I’m a scrooge of a pastor this time of the year. You may find me in stores, surrounded by excited holiday bargain shoppers, ranting to myself about the fact that it’s Advent and these carols shouldn’t be played until the 12 days after Christmas.
My least favorite holiday song has always been “The Little Drummer Boy.” It is the most obnoxious of the many long repetitive carols. Who would play a loud drum for a newborn baby?
Imagine Mary. She just trekked across the desert nine-months pregnant on a donkey. Then after giving birth in an unsanitary barn, she is exhaustedly trying to nurture a new baby who will not sleep for more than two hours at a time, when a little boy comes in with a loud drum.
What an impractical gift!
Impractical gifts
And yet, when I stop to think about it in terms of the adult life of Jesus, it seems that he is someone whose favorite gifts are the most impractical. Mary and Martha are the best example of this. Both sisters give gifts to Jesus, and he chooses the wastefully impractical one (Luke 10:38-42).
My call to ministry is one full of unusual gifts too. Most obviously there is the faux hawk, facial piercings and tattoos.
At times, I know, my own life and ministry seem just as impractical and unconventional as the drummer boy’s gift.
Creativity
But, my greatest pastoral gift is the ability to look around and see what creative ways our resources can be used and to respond to the very real needs of individuals in our congregation, communities around us and in the world.
When we don’t have the resources we need, I beg for them. When I don’t have the skills I need, I learn them. This means that I am a pastor who is sometimes a plumber, a dishwasher, a hair cutter, a sculptor, a student, an expert hugger, a lobbyist, a cook, a nurse, a parent and an emergency responder.
I’m not saying that all pastors should look like me or use gimmicks or big projects to bring attention to God’s presence in their congregation. And certainly if Garrison Keiler’s descriptions of Lutherans are accurate (and I think they are), ELCA members are not known for their bold unconventionality.
Yet, this Advent season, we are called to march to the beat of a different drummer. Martin Luther used the tunes of pub hymns that people knew how to sing joyfully and changed the words to be about God. However, sometimes when we sing them today they seem to have lost the vim they once had.
We must find ways new ways to spice up our worship services. Though we may have a very real fear that changing things will decrease the number of people in the pews, we should remember that the service is supposed to be a gift to God.
We may find that the impractical gifts that Jesus likes are the same gifts that can inspire faithful individuals in our midst. Those are individuals who have given up on church because they believe it’s boring, has nothing to offer them or cannot speak to what is happening in today’s world.
In the footsteps of the drummer boy, Martha and Luther, I hope you will find your own unusual and impractical ways to have eyes to see and ears to hear this holiday season, and every day.
Megan M. Rohrer is an ELCA pastor called by five congregations and has been a missionary to the homeless in San Francisco since 2002.
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I've never been a fan of The Little Drummer Boy. There is no Little Drummer Boy in the Bible and the story conveys a subtle works righteousness (play your best for Jesus and maybe he'll smile at you). Stick with "Of the Father's Love Begotten" or "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" beacuse he was born to "save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray."
I don't completely agree with your statement that worship is a gift to God. There is an aspect of that in worship, but more importantly, worship is a gift from God.
What we seem to lack is that gift from God. We lament the shrinking churches, and the lack of resources, and we try our hardest to fix those problems. Unconventional approaches are great when the conventional ones don't seem to work. But we're trying to solve the wrong problem.
The ELCA (and all of the other denoms) recognize that we have a serious problem translating Christ into the new generation and contemporary American culture. This is a serious problem. However, this horizontal (culture to culture, generation to generation) transmission is not the most serious problem. More seriously, we have a problem with the vertical transmission from God to us, which we understand in Christ crucified and risen for us. We have to keep that vertical transmission front and foremost. Without seeing this vertical transmission, the church is just one more charity in a world full of charities. That's why the horizontal transmission will fail (even if we use unconventional approaches).
With that vertical transmission (which God does for us, in Christ) front and foremost, the horizontal transmission will not be a problem. That's God's promise to us in Christ. Look to Acts, or even today look to Africa or China, where 5000 believers being baptized in one day does still happen.
This is a good post on the whole.
However, I am sorry to see the tired old urban legend about "Martin Luther used the tunes of pub hymns that people knew how to sing joyfully and changed the words to be about God." The Lutheran tradition did this in only a very few cases, and none were Luther's doing.
What Luther really did was build on a pre-existing body of popular German (or German/Latin) hymn singing that existed parallel to the official Latin liturgy. Sometimes it had a folk-like rhythm, sometimes it took and adapted chants of the Latin liturgy. He had specific words AGAINST the use of the music of the tavern.
This article opens the question of Advent in the 21st Century. On the one hand the preparing for the way of the Lord movement is helpful for people to go through, on the other hand it is not where most are at in their lives. When Christmas started on Christmas day and lasted for 12 days to Epiphany, (1800's) Advent as a season of preparation made sense. In our world however. Christmas starts the day after thanksgiving and for the most part ends on Christmas day. I wonder if it is not time to look at the whole Advent/Christmas/Epiphany liturgical calendar for some ways to bring it into sync with the world. There is a place for preparing the way of the Lord, but four weeks of you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout I'm telling you why, Jesus is coming and he's not happy about it, is not connecting with the people in the 21st century.