God With Us
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Taking His Joy unto Ourselves" by Lamar Massingill
"God Acted that We Might Act" by Lamar Massingill
"The Hopes and Fears of All the Years" by John Sumwalt
"God with Us" by Peter Andrew Smith
* * * * * * * *
Taking His Joy unto Ourselves
Lamar Massingill
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
Christmas would be incomplete without recognizing Incarnate Love's first fruit, which is joy. Johann Sebastian Bach recognized it when he, as an act of worship, composed "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
Music historians have hailed it as the most joyous music Bach ever wrote. Musically, critics say that Bach changed everything he touched. He was that gifted. But back to joy.
What is it exactly, for Bach and for us, that at once makes Jesus so much a joy and our desiring? Just this: He became us and pulled it off! Perfectly! He did as we were meant to do but couldn't. And once He played the music of our humanity, it was never the same again. And still isn't. He still plays on the theme of our relationships, the things and people who "happen" upon us, and are therefore important to us. He plays on the theme of our growth journey, teaching us how to reach without grasping and letting us know that our destination is not as important as the journey itself.
He plays on the fact that we suffer, teaching us how to have trust in the midst of pain and grief and that there will be enough strength for us to walk through the shadows. He plays on the theme of our defenses, teaching us that only fools have something to prove, and that our goodness has to be unguarded and vulnerable, or it's not true goodness. What I am suggesting in all this is that Jesus played the music of every aspect of our humanity, and it hasn't been the same since. That's the joy of it.
And this joy, although not the same as happiness, can easily unite with it. It doesn't deny us happiness, but instead gives happiness its true foundation. Happiness for happiness' sake is hedonistic, but happiness with a foundation of joy becomes divine because it infuses pleasure with meaning. That is what many folks are missing. Not a lack of pleasure, but a lack of meaning that gives pleasure a sure foundation.
The joy of God is no legalistic escape from earthly pleasures, but rather infuses them with a foundation of meaning. With God's joy as a foundation, the dance of life comes alive. God is our joy, but he is also our desiring. The moment we are surprised with the meaning we have so long desired, joy moves into the home of our hearts.
In a former parish a little Cherub Choir member during a children's musical event saw the Baby Jesus (a doll, of course) lying in the manger. Her excitement was so great that she went to the manger, took the baby Jesus out of it, and started playing with him. There were a lot of laughs -- not at, but with the children -- but the symbolism is profound. Is it possible that when we are surprised with the presence of God, we could feel the same joy as that little child did, realizing that all our desires are fulfilled in Him? Could that same joy cause us to walk up to life's "manger" and take His presence unto ourselves without feeling the least bit ashamed and then start truly living?
Without that kind of childlike faith, which enables us to take the Christ unto ourselves, the joy of the Christ cannot be ours, and our desires are frustrated. Childlike faith, mind you, is not a return to innocence but a call to vulnerability, without which joy cannot happen. May the joy of the Christ during this season be born anew in us and in our world. It's a great hope for a new year!
God Acted that We Might Act
Lamar Massingill
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
When Thomas Carlyle was well along in years, he became seriously ill and lapsed into a deep depression. A friend was visiting with him one day and the subject of religion came up. The friend said, "I can only believe in a God Who does something." Carlyle, we are told, reportedly winced as if in physical pain, and said with a sigh, "But that is just the problem. He does nothing at all." Feelings are largely uneducated. Those of you who have ever read Thomas Carlyle know that this statement is by no means the full measure of Carlyle's faith. His faith in God was well known. The statement simply represented the way he felt at that moment as depression engulfed him.
You know how it feels and I do as well. I have had times of conflict and sickness and crisis, and have wondered myself if God does nothing, nothing at all. And I'm sure you have too. We've all had times when we thought, to use H.G. Well's phrase, that "God is a very absent help in times of trouble." Indeed feelings are uneducated. And many times God acts when we don't even know he is acting in our lives. We don't know because it is not what we want or have come to expect of God, so we simply miss the fact that he acting constantly in our lives.
In fact, the birth of God as a human being called Jesus was not a way human beings expected God to act. This one quality distinguished him from the other deities of the age, namely, his willingness to act decisively in human history by daring to enter the world as we do, and to participate with us in our journey from womb to tomb. This action is what we have come to call "Emmanuel," or "God with us."
If this is not hope for the human situation, I do not know what it is. The light of God has become "us," flesh and blood, in order that we may become us and begin to act in the same way that God acted in our world as he walked the dusty roads of the earth. In a phrase, He acted so that we might act. And for us to act, His hope has to get into us -- it has to get under our skin. And in order for that to happen, we have to be vulnerable enough to make those openings, because hope does not follow dead ends; it follows thoroughfares. "Unto us a child is born," says Handel in Messiah, which is being performed quite a bit during these days of Advent. And what could that possibly mean except that this eternal event is now in our hands? What if advent becomes event only as it becomes event in us? What if the hope of advent is in our realm of responsibility? It is no mistake -- "Unto us a child is born!" And his name shall be called, by us, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. His hope is in our hands, because unless He is all those things to us, then He is not any of those things at all. He is what He is only by and through us.
But there's a problem that we must have with this child who is born unto us. We don't seem to want to be born unto Him. We have received His baptism; we have been confirmed in His faith. We have professed our belief in his hope. But what difference does any of that make if we don't, with our own lives, reflect that hope to our world? What difference do any of those actions make if we continue to want to objectify a hope that has the power to change the topography and landscape of our lives and our country and our world? Why objectify a hope that has infinite potential to bring hopeful unity and love to our world, a world that feels as if God does, as Carlyle said in his pain, "nothing, nothing at all"? We've done such a good job in objectifying the child born unto us. We have succeeded in rearing, baptizing, and educating the child in the school of our own localisms, traditions, definitions, ideologies, philosophies, and symbols, so that when the child grows up, he will be in our image, and there will be no need to be responsible.
Our ignorance has given way to an easy convenience. By objectifying his hope, we have killed the personal responsibility we took at our confirmation to invite his hope into every turn our life journey takes. We, the church, seem caught in a mighty contradiction that we have shined like a pair of shoes over the years: Created to receive and share his hope, we evade our responsibility.
So, what do we do as we celebrate God's great action in history? What we have come to call Christmas? How can his advent again become an event in our lives and in the life of the church of which we are a part? How can we confront our chaos, our gospel of status quo, our cultural illusions regarding the Christ Child? How can we be, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of His story (history)?
It may surprise you that Handel's Messiah was originally performed during Lent, but since the nineteenth century has traditionally been sung during Advent. Could it be, and of course I am speculating, that we need to hear the good news of a child born "unto us" at the beginning of the child's life, instead of the end?
As long as we are the church, we are promised new beginnings. God has acted in order that we may act. And during this time of new beginnings, we have yet a new opportunity to act as he would have us act by answering his advent with a courageous responsibility! God is not doing nothing. He is not checking His fingernails. God is doing something, in order that we may do something! May it be so for us all, and, Merry Christmas to you!
W. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, is now the minister at Richton United Methodist Church in Richton, Mississippi. He also serves as religion editor for the Magnolia Gazette and as a guest columnist for the United Methodist Advocate and the Richton Dispatch. Massengill is the author of two books, New Eyes: A Spirituality of Identity Formation and Soul Places, and he has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He is a graduate of William Carey University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
John Sumwalt
Titus 2:11-14
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self controlled, upright, and godly..."
-- Titus 2:11-12
I was excited as our tour bus rolled into Bethlehem. I could hardly believe I was going to see it, that wondrous, mystical corner of the earth where my heart had been transported every Christmas Eve for as long as I could remember. Our Israeli guide, who had been a paratrooper in the 1967 Six Day War, pointed out the shepherd's fields and then the great church of the Nativity that had been built over the spot where the Prince of Peace came into the world. A familiar tune came into my head and I found myself singing:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see the lie;
above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark street shineth the everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Philips Brooks, then pastor of The Church of Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, penned these words 121 years before my visit to Bethlehem, and three years after his own, on December 24, 1865. In a letter to his father, he wrote: "I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the 'Wonderful Night' of the Savior's birth..."
The composer of the tune was Lewis H. Redner, a real-estate agent who was also the church organist and Sunday school superintendent. He told Louis F. Benson, the author of the 1903 Book Studies of Familiar Hymns, about his part in the birth of this beloved Christmas hymn:
"As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, 'Redner, have you ground out that music yet to "O Little Town of Bethlehem"?' I replied, 'No,' but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous, my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868."
I will be thinking of Philips Brooks and Lewis Redner with gratitude as we sing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" on Christmas Eve. It is still true: "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."
Studies of Familiar Hymns, Louis F. Benson, D.D. (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1924), p. 85-86.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
* * *
In his story "God with Us," Peter Andrew Smith reminds us that the meaning of Christmas is not found in what we do during the holiday but rather when we experience what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
God with Us
Peter Andrew Smith
Matthew 2:13-23
Mary tensed as the nurse passed by the door of the waiting room. Before she could ask the woman shook her head slightly in response, smiled at the sight of Joshua curled up in a chair clutching his teddy bear, and continued down the hallway. Mary forced herself to sit back in the chair and relax.
She took another drink of the vending machine coffee and sighed. Some Christmas this was turning into. A frantic phone call that her father had been taken to the emergency room, a six hour drive through lousy weather, and then stuck in this room waiting for a doctor to speak to her.
"Mommy, is it Christmas yet?" Joshua said sleepily.
"No, baby go back to sleep."
Thankfully he closed his eyes and drifted off again. She didn't want a repeat of the panic when she woke him up to get them on the road. He didn't understand what was happening and cried when she told him they had to go right now. She wished she believed the words she had used to convince him that everything would be okay.
The clock on the wall said 2:30 am. Technically it was Christmas Day but she didn't want to tell that to her son. She didn't need to see his disappointment that there were no presents, no stocking full of goodies, no cheerful decorations other than the tired piece of artificial greenery strung over the door of the empty hospital waiting room. She couldn't handle that on top of not knowing what was happening with her father.
The nurse reappeared at the door with a small stocking filled with candy. "It's not much."
Mary smiled. "It's something."
"Can I get you anything?" the nurse asked. "Coffee?"
Mary shook her head. "Do you know how much longer the doctor will be?"
The nurse shrugged and Mary returned to her seat.
"Mommy, is it Christmas?" Joshua asked stirring beside her.
"Not yet," Mary said. At least she could postpone his disappointment for a couple of more hours.
His eyes went wide as he saw the stocking. "Is that for me?"
"Sure," she said handing it to him.
He dug through the treasures of foil coated chocolates and found a candy cane. She started to tell him to only take one piece when a man with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck walked past the door. Mary sprang to her feet and rushed into the hallway.
"That's his daughter there," the nurse said pointing at Mary.
The doctor introduced himself and went into a long description of what had happened to her father and what tests they were running on him. Mary couldn't follow most of it.
"Is he going to be okay?" she asked.
"It's too early to be sure but he is responding to the medications. We'll know more after the tests come back." The man smiled weakly. "I'm sorry I wish I could tell you more but right now we just don't know."
"I understand. Is it okay if I take my son in to see him?"
The doctor said that would be fine and Mary turned back to the waiting room. She started to rehearse what she was going to tell Joshua about what he would see and how his beloved Grampy was doing. The stocking was sitting on the chair along with his coat and teddy bear but Joshua was nowhere to be seen.
Mary looked up and down the deserted hallway. She started toward the nurses' station when she heard a faint voice singing.
"Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday, baby Jesus. Happy Birthday to you."
She turned the corner to see Joshua take a candy cane from his pocket and put it into the manger of the nativity scene set up in an alcove.
"Sorry, it is not much of a birthday present, baby Jesus. Mommy and I had to come here because Grampy is really sick. Please help him and Mommy, okay?"
The scolding she was going to give Joshua for disappearing caught in her throat and she simply said his name.
"Hi Mommy." He yawned. "The nurse told me it was Christmas."
"It is," she said. "We can't open up any presents though until we go home and I don't know when that will be."
"Okay," Joshua said his face very serious. "Can I see Grampy now?"
"You can but he is sleeping and there are lots of wires and equipment like we sometimes see on television so the doctors can help him get better." Mary took his hand. "Do you still want to see him?"
Joshua nodded.
"I'm sorry this isn't much of a Christmas," Mary said softly.
"But you told me Grampy needed us to be here," Joshua said "And you told me that Christmas isn't about presents but about the baby Jesus being born because God loves us."
"It is."
"So why isn't this a good Christmas?" His face fell. "Was I supposed to wait to sing happy birthday to the baby Jesus until you were here?"
"No," she said letting his words echo in her head and heart. A hospital was not where she wanted to be this Christmas but she knew they needed to be here. She knelt down to speak to him face-to-face. "You have been a great help to Mommy. A little angel."
A huge grin broke out on his face. "Really?"
"Absolutely," Mary said. As she took Joshua in her arms she felt an embrace of love and peace, which she knew would hold her through this difficult time. As they started back toward intensive care she whispered a prayer of thanks.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 25-26, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Taking His Joy unto Ourselves" by Lamar Massingill
"God Acted that We Might Act" by Lamar Massingill
"The Hopes and Fears of All the Years" by John Sumwalt
"God with Us" by Peter Andrew Smith
* * * * * * * *
Taking His Joy unto Ourselves
Lamar Massingill
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
Christmas would be incomplete without recognizing Incarnate Love's first fruit, which is joy. Johann Sebastian Bach recognized it when he, as an act of worship, composed "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
Music historians have hailed it as the most joyous music Bach ever wrote. Musically, critics say that Bach changed everything he touched. He was that gifted. But back to joy.
What is it exactly, for Bach and for us, that at once makes Jesus so much a joy and our desiring? Just this: He became us and pulled it off! Perfectly! He did as we were meant to do but couldn't. And once He played the music of our humanity, it was never the same again. And still isn't. He still plays on the theme of our relationships, the things and people who "happen" upon us, and are therefore important to us. He plays on the theme of our growth journey, teaching us how to reach without grasping and letting us know that our destination is not as important as the journey itself.
He plays on the fact that we suffer, teaching us how to have trust in the midst of pain and grief and that there will be enough strength for us to walk through the shadows. He plays on the theme of our defenses, teaching us that only fools have something to prove, and that our goodness has to be unguarded and vulnerable, or it's not true goodness. What I am suggesting in all this is that Jesus played the music of every aspect of our humanity, and it hasn't been the same since. That's the joy of it.
And this joy, although not the same as happiness, can easily unite with it. It doesn't deny us happiness, but instead gives happiness its true foundation. Happiness for happiness' sake is hedonistic, but happiness with a foundation of joy becomes divine because it infuses pleasure with meaning. That is what many folks are missing. Not a lack of pleasure, but a lack of meaning that gives pleasure a sure foundation.
The joy of God is no legalistic escape from earthly pleasures, but rather infuses them with a foundation of meaning. With God's joy as a foundation, the dance of life comes alive. God is our joy, but he is also our desiring. The moment we are surprised with the meaning we have so long desired, joy moves into the home of our hearts.
In a former parish a little Cherub Choir member during a children's musical event saw the Baby Jesus (a doll, of course) lying in the manger. Her excitement was so great that she went to the manger, took the baby Jesus out of it, and started playing with him. There were a lot of laughs -- not at, but with the children -- but the symbolism is profound. Is it possible that when we are surprised with the presence of God, we could feel the same joy as that little child did, realizing that all our desires are fulfilled in Him? Could that same joy cause us to walk up to life's "manger" and take His presence unto ourselves without feeling the least bit ashamed and then start truly living?
Without that kind of childlike faith, which enables us to take the Christ unto ourselves, the joy of the Christ cannot be ours, and our desires are frustrated. Childlike faith, mind you, is not a return to innocence but a call to vulnerability, without which joy cannot happen. May the joy of the Christ during this season be born anew in us and in our world. It's a great hope for a new year!
God Acted that We Might Act
Lamar Massingill
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
When Thomas Carlyle was well along in years, he became seriously ill and lapsed into a deep depression. A friend was visiting with him one day and the subject of religion came up. The friend said, "I can only believe in a God Who does something." Carlyle, we are told, reportedly winced as if in physical pain, and said with a sigh, "But that is just the problem. He does nothing at all." Feelings are largely uneducated. Those of you who have ever read Thomas Carlyle know that this statement is by no means the full measure of Carlyle's faith. His faith in God was well known. The statement simply represented the way he felt at that moment as depression engulfed him.
You know how it feels and I do as well. I have had times of conflict and sickness and crisis, and have wondered myself if God does nothing, nothing at all. And I'm sure you have too. We've all had times when we thought, to use H.G. Well's phrase, that "God is a very absent help in times of trouble." Indeed feelings are uneducated. And many times God acts when we don't even know he is acting in our lives. We don't know because it is not what we want or have come to expect of God, so we simply miss the fact that he acting constantly in our lives.
In fact, the birth of God as a human being called Jesus was not a way human beings expected God to act. This one quality distinguished him from the other deities of the age, namely, his willingness to act decisively in human history by daring to enter the world as we do, and to participate with us in our journey from womb to tomb. This action is what we have come to call "Emmanuel," or "God with us."
If this is not hope for the human situation, I do not know what it is. The light of God has become "us," flesh and blood, in order that we may become us and begin to act in the same way that God acted in our world as he walked the dusty roads of the earth. In a phrase, He acted so that we might act. And for us to act, His hope has to get into us -- it has to get under our skin. And in order for that to happen, we have to be vulnerable enough to make those openings, because hope does not follow dead ends; it follows thoroughfares. "Unto us a child is born," says Handel in Messiah, which is being performed quite a bit during these days of Advent. And what could that possibly mean except that this eternal event is now in our hands? What if advent becomes event only as it becomes event in us? What if the hope of advent is in our realm of responsibility? It is no mistake -- "Unto us a child is born!" And his name shall be called, by us, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. His hope is in our hands, because unless He is all those things to us, then He is not any of those things at all. He is what He is only by and through us.
But there's a problem that we must have with this child who is born unto us. We don't seem to want to be born unto Him. We have received His baptism; we have been confirmed in His faith. We have professed our belief in his hope. But what difference does any of that make if we don't, with our own lives, reflect that hope to our world? What difference do any of those actions make if we continue to want to objectify a hope that has the power to change the topography and landscape of our lives and our country and our world? Why objectify a hope that has infinite potential to bring hopeful unity and love to our world, a world that feels as if God does, as Carlyle said in his pain, "nothing, nothing at all"? We've done such a good job in objectifying the child born unto us. We have succeeded in rearing, baptizing, and educating the child in the school of our own localisms, traditions, definitions, ideologies, philosophies, and symbols, so that when the child grows up, he will be in our image, and there will be no need to be responsible.
Our ignorance has given way to an easy convenience. By objectifying his hope, we have killed the personal responsibility we took at our confirmation to invite his hope into every turn our life journey takes. We, the church, seem caught in a mighty contradiction that we have shined like a pair of shoes over the years: Created to receive and share his hope, we evade our responsibility.
So, what do we do as we celebrate God's great action in history? What we have come to call Christmas? How can his advent again become an event in our lives and in the life of the church of which we are a part? How can we confront our chaos, our gospel of status quo, our cultural illusions regarding the Christ Child? How can we be, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of His story (history)?
It may surprise you that Handel's Messiah was originally performed during Lent, but since the nineteenth century has traditionally been sung during Advent. Could it be, and of course I am speculating, that we need to hear the good news of a child born "unto us" at the beginning of the child's life, instead of the end?
As long as we are the church, we are promised new beginnings. God has acted in order that we may act. And during this time of new beginnings, we have yet a new opportunity to act as he would have us act by answering his advent with a courageous responsibility! God is not doing nothing. He is not checking His fingernails. God is doing something, in order that we may do something! May it be so for us all, and, Merry Christmas to you!
W. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, is now the minister at Richton United Methodist Church in Richton, Mississippi. He also serves as religion editor for the Magnolia Gazette and as a guest columnist for the United Methodist Advocate and the Richton Dispatch. Massengill is the author of two books, New Eyes: A Spirituality of Identity Formation and Soul Places, and he has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He is a graduate of William Carey University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
John Sumwalt
Titus 2:11-14
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self controlled, upright, and godly..."
-- Titus 2:11-12
I was excited as our tour bus rolled into Bethlehem. I could hardly believe I was going to see it, that wondrous, mystical corner of the earth where my heart had been transported every Christmas Eve for as long as I could remember. Our Israeli guide, who had been a paratrooper in the 1967 Six Day War, pointed out the shepherd's fields and then the great church of the Nativity that had been built over the spot where the Prince of Peace came into the world. A familiar tune came into my head and I found myself singing:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see the lie;
above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark street shineth the everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Philips Brooks, then pastor of The Church of Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, penned these words 121 years before my visit to Bethlehem, and three years after his own, on December 24, 1865. In a letter to his father, he wrote: "I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the 'Wonderful Night' of the Savior's birth..."
The composer of the tune was Lewis H. Redner, a real-estate agent who was also the church organist and Sunday school superintendent. He told Louis F. Benson, the author of the 1903 Book Studies of Familiar Hymns, about his part in the birth of this beloved Christmas hymn:
"As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, 'Redner, have you ground out that music yet to "O Little Town of Bethlehem"?' I replied, 'No,' but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous, my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868."
I will be thinking of Philips Brooks and Lewis Redner with gratitude as we sing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" on Christmas Eve. It is still true: "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."
Studies of Familiar Hymns, Louis F. Benson, D.D. (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1924), p. 85-86.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
* * *
In his story "God with Us," Peter Andrew Smith reminds us that the meaning of Christmas is not found in what we do during the holiday but rather when we experience what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
God with Us
Peter Andrew Smith
Matthew 2:13-23
Mary tensed as the nurse passed by the door of the waiting room. Before she could ask the woman shook her head slightly in response, smiled at the sight of Joshua curled up in a chair clutching his teddy bear, and continued down the hallway. Mary forced herself to sit back in the chair and relax.
She took another drink of the vending machine coffee and sighed. Some Christmas this was turning into. A frantic phone call that her father had been taken to the emergency room, a six hour drive through lousy weather, and then stuck in this room waiting for a doctor to speak to her.
"Mommy, is it Christmas yet?" Joshua said sleepily.
"No, baby go back to sleep."
Thankfully he closed his eyes and drifted off again. She didn't want a repeat of the panic when she woke him up to get them on the road. He didn't understand what was happening and cried when she told him they had to go right now. She wished she believed the words she had used to convince him that everything would be okay.
The clock on the wall said 2:30 am. Technically it was Christmas Day but she didn't want to tell that to her son. She didn't need to see his disappointment that there were no presents, no stocking full of goodies, no cheerful decorations other than the tired piece of artificial greenery strung over the door of the empty hospital waiting room. She couldn't handle that on top of not knowing what was happening with her father.
The nurse reappeared at the door with a small stocking filled with candy. "It's not much."
Mary smiled. "It's something."
"Can I get you anything?" the nurse asked. "Coffee?"
Mary shook her head. "Do you know how much longer the doctor will be?"
The nurse shrugged and Mary returned to her seat.
"Mommy, is it Christmas?" Joshua asked stirring beside her.
"Not yet," Mary said. At least she could postpone his disappointment for a couple of more hours.
His eyes went wide as he saw the stocking. "Is that for me?"
"Sure," she said handing it to him.
He dug through the treasures of foil coated chocolates and found a candy cane. She started to tell him to only take one piece when a man with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck walked past the door. Mary sprang to her feet and rushed into the hallway.
"That's his daughter there," the nurse said pointing at Mary.
The doctor introduced himself and went into a long description of what had happened to her father and what tests they were running on him. Mary couldn't follow most of it.
"Is he going to be okay?" she asked.
"It's too early to be sure but he is responding to the medications. We'll know more after the tests come back." The man smiled weakly. "I'm sorry I wish I could tell you more but right now we just don't know."
"I understand. Is it okay if I take my son in to see him?"
The doctor said that would be fine and Mary turned back to the waiting room. She started to rehearse what she was going to tell Joshua about what he would see and how his beloved Grampy was doing. The stocking was sitting on the chair along with his coat and teddy bear but Joshua was nowhere to be seen.
Mary looked up and down the deserted hallway. She started toward the nurses' station when she heard a faint voice singing.
"Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday, baby Jesus. Happy Birthday to you."
She turned the corner to see Joshua take a candy cane from his pocket and put it into the manger of the nativity scene set up in an alcove.
"Sorry, it is not much of a birthday present, baby Jesus. Mommy and I had to come here because Grampy is really sick. Please help him and Mommy, okay?"
The scolding she was going to give Joshua for disappearing caught in her throat and she simply said his name.
"Hi Mommy." He yawned. "The nurse told me it was Christmas."
"It is," she said. "We can't open up any presents though until we go home and I don't know when that will be."
"Okay," Joshua said his face very serious. "Can I see Grampy now?"
"You can but he is sleeping and there are lots of wires and equipment like we sometimes see on television so the doctors can help him get better." Mary took his hand. "Do you still want to see him?"
Joshua nodded.
"I'm sorry this isn't much of a Christmas," Mary said softly.
"But you told me Grampy needed us to be here," Joshua said "And you told me that Christmas isn't about presents but about the baby Jesus being born because God loves us."
"It is."
"So why isn't this a good Christmas?" His face fell. "Was I supposed to wait to sing happy birthday to the baby Jesus until you were here?"
"No," she said letting his words echo in her head and heart. A hospital was not where she wanted to be this Christmas but she knew they needed to be here. She knelt down to speak to him face-to-face. "You have been a great help to Mommy. A little angel."
A huge grin broke out on his face. "Really?"
"Absolutely," Mary said. As she took Joshua in her arms she felt an embrace of love and peace, which she knew would hold her through this difficult time. As they started back toward intensive care she whispered a prayer of thanks.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
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StoryShare, December 25-26, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
