The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Side by Side The Rev. Janis Campbell Northminster Memorial United Church Odd, the music that will wander into a person's head when she's contemplating Christmas. One expects Silent Night or Away in a Manger, but would you believe: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross! Well, to be honest, the words of the hymn came hot on the heels of what came along first, which was: When I survey the world . . . When I survey the world, I know that the peace we have is uneasy, that for many people there is a decided lack of either joy or hope, and that as far as the eye can see there is a scarcity of love. And just when I want more than anything to set my contemplations aside and turn my heart away, along comes that metrical reminder . . . When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died . . . The question occurs: Who is this Prince of glory who died on the cross? The answer comes: Love made known at Christmas. Emmanuel. God-with-us who holds back nothing for the sake of the world from which I would avert my eyes. Like it or not, Christmas calls us to look without flinching at the world as it is ? to look realistically at the world that is the object of God's loving, to have an honest look at ourselves. When we do, it's plain to see that the cross is right at cradle-side. For all of us, birth inaugurates a journey that is shaped as much by pain as laughter. But before you lament over-much, remember: in the gospels, the cradle didn't even come into view until those faithful first disciples looked back toward Bethlehem from the vantage point of Calvary. The Greatest Story Ever Told took shape in reverse, starting with Jerusalem. Until the community had endured that later, desolating time, there could be no narrative of the virgin birth, no angels and no shepherds, no adoring magi presenting gifts. Then, at Easter, they beheld the keeping of the ancient promise: I will be with you . . . I will neither leave you nor forsake you. Then, they understood how the bonds of death had been undone. Then, they knew with a certainty that no power on earth ? not even the evil that undermines our compassion and obscures our vision and fills us with contempt for one another ? nothing-that-is-made is equal to the power of God. Then, it came to them that God's word to us, first and last, is the same . . . know that you are loved; love one another.12/20/2004
