It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Advent

C.S. Lewis called Christianity the “one true myth;” regarding Christmas, Andrew Peterson has coined the phrase “The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ.” Does that kind of language strike our ears in strange way? Maybe we need to step back and take a look at the wonderfully absurd miracle of Christmas. Who would have guessed that God would come to us in the way that he did – a helpless baby born to a young girl pledged to be married to a man of no great means. God sent angels to herald the news to a people who longed for a Savior, but who would have otherwise missed his arrival.

The Jews missed it. They had the Law and the Prophets to point them to God’s redemptive plan, and they missed it. Let’s not be too hard on them, though. Christ’s first disciples continually missed it—continually misunderstood God’s plan in Christ even though Jesus had chosen them and invested himself in them for several years.

But let’s not be too hard on them either. To use the language of Matthew 7, we’ve got a plank in our eye when it comes to Christmas. We act like it’s about decorations and presents and food and family and children and Santa and yet we still declare that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” I admit that I share in this hypocrisy, and I’m trying to be plank-free in my perspective. My challenge is for all of us to do the same.

December 2nd marks the beginning of Advent—a season that culminates with Christmas: our celebration of the birth of the Savior. During this Advent may we retell with even greater purpose the story of God’s creation and our fall; of his coming to rescue and redeem us. May we allow God to remove the planks and specks from our eyes as we expectantly re-enact the waiting for God’s great hope to be revealed.

What the church really doesn't need...

... is one more insipid worship song. (Rant warning!)

Every day when I'm on my way to pick up my daughter K from school, I turn on one of several "Family Friendly, Positive Message, Christian Hit Radio Stations." I hope against hope that they'll play something that's a good song in terms of music, content, and performance/production. The performances are generally good (Nashville studio cats usually) and the production--well you almost have to try to screw things up sonically these days with the plethora of virtual aids for the recording engineer/producer types. (I suspect that the next generation of Mac's Garage Band will be able to automatically generate songs in the same way that Jean-Luc Picard might simply request "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot." Imagine the possibilities: "Song, Lenny Kravitz, rocking, vaguely about Jesus." Oh, he's already done that?)

I was particularly annoyed by a song that rolled all my pet peeves up in one. It used a lot of churchy sounding words and phrases (which I'm way OK with using in congregational worship, BTW) like "manifest," "implore," and "adorn." Yet I found that there wasn't really a theme to the words. It's like the guy was brainstorming a bunch of standard (read "trite") worship phrases and stuck them together so they formed a rhyming pattern. The line that really honked me off was "Creator of all glorious things." Now, accuse me of being fussy about semantics (that accusation will surely stick), but shouldn't it probably be "Glorious Creator of all things"? You see the enormous difference, yes?

Besides that, it was full of "me" language. CHALLENGE TO ASPIRING WRITERS OF WORSHIP SONGS: try to use some "us" constructions. The church could maybe use that. Also, how about more songs about repentence and restoration? How about more songs with memorable and singable melodies? Consistent theology?

I could gripe for hours, but I need to go shoot some video on location.

Now don't get all defensive...

...but take a moment to consider the validity of this quote from Derek Webb:

We are disliked for all the wrong reasons, Christians in America... We need to be careful that we are actually acting like Jesus, opposed to
acting like the people Jesus judged the most harshly, which is the arrogant
church leadership, the Pharisees. We need to be careful, because it’s sending
such a mixed message, and that’s a huge issue. And I think that if we could just
pause for a moment and just look at Jesus’ life and look at the way he dealt
with people and treated people, in the context that he did it, I think we would
find that we’re probably on the wrong side.

Chew on that for a minute or ten, then let me know what you think.