Put Yourself in the Nativity Story

Hobbes, Calvin and Chris join the

Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church nativity scene, early 2000's.

Photo by Wade Jones.

In his autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest, novelist and sociologist Andrew Greeley writes that most Roman Catholics in the U.S. are not “propositional” Catholics who assent to a number of “propositions” or doctrines. For example, a majority of American Catholics do not agree with the Vatican’s teaching on sexual ethics, dismissing its teaching on contraception altogether and questioning its positions on other reproductive choices, premarital sex, and homosexuality.

Greeley concludes from his research that they are not drawn to their church by dogma, but by the story—the biblical narrative, particularly the narrative about Jesus. I think that’s true of Protestants as well. We wonder why many Christians only come to church around this time of Advent and Christmas, but I believe it’s because we love the story of the baby Jesus born to Mary and Joseph, cradled in a manger, endangered by Herod, visited by shepherds and kings.

In the words of Kathleen Norris, “Human beings, it seems to me, require myth as one of the basic necessities of life. Once we have our air and water and a bit of food, we turn to metaphor and myth-making.” To me, myth is not a story that is untrue, but a story that carries a deeper truth that draws us in. As a 5-year-old once said, a myth is a story that is true on the inside. (Gertrud Mueller Nelson tells this in Here All Dwell Free.) Within the words is a Word.

In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore suggests that imagination is one of the most underutilized and undervalued spiritual gifts. So I invite you to put yourself in the story of Jesus’ nativity. Jesus is not simply born to Mary. He is born to us, if only we use our imagination!

Are you King Herod, fearful of losing power or privilege as God is doing a “new thing”? Or an Eastern sage enduring academic malaise, seeking a star of inspiration? A shepherd routinely going about your business when the skies seem to open up? A prophet crying in the wilderness?

Are you a religious leader holding on to tradition at all costs? An empire’s bureaucrat missing the unfolding human drama? Or one whose life is too full to welcome a homeless, unwed mother-to-be? Joseph, serving quietly on the periphery of sacred drama? Mary, with an unsought calling to do the dirty and painful and lonely work of birthing a new movement? Or a vulnerable child born into a vicious and violent world?

Truth is, over a lifetime, we may play all of these roles in this story. Good to remember, at this time of year, that we hinder or help, blink or behold this nativity of God’s Word to us.

I posted this on December 11, 2011, and thought new blog followers might like to read it. Have a meaningful Advent and Christmas!

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Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

Potlatch

As a youth I was fascinated by a custom practiced among Pacific Northwest Native Americans called the Potlatch. I capitalize the Chinook term here, though my OED does not, because it seems every bit as sacred as Christmas and Easter.

Having accumulated much, a person (often a chief) would give away or burn all possessions and start afresh. Though my dictionary implies this was a show of wealth and prestige rather than generosity and humility, I’d say Christmas or any show of charity and humility is practiced with similar mixed motives, so why quibble?

Wade and I have been engaged in a similar practice as we downsize and move to a smaller, more affordable home, though one we hope to improve. I got practice for this in October by emptying my public storage unit in Los Angeles of my parents’ library and a few pieces of their furniture.

I was ruthless in finding new homes for their books, though I did glean three boxes of books and memorabilia to send home. About 35 boxes of books went to a used book store in the suburb where they lived. The furniture went mostly to family, thankfully, though a few pieces found their way to Mexico thanks to my brother’s enterprising neighbor.

My parents were not hoarders in the problematic sense, but they did hoard memories and books. Those “sacramentals” whose stories we knew we often kept, but the ones whose stories have been lost to us easily wound up in the yard sale after my mom’s death. Yet the books also contained “sacramentals”: postcards, photos, news articles, letters, poems, etc. that I needed to remove before giving up the books.

Maya Angelou shared her steely resolve with me through a book of hers I was reading in my morning prayers during that process, one I had found in one of those little lending libraries in a neighbor’s front yard. She could be sentimental and nostalgic, but also realistic and pragmatic, and she helped me recognize the grief and nostalgia of my enterprise as well as its practicality and necessity.

This October pilgrimage prepared me for our December/January Potlatch. Wade, the true materialist of the household, nonetheless loves giving up things just as much as acquiring them, and has made multiple trips to our neighborhood Habitat for Humanity ReStore, delighting its volunteers with every batch of items we will no longer have room for or have fallen into disuse.

As it was my job with my original family to empty my parents’ bookshelves, so too I needed to prune my own overflowing library, an exercise that reveals my present priorities.  My books about theology, church organization, and interim ministry were the easiest to surrender, but the books about spirituality will stay with me for now, including my Henri Nouwen collection.

My collections of books by Gore Vidal and Paulo Coelho, LGBT authors and other contemporary writers I deeply appreciated reading, but can release to keep books that changed my life and make room for those I hope to read. And of course, my volumes of poetry and art will stay. A local seminary library has benefited from my literary Potlatch.

My many boxes of personal and professional files I am still sorting for my archive at the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion at the Pacific School of Religion. Many boxes were sent years ago, many are still to be reviewed. I have given up my desire for putting together a scrapbook, wanting rather to “move on” rather than be kept in the past.

These archives serve as the “final resting place” of the papers of such folk and ministries as John McNeill, Janie Spahr, and the Lazarus Project (to name a few) and I would urge you to make a donation to preserve them, and include them in your will. Write to CLGS, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709, call toll-free 800-999-0528, email clgs@clgs.org, or visit http://www.clgs.org.

The first sermon I gave to an LGBT congregation, MCC Hartford in 1974, was entitled “Letting Go.” Coming Out is ultimately about letting go, whether coming out sexually or coming out spiritually. In a post entitled “Spiritual Picassos,” I described spirituality as a process like Picasso’s life’s work, letting go of unnecessary lines in his paintings and drawings to suggest the essence of his subject.

In October I found a big box of my childhood writings: stories and poetry. When I mentioned I was surprised that there were so many, my brother reminded me, “You were always writing stories.” Somewhat arbitrarily, I selected a few for my archive and tossed the rest, so impatient was I to let go of the dross of my life!

However, one story I rescued long ago was my first childhood attempt to write a story from the Bible, the story of Joseph and his brothers. His having to let go of his family, country, safety and security, believing in his dreams, spoke to my spiritual imagination.

“You intended this for evil,” Joseph later told his brothers who had sold him into slavery, “but God intended it for good.” As I think back on my life, disappointed and disregarded by the church alongside my LGBT sisters and brothers, there is no doubt our exclusion was evil, but God has used the injustice for good to those who follow.

Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Mary Doesn't Do It Alone--Neither Do We!

Light shines in darkness...

In these uncertain times, we may feel overwhelmed by the needs of the world and the deficits of our leaders. The biblical story of Mary metaphorically tells us what to look for from God, “however we understand” our Higher Power.

For additional posts for the Christmas season, click on this link or copy and paste in your browser and scroll down: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com/search?q=Christmas

How did God help Mary—the Mary we seek to emulate in her willingness to bring something new into the world?

God first sent an angel, a messenger from God who told her not to be afraid, explaining what was happening, how God was working out a purpose in her life, giving her vision of her sacred worth, as well as calling her out as an instrument of God’s in-breaking kingdom, or commonwealth.

God sent her a kinswoman, Elizabeth, visited by the same angel and experiencing the same miracle of giving birth to a new order, pregnant with the forerunner John the Baptist. She affirmed Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

God gave Mary a religious tradition in which nativities of the Spirit were recognized and valued: Sarah with Isaac, Hannah with Samuel. Mary knows her tradition well because she is able to sing a song of praise to God that parallels Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel.

God gave Mary a theology that included the feminine: Sophia, Wisdom, without whom creation wasn’t possible.

God provided Mary Joseph. In a culture that did not permit women to earn income, his resources would be needed to sustain and protect the young family. Joseph could also serve as cover for an unwed pregnant girl for whom tradition might have required stoning.

God gave Mary shepherds, common folk, as well as Magi, foreign religious leaders, to assure her that what was being born was of great significance to people at every level of society, in every part of the world, in every faith tradition.

God gave Mary an indifferent leader, Caesar Augustus, as well as a threatened, insecure leader, Herod, to soberly realize that what she was doing might not be recognized or welcomed as God’s inevitable work. Such opposition would give her an inkling of the revolutionary nature of God’s working.

God gave Mary the prophet Simeon and the prophet Anna who, in the temple, bore witness to her child’s sacred worth and divine calling.

And God gave Mary the Holy Spirit, empowering her to conceive, carry, birth, and rear a child of God who would remind us that we are all children of God.

“Somebody’s gotta be Mary!” last week’s post proclaimed. But no one has to be Mary alone, because that first Mary was not alone.

As we give birth to a new order, a fresh understanding of the Gospel and of scripture, a reformed understanding of the church, a revolutionary critique of all “powers that be,” we are not alone. God has given us what God gave Mary:

Angels who tell us to “fear not” and help us understand our individual callings.

Kinswomen and kinsmen of like spirit who bless us, affirming the fruit of our movement. 

A spiritual tradition whose expansive nature has overcome walls that unnecessarily divide us, reconciling us as one people in the midst of great diversity, standing on the side of the oppressed and underprivileged, yet understanding that such a stand also redeems the oppressor and privileged, proclaiming an in-breaking commonwealth of redeeming mercy and grace, saving justice and righteousness.

A theology whose wisdom understands a greater and larger and more compassionate God than ever before.

We have Josephs, without whose defenses and resources we would have no buffer between us and the Caesars and Herods of our time.

We have every day folk as well as leaders and scholars who have assured us that we are doing the right thing; those who have seen angels singing of peace and goodwill among all or witnessed and followed the star of God’s hope for the world.

We have indifferent leaders and we have hostile leaders to remind us that anything worth devoting our lives to requires more than our lifetimes to achieve, to amplify a quote from Reinhold Niebuhr. They remind us that movements transcend not only geographical, cultural, and religious boundaries, but generational boundaries as well.

And we have prophets—a great cloud of witnesses, living and dead—who, like Anna and Simeon, sing of God’s salvation in every nativity of the Spirit.

And God has given us the Holy Spirit, who has conceived in us a more inclusive spiritual community that would remind the whole earth we are all children and creatures of God.

We are not alone. God is with us in so many ways. The story of Jesus’ nativity reminds us of that.

An astute follower of my writings noticed something familiar in last week’s post. Indeed, last week’s and this week’s posts are adapted from a sermon I delivered to Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, on December 15, 2002.

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

"Somebody's Gotta Be Mary!"

India, January 1983. 

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Once upon a time, respectable members of a respectable church decided to perform a Christmas pageant, and congregants were vying for parts. The big competition was around the roles of the Magi, the Eastern religious scholars bearing gold and frankincense and myrrh. Many were taken with their absolutely fa-bu-lous costumes, reeking of wealth and privilege and prestige.

But there were also many who wanted to demonstrate their own humility by playing the poor shepherds watching their flocks by night, knowing that they’d get to see a sky full of angels singing of peace on earth, goodwill toward all, as well as visit the baby Jesus lying in a manger with a halo for a hanging playtoy.

Others wanted to be those high and mighty angels, who, in our contemporary, secular times seem to represent only themselves, cutely and cherubically and all-too-benignly making guest appearances on wrapping paper, greeting cards, and Christmas films, instead of being the fierce and frightful presence of God they are in the Bible—so terrible, they often had to say “fear not!”—awesomely calling individuals to radical action rather than offering sentimental appeasement.

For the manger scene itself, as you may have guessed, it was easy among the staid and high-end church members to cast the roles of the ox and of the ass and of the many docile sheep. Easy also to cast the unwelcoming innkeeper and King Herod frightened of losing power and the indifferent Caesar Augustus only interested in the bottom line, the church budget.

A few were at least willing to play one of the pageant’s two leading characters, Joseph, who at first wanted to put his pregnant betrothed away in a closet somewhere to avoid public disgrace. You will recall that Joseph had a change of heart after having his own vision of an angel, then choosing to serve as a kind of behind-the-scenes partner to the inevitably unfolding will of God, a ferocious will contrary to decency and order, a decency and order Joseph wanted to at least appear to uphold by his outward compliance.

But nobody wanted to play the role of Mary in the Christmas pageant. “Somebody’s gotta play Mary!” the stage manager Gabriel shouted out, sounding very much like the gravelly voice of Harvey Fierstein. “No Mary, no Jesus!” he cried bluntly.

You see, nobody respectable wanted to play Mary because of the shame of her unwed pregnancy. And absolutely no one wanted to go through the bloody and painful job of giving birth to a new thing.

Mary’s fidelity to God, her willingness to say, “Here I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”—all of this counted for naught in the eyes of these good people. The Holy Spirit was knitting together in her womb the new thing for which the prophets hoped, yet, like all nativities of the Spirit, “the powers that be” trembled, including these dignified religious types. Mary’s birthing this child would be an unsettling and unclean act, embarrassing rather than admirable.

“Mary is not a good role model for our children,” someone said.

Stage manager Gabriel again implored the crowd, “C’mon! As Mary, you get to magnify and rejoice in the Lord and be called blessed by generations to come, though admittedly not this generation. You get to serve as God’s instrument to scatter the proud in their presumptuous imaginations, lifting the downtrodden even as the powerful are taken off their high horse. Your mission is to fill the hungry with good things, and to remind the privileged of their own poverty. This is a good thing. Really.”

Visiting the church for the first time, a timid and small young girl came forward, a recent immigrant with olive skin and dark brown eyes and thick black hair, and simply said, “Here am I.” Gabriel, exasperated by everyone else’s resistance, asked, “So—ya wanna be Mary?” And because his language was new to her, she simply quoted Mary’s line, “Let it be with me according to your word.”

And so the respectable church filled with respectable members was able to put on its pageant, reliving the Christmas story, but they did not live happily ever after. For the nature of all nativities of the Spirit humbles those with privilege and uplifts the underprivileged, shaming the proud and bringing mercy and justice to the oppressed.

But that can’t happen unless someone is willing to be Mary.

Related Post: Put Yourself in the Nativity Story

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Put Yourself in the Nativity Story

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

Hobbes, Calvin, & Chris in the Nativity Scene
of Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church, Atlanta.
Photo by Wade Jones.

In his autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest, novelist and sociologist Andrew Greeley writes that most Roman Catholics in the U.S. are not “propositional” Catholics who assent to a number of “propositions” or doctrines. For example, a majority of American Catholics do not agree with the Vatican’s teaching on sexual ethics, dismissing its teaching on contraception altogether and questioning its positions on other reproductive choices, premarital sex, and homosexuality.

Greeley concludes from his research that they are not drawn to their church by dogma, but by the story—the biblical narrative, particularly the narrative about Jesus. I think that’s true of Protestants as well. We wonder why many Christians only come to church around this time of Advent and Christmas, but I believe it’s because we love the story of the baby Jesus born to Mary and Joseph, cradled in a manger, endangered by Herod, visited by shepherds and kings.

In the words of Kathleen Norris, “Human beings, it seems to me, require myth as one of the basic necessities of life. Once we have our air and water and a bit of food, we turn to metaphor and myth-making.” To me, myth is not a story that is untrue, but a story that carries a deeper truth that draws us in. As a 5-year-old once said, a myth is a story that is true on the inside. (Gertrud Mueller Nelson tells this in Here All Dwell Free.) Within the words is a Word.

In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore suggests that imagination is one of the most underutilized and undervalued spiritual gifts. So I invite you to put yourself in the story of Jesus’ nativity. Jesus is not simply born to Mary. He is born to us, if only we use our imagination!

Are you King Herod, fearful of losing power or privilege as God is doing a “new thing”? Or an Eastern sage enduring academic malaise, seeking a star of inspiration? A shepherd routinely going about your business when the skies seem to open up? A prophet crying in the wilderness?

Are you a religious leader holding on to tradition at all costs? An empire’s bureaucrat missing the unfolding human drama? Or one whose life is too full to welcome a homeless, unwed mother-to-be? Joseph, serving quietly on the periphery of sacred drama? Mary, with an unsought calling to do the dirty and painful and lonely work of birthing a new movement? Or a vulnerable child born into a vicious and violent world?

Truth is, over a lifetime, we may play all of these roles in this story. Good to remember, at this time of year, that we hinder or help, blink or behold this nativity of God’s Word to us.

 



When Life Begins

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

I re-tell an old joke I overheard at the gym where I worked out when I lived in West Hollywood. Old Jewish men, some of them with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms, would sit in the sauna spinning stories and telling jokes.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi got into a heated discussion about when life begins, the moment when conception occurs. The priest spoke first, “Life begins when the egg is fertilized by the sperm, don’t ya know.” The minister disagrees, “No, life begins when the child is born.” The rabbi expresses still another view, “No, no, no! Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies!”

Anyone who has had a child or been a child knows that conception is more than the mere biological act of a sperm wriggling its way into an egg. A child’s conception begins with adolescent daydreams of intimacy and raising a family. At its best, it begins with a twinkle in the parents’ eyes, moments of ecstasy, months and then years of planning for the child’s welfare and well-being, dreaming of who the child will be or become, investing in the child’s future with education and recreation and a college fund. Life begins when the child is welcomed and loved and eventually honored as an independent being.

Like many mothers, Jesus’ mother Mary conceived more than a child. She conceived a vision of her child as one who would turn oppression on its head, one who would bring justice to those who had more than their fair share and compassion to those who had less. What mother does not think her child is divine—at least, at first? Babies, puppies, and kittens are all made cute by nature, I believe, to prompt our tender feelings toward them and our desire to care for them. We are born with the same-size eyes we will have in adulthood, and those big eyes in a little face are endearing, compelling us to protect such vulnerability.

If only every child could be welcomed as a divine emissary, a fulfillment of prophecy, a hope for the world! The model of Mary for our world today is not that of a virgin but the model of a mother’s feelings for her child, a mother who would treasure all things related to him in her heart. Unlike Christians of an earlier era who needed to see Jesus as other than a product of sexual intimacy, Christians today are on our way toward affirming the divine inspiration of such intimacy. Whether Joseph was his biological father is irrelevant to our vision of Jesus, just as it surely was for Mary, for every conception cradles divine possibility.


This Sunday, June 26, Chris speaks on "The Power of Words" during 11 a.m. worship at Our Hope MCC, which meets in the Univ. of GA Presbyterian Student Center, 1250 S. Lumpkin St., Athens, GA 30605. Tel: 706-202-3723. His books will be available.