In December the ancient Celts found themselves under the Elder Moon.
Known as Ruish (roo-esh) in Gaelic, the elder tree was known to protect against negative forces, including pests like fruit flies and mosquitos, and so elder was often hung from doorways or in kitchen windows throughout the year. It was also sought out as medicine for so many, and is said to have natural antiviral properties. The elder tree was one you sought when you needed help.
The elder tree is bruised easily, but also regrows quickly, which is why the ancients named this moon at this time of year for this tree. Everything feels fragile right now. But, as the Irish phrase goes, “Every beginning is weak” (bionn gach tosach lag). Fragility allows for birth.
December is about beginnings sprouting from endings. As we head closer and closer to the solstice, the days shorten almost to the point of non-existence (or, at least it feels like that). But the ancients believed that the sun that faded-but-never-abandoned them made a new covenant annually with the earth in these days.
When Christianity began to have an influence and decided to place the celebration of Jesus’ birth in this month at the time of the Yule celebrations, it made so much sense to the Celts that they didn’t bat an eye: a new covenant with the Son/sun was appropriate in these shadow days.
The ancient Celts felt that December was a time for wombing, anyway. The fields were fallow. The family tended to be physically lax but mentally focused. In December they did their “inner-work,” pondering how the shadows of their own being (as Jung would say) helped them live into their full selves.
We’d do well to follow that lead.
And we may find that, at the end of December, we, like the elder tree, find ourselves being birthed differently into a new year after doing the inner work under the Elder Moon.
Today the church remembers a triple threat of a politician, theologian, and hymn-writer: St. Ambrose of Milan, Peacemaker, Bishop, and Doctor of the Church.
St. Ambrose is the first Roman church leader born into and raised in the faith. His father was a Prefect of Gaul, and Ambrose was sent to study the classics of the law in Rome.
When he was just thirty-three years old he was appointed the governor of Liguria and Aemilia, and took his seat in Milan where the imperial court was regularly convened.
And then it happened: the Bishop of Milan was an Arian (the strain of Christendom that was competing with Orthodox Catholicism at the time…recall the legend of St. Nicholas punching Arius at the Council of Nicaea), and violent clashes started to break out between the Arians and the Catholics.
St. Ambrose kept his cool and quieted the clashes, and because he was so appreciated on both sides of the aisle, he was unanimously acclaimed as the new Bishop even though he hadn’t been baptized or ordained.
It was a “rush order initiation” for in the year 373 (or maybe 374?) St. Ambrose was baptized a Christian, ordained a priest, and consecrated a Bishop.
Immediately St. Ambrose began doing Bishop-y things like giving half his family wealth to the poor and changing his dress and tastes to reflect humility rather than opulence. He also began, in short order, to make Milan a center of learning, and through his own preaching, writing, organizing, and administration had influence far beyond his little corner of the waning Empire.
Through his writing he inspired one who is thought to be, next to St. Paul, the church’s crown jewel theologian: St. Augustine of Hippo (baptized by St. Ambrose in Milan at the Easter Vigil in 387).
But, see, all this influence and competency comes at a price. Justina, the Empress and mother of Valentinian, became jealous of St. Ambrose and how many fans, followers, and ancient retweets he was getting. She secretly devised a coalition to speak out against the Bishop, tried to retake and rename some of his cathedrals and basilicas in the name of the Arian streak of the faith, effectively pitting portions of the church against the other in order to gain their loyalty.
Doesn’t sound at all like politics today…
St. Ambrose decided not to play Justina’s games. He stood fast, at times seeking refuge inside his own church surrounded by his parishioners as Imperial soldiers attempted to capture him. During these moments of siege it is said that St. Ambrose led the gathered congregation in songs that he himself wrote, an impromptu sing-along to wage a non-violent war against the weapons of the state.
Again, doesn’t sound like any protests I know of…
Eventually Justina realized she was never going to have the following of St. Ambrose, and she stopped her assault, the courts withdrew their edicts for Catholic oppression and the arrest of the Bishop, and he got back to writing, preaching, and teaching.
A couple of fun facts: he’s considered one of the four pillar “Doctors of the Church,” and is credited with the saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” This last piece of advice was given to his charges who, when they came upon liturgical differences in the Mass that were regional, asked the good Bishop which ordo to follow.
The good Bishop, understanding hospitality, told them to do what the locals do. Because, well, “When in Rome…”
“The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds—and also big enough to shut out the voice of the poor…
There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.”
St. Ambrose died on the Vigil of Easter, April 4th, 397. Though some remember him on that day, today is a better opportunity, the day of his baptism-ordination-consecration, because it doesn’t conflict with the moveable Easter Feast.
St. Ambrose is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that sometimes the best church leaders are those who know how to stand against the headwinds of worldly power.
And no book can tell you how to do that.
-historical bits gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
-icon written by the saints at Monastery Icons (monasteryicons.com)
Today is one of my favorite Feast Days for one of my favorite saints: Saint Nicholas, Bishop, Patron Saint of Sailors, and Gift-giver.
It is ironic that little is known about the life of Saint Nicholas, this Bishop of a seaport town in what is now Turkey, because he’s one of the most beloved and recognizable saints in popular culture. We know that he was born in the 4th Century, and that he attended the Council of Nicaea where he is purported to have socked Arius (considered a heretic at the time) right in the face. Anyone who has served on a church council understands that it can get a bit testy sometimes…
But other than the above (and the whole “punched Arius” thing may not even be accurate), all else that is said about St. Nicholas is lore and legend.
It is said of him that, as an infant, he refused to nurse on Wednesdays and Fridays, typically fasting days for the pious.
It is said that he aided a poor family once by paying the dowry of three daughters, saving them from a life of prostitution. On three successive nights he threw bags of coins through an open window. This act is how he became known as the patron saint of gift-giving.
It is said that he saved three boys who had been kidnapped by a butcher and returned them to their parents.
It is said that he aided sailors in trouble off the coast of Myra by calming a storm, and showed great courage himself while out on the sea. This is why he is the patron saint of seafarers.
Today around the world Saint Nicholas will be impersonated by many utilizing a long, white beard, parading around in Bishop vestments. In some places small children dress up like the saint to beg for alms for the poor.
In America the rituals of St. Nicholas Day have almost all been moved to December 25th and melded with other Christian-Solstice practices. Still, in some homes (like mine), children leave their shoes out by the fireplace or in the foyer of the home, hoping that St. Nicholas will come by on his horse and leave chocolate coins, oranges, and small trinkets as gifts. The coins are an homage to the legend of the dowries.
The festivities and legends surrounding Saint Nicholas have melded with Norse and Celtic winter legends and lore in these days. Looking more like Odin now than a short, brown-skinned Bishop (which he most certainly was), common depictions of Santa Claus bear little resemblance to this ancient priest from Asia Minor. Still, the practice of gift-giving and charity is certainly worth continuing in whatever form it takes, and in that way St. Nicholas is kept alive age after age in one form or another.
Saint Nicholas is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that charity and love are languages that are universal and, in the form of Saint Nick, take on hands, feet, and a face every year. There is much to be learned about human nature and human connection from the fact that his appeal is so wide and varied!
It almost makes one hopeful, yes?
-historical notes gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations and too many Rick Steves documentaries on Christmas
“Preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Epiphany this last weekend. Went in with one sermon, but ended up doing this one…
Our ancient mothers and fathers conceived of God as being a bit wild. Why do you think the angels always open with the words, “Fear not!”? We’ve domesticated God, equating God with Santa Clause, the giver of gifts and tally-taker of who is on the nice and naughty list. But God’s encounter with Moses was not the red of a flannel suit and rosy cheeks, but a bush on wild-fire, defying physics and tantalizing the imagination.
We’ve domesticated Jesus, pretending he votes our values (or we vote his), putting him in stark white robes so that he looks like the pastor we’ve always dreamed of (with considerably more hair). But perhaps Jesus is more John the Baptist than John Smith.
We’ve domesticated the Holy Spirit, relegating her to a peaceful dove who gently alights upon shoulders and inspires beautiful paintings. But maybe the Holy Spirit is more gadfly than dove, aggravating more often than alighting. For this example, I appreciate my Celtic ancestry. They referred to the Holy Spirit as “Ah Gaedh-Glas” or “The Wild Goose,” sending the Celts on a wild goose chase, literally, as they sought out the Spirit to inform their lives.
And if God is wild, then the kingdom of God is wild.”
On December 5th the church honors an interesting Saint who sought to incorporate some pagan practices into the Christian faith and life (and, for that alone, he has my admiration): St. Clement of Alexandria, Priest and Scholar.
St. Clement of Alexandria (not to be confused with the Clement of Rome or any of the other many Clements of the ancient world) was a Greek philosopher born in the middle of the Second Century. He found himself making a home in Alexandria, the center of scholarship in the ancient world, and he headed up a school there that would eventually teach catechumenates about the faith.
St. Clement is noteworthy because he was a seeker of truth, and though a professed Christian he honored the truths and practices that other religious paths offered. He defended the faith in the midst of both his pagan friends and his Christian friends, trusting that melding certain practices was not only necessary, but good and human.
He believed that many of the ancient texts the church was using were wonderfully allegorical and applicable to life, and in this way he expanded the reach of the church in philosophical circles. Origen, the greatest biblical scholar of the early church, was his pupil.
His writings are some of the first systematics documents for the church.
St. Clement is a reminder for me, and should be for the church, that “purity” is a fiction we cannot afford in the world when it comes to practices, dogmas, and doctrines. It is appropriate that we honor St. Clement of Alexandria in the Advent-Christmas season because this time of year, in particular, is a beautiful bouquet of melded practices for humanity.
We need not run from this truth or try in vain to defend that it is not so. We must embrace it, revel in its particular beauties, and be at peace.
In the breaking days of December the church honors a Saint who found himself in a church at a breaking point: St. John of Damascus, Hymnwriter and Priest.
Born in 675, St. John was born into a wealthy family and was elevated to a political position of prominence at quite a young age when he succeeded his father as an official in the Court of the Caliph of Damascus.
He felt a call to the faith, and became a monk at the monastery of Mar Saba (still in existence!), a hermit colony founded in the year 484. It was there that he gave up his position in the Caliphate Court and devoted himself to simplicity, the study of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, and the priesthood. He was ordained in 725.
It was about this time that the church began to crumble under the weight of melding practices. The Eastern and Western churches were evolving drastically different approaches to faith and life. It would take another 300 years for the split to become official, but it is here in history that we can see the fault lines.
In these days the Byzantine emperor Leo III forbade the veneration of sacred images and icons, and ordered their destruction. St. John of Damascus wrote vehemently that icons and sacred images were portals and glimpses of the Divine, not Divine themselves, and should be saved and maintained. As part of his logic, he successfully defended the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as well, against those who would dismiss it.
St. John of Damascus wrote great mystical treatises on theology, too, that are still foundational for the Orthodox community.
For all of the above, St. John of Damascus is considered by the Eastern Church as the last of its Fathers.
We still sing the writings of St. John, by the way. That wonderful Easter hymn sung every year that goes, “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!” came from his golden pen. He authored a number of Easter hymns that still sing out the faith to this day every Spring.
St. John of Damascus died near Jerusalem around 760. He is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that icons and objects can be glimpses of Divine presence in this world, and we need not take everything at face value.
Indeed, nothing is “face value” when it comes to the Divine. God is always more than they appear…and godly things can be, too.
-historical notes from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
“The writer of the Gospel of Matthew loves a good quote, especially from the Hebrew scriptures. In fact by my arm-chair counting, Matthew will quote the Hebrew scriptures or use an allusion to them over 70 times in his retelling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He’s big on connecting the story of Jesus to the Hebrew scriptures, and today he attempts to quote the prophet Isaiah.
‘Attempt,’ I say, because he actually misquotes Isaiah…
Matthew has Isaiah saying, ‘A voice cries out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord!’
See, in Isaiah’s 40th chapter the prophet doesn’t write that. Instead, the prophet writes:
‘A voice cries out, ‘In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord!’
You might not think this matters much, and perhaps it doesn’t for the text…it fits so well, right? Matthew wants John the Baptizer (I refuse to just give him to the Baptists) to be the voice we think of crawling out of the wilderness with his PETA-offending clothes and unusual diet telling us to prepare the way of the Lord.
And that’s all well and good, except Beloved.
Well.
Sometimes I think we’re the ones who find ourselves in the wilderness of life, no?
Sometimes I think we’re the ones who find ourselves in the wilderness of church life coming out of a pandemic and the pews are a little emptier than before.
Sometimes we’re the ones who find ourselves in the wilderness of a bed that is empty on one side where it used to be filled.
Or the wilderness of an empty-nester house.
Or the wilderness of a lifeless job, a lifeless marriage, an unwanted singleness, a confused state in between all of those things.
Or perhaps some are in the wilderness time of regret for things done and things left undone, as our Rite of Confession says. The things that weigh on our hearts can sometimes keep us lost in the wilderness of guilt and anxiety, and John the Baptizer speaks clearly to that kind of wilderness today…
And we may think that these sorts of things are some sort of mistakes in our life, a misquote perhaps, or that something we’ve done or not done have made us a misquote in this world, where something is not quite what it should be because it all just doesn’t feel right, and we’re coming up on the holidays and, well, it just might not feel quite right this year.
We may think we’re the mistake, misquote of existence, by God.
And here is John the Baptizer, Beloved, breaking into that noise to remind us that whether we’re in the wilderness or not, it is in the wilderness where the paths of God are made.”
For the ancient Celts, December was a month where they celebrated light being born from winter’s long shadows.
They believed that, on the solstice, the sun would jump up and retreat back down for just a moment, seemingly staying in roughly the same place, signaling that it would once again keep it’s promise to bless the people with its presence the next year.
Every year they believed the sun was born again.
They’d honor this birth with days and days of celebration, usually around twelve, and they would perform ritual acts of welcome including dancing, drama, music, games of feat, and above all, lighting fires that they thought would help the newly-born, fledgling sun gain strength. The “yule log” was both for heat and for fueling the sun back into its summer glory.
Also, interesting tidbit: “yule” is probably where we get the word “jolly” from in English.
Even after Christianity had overlaid its own festival onto the celebrations of Ireland and Scotland, the pagan roots shone (and shine!) through. The Scandinavian settlements of the area had dyed the yule practices in the proverbial wool of the people.
Today the church remembers the Martyrs of El Salvador.
Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel were Catholic Missionaries, Ursuline, and Maryknoll Sisters murdered in 1980 for their outspoken defense of the plight of the powerless and poor. Accompanying the people there, they were irritating the powers of the day with their theology of liberation and hope.
These four sisters were murdered on this day in the same year that Archbishop Romero was murdered, though he was killed in March.
Instead of recounting the details of their lives, I’ll just share a bit from a letter Sister Clarke wrote to her companion, Katie, just before she was murdered:
“There are so many deaths everywhere that it is incredible.
The ‘death squadron’ strikes in so many poor homes. A family of seven, including three small children, was machine-gunned to death in a nearby town just last week. It is a daily thing–bodies everywhere, many decomposing or attacked by animals because no one can touch them until they are seen by a coroner. It is an atmosphere of death.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring…Write to me soon. Know that I love you and pray for you daily. Keep us in your heart and prayers, especially the poor forsaken people.”
The days surrounding Christmas are filled with Feast Days, some beautiful (like St. Nicholas), and some tragic like today. This is because the Divine entered into the world not as we would like it to be, but as it is: beautiful and tragic.
These martyrs today are a reminder to me, and should be for the church, that the first victims of any sort of violence are the poor and vulnerable.
If you need confirmation of that, just ask any medical professional who they treated most for COVID-19.
Those with means, good insurance, fewer health conditions (that are easily and often exacerbated by poverty!), and who can take off work to get treatment without fear of losing their job largely recovered.
Those without, did not.
It is a different kind of violence, a more negligent kind on the part of the powers of the world, but it is violence none-the-less.
“I once heard you should never vote for a politician who tells you how to pray, and you should never listen to a pastor who tells you how to vote,” their parting email said.
The family would be leaving the church because I was “too liberal,” even though I had never told anyone how to vote, from the pulpit or otherwise. I mentioned this fact, by the way, and he said, “Yes, but we can tell what you think about it and how you’d wish we would vote…”
That’s a big assumption.
No goodbye in the office. No farewell. Just an email with no subject line.
It hurts when people leave your church over politics. It still stings me, even now, to think on that family and a number of others.
It feels like a failure of some sort, like you couldn’t keep people together.
By the way, the translation of the above phrase actually should be, “you couldn’t keep people happy,” which is absolutely true. A pastor’s call is not to keep people happy, anyway, despite what the people will tell you…
It hurts when people leave because they see you have a bumper sticker for a different candidate than they prefer (this actually happened, btw).
It hurts when people leave because you were just trying to keep them safe with masks and social distancing and they wanted to “trust Jesus” rather than “trust the science,” pitting Jesus against science in a way that I think would make Jesus himself scratch his ancient head.
It hurts when people leave because you talk about tending the poor and needy and they hear “socialist!” instead of hearing Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jesus, and Paul.
It hurts when people leave because you say “Black Lives Matter,” because it’s just true and Jesus was a person of color and all they hear is the filtered funnel of the media.
It hurts when people leave because you mentioned the existential threat of gun violence in that one sermon because, honestly, it is an existential threat that is killing our babies (and if mental health is such an issue…which is certainly is…suicide alone is enough reason not to keep a gun in the house!), and all they heard was that you think all guns are terrible.
The honest truth is that it hurts like hell. Even if you know that they won’t be upset all the time anymore, and even if you know that this kind of a break is coming, and even if you know that you won’t have to sweat when opening your email inbox on Monday because they’re perturbed by something they heard or thought they heard or pretended to hear on Sunday, it hurts.
Even when you see it coming from a mile away, it hurts.
No two-ways about it.
And you know what? It hurts even more when you see them at the grocery store around town, or see their social media posts about how happy they are at their new church where the pastor “never talks about politics” (translation: doesn’t talk about political things I disagree with). It hurts even more when they still hang out with the people who stayed and you see them at parties, but you don’t talk to them, or feel like you can, because no matter what the truth about their leaving is, it feels like it’s because of you.
You.
And it is at this point where you might expect I’d say something like, “They’re better off,” or “You don’t need them,” or “Shake the dust from your feet and move on,” or “But look at all the new people joining!” or “It’s not you, it’s them.”
But I’m not going to, because I can’t.
While all of those platitudes might be true, none of it heals the other deep truth that it. just. hurts.
In this Advent season I clutch perpetual hope tightly, hanging on as if my life depends on it (which it probably does). But I do wonder if pastoring in these hyper-partisan times is perhaps the hardest in recent history, and I’m not sure where hope plays into that in the immediate moment.
Even so, pastor, I hope the pain recedes in time.
And I hope those people, even in my life, are happy how they find themselves.
And I hope that one day political partisanship won’t split the pews and the pulpits.
Reluctant Xtian 