"Do not
judge by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment."
-- Jesus, Good News of John 7.24
There’s always a
lot of grumbling among Christ's followers around this time of year about the
unbelieving, lost world manipulating or disregarding Advent season and the
feast of Jesus' birth. One biggy is that they -- the unbelievers -- are
taking "Christ" out of the celebration both literally (Xmas) or
metaphorically through crass commercialism or laws stopping religious, public
displays of Christians. All true. But remember, they're blind, and
only responding to the whip of their master, the one who's been lying since the Beginning,
that is, Satan.
How 'bout this
though...since it is Christ's Congregation's holy-day, why don't we back the bus up, and we all get out somewhere at the beginning of this holy-day observance and reach up
and tear the "mas" (i.e. the Roman church "mass") out of
the name Christ-mas? It would seem appropriate that true, regenerate
disciples of Messiah should be more peeved about that than a bunch of
dead-in-sin unbelievers messing with our holy-day. They don't know any
better! They are spiritually dead, lost, blind. In fact, we should have
pity on them, and continue to be long-suffering, applying the healing balm of
the Gospel where-ever possible. We are the Light and the Salt; not the
Bat and they're the Ball.
On the other hand, we've let a high holy-day be labeled and
stamped with the Roman church idolatry for centuries! Centuries!! Christ-MASS? What the flibbity-jibbits has been going on??
Is it that we are so uncreative we can't think of some other name for
this holy-day? Or, is it fear of man that perhaps the World won't know
what we're talking about and, Oh! No! we'll be embarrassed? We shouldn’t
be concerned, correct? He's the King (now) over all other sub-kings (not later, see Revelation
1:5), and He's the one we honor and are concerned about what He thinks of us
not the blind leading the blind.
Now, it needs to be said that the feast of Christ-mass did
not always have the Roman church's idolatrous, re-sacrificing connections
(transubstantiation) that it has had since around the 12th century. Before that
time the word "mass" was "misse" which is the Latin word
for "sending". So, our word "mass" is the Anglicized
rendering of that word. To make a long history short, it eventually
became the short way of referring to a Christian worship gathering because
often the Latin phrase "Ite misse est" meaning "Go you are
dismissed" was the final words spoken at the end of the gathering by an
elder-shepherd. (See Jeffery Meyer’s fine article “Is Christmas Christian?” for
more info on that idea. You'll see I do not agree with the heart of the author's
argument but it still is an excellent article.)
The stubborn fact remains, though, that the Mass of Rome
now does have that meaning of re-sacrificing and not the
general ancient one of "worship time" and -- let's be bold here --
it's high time we deal with it. Let's think this through ... we
Protestants don't currently call our worship gatherings "mass" even
if it started out as a generally accepted term long ago, do we? No. Why
not? Because it's referring to idolatrous worship! The word has changed
meaning and means something entirely different than a 1000 years ago.
Just like the word "gay" today. Let me ask you, are you
going to keep on using that term “gay” now just because it meant "merry
and jovial" in Webster's 1828 dictionary? No way. In the same way we
Protestants aren't using the word mass for our fellowship gatherings. It
is unacceptable, but unfortunately it is tacked on the end of the word
Christ-mass like a leech that is unwilling to release.
So, here's what I propose: Let's actually reform our
language, and seek precision and clarity not vague notions and ambiguity.
Loose, subjective language allows
compromise with the world on multiple levels of life. Just look at
what the World does during and with Christmas and Easter. In other words,
brethren, it's OUR fault, the Church's that is. Look at Easter. No
one even knows what that word means! It literally is a foreign language,
lost to our culture and irrelevant. How 'bout renaming it Resurrection Day
instead, hmm? That's pretty precise and clear. And, as for a name
change for Christ-mass, I propose my wife's suggestion which is INCARNATION.
All reform starts small. But, let's change the
language and reform ourselves first.
"For it is time for judgment to begin at the
household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those
who do not obey the gospel of God?"
1 Peter 4.17
Reposted from 12/2014
No comments:
Post a Comment