LITTLE-LORD-JESUS MAN: A Great Christmas Blasphemy

 

     There is a line in a beloved Christmas carol that I’ve not sung for over 25 years, nor do I ever intend to sing it again. Rather, I’ve been on a fervent crusade to bring the heresy of the seemingly innocent lyric to the attention of those potentially deceived. 

     It started in December of 1997. Through moist, glazed eyes, I made out an image that has lingered ever since as a surrealistic mast. Cheap tinsel glistened on an evergreen tree near the front of an unfamiliar sanctuary. The dancing of light, through the reds and greens of the decked out room, pierced into my cloud of mourning -- not enough to free me but just enough to pronounce into the haze: “It’s Christmas out here! Life goes on even when it may have stopped and frozen for you.” The jarring glare of refracted light seemed a mockery of what we were going through, saying our goodbyes to my little sister Amber, the baby of the family, the one whom – if life were “fair” – should have been the last of us to go. 

     That touch of sparkling tinsel, viewed through waters that I attempted to forestall spilling from my eyes, stayed with me, intermingling with the carols that would play in the walking dream that followed. For days and weeks afterward, nothing was real, yet this glimmer remained with me. Words melted into incoherent syllables, sounds, bells, clanging, empty, loveless. Time was not linear – did it even exist? 

     Children stood donning their Christmas best in the front of another church, singing “Away in a manger....” The song warbled impotently across air that was as visible as anything else. Cute little baby Jesus... I know, I know, I’ve heard it all before. Jolly old Saint Nick and the Easter bunny, too... Deck the halls and flashback to Amber. 

     Amber and I shared a room growing up. I used to have such a hard time keeping my big mouth shut. Christmas presents should be surprises, I thought, but I would always end up spilling the beans and telling her what I had gotten her. Then I would have to get her something else, too, so she could have a surprise. Before long, I would inevitably tell her about the new gift, necessitating that I find yet another. The gifts may have been small stupid things, the kind of special inside jokes that only sisters can understand. 

     Back to the kids singing on the stage... sisters standing next to each other: one pokes the other, the other whacks her back, sticking out the tongue, hitting, pinching... a mom glares at her offspring. Why can’t they be good at least until the song’s over and they’re out of the spotlight? The song warbles on: “...the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes....” That’s it, the mom thinks – why can’t my kids be more like the Little-Lord-Jesus? One sibling pinches the other. Little sister sniffles, a full blown fit is about to ensue. “The Little-Lord-Jesus, no crying he makes...” 

     The song reminds all seated in the mass of ceremony how unlike us that Little-Lord-Jesus is: He is a superhero. The entire taking on mortality thing that I thought Christmas was supposed to be about begins to unravel. God put on a costume to pretend he was a real baby, but the fact that he didn’t cry gave him away. He’s an impostor! 

     Suddenly, the quaver of the sweet traditional hymn is pierced by a fleck in the flickering tinsel – I’m back at the funeral, trying to hold back the tears, trying to be good, trying to act like the hope of being reunited in the afterlife is enough now, in this moment. “The Little-Lord-Jesus, no crying he makes...” The flickering tinsel is ablaze in flame now, engulfed in righteous anger, and the anger is not mine. “LIE!” a voice shouts through the fog, but everyone else drones on. They didn’t hear – perhaps they are trying to drown him out. “The Little-Lord-Jesus, no crying he makes...” The inflamed tinsel becomes a tear, a blazing hot tear burning through the fog. It washes over me in a refreshing flood that will never again allow me to sing those words: “The little Lord Jesus” did what? 

     Have you ever had that feeling of betrayal, when you discover that someone has been spreading lies about you, defaming your character? You thought they knew you, but they obviously didn’t. You may feel anger about being misrepresented. You may feel hurt. But then, if someone you love dearly is harmed by the misrepresentation, the anger and hurt give way to heartbreak. You want to pour yourself out and wash away the poison, make all right. You want to whisper the truth, to be heard, believed, to bring healing. The lie may go on, but once you are holding the one you love, it fades like meaningless noise into the background. You whisper the truth and the power of it washes away the lies. 

     “The little Lord Jesus...” the voice whispers, “Where is that in my book? Where?” He flips the pages of my memory and my eyes settle on the words of the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) 

     “Jesus wept,” it says. How beautifully profound. How perfect. Jesus wept. When Mary and Martha had lost their dear brother Lazarus, in that very moment. In that moment. Jesus knew they would see him again. Jesus even knew that he had the power and would bring Lazarus back to life. He could have said, “Get over it. You’ll be with him in heaven.” He could have said, “Settle down, look, he’s alive now. No biggie.” He could have used any of the comforting words spoken by Job’s friends and all of their descendants to put those of “little faith” in their places and to tell them to be good. Jesus, however, did none of these things. Jesus wept. 

     Since December of 1997, that verse has become central to my understanding of what the gospel of Christ is. We are so often distracted from what is central by the droning noise of our own traditions. La la la la la... blah blah blah blah blah... it is all like a clanging cymbal “if we have not love” (1 Corinthians 13). He didn’t come into the world to be a role model. 

     "Follow me. Be good. You better watch out. You better not pout. You better not cry..." 

He came because he wanted to be with us. To laugh with us. Cry with us. Feel with us. Love with us. He wanted to make a way for us to truly live with Him. It’s about connection. 

     All I want for Christmas is to see a few more droning choruses shattered, if that will help us to see the Jesus who wept, and still weeps – who loves us every moment and doesn’t expect us to be good little super-heroes. Let’s be real. Let’s be honest. God can handle that. It’s what He wants. He wants us. 

~~~~~

December 2024. The past few years have been filled with more funerals of family and friends than all of the rest of my years combined. Young and old. Anticipated or not. It’s never easy. In studying the book of Matthew, one little phrase from the Sermon on the Mount keeps pestering me: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the years, it’s that God’s Word is living and intentional. I want to know what Matt. 5:4 means. We speak words of comfort to the mourning all the time, but what about the “blessed” part? What is the blessing in mourning? What is this Comfort? 

      I pray that all of you, my loved ones who have suffered loss this year especially, will have a truly blessed Christmas. I'm not posting this until the 7th Day of Christmas (New Year's Eve) because I wanted to edit this more--to make it perfect. But that would have meant putting it off, possibly until next Christmas, or the next... That would be missing the point entirely. I'm not a superhero and I never will be. But looking forward into the New Year -- a year that will be full of ordinary days -- I will not despise "small" things. 

Day by day: Don't put off hugging those you love, and be intentional in seeking the only One who is the answer to all of our questions. 

If we could see through her eyes now…

Palindrome Day 22022022

Yesterday was a fitting day to begin a new journey – or to take a new perspective on the existing journey. Sometimes we get hung up by the past. “Don’t look back or you’ll turn to a pillar of salt” doesn’t mean that we should avoid examining our lives, living only for today or tomorrow. Balance that allows us to move forward grows from an accurate awareness of where we stand. That includes honesty about the past as well as optimism and strategy for the future. It is my prayer that the story of my life will ultimately make sense in the greater context of God’s eternal timelessline.

I’ve told my children all of their lives that “people are consistently inconsistent.” It’s definitely a perspective that helps avert disappointment and frustration. Frustration with the inconsistencies of our fellow humans stems from the inconvenience it causes us, and it doesn’t help that their glaring inconsistencies usually mirror the things we have worked so hard to mask within ourselves! It throws us off balance as we struggle to feel at home on the balance beam of a linear timeline. We should grow, getting better and smarter as time goes by, shouldn’t we? Yet we stumble. Instead of evolving into what we long to be, we often experience entropy. 

Entropy can be defined as “a lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder,” and interestingly enough, the definition, as a measure, is about energy that is “not available for doing useful work.” Sounds like the greater portion of my energy in this post-pandemic malaise. Procrastination has become more than an annoying habit – it has become the new breathing. I know I’m not alone in feeling numb and uncertain more easily than in pre-pandemic days. I’m not turning backward on the balance beam to see what I’ve been through, but I'm not looking forward either. My eyes are closed. My feet are still. My breath, shallow. If you don’t move, you won’t fall… unless the very beam you are planted on is falling; unless the world in which the beam exists is plummeting (which it is, but our perspective creates its own basis, or baseline, for defining stability.)

What is balance?

    What is stability? 

        Are they mere illusions? 

Most people focus on the balance of a palindrome being about its structure – the same whether you read it forward or backward, but I see the balance of this one is also about its very content. Amidst the emptiness of the 0’s of life, emerges the repeated “22’s” (“tutus” to the mind of this recovering dance mom and long-time costume designer.)

Maybe balance is not just about structure and perspective, but also about what we’re wearing. A nice, puffy tulle tutu might help one balance through the wafting winds of life, and if one falls, it might cushion the impact of the fall on our delicate hips. But seriously, what we “wear” is just as important as where we focus. The value of light-heartedness is serious. There’s an old song based on Isaiah 61 that says, “Put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” It’s a trade-out worth exploring. 

We hear a lot of talk about pre-pandemic this and post-pandemic that, but take a moment today to consider what you will “wear” in this post-palindrome-day world. 

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because the Lord anointed me

To bring good news to the humble;

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted….

Giving them a garland instead of ashes,

The oil of gladness instead of mourning,

The cloak of praise instead of a disheartened spirit.”

  Isaiah 61:1-3

It takes strength to break out of a malaise. There is strength in joy. Silly as it might sound, if you can think of the joy of the Lord as a tutu, it might be easier to remember that it is something one can “put on” to prepare for the dance.

The Future is so Bright...

Last night when I went on a "Once in a Blue Moon" night hike, I made a silly mistake:

I was wearing my prescription sunglasses when we left, and forgot to bring my regular glasses.

Watching the sun set through rose-colored lenses was not a bad experience, and even the moon and it's wispy dance with the marine layer was beautiful through the absent-mindedness-induced filter.

Given the significance I had placed on this Blue Moon as a marker in time, I could have looked upon my faux pas with great disappointment, but rather, it adds a fun twist to the experience: It forces me to think about the way perspective and filters affect the way we approach life.

Maybe my future is so bright I have to wear shades ;)

Blue Fog

Like fog creeping over mountaintop,
running wispy fingers
slowly
through branch, parting leaves--
soothing, seducing,
lulling unsuspecting ridge to sanction passage.
Saturating, consummating, consuming,
then vanishing to phantom misty memory.
Dull void.
Sad silence.
Bare

Barren.

A Standard of Relation

I'm going to share the words of a very special guest today: my big brother, Joel. He took on the extremely difficult task of delivering a eulogy on behalf of our family at our dad's funeral a few days ago. I am grateful to him for shouldering a responsibility that I would not have been strong enough to bear. He did it so perfectly. I could think of nothing to add or to subtract.

In Remembrance of Severt Ole Score

November 22, 1928 - July 26, 2014

a eulogy delivered by Joel K. Score, July 30, 2014

 
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Mom and dad tell me that when I was three I said I was going to be a pastor so that I could talk in church. I wasn’t sure I would speak today. But fifty years after that declaration, perhaps it’s time.

I miss him. Dad. Severt. That’s true this week, and it’s been true these past few years as we’ve lost him, further and further, to memory loss and confusion.

In planning this service, we tried to guess how many people would come. In practical terms, that means how many sandwiches we need.

But it also means thinking about family—who’s still living, how well they’re getting around, how widely they’re scattered.

It means thinking about all of the places dad has been and the people he’s known—in this church and this town, in the nearly twenty churches he’s served (almost a score! How could I speak about dad without one pun?)—all of those churches in half a dozen towns.

It means thinking about the places he lived earlier in his life and places he made friends while passing through.

It’s also meant thinking about the caregivers who have helped dad and helped us, his family, so much in these last years: at Legends, where he’s been in memory care since May 2012; at St. Croix Hospice, whose team gave him a jump-start last winter and gave us advice and solace this past week; at Country Manor, whose nurses, aides, and social workers scarcely had time to get to know dad; and here at Bethlehem, which sent pastors and volunteers to visit him.

I’d been thinking that those of you who have known Severt only in these St. Cloud years have missed out on a lot. And you have—

You missed the practical joker who rewired a seminary classmate’s radio so that it could be switched on and off only from the next room (I missed that too—I was two when he graduated).

You missed the young husband who, in a mix of necessity and the joy of making things, crafted much of the furniture for his and mom’s first homes from salvaged crates and other cheap wood (I still have some of it, including the toddler-size table, chairs, and bookcase he built me).

You missed the father who taught us what he knew but also how to look up what he didn’t know, and to look up more than one point of view. The father who told impossibly long shaggy-dog stories to entertain us, but really to keep us quiet, on long drives to visit relatives. The father who, when we were misbehaving, might introduce us as “Bea’s kids from her first marriage.”

You missed more building—the elaborate camper custom-fit to the roof and tailgate of our Pontiac station wagon; the smaller pushing structure that turned our red wagon into a racecar.

You missed exotic cuisine—the foraged mushrooms that mom would have nothing to do with; the pickled stems of purslane (a succulent weed that’s tastier than some standard vegetables); the rhubarb and backyard-grape wine of which some parishioners did not approve.

You missed thoughtful conversations about how much people miss when they read any meaningful text as strictly literal.

You missed some periods of depression.

You missed most of his art-making.

And you missed forty years of sermons—some inspirational, some entertaining, some meandering discussions of Hebrew or Greek etymology, some just plain embarrassing to the family members who appeared in them.

But you also—especially you caregivers—helped me see how much was still there.

The activities director at Legends, Blaire, recognized how important it was to Severt to make things with his hands and to help people, and she sought out ways for him to continue doing both.

Dad had made some things since coming to St. Cloud, but mostly he accumulated materials for sculptures and other projects that were never realized.

He filled a two-car garage with tools and rocks, blocks of wood and bits of plastic, prescription jars filled with golf tees or pen springs. He could pick up most anything there and tell you what he saw in it, or how it might fit with that car part in the corner to make a bird or solve a workshop problem. But he could no longer follow through and put the pieces together. They just piled up.

Cleaning out that garage, and (necessarily) discarding much of the stuff, was among the hardest things I’ve ever done. I could see what had drawn him to most of the scraps—their geometry or color or heft in the hand. His belief in the value of simple things, the dignity of materials, his abhorrence of waste, was everywhere evident.

But to every thing there is a season.

It was in speaking with caregivers this past week, and with friends who’ve offered support, some of whom never met dad, that I decided I should say something here.

I spoke with Wayne, a nursing assistant at Legends, about how we resemble our fathers, whether we want to or not, and how eventually, if we’re lucky, we find ways in which that’s a good thing.

I saw how dad, when he could barely talk, charmed the staff at Country Manor, and how, when he stopped talking, and scarcely moved, those last three days, they saw dad in us, his family.

I’ll leave it to others here to speak of eternal life. 

I know my father lives on in the people whose lives he touched—in the family he loved, the friends he loved, in the strangers he loved.

He lives in me, as he long has, as my mother does, as others I love do. He lives in me not just as a relation—someone in my family, someone on my side—but as a standard of relation, a principle I use in finding my place in relation to other things and other people.

I don’t aim to duplicate dad’s life, but I evaluate others’ prescriptions for living in relation to what he and mom taught and exemplified.

In a commencement speech last year, the novelist George Saunders said, “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.”

Age, he said, may erode selfishness: “We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be.”

So time may make us kinder, he said, but why wait? Start now. Go on with whatever else matters in your life, but be kind.

That fits with my sense of dad and what he valued. It fits with his short poem that we included in the memorial card. It fits with much of what he reminisced about as his memory failed.

The details weren’t always to be trusted. He recalled with gratitude all he’d learned from his brother-in-law Andy about fixing engines (I don’t doubt that)—then he mentioned that they’d invented the airplane (perhaps not).

But the important things were consistent: he believed in generosity, both material and of the spirit; he believed in inclusiveness and encouragement; he believed in kindness; he believed in love.

And if we live up to that, he’s with us.

Thank you all, so very much, for coming.

Education

Something to think about...