saints before the altar bending / watching long in hope & fear
suddenly, the Lord, descending / in his temple shall appear
While the department stores are rotating a nearly endless loop of holly jolly Christmas muzak, today’s Scripture strikes an ambiguous note. Instead of all things merry and bright, the sound of glee is mixed with the howl of grief. When the temple’s cornerstone is laid, the song of praise is counterbalanced with that of pain. The hymns are mingled with heartache.
…I confess this passage speaks to me. For one thing, all the forced happiness of the holidays wears me out. To be clear, I like Christmas. I’m no Scrooge. As a person prone to get down by the colder, darker days, a little Christmas cheer does me a lot of good. And that’s especially true when the weather isn’t even kind enough to give us a little snow!
The rub, though, is that weird pressure to be festive every blasted moment of the season! For starters, it’s a tall order. This month will fly by, yes. Nevertheless, nonstop joy is a big ask.
But aside from being unrealistic, it’s also just plain cruel. Demands of happiness are not nice. Judging someone because they’re feeling some-kind-of-way they didn’t choose to is foolish! In my experience, expectations of seasonal frivolity just boomerang on themselves. Instead of encouraging merrymaking, they actually make it harder to come by.
So yes, I find this passage refreshing. The candid acknowledgment of sadness is welcome. And even better is the total lack of criticism! The fact is just noted, and that’s all. The people are not judged for weeping. They’re simply acknowledged.
Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you think that kind of nonjudgmental attitude might make grief that much easier to bear? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to feel bad for feeling bad?!? Wouldn’t it be so much simpler just to take your moods as they come and go?
Truth be told, this kind of acceptance even helps create something to celebrate, too! In place of stipulations, there’s space to just be. And I don’t know about you, but that’s something I'd receive with gratitude.
And so, on that note, hear this: GOD is not insisting you have the most wonderful time of the year this year. In Christ, God has gone to you. And Christ hasn’t waited for you to get to some Hallmark town where it’s always Christmas, either! No, Christ has found you. And he’s found you in the sort of places they don’t put on greeting cards.
So whether or not this is your best Christmas, Christ, the founder of this feast, doesn’t hold back from you. And neither does he condemn you if you’re a bit blue this Christmas. Instead, he goes to you. And he brings with him his light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.
…You know what else, though? That’s not all God has for you! The holy writ is so living that there’s even more to this passage! For instance, there’s the way it’s so relevant for us in the church today.
This passage tells of the people of God trying to pick back up the pieces of life. Like us, they lived through a catastrophe. And as they’ve tried to get on with life, they’ve learned the painful lesson that it isn’t going to be as easy as they thought. Rebuilding their life won’t magically make it all go back to the way it was before. In fact, they’re starting to realize it’s not going to come so easy anymore. The people of God are staring down the prospect of a smaller and sadder future.
Many of us here can relate to that. Can’t we? We can relate in our personal lives, yes. But we can also relate in our congregational life, too. We remember the days of the big Christmas pageants. Don’t we? Like the old people in today’s Scripture, we see that the foundations of the future church are not as sizable as they were in the past. Don’t we?
That’s why the old-timers were weeping in today’s Scripture! They were crying because they remembered the first temple. And compared to that magnificent house of worship, this new one is diddly. Or at least that’s how I always used to read this passage.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still think there’s something to that interpretation. As discouraging as it may seem, it actually helps us see God’s promises that much better! Yes, the new temple won’t match the grandeur of the first one. But guess what? That doesn’t lessen God’s glory in the slightest! In fact, it only increases it!
“GOD’S power is made perfect in weakness!” Saint Paul said that! The less you have to offer God, the more you’re ready to receive everything God has to give you! I said that. And I’m confident in it, too. After all, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Jesus Christ himself said that!
…You know what, though? It’s not so cut and dried as all that. Is it? Consider your own tears. Do they ever mean just one thing? No, of course, they don’t!
As I’ve sat with many of you and shed some tears myself, I’ve come to learn that sorrow never means just one thing. No, tears contain multitudes. Grief has mourning, yes. But it also has happiness, too. Doesn’t it? Sorrow is rarely about one thing only. Rather, it’s so often the culmination of many little things building into something greater than the sum of its parts.
When you keep that in mind, suddenly, this passage begins to sparkle. Consider: perhaps the elders aren’t just crying because the new temple doesn’t measure up. Maybe they’re glum because they’re not sure they’ll still be around when the new temple is finished. Or maybe they’re weepy because they’re missing their friends and family they used to worship with at the first temple but who aren’t around anymore. Or maybe they’re shedding a tear because they can’t forget the tragedy that necessitated rebuilding the temple in the first place!
More than likely, though, it’s a combination of all that. Don’t you think? Like life itself, sadness is never so simple. And, for that matter, neither are we. Are we? No, we’re a complex and contradictory people living in a colossal and often confusing cosmos.
Today’s Scripture ends on a muddled note. “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted for joy, SO THAT the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.” “So that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.” “The people could not distinguish.”
But what if you can’t, anyway? What if, at its deepest level, there is no difference between the two sounds? What if, somehow, the sound of joy is no different from the sound of weeping? When then?
What if the conclusion isn’t jumbled at all? What if it’s really just radically in tune with the all-too-real vicissitudes of real life? Well, if that were the case, today’s Scripture would be drilling down into the very core of sound itself. And what’s more, it would be making a brazen claim about the note resounding therein.
…There’s something at my alma mater that attempts to depict this audacious claim. The artifact in question hangs in the library. It’s a stained glass window. And it was donated by one of the former presidents.
The window is yellow, burnt orange, and taupe. It’s all angular shapes. And from up close, it’s just an abstract piece of art. But when you take a step back, a figure sort of starts to emerge. From a distance, you can nearly make out the image of a figure holding their arms open.
The genius of the window, though, is that it’s never explicit. Yes, the context helps. It’s a stained glass window, after all. And it’s in a Christian college, too. Therefore, you expect more than just some modern decor. But, in a true-to-life fashion, the image in the window is never crystal clear.
The one clarifying detail is the inscription at the bottom of the window. It reads, “In him all things cohere.” The phrase comes from the Bible, Colossians 1:17. In the context of the passage, the saying is making a claim about Christ’s cosmic supremacy. In the context of the stained glass window, though, it’s making a claim about Christ’s shocking coherency.
College is known as one of those places where young adults go to lose their faith. But by placing that image in the library, the college is insisting that all the confusing and often seemingly contradictory facts are held together in Jesus Christ. But that’s not all this window demonstrates, either. You see, the reason one of the presidents donated this window was to honor his son, who died in a car accident.
That tragic event, presumably, shattered life for the poor man and his family. The window, however, witnesses to their faith that somehow, unfathomably even, all the jagged and asymmetrical shards of life and death themselves are held together in Jesus Christ’s broken body. Even though it’s not always apparent, and in fact, without Scripture, it’s by no means evident, either.
…This is the very nature of faith on this side of Eden. Faith doesn’t trade in certitudes. No, faith runs on trust. Faith goes by, not what’s seen, but rather what’s heard. If you want to follow Jesus, you must do as he says. You must pluck out your eyes and place them in your ears! Gail has an advantage over us in this regard. Don’t you, Gail?
Accordingly, worship is equally complex, too! Worship is not where we go to shut away life. No, worship is where we drag all that’s bewildering and burdensome to the Lord!
That’s what our stained glass represents, too, you know! It’s based on the passage when Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden.” Jesus promises relief from your all-too-real exhaustion, not denial of its existence. And the window demonstrates where Jesus promises to meet you with it all, too, this table, his altar.
In communion, where Jesus presides, as the window so wonderfully demonstrates, Christ becomes your high priest. He takes yours and the rest of the world’s sins away. And in turn, he GIVES you HIS holiness. His holiness onto new and eternal life.
That’s some subtle theologizing! Isn’t it? It’s not just upbeat. But neither is it purely morose, either. It’s both! Like us, Christianity is complex. And that’s why the true sound of real Christian worship is that impossible-to-distinguish sound of rejoicing and weeping!
And this is especially true at Christmastime. I believe this is why Advent is so meaningful to so many of us. During Advent, you can bring your Christmas blues with you to worship without any shame. But I’ve also come to learn Christmas itself also has room for these minor keys of the Christmas season, too.
…For instance, one of the most meaningful parts of the Christmas Eve service is turning to the last page of the bulletin. If you don’t recall, that’s the page with all the poinsettias and memorials. Reading these words is as profound as it is spiritual. It’s a page full of losses. AND it’s also a page full of hopes, too. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s also deeply edifying.
That’s not to say anything about all the people who aren’t listed but are dearly beloved by us nonetheless, either! There’s St. Vonda, or just sweets, as Dwaine calls her. There’s St. Brenda and St. Richard. St. Beverly, St. Don, St. Chuck, and St. Greg, too. There’s St. Virginia, St. Marilyn, St. David, St. Paul, and St. Elna. There’s St. Sally. And I know you have your own litany of names you could add, too. Don’t you?
But I know St. Glenna Mea will be listed on the memorials page this year. Won’t she, Cheryl? St. Glenna. Glenna, who sang Silent Night, and the church burned down, as Lynn Van Winkle always joked. Interestingly, though, the history is clear. The fire happened on December 31st, not Christmas Day! Now I checked, and December 31st, 1939, was a Sunday. So that means Christmas Eve was the last service before the fire. My guess is, the story was just compressed over the years.
I mention that story, though, because I’ve always thought we sing Silent Night in the dark because it’s ethereal. But I’ve come to wonder if we don’t really sing Silent Night in the dark because it’s earthy. After all, it was in the dark and silent fields that the glory of the Lord shone round those shepherds as the heavenly host sang out their good news of great joy! Wasn’t it?
But that’s not all, either. The darkness makes it a little easier for us to bring our tears. Doesn’t it? Turning the lights down helps us put our guard down! And the dimmed lighting allows us to feel safe enough to let our sorrows show. Don’t they?
And that’s a good thing, too. It’s a good thing because your sorrow does not diminish the glad tidings of Christmas one bit. In fact, they only enrich it! The sound of weeping only makes Christian worship truer to itself.
…Yes, it’s a strange sound, this noise of glee mixed with grief. It’s a complex melody, that tune of praise counterbalanced with pain. But Christ, the new temple himself, holds it all together. In his body broken for you, ALL things cohere. In him, every note of your existence, from the sorrowful to the sublime, RING out with the holy hum of Christ’s redemption itself!
Christ doesn’t just wipe away your tears. No, he weaves them into the divine ditty of his Gospel shout! Christ, the cosmic conductor, is taking all your heartache and all your happiness, too, to compose the most sacred hymn out of that impossible-to-distinguish sound of weeping and rejoicing!
But, on the great Last Day, when the last trumpet shall sound, and all the other noises shall fall away, that note of mourning mixed with the paradox of praise will turn out to be none other than the music of a faith that endures. Yes, you may be a jumbled mess this Christmas, but that only makes you all the more ready to hear every note of its joyous strain!
Accordingly, we will sing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, hymn number 257.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is one of those beloved Advent hymns. Isn’t it? But it’s a minor key one. It’s got that somber tone. But it’s also infused with a deep and abiding hope. Isn’t it? And given the facts of life and all the promises of Christ-child, wouldn’t you say that’s just fitting?
Now, we’ve got to sing verse 2. That one is assigned for today. So let’s sing verses 1, 2, 6, and 7. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, hymn number 257, v. 1, 2, 6, 7. Let’s sing!
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