Loving and Lightbulbs
I was doing some work from home this morning while my daughters watched VeggieTales: The Star of Christmas. I’m a huge supporter of the creative and ministerial duo that is Phil Vischer and Nawrocki, but this wasn’t my favorite of their Christmas repertoire. However, this time, I overheard a line from the dialogue that really stuck with me.
In the basic premise of the story, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber play Cavis Appythart and Millward Phelps, two musical playwrights in late nineteenth century London. It’s Christmas season, and they’re struggling to produce a blockbuster. Meanwhile, a nearby church is producing a Christmas pageant, featuring a special relic known as the Star of Christmas. The church is unknowingly making itself a competitor and finding itself in the crosshairs of the two aspiring playwrights, who successfully steal the Star of Christmas. (More spoilers ahead). It was the day before opening night, and it seemed the playwrights’ desperate actions were fruitful. But then a technical mishap started a fire which burned the theatre to the ground, and the two were arrested for their theft.
Though the now-imprisoned Appythart’s ethics and intentions were questionable at best, he still was making a soliloquy in his cell about how he had only hoped to “teach London to love.” The playwrights‘ cellmate, a longtime prisoner, inquired of them. When they told him of their production goals, he laughed uproariously and said, “You’re teaching London to love, with lightbulbs?”
It was a hard thing for me to realize in my studies to be a pastor in music. All the music, art, technology and general pizazz of a church have their limits. The resourceful Willow Creek Community Church well-developed the method of such an “attraction-al” church to grow its attendants and increase its ministry, but (as they probably will agree) it seems that approach has passed its prime. Ironically, as I’m serving in ministry now, I feel like I’m having to help people unlearn the consumer-like tendencies which the “attraction-al” church era had fueled so well.
All I want to do is teach London to love. And lightbulbs are useless.
But I learned a while ago to see beyond the lightbulbs of Christmas and into its true meaning. Christmas (literally meaning “Christ’s mass” or “Christ’s coming”) is God’s gift of love, and Christ commanded us to love definitively for Him (John 13:34-35). In essence, we are to “teach London to love.” Maybe not London, per se, but our neighbor (Mark 12:29-31). But lightbulbs won’t do that. We need to live and love by example.
Lightbulbs are pretty. Music can sound angelic, but if we don’t have love, it all turns into resounding gongs and clanging cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Maybe that’s one way we can model the original Christmas, by teaching love.
And On That Day - Phil Keaggy
I remember one day my Christian elementary school was having a little book sale, and I spotted a Christmas collection two-disc set and snuck it into my mother’s shopping bag. It’s since become the prominent Christmas musical listening tradition in our family. This song is track 2.
While endorsements from Jimi Hendrix may be an old wives’ tale, Phil Keaggy is widely praised for his guitar skills. However, his technical skill doesn’t show so much in this track as does his devotion and gentle passion as a singer and songwriter. His voice is gentle, and his words avoid much “Christian-ese.” My favorite line from the song is:
“And on that day was put in motion/the means of our redemption”
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