Hymns abound!

[Greg M. Johnson]

Good Christian, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce him through,

The Cross be borne for me, for you;

I had long admired this hymn.  I had always liked how it pointed out how the whole story is completed (nails, spear!).  This season, I'm having even more admiration for the package of the four verses together.  It's amazing how it gets a law and gospel sermon and a theology of the cross into one breath.

Once a few years ago I sang it in a NY City electronics store.  They had an open mike and you'd get five or ten dollars off your purchase if you sang a stanza of any Christmas carol.  The theological content of the list went from completely secular children's myths to "What Child is This."   I chose the latter: I don't know whether the words resonated with the entire crowd in that store then as they do for me today.

And that's the rub. We Christians worry a lot about losing our special place in the public square-- partisans in my county were set for a menorah vs. manger fight, but it all evaporated at the last minute.  Yet electronics stores are playing our best theological material for free to the crowds.  This year, in NY City, Lincoln Center had great big ads for an opera called "The Messiah", posters I saw when I went to see "Amahl's Night Visitors."   And then today on two different public television stations, I see choirs of kids singing Christmas songs.  First one about the cold weather, then a ka-bam! with "What Child Is This?".    (A year or two ago, my local National Proletariat Radio station played a sermon on Easter.).    

Yes, the electronics store is probably playing music that would make a sixties hippie blush the other days of the year, and taxpayer funded media is no ally of the Religious Right (I'm unconvinced of what their stand is on "all" of biblical Christianity, per se.).   But all this does make me wonder two things:

i) How much garment-rending is really called for in the fight over our status in the public square?

ii) The spiritual status of all those folk for whom "What Child is This" gives a little tingle of fear and then a tingle of ease: it is a mystery. They may reject the small c church they see in televangelism, in fights over sexuality, in fights over worship practice and Yankee Stadium.  [Insert here a parable from Jesus about folks being surprised about the extent of membership in the kingdom.]








--
"Too many lifetimes are wasted in an irrational rebellion against the bullies of one's youth."

Greg M. Johnson
http://pterandon.blogspot.com

[Heart2L...@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/26/2007 2:14:20 A.M. Central Standard Time, nor...@googlegroups.com writes:

How much garment-rending is really called for in the fight over our
status in the public square?

A few days before Christmas I noticed an almost rebellious spirit of wishing people a "Merry Christmas" as if it was of utmost importance to get those words out in the public.  It occurred to me, however, that long before it became a politically correct issue that I didn't always use the greeting. 

 

After all, once Thanksgiving hits, we are in the "holiday" season.  Not just because there other religious holidays, but because along with Christmas, we celebrate New Years.  That office party?  Has that really been a "Christmas Party" or is it an "End of the year celebration about how well we have done over the past twelve months"?  Our children get a holiday vacation because it goes from just before Christmas to just after New Year.  On that last day of school, we always greeted one another "Happy Holidays" because we would be celebrating more than one holiday when we were gone. 

 

From our Christian perspective, should we even have been saying "Merry Christmas" before Tuesday?  After all, we were still in Advent, :)

 

So, I decided to stop worrying about it.  A "Merry Christmas" isn't a very good witness when you are yelling it a sales clerk who just offended you with a "Happy Holidays" anyway.

 

Blessings.  Peg

www.awordfortoday.org

 

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[Greg M. Johnson]

I remember class session one day in high school where the teacher let the kids chat amongst themselves for an hour.    My only friends in the room were fans of Ralph Samson and the UVA basketball team.  They talked about Ralph Samson for an hour, a topic I knew nothing about.  After fifteen minutes, I said to myself, "I'm going to start reading everything I can about Ralph from here on out."  After an hour, I said, "I'm never going to watch another basketball game again."

Then in college, I was once stuck at a party where my best friend got into a long yelling match with someone about two different PA college football teams.  He and his opponent became best friends: I was in dread the whole evening.

Having been an agnostic on the topic of sports and then having spent time around diehard fanatics, I think I have a sensitivity to a sociological thing going on in fights over religion in the public square.  So much of it seems like a fight over whether you have both Giants **and** Jets logos on the town square. If the town square doesn't let your sports team logo, are they going to start putting you on trains?  While I think "What Child is This?" is a pretty cool evangelism tool, when I see a creche on public property, I end up thinking more about the fight over PA football.   

Putting my LC-MS hat back on for a moment,  I think a square with a creche **and** symbols of other religions ought to be worse than not getting involved at all.  You've made it to be just another sports team, which are all equally good at providing psychological benefits.

I also think that this sociological thing has something to do with the reason men aren't as involved in the church. (I'll have to think more about that later.)   (The hard drive on my laptop died, so I had to send this without as much polish as I would have liked).