Friday, December 23, 2016

THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS: THE LIGHT IN THE MANGER


The land into which Jesus was born burned with Messianic expectations. Prayers for a long-promised national deliverer arose constantly from homes, synagogues and the great Temple in Jerusalem. A nation which had for over six centuries been divided, humiliated and dominated by foreign powers awaited God’s anointed deliverer who would restore national honor, integrity, piety and power. The coming of this national redeemer would be a joyful event for the people—a momentous event that would be witnessed by all the nations of the earth. At least that was the populist belief of the time given the common interpretation of scriptural passages such as this:

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.
When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the LORD has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God."
(Isaiah 52:7-10)

The central reason why most believers in these scriptures rejected Jesus as God’s Messiah—His Anointed—was that his birth, life and death (and even the claims of his resurrection) met none of the expectations that the vast majority of the people had for their long-hoped-for redeemer.

In the decades and centuries following Jesus’s earthly ministry, those who did embrace him as the Messiah passed along stories and created traditions that commemorated his birth as a miraculous, earth-shaking event.


Thus, Christmas is celebrated by erecting Nativity scenes, singing glorious carols, and retelling stories of singing angelic hosts filling the night skies above shepherds in their fields; of Wise Men on camels following a blazing star from Persia to Bethlehem; of ancient Americans falling to their knees as the skies above them remain bright for a day, a night and day in recognition of the Savior’s birth.

There are two things that these stories have in common.

All of these stories involve great lights: the star of the east; a day, a night and a day as if they were one day; bright angelic host filling the night sky.

And all of these stories involve humans looking heavenward for signs of the Messiah’s birth.

Whether these particular stories are historical or legendary is of little importance to our discussion here. If they are indeed historical, they happened to only a handful of people in the Middle East or to an ancient America civilization that had no contact with the rest of the world. The fact remains that the rest of the human family—including those living in the small town where Jesus was born—had no idea that a Messiah had been born.


No one was looking earthward. No one was looking down.

With all of the reading of scripture that took place daily in synagogues and communities throughout the Roman Empire; all of the anticipation, all of the talking, bickering, debating, speculating and theorizing about the Messiah which consumed the faithful of that day—no one thought to look for the Lord’s Anointed in a dark stable, lying in a manger.

Certainly if (as the Gospel According to Luke testifies) Mary gave birth to Jesus in overcrowded Bethlehem during the taking of a national census, it would stand to reason that others in the crowded inn and adjoining stable would have been aware of the event. Others would have heard the newborn Jesus crying. Others would have passed the babe in the manger. Even with no heralding angles or stars rising in the east, Jesus was not born in isolation, in secret or even in the privacy of a home.

And yet as far as our traditions tell us, not a single soul in closest proximity to the newborn babe had the slightest inkling that their Messiah had come—that the child was “Emmanuel”—meaning “God with us.” The populist notions of national pride and power, the certainty that national and sectarian interests were the measure of God’s interests, the testimonies delivered by the multitudes asserting that they already knew the truth regarding the ways in which God operated—all of these combined to blind people to the way in which redemption, salvation, restoration, peace and the reign of God were being brought into the world.

For those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah—the Christ—God had entered the world quietly, undermining not only popular beliefs about how He operates but also undermining all traditional, orthodox assumptions about the very nature of the Divine’s relationship with humanity.

In Jesus’s day, as in our own, people were looking for blinding beams of glory streaming from the heaven, for the bright flash of a national deliverer’s sword, for the glowing radiance of thrones, crowns, riches and royal opulence.

No one thought of looking for the Light in the countenance of the weakest of humans—a seemingly ordinary infant asleep among the animals in a common stable.

As Phillip Brooks wrote his immortal 1868 Christmas carol:

“How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.”


FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
How much time and energy have I spent looking heavenward for signs and wonders rather than looking at the world around me, in the faces and lives of others?

How have my experiences of God undermined the expectations I had based on my religious upbringing?



SHARING FOOD FOR THOUGHT: This Christmas Season bring up the above questions in conversations with family members or friends.

Don’t argue; don’t attempt to convince or convert one another to any particular idea. Just discuss your thoughts openly and honestly. Seek to understand one another first and then try to make your ideas understood. The objective is to create a bond between yourself and the other person in which such ideas can be expressed openly and without fear; in which each person can be true to what they believe while still feeling respected by the other person. The objective is to strengthen the sense of community between you and others.

For more information on Reform Mormonism visit www.reformmormonism.org

Thursday, December 22, 2016

ADVENT OF THE LIGHT: LOVE

ADVENT OF THE LIGHT: LOVE



“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels,
but do not have love,
I am only a resounding gong
or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy
and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have a faith that can move mountains,
but do not have love,
I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor
and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,
but do not have love,
I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.

Love never fails.

But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they will be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain:
faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.”
(I Corinthians 13)

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

ADVENT OF THE LIGHT: JOY

In even the darkest times, the promised advent of Christ’s Light offers us a reason to rejoice. For despite the chaos, despair and violence of the current age, the vision of a future age in which these things have no place has long inspired prophets and poets throughout history.

Anciently the defeated and dispersed Children of Israel were encouraged by their prophets to never lose sight of a joyous future age that would be ushered in by a coming Messiah:

“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness;
it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there,
nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
(Isaiah 35:1-10)

In early nineteenth century America, another prophet, while illegally imprisoned for months in a small Missouri jail, cast his thoughts forward to that same future time, envisioning how the dead would be restored to the living in an eternal joyful union. Rather than give in to feelings of gloom and despair because of current injustices and suffering, this prophet encouraged his brothers and sisters to press forward with joy:

“Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received?
A voice of gladness!
A voice of mercy from heaven;
and a voice of truth out of the earth;
glad tidings for the dead;
a voice of gladness for the living and the dead;
glad tidings of great joy…
Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause?
Go forward and not backward.
Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory!
Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad.
Let the earth break forth into singing.
Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel…
Let the mountains shout for joy, and all ye valleys cry aloud;
and all ye seas and dry lands tell the wonders of your Eternal King!
And ye rivers, and brooks, and rills, flow down with gladness.
Let the woods and all the trees of the field praise the Lord;
and ye solid rocks weep for joy!
And let the sun, moon, and the morning stars sing together,
and let all the sons of God shout for joy!
And let the eternal creations declare his name forever and ever!
And again I say, how glorious is the voice we hear from heaven,
proclaiming in our ears, glory, and salvation,
and honor, and immortality, and eternal life;
kingdoms, principalities, and powers!
…Behold, the great day of the Lord is at hand;
and who can abide the day of his coming,
and who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap;
and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,
and he shall purify the sons of Levi,
and purge them as gold and silver,
that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. “
(Doctrine & Covenants 128: 19, 22, 23-24)

Though the past year may have had its fill of disappointments, hurts and anger, let us pay renewed attention to the prophetic voices found in scripture. Let us learn from the things we may have suffered and then let us release that pain, allowing it to recede into the darkness of the past. As Christmas approaches, let us rejoice in the coming of Christ’s Light into a world in need of healing and restoration—for as the scripture testify, we are that we might have joy! (See II Nephi 2:25)