ours is a regular service.” Is it? I know I’m in my own world, but is it? Now these are not liturgical churches, so I’m not going to say anything about the absence of Communion (oops! I just did). But why is there no confession of sin? Why no Assurance of Pardon/Declaration of Forgiveness? Regardless of denominational bent (and these churches are admittedly of a different one from mine), I think all believers need to acknowledge in worship that sin disrupts our relationship with God and needs to be acknowledged and, more importantly, that we all need very much to hear, from Scripture, the promise that our sins have been forgiven through Jesus Christ. Without the cycle of confession/assurance of pardon, the entire concept that we are approaching a holy God in worship is lost.

On an even more basic level, however, are these two questions:

1) WHAT ABOUT PRAYER? Don’t Christians pray anymore? Didn’t Jesus say something about his house being “a house of prayer for the nations”?

2) WHAT ABOUT SCRIPTURE? Both mention a sermon or message, but nothing about the public witness of Scripture. Our tradition (and the tradition of most liturgical churches) is to have a Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) reading, a Psalm (either read in unison, responsively, or antiphonally), an Epistle lesson, and a Gospel lesson each Sunday. The sermon will only be on one of these selections–usually the Gospel–but we believe the public reading of Scripture is as important a part of worship as the sermon, if not more so. It certainly isn’t something we would consider optional or dispensable.

So, those of you in more broadly evangelical churches, more “contemporary” churches, etc., do the above really describe a “regular service”? If so, how do you account for no prayer and no public reading of Scripture? Call me a stick in the mud, but I consider those two things to be non-negotiable.