Curation — Clayfire Curator

Beheaded Pigs and Fancy Logs?

by Mandy Smith | December 28, 2011

The Boar’s Head and Yule Log festival is an Epiphany tradition dating back to medieval times which, like most things medieval, draws together Christian and pagan metaphors. It is believed to have begun back in the 1300′s when a scholar at Oxford, while walking through the forest, was attacked by a wild boar. Having no other weapon with him, the scholar used his metal-bound philosophy book to kill the beast and that night the boar’s head, finely garnished, was paraded into the halls of the college to the strains of Christian carols. The presentation of the boar’s head came, over time, to symbolize Christ’s triumph over sin. Today the festival is a lavish church festival with bright costumes, choral music, and all the necessary pageantry.

Find a nearby Boar’s Head festival on Google. Or, failing that, incorporate a few elements of it into your own Epiphany worship:

Incorporate the Yule Log tradition either by burning a real log or serving a log-shaped “Buche de Noel” cake. Over the years the log has symbolized everything from fertility, to rest, to protection. Read more to decide how to make it meaningful for your worship community.

Another tasty Epiphany tradition is Wassail, a spiced wine or ale, served warm.

Choose some songs from the Boar’s Head festival to incorporate in your worship:

“Kings to Thy Rising” is a great hymn to reflect on the visitation of the Magi (and which could work as a song or a responsive reading). Here are the lyrics. Follow this link and scroll down to find the music for it.

Kings to Thy Rising
French, 16th Century

Noel! Noel!
Where is He, born King of the Jews!
For we have seen His star in the East.
Where is he, born King of the Jews?
For we have come to worship Him.

In Bethlehem the King is born!
Rejoice! Emmanuel has come!  Sing we Noel! Noel! Noel!

Where is He, born King of the Jews!
For we have seen His star in the East.
Where is he, born King of the Jews?
For we have come to worship Him.

‘Tis here he lies, Give thanks, be glad!
Amidst the oxen sleeps our Lord.
Sing we Noel! Noel! Noel!

Where is He, born King of the Jews!
For we have seen His star in the East.
Where is he, born King of the Jews?
For we have come to worship Him.

Behold your Lord! Rejoice! Rejoice!
In praise lift up a joyful voice!
Sing we Noel! Noel! Noel!

At last the long and hopeful search is done,
Afar from distant lands we come,
Moved by great tidings of a newborn King,
Costly gifts to him we bring.

Fall on your knees, proclaim His birth.
Let there be peace throughout the earth.
Sing we Noel! Noel! Noel!

What small hints of pageantry and grandeur can you use this week to remind worshipers of the Magi and how they set aside their status to receive a tiny child?

Image © Adam Koford (Ape Lad)

Categories: Curation

Waiting for Christmas

by W. Zachary Taylor | December 22, 2011

As we swiftly flow from Advent into Christmas, there is limited time for reflection on the worship of the last four weeks. The meetings to evaluate how things worked, how people were affected, and what kind of transformation occurred in our community will take place next month. But now, as I take down the elements of the waiting room, the memories and conversations are still alive in this place:

Shocked reactions of people being handed a birth announcement that reads, “Congratulations, you’re expecting!” The snarky comments of white-haired women were definitely more humorous than the glares and “I don’t think so!” responses from fathers of teenage daughters.
The pastor openly and adamantly declaring from the pulpit, “You know what I learned from watching a pot of water and waiting for it to boil? That I hate to wait! I want worship to start on time. Oh, that was brutal.”
People rolling their eyes at being invited into the worship space by number, and making comparisons with the DMV.
The guy who asked, “Next week, can we watch paint dry?”

Then, there are the conversations about having a new understanding of Advent, making connections to the worship we might practice during our everyday waits, and genuine gratitude for the time and thoughtfulness that went into planning and implementing it all.

Applying the philosophy of worship curation in our context led to Advent worship that was engaging, revelatory, and transformational. It gave talented, artistic people opportunities to participate in ways that did not exist here before. It strengthened our faith community and invited the neighborhood around us to join our waiting. It also gave the musical groups a better opportunity to prepare for Christmas.

You may remember from my first blog post, that Advent has not meant much to people in our community. Well, that was because, in previous years, the last three Sundays in Advent were filled with Christmas programs of some kind. Musical preparation for actual Christmas services then became an afterthought. We often would cherry-pick from the various musical numbers that we had done over the previous weeks and musically regurgitate them in our Christmas services. To me, that was fundamentally messed up, but that was the tradition. By curating Advent worship this year, Christmas worship is organically becoming unique and meaningful.

With fewer Christmas programs during Advent this year, our musical groups have created new arrangements of our favorite Christmas hymns/songs. Our Multimedia Arts team is working to bring the outside in by projecting a starry sky on the sanctuary ceiling. I am particularly excited about processing to the outdoor winter garden and placing Jesus in the nativity set as we sing “Silent Night” during our candlelight worship gathering.

Having waited patiently (and impatiently), we now flow into Christmas with hope, gratitude, and excitement for the arrival of the much-anticipated Savior.

How have your community’s Advent practices influenced your planned celebration of Christmas this year?

Image © W. Zachary Taylor

Categories: Curation

The Same Gift Every Year

by Mandy Smith | December 21, 2011

As a child, I had a mad aunt who faithfully sent me the same gift every year—a coat-hanger carefully covered with crochet. When I was small I thought their pastel shades were pretty. At ten I held up the coat-hanger-shaped parcel and joked, “I wonder what this could be?!” By the time I added my thirteenth crocheted hanger to the rest in my wardrobe I noticed my clothes were getting too big for them.

The annual challenge for Christian leaders—and indeed, bloggers for worship websites—looms large over us. How to present something new? How to make the Christmas story fresh? Shepherds and stars and angelic baby boys are the themes of our songs, stories, movies and it’s hard to see them with new eyes. So surely it’s our challenge each Christmas, as leaders of the Church, to do something arresting, surprising and new? To make worshipers say, “Wow! I’ve heard that old story for years but I never saw it that way before!”

Newness in itself is not a problem. Doing something new for the sake of a greater purpose can be refreshing. But newness for the sake of newness often leads to distracting worship. Our audience is not dumb. They can tell when we’re missing substance or if we’re motivated by fear that we’re not cool or relevant.

So what would be wrong if, instead of investing our energy in coming up with something new, we invested it in doing something really old, really well. Life ensures that each year we ourselves, as worshipers, are new… or, at least, different. Just as the sameness of the coat-hangers in my growing collection revealed how I had changed, could the sameness of the Christmas story reveal the growth that has taken place in the past year? Could the familiar words collide in new ways with whatever is on our minds and in our hearts each year to reveal for themselves new depths of the story?

Can you remember a time a very familiar scripture passage revealed something new to you?
Is there a worship tradition you take part in each Christmas?
Is it somehow different each year? How?

Try a kind of Lectio Divina approach to the Christmas story. Present the same story in three different ways (read, sung, acted, painted etc.) with time for reflection between. Give worshipers an opportunity to share how the story intersected with their own life and with whatever questions they are currently asking God.

Categories: Curation

A Way in a Manger

by Guest Blogger | December 16, 2011

This post was written by Patrick Oden.

Do you know (well of course you know) the old hymn Away in a Manger? Here are the words:

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head

The stars in the bright sky
Looked down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay

The cattle are lowing
The poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

I love Thee, Lord Jesus
Look down from the sky
And stay by my side,
‘Til morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus,
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray

Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care
And take us to heaven
To live with Thee there

This is a popular carol to be sure, one of the most popular. The sentiment is nice, indeed steering pretty much into being sentimental, emphasizing the peace of the moment, the quiet, the contented, inviting us into this still moment so as to still our hearts, encouraging us to imagine ourselves in this most pastoral of scenes so as to renew our faith in the God who cares for us and will take us, as well, to the place of peace. Lovely.

And yet… I wonder about it a little bit, and I wonder about it in a way that reflects some of my thoughts on so much of our Christmas liturgies and celebrations.

We’re docetic. This carol is docetic.

Now, before you get offended, let me tell you more exactly how you should be offended, since I basically called us heretics. There were two main ways in which the early Church erred in their thinking about Jesus. There were those who tended to see him only as this guy, this great guy mind you, but just a guy, with a special message and work that should inspire us. On the other side, there were those who really emphasized the fact Jesus was God, and the conceptions of God being what they were they couldn’t see how this Jesus was really a real human. So, they danced around the idea of how this Jesus appeared in human form, but didn’t really cavort with real flesh, blood, or any of the other trappings of physical life. This latter approach was called docetism.

Now, we’ll confess that’s wrong. The incarnation is in our creeds, after all. We confess Jesus was both this guy and this God, and would heartily argue with someone who suggested anything different. And yet, like with this carol, our worship and liturgy is much better about emphasizing the glory of Christ’s divinity than the earthiness of Christ’s humanity. We want to be lifted up, lifted away, given space within God’s throne room, transported out of our present troubles and be promised that this impassive savior will deliver us to live in a safe, protected, always still, paradise. The baby wakes, but the baby doesn’t cry. That’s what we want all our life to be like. All our problems would appear, but not disturb us in any way. Just like the little Lord Jesus.

Only that’s almost certainly not how it was. We worship in a way that seems like we’re honoring God, but in a way that so often dismisses the real glory of what happened. We want to protect God, to keep Jesus safe, to honor him and make up stories that are more impressive. Sort of like what some in the early church did with the gnostic infancy stories.

That’s not really honoring God, though, is it? The reality of the Christmas story is not that it was this moment of perfection, of stillness, of beauty and life and constrained adoration. The reality of Christmas was that everything was going wrong. Joseph was ordered by a hated ruler to travel at most inconvenient time. His wife was very pregnant. The roads were dangerous, the weather probably was bad, and in general they were pulled away from their life. One thing went wrong after another. They finally got to the town of Bethlehem, but they couldn’t find a place to stay. We know this story, but think about it again, now. Think about how you might feel if you had to travel during the Christmas season, the airports shut down, and all the local hotels were booked.

Think about how you feel when you go to the store, to many stores, and can’t find that thing—that ingredient or that perfect present—no matter where you go. Think about the frustrations that come with visiting family (after all Joseph had to go to the town where his family originated). We like to reflect on peace and stillness, and get annoyed with all the frustrations pulling us away from our ‘proper’ religious focus. Only, it’s precisely with those frustrations that we can understand the fullness, the glory, of the incarnation. God isn’t this otherworldly being, away from us, distant from us, separated.

Jesus wasn’t this still, little child in this nicely arranged nativity scene—put the shepherds over there, and Mary and Joseph standing beside the small little manger, with maybe an angel or two off to the side and the wise men hovering over the manger right behind Mary and Joseph. The nativity was messy. It was a barn and a stable. Birth is messy. Travel is messy. It’s all messy and it’s all frustrating and it’s the sort of thing that makes a person confused and angry about why everything seems to be going wrong, the best laid plans going awry no matter how much we try to get things going right.

To this, God entered into this world. Into this, was Jesus born. In the midst of the messiness and frustration and distraction, God became a human, participating with us so as to restore us. We want to ignore the trappings of real life when we create our Christmas worship. Only that’s precisely what God didn’t want to ignore. It came to pass in the midst of messiness. That’s the way of God’s work with humanity. It does not lift us out and away, it leads us through the times of wilderness and struggle, forming us and shaping us, creating us anew. The earliest Christians called their faith The Way, and that’s because it was precisely in the midst of struggles and frustrations that Christ gave a new way of living, one that resonates the work of God even, and especially, when things just don’t seem to be going right.

And that’s precisely the place where God enters in, joining with us, bringing life and hope. When it is messy, when it is loud, when everything seems out of hand, God is with us, incarnated among us, joining together in our struggles right when they seem the most overwhelming. We don’t ignore the struggles. We look for the God who became a baby in the midst of a messy, awkward, frustrating manger. Because we know this incarnation means all things are made new.

And, no doubt, that little Lord Jesus cried. Because that’s what babies do.

Thanks be to God.

Patrick Oden, blogging at dualravens.com, is a PhD candidate at Fuller Seminary, studying theology with a minor in church history. His first book, It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit, explored the topic of pneumatology, using a fictional emerging church as the setting for conversational theology. His latest book is called How Long?: The Trek Through the Wilderness. Patrick’s in-process dissertation focuses on the emerging church in conversation with theologian Jürgen Moltmann, with some liberation theology mixed in for texture. When he isn’t buried in his many books of deep theology, he loves to camp on islands, ponder the activities of local ravens, and spend as much time as possible with his wife of three years, Amy.

Categories: Curation

A Muddy Magic

by Mandy Smith | December 14, 2011

I’m not ashamed to say it: “I believed in Santa Claus.”

I still remember the Christmas Eve when I was six. On the way to a friend’s Christmas party, my Dad pointed up at lights in the sky, crying, “Santa’s sleigh! And the red light at the front must be Rudolph!” So we rolled down the car windows and listened for the roar of plane engines. But all we felt was the warm air of an Australian summer and the silence, surely, of a sleigh. I left the window down, resting my chin on it to watch the lights until they disappeared from sight, wondering if he’d already been to my house.

As adults we fondly remember those magical moments of childhood Christmas Eves. Every year for six, or even ten, years there was that one night when we could hardly sleep because we knew something extraordinary was at work, something beyond our comprehension, and when we woke, nothing would be the same again. A tiny bit of that breathless anticipation still hides in our hearts and we assume it’s just a faint memory of childhood. Mingled with that memory of magic is a small sadness that the lovely dream has ended. But maybe we still feel something because our adult selves know the greater, real-er wonder at work as the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe becomes Created. We tuck ourselves into bed on Christmas Eve with a sense that something beyond our imagination is about to break into our world and nothing will be the same again.

This is not a magic of tinsel and sugar but a more muddy magic. This is the earthy essence of Incarnation.

In explaining the philosophy of the non-profit organization Word Made Flesh, Rob O’Callaghan writes:

The Incarnation demonstrates God’s great commitment to all of humanity, to live among us and to die on our behalf. But Jesus’ very humanity means that God, ironically, has shown us by His own example how to be human. Our faith in Jesus includes a calling to be Christ-like, “to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6). This implies, among other things, a similar commitment to be with people, to be present, available to be used by God.

How can reflecting on the concept of Incarnation become an opportunity for service as we explore how God is also in our own bodies?

Poetry and Music seem fitting ways to evoke the mystery of unseen things.

Over the Rhine’s dreamy Christmas Album, The Darkest Night of the Year captures the ways adult hearts yearn for wonder.

Paul’s words from Philippians 2:5-11 have such a rhythm to them that readers over the centuries have wondered if he used an existing hymn or even penned the poetry himself. Because of this, the passage is often called The Christ Hymn and that rhythm still draws the reader into a place of reflection on the nature of Christ’s incarnation and humility. If you have a musically-gifted crowd (or a leader who is able to help worshipers compose on the spot), put this hymn to music in your own way. Try different translations of the scripture to find the one that has the best meter. Or have a reading of the hymn as poetry. Ask worshipers to write their own versions.

Lyrics like “Lord of Lords in human vesture” make the hymn, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence perfect for an Incarnation-themed worship experience.

The Celtic song, Christ Child’s Lullaby, draws us into the mysteries as Mary might have experienced them with these lyrics: ”You are my God and helpless Son, High Ruler of Mankind.”

Which poetry or music brings to mind for you the mysteries of Christ’s incarnation?

Categories: Curation