Pile Of Camels
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Pile of Camels" by C. David McKirachan
"Epiphany, the Wise Men, and the Answer" by Lamar Massingill
* * * * * * * *
Pile of Camels
by C. David McKirachan
Isaiah 60:1-6
My siblings are considerably older than I am. I remember being hip deep in the throws of Advent, excitement building in our home, with new Christmas debris drifting in every day. Along with the mystery and wonder of Christmas, changing the atmosphere of my father's congregation like dawn changes the sky, long before the sun is apparent. And into this heady mix came three strange and disruptive beings, with groupies, landing like a fighter jets on the heaving deck of an air craft carrier, bouncing, engines screaming, oozing supreme confidence, stories of the alien planets of college littering every room they entered, demanding attention, taking priority. I felt like a monk whose monastery had been invaded by a rugby team.
The really strange part of it was the joy with which my parents greeted these large barbarians. My mother fairly beamed as she did countless loads of laundry, brought from dorm hampers, cooked more food that had been consumed since Thanksgiving, three times a day, and hung on every word of her older children. My father launched into enthusiastic discussions of Heidegger's Epistemology and the paradox of Marx's condemnation of religion while he used Christian economic theory (I'm back filling a bit, but you get the drift). I mean what did all of this have to do with Christmas?
Cycle forward a number of decades. In the present incarnation of the McKirachan clan, the barbarians land on Christmas morning. We, mostly they consume vast quantities of waffles, eggs, bacon, muffins, mimosas, sticky buns, homemade jam, and the list goes on. They giggle as they empty their stockings, unwrap their presents, and tell stories about their lives, much to the delight of their mother and the almost arrogant pride of myself (like I had anything to do with their superior intelligence, good looks, and copious accomplishments).
They truly are as intrusive as a pile of camels arriving in the dusty town of Bethlehem, worshiping this child. Disruptive, much? Troubling for the humble parents, much? Awkward, messy, intrusive, exhausting? Of course. But they bring joy and leave a glow in their wake, along with a deep sense of gratitude and humility.
None of this seems very theological, but for me it personifies the incarnational nature of this incredible gift of life and love and salvation from our Lord. The train wreck of Christmas is followed by the explosive, weirdness of the visit of the Magi, as much as two years for them and as few as twelve days on our calendars. But all wrapped up like a set of wrenches or a sweater set or an invasion of children.
In the loneliness of our world, in the dark corners of our existence, in the chancy and painful distances marked by exhaustion and doubt, a star shines. Not just for the protagonists of Epiphany, but for us all.
Arise, shine, for your light has come...
Try to remember this the next time a pile of camels stampede through your life. It puts clean up in perspective.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
Epiphany, the Wise Men, and the Answer
by Lamar Massingill
Matthew 2:1-12
I used to love to read Ann Landers. Aside from her marvelous common sense, I liked the way her correspondents sighed off: "Perplexed in Peoria," "Miserable in Memphis," "Hassled in Hackensack," or "Yearning in the Yukon." While they are funny and humorous, even more importantly, there is something universal about these sign-offs, for in every time and place, people have been hassled, miserable, perplexed, and always, and advice columns are the proof, yearning not only in the Yukon, but in the world, for answers to their deepest dilemmas and problems. They want an oracle of some kind, a sign, a merlin or a messiah to take care of things. On a different level, they want someone to give meaning and purpose to their lives. And there are many oracle and answer-givers in our society. Ann Landers, despite the fact that most of the time I agreed with her answers, was just one of those oracles.
We are right, we humans, for wanting these kinds of answers, this kind of deliverance from oppression -- if only the oppression of a treadmill type of existence. I, mean, if life is not an unceasing quest for more meaning and truth, then forget it, we're just killing time.
I don't know how these wise men got together. Maybe they were on a treadmill type existence and wanted more. Any historian who has seriously studied life during the period of the birth of Jesus would know that people of education regarded stars as signs. In that day stars were believed to signal the coming or birth of something or someone distinct, particular, or divine. So it is no big deal that these kings or wise men (we don't know which) would know exactly that somewhere, something extraordinary was happening, while the uneducated population at large thought nothing of the star.
Also anyone who studied that time in history would know that by this time in history, Israel had been handed over to Herod by Rome. It was a seriously difficult time in Israel's history when the poor felt the boots of the rich in their faces. Everywhere was physical pain and fiscal grief as tax collectors cheated people out of what little money they had. All forms of injustice -- homes without roofs, fathers and sons meeting untimely deaths -- all of these became familiar tribulations. All these are incomprehensible. As a result, everyone was looking for deliverance and messianic expectations grew into a frenzy.
Maybe you are thinking by now that all this sounds familiar? In 2011 you may have heard about a fringe group of offbeat radio religionists who predicted when Jesus will come back. If you didn't see the clip on the news, the date was May 22, 2011. Well, we know the answer to that one! These too are incomprehensible. Isn't it human nature that when things get bad people want a deliverer?
During the rationing of gasoline, which caused the long gas lines in the seventies during the Carter administration, Hal Lindsay predicted Jesus to come back in 1979. And he did so again three times during the cold war of the eighties. There are several who predicted his coming at the turn of the century twelve years ago. All to say that when things get bad or scary, as they are now and to some extent always have been, the doomsayers seem to come out like fleas following a warm dog and start making their ill-informed predictions despite the words of Jesus, "It is not for you to know times and seasons that only the Father knows." Adults, like children, seem to have a neurotic need to know that someone is taking care of them. So I suppose -- to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau -- that for every truly farseeing wise person, there are 999 people who are ignorant and not able to see beyond their own noses.
Herod would not have known this news had not the wise men told his people. "And Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him..." Well of course they were troubled! The last thing a luxury ridden and power hungry people want is a savior. Herod and his people were the essence of immorality -- they possessed what W.H. Auden called a "richly odored ignorance." And doesn't it seem that among people with ignorant pretensions, the most common response to moral evaluation would be violence? Of course it would, so Herod ordered all male children under two years old murdered.
So much for Herod. Another question this lesson begs is "How did the wise men know enough to know that the one born was to be 'King of the Jews?' " Says Isaiah in his prophesy, which no doubt the wise men knew, "He was despised, rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Now, if they knew Isaiah's prophesy, they knew that the true messiah would not meet the messianic expectations of that time in history. He would refuse to become whatever the popular expectations were. To those looking for a military leader he would say, "Put down your swords." To those seeking easy, comfortable answers, he would bring disturbance. To those looking for a way out, he would issue the invitation to jump in.
This brings me back to where all this started. I said earlier that in all times and in all places people have been perplexed, miserable, hassled, and yearning for answers to their problems. The trouble is that too many of us want the popular expectation of a messiah, the one who will come and take us and our problems away, not the one "despised and rejected, acquainted with sorrow and grief." Instead we want the Answer with a capital A, and we want it delivered in such a way as to remove all doubt and responsibility to do our part and grow. And to those who have such expectations, such as the folk who have predicted the date of his coming, I think Jesus would say, "There is no answer and I'm it. I, who refuse to solve your problems, am the solution to your problems." You see, Jesus was an offense to the Jews because instead of taking power, he empowered. And as he empowered us to come to our own answers regarding our lives, he would be a Presence; a capital P during our entire journey toward his truth.
So my invitation this Epiphany Sunday is that we be as wise in hindsight as the wise men were in foresight. The wise men knew the prophecy. They knew this babe to which they gave gifts would not be influenced by the popular expectations, either then or now.
So it seems to me we will do either of three things with this truth: Either react with hostility as Herod did. Or, even more disappointing, react as the chief priests and scribes did and be indifferent to this true Messiah, committed to religion but not to Christ, or we will choose to bring our best gifts to him in order that we too may trust and worship him and begin the journey of a lifetime.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 6, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
"Pile of Camels" by C. David McKirachan
"Epiphany, the Wise Men, and the Answer" by Lamar Massingill
* * * * * * * *
Pile of Camels
by C. David McKirachan
Isaiah 60:1-6
My siblings are considerably older than I am. I remember being hip deep in the throws of Advent, excitement building in our home, with new Christmas debris drifting in every day. Along with the mystery and wonder of Christmas, changing the atmosphere of my father's congregation like dawn changes the sky, long before the sun is apparent. And into this heady mix came three strange and disruptive beings, with groupies, landing like a fighter jets on the heaving deck of an air craft carrier, bouncing, engines screaming, oozing supreme confidence, stories of the alien planets of college littering every room they entered, demanding attention, taking priority. I felt like a monk whose monastery had been invaded by a rugby team.
The really strange part of it was the joy with which my parents greeted these large barbarians. My mother fairly beamed as she did countless loads of laundry, brought from dorm hampers, cooked more food that had been consumed since Thanksgiving, three times a day, and hung on every word of her older children. My father launched into enthusiastic discussions of Heidegger's Epistemology and the paradox of Marx's condemnation of religion while he used Christian economic theory (I'm back filling a bit, but you get the drift). I mean what did all of this have to do with Christmas?
Cycle forward a number of decades. In the present incarnation of the McKirachan clan, the barbarians land on Christmas morning. We, mostly they consume vast quantities of waffles, eggs, bacon, muffins, mimosas, sticky buns, homemade jam, and the list goes on. They giggle as they empty their stockings, unwrap their presents, and tell stories about their lives, much to the delight of their mother and the almost arrogant pride of myself (like I had anything to do with their superior intelligence, good looks, and copious accomplishments).
They truly are as intrusive as a pile of camels arriving in the dusty town of Bethlehem, worshiping this child. Disruptive, much? Troubling for the humble parents, much? Awkward, messy, intrusive, exhausting? Of course. But they bring joy and leave a glow in their wake, along with a deep sense of gratitude and humility.
None of this seems very theological, but for me it personifies the incarnational nature of this incredible gift of life and love and salvation from our Lord. The train wreck of Christmas is followed by the explosive, weirdness of the visit of the Magi, as much as two years for them and as few as twelve days on our calendars. But all wrapped up like a set of wrenches or a sweater set or an invasion of children.
In the loneliness of our world, in the dark corners of our existence, in the chancy and painful distances marked by exhaustion and doubt, a star shines. Not just for the protagonists of Epiphany, but for us all.
Arise, shine, for your light has come...
Try to remember this the next time a pile of camels stampede through your life. It puts clean up in perspective.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
Epiphany, the Wise Men, and the Answer
by Lamar Massingill
Matthew 2:1-12
I used to love to read Ann Landers. Aside from her marvelous common sense, I liked the way her correspondents sighed off: "Perplexed in Peoria," "Miserable in Memphis," "Hassled in Hackensack," or "Yearning in the Yukon." While they are funny and humorous, even more importantly, there is something universal about these sign-offs, for in every time and place, people have been hassled, miserable, perplexed, and always, and advice columns are the proof, yearning not only in the Yukon, but in the world, for answers to their deepest dilemmas and problems. They want an oracle of some kind, a sign, a merlin or a messiah to take care of things. On a different level, they want someone to give meaning and purpose to their lives. And there are many oracle and answer-givers in our society. Ann Landers, despite the fact that most of the time I agreed with her answers, was just one of those oracles.
We are right, we humans, for wanting these kinds of answers, this kind of deliverance from oppression -- if only the oppression of a treadmill type of existence. I, mean, if life is not an unceasing quest for more meaning and truth, then forget it, we're just killing time.
I don't know how these wise men got together. Maybe they were on a treadmill type existence and wanted more. Any historian who has seriously studied life during the period of the birth of Jesus would know that people of education regarded stars as signs. In that day stars were believed to signal the coming or birth of something or someone distinct, particular, or divine. So it is no big deal that these kings or wise men (we don't know which) would know exactly that somewhere, something extraordinary was happening, while the uneducated population at large thought nothing of the star.
Also anyone who studied that time in history would know that by this time in history, Israel had been handed over to Herod by Rome. It was a seriously difficult time in Israel's history when the poor felt the boots of the rich in their faces. Everywhere was physical pain and fiscal grief as tax collectors cheated people out of what little money they had. All forms of injustice -- homes without roofs, fathers and sons meeting untimely deaths -- all of these became familiar tribulations. All these are incomprehensible. As a result, everyone was looking for deliverance and messianic expectations grew into a frenzy.
Maybe you are thinking by now that all this sounds familiar? In 2011 you may have heard about a fringe group of offbeat radio religionists who predicted when Jesus will come back. If you didn't see the clip on the news, the date was May 22, 2011. Well, we know the answer to that one! These too are incomprehensible. Isn't it human nature that when things get bad people want a deliverer?
During the rationing of gasoline, which caused the long gas lines in the seventies during the Carter administration, Hal Lindsay predicted Jesus to come back in 1979. And he did so again three times during the cold war of the eighties. There are several who predicted his coming at the turn of the century twelve years ago. All to say that when things get bad or scary, as they are now and to some extent always have been, the doomsayers seem to come out like fleas following a warm dog and start making their ill-informed predictions despite the words of Jesus, "It is not for you to know times and seasons that only the Father knows." Adults, like children, seem to have a neurotic need to know that someone is taking care of them. So I suppose -- to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau -- that for every truly farseeing wise person, there are 999 people who are ignorant and not able to see beyond their own noses.
Herod would not have known this news had not the wise men told his people. "And Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him..." Well of course they were troubled! The last thing a luxury ridden and power hungry people want is a savior. Herod and his people were the essence of immorality -- they possessed what W.H. Auden called a "richly odored ignorance." And doesn't it seem that among people with ignorant pretensions, the most common response to moral evaluation would be violence? Of course it would, so Herod ordered all male children under two years old murdered.
So much for Herod. Another question this lesson begs is "How did the wise men know enough to know that the one born was to be 'King of the Jews?' " Says Isaiah in his prophesy, which no doubt the wise men knew, "He was despised, rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Now, if they knew Isaiah's prophesy, they knew that the true messiah would not meet the messianic expectations of that time in history. He would refuse to become whatever the popular expectations were. To those looking for a military leader he would say, "Put down your swords." To those seeking easy, comfortable answers, he would bring disturbance. To those looking for a way out, he would issue the invitation to jump in.
This brings me back to where all this started. I said earlier that in all times and in all places people have been perplexed, miserable, hassled, and yearning for answers to their problems. The trouble is that too many of us want the popular expectation of a messiah, the one who will come and take us and our problems away, not the one "despised and rejected, acquainted with sorrow and grief." Instead we want the Answer with a capital A, and we want it delivered in such a way as to remove all doubt and responsibility to do our part and grow. And to those who have such expectations, such as the folk who have predicted the date of his coming, I think Jesus would say, "There is no answer and I'm it. I, who refuse to solve your problems, am the solution to your problems." You see, Jesus was an offense to the Jews because instead of taking power, he empowered. And as he empowered us to come to our own answers regarding our lives, he would be a Presence; a capital P during our entire journey toward his truth.
So my invitation this Epiphany Sunday is that we be as wise in hindsight as the wise men were in foresight. The wise men knew the prophecy. They knew this babe to which they gave gifts would not be influenced by the popular expectations, either then or now.
So it seems to me we will do either of three things with this truth: Either react with hostility as Herod did. Or, even more disappointing, react as the chief priests and scribes did and be indifferent to this true Messiah, committed to religion but not to Christ, or we will choose to bring our best gifts to him in order that we too may trust and worship him and begin the journey of a lifetime.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 6, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
