Angels in Disguise

Have you ever wondered why angels are placed on top of Christmas trees? Apparently, Santa was having a bad Christmas one year. He asked Mrs. Claus to wake him at 5 a.m. and have his breakfast ready with a packed lunch. He then went to his workshop and told the elves to have all the gifts packed in the sleigh and the reindeer harnessed at 5:30 a.m.

At 5:30 the following morning he awoke and jumped out of bed, furious with Mrs. Claus for not waking him on time. His mood got worse when he realized she had no breakfast ready. Then he ran out to his sleigh only to find the elves all dishelveled, no gifts packed and the reindeer running loose in the field.

About this time a little angel walked by, dragging a large Christmas tree and said, “Santa what should I do with this Christmas tree?” Santa looked daggers at her and said “I’ll tell you what you can do with that Christmas tree……”

Now angels are placed on the top of the Christmas tree each year as a reminder that even the angelic Santa loses his cool from time to time.
Aside from this tall tale, there are many different ideas about angels. Some people think of them as literal beings. Some think of them as metaphors for surprising messengers. Angels are still widely regarded. A recent study conducted by Baylor University showed that half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels. One-fifth of Americans say they’ve heard angels speak to them in a very specific way.

Maybe you feel skeptical like George Carlin, who said this about people who believe in angels-

“Has everybody lost their mind? You know what I think it is? I think it’s a massive, collective, psychotic chemical flashback for all the drugs smoked, swallowed, shot, and absorbed by Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of street drugs will get you some angels, my friend!”

Carlin is part of a long line of skeptics who have questioned the existence of angels. Johannes Kepler, the 16th century astronomer, was the first to document the Copernican revolution. When he began to question how the planets move, he challenged the common understanding of his day that angels pulled the planets by the corners of a giant canopy that sheltered the flat earth. By exploring the natural phenomenon of the movement of planets, Kepler finally concluded that angels were not needed as part of the explanation.

The original Christmas stories were crafted in a pre-Copernican context. Angels and spirits were used to explain extraordinary circumstances. Angels fluttered at the intersection between heaven and earth, bringing divine messages to people on earth and singing songs of peace. It’s a story that’s difficult to read literally with our modern understanding of the world.

And yet many of us long for a sense of something larger than ourselves and we seek explanations for experiences that we can’t fully explain. We long to believe in ideals such as peace and justice, even though we have no evidence that they are ever attainable. We want to believe in miracles without compromising our rational minds. Maybe the idea of angels can be reinterpreted in a way that satisfies our curiosity with the unknown without offending our contemporary common sense.

You could think of angels as nature’s voice, surrounding you on every side with the sounds of mysterious order and beauty. You could think of angels as inner voices guiding you to new truth or voices encouraging you to hold your ideals despite the evidence. Angels could be meaningful coincidences and moments of synchronicity. They could be other people who show up at just the right time with just the right words or actions of care. They could be these things and so much more.

A nine year old girl described angels like this- “My angel is my grandma who died last year. She got a big head start on helping me while she was still down here on earth.”

This Christmas, consider what angels mean to you and consider the possibility that you are an angel for others. You are the presence of what is divine and sacred and beautiful in the world. Your every thought, word and action is an opportunity to inspire another person with your presence and encouragement.

We are each other’s angels
And we meet when it is time
We give each other messages
And show each other signs. David Lamotte.

Whether you believe in the literal events of the first Christmas or whether you believe that the world is full of love and beauty, either way you get a Christmas miracle. You get your Christmas miracle if you choose to see the world that way. Something angelic is waiting to be born in your life and in the world this Christmas. It may require some labor pains as the waters of new consciousness break, but do not shrink back. It is urging you forward. Do you hear the divine messages? Love filling the earth. Justice rising. Hope and history rhyming. Memory and imagination harmonizing. Do you hear it? Faint whispers speak to you, the voice of God heard through nature and through the fragile and angelic tones of human life.

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Christmas Elevator Message

Im just about to go into our Christmas Eve gathering. Its come together really well and im quite excited about it. Because im leaving on Christmas Day for two weeks vacation in Sydney, I wanted to post this tonight.

I offer my love and gratitude to all. Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and I look forward to more fun and heresy when I return mid January......

Christmas Elevator Message

I set myself the challenge of giving a Christmas “elevator talk” this evening. That is, I want to say something meaningful in the time it would take to ride an elevator, let’s say up and down the CN Tower in Toronto. It’s a glass elevator with amazing, panoramic views, so my hope is that this elevator talk might offer you a broader and clearer view of the Christmas story and its relevance in today’s world.

Our gathering tonight features the Sanctuary Choir singing Vivaldi’s Gloria. Huge appreciation to them for all the hard work that went into that. It was a new experience for many of us, including the staff. What’s the difference between the C3 staff and yoghurt? Yoghurt has culture. Except of course Jackie Fisher. Jackie came to the staff a few months back and said she wanted to consider the Gloria for Christmas Eve. Most of us looked at her dumbfounded. The only Gloria we knew was Van Morrison’s rock classic. G L O R I A, bout five feet four from her head to the ground, Gloria……

She said it wasn’t Van Morrison. It was a Cantata. From that moment forward it became affectionately known as the Vivaldi Frittata.

Lack of sophistication aside, Jackie had me intrigued. What relevance does Vivaldi Gloria have for Christmas? I did some research. I loved what I found, and I’m excited to share it with you. Take a long look out the glass elevator of your imagination and be prepared to be inspired.

Vivaldi struggled with health and poverty throughout his life. He had a dubious love life, frowned on by the church of his day. He died a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave. And yet he was a wonderful human being with a progressive heart and a prodigious musical talent. Vivaldi spent most of his life working in an orphanage in Venice. (Ospedale della Pieta) Abandoned children were passed through a hole in the orphanage wall. The boys were taught trades. The girls got married, became nuns or were taught music. Vivaldi trained the most talented of the girls. His all women’s choirs are believed to have been some of the best in the world. They performed behind metal grilles high above the audience, so that noble men would not be distracted. Instead the angelic voices would take them to heavenly places.

You get the picture. Vivaldi is now one of the most famous composers of all time, known to have inspired Bach. But he spent his life receiving orphans through a hole in a wall and passing on his musical gift.

Doesn’t that sound a little like the Christmas story? The story of Jesus, that has inspired millions of people over thousands of years, began in a backwater inn. A frightened family trapped in poverty, condemned for immorality, fled for their lives.

Doesn’t it sound a little like the story of the world today? People trapped in cycles of recession and anxiety, searching for meaning.

Does it sound at all like your life? Trapped in cycles of self loathing and fear.

Take heart- Vivaldi’s story is every person’s story. The Christmas story is your story. Look out the glass elevator of your imagination.

The message is clear. In the spirit of Vivaldi’s Gloria, let me offer it to you in Latin. Things sounds so much grander in Latin. I saw a great bumper sticker. In Latin it said, “Sona si Latine loqueris” which translates as ‘Honk if you speak Latin”. My Christmas message in Latin. “omnia vincit amor”…..Love Conquers All!

The anxiety of your life. Love conquers all.
The despair and uncertainty. Love conquers all.
Children abandoned and futures unsure. Love conquers all.
The Christmas story of hope against all odds. Love conquers all.
Your story of courage in the face of crisis. Love conquers all.

So now we are almost done with our elevator tour of Toronto. Your vision is broader and clearer. The Christmas story comes into clearer focus. You have your Christmas miracle. The wonder of Christmas is your best humanity offered as a gift to the world. “omnia vincit amor”…..Love Conquers All!

Christmas; the Birth of Genius

My greatest hope at Christmas time is to offer relevance and wonder. When you no longer read the Christmas story as literal history, it opens up amazing opportunity for both. The story becomes every person's story, and mirrors the wonder of human courage (and genius).

There are lots of ways to approach the Christmas story to achieve relevance and wonder. Here are a sample.

You can read it as a story of survival against all odds....

http://www.christ-community.net/ezines/ezine12_14_06.htm

You can read it as a pagan celebration of earth's cycles...

http://www.christ-community.net/sermons/sermon11_30_08.htm

You can read it as the birth of the Christ in every person (the third Jesus)

http://www.christ-community.net/sermons/sermon12_07_08.htm

Or you can read it as the celebration of every birth, and every birthday. This was a new idea for me, and grew out of the Roman idea that each person is born with a designated guardian spirit, known in Latin as Genius, or for a women Juno. It seemed to relate well to the story of Elizabeth and Mary meeting.

"The Christmas story is every person’s story. It is your story. It is the story of life meeting life, and genius being born. Your life is radiant in its genius. You are both mother and child, both the bearer of genius, and the genius itself. You stand at the edge of the great mystery, so near your genius, mirroring life back to itself. Your genius is a naked, winged child, ready to soar. Will you let it soar?"

Read, listen to, or watch the whole sermon here. Let me know what relevance and wonder the Christmas story has for you?

http://www.christ-community.net/sermons/sermon12_21_08.htm

Christmas Angels

We had an amazing gathering at C3 yesterday. There was a Sudanese choir from Grand Rapids. Absolutely breathtaking. There should be video of this at the C3 website later in the week. Such freedom and passion. It was great. And we had three dancers in the service from Laura Armenta Studio in Grand Rapids. They were superb, and evoked very powerful reactions from the congregation. One of the highlights of the service was when Laura was teaching the kids to bellydance. She did a great job and the kids were really getting it.

All in all, it was a service that evoked an incredible sense of wonder, and the power of wonder to inspire greater humanity.

The sermon in this context was barely necessary. Christmas had already come alive as a present reality. We recieved many Christmas miracles. There were many Christmas angels present.

I explored angels in the sermon. A lot of time could be spent on the question, "Do angels exist?" It seems more fruitful to ponder why a belief in angels is so enticing. Maybe as humans we have an appetite for wonder, and angels are an attempt to put flesh and bones on this wonder. My intention in the sermon was neither to feed a superstitious belief in literal angels, nor to feed skepticism. My hope in the sermon was to feed the appetite for wonder.

Im interested in other perspectives on angels. Feel free to leave comments.

One note; because of the nature of the gathering, the text of the sermon is a lot fuller than the audio and video. My suggestion would be to read the text this week.

"Angels evoke a sense of wonder and imagination, the sort of wonder and imagination that inspires us to “be” angels for others......

Do you believe that God blesses the world? Or do you believe that the world is full of blessings?
Either way, we can all agree. You are the way God blesses the world. You are the way that the world blesses itself. You are a blessing machine. You are an angel when your blessings surprise you and others into a wider perspective, that you are here to live and love, give and remind, poke and provoke, here to make the world a more wondrous and gentle place. You are an angel, a messenger of wonder."

to read the whole sermon

http://www.christ-community.net/sermons/sermon12_14_08.htm

The First Jesus

Ive been thinking a lot about story and history this week.

Many years ago i was leading a Bible study in an evangelical church on the resurrection stories. The words just slipped out of my mouth. "If someone found a bag of bones somewhere in the Middle East and they were shown to be the remains of Jesus, i wouldnt even miss breakfast." There was a stony silence in the room. Eyes popped, jaws dropped, and one person said, 'Thats heresy."

It was hard to explain back then, but i have never felt the need for a literal resurrection in order to believe in the empowering metaphor of resurrection. Resurrection is an inner resolve to persevere against all odds. Resurrection is a fresh start, grace and grit, new possibilities. The story of Jesus resurrection has always inspired this sort of inner resolve, and it never needed to actually happen to do that for me.

Lots of stories have that affect. The Wizard of Oz was a very infuential story for me as a child. I thought Dorothy was about as brave as a person could be. I imagined that i was living my own "oz" story, and found courage in the way Dorothy survived.

Does the same imagination apply to elements of the Christmas story? Is there value in the myth even if the details were completely fabricated?
Does the same apply to the whole life and ministry of Jesus? Is there value and inspiration in the story even if none of it actually happened?

The Jesus Seminar is a group committed to accurately portraying the first Jesus, the Jesus of history. They color coded the words of Jesus into those that were more or less likely to have actually been said by Jesus. They generally agree that Jesus was a social revolutionary who taught in parables and metaphors. He was an itinerant Jewish sage who did not die to save sinners nor did he rise from the dead. They found that Jesus was a radical who broke with Jewish theology, ritual and social convention. He preached that the kingdom is unseen but already present, a realm where outsiders were accepted and insiders were challenged to greater justice.

This has been an important work, opening up ways for modern people to nurture their love of the story and teachings of Jesus while being true to history. Of course the Jesus Seminar has not been without its critics. One line of criticism has been that most of the Jesus Seminar scholars have started from a perspective of theology; ie they read their own theological preferences back into the Jesus story.

A new group has now formed, called The Jesus Project. The group has a similar committment to uncovering the Jesus of history, but they are dedicated to not having any theological agenda. They operate with a purely scientific method and scholarly objectivity. The group is made up of historians, biblical scholars and theologians and is sponsored by CFI (Centre for Inquiry). They met this past weekend and discussed a range of options including evidence that locates the tomb of Jesus, and the view that Jesus did not exist.

You can listen to a short audio interview with Robert Price, the co-chair of the group, and hear him speak about his view that Jesus did not exist. https://mail.christ-community.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://tinyurl.com/5dgj2w

This project presents an important challenge to people who love, or are even interested in, the Jesus story. Would the story and the tradition still inspire you if none of it has any historical reliability? Its a question worth thinking about.

Third Jesus

Deepak Chopra had a brilliant idea when he wrote "The Third Jesus". He offered a simple way to think about Jesus. The first Jesus is a historical conundrum, variously thought of as religious teacher and social revolutionary. Ideas about the first Jesus are always changing, as textual scholarship and archeology bring to light new understandings.


The second Jesus is the Jesus of theology. Again, the second Jesus is a moving target. Theology about Jesus is usually coopted from the way different groups understand the first Jesus; eg liberation theology understands the first Jesus as a social revolutionary so they develop a theology to match. Those who believe in a sin/ atonement theology read back into the first Jesus a supernatural role as divine scapegoat.


The first and second Jesus are both important, inspiring and intriguing. But this is usually the place for division and religious rivalry. The third Jesus points to something universal that transcends and includes all specific "perspectives" on Jesus.


In my sermon yesterday, I spoke about these distinctions, focusing on the Christmas story, the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian and Mother Theresa. Here is an extract-


"Whatever you believe about the first and second Jesus, don’t let it distract you from your essential humanity and life purpose. Something magical is taking place in your life. Your inner star is guiding you to a new consciousness. It might look rough like an old farm shed, and it might not be very grand, but it is a miracle none the less. Wise ones will gather around. They might not bow down and worship you as the Messiah, but they will nurture the birth of this new consciousness that you are part of them and they are part of you. You will dream dreams and imagine peaceful worlds and your intentions and actions will be part of this peace. Your purpose is to birth your own Christ consciousness, and have your own direct and present experience of God."


to read more, watch or listen to the sermon go to
http://www.christ-community.net/sermons/sermon12_07_08.htm