Sunday School Christmas

Merry Christmas! Here's a recycled gift: the script of a sketch we did in my class at church several years ago. Our class is called Crossroads and it comprised 40 or 50 couples so it was hard to get to know everyone. We used to invite one couple each week to tell a little more about themselves. Here's the class intro scene from a special new couple. 


JOSE: Gosh, where to start? I'm Jose and this is Maria. We've been coming to IBC for a little while - like since the summer.

MARIA: But this is only the second or third time we've visited Crossroads. We've had trouble finding appropriate child care for our son—

JOSE (to Maria): They don't care about that. We're supposed to tell about our past, like our testimony.

MARIA: Ok, well you go.

JOSE: Ok, well we both grew up in believing homes. We met in college. At A&M. I was construction engineering. She was fine arts. We dated for a couple of years.

MARIA: Seven and a half months.

JOSE: Ok, so not quite a year. And then we decided to get married. And then—

MARIA (interrupting): I was visited by an angel.

JOSE (to Maria): I thought we weren't...

MARIA : And I got pregnant.

JOSE (to Maria, surprised): Wha? I thought...

MARIA (to Jose): Well, they're nice people. I just...
(to class) See, that part of our story is pretty unique. It's kind of hard to tell.

JOSE: So sometimes we just sort-of gloss over that.

MARIA: And let people think he knocked me up.

JOSE: Well, sometimes it's easier that way, especially with church people. They'll forgive you for sin, but not for being weird and talking about the Holy Spirit. I mean, not you guys. Er...

MARIA: Anyway, so there was all kinds of weirdness. This angel told me I was pregnant with God's son.

JOSE: Mine too. I got an angel too.

MARIA: But all our friends were like "Yeah, right" and my Dad completely flipped out.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: I seriously thought he was going to kill Jose. Or get arrested. Or both.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: So we decided the best thing might be for me to disappear for a while. So I went to Austin.

JOSE: The hill country.

MARIA: My cousin and her husband, Lizzy and Zach, live down there. She was pregnant too. And she had seen an angel too, so she believed me about my angel.

JOSE: I know it sounds like everybody in our family talks with angels and then gets pregnant all the time.
(to Maria) Let's get past this part.

MARIA: So I stayed with them for a while. That was great. I wrote a song then.

JOSE: Don't sing the song.

MARIA (glares at Jose)

JOSE: I stayed in College Station. I was working for my dad's construction company and just trying to save some money for doctors and hospital costs and baby stuff. She was gone for a month or two.

MARIA: Three and a half.

JOSE: Something like that. That was kinda hard. To be honest, I didn't really think that was fair at first. I didn't want any kids yet and then I find out I've got to raise somebody else's kid before I get to have my own? I mean, even if it was God's son, sheesh!
But then she finally came back.

MARIA: By then things had settled down and Dad had stopped making threats.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: And it was finally going to be somewhat normal. Like I could finally plan the wedding and stuff.

JOSE: And then the stupid census thing happened.

MARIA: Stupid.

JOSE: Some stupid politician got it in his head that everyone needed to go to their home town for this census.

MARIA: I was like, "Couldn't we just do this on Facebook or something?"

JOSE: Yeah it was stupid.

MARIA: I mean: Census page — "Like" — done.

JOSE: Yeah well they said something about travel stimulating the economy, yadda yadda. But it was stupid.

MARIA: So we've gotta drive 16 hours in his 1981 Chevy pickup. Wouldn't go over 50 miles an hour. I could see the road through the floorboards. We may as well have been riding a mule.

JOSE: That was a great truck.

MARIA: Not when you're pregnant. It was awful.

JOSE: Anyway, this is taking too long. So we went to my home town. I'm from a town called Breadsville, Arizona.

MARIA: Two words: Po - dunk.

JOSE: It's pretty small.

MARIA: One hotel.

JOSE: And a bed-and-breakfast.

MARIA: Like anyone would want to stay in a bed-and-breakfast in Breadsville.

JOSE: Anyway, Breadsville used to be a lot bigger and there's kind-of an influential family from there so there were a lot of people in town for this census thing and we couldn't find a place to stay. The hotel was full. The B&B was full. And so it was pretty late at night and we had tried all the people I knew and even called some motels in other towns around there and there was just nothing. We were gonna have to sleep in the truck.

MARIA: There was no way I was sleeping in that truck.

JOSE: So I went back to the guy at the B&B and pretty much just begged him if we could crash on his couch or something. Told him we would get up early and leave before the breakfast and everything. And he said no, but that we could stay in his garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: It was his garage.

MARIA: It was tiny. Not like an attached garage with a floor and drywall. It was a shack with no floor and a bunch of tools and boxes of D-Con rat poison.

JOSE: He had an old car in there under a sheet. He helped me push that out to give us room and he brought us some blankets, and we made a pallet on the ground right next to this puddle of oil from his old car.

MARIA: It stank.

JOSE: Well, and it got worse because I don't know if it was all the excitement or the rough ride in the truck or what, but she hadn't had a single contraction before that night and all the sudden, she looks at me with big eyes and says her water just broke.

MARIA: Did we mention that Breadsville doesn't have a hospital either?

JOSE: So I go running up to the house and bang on the door and the guy doesn't answer! I guess he was tired of dealing with us. So I run back to the garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: And there's Maria...

MARIA: That's good, dear.

JOSE: She's sitting on this old seat from a riding lawnmower.

MARIA: You can stop, dear.

JOSE: With her legs spread apart and a blanket in front of her—

MARIA (gritting teeth): Jose, I said that's enough!

JOSE: Um...so...she had the baby.

MARIA: Jesus ... our son's name is Jesus.

(Pause here.)

JOSE: Nasty. I had not intended to cut the cord or any of that.

MARIA: He's a wimp.

JOSE: Yeah, when it comes to blood. It was nasty.

MARIA: He was beautiful.

JOSE: Well, I had to clean it all up, which was nasty. And I just about get done and somebody bangs on the door of the garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: And I figure it's the B&B owner because he probably heard the noise and we're waking up the guests or something. And I go and open the door and it's Paul Teutul.

MARIA: It was not Paul Teutul.

JOSE: The dude from OC Choppers. Anybody watch that?

MARIA: It was not Paul Teutul.

JOSE: It looked exactly like him. He had two other dudes with him. They were riding Harleys. I'm telling you it was him.

MARIA: In Breadsville, Arizona?

JOSE: For the census, maybe.

MARIA: Why didn't you get an autograph?

JOSE: I was ... distracted.

MARIA: So anyway, these biker guys come in and they're carrying boxes. I mean presents. Gift wrapped. And they put them down next to Jesus who is burrito-wrapped in a blanket and laying on the work bench. And they tell us that an angel - a whole bunch of angels - appeared to them—

JOSE: I know. More angels. Sounds crazy.

MARIA: And the angels told them that Jesus was special and where to find him.

JOSE: In a tool shed in Breadsville, Arizona.

MARIA: We stayed there for almost a month. Eventually got in to see a doctor. Took Jesus to church for the first time there. Some other visitors showed up too. Big wigs of some kind.

JOSE: Limos this time instead of Harleys. And they saw a star, not an angel.

MARIA: They told us the same thing the biker guys had. Jesus was special and they had come a long way to see him.

JOSE: And apparently stopped by their bank on the way because those boxes were full of cash!

MARIA: Very generous.

JOSE: I was afraid it was stolen.

MARIA: If it hadn't been for those gifts, there's no way we would have made it to Mexico and back.

JOSE: Yeah, but that's a different story.

MARIA: Yeah, so that's us. We have two boys: Jesus is six and Jaime is three. They're both precious.

JOSE: They're out of control.

MARIA: No. They just keep us on our toes.

JOSE: Our number comes up on the screens in service just about every week because Jesus is talking back to his teachers.

MARIA: Correcting his teachers.

JOSE: It's back-talking. But he'll learn.

MARIA: Yeah, so we're here now and we're very excited about getting plugged in to Crossroads.

JOSE: Yeah, I guess that's it. Thanks for letting us join you.

MARIA: Merry Christmas.

The Sandy Hook Evil

I promised myself I wouldn't make any public comments about the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut for at least a week. When my news app pinged me this morning that bells were ringing there to mark the one-week anniversary of the shooting, it got me thinking, again, of what can possibly be said. I feel the need to issue two disclaimers related to this topic.

First, there is an enormous amount to say. When that level of evil is exposed in our society, it should spark deep, thoughtful, exhaustive and difficult discussions. This is a deep hole we're in. This isn't something we should read (or write) a couple of blog entries on and then move along to the next celebrity gossip. This should arrest our progress, or more accurately, make us aware that it halted while we weren't looking. As a society, we need to grapple better with things like evil, innocence, the sanctity of life, suffering, violence, mental health, and, yes, gun control. If we took the next 26 years to research, study, plan, test, and seek to understand violent evil, that wouldn't be enough to honor the 26 lives lost last week. I'm going to point out in this article (and probably a few others) a few of the things weighing most heavily on my mind this week, but what I have to say here is not all there is to say. What I know is not all there is to know. I do not have a 12-step plan for ending violent evil in America. And don't believe anyone who says they do.

Secondly, I'd like to acknowledge that none of my words here matter to the families who lost loved ones last week. I have sat with people who are enduring deep, deep sadness. For people in those situations, words don't matter; public policy doesn't matter; the threat of the next atrocity doesn't matter; their own safety doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter but their loss. No blog post matters because no blog post is going to bring back their sons and daughters.

So with that much preamble, I must be about to launch quite a gun control debate, right? Not at all. I think we need to talk about gun control; I have some ideas and opinions on that topic. But I think we should get to that topic around year 25 or your 26-year study. I'd rather start with a more accurate categorization of last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary. Last Friday wasn't primarily about gun violence. It wasn't primarily about mental health. It was primarily about evil. It was pure evil. It was the most evil thoughts of Adam Lanza's mind distilled into their most horrific and actionable form. It seems to me that this particular display of evil is special in our history. We've turned a corner. Americans have died in mass shootings before; children have died in mass shootings. But, as you've read countless times now, this is the first time in our nation's history anyone has embodied evil boldly enough to target kindergarteners.

And that matters.

I am not saying that a child's life is more precious than an adult's. My religion teaches that all people are created in God's image and all human life is sacred. I'm also not saying that those 20 children were any more valuable or important than the 16,000 children who died of hunger-related causes last Friday, or the 720 who died of AIDS that day. Each of those lives was sacred. Each of those deaths was an awful consequence of the presence of death in the world. But I am saying that last Friday's display of evil was symbolically weighty. It's a milestone of evil against vulnerable victims that stands out among its peers.

Our tendency over the past seven days has been to reach immediately for answers. We want solutions. We want to know, "What do we have to do to ensure that this doesn't happen again?" Obviously, that's a great question, one that we won't find easy answers to because there aren't easy answers. And I wonder if we're rushing toward solutions before we fully understand the problem. Again, the problem is evil. How do we understand evil?

To the extent that we pass some laws intended to limit the expression of evil, we are only fooling ourselves that we can control it. It could be that stricter gun laws would have forced Adam Lanza to kill three children with a kitchen knife rather than 20 children with guns, but for those hypothetical three families grieving this week, the end game is the same; they have been visited by evil. Likewise, an armed teacher or security guard might have stopped Adam Lanza after he killed the same three kids, but before he could get to the other 17. Again, would it matter to the families of his three victims? Yes, the numbers matter. Yes, three murders is better than 20. But let's not talk about behavioral band-aids that will reduce the numbers without taking about foundational truths that could actually have a larger effect. Let's talk about limiting the number of Adam Lanzas, not the number of kids Adam Lanza can kill.

Let's remain focused. The problem is that there is evil in our country. It's getting bolder. It's not lurking in dark alleys and the "other side of the tracks" any more. Evil is showing up in our gated communities and our suburban elementary schools.

And it's showing up in our hearts.

Let me drive this point home. You are a shooter like Adam Lanza. Do you know what signs Lanza exhibit before last Friday that he had the capacity to do what he did? None. At least very little. He might have seemed troubled at times, but so have you. He might have even been violent or melancholy or compulsive at times, but so have you. The reality is that we are all about two clicks away from bald-faced evil. Of course it doesn't seem that way. You're well-adjusted. Your life is manageable and predictable. You have a loving family. But let life throw you a few curves. Cancer. The death of a child. Job loss. Debt. Divorce. Disrespect. Betrayal. You'll start to withdraw. Your loving relationships will dissolve. You'll try more desperate versions of your coping mechanisms. You'll spend more time in the darker corners of your mind. And within weeks, you'll start to think about going out in a blaze of glory. America doesn't have two or three dozen potential Adam Lanzas playing video games in their moms' basements. America has 300 million potential Adam Lanzas.

Of course that doesn't happen to everyone who hits hard times, but the ones it does happen to aren't "more sick" than the rest of us. And we aren't "better people" than those who snap. The awful truth is that we are all capable of evil. We are all potential shooters. Evil isn't just in our neighbors' hearts; its in ours.

I was first disavowed of the notion that "I would never do something like that" in college. I had a friend named Ron Shamburger. He was a good guy. He came to the campus Christian meetings I was a part of. His family was stable. He made good grades. On September 30, 1994, Ron broke into his girlfriend's apartment, shot her in her bed, and then set fire to the place. He was executed by lethal injection on September 18, 2002. Evil got the better of Ron. If you think you're better than Ron, I hope live long and happy in your arrogant ignorance. I hope dumb luck keeps you from an outbreak of evil that would prove you wrong. If you're starting to see that your life's version of evil (shouting at your spouse? cheating on your taxes?) is only one step on a stairway toward hell, then you're starting to see the bigger issue at work in Newtown.

Evil exists in our country and in our hearts. I want to have the gun control debate, but let's table that for now and talk about the larger issue. Let's ask a more fundamental question. What are we going to do about evil? What on earth can we do?

Joseph and Sgt. Maj. Epting

During my college years, I was recruited heavily by the Army. I was in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, and I think it drives military recruiters crazy to have someone right on the doorstep — enrolled in ROTC and in uniform every day — and not close the deal. Every unit in the corps has a "military advisor" (read: recruiter); ours was Sergeant Major Epting. I remember one particular exchange with the sergeant major. It must have been his final attempt to win me over. He cornered me in a hallway outside an ROTC classroom and said, "So, Sanders, are you going to be in my army?"

"Sorry sergeant major. I've decided not to."

"That's too bad, Sanders. I like you. I hate to see you throw your life away."

I almost laughed. I really liked Sergeant Major Epting. I looked up to him. And my decision not to pursue a military contract was a difficult one. I have great respect for that career. But I didn't share the sergeant major's definition of a wasted life.

Oddly, Sergeant Major Epting is who I thought of when I read this morning's advent passage.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

I can't imagine the pressure Joseph must have felt to get out of that situation. Forget the weight of generations of family tradition, religious obligation, and cultural shame. Even if he ignored all that, this is seriously messing with his life plan. Now, instead of a storybook romance, he's got to prepare for her "baggage". Instead of being the envy of all his buddies, he'll be their charity case. Instead of the marriage night he dreamed of, he'll be raking hay in a stable and waiting a few extra months to get his groove on with Mary.

Even after his angelic vision, it would have been hard to stick around. It would have been easy to dismiss the dream as the result of too much wine the night before, or to water down the vision with half-measures. But what Joseph did was the ancient Hebrew equivalent of throwing his life away. He was going to marry a woman who had, apparently, slept with another man while promised to Joseph. He was not only going to tolerate her story about virgin pregnancy; he was going to believe it himself. He was going to tell his family, "Oh it's not what you think. She didn't sleep with anyone. She's a pregnant virgin. God impregnated her."

Every friend, every family member, every priest Joseph knew would have been pleading with him not to be foolish, to see past Mary's lies and his infatuation, to consider his family name, and not to throw his life away.

Joseph's call is our call too. God calls us to believe an impossible, cockamamie story about angels and devils, an all-powerful invisible being, human sacrifice, a virgin birth, and the king of the universe in a Middle Eastern feed trough. Too often, we lose sight of how ridiculous our beliefs really are. We start to think that Mormons or Muslims or evolutionists believe crazy stories. We ask them to "be reasonable."

But God's call is not reasonable; it's insane, countercultural, and impossible. If you want to live in a story that makes sense — a belief system that "feels right" to you, check out Buddhism or Hinduism. Those are much easier to swallow. But if you're interested in the Christian story — in answering the call of the God in the manger — then get ready to believe the unbelievable. Get ready to throw your life away.