Wesley Bros.

Forgive the low-ball comedy in this one.  Recently, a pastor was holding a baptismal remembrance ceremony.  As the entire church came one by one before him, he would mark their forehead, saying, “Remember your baptism, and be thankful.”  One woman came to him in the line and refused him, saying, “No way, pastor…I heard there is a transgender person in my son’s confirmation class.  We are a bible-believing church.  You can’t let that kid be confirmed!”  With great grace, the pastor asked this mom to come back and talk to him about it another time…he continued to help everyone else remember their baptism.

Later, one-on-one, the pastor informed this parent that transgender people have the highest suicide and self-harm rates of anyone.  He informed this mom that this kid had already been chased out of another church because of the self-righteous hard hearts, and that this would not happen in our church. When our state of NC had just passed a bill that allows Christian business owners to discriminate against gays and transgender people, we would show this child that this is not us. In our church, we would amaze this kid with the love of God, and the love of this community.  Believe it or not, that mom’s heart was changed.  She began to see this transgender kid as something more…a child of God.  She ended up praying for the child and his family.

And where did these Christians get the idea that they were sharing God’s love by discrimination disguised as protecting themselves?  In Acts 8, we get the amazing story of Philip sharing the gospel with a sexual minority.  The Ethiopian eunuch would have been castrated as a boy against his will, making him both a victim of abuse and forever incapable of entering the Jerusalem temple to worship God (Deuteronomy 23:1).  After leaving Jerusalem where he had come to worship, only to be reminded that his trans-gender nature barred him from the walls of God’s house, the eunuch was drawn by the Isaiah passage that reminded him of himself:

“As a sheep led to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was taken away from him.  Who can tell the story of his descendants because his life was taken from the earth?”

The Holy Spirit drops Philip by the eunuch’s side, just in time to overhear him reading this text.  Philip shares the gospel with him, and it turns out that Jesus actually died for transgender people because Jesus believed they are worth it.  The eunuch was so elated he asked to be baptized.  Philip, who had grown up with the temple holiness codes, didn’t think twice about whether or not this sexual minority belonged to the church.  He baptized him at once.

I listened to Against Me! while working on this one this week.  They’re not for everyone in my normal audience, but their latest album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, has really opened my eyes to the internal struggle that seems to be common for people experiencing transgender dysphoria.  In one song where the band judges idiot Americans, the singer hauntingly says, “While I hope I’m not like them, I’m not so sure.”  It’s just as easy for people who are are more open to transgendered people to become judgmental of those who aren’t.  The point isn’t to look at other people like they’re idiots for not believing the way you do.

I’m in this weird position as a pastor, where I know loads of people who absolutely LOVE Christian movies.  They are wonderful people I love so much.  They want me to take my youth group to see these movies.  And they seem to have really moving experiences watching these movies.  In fact, I was likely the teenager who would have really loved these movies (I did after all, get rid of all my secular CD’s and dive wholesale into the Christian music market).  And then there’s me today, who doesn’t just hate these movies, I’m usually blatantly offended by them…maybe not all Christian movies ever, but ESPECIALLY the God’s Not Dead franchise.

Here’s why.  They are not in any way actually evangelistic, in no way designed to convert a person into a believer, but instead, to affirm this Christian sub-culture, to pat Christians on the back and make us feel good about ourselves.  The Christians are flat, perfect characters, persecuted for their beliefs, while the non-Christian characters are flat, antagonizing jerks.  These movies tend to become propaganda for a very particular version of conservative American Christianity, inflating this bizarre victimization of “We’re just not allowed to say the name ‘Jesus’ anymore,” and confusing that with actual persecution.

This puts me in a weird position as a very different kind of Christian with many non-Christian friends and acquaintances.  Most of these people are ex-Christians because they have come to believe that the Religious Right, and this Christian sub-culture that’s been formed more by Capitalism than by Christ, is all that the Church is.  And who can blame them for rejecting that?  But then they’re just confused about why I would want to be even remotely associated with that scene.  They’re so turned off by this brand of Christianity that it requires the rest of us to really up our ante with our witness.

You see, I’m still evangelical.  I want my non-Christian friends to know Christ.  I want them to know the joy and beauty that I have found in Jesus.  And so I am inspired by the story of St. Francis travelling to Egypt during the Crusades to try to convert Islamic Sultan Malik Al-Kamil.  St. Bonaventure (a biographer of Francis) described the encounter this way:

The sultan asked them by whom and why and in what capacity they had been sent, and how they got there; but Francis replied that they had been sent by God, not by men, to show him and his subjects the way of salvation and proclaim the truth of the Gospel message.  when the sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage, he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.”

Malik never converted to Christianity, and when he shared about Allah, St. Francis never converted to Islam.  But the two men demonstrated respect for each other’s religion, respect that didn’t deny the truth they believed about their own.  Francis was impressed by the Muslim practice of praying 5 times daily, and the sultan encouraged him to practice it.  And the sultan experienced a profound truth that not all Christians believed he was worthless if he didn’t convert.  You see, I can believe that Jesus is the only way to the Father, and still respect another person’s devotion to their different faith.  I try to make my witness to non-Christians one that begins with respect for their beliefs, even when I disagree.  If Jesus says, “This is how the world will know you are my disciples, if you love one another,” then I want to shape relationships that show real love, real respect, and genuine friendship even if a person never ends up following Christ the way I think they should.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  The earth shook, and the rocks were split.  The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.  After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.  Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Matthew 27:52-54

Many church fathers wrote about this tiny little incident, only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, wherein the zombie apocalypse commenced.  These church fathers help us theologically interpret Matthew’s narrative.  For instance, Gregory of Nazianzus (330-389 AD) says, “He lays down his life, but He has the power to take it again; and the veil rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened, the rocks are cleft, the dead arise.  He dies but he gives life, and by his death destroys death.  He is buried, but He rises again.  He goes down to Hell, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead…”  What’s theologically significant in Matthew is that Jesus’ DEATH conquers death…not just his resurrection.  Jesus’ death destroys the holy border that kept Israel from God’s presence.  Jesus’ death sets the captives free from Hell.  This text is connected to the idea that Jesus broke into Hell and set loose all the saints who had died before he came to earth.

Protestant Reformer John Calvin notes some of the logical questions raised by Matthew’s wording and timeline, writing,

“This was a particular portent in which God testified that His Son had entered death’s prison, not to stay there shut up, but to lead all free who were held captive… That is the reason why He, who was soon to be shut in a tomb opened the tombs elsewhere.  Yet we may doubt whether this opening of the tombs happened before the resurrection, for the resurrection of the saints…followed, in my opinion, the resurrection of Christ.  It is absurd for some interpreters to image that they spent three days alive and breathing, hidden in tombs.  It seems likely to me that at Christ’s death the tombs at once opened; at His resurrection some of the godly men received breath and came out and were seen in the city.  Christ is called the Firstborn from the dead… This reasoning agrees very well, seeing that the breaking of the tombs was the presage of new life, and the fruit itself, the effect, appears three days later, as Christ rising again led other companions from the graves with Himself.  And in this sign it was shown that neither His dying nor His resurrection were private to himself, but breathe the odor of life into all the faithful.”

That’s beautiful, Calvin…and probably my favorite explanation of all the one’s I’ve read.  But I want to know the rest of the story!!!  Matthew DOES say that the bodies were raised the moment Christ died, but they didn’t appear to anyone until after the resurrection.  Matthew leaves us guessing about what happened to all these undead.  Did they move in with their ancestors?  Did they crumble back into dust, and if so, what was the point?  Did they take off into the sky with Jesus when he ascended, which would have been mentioned, I think?  Do they continue to roam the earth, lurking in your church shadows late at night, long past the point of remembering what it means to love others the way Christ loves them, mumbling, “Weeeeev nevvvrrrrr donnnn ittttt thaattttt wayyyy beforrrrrrr……”

It’s a funny thing, coming to take the bread and the wine.  We all bring different levels of understanding, or of not understanding.  We all come with different strengths of faith or lack of faith.  Different Christian traditions have different limits on who can receive Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist.  That’s because they each have different understandings of what it means.  My favorite summary teaching on the Eucharist comes from St. Augustine of Hippo, who taught catechumens on the meaning of communion by saying, “Be what you see, receive what you are.”  What happens in the Eucharist always requires some sort of translation, some kind of imperfect metaphor to help a person begin to grasp this incredible mystery.

This comic is not meant to cover all the breadth of theology surrounding the Eucharist, nor is the punchline some culmination or summary of Eucharistic theology.  Rather, I wanted to convey the beauty of the communion of saints who gathers at the table, the variety of theology that enriches our understanding.  Perhaps in one of these saints you hear echoes of how you tend to understand this Holy Mystery.  As I youth minister, it’s always a joy to help a person find Christ in translation.

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast; let every soul be Jesus’ guest. Ye need not one be left behind, for God hath bid all humankind.

Palm Sunday was much more political than most Christians would like.  Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt, a symbolic messianic gesture (see Zechariah 9:9), in a processional that could easily be construed as mocking the triumphal entries of Pontius Pilate or other Roman leaders into town. The palm branches are also the symbol of a victorious ruler, and of the coming Messiah (1 Macc 13, Naphtali 5).  When the Pharisees chastise Jesus to silence the crowd, he responds with a quip from Habbakuk 2:9-11…

“Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,    setting his nest on high    to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,    shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out,    and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.”

As I go to vote in the North Carolina primaries, it haunts me to know that Christians are being associated with rhetoric that is so opposed to the way of Christ.  I in no way wish to endorse one political candidate as more Christ-like than another… I’ve never been too impressed with candidates who use Christianity as a way to draw votes for themselves, and I’m especially turned off by anyone who calls themselves a leader by capitalizing on the fears and hysteria of the masses.

Just as on the first Palm Sunday, Christ is entering the back door, maybe on a moped this time, countering this culture of hatred we have built…  While we raise our glasses to those who would protect us from the people we have pushed aside, the very stones and woodwork of our security cry out against us, proclaiming, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  The call of Christ, especially on this Palm Sunday, is one that challenges every wall we build to protect ourselves at the expense of others.

Claim me for Thy service, claim All I have and all I am.

Take my soul and body’s powers, Take my memory, mind, and will, / All my goods, and all my hours, All I know, and all I feel, / All I think, and speak, and do; / Take my heart–but make it new.

—Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.

Theosis is an Eastern Orthodox understanding of salvation that is incredibly influential on John & Charles Wesley’s theology.  It’s best articulated by an early Church Father, St. Athanasius, who wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”  It might sound a little weird at first, but think about it…the entirely holy, eternal God entered our finite and sinful existence so that we sinful and finite people could become holy and live eternally with God.  For Wesleyans, this is a lifelong process of sanctification, or being made more and more like Christ as we live lives that reflect the mind and attitude of Christ.

Kenosis is the Greek word for “emptied,” found in Philippians 2:5-11.  For our lives to reflect the mind and attitude of Christ, we must imitate the one who crafted the universe  and left behind his reign in Heaven to enter into our sinful existence and love the least of these.  We must never see ourselves as above others, but humble ourselves to serve the very people whom Christ died to save.  There’s a lot of theological debate about what “kenosis” really implies about the nature of the God-Man (that’s Jesus), but for the Wesley’s all that matters is the practicality of it all.  Jesus emptied himself and chose the life of a human who would die on a cross…and that means that to become like God is to empty ourselves and serve, no matter how smelly, no matter how ungrateful the recipients are, even if your actions never lead to their redemption or happy ending.

Bromhidrosis is the closest I could come to ‘stinky feet,’ but it really just means smelly sweat, which is the cause of stinky feet.  For the Gospel writer, John, when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he showed the real depths of his love and self-emptying.  The very God who created the atoms and souls that would become each of us, this very God chose to display his love and power by taking on a servant’s role, moving past the point of privilege and authority and into the realm of intimacy and lowliness for the sake of the other.

The poem in the central panel is part paraphrase, part original text from a Charles Wesley Hymn found in the 1739 Collection, in the section titled, “For Believers Working.”  Here’s the text:

Arise, my soul, arise, / Thy Saviour’s sacrifice! / All the names that love could find, / All the forms that love could take, / Jesus in himself has joined, / Thee, my soul, his own to make.

Equal with God most high, / He laid his glory by: He th’eternal God was born, / Man with men he deigned t’appear, / Object of his creature’s scorn, / Pleased a servant’s form to wear.

High above every name, / Jesus, the great I AM! / Bows to Jesus every knee, / Things in heaven, and earth, and hell; / Saints adore him, demons flee, / Fiends, and men, and angels feel.

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and Joy. Amen.

-Mother Theresa

It is a common reaction for Americans serving the poor to share about their experience with things like, “We are so blessed,” and of third world poverty, “Even though they have nothing, they seemed so happy.”  We develop a theology about God that lacks confluence, or the merging of those kinds of phrases with what they actually imply.  “We are so blessed,” often implies that those who have little are not blessed.  Closer inspection of the way we use these “blessings” of material wealth primarily for ourselves reveals a theology of hard work and luck (I earned this life for myself and I’m lucky it hasn’t been taken from me).  But Jesus never taught, “Blessed are the high-end grocery shoppers, for they shall never lack gourmet cuisine.”  Jesus taught, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

The reality of our world is that we are born into economic disparity, and the social structures in place create a tremendous up-hill battle for the poor.  Those with privilege who realize and care about this disparity often toss up our hands, overwhelmed by how impossible it seems to actually make a difference.  The problems are just too big, and we are too comfortable with our lifestyle to anything meaningful.

Basil the Great took seriously the command of Christ to “sell your possessions and give to those in need.”  He challenged our normal objections to these words, reminding us the logic of our wealth.  If you think everything you have you earned for yourself, you are an atheist, unwilling to recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If you recognize you have nothing that you have not received from God, you must give an account for why God gave you so much and others so little.  “Is God unjust, who divided to us the things of this life unequally?”  Basil uses confluence to merge the reality of economic disparity with belief in a just and loving God.  Life is the way it is because God intends for you with wealth to share with you who have none.  Basil taught that the wealthy claiming their wealth as their own is like someone calling fives on a seat at a theater…you are taking public property and saying it belongs to you, getting mad when someone else takes the seat.  In other words, everything you have beyond what you need for basic survival belongs to those who don’t have enough for their own basic survival.  Because it belongs to them, you are robbing from them by keeping it for yourself, you greedy cheater-pants.

In the Wesleyan tradition, we teach that we experience the grace of God as we practice works of mercy.  As we give generously to those in need, the lines get blurred between who is being served.  Giving away from your stores begins to set you free from the trap of your possessions.  Meeting the people who struggle to survive, learning to love them, transforms our hearts more and more to see Christ in everyone, enlarging our hearts for peace with justice on this earth.

Zwingli Loves Sausage.

Lent is that weird season where Christians go on a diet.  Catholics and Orthodox give up meat (at least on Fridays), and High Church Protestants give up caffeine or booze or chocolate or social media.  One of my students this year gave up giving up stuff, meaning, he won’t be participating in the Lenten fast.  Historically, its 40-ish days of fasting a la Jesus in the wilderness, preparing the soul for Easter.  The truth is most Protestants don’t really get into fasting, in general, or for just 40 days.  I characterized this with the true story of Swiss Reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, who literally threw a sausage party the first Sunday of Lent in 1522 to protest Roman Catholic practices.  Take that, pope!

John Wesley didn’t actually keep Lent; he essentially did away with it in his Methodist Church calendar.  Wesley saw self-denial as crucial to true discipleship, but also recognized it to be one of the most misunderstood practices of the faith.  You had extremists to didn’t see the point of fasting, and therefore lived in the liberty and gluttony of enjoying everything to the utmost all the time.  You had other extremists who fasted so hard they took their self-deprecation as a point of pride.  Wesley proposed, and lived, a much more moderate and regular practice of fasting that is applicable for all people.  You should stop reading this and click here to read his sermon on Self Denial right now, because it’s better than anything I could say.

Wesley took Christ’s challenge seriously…to deny yourself and daily take up your cross.  For Wesley, self denial didn’t mean mistreatment of your body or super harsh and impossible self-masochism.  Self denial means second-hand shopping, it means living below your means so that you can give away the extra to those in need.  Self denial always carried with it the practical rule that you give yourself less so that you can give others more.  Eat less expensively and extravagantly.  Buy less for yourself so that you can budget more for those with nothing.  Wesley expected all of his ministers to completely abstain from food every Friday, and to dive deep into prayer on those days.  He taught that fasting and self-denial were the ways you feed your relationship with Christ, while feeding ever appetite you have only makes it more difficult to follow Christ.

John Wesley was pretty notorious as an “editor.”  Whether he was republishing other people’s tracts as his own work (with a few revisions), or enhancing brother Charles’ lyrics, John had no qualms with taking material that he thought was good and rearranging it to make it better fit the overall thrust of the Methodist movement.  This was fairly common practice for his day, as there were no real copyright laws governing these shenanigans.  Some of Wesley’s editing cuts resulted in more popular versions of the original song.  A case in point is the hymn in the background of this comic, Praise to the Lord  From All Nations, by Isaac Watts.  Watts had made a few minor revisions of his own work, but Wesley went crazy with it, rearranging the lines of the verses, scrapping entire concepts within the song, and finally resulting in the weirdly named, Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne.  This actually became a much beloved hymn after Wesley’s revisions.  What I love about all this is that even though John allowed himself free reign to alter other’s lyrics, he was pretty opposed to anyone else revising the songs written by himself and his brother.  “I desire they would not attempt to mend them; for they really are not able…None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse,” he said, because he and Charles wrote such perfect songs.

I share this snippet with you because Discipleship Ministries of The UMC just vetted the top 100 CCLI Songs.  This means a group of people looked at the most song contemporary praise songs and have chosen which ones are Green Lighted (okay for Methodists to sing as-is…most of these are just contemporary versions of existing hymns), and which ones are Yellow Lighted (proceed with caution). It’s a fascinating article (read it here), where they recognize that a majority of praise songs are coming out of “charismatic, Pentecostal, Calvinist, or neo-Calvinist” communities.  In a world where you don’t need a hymnal to have music in worship, where any worship leader can choose songs based on their radio popularity, or whatever she or he is most moved by, it can be useful to have the denomination regularly take a look at these songs and offer some theological insight.  Hopefully, theologically trained pastors and worship leaders are already doing this in their own congregations.

Days before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. mourned, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, the same hour when many are standing to sing In Christ There Is No East And West.  Surveys today show that 87% of American congregations are homogeneous, with 67% of that number believing that their church is doing enough to be ethnically diverse (See the Lifeway study on Church Segregation)

I am super frustrated with the lack of real dialogue around the issues of interracial worship.  I work for a white church.  We have small pockets of non-white families that join and participate, a Burmese service that meets in our building but otherwise has no connection to us, and loads of ministries to ESL folk.  But any conversations around worship are really just focused on issues that concern white people.  Bring up trying to be more interracial in our approach to worship and it gets shut down, as if to say, “Look, we’re having a hard enough time convincing the (white) traditional worship crowd to accept that the (white)_contemporary service is real worship.”

I wrestled with addressing interracial worship in a comic because it is so complicated, and comics by nature oversimplify and make blanket statements to poke fun at nuanced issues.  But I couldn’t shake King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, where he said,

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

Calvinists are often quick to dismiss Arminians as “Pelagian” or “semi-Pelagian.”  Aside from the fact that they need to up their taunt-game, it is a categorically untrue accusation of actual Arminian theology.

Pelagius, the 5th century contemporary of Augustine, taught that we have the natural ability to follow Christ, that our nature is essentially good.  Augustine countered with an argument of original sin, that every inclination of the human heart was ultimately self-centered.  For Augustine, it is impossible for anyone to do anything that would incline their hearts to God, and only God’s grace could awaken a soul to transformation.  The church condemned Pelagius’ teachings as heresy, upholding Augustine’s doctrine of original sin as more true to scripture.  Today, a Pelagian is someone who straight up denies the need for God’s grace to do good – that essentially, everybody on their own has the capacity to save themselves by being good people.

The semi-Pelagians sought a middle way between Pelagius and Augustine by emphasizing humanity’s free will enabling us to do enough good to recognize the need for God, but that God’s grace takes us the rest of the way.

Today’s comics tell a story.  The first, visually based on M.C. Escher’s woodcut Mobius Strip II, shows a pretty common view of religion…I’m good enough, God helps those who help themselves.  Before their heart conversions, John and Charles Wesley did both tend to have this attitude.  Charles Wesley himself once wrote, “What! Are not my endeavors a sufficient ground of hope?  Would you rob me of my endeavors?  I have nothing else to trust to.”  You can make a Mobius by taking a strip of paper, giving it one half-twist and taping it into a loop.  It now has only one infinitely continuous side, so if an ant started crawling on it, the ant would return to the very same spot it started without ever crossing an edge.  When we trust only in our own efforts, we are infinitely climbing a ladder to nowhere.

Covenant New Year.

I’m usually optimistic when it comes to the New Year.  I get pumped about going back to the gym, eating healthier, setting better boundaries for work and family.  But this year, I must admit that I wasn’t a fan of 2015, and the political front makes me want to just go ahead and fast forward past the debates of 2016.

The early Methodists practiced getting together over New Year’s Eve for a Watch Night service.  It was a time to pray deeply together and to renew their baptismal covenant with this prayer that John Wesley created.  Often called the Wesley Covenant Prayer, this prayer is meant for Christians who want to go all in, who are willing to do great things for God just as much as they are willing to be “laid aside” for God, amounting to little in the eyes of the world.  As I enter the New Year, I do not place my hope in my own abilities, or in the world around me.  My hope is in the One who claims me, the Christ who died for even me, the God who works all things together for the good of them who love Him.  I hope to enter this year all in, diving headfirst into the expansive ocean of God’s love for me in Christ Jesus.

So, I’m a parent, right?  And I LOVE my 4 and 2 year old kids.  And then my little sweet girl gets presents for Christmas from her grandparents.  And she opens that one gift.  And it’s not a toy, it’s tights.  And she throws the tights at Martha, who gave her the tights.  “I don’t like clothes!” my daughter yells.  “I don’t want clothes!”  And I ran away and never came back.  Who is this little Christmas monster filled to the brim with original sin, that I love so much?

John and Charles Wesley were in the “fear the rod, and cry softly” camp of child-rearing, and I’m just not that guy.  I know it’s impossible to reason with a four year old.  I am working with her to understand the importance of gratitude and mindfulness, and oh yeah, that Christmas is not her birthday.  But the truth is, my mom had these same conversations with me, when I was crying because I got clothes instead of toys for Christmas…as a teenager…

Sometimes the Church is so intent on being the sole bearer of God’s truth, it can throw out the gospel when it is proclaimed back to us by a non-believer.  When John Wesley talked about prevenient grace, he said that there is no person alive who does not have the spark of God’s grace working within them.  Even if a person chooses to never accept God’s full love for them in Christ, that person will never spend a moment in this life completely abandoned from the love of God, for God will always go before them, leading them into God’s love.  This is the hope we have at Christmas time…that this grace which goes before us will truly break our chains, will truly create a brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity where wars cease, ideologies no longer supersede human rights, and community-building is never the result of tearing someone else down.

The first song to be broadcast over radio, O Holy Night, has been a crowd favorite for Celine Dion and Southpark lovers alike.  The song was originally a poem by French wine merchant, Placide Cappeau.  He thought it should be a song, and so he asked his friend, the Jewish composer Adolphe Charles Adams, to create an original tune.  It was first sung in a French congregation on Christmas Eve 1847.  The carol quickly became a French favorite, until the Catholic church discovered that Cappeau had left the faith for socialist philosophy, and Adams had never believed Jesus was the Christ.  The church forbid O Holy Night from being sung in its chapels. However, the people loved it so much they continued to sing it wherever they could.

Eventually, an America abolitionist, John Sullivan Dwight, heard the song and penned an English translation, making it a favorite hymn of the Union during the War of Northern Aggression (that’s what Southerner’s call the Civil War).  There is a legend (almost identical to a legend about Silent Night) in which the French army began singing the song from the trenches, leading to the Germans singing back a Christmas hymn by Martin Luther, leading to 24 hours of peace between the warring armies.  This is supposedly the reason the Church allowed the song to be sung again in its chapels.

In 1906, Reginald Fessenden made the first vocal radio broadcast, reading from the Gospel of Luke and performing O Holy Night on his violin, making it the first song sent by radio waves.