For Nancy, my favorite bibliophile and for William, the only
person I know who knows the words to “Once in veiled darkness Judah lay”
To be perfectly honest, I am a sermon snob. It is not so much that I am critical of
preachers, but I do want a sermon with three points that tells a story. Frederick Beuchner is a master storyteller who knows how to
craft a sermon. One of my favorite Beuchner quotes states:
“Christmas
itself is a grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and
depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it
is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to
tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have
reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and
beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas
event in itself is indeed—as a matter of cold, hard fact—all it’s cracked up to
be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.”
One of my
students must have momentarily lost her mind because she thought it wise to
argue with me in front of a patient, not once but three times. I guess I may have snapped. I would have described it as I had a moment
and she was lucky I didn’t remove her tongue.
I chose to verbally shred her instead.
I was attempting to instruct her on how to do perineal care correctly,
and she thought it wise to balk at my instruction. Now truth be told, there are about 100 ways
to wipe someone’s booty, but the Board of Nursing only recognizes one. Just one way, and this also happens to be my
way.
I guess since I
have been giving baths to patients for the past 30 years, I probably have given
well over 1000. I would say that makes
me an expert and Lord knows I have cleaned way more booty than a 1000.
Apparently my confused student had forgotten this fact. I also would like to add this was her fourth bed
bath. Just her fourth. Let me say that number again, 4. Any who, when
I tried to correct her technique, she argued.
Furthermore, she continued to argue after I speaking to her through
clenched teeth and my temporal artery was pulsing. Needless to say after we
finished tending to the patient, I took her to the conference room and
proceeding to instruct her in the error of her ways. It was not pretty. It got even uglier when she responded to my
criticism with “But, Mrs. O’Brien….” I
quickly told her that the phrase “But, Mrs. O’Brien” would never be the correct
answer. Ever. I also suggested she remember that I have
forgotten more about nursing than she will ever know and if she temporarily
lost her mind again, I hope she had sense enough to keep her mouth closed. As my students tell me “Ms. OB snapped.”
Which brings to
the sermon on Sunday and how thinking about how angry I made my English teacher
once kept me from cutting out her tongue.
The reading for Sunday was Isaiah 40: 1-11. The passage tells Judah that deliverance is
near. Judah was living in a time that
parallels our world today.
Oppression. Slavery.
Poverty. War. Violence. It seemed as if God was not going to show up
to rescue. The prophet reminds the
people of Judah that help is coming.
Besides sermons,
I love the stories behind hymns and carols.
I love to hear who, why and where they were written. There is a carol
entitled: “Once in veiled darkness Judah lay.” I am willing to bet some serious
money that there is only about one or two of my readers who even know that
carol, much less can recite all the words.
I am also willing to bet that if all of you look in your hymnals on
Sunday, only about 2 of you will find it in your hymnal. It is not found in the Baptist hymnal, the
Lutheran hymnal or the Methodist hymnal. I did find it in the Presbyterian hymnal
which was a shocker to me. It is in the
Moravian hymnal and as I learned on Sunday, there is a reason for this.
My pastor told
the story of how this hymn was written.
His grandfather wrote it in 1915.
To be honest, I have never met a writer of a hymn before. His grandfather, Rev. Douglas Rights, a Moravian
pastor, was in seminary at Harvard and entered a hymn writing contest during
Advent. He wrote this hymn for the
contest and he won. The hymn is a
musical version of the prophecies of Isaiah.
Veiled in darkness
Judah lay,
Waiting for the
promised day,
While across the
shadowy night,
Streamed a flood of
glorious light,
Heav’nly voices
chanting then,
“Peace on earth, good
will to men.”
Still the earth in
darkness lies.
Up from death’s dark
vale arise
Voices of a world in
grief,
Prayers of those who
seek relief:
Now our darkness
pierce again,
“Peace on earth, good
will to men.”
Light of light, we
humbly pray,
Shine upon Thy world
to
day;
Break the gloom of our
dark night,
Fill our souls with
love and light,
Send Thy blessed Word
again,
“Peace on earth, good
will to men.
The hymn tells something about
verb tenses and how that teaches us about the real meaning of Christmas. My fifth grade English teacher made us
diagram sentences. She was a grammar
nazi. I on the other hand, am more the
creative writer type and love to play with run on sentences, hyperbole,
metaphor, simile, sentence fragments and the like. Subject/verb agreement was never high on my
priority list. Once, she hit my knuckles
with a yard stick because I didn’t use the future prefect progressive tense of
a verb. Most of you probably didn’t even
know there is a verb tense other present, past or future but alas, there
happens to be. But thanks to her, I learned.
Now she had to beat
that knowledge into me, but I
learned subject/verb agreement.
Now I know you are breathless with anticipation and are dying for me to
get to the real point, but let me refresh your memory on verb tenses first. In English, there are three basic tenses: present, past, and future. Each has
a perfect form, indicating completed action; each
has a progressive form, indicating ongoing action; and
each has a perfect progressive form, indicating ongoing
action that will be completed at some definite time. Notice the word
perfect. It means complete or finished.
The grace of Christmas and the
real meaning of Christmas can be found in the present progressive and future
perfect progressive form of the verb: come.
Some 2000 years ago Jesus came to Bethlehem. He took on our fragile flesh and brought his
peace into our violence. He breathed our
air and walked on our sod. Tears were and are falling. Hearts were and are breaking. We needed and need to hear from God. He was promised and we waited and are waiting
and will wait. He didn’t mind the manger and he made himself at home among
us. He filled and fills and will fill
our hungry souls. His coming broke heaven’s silence. That tiny heart of that
baby lying in that manger was filled with blood that will save us. He took our
sin and made us holy. He did not come in
vain. And he will come again. The real message of Christmas: Christ
came. Christ comes. Christ will come again. Jesus came in one definitive moment of
history. Jesus continues to come into
our hearts today and Jesus will come again.
All is grace
and grateful to my English teacher for making me diagram sentences and the
Moravian hymnal and every song really does need to be sung
Kathleen
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