Advent - "Meanwhile..."

Shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem

There were shepherds in that region, out in the open, keeping a night watch around their flock. An angel of the Lord stood in front of them. The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ the angel said to them. ‘Look: I’ve got good news for you, news which will make everybody very happy. Today a savior has been born for you – the Messiah, the Lord! – in David’s town. This will be the sign for you: you’ll find the baby wrapped up, and lying in a feeding-trough.’

Suddenly, with the angel, there was a crowd of the heavenly armies. They were praising God, saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest,
     and peace upon earth among those in his favour.’

Gospel of Luke, chapter 2 verses 8 - 14, New Testament for Everyone (NTE)

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If you've ever listened to one of those old radio programs, the ones your grandparents tuned in every night when they were kids, you'll know what I'm talking about. The hero is crushed with problems, the background music is somber, things are looking bleak. But then the narrator intones, "Meanwhile, on the other side of town...!" And the entire scene changes.

That happens in this scripture.

True, Mary and Joseph had both seen angels nine months ago, and great things were foretold about this child Mary carried. They were told that this was the prophesied one, the Messiah, the hope of all Israel. But since then, nothing much had happened. They remained poor peasants. No other angelic visitations occurred. They eked by on Joseph's job, for which there was precious little demand in a tiny backwater village like Nazareth. The holy infant grew in Mary's womb, but she still had to fetch water, bake bread, fix holes in Joseph's sweaty clothes. Life just went on, like it always did.

And God didn't even do something about that census; the increasingly pregnant teenage girl and her husband still had to make the dangerous, arduous, dusty 90 mile journey to Bethlehem. Why would God allow the woman who carried the "Son of the Most High" to risk having a miscarriage?

Now here they are in a feculent stable -- not even a house! -- while the mother of the Messiah writhes through her birth throes in a pile of bloody, insect infested straw. Look where they would, there was nothing to validate that this was the Messiah being born. For such an event shouldn't there be at least something slightly glorious? It was all so dirty, so pedestrian, so ordinary.

But meanwhile, on the other side of town...

Light

It was ordinary there too. Ordinary shepherds (not an occupation with the best reputation) watching their ordinary sheep, as they always did. And then -- then for a very brief time the curtain between Heaven and Earth parted.

The renowned Angel of the Lord, mentioned throughout their sacred scriptures, stood before these ordinary shepherds, and shafts of indescribably bright, glorious light flooded and transformed the hills. And the Angel proclaimed in heart shaking tones that this ordinary night was not ordinary at all, that in reality the most important event in the history of the universe was happening right here, right now -- right among the filth and the sheep and the bloody straw and the pains of an exhausted young woman in labor. The choir of "heavenly forces" that joined the Lord's Angel sang a hymn that linked these two realities: "Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors."

Where the angelic host lived every being was alive and electric with the overwhelming magnitude of what was taking place in tiny Bethlehem; where Mary and Joseph and the shepherds lived it looked for all the world like business as usual.

As it can for us -- but it's not. As followers of Jesus we serve the High King of the universe, and we are called to perform an all-important mission: To build his Kingdom through self-sacrificing love and the power of the Gospel. We don't have the chance too often to be encouraged by angels and we may get caught up in the sheer ordinariness of our lives, or in our sufferings, or our grief. Is there any significance to my life at all? Do I make any difference?

But there is another reality, the ultimate reality. Meanwhile, on the other side of that curtain is a world that is quite sure of the extraordinary nature of our ordinary lives.

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Prayer: Lord of all realities, please give us the miraculous gift of Faith so we can see our ordinary existence through your eyes.  In the name of our King, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Light or Dark

"In the light of the Lord I could have a garden of Eden; how often I choose the dingy wilderness where I can grow neither flowers nor fruits."

-- J H Jowett

Jesus Christ Superstar Saved My Soul!

Synchroblog is a little community of mostly Christian blogs that post on a particular subject each month. Read more about it here and (assuming you're on Facebook) here. This month our topic is "My Faith Journey." The bloggers who posted are listed at the bottom of this post for you to peruse. Visit them all! We're an interesting and eclectic group!

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Talking about myself is one of my least favorite things to do. It took me years before I even put a blurb about myself in the "About" section of this blog. When people ask about my testimony I usually try to leave it (unsuccessfully most of the time) at, "I didn't look for him, he came after me." But, bowing down in submission to the Synchroblog Magisterium, here are a few words about the Lord's dealings with J A Carter.

Catholicism

I was born and bred Catholic. My father came from a long line of Catholics whereas my mother joined after a long search for a church she could believe in. She chose Catholicism in part because it seemed to her to be the oldest church. When I was born, mom told me, she consecrated me to God and rather expected me to grow up to be a Priest. Regrettably, I never got much out of Catholicism myself. The Catholic Church is as profound or as shallow as you want it to be. Many of the Christian Movement's greatest theologians, deepest writers, and bravest heroes, whom I found I needed to study in my adulthood, were always there for me in the Catholic Church if I'd only known where to look. If somebody had hooked me up with Francis of Assisi, Aquinas, the Apostolic Fathers, or Teresa of Ávila I'd most likely be there to this day.

But as I experienced it, Catholicism was about wearing itchy clothes, listening to organ music (which was by far my favorite part), and going through fascinating but incomprehensible ritual actions and gestures. My memories from catechism (i.e., "Sunday School") consist mainly of reenacting The Good Samaritan using coat hangers as clubs (I was the guy who was beaten and left half dead), and later on discussing contemporary issues such as whether Jesus Christ Superstar was blasphemous (Oops! I think I may just have dated myself with that last statement.) I had the album so this was a relatively important topic. I think we decided it was ok.

Wandering Teenager

But then one day we left the Catholic Church. A radio preacher had persuaded my mother that it was actually "The Great Whore Babylon," and my dad had lost interest due to the Vatican II changes. For the next few years of my teenagehood, I believed in nothing in particular and was glad to be free of going to Church.

But I always had this nagging feeling that there was more to reality than just this -- this physical "stuff." And if there was I wanted its help in dealing with my teenage problems, like being popular, conquering shyness, and getting girls to like me. I had no desire for religion or worship, no sense of needing salvation from anything. What I did need was power and control over my life. So eventually I found myself looking at the supernatural, which to me could well include religion.

Copies of the Living Bible were on sale at our local drugstore so I bought one and read the Bible through (mostly) for the first time in my life. For good measure I visited the library and checked out the two other major books that, according to my world history teacher, were considered "inspired" instead of just exceedingly wise advice: the Quran and the Gathas. For some reason he didn't mention the Book of Mormon, but I had a copy from a Utah hotel room, so I read that too.

None of them impressed me much though. So I  turned to the one thing in my limited experience that promised actual power over my world: Occultism. As usual when I became interested in a subject, I checked out every book on it in the library. A few friends and I practiced telepathy and psychokinesis, which seemed to actually work. Eventually I came to "opening my chakras," which were supposed to be 7 centers of  psychic power in my body. This was obviously something that I wanted. But my reading also considered it to be rather dangerous.  If not done correctly, Satan could use this procedure to drive one insane, which alarmed me. I had been feeling an odd sense of oppression lately too, like there was a struggle going on for my brain, like it might split apart. One needed spiritual protection, my reading materials told me,  preferably from one of the "Elder Brothers" -- famous spiritual adepts like Buddha, Jesus, Krishna and such who had achieved perfection and were now helping others to progress towards enlightenment.

Found Teenager

Jesus rang a bell -- not because of anything I'd learned in church but because of Jesus Christ Superstar. In the film he was portrayed as a misunderstood man of supernatural power. A couple of lines from a song ("Herod's Song", of all things!) had stuck with me: "Still I'm sure that you can rock the cynics if you try," and a little later, 

"I only ask what I'd ask any superstar
What is it that you have got that puts you where you are.
I am waiting, yes I'm a captive fan,
I'm dying to be shown that you are not just any man."

What can I say? "God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform."

So that February 2nd I put myself under the protection of Jesus of Nazareth in what was not quite a prayer but more than a simple request, and went to bed. When I woke the next morning, everything was different.

This is where I've never yet found a natural-sounding way to describe what happened. My mind was now clear. I was exceedingly happy. Most of all there was an unshakable sense that I had somehow encountered a cracklingly alive, utterly real, personal Jesus of Nazareth. I say "unshakable" because it hasn't been all these years. That encounter with Jesus is a foundational reality for me. I didn't care about my occult studies; now I only wanted to study Jesus Christ, his life, his philosophy. I had no idea what that meant but I just wanted to get started anyway.

Little teenager-y signs and wonders kept happening through the following week. Things like my bicycle, stolen 3 weeks before from outside a store, being recovered without a scratch. The Police had told me it would never be found, and if it was it would be stripped and unusable. Or the time when I found my best friend crying in his driveway. His dog 'Lady' seemed to be dying from her weak heart. Impulsively, I put my hands on her and prayed. She jumped up, went skipping off, and lived 3 or 4 more years. Things like that.

I'd been baptized years before as a Catholic, of course, and would be again when I joined a church. But I just had to do something "official" to mark that this happened to me. I didn't know anyone who could assist me. So I drove down to Lake Michigan and baptized myself.

And I've never stopped running since. That's how Jesus Christ Superstar saved my soul!

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November 2013 Synchrobloggers

• LoveDay – When God Pulls Your Strings
• Liz Dyer – Stages of Faith and Beauty In the Wilderness
• Jeremy Meyers - A Life of Regret and Hope
• J A Carter – Jesus Christ Superstar Saved My Soul
• Carol Kuniholm – Stumbling In the Dark
• Edwin Aldritch – A Journey From Church To Faith
• Glenn Hagar – How I Became Irreligious
• DoneWithReligion – My Journey To Leaving Church
• Kathy Escobar – a drama + a comedy = a dramedy
• Margaret Boelman - Lonesome Journey

Reboot

You may have noticed if you pay attention to the dates on my posts, which tend to mean less than on other blogs, that there haven't been any from May til October. Dates mean less because I intend these as fragments of teaching on various aspects of Christianity that (hopefully) will form a coherent whole someday. The posts aren't day by day so much as idea by idea. I write them as they come, then toss them into an appropriate box in the navigation bar near the top of the page, which is arranged to roughly correspond to the articles of the Apostles Creed.

But I noticed I'd wondered away from my purpose and became rather bland and insipid in the process, so I stopped. Now, after trying to discern what Christ wants me to do with this (a question I've also been asking of other aspects of my life), I'm back to try again.

So, taking my cue from the 'Batman' franchise, I've rebooted. For one thing I've thrown out the former gloomy, portentous site design and replaced it with something lighter and fresher. I'm still fixing up a few other things, like writing a new 'About Us' page and deleting a few repetitive posts.

But the main thing is that Authentic Light is now back to being a humble little site where interested parties can learn about, well, the Authentic Light -- simple, radical Christianity.

"Christ himself is this light!"

(Some thoughts for Sunday from one my favorite writers in Christ's Movement, Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof communities.)

"No light can radiate brightness and warmth without consuming itself. The greatest Man, in giving light, suffered this most violently. The light of the world went forth from the cross of Jesus. Those who experience the world’s suffering and guilt with the crucified Christ – and their own sin and forgiveness – are able to serve the world with the light and strength of the risen Lord. For after Christ rose from the grave, he sent his disciples to bear his light to the ends of the earth.

"Christ himself is this light. It is the fire of judgment that comes over us to consume the old, rotten life, to lead us who are crucified with him into a radiant life of resurrection. For there is only one who is the light of the world and who shines on all who come into this world. He himself was all light. He was not entangled in untruthfulness or impurity, lovelessness or greed. It is an illusion to push the false light of our own life into the foreground, trying to shine without being consumed in Christ. No human being can teach us what light is. To give oneself, as the sun gives of itself to the earth, can never be our own doing."

-- Eberhard Arnold
   Salt and Light