Christmas Eve

I once wrote in a Facebook update: "looks like I am working another Christmas Eve this year." One of my wife's friends replied to my update with "My pastor growing up worked every Christmas Eve. Don't they teach you that in Seminary?" Not able to control myself I replied, "Not in any class I took."

Being a Pastor you learn quickly that you have a different relationship with traditional Christian holidays like Christmas & Easter than some other folks. Taking Christmas Eve & Christmas off was always second nature & as a student the winter vacations made spending time as a family easy if not expected. Yet as my student days have faded away and I am "pastoring", being home for Christmas is indeed only happening in my dreams. My brother, sister-in-law and father are spending the holiday together in Oklahoma (where my brother lives), my mother is spending Christmas with her husband in California, and my wife and I are here in Ohio. Family spread far and wide plus Clergy will always equal separation for Christmas Eve. This is one of the lessons you learn early (some of my friends in seminary were required to be at their internship congregations for Christmas Eve) and though I still get the odd question here and there about my plans for Christmas Eve, most everyone knows that Christmas Eve is a working day for your local Pastor.

I don't want to give you the impression that I resent being away from my family during the holidays. Being able to serve this congregation & community here at Boulevard is a privilege that I am honored to have. Other than a brief foray into wanting to be a Dentist, I have always wanted to be a Pastor and now that I am able to help celebrate the birth of Christ with my church family I feel blessed that it was seen fit for me to answer God's Call into ministry.

Christmas Eve & Easter illustrate something that my sarcastic assertion on Facebook might obscure: following your Call, your dreams means that there will be sacrifice. Like my brother, a pilot in the US Air Force who has missed all but one of his anniversaries, my wedding, and other milestone events, it takes sacrifice in order to follow the call/dream that God places upon each of us. I know deep inside that he would have loved to been at my wedding & certainly his anniversaries yet we are all happy to go without his presence because the US Air Force with all their demands and requirements allows him to do what he wants to do more than anything else: fly.

(By the way, the photo is of my brother's plane, a C-17 Globemaster. This is the only photo the family has of him flying. The photo appeared on Stars and Stripes website.)

Like my brother who flies, or my many pastor friends, the things that we feel called to do will require something from us. For some it is their free time, for others it will be being home for the holidays, and for others they give up more than many of us could imagine. At the end of the day we all do so willingly, and thank God for the support of our loved ones, so that we can be the people we were created to be.

So to Mom, Dad, Reese & Laura, I, once again, miss you this Christmas Holiday but thank you for your support as I follow my call. Merry Christmas!

Predicatable Christmas Blog Post

I have been reading more than my fair share of Christmas emails, letters, blogs, and other communiques from a whole host of suppliers. I am starting to sense a theme. If you read my earlier post about December 26th you will see that I am not immune to the trend to "over simile" Christmas into a neat little package fit for quick consumption or inspiration. I am guilty but I am not alone.

Christmas the event & not the holiday suffers from an interpretation problem. So overcome are we with Christmas the holiday that we want to make sense of the event through the holiday vehicle we know best. So it is not surprising that we get "Jesus is like the Christmas Gift..." or "God's love is like lights on the Christmas Tree. Things just don't glow like they should without it" when Christmas comes around. The reality is that Christmas the event does not authentically fit into a "Christmas is like" form. Christmas the event - the day of Christ's birth - is so unique, so "other" that shoe-string similes seem hallow, contrived and perhaps dangerous to the true message of Christmas.

Christmas at its core is about a radical, profound moment in the history of humanity when the lowly are exulted and a child born to poor parents in a manger is given the same title as the Roman Emperor. When we hear the Shepherds call Jesus "Lord" our modern ears do not perk up yet there in that small manger was a Child who would be the true Lord, Savior and King over the Roman Empire's attempt to demonstrate Lord through might and law. Christmas turns everything on its head, upsetting the rules and giving hope to those who have been under the thumb of oppression. When word spreads to the lowly throughout the land that the true Lord comes to liberate the oppressed and not profit off of them we begin to see the Kingdom of God manifesting itself in the here and now. This is the good news that comes to us in Christmas. That Jesus' birth means that the ways things are are not the way things should be.

Christmas Eve is almost here. We here at Boulevard are putting the finishing touches on the services that will help us celebrate the birth of Christ in community. It is my prayer that as we celebrate Christ's birth we remember that the presents and the lights under the tree may help us celebrate but they are not the reason for the celebration felt all the world around.

Merry Christmas and I hope to see you here on Thursday!

'Tis the Season

December 15th is upon us. 9 more days to Christmas Eve. 10 more days to Christmas. 11 more days to the Day After Christmas, which most retailers will tell you is the single most hectic retail day of the year, even over that of the so called Black Friday. But why? Why should December 26th strike fear in the hearts of Target employees nationwide? The answer is simple: Returns.

Hundreds of thousands of carefully selected, researched, and purchased gifts will be brought back from whence they came because we simply just don't want 'em. Mickey Mouse Popcorn Poppers, Bathrobes with fuzzy Teddy Bears, and a whole host of gadgets, DVDs, and other gifts that leave many asking themselves "what were they thinking?" will be unceremoniously heaped back upon the very same counters from where they were purchased. Temporary caretakers of singing robotic Snowmen & food dehydrators will ask that they be refunded for the mistakes their friends and family made and given the opportunity to shop for things that they actually wanted. The story goes that all the returned merchandise brought back to Targets nationwide eventually ends up in rows and rows of shopping carts in the storerooms creating a caravan overflowing with the failure of Christmas. The reality is that in a season when we champion & celebrate the spirit of giving manifesting with presents under the tree we must come face to face with the reality that some people just don't want what they have been given.

Let's set aside the clothes that don't fit or the DVDs that won't play & ask ourselves about the opposites of December 25th and December 26th. How is it that a mere handful of hours can drastically change the spirit and nature of what we have come to call Christmas? During this short period of time we make the judgment on what gifts we will keep and what gifts fail to meet our expectations or needs sometimes even before the fire dies out. I believe that this is a problem not about givers and receivers rather about what we have come to expect out of the gifts we have been given.

Gifts exchanged at Christmas or any other time is about what one person wants for the other. I give my Dad book because I want my Dad to read this book, to enjoy it, to be glad that he got it. Sometimes he won't be interested in the book, sometimes he might have already read it but I wanted him to have it. We receive the gifts we have been given because for some reason (and sometimes it is very mysterious) somebody wanted to give them to us. We might not know we wanted it, we might not know why we got it, but someone thought that we should have it. As we reflect on the "reason for the season" as we often say about the Christian celebration of Christmas we recognize that the birth of Jesus was a gift given to the world that much of the world didn't think it needed. The Baby born in Bethlehem was the single greatest gift of God and this life changing gift was first recognized by the lowly Mary and Joseph, and the Shepherds, and not the rich, the powerful, the popular who sets trends. This child comes to us because God gave Christ to the world in a way that befuddled many but God wanted reconciliation with us before we wanted reconciliation with God. Maybe we all thought thousands of years ago that a Savior born of Mary in a manger was a Savior that we would gladly return for something more to our liking yet this was God's plan for us.

Merry Christmas!

Ten Things I Learned This Weekend

10. If you are going to give blood at 11am it is a really good idea to eat breakfast first
9. Some Potatoes available for purchase can grow at least as large as both my fists
8. Teddy Bears & other stuffed animals are easier to wrap than Soccer Balls
7. Boulevard has 2 Vegetarians (I thought that there would be more)
6. Hilliard Davidson HS Football Team's uniforms look like the "traditional" BYU uniforms
5. If you are going to give blood at 11am on an empty stomach eat lunch right away
4. Like Chocolate Chips and Peanut Butter Chips there are also Cinnamon Chips & they are good
3. 4 Youth & 3 Adults can wrap a whole lot more presents in 90 minutes then I thought
2. There exists a product called Carrot Jam & it looks very funky
1. Boulevard folks always seem to chip in & help out when you need them.

Making Visits & Thinking about Community

Tomorrow I am heading out and making some visits to some members of our church who cannot be with us due to reasons outside of their control. Some are hospitalized, some are home bound, some find themselves in between but their situation keeps them from joining us for the happenings that are the life of the church. So tomorrow I am going to go out and pay some visits.

I remember moving a fair bit when I was a kid. Going from school to school or house to house you inevitably leave some people that you would call friends behind. I remember vividly thinking on the day of my college graduation that despite the fact that I would call many of these people friends the smart bet was that I would only see a small handful ever again. Life takes you to strange and new places and that is just the way life works. Eventually you settle in, become part of a community and put down roots. You become part of something that feels permanent and your participation in the life of the community is part of what makes the community unique if not great. Churches are communities in their own right and likewise people have the same effect. Yet while communities tend to draw their lines based on geography people are what make up the church. People are the church and so the men and women who worship with us on Sunday and have worshiped with us in the past help make up the very DNA of congregations. Here at Boulevard we are no different. Worship with us once and on that Sunday you are beloved member of this community. Settle here, worship here and serve here and you become a fixture that when you can no longer be a part of the "visible community" here at Boulevard we recognize that something is missing. When people because of the rhythms of life cannot worship, play and serve with us we miss them and so it becomes the job of the entire community to make sure that this absence does not go unrecognized. It becomes all of our jobs to find the places where we can reach out to show care and love to those people who helped make this community great. It is my hope that in the days and weeks to come you will find a way to show love, welcome, and care to those people who cannot be with us as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.