WELCOME
Free To Think…Bound to Serve
Christianity is more Doing than Doctrine:
Half of every relationship with God is the individual. God, who is timeless and constant, is known “as in a mirror dimly” while we live. We, who change and die, find our knowledge of God change throughout our lives. And we not only differ from our younger selves or who we shall become. We differ from each other. Temperament, experience, inclination give our approach to life different emphases. We each have our own perspective.
Some Christian traditions address this fact by establishing doctrine as definitive. Individuals subscribe to set teachings, by an act of will, and forgive themselves privately for being puzzled or unpersuaded by some of the formulations. Personal conviction is in the authority of the church which has decreed dogma.
Our tradition takes a different approach. We urge that for religion to be real, it must be based on a person’s honest beliefs. This means that each individual trusts himself or herself as a reader of scripture and a thinker about what is revealed there about God. We know we shall each understand God a bit differently from each other, and that the inevitable limitation of our understanding will carry through all the concepts which are part of our religious life. We trust God’s grace and the Spirit’s work to keep us in community, and to keep us ministering to the world.
We are required, as followers of Jesus Christ, to love others. Feeding, healing, forgiving, clothing, and paying attention to those with needs is the way Jesus embodied God’s approach to life. We must do the same. The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel states that it is caring for other people, and not profession of religious views, which counts with God.
The church long has aimed to make its Christianity a matter of active service, and long has accepted open, earnest inquiry as part of its character. For twenty years we’ve summed up this approach to discipleship with the credo “Free to Think, Bound to Serve.”
THIS MONTH’S ESSAY FROM THE PASTOR
We squeezed together at the makeshift fence, hoping to find some heat in contact. It was very cold. The live Nativity had been set rather late. No doubt collecting the cast, including the burro, needed to take place after supper and from some distance.
The stage was the yard between church and parsonage, with outside lights and an outside speaker on the church building. The pastor would read the familiar scripture and pause, and then the living picture would compose itself, kids in burlap or bedsheets being prompted to move from behind the shrubbery to the manger.
The offstage reader would somehow be contacted, and the next bit of narration would cut into the frigid air. The reading was clear, rounded and deliberate. Some slight span would mark the prompter’s persuasion that the cue was completed, and then the next players would emerge.
There were pauses. We shifted like tethered beasts, stomping to sense bloodflow, and waited either to hear more story or see someone walk across the frosted lawn. Dressing to be outdoors in late December and dressing to stand still outdoors began to seem like crucially different things.
The donkey had come with Mary and Joseph, a doll Jesus had appeared from behind a prop, the shepherds had arrived. The Magi mercifully made their way across the lawn, and players and onlookers alike prepared to get indoors. Some summing-up scriptures were intoned.
The conclusion never came off as planned. The public address went bad, squelching and sputtering. We were newly alert, wondering how the suddenly changed story would resolve. Hums and honks and awful buzzing and scratching sounds blared from the speaker, until a sudden clear signal conveyed the offstage pastor’s exasperated “Damn!”
It was like those films which accompany the ending credits with bloopers. Sometimes those are the best part of the movie. If the film hasn’t successfully engaged the audience as a fiction, the fact of fellow mortals muffing their lines or being betrayed by uncooperative props brings a smile. Whatever satisfactions might have been attained by our willing suspension of disbelief are followed by the fellow-feeling of seeing the humor in failure. Mishap needs to be met, and it’s usually between laughter and tears.
God with us is the point of the pageant. Parents come anxious about their child’s turn on stage, hoping for the best. Some of the congregation are hoping for dignity, and others for some froward angel or hammy shepherd to break the spell and bring a laugh. For those gathered it is always “our pageant,” the familiar setting and the recognizable actors briefly inhabiting the old roles. We are glad that this little girl has attained the part of Mary, and look forward to seeing what that little personality is going to do at the manger.
Whatever mix of wonder, awe, cluelessness and comedy comes, the Christmas story rings true. Mere mortals do their best to follow the dictates of deity. The shepherds are scared, they’re curious, they seek confirmation. Mary and Joseph are inconvenienced, they’re overwhelmed by necessity. The Magi think they know where they are going and they are wrong; they think they are bringing a blessing and they’re causing trouble.
Jesus is born into a world in which things fail, plans are frustrated, and pride is embarrassed. There are tears of pain and laughter at absurdity. It is our world, and it is worth our inconveniencing ourselves to attend, again, to Christmas. Its exhilaration and its sighing alike speak to our lives, and God’s part in it reminds us that underlying the tragedies and the farces of mortal living always is purpose, and providence, and
Peace. Mac