A Better Gospel

Interesting for late autumn, December 5th. Clear in Broad Bay, Maine -- now named Waldoboro, where my Weller ancestors came from Germany in the 1700s -- clear and 25F and 95% with precipitation 10%. 

St. Ignace, Michigan, home of Martin Bell (1937-2009), the forecast is snow and temp in teens. In the U.P. as Michiganders call their Upper Peninsula, St. Ignace is in mind because earlier this week I was looking for my Martin Bell books, couldn’t find them, ordered a replacement for The Way of the Wolf. An Episcopal priest, Father Bell was an interesting person who had a fascinating life. He once lectured at our church in Pennsylvania, then a few years later Linda and I went to Birmingham, Alabama to hear him again at Advent Cathedral. Father Bell and his mind-catching stories about Barrington Bunny, and the Great Silver Wolf, and others stir in me every Advent and every Lent. 

Meantime, here on the shore of St. Andrews Bay we have 70F and foggy over the Bay and in the neighborhood, nice out here on the back porch with coffee and MacBook. One unaccustomed to this sort of December might say it doesn’t feel like Christmas, but it does: a childhood Christmas I remember best was about 1946 and I was wandering our back yard in my bare-feet watching the ground to avoid sandspurs, wearing my new pistol and holster set and shooting anything that moved or didn’t. My usual wish for Christmas was a chemistry set, a cap gun with lots of red rolls of caps, and a new pocketknife. In our neighborhood of boys, the sound of Christmas was the snap of cap guns being fired at each other. Having real and toy guns around all in your growing up years was common, and they didn’t seem threatening and dangerous like today when such horrible things happen that one little boy pointing a finger at another and saying bang gets a first grader expelled, what a crock, what an alphabet crock.  

During Christmas vacation these days do roughhouse boys play cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians or do they gather and read sonnets and Bible stories? What boys do I don’t know anymore, but it isn’t better.

Blogging earlier this week about the annual “Christmas wars” of rock throwing over whether it’s “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” another priest mentioned 1706 in Boston when Christians against Christmas -- mainly Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians -- rioted against Christmas Christians -- Roman Catholics and Episcopalians -- surrounded churches where the ChristMass was being celebrated and smashed out windows. A hundred years later, December 1806, a Protestant mob surrounded a Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan to disrupt the ChristMass and dozens of people were injured, one killed. Times have changed but not really for folks of certitude who think it’s their way or no way. For one, I couldn’t care less whether someone wishes me MC or HH, it's all Joy.

Likely we’ll be hearing a lot about Tim at Riverside, it’s all over the web again this year, but still a great gospel -- 

. . . it was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City’s Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was underway and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was to turn away Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, “There’s no room at the inn!” The innkeeper was played by Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: “There’s no room at the inn!” He had practiced it again and again with his parents and the pageant director and seemed to have mastered it. 

So Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and waited for his reply. Tim’s parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing him to remember his line.

“There’s no room at the inn!” Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled “Wait!” They turned back, startled, and looked at him in surprise.

“You can stay at my house!” he called.

That’s a gotcha every time I hear it, but it’s exactly what happened that night in Bethlehem, it's even better than Martin Bell's "Barrington Bunny" and it’s the only Christmas gospel we need.

TW+ 

Sudden hard rain. And whoever missed last evening's service of "Lessons and Carols" at HNEC is much to be pitied. And not only the wonderful music but Christmas dinner with roast turkey and even Linda's oyster dressing, and a marvelous spicy pasta dish that Judy brought, and ... and ... and ... and afterward Mary Ellen's cake and Nancy's bread pudding with cognac sauce ...