Sunday, December 28, 2003
I Samuel 2:18-20,26; Psalm 148; Colossians 3:12-17, Luke 2:41-52

Today is "Low Sunday" though you won't find that scheduled on the Common Lectionary. That's the "inside joke" name for the next Sunday after the "high" of Christmas Eve/Day. People are still on family trips or in the shopping malls exchanging gifts and hunting sales so attendance is often really low at church. The poinsettias are getting brown around the edges.

I'd like to find a book which tells how the committee that draws up the Common Lectionary does its work. Some of their choices and pairings seem really strange! This week's readings don't fit in. This is still the Christmas season--low or not-- yet as far as I can tell, none of these readings have anything to do with the Christmas Story.

However, the readings are neither "low" nor "strange." They are profound. In their own way they provide a larger context for the Christmas story which looks to the future. They provide a helpful break from the story and they speak to our overall theme: "How Shall We Sing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land?" (Psalm 137:4)

In April 1964, another Colorado clergy friend and I, both of us not long out of seminary, stumbled into Hattiesburg, Mississippi to participate in an ongoing, nationally church-sponsored voter registration action.

Every week a group of a dozen or more clergy from all over came to join the local African-American civil rights and church people to witness for the right of all people to register to vote without any barriers. We picketed the county jail in the morning and went out to talk to local black people in the afternoon to encourage them to go down to the courthouse in the face of great danger to register to vote. We hoped the presence of white clergy ("outside agitators" from "up Nawth") could prevent overt violence.

While we were there, Mississippi passed an anti-picketing law. About 45 of us challenged it, were arrested, and spent a long weekend in the county jail. Released on bond, we white clergy came home to campaign for the Civil Rights Act which passed that year and to later to see our Supreme Court appeal provide a key precedent for the whole civil rights struggle.

On return, I titled my reports, "How do we sing the Lord's Song in a strange land?" Mississippi was a very scary and strange land to me then, but that week was also the most life-changing spiritual retreat I have ever made. Today, the United Methodist Church, in fact, the whole United States, are very strange lands for me. I hope in this "break week," these readings will help us explore how to sing in harmony with and to a strange and troubling world.

Dave Steffenson

All contents copyright 2003 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.