SOUL SURMISE

SENT - Day After Christmas Poem

The turkey is eaten... the wrapping paper binned... the baby is born... but if you think it is all over... this is but the beginning...

 

An angel was sent

To break to Mary the shocking news

To find out if she was up for the privilege

Mary was sent into a tail spin

That would need some cool prayerful courage

So she sent herself off to Elizabeth 

A companion who understood and affirmed.

An angel was sent, again

To calm Joseph’s shock and anger

And turn his disappointment and confusion into complicity.

A choir of angels were sent

To sing the news of peace and good will

To shepherds who were sent

Scurrying with joyous abandon

Right into the holy of holies in straw and filth.

Oriental stargazers were sent in awe and wonder

On the trail of a sign of seismic shift 

So, Herod sent for his religious scholars

To make theological sense of the conjecture

The King then sent his death squads

To kill the idea and the revolution being born.

An angel was sent, yet again

To Joseph in a dream to warn of a nightmare

Which sent Joseph, Mary and the baby of to Egypt as refugees

Because God so loved the world he sent

Himself to be present with us

To light our way in darkness

To overturn the tables of our greed

To give himself for our redemption

To bring God’s will to where he was sent

As it is where he was sent from.

 

As the Father sent the baby

We are sent. 

 

“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20: 21)

DO NOT BE AFRAID - A CHRIST-FILLED CHRISTMAS

Your life will now not be as you planned it

Do not be afraid

Every possibility will be forever expanded

Do not be afraid

Hallelujahs will twinkle what you could not see

Do not be afraid

Your identity will be hidden in a refugee

Do not be afraid

A new culture will shock your familiar fall

Do not be afraid

A baby has been born to redeem it all

Do not be afraid.

 

The most used refrain in the nativity stories... and the Bible as a whole... "Do not be afraid". Whether the exhilaration of an unknown adventurous exploring or the darkness that makes a step frightening in case your fragile heart is broken... God whispers, "Do not be afraid".

I prefer not to say "Happy Christmas" because we might not all be happy. I refer to say "Christ-filled Christmas" because celebrating or grieving God is with us and is saying, "Do not be afraid".

A Christ-filled Christmas from all the Stockies!

PEACE ON EARTH - ANGELS SING GOD'S PRIORITY FOR EARTH

The first time I heard Over The Rhine sing Another Christmas... 

 

“I hope that we can still believe

The Christ child holds a gift for us

Are we able to receive

Peace on earth this Christmas”

 

… something went off deep within me. It is not a new line. I have been living with this line most of my life. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I didn’t hear it at Christmas time. I heard it for years before I even believed that what it was talking about was any kind of reality. For the last thirty years I have worked the phrase annually. One of my other favourite bands U2 even had a song called this and I have written about that song.

However, it was only recently, as Stormont began to unravel and some of our politicians seem intent in speeding our peace coming apart that that near over familiar line, “Peace on earth this Christmas”, struck a chord as loud as any Jimmy Page strum and as spiritually powerful as an Old Testament prophet or actually a New Testament angel on the night God came to earth! 

“Peace, Steve, Peace” is what my soul kept repeating. It is not about justice or vengeance, it is not about proving who was right or wrong. It is not about us and them and us winning. The point of this mission that God had in coming to earth was peace. That peace was not just for my soul. It was about peace on earth. Anyone following this Jesus whose birth is heralded in this angel’s song should be all about peace. 

This of course is not an out of the blue declaration of a God reaching for some Plan B or C. The Old Testament was all about this peace; shalom is how the Jewish people said it. Shalom was God’s intention in the law given, for the King’s to achieve and for the prophets to critique the lack of. A favourite verse on the subject that I have blogged often is Jeremiah 29:7 “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” (NKJV)

Those who claim to follow the baby born when the angels sang need to find that priority of peace. That God’s people would seek shalom wherever they were was a way of being God’s holy nation, a people set apart, different, in all the right ways, from the other nations. We need to not blend in to the world’s intuitive response to seek to be proven right, in control and avenging all who would come against us. We need to be about that ministry of reconciliation that God told us we would be about just as we are connected to God himself through that same ministry of his peace making.

My own wee country’s peace has been unravelling little by little over these last three years. Our two main parties are fighting over very old ideals and missing contemporary priorities. They are putting no priority on peace. Our governmental void is being filled with sectarian, bigoted and graceless finger pointing. We need to see afresh this Gospel priority and commit to it with renewed courage, hope and all that grace that is intrinsic to the baby born and lacking in our current political climate.

LOU REED BRINGS REALISM TO CHRISTMAS - WITH BRUCE COCKBURN

Lou Reed in the nativity section. That might surprise you but my favourite Lou Reed musical moment was when he appeared on a song that brings redemption to those hungry and impoverished!

 

“There are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums
And the message is clear if you've got ears to hear
That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear
It's a Christmas gift [that] you don't have to buy
There's a future shining in a baby's eyes...”

 

This is Lou Reed singing the Christmas nativity, perhaps even more off kilter than one of his songs, Perfect Day, being a pop number 1! It is a live version of a Bruce Cockburn song from the The Best of Columbia Records Radio Hour, Vol. 1, released in 1995. 

The song was Cry Of A Tiny Babe, an 8 minute run through the Christmas nativity story of all things. The Bruce Cockburn Project website has a few quotes about the song. 

One is from an interview my friend Steve Lawson did with Cockburn for Guitarist Magazine. Steve asked about duetting with Lou Reed and Bruce responded, “I know, it amazes me too - you should have been there when it happened. We'd rehearsed it but he was reading the lyrics off. There we were playing the song, and it came time for his verse and that's what he did, and I just started laughing as you can probably hear on the ensuing chorus.”

Another quotation from the Bruce Cockburn Project gives insight into Cockburn’s intentions with the song. He told Paul Zollo in Song Talk... "I wanted to write a Christmas song. I went at it like trying to tell the Bible story but put it in modern terms. Like the Goddard movie "Joseph and Mary". I thought the story in the Bible is such an interesting story, but you forget how interesting it is because it's held up as a cliche so much to us. And over the years people have lost their humanity, who are in the story, and they've become larger-than-life figures. And I just thought it would be interesting to play at putting them in a human context. So Mary becomes a little bit shrewish and has a little bit of an attitude. The classic Mary figure, the Madonna - the original Madonna - is a far cry from any young Jewish mother I've ever run across [Laughs]. So I wanted to get it into something that people could relate to."

For me Cockburn’s song does just that and Lou Reed unique voice gives the song the menace that King Herod would have cast across Judea as babies under 2 were all killed in a ruthless attempt to get rid of God in a bundle of baby bones in straw who was quickly whisked away as a refugee to Egypt. 

If you want to smash up the sentimental clichés and bring realism to the nativity story then Lou Reed was the man! Of course Cockburn’s chorus was a poetic and theological depth charge...

 

“Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe.”

 

I simply cannot express how much I love those words.

I'M THINKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS (50 Words For Waiting) (for Mary and Lucia)

photo: Fiona McNeill

 

I’m thinking about Christmas

Too much for such a young girl

A big ask that God is asking

In this shuddering of our worlds

I’m thinking about Christmas

Eyes fixed on a brand new birth

I’m stumbling with the shepherds

To find that peace on earth.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit

Waiting

For Hope and peace and joy and love

We keep praying for it

 

I’m thinking about Christmas

That strange medical ward

The danger and vulnerability

Has me whisper “oh my Lord”

I’m thinking about Christmas

And the twinkle of a light cast

A courageous cry in the dawning

As the past at last is past.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit

Waiting

For Hope and peace and joy and love

We are praying for it

 

There should be 50 words for waiting

Waiting before and then until

Every time a waiting is over

There is another waiting hill

There should be 50 words for waiting

Wait, here’s another one

For the courage to wait along with

Until all the waiting is done.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit.

 

Our dear friend Lucia is on an Air Ambulance tonight to Kings Hospital, London where a liver is  waiting for her. If all goes well she will have a transplant in the next number of hours. It will be Lucia's fourth. She is 20 years of age. She is an amazing young woman. Two years ago we celebrated with her as she received a British Empire Medal in the Queen's New Year Honour's List for her contribution to organ donation awareness. Lucia is an inspiration.

I have been preaching and blogging a lot about Mary this Advent and I began thinking of Lucia through Mary's experience. Lucia's father David always talks about the need for 50 words for waiting, just like it is said that the Inuit and Yupik people have 50 words for snow (and Kate Bush too!). Advent is about waiting. If you are the praying kind...

 

Photo: Jasmine Stockman

 

 

STOCKMAN'S CHRISTMAS PLAYLIST 2019

Here is my Christmas 2019 Playlist. I have kept Slade, Wizzard and Springsteen out of it this time. This is varied in style, has the Santa as well as the Jesus Christmas, the pain as well as the hope of the nativity scenes with a robust prophetic challenge and inspiration... enjoy!

 

WALKING IN THE AIR - TOM CHAPLIN

(from Twelve Tales Of Christmas)

 

SOMETHING IN DECEMBER - ANDREW PATTERSON

(single)

 

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS - RAG AND BONE MAN

(from The Sound Of Christmas; Live and Exclusive at the BBC)

 

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS - CIARAN LAVERY

(from Live At The Mac)

 

WINTER WONDERLAND - ROD STEWART feat MICHAEL BUBLE

(from Merry Christmas, Baby)

 

PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - CHEAP TRICK

(from Christmas Christmas)

 

JINGLE BELLS - JAMES TAYLOR

(from At Christmas)

 

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS - COLDPLAY

(from The Sound Of Christmas; Live and Exclusive at the BBC) 

 

WINTERSONG - SARAH MCLACHLAN

(from Wintersong)

 

RIVER - BRIAN KENNEDY

(from Christmassy)

 

BETHLEHEM BEGINS - DEACON BLUE

(from A New House)

 

JESUS CHRIST - BLUE RODEO

(from A Merry Christmas To You)

 

IN THE BLEAK MID WINTER - PLAN B

(from The Sound Of Christmas; Live and Exclusive at the BBC)

 

AWAY IN A MANGER - BRIGHT EYES

(from A Christmas Album)

 

O COME O COME EMMANUEL - THE CIVIL WARS

(from Tracks In The Snow single)

 

OH LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM - EMMYLOU HARRIS

(from The McGarrigle Christmas Hour)

 

BETHLEHEM - OVER THE RHINE

(from Blood Oranges In the Snow)

 

GOSPEL OF MARY - JOSH RITTER & THE MILK CARTON KIDS

(single)

 

OH HOLY NIGHT - KATIE MELUA

(from In Winter)

 

SILENT NIGHT - JAMES ARTHUR

(from The Sound Of Christmas; Live and Exclusive at the BBC)

 

LABOUR OF LOVE - ANDREW PETERSON Feat JILL PHILLIPS

(from Behold The Lamb)

 

LIGHT OF THE WORLD - LAUREN DAIGLE

(from Behold)

 

UPON A WINTER'S NIGHT - CARA DILLON

(from Upon A Winter's Night)

 

AS JOSEPH WAS A WALKING - ANNIE LENNOX

(from A Christmas Cornucopia)

 

JOSEPH, BETTER YOU THAN ME - THE KILLERS

(from single)

 

MARY’S BOY CHILD/OH MY LORD - GUY GARVEY

(from Dermot O'Leary Presents The Saturday Sessions 2016)

 

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB - SARAH MASEN

(from Women's Work In Alchemy)

 

CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHISPER - CHRIS TAYLOR

(from Bandcamp single)

 

CRY OF A TINY BABE - BRUCE COCKBURN

(from Nothing But A Burning Light)

 

LONG WAY AROUND THE SEA - LOW

(from Christmas)

 

LOVE CAME DOWN - SHAWN COLVIN

(from Holiday Songs and Lullabies)

 

REBEL JESUS - JACKSON BROWNE

(from The McGarrigle Christmas Hour)

 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (WAR IS OVER) - JAKE BUGG

(from The Sound Of Christmas; Live and Exclusive at the BBC)

 

LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH - NICHOLE NORDEMAN

(from Fragile)

 

JOY TO THE WORLD - SUFJAN STEVENS

(from Songs For Christmas)

 

O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL - BRIAN HOUSTON

(from Joy To The World)

 

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN - THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA

(from Go Tell It On The Mountain)

JOSH RITTER & THE MILK CARTON KIDS - THE GOSPEL OF MARY

 

Josh Ritter with help from The Milk Carton Kids has given us the Song For Christmas 2019.

Ritter takes the traditional Biblical story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph escaping as refugees into Egypt and gives it a modern slant. Another family of three is escaping, seeking safety. 

It would seem obvious that Ritter, an American writing to a predominantly American audience, would be setting their story among those seeking refuge in 2020 America. 

This little family sets out with hope of something better:

 

We prayed our prayers, we broke our bread

With others who had even less

Till finally all we had were dreams

And we hoped that they would fill us

 

Soon however the sinister world of the modern refugee kicks in. Duped for a place in a container, Jospeh dies, eventually Mary is put in chains and in the end she and her son are separated. 

The lyrics reminded me of that Nativity Scene on display at Claremont United Methodist Church in Claremont, California with Mary, Joseph and Jesus all in different glass cages.

Ritter’s song is clearly in the tradition of the American protest singer. It is asking serious questions of a government that is continually going against the idea of America, particularly when it comes to immigration. Those words on the Statue of Liberty seem so sadly neglected:

 

 

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

Eventually Ritter brings it all around to the original Mary, Joseph and baby. The ancient texts of Scripture are full of migrants. From Genesis to Revelation the entire Bible is about people moving countries. So it is with Jesus. As Ritter sings:

 

The holy family got away

A simpler time, a simpler place

And Egypt stretched out it's great hand

To welcome them with mercy

 

Egypt is set up as a more merciful place than present day America. Is that a judgement itself? Even if that isn’t intended and just suggests that other generations and peoples were more welcoming than America, judgement is coming.

Ritter doesn’t hit the wall and miss with his closing verses. There are echoes of Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War:

 

And you who stood at your great gates

Watched us as we met our fate

Then took our pride and stole our babes

You will one day die of something

 

Then the last lines of damnation:

 

May the pain within you dwell

And may it follow you to hell

All alone in a lonely cell

Forever unforgiven

 

It is early 60’s Dylan at his best, his folk singing ghost haunting us with the power of truth at the dawning of the third decade of the their millennium. 

The developed world is so fantastically wealthy that we cannot dare let those who have nothing eat into our entitled decadence. The baby in that original manger is speaking out of the nativity’s prophetic poetry - we cannot serve God and money. What we do to the least of these who do for God.   

Josh Ritter has gifted us a song that is deep in the truth of the Gospel nativity. It is not a warm and sentimental take but one of reality that gets the point!

MARY - A VOCATION OF MOTHERING GOD

“There was nothing promised that is easily imagined,
And questions of the future leave me puzzled and concerned.
I don’t know where tomorrow leads,
But his grace today is all I need;
I know his love and love him in return.

And my senses overwhelm me
When I estimate his majesty
Every fibre of my being
Joins with all creation singing
Songs of how the weak are lifted up,
Songs that tell the richness of his love.”

 

These lyrics come from my friend Dave Thompson’s Mary’s Song. What I loved about the song is that in it we don’t find a Mary looking back with 2000 years of hindsight. She has faith to go along with this crazy and mysterious plan of God’s and, in its absurdity and great cost for her, just trust and believe. There is also a realisation that if what she thinks is happening to her is true that she is involved in an advent that will have deep seated affect among the poor and marginalised. God’s love is on the move and she feels it in her womb. She then finds the courage to play her part and praise the one who set it all in motion.

I have been linking this Biblical song of Dave’s with one he wrote about Van Gogh, available on his debut album Newsprint Sky. This song called Dear Theo is based on the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother. Dave paraphrases my favourite line of Frederick Buechner that I use as a near mantra for the secret of purposeful living, “where your deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest need.” Dave writes it this way: -

 

“This is my calling and my creed,

This is my gift and deepest need.

Where I am at my most complete,

Where earth and heaven’s best intentions meet.”

 

It captured Van Gogh for Dave, it captures Mary in this Advent drama for me and Frederick Buechner thinks it should be what captures us all. What are we offering God? What is our reason for living? Where is that place where earth and heaven meet in and through us?

AS WE JOURNEY TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

 

God, as we journey towards Christmas

Our world is at war

God, as we journey towards Christmas

There is electoral and sectarian tensions on our own Belfast streets

God, as we journey towards Christmas

There is still no peace in the very place of that first Christmas morning

Yet the angels sang

Peace on earth

God, "we're sick of sorrow

Sick of pain

Sick of hearing again and again

That there's gonna be peace on earth

So Jesus could you take the time

To throw a drowning man a line

Peace on earth." ***

 

God help us to see the world as you see it

With grace filled eyes

With a hopeful heart

With an imagination full of possibilities

This Christmas

As we stop outside that stable door

As we park for a day at that manger

May we not get distracted

By the tinsel and glitter of our streets

By the dressing and stuffing of our tables

By the anemic nativity plays of our churches

May we not miss the wonder of what is happening

This symbol of God's love towards us

This affirmation of how okay it is to be human

And this great truth

That He who was beyond our comprehension

Moved into the very midst of us

The holy... in the filth of animal dung

The Almighty... dependent on a young girl

The unapproachable... with shepherds at ease by His side

Emmanuel; God with us.

And God may we leave that day at the stable

May we leave that day at the manger

Inspired to be like that baby

To bring some peace on earth

In a world where words are no longer as important as experience

Where modernist objectivity is being replaced by postmodern subjectivity

May we see the secret of peace on earth

That in these days more than any other time for centuries

Actions need to speak louder than words

May Christ's birth that we remember

May Christ's life that we celebrate

May Christ's cross and resurrection that we will come to, in Lent

Empower actions that scream and shout

Across our world

Onto our streets

Into our polling stations

Deep down into our lives

May indeed the word become flesh

And live among us.

AMEN

*** quoted from U2's Peace On Earth available on All That You Can't
Leave Behind

CHRISTMAS... AND X-MAS. ENJOY BOTH BUT GET THE BALANCE RIGHT!

 

“Santa Claus is comin' and the kids are gettin' greedy
It's Christmas time
They know what's in the stores 'cause they seen it on the TV
It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time
It used to be the birthday of the Man who saved our necks
It's Christmas time
Now it stands for Santa Claus they spell it with an X
It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time...”

          From Christmas Time by Larry Norman

This is the first song I think about every time Christmas seems to be running down the track before us. The Stockies start to listen to our Christmas playlists on December 1st. I immediately hear “Santa Claus is comin' and the kids are gettin' greedy/It's Christmas time.”

Usually the Santa Claus Christmas appears before we reach the Christian Advent Christmas. The first leaf is usually the stores piling the Christmas offers onto the shelves, the adverts starting on the TV and the far too early lighting up of Christmas trees in City centres. 

And don’t get me wrong I love the Holiday Season Christmas. I like, even now, writing my Santa letter, at least filling a Santa check out at Amazon. I love Mince Pies. Forgive me, but I love Egg Nog Lattes in Starbucks. I love the warm and feely family closeness. I love Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody and Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. The benefits of being 11 in 1973!

In Advent sermons I am often warning my community in Fitzroy to separate the two Christmas templates. Enjoy both for sure I encourage but I also warn that the vital thing is to make sure that the Christian Advent influences the Holiday Season and not the other way around.

I am keen that we as a Jesus following community take a Lenten approach to Advent. It is important to find the spiritual discipline of this season and to take time to reflect on the Biblical story, to read ourselves into that story and to take the waiting time of Advent to surmise the state of our souls. 

The Advent Scriptures are so rich and deep in meaning, in challenge and inspiration. Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, Zechariah, Herod, the shepherds and the mystical stargazers. Then, God born as a vulnerable baby, facing death squads and being scurried off to Egypt as a refugee. Goodness me! 

So this Christmas, as the Holiday Season version hurtles forward, catching you in its slipstream and near throwing you over in its ferocity… breathe in… breathe out… and take time to surmise the eternal story of love and grace. God moved in amongst us. Surmise the long term connotations of this amazing truth so that, after the Seasonal one is put away for another year, we have the lasting impact of the Advent one on our lives and communities.

“Santa Claus is comin' and the kids are gettin' greedy
It's Christmas time
They know what's in the stores 'cause they seen it on the TV
It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time
It used to be the birthday of the Man who saved our necks
It's Christmas time
Now it stands for Santa Claus they spell it with an X
It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time...”

          From Christmas Time by Larry Norman

This is the first song I think about every time Christmas seems to be running down the track before us. The Stockies start to listen to our Christmas playlists on December 1st. I immediately hear “Santa Claus is comin' and the kids are gettin' greedy/It's Christmas time.”

Usually the Santa Claus Christmas appears before we reach the Christian Advent Christmas. The first leaf is usually the stores piling the Christmas offers onto the shelves, the adverts starting on the TV and the far too early lighting up of Christmas trees in City centres. 

And don’t get me wrong I love the Holiday Season Christmas. I like, even now, writing my Santa letter, at least filling a Santa check out at Amazon. I love Mince Pies. Forgive me, but I love Egg Nog Lattes in Starbucks. I love the warm and feely family closeness. I love Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody and Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. The benefits of being 11 in 1973!

In Advent sermons I am often warning my community in Fitzroy to separate the two Christmas templates. Enjoy both for sure I encourage but I also warn that the vital thing is to make sure that the Christian Advent influences the Holiday Season and not the other way around.

I am keen that we as a Jesus following community take a Lenten approach to Advent. It is important to find the spiritual discipline of this season and to take time to reflect on the Biblical story, to read ourselves into that story and to take the waiting time of Advent to surmise the state of our souls. 

The Advent Scriptures are so rich and deep in meaning, in challenge and inspiration. Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, Zechariah, Herod, the shepherds and the mystical stargazers. Then, God born as a vulnerable baby, facing death squads and being scurried off to Egypt as a refugee. Goodness me! 

So this Christmas, as the Holiday Season version hurtles forward, catching you in its slipstream and near throwing you over in its ferocity… breathe in… breathe out… and take time to surmise the eternal story of love and grace. God moved in amongst us. Surmise the long term connotations of this amazing truth so that, after the Seasonal one is put away for another year, we have the lasting impact of the Advent one on our lives and communities.