Atypical (and modern) Christmas Songs: Baby Boy

This is the continuation of a collection of posts I'm doing this year about some of my favorite "Christmas Songs" that most people may not think of when they think of  Christmas.  They're not in any particular order and I'm not sure how many I'll come up with, so I wouldn't exactly call it a countdown.  Perhaps that will be a future year.  This one may be on this list due only to how new the song and the artist are.  Time will tell if song enters the realm of modern Christmas classics.

By far, my favorite new artist emerging on the Christian Music scene is For King & Country.  Everything I have heard from this brother duo up to this point has appealed to me in one way or another.  "Baby Boy" is no different.

Between their debut major-label project and their most recent release, For King and Country released a four song / five track (includes both a studio and live version of "Baby Boy") Christmas EP titled Into The Silent Night. Of the two traditional carols and two original songs, "Baby Boy" has received the most airplay on Christian radio stations.

The imagery of the official video tells a great story.  The entire EP revolves around an animated tale of a Confederate drummer caught in the middle of a fierce Civil War battle played out against the backdrop of a peaceful winter landscape.  In this video, our battle-weary drummer ascends a hill carrying a sword left by a fallen soldier.  After a time of at reflection at the top of the hill, the drummer descends the hill carrying a white flag he made from a sheet hanging on a nearby clothesline.  It's a sign of surrender to the unexpect King that came down in the form of a baby boy.

In a time when the world seems very divided and we get battle-weary, we need songs like this to remind us that there is hope in the midst of the battle.

Atypical (and modern) Christmas Songs: Better Days

This is the continuation of a collection of posts I'm doing this year about some of my favorite "Christmas Songs" that most people may not think of when they think of  Christmas.  They're not in any particular order and I'm not sure how many I'll come up with, so I wouldn't exactly call it a countdown.  Perhaps that will be a future year.

No list of modern Christmas songs would be complete without "Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls.  I'm not sure if I would define it as "atypical" since it has been a mainstay of pop culture Christmas and New Years events since it's release in 2006.  The song definitely has undertones of John Rzeznik's Catholic upbringing in it.  Still, for those of us who grew up in and around the Evangelical church culture this one may not be as familiar to us.

To me this is a call for a missional understanding of Christmas.  It's a call for the Incarnation to be about more than sweet, sentimental feelings once a year or initiating a personal transaction that buys us our ticket to Heaven someday.  It's a call for real transformation in the world around us as we embrace "the one poor child who saved this world."  It calls us to embrace God's mission to restore the world He created to Him again and reminds us that the opportunity is there for re-creation to happen in our lives and our world ("tonight's the night the world begins again").

I don't know if this is what Rzeznik had in mind when he penned these words and some of the finer points of theology in it can be debated.  Still, I can identify with this prayer found in the bridge:

I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this endless fight
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

Atypical Christmas Songs: Peace on Earth

By Visitor7 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

This is the continuation of a collection of posts I'm doing this year about some of my favorite "Christmas Songs" that most people may not think of when they think of  Christmas.  They're not in any particular order and I'm not sure how many I'll come up with, so I wouldn't exactly call it a countdown.  Perhaps that will be a future year.

14 “Glory to God in highest heaven,
    and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

The news this week of a hostage situation at a chocolate store in Australia and the Taliban massacre of over 130 people, mostly children, at a school in Pakistan remind us of how far we are from complete peace on earth.  It's the paradox of living between the initiation of the revealing of the Kingdom of God through the incarnation of Jesus (Christmas) and the final fulfillment His second coming.  It's a reminder that Satan is still active in the world and still about the business of destroying any sense of peace in our world.  In seems all the more poignant when tragedy involves children.  My wife responded to hearing the news of the school massacre in Pakistan by saying, "It seems like Satan always likes killing children at Christmastime."  Looking at the number of such tragedies in December, it would be hard not to agree with her.

As I thought of the tragedies of this week the song "Peace on Earth" by U2 came to mind.  This song strikes me as the "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" of our generation.  It captures the paradox of living in world where peace is promised at the time of Jesus' birth, but has not been fully realized yet.  The choice when facing such paradox is to either try to shelter our lives from tragedy and just focus on personal peace, give up on the possibility of true peace on earth and despair, or to continue to pursue the final fulfillment of the promise of peace while recognizing we are not there, yet.  This song seems to take that third way.  It acknowledges tragedy and suffering, while calling out to Christ to bring peace to those who suffer.  It's not done in a cynical way, but in the form of a prayer asking for this peace to be fulfilled.

I like this particular video version.  It captures the paradox of simultaneous peace and tragedy very well.

Atypical Christmas Songs: Christmas at Denny's

I've previously mentioned wanting to assemble a collection of posts about some of my favorite "Christmas Songs" that most people may not think of when they think of  Christmas.  I've decided this will be the year.  They won't be in any particular order and I'm not sure how many I'll come up with, so I wouldn't exactly call it a countdown.  Perhaps that will be a future year.

For those not familiar with Randy Stonehill, he is known as one of the pioneers of the Jesus Music movement of the early 1970's and what later became known Contemporary Christian Music.  He's best known for his high energy, quirky songs such as "Shut De Do," "American Fast Food," and "Can't By A Miracle."  He also has a gift for folk-style storytelling and ballads, though.

In 1989 he released "Christmas at Denny's" as part of his Return to Paradise album.  It's the haunting tale of a drifter who's spending another Christmas Eve with other nameless lonely souls at a Denny's restaurant because they have nowhere else to go.  It tells a story that has become all too familiar to me as I have gotten more involved in the lives of friends without homes these past two years.  It's not a song that you can ever say you enjoyed, but it sticks with you over the years and touches your soul if you're willing to let it.

As our nameless drifter reminisces of the life he left behind and the circumstances that brought him to this place he has one simple prayer, " I don't need no miracle, sweet baby Jesus.  Just help me find some kind of hope in my heart."  When you reach a point of total despair, this is sometimes the only prayer you know how to speak.  It's the kind of prayer Jesus entered this world to answer.

So, here we have "Christmas at Denny's" by Randy Stonehill:

Humility Critical For Real Change To Happen

This past Monday I watched our local city-county council get bogged down in petty politics as they debated a proposal to provide legal protections to our neighbors living without homes.  As I watched this, I kept thinking of how important the quality of humility is if we are ever going to see any substantial change in the treatment of our friends without homes.  In his book Spiritual Leadership J. Oswald Sanders called humility one of the essential qualities of leadership.

Humility is needed by the current ensemble of professional service providers in our city to admit that, although they have done much good, there are still many not being helped by their services and some people fall through the cracks in the current system.  The assumption can be that the ones not being helped are choosing not to receive the help, but reality is more complex than that.  They must also recognize that grassroots efforts to bring necessities to those living on the street are not about enabling the homelessness, but about building trust in order to assist our friends off the street.

Humility is needed by those of us involved in grassroots faith-based efforts to recognize that many of those in the professional service industry entered the field with good intentions, though it's not always apparent by the way things are operated.  It's possible that some of them have lost sight of their original purpose in the struggle to keep their organizations afloat, but the heart that got them involved in their mission must still be there somewhere.  Perhaps our efforts will yield fruit in seeing these providers spending time in self-examination and stepping up to meet the challenges they face in a way that yields the type of results we would like to see.  So, we need to see them as colleagues in the fight against poverty and not obstacles.

Humility is needed by conservative politicians to recognize that the dogma of personal responsibility does not define the story of every person in poverty and some may need help pulling on their "bootstraps."  As someone who lives among you and grew up with many of the same views I had to learn to listen to people to find out what they really needed instead of just giving them what I thought they needed.  I had to take time to listen to their stories instead of hurrying to find a "solution" that would make me feel good, but not make any real difference in their lives.

Humility is needed by those of us who champion the cause of the poor to recognize that we don't hold the corner on compassion.  Sometimes questions asked by political conservatives are simply an effort to understand the issue better and have answers to bring back to their constituency that will be looking at the cost of our efforts.

My hope is that all involved will find the humility to come together for real change and not simply stay entrenched in their divisive views while our friends without homes struggle through another winter.

The Paradox of Awe and Anxiety

My blog has been silent for the last three months.  With the beginning of a new school year, fall usually brings about the slowing down of writing activity.  This fall has been particularly active in a number of ways: adjusting to a regular part-time teaching routine at my daughters' school, new relationships in and around Diakonos that put us on the cusp of something exciting for the years ahead, and small victories in the lives of people our community touches that increase the load of face-to-face mentoring that goes with leading a missional community.

Times like these can lead to feelings of awe and anxiety at the same time.  They bring awe because you realize little to none of it is a product of your own creating.  Instead, it is the result of God seeking to build a piece of His Kingdom through you.  They bring anxiety because you realize your own limitations and your need of a power greater than yourself if you hope to see the fulfillment of God's plan through all this.  The choice is to step ahead or to shrink back.

You get the sense in the writings of Paul the Apostle that he felt these same feelings many times.  In one of his most vulnerable letters he confides to the followers of Jesus in Corinth the paradox of feeling awe and anxiety at the same time in the pursuit of God's Kingdom.  Early on he compares the paradox to having a valuable treasure hidden in a fragile clay jar.  Though the outward pressure appears ready to crush the jar, the inward presence sustains it:

"We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies." (2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NLT)

Later he speaks of a what he calls a thorn in the flesh that keeps him from being too self-confident, even in the midst of great spiritual encounters.  It keeps him seeking God for a relief from the torment, but finding the answer is to trust God's strength in the midst of weakness:

"Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said,'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me." 2 Corinthians 12:8, 9 NLT)

So, as we face the paradox of awe and anxiety, we need to press ahead and trust the presence of God's strength and grace to shine through our own feelings of inadequacy and weakness.

Being At The Mercy Of Another

This past weekend I had the "opportunity" to experience just a piece of the helplessness many of the most vulnerable people in our city experience on a daily basis.  This was not a staged learning experience where you know no matter what's going on it's only pretend, but instead a situation where you are in the wrong place at the wrong time for just a moment and you feel totally at the mercy of another person.

Last Sunday, our missional community had its biweekly service Sunday where we deliver food to people living in tent cities at different locations throughout our city.  Our final stop was near a railroad track with several camps lined in the woods along the side.  As our team wrapped up this final food station and prepared to go to our favorite coffee shop to debrief, I heard some commotion back by the tracks.  I went back just to make sure everything was alright and saw two trucks driving along the track to deliver firewood to the people living in the camps.  Shortly after that the Railroad Police vehicle appeared from behind the tree with lights flashing.

Though we always park off of railroad property when we deliver our meals, my standing on the property at this moment placed me in the middle of the whole situation.  From the officers position, he saw six individuals on railroad property (three people delivering wood, two friends who live in the camps, and me).  He exercised due diligence and collected all our ID's in order to run checks on any outstanding violations, warrants, etc.  I complied and waited as most of the conversation revolved around one of the individuals delivering firewood.  The rest of my team watched from where we were parked, wondering if they would need to back up my story or bail me out of jail.  After what seemed like eternity, my ID was returned and I was able to head back with no further problems.

Even though I knew there was little to be concerned about, in a moment like this it is not hard to feel like you are at the mercy of another person.  Thoughts about the possibility of a ticket or being detained begin to enter your mind.  And for a moment I understood how harassed and helpless my friends without homes feel on a daily basis.  They have run-ins like this on a regular basis where they are left at the mercy of another person for their sense of security.  There are not only the run-ins with police that they have to be concerned with, but they also deal with any number of strangers every day that could take advantage of them.  So, I can't help but have empathy for their plight.

This makes me think of Jesus entering our crazy world.  He lived among an oppressed people.  He experienced hardship and injustice.  I wonder how many times as a young man he was forced by a Roman soldier to carry the soldier's equipment before he said, "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles." (Matthew 5:41)  How many times did he have his shirt taken before he said, "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well."? (Matthew 5:40)  Jesus identified with the harassed and helpless.  He lived among them.  He identifies with us when we feel the same way.  He's walked in our world.

So, we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus identifies with us in our moments of vulnerability.  He can also help us empathize with the most vulnerable citizens among us.  For this we can be thankful.