Dear Friends
Tis Christas eve, and “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse!”
Well, we’ve had a couple of “mouses” here at our house wanting to come in when it was 2-below zero, and a stray kitten whom my darling Debby fed until he found his way back home. Something tells me he’ll be back as he savored our leftover salmon! Mouses beware!
I trust your Christmas will be full of delightful surprises (one Advent candle and our pine needles caught on fire!), congenial times with your family and friends, and a keen sense of what we’ve been anticipating—the Christ who has come and will come again. A staggering thought—a risen Christ who is with us and who will come again!
So stay warm, stay strong, and stay rejoicing!
A Merry & Blessed Christmas!
D. Paul
The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!
JESUS CHRIST, THE HOPE OF THE WORLD
In the Hanukkah season of “light” and the Advent week of “peace,” vengeance fueled the bloody weekend of December 13 and 14, with Claudio Neves Valente killing two Brown University students and wounding nine, followed by a father and son tandem slaughtering sixteen on Sydney’s Bondi Beach and wounding over forty at a “Chanukah by the Sea celebration.” The final butchery was announced Sunday afternoon when the slain bodies of Michele and Rob Reiner were discovered by their daughter, Romy, in their Brentwood bedroom, an apparent act of parricide, allegedly by the Reiner’s son, Nick. But for God’s comforting grace to family and friends, so much for a “Silent Night” this Christmas on Brown’s campus, the Jewish community of Sydney, and the Hollywood royalty of Brentwood, CA.
In way of response, the perplexed pundits ask the same question over and over—what is the motive? Excuse the naïveté, but don’t the overarching motives seem apparent: resentment, bitterness, envy, and hatred the common, emotional threads woven throughout the perpetrators of these vengeful murders.
Valente, a purportedly brilliant physics student, dropped out of Brown’s PhD program in 2003. Payback for his failed “vaulting ambition” came some twenty-years later with the slaying of students Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, followed two days later with the killing of renowned Professor Nuno Loureiro, who had become the prestigious Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center over the intervening 25 years since he and Valente were classmates in Portugal. There is a reason “envy” is considered one of the seven deadly sins and “Thou shalt not covet” one of the Ten Commandments. Left unchecked, envy’s bitterness leads to death, either of oneself or of another, or, as in this case, both parties. On December 16, Valente was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, the father and son team slaughtering the innocents celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach, need little investigation to determine their motive—a homemade Islamic State Flag found in their car along with several explosive devices. It’s evident: they hated Jews and the State of Israel. Thank God, another Muslim, Ahmed al-Ahmed, a local fruit shop owner, rushed the father and wrestled his shotgun away. Sajid stumbled his way back to the upper-level bridge where his son was firing from, and there the father was shot and killed by the police who also shot and wounded Naveed. The 24-year-old son has survived his wounds and faces 15 counts of murder and 40 counts of attempted murder. According to the press, “A multi-agency investigation is probing…why the Bondi Beach massacre happened.” And so horrific tragedy after tragedy, we continue to ask, “What could possibly be the motive,” when Christ addressed those motives head-on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23 NIV).
And then, as if sufficient blood had not been shed, I received word Monday morning (I’d retired early on Sunday) from a director friend who lives in Brentwood of the brutal slaying of Michele and Rob Reiner. Nick, their son, was immediately a person of interest, his sister, Romy sharing with police her suspicions about her brother. There is little more to say except, for the children living in the “pressure cooker” of Hollywood with high-profile parents, it can be an exhilarating, joyful, intimidating, and tortuous experience—all at one time. Often, as evident in Nick’s case, who had been in-and-out of rehab some seventeen times, alcohol and drugs are the preferred antidotes and buffer to the bright lights of fame with their ensuing dark shadows. And such … darkness.
But then it was in such darkness, a “gross darkness” that covered the earth two-thousand-years ago, that there arrived the greatest gift in human history—JESUS CHRIST, EMANUEL, GOD WITH US—sent by the unmatched love of the Father “in the fullness of time.” An unparalleled love, never witnessed before nor since—counterintuitive (born in a manger?), counter-cultural (love your enemies?), a mysterious, transformative counterpoint to the broken hearts of a fallen humanity (can one really be born again, given a new heart?), and the only true cure to those evils that “…come from inside and defile a person.” Yes, my dear brothers and sister in Christ, without qualification, Jesus Christ is the hope of the world! Rejoice without restraint this season, for we celebrate this Christmas a Christ who has come and will come again, for “The people who walk in darkness, in the shadow of death, have seen a great light and upon them hath that light shined!” (author’s paraphrase of Scripture and Handel’s Messiah). In the midst of such darkness, Christ is the Light of the world!
May that Light be a healing power for the Reiner family and their friends, and for the tortured psyche of Nick Reiner.
And bless the families and friends of those slain on Australia’s Bondi Beach. A few days ago, I received this note from a dear Jewish friend of mine in response to the tragedy:
“…no cause to despair. We read the story of Joseph in shul yesterday, and it reminds us of a very important -- and eternal -- truth. When God wanted to make Joseph the most powerful man in Egypt, He didn’t send him a chariot -- He sent him to jail. When God wanted to make David a king, He didn’t send him a crown -- He sent him Goliath. When God wanted to make Esther queen, He didn’t send her a life of leisure -- He sent her a genocidal plot. And so it is with us.”
Pondering the precious students on Brown’s campus, I was drawn again this week to the poetry of Christina Rossetti and the true meaning of Christmas as found in her poem, “Love Came Down at Christmas,” written in 1885.
Love Came Down at Christmas
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.
Amen
A lovely a-cappella arrangement, with embellishments, of “Love Came Down At Christmas.”
