Seven whole days

Enjoy some photos of Christmas around the world. From the sublime to the tacky, it’s all captured beautifully at the Big Picture Blog.

I have written before about the ridiculous state of aviation security (and general anti-terrorism measures) in the US. The short version is that our security stinks. It’s ineffective whilst also being inconvenient. I would cheerfully put up with effective security. I will not cheerfully put up with anxiety-laden, bloated, and reactionary security techniques.

Let’s take, for example, the Christmas Day incident. A Nigerian man is said to have attempted to detonate a bomb on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. You are doubtless familiar with the incident, in which the man lit some kind of explosive powder on fire during the flight’s final approach. It goes without saying that I’m horrified by how close he came to pulling of his plan. In my comments here, I do not want to be seen to be making light of terrorism, but rather pointing out the US government’s utterly incompetent response and plan.

Let’s start with the response. In my last post on security, I made a joke about how we all have to take off our shoes because of the “shoe bomber” and I wondered what would happen if there were ever an “underwear bomber”. In the it-is-no-longer-possible-to-satirize-life department, I note the following: because this man planned his attack for the final approach phase, the TSA is ordering that no one be allowed to leave their seats or have any access to their belongings in the final hour of flight. (They’ve now relented and said that you can have printed reading material.) Really? Apparently, the TSA believes that ALL terrorists will do their work in the approach phase of the flight now, since that’s the most recent example.

Read more »

A little something for today’s feast day, not widely celebrated in the Church.

Sorry about the visuals on that one. The singing is brilliant though, so I went with it anyway. While you’re in the mood, don’t miss this offering of Kenneth Leighton’s setting. I actually like Leighton’s a bit more, but I decided to feature the traditional one. We’re all about tradition here on 7WD.

Image by Claire Macdonald, from here.

Image by Green Kitchen, via flickr.

I have the good fortune of serving at Christ Church with the Rev’d Melody Wilson Shobe. She preached a brilliant sermon on Christmas Eve, which she has agreed to share with you, dear readers. The text is Luke 2:1-20. Enjoy!

There is nothing quite like the power of stories, for children or for adults. Casey and I began reading aloud to Isabelle on the day that she was born, and we have continued to do it every day since then. It has been quite an adventure, reading to her the stories we read as children—from Babar to Paddington the bear, from Winnie the Pooh to The Velveteen Rabbit. As a child, I could read them over and over and over again and they never got old; they always had new things to say. And even now, each time I read one of my beloved childhood stories to my daughter, there are things that jump out to me that I never noticed before—words or images or illustrations that I looked at thousands of times as a child, but I see in a whole new way now. I am so excited, as the years go by, to continue to share with Isabelle the stories that have been so meaningful to me, and see them again in a new light myself. That is part of the power of stories, that they speak to us again and again and again, because there is always something new to be heard in their pages.

And there is, of course, perhaps no more beloved and powerful and enchanting story than the one that we come together to hear tonight. The story of that night, so many years ago, when two young wanderers were looking for a place to stay, and there was no room in the inn. The story of a pregnant woman beginning her labor of bringing new life into the world in a small, humble stable. The story of the shepherds in their fields with their flocks, and the angel and heavenly host singing their chorus of “glory to God in the highest.” The story of that holy, special night when God came into the world, a tiny baby, love incarnate, God with us.

Read more »

A little something for the day after Christmas. Sure beats going to the mall!

From here.

Don’t believe the mall people! We’re just getting starting on Christmas.

This is my (brief) sermon for Christmas Day, preached this morning at Christ Church.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us”

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The story of Christmas is breathtaking. We might think we know the story. Last night we heard the familiar parts of the story from Luke’s Gospel: the angels, the shepherds, the manger, Mary, Joseph, and “glory to God in the highest”.

None of that is in today’s Gospel. But, still, we hear the Christmas story in John’s beautiful, poetic prologue.

“In the beginning was the Word…”

You see, the Christmas story is bigger than a manger, or at least it began long before the manger. The Christmas story began before the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary the Good News of her part in the salvation of the world. The Christmas story began at the moment of creation.

Read more »

This proclamation was read out at the beginning of our late service on the Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I love this because it makes clear the historic reality of the Incarnation and places it in the context of God’s eternal purposes.

oday, the twenty-fifth day of December, unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth and then formed man and woman in his own image. Several thousand years after the flood, when God made the rainbow shine forth as a sign of the covenant. Twenty-one centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah; thirteen centuries after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt. Eleven hundred years from the time of Ruth and the Judges; one thousand years from the anointing of David as king; in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel. In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome. The forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus; the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since his conception, was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary. Today is the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

I do not like the carol “Silent night”. No doubt, everyone has favorite and least favorite Christmas carols. Some carols I could sing a few times each of the twelve days of Christmas. And then there’s Silent night. I could live the rest of my life without that one. Finally, I found — thanks to a Facebook friend — a version of this carol that I can enjoy again and again. I give you this:

By the way, as this post hits the net, we are probably singing this carol at Christ Church. We’ll sing it at both our Christmas Eve services. Just because the priest does not like something does not mean the people should be deprived of a favorite carol.