The Park Road Pulpit

When Amy and I were in High School, we were a part of a very active drama department. This troupe of Thespians was led by two unique and wonderful teachers. Barbara Murray was a fiery red-head, who loved to teach English. More than she loved literature, though, “Big Red” loved to coach drama. She had an amazing knack for teaching students, both individual actors and entire casts, to become the characters whose names and identities they had temporarily assumed. Mrs. Murray’s counterpart was an eccentric bachelor, something of a mysterious singleton, almost a misfit in a small South Carolina textile town. Dr. Johnson was known by all of his students simply as “J.T.” He wore a handlebar mustache, smoked like a chimney, and loved to do macrame. During my junior year in high school J.T. held the distinction of possessing the only computer in the entire school. Only the students in his advanced classes had access to this new-fangled machine. (I went to high school in the “Good Ol’ Days!”) J.T. spent much of his spare time either perfecting his macrame creations or designing, supervising, and building the props and backdrops for all of “Big Red’s” productions. Like Murray’s productions, J.T.’s sets were masterpieces.

In these two characters, the school had a best-selling ticket for teaching The Arts. “Big Red” could make football players dance, and she could get guys who otherwise took only shop classes and P.E. to read scripts and discuss historical setting and literary intention. J.T., on the other hand, could turn average, run of the mill red necks into artists of amazing accomplishment!

I can remember going as a child to Belk Auditorium, on the campus of Presbyterian College, and watching what, in my mind, could only have been Broadway quality productions: “Carousel,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” and “South Pacific.” I could not imagine how high school students could have turned out such incredible performances.

When I had the chance to play a role in a full-bore production of Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma,” I learned the secret: preparation – by the boat-load! It may have been Mrs. Murray who taught me that, contrary to popular dictum, “practice [does not] make perfect,” – only “Perfect practice makes perfect.” So actors would begin months in advance, learning lines, and working on blocking. Mrs. Moon’s chorus members learned harmonies. Mr. Henderson’s orchestra nearly memorized a score. Mr. Brinson’s art class helped in the lay-out of various backdrop scenes. And Mr. Miller’s shop class built stages and props. I think the Stagehands and Stars, alike, would agree that it was all worthwhile – not just because of the adrenalin ruch of an opening night performance, or the sentimental flush of a final curtain call – but because of that final week of final preparations. During that week of full run-throughs and dress rehearsals, “Big Red” barked out orders from her seat mid-way into the auditorium, while, backstage, J.T. cussed Stage Managers and prop-runners alike for every missed detail. The preparations went late into the night. The preparation drew everyone together until, finally, “every valley was lifted up,” and “every mountain and hill [had] been made low.” And the story could be told…

As I think back on the productions in which I participated, both on-stage and from the orchestra pit, I have very few memories of the actual nights of the performances. What I remember is all the preparation. If you’re acting – practice is as “real” as it gets!

We hope to have set the stage for this Advent series last week, by convincing you that, sentimental remembrances aside, there are no “Good Ol’ Days.” Especially not with God. If my brief sermon was not convincing enough, let me tell you that, personally, three days without power has done the trick. I can tell you that after this three day month of cutting and splitting firewood, cooking on the back porch with a Coleman Stove, and dressing by candlelight… you can have the “Good Ol’ Days!” Give me the corruption of contemporary society, but on a 25 degree night -- give me some electricity![1]

If there are no “Good Ol’ Days.” If we can be convinced that we live in a world that is Isaiah’s world. If our day is hardly different from that of John the Baptist. If God does, in fact, still “work” among us… then today’s prophecy of preparation should have different meaning to us.

The prophecy of Isaiah, a word first uttered some 2500 years ago, is a word of preparation. “Prepare the way of the LORD.” Get ready. Clear the road. Straighten out the turns. Level the hills. Fill in the low places. Make the path straight, wide, and easy to follow. This prophecy is a word of anticipation, “a voice cries out.” An unexpected voice. In a dry desert where nothing exciting ever happens, a voice cries out. “One is coming,” says Isaiah’s wild-eyed, locust-eating successor, John, “One who is powerful… one whose sandals I don’t deserve even to clasp… one who will baptize with fire.”

If last week’s question was “When are the “Good Ol’ Days?” Then this week’s question is this: “Who is this Jesus? Star? Or Stagehand?

If you read in him a script like Showbiz, then he is undoubtedly the star of the show. Ah… there’s no business like Show Business!

The Christian Church, like any marketing organization, loves a star. Because institutions need someone to sell their products, in order to keep the institution alive. And Jesus has become the Church’s star. We have marketed him until his name, that “name above all names,”[3] I fear, has become another cheap, commercial trinket, in a sea of cheap, commercial trinkets. Who is this Jesus? Star? Or Stagehand?

As I have done before, in trying to define for you my own “Christology,”[4] and challenging you to work out your own, let met tell you that I believe Jesus is our center. I affirm with the scripture that he is the “image of the invisible God.”[5] “The firstborn of all creation.”[6] “Son of God.” “The Christ.” The one announced by prophets of old, told of to shepherds in the night, made known to kings of the orient. He is the reason for this season.[7]

But his stardom ended the day he chose to forsake the Gold of that Wise Man’s gift, and follow God. The day he set his face, like a flint, to Jerusalem[8] – which meant certain death. The day he chose to wash the feet of disciples and to call them friends.[9] His role as “star of the show” ended the day he challenged them, and you, to do “even greater things” than he had done.[10]

If we understand his life through the glamour of stardom, by seeking “appearances” and “autographs,”[11] we will surely miss his most important gift to us all. For the Star became a Stagehand.

In Showbiz, he is untouchable. But in the Story. He is us. Touchable. Breakable. Like us. With us. For us.[12]

If we allow him to become the star of this Christmas spectacular, year after year, the glamorous “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” God’s ultimate “rags to riches” production, then we will have missed the most important gift he can bring. For the “star” became a stagehand, that all stagehands might know God’s Story.[13] It is a story called salvation – that in God’s eyes, all children play an equal part. All are worthy.

So not only did Isaiah announce preparations. Not only did John the Baptist prepare the way. But if the story is to be real. If the true “miracle” of Christmas is to be here, for us… then we too, must prepare.[14] Everyone has a role in this story. Boys and girls, you have a role. There are no spectators. We must clear-cut our own hearts and minds of the clutter which keeps us from hearing that greatest Story. And we must announce, in our own, clear, unique voice… that just as he came… today, he is coming.

[1] A winter ice storm left 1.2 million North Carolinians without power, some for more than a week.

[2] Lyrics by Irving Berlin.

[3] Philippians 2.9.

[4] See my sermon, “Believing in Jesus: Proclamation or Practice.”

[5] Colossians 1.15.

[6] Colossians 1.15.

[7] I actually despise the sentimentality of this wording, “the reason for the season,” yet I use it here to affirm that the center of Christmas celebration is a recognition of the coming of the Christ as the presence of God in our lives, and not the commercialized and over-materialized festival that it has become.

[8] See Isaiah 50.7 and Luke 9.51.

[9] See John 13.

[10] John 14.12.

[11] In these two references I have in mind, specifically, the following: “Appearances” – the desire to seek after the “magical” or “miraculous” in faith. (Is there a difference?) This desire might be traced to the appearance narratives in scripture as well as to contemporary “sightings” of Jesus, Mary, and other Saints, which always draw huge, longing crowds. (Longing for some miracle.) “Autographs” – a veiled reference to the so-called inerrancy controversy, which has destroyed the former Southern Baptist Convention. In this controversy, the argument for an “inerrant” scripture is dependent upon the “original autographs” of the biblical texts, none of which exist. I find this an immensely foolish argument, and an argument which misses the significance of the scripture as a whole. Our Bible is not a “magical” “inerrant” word from on high, but a Word which is made sacred by the human experience in narrative, therein, and by the two-thousand year, continuing affirmation of the people of God, that in it, God is revealed.

[12] This is an allusion to my sermon, “For Us.”

[13] The concluding meditation in today’s bulletin is as follows: “[The early Church Fathers] Irenaeus, Athanasium, Basil, and a host of others tell us in many ways that the very purpose of the coming of Christ is that ‘God became human in order that humans might become God.’ Now this is not understood by the early theologians as the absorption of the individual into a great cosmic One. No, theosis means sharing in the divine life . . .” quoted by Allyne Smith, Jr. in Weavings.

[14] I have referenced the word “miracle” so many times, because a banner on the lawn of the church this Advent states, “Is the miracle of the Christmas story here for you?” This is an attempt to help people understand the contemporary nature of “the story.” In Advent, we are moving from the story, simply as some kind of “historical event,” to an existential moment, which can be real for believers in every age, if Christ is allowed to “be born in us, today” (a phrase from the hymn, “O, Little Town of Bethlehem”).