The Second Day of Christmas

The Second Day of Christmas

Chris Cox

Mary heard the cry through a fog and forced her exhausted eyes open to see sunlight drifting in through a crack in the stable roof. She rolled over. Joseph was still gone. He had left during the last feeding to see if he could do something about their situation. “There’s no way that we can keep going on like this,” he muttered as he looked around their dilapidated quarters.

Mary stared after him as he stooped out of the doorway. Joseph stopped and looked back at her. On the journey to Bethlehem, he had opened up about how he had almost left her. She trusted him, but that small shadow of fear made her worry whether he would come back. He was the only one that Mary knew here. They were miles from home. No mother here nor family. It was just the two of them in a strange town; now three. They weren’t even married yet. He hadn’t signed up for any of this. The prophecy. The baby. The strangers barging in with unbelievable stories about angels.

Joseph looked her in the eye. “I’ll be back. I promise.” And Mary had to trust that he was telling the truth. Ever since the messenger turned her world upside down, she had to trust they were all telling the truth. Her child’s cry competed with the bleating of a lamb. Mary pushed herself up off the straw-strewn floor; still sore. Her body felt like it had been torn open. The pain of childbirth echoed with every move she made.

Love is Here

Love is Here

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

There’s a common meme on Twitter in which someone will write something very straightforward and then say “That’s it. That’s the Tweet.” Doing a little internet research “Brie Larson’s Endgame Look. That’s it that’s the tweet” is where this kind of tweet entered into memedom. The idea is that the statement or picture is so obvious or straightforward or awesome that no further commentary is needed.

Looking at these two passages, there is only one appropriate response: “Immanuel. God with us. That’s it. That’s the blog.”

Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee

Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

John the Baptist was in prison. He figured it would happen eventually. You bring the prophetic thunder down on a thin-skinned despot enough, he’s going to toss you in jail. It didn’t stop John from continuing to call out Herod. But he also had lots of time on his hands to think and he wondered about his cousin. Was he really the One?

John’s disciples would come periodically with what Jesus was up to. The stories were incredible, but also sometimes confusing. Sure there were the miracles, but there was also the interactions with the centurions and tax collectors. Jesus’ disciples didn’t exactly seem to fit the fasting and praying aesthetic of John’s disciples. And, again, John was in prison. The imprisonment had to tug at him and make him ask questions. So John sent his followers to ask the big question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

It was a blunt question, which fit John perfectly like a camel-hair suit. One likes to think that Jesus chuckled at his cousin’s brassiness. Then he gave a non-straightforward answer, which fit Jesus perfectly. He told the Baptist’s buddies to tell John what they had seen and heard: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Then he added, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

A Wild Peace

A Wild Peace

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

Every Friday night at our house is movie night. We get pizza, pop some popcorn, and one of our kids selects what we’ll be watching. The quality of what they pick varies wildly. But the appetizer to the evening—and I don’t exactly remember how this started—is always an episode of the PBS cartoon Wild Kratts. Each episode of Wild Kratts, for those who are uninitiated, focuses on the the titular Kratt brothers and their team learning about and then rescuing some wildlife creature utilizing special suits that give them that specific animal’s “creature powers.”

As children’s TV shows go, it’s pretty good. Just don’t pull on the threads. Things fall apart. On a related, unsurprising note, I have been pulling at the threads of every cartoon that has graced our TV screen for about a decade. I will not go into all of my Wild Kratts quibbles right now—none of us are here for that—but I got to thinking about one of them in light of this week’s Lectionary passage from Isaiah.

Here’s the thing, Wild Kratts isn’t really that, well, wild.

I totally understand why it’s not wild. Wild Kratts is geared towards children. As such, it probably shouldn’t show a mongoose killing a cobra or a Komodo dragon feeding on the corpse of a water buffalo that it had earlier injected with venom (because that’s what they do!). They talk about it, but never show it. All the animals are really chill with the Kratts coming into their habitats and cuddling their babies. Again, the show probably shouldn’t have the Kratt brothers weekly getting mauled by a wild animal because once again the bros got way up into some creature’s business. Even though that is what actually would happen in the wild, it wouldn’t make for a good children’s show. It would make for a very educational program to be sure, but not one that parents would be keen on showing their kids.

Hope is the Thing with Teeth

Hope is the Thing with Teeth

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

We can get behind swords being turned into plowshares. Well, there might be a few organizations and corporations that would not be thrilled about weapons being turned into gardening tools. But for most of us, the picture presented in the second chapter of Isaiah is an appealing one. The whole world coming together. Nations no longer entrenched in war against one another. The picture the prophet paints is the great hope of the world. It’s hope like a toasty cup of hot chocolate. We can sit down with it by a crackling fire at Christmas time and feel safe, comforted.

And yet…

That sentence right before swords are beaten into plowshares grabs my attention every single time. “[The Lord] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.” The NIV and CEB translations say that God will settle disputes. This hoped for future is not just some happy time in which every slate is wiped clean and the past is the past. Peoples are held to an account. There is a reckoning here.

Weekly Lectionary: Let's Try This Again

Weekly Lectionary: Let's Try This Again

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

For about three years, I would pick one of the Revised Common Lectionary passages for the forthcoming Sunday and write some kind of reflection about it. Sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes earnest, sometimes goofy. But I stopped doing that a little over two years ago. Writing, which was once as natural as breathing, has become exponentially difficult for me of late. With apologies to Anne Lamott, I’m going to try to bird by bird this sucker starting with resurrecting this old practice. It might be rough, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

Jeremiah 23:1-6
First Reading for Reign of Christ Sunday (Year C)

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord.”

I’m going to try my best to be honest: Reading this my mind immediately goes to the dumpster fire and, I don’t know, port-a-john pyrotechnics that are presently engulfing our political and religious lives in America. And I want to steer out of that. It’s there. It’s important. We need to stay informed and be vigilant. But I am just too exhausted by it tonight.

What Does God See?

What Does God See?

Chris Cox

What does a day look like to God? Is it something the Divine ducks in and out of? Does God experience this all with us? Is the commitment to being Immanuel so strong that God sits with us day in and day out?

What does One do with 7 billion breathing, broken, and beautiful humans? I have no idea where the Infinite would even begin. I’m finite so I can’t imagine. But I wonder if God is horrified and heartbroken by us. When a school shooting happens or war breaks out or someone chooses the easy lie over the hard truth, does it frustrate God? Does it seem like some sort of cruel Groundhog Day where a hideous history repeats itself in a myriad of ways? Does God hope that this time someone will do something? Maybe today is the day that the scales tip and enough people will be brave enough to do the right thing. Maybe God knows the day. Maybe God knows it’s not today but still hopes like when you watch an old movie, but hope that maybe, somehow the beloved character escapes a cruel fate.

And I wonder how God holds back. There is a song that I love dearly. It wasn’t written about God, but it’s about God. A line that I’ve always clung to mused “I heard you laugh / I heard you sing, ‘I wouldn’t change a single thing.’” I have hoped against hope that is how God feels. That God, seeing the outcomes of an infinite number of ways this creation was going to shake out, has stayed the course on this way. But there are some days where I do not know how God could laugh or sing. How could God now want to change a day where even one child starves? I cling to that idea, but I also hold it at arms length. The tidal wave of hurt that crashes into each day seems like a bug in the system; like something that could and should be changed.

Every Song Becomes a Psalm

Every Song Becomes a Psalm

Chris Cox

I always looked for God in music. Lyrics and melody always grounded me in a special way. Growing up in the evangelical church all music was supposed to be about Jesus. Yet even as I ventured outside the safe confines of Christian music, I still kept listening intently for God in every song I heard. I felt like there was something special about finding the divine in a thing considered secular by my tradition. Working later at a Christian camp, I felt like if I could ground a skit or a drama scene in a Coldplay song or something else a kid might hear on a radio that it might stick better with students. They could hear God pop up outside the confines of the church. And so I always listened for God in music. 

I have discovered that when you try to look for God—if you dedicate yourself to that quest—you will find God even when that was never intended. “Wonderwall” by Oasis is absolutely not a song about God and yet the line “Maybe you’re going to be the one that saves me” still stirs something spiritual inside of me. I projected my faith into the world and I found that faith in many places. The reward has been that, in the moments when I need it, every song becomes this connection to this faith that sustains me and keeps me afloat. I can’t not hear God calling to me from a car stereo.

Beeps, Boops, and Prayers

Beeps, Boops, and Prayers

Chris Cox

Saying “I had a medical scare” seems melodramatic. It was medical but I was never really “scared.” Concerned? Yeah. Spooked? Sure. It’s just that calling it a “medical scare” seems unfair to people that actually have medical scares. Semantics aside, I woke up Friday morning with numbness and tingling in my left hand and foot, which over the course of a visit to our local urgent care facility spread to my leg, arm, and—for a delightful short period—the left side of my face. 

The doctors at urgent care felt like this all warranted a visit to the emergency room and so I spent most of the day at one of the fine hospitals in our city undergoing a battery of tests. To cut to the chase, I didn’t have a stroke. Whatever was going on with the left side of my body was likely some sort of combination of a bulging disc between two vertebrae and possibly stress. So there are lessons to be learned.

To reach these conclusions, I had to get a couple of MRIs done. I had never been in an MRI machine before and I now have no desire whatsoever to get in one again. If you had asked me prior to Friday whether I was claustrophobic, I would have laughed and said, “Oh, of course not.” But after that session in a high tech coffin, I totally understand why people are afraid of enclosed spaces. I guess the thing I said at the beginning about never really being scared isn’t exactly true.

Turning Over Tables (Sermon Video)

Turning Over Tables (Sermon Video)

Chris Cox

This is video of the sermon that I preached this past Sunday at The Bridge worship service in which I tell the story of cafeteria crime spree in my middle school, look at the passage where Jesus drives the moneychangers out of the Temple, wrestle with another mass shooting, and talk about our calling as Christians to flip over tables in the world.

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