First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Romans 13:11-14 and Galatians 3:23-29
As you can tell by reading the last two covers of Steeple Notes, I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the time I spent in our sanctuary (earlier in December) with 120 second graders from West Maple Elementary School. It was amazing how well it went. Sixty Minutes is one thing when Leslie Stahl and Mike Wallace do it for adults on a Sunday. Sixty minutes is very much another thing when Doris Hall and I do it for 120 seven year olds on a Wednesday. But you would be amazed to read the thank you letters I received….not only as to how well second graders can write, but as to how well second graders can think.
They loved the visit (“Best field trip ever,” many said). And to think, Doris and I didn’t even have a fire truck to show off. They especially liked the windows (which they could see)….the organ (which they could hear)….and the mock baptism (which they could imagine).
Several kids were concerned about our Angel Tree program, where we purchase and deliver presents for over 300 children of prisoners. One letter writer named Eliot was especially “sad” for what he called “the kids in the Angel Tree,” because they had no parents. While Sydnee Cohen (I think it’s a girl Sydnee, not a boy Sidney) thanked me for telling about the birth of Jesus, before adding: “I always wondered why Santa was a part of it because he had nothing to do with it.” But my favorite letter came from a lad who wrote:
Dr. Ritter, thank you.
What does it feel like to be a minister?
I know I feel better every time I think about you.
My mind feels better.
Thanks very much.
Just to remind you, I’m Jewish.
Love, Jared
In point of fact, all three letters I quoted were written by kids who are Jewish. That’s because Jewish kids constitute a statistical majority of the second graders at West Maple Elementary. Which, however, did not stop several of them from wanting to participate in our annual reenactment of the nativity at 5:30 on Christmas Eve. They wanted to know how you got parts…. if kids who didn’t come to this church could have parts….who, on our staff, assigned the parts…. what you were allowed to wear if you got a part….and were there enough costumes for all the kids who wanted parts.
Finally, one little girl laid it right on the table when she said: “What if you’re Jewish? Can you still have a part?” I tried to answer her as delicately as I could….wanting to be welcoming….but not wanting to start a bigger conversation than I was prepared to finish. Certainly, being Jewish was no hindrance to Mary and Joseph. Nor was it an issue for anyone else who wandered by the barn, save for the kings (wise men, astrologers, whatever), given that neither Persia (then) nor Iraq (now) was awash in synagogues.
But none of this concerned these kids. Religious distinctions were not divisive issues for the second graders of West Maple, in spite of Jared’s need to remind me that, though he loved me and his mind felt better when he thought about me, he was not me, nor was he like me. Thus explaining his sign-off: “Just to remind you, I’m Jewish.”
What many of these kids thought was that it would be “fun” to be in a play….“fun” to get dressed up in costumes as a part of the play….and “fun” to be with other kids in this particular play, given that it is not every day you can find a children’s theater production with room for everything from angels to animals. “What fun,” someone said. And, if the truth be told, “what fun” it often is.
I remember, several years back, when debates over public nativities raged across the land. Could a town erect a “stable scene” on the front lawn of city hall? Could Christian images be displayed on village greens or in urban parks? What kinds of music could be played over what kinds of loud speakers in December? For a while, it seemed as if everybody was either in court or on their way to court. To be sure, we still see a bit of that. But precious little, compared to 15 years ago.
At that time, I remember reading an essay by the late Meg Greenfield on the back page of Newsweek magazine. Every other week, Meg shared that “bully pulpit” with George Will, numbering the two of them among America’s most influential voices. Meg Greenfield was Jewish. And in response to all of the public nativity court cases, she wrote some incredibly interesting things. She noted that to whatever degree Jews opposed nativity scenes on public land, or sought to moderate Christmas images in the marketplace, such opposition had less to do with sectarian grumpiness than with sectarian envy. She was even so bold to say that many in the Jewish community….especially many children in the Jewish community….wished they had what we have. “The public enchantment of your story does not so much offend us as attract us,” Meg said. Few Jews would want to see it gone. The primary goal is to see it contained, so that the most impressionable members of the Jewish community (namely, the children) do not get the idea that the Christian story is the only story there is….the only story that matters….or the only story the town (or state) endorses.
If you don’t believe Meg has a point, ask yourself: “When was the last time your child or grandchild ever clamored to play Ahasuerus, Mordecai or Queen Esther in a local Purim pageant, or one of the Hasmonean brothers in a Hanukkah festival?” The fact that many of you don’t have the faintest idea what those names represent probably proves Meg’s point. At least she made sense to me. And it is my guess that the kind of moderate thinking she represented led to fewer court cases and greater civic sensitivity on the part of everybody. But implicit in her remarks was the reminder to us….in the Christian community…. that our story is alluring, and (when visually enacted or depicted) does capture the imagination, even as it touches the heart.
And so we put ourselves into it. In some cases, we even throw ourselves into it. Designing sets. Sewing costumes. Learning lines. Playing roles. Every year we do a mini-pageant at 5:30 on Christmas Eve with (and largely for) children. Every three years we also do a musical pageant in early December with (and largely for) adults. The king I never got to be as a child in Detroit, I have portrayed three times as an adult here in Birmingham….even to the point of being allowed to sing. What’s more, church after church now does a greater or lesser version of a production known as “Journey to Bethlehem.” Still other congregations place beautiful manger scenes on their front lawns. And a few, like the Baptists downtown, go all out and stage live nativities under the shadow of Jacobson’s, where the sheep are the only ones who get to wear their winter coats as costumes. One advantage possessed by the original Mary was that she was in less danger than her Birmingham Baptist counterpart of freezing to death.
C. S. Lewis (who took many of us closer to the heart of thoughtful Christianity than anyone in the last century) reminds us that there is more here than meets the eye. Something extremely important is going on in the midst of all this set-building, costume-sewing, line-learning and history-reenacting that consumes us each December. In short, we play the part in order that we might become the part. In a marvelous essay entitled “Let’s Pretend,” Lewis talks about “the good side of pretending.” To be sure, he says, there is a bad kind of pretense, where the goal is to deceive, defraud or misrepresent the self as something one is not. If, on the street corner, I pretend to help you, thereby gaining your confidence so that I will be able to rob you, that is the worst kind of pretending. Picture yourself standing at an ATM machine, having difficulty with the peculiar configuration of slots and buttons. Suddenly someone comes up behind you, senses your confusion, guides you carefully through the proper procedures, and then runs off with your money, once it slides from the slot. Clearly, an evil pretender.
And then there’s that poor chap who got to coach the Notre Dame football team for a grand total of five days, until someone higher up in the university discovered great pretension in his resume, suggesting achievements he’d rarely had at places he’d barely been. Oops….another great pretender found and foiled. And every pastor can tell stories of some lay person who amassed great power in the church by pretending to be a great giver to the church, but whose check (at the end of the day) never matched his “cheek” (as they say). And, at the most relational level, how many marriages suffer from one spouse or the other pretending everything is all right, when it isn’t and hasn’t been for a long time? To be sure, a lot of pretending is bad.
But not all. Some pretending, rather than misrepresenting the real thing, moves you toward the real thing. C. S. Lewis suggests that careful attention be paid to the games children play…. pretending to do this and that….pretending to be this and that. Important stuff is going on in those games. Life is being tried on for size in those games. I asked Mary Feldmaier if this is true (given that Mary spends almost all of her staff time with children five years of age and younger). “Of course it’s true,” Mary said. “Play is children’s work. Pretending is never merely make believe.”
I have a friend in the ministry who, at five years old, used to line up all of his stuffed animals in rows and preach to them. All the while I was dressing up as a cowboy. Which explains nothing, unless you want to start playing with the word “round up.” Although it does help me understand why one of my favorite movies of all time is Billy Crystal’s City Slickers.
Shifting gears, I have long noted that brides seldom cry in the act of repeating their vows, while grooms often do. Which is, I think, explainable by the fact that brides have pretended to be brides….dreamed about being brides….dressed up as brides….and watched 428 episodes of Wedding Story….since they were five years old. Grooms don’t have the faintest idea what Wedding Story is. Nor have they pretended to be grooms or even thought much about being grooms until 20 minutes before the ceremony. So when the groom opens his mouth to say, “I, Fred, take thee Ethel,” the enormity of it hits him right between the eyes….or, more to the point, right behind the eyes, where the tear ducts are located. Pretending, done right, is part of the preparing.
Christmas is the prime moment when both full-blown and closet Christians are invited to enact the story they tell….the better that they might grow into the story they tell. Because the ultimate pretense (as the apostle Paul reminds us) is not putting on the costumes of those who surrounded Christ, but “putting on Christ.” What John calls “being born again,” Paul calls “putting on Christ.” Several times, Paul alludes to that image. In Bible-speak, this is the ultimate in dress-up language. For, as a careful analysis of the Pauline epistles will demonstrate, every time Paul talks about putting on Christ, he also suggests that we are being “re-clothed.”
Which does not mean that, upon leaving this morning, we are going to issue every one of you a costume at the door. You’re smarter than that. That’s why I like preaching to you. As a congregation, you’ve long since removed the braces from your brains. You know that “putting on Christ” has less to do with bathrobes than with behaviors….“behaviors” meaning acting different as an entrée to being different. If, indeed, you find that you are a little better in December…. kinder in December….more open-handed, open-minded and open-hearted in December….and more hospitable, charitable and reconciling in December….it is not so much a seasonal aberration or temporary pretension, as a possible indicator of who you are on your way to becoming….if you would only just go with it longer and further than you have ever gone with it before.
What might “putting on Christ” look like for you? Darned if I know. I don’t really know you that well. The Bible offers a few clues. Maybe it looks like turning the second cheek, offering the second garment, walking the second mile, or forgiving someone the 491st time (70 times 7 plus 1). Maybe it looks like turning on a porch light for the wayward kid, digging up the back forty for a missing pearl, reinvesting and doubling whatever gift God gave you that you buried in a box decades ago, or even cracking the seal on a bottle of much-too-expensive perfume, the better to adorn the face or feet of one you love. Those are just a few biblical things you might do if you want to “put on Christ.”
But I do need to warn you (given that everything comes with a warning label these days). If you do that stuff….any of that stuff….for very often.…or for very long….people are going to wonder about you. And some may even come right out and ask you: “What’s gotten into you?” Which isn’t correctly phrased, don’t you know….given that the question should read not “what,” but “who.”
