Delve into the sights, sounds and other sensory experiences of Christmas to create a more meaningful Advent with United Methodist pastor and author Matt Rawle.
Guest: The Rev. Matt Rawle
- Rawle, an author and international speaker, is the lead pastor at Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, La.
- To learn more about and/or to purchase Rawle's new book, "Experiencing Christmas: Christ in the Sights and Sounds of Advent," visit MattRawle.com.
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This episode posted on October 20, 2023.
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Transcript
Before we start today's episode of "Get Your Spirit in Shape," I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a progressive, spiritually centered, servant seminary that seeks to form courageous leaders in the way of Jesus to cultivate communities of justice, compassion and hope. Garrett offers degree programs in different areas of church and nonprofit leadership. Don’t miss their early action deadline on November 15th.
Prologue
Christmastime is filled with sights, sounds, tastes and smells. United Methodist minister and author Matt Rawle shares how our sensory experiences of Christmas can deepen our connection to the season’s narrative and help us create a more meaningful Advent.
Crystal: Matt, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Matt Rawle: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is going to be great.
Crystal: Well, you are a veteran guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” and I thank you for always accepting our invitation. It's always fun and it's always a great time for sharing. You're the lead pastor at Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana.
Matt: That's right.
Crystal: Prolific author, which is why you are a veteran guest.
Matt: Very prolific. I mean, just writing every day.
Crystal: We have you in here talking about your books and it's so much fun and you've been a featured speaker all over the world, so it it's just really great to,
Matt: By the way, I'm never taking that off my resume. I spoke once at the University of Manchester in England and it was such an amazing, fantastic experience. So I might not ever speak internationally ever again, but I'm never taking that off of my resume. Thank you for recognizing that I'm an international speaker.
Crystal: That jumped out at me.
Matt: It's never coming off my resume.
Crystal: I love it. Today we're going to talk about your newest book, which is “Experiencing Christmas: Christ in the Sights and Sounds of Advent.” And I'm excited to talk to you about this book because, I'll be honest, I'm that person who, when I think about Christmas and Advent, I get overwhelmed quickly because there's almost a cacophony. So much is happening, so many sounds, and you talk about that in the book of how we're just really inundated with Christmas music from the day - you said the day after Thanksgiving. Honestly, it feels like the day after Halloween sometimes and all the things. So we're going to talk about that. But tell me just to get started, why did you write the book?
Matt: Yeah, well, because I've always been a big fan of the senses and how we experience things through our sight, through sound, through taste, through touch, these kinds of things. Because I think when we gather for worship generally, not just during Christmas time, when we gather for worship, certainly as clergy and leaders of worship, we need to take advantage of all of the senses that we bring to the table. So we do a great job with sight, whether it's lights or altered table decorations or graphics on the screens. We also do really great with sound, right, music and preaching, but have we thought about smell? Have we thought about taste or touch, these kinds of things. For example, we always use Welch's grape juice because we are good United Methodists, so communion has a particular taste to it. We use Hawaiian bread and Welch's organic concord grape juice.
So there's this really interesting connection and memory with taste, especially with Christmas. And the intersection of this is that in Christmas the celebration is that God now has senses God putting on flesh. The incarnation means that God now has eyes to see humanity. And not only that, but this omniscience, this omnipotent presence now is married to our own flesh, which means that God now does not have eyes in the back of his head. He can only see forward, which means that God now has blind spots in the person of Jesus. And what does that mean? God now has ears to hear our lament and our praise. And it's just an interesting thought. Did God in the person of Jesus have a preference of music taste? Did God in the presence of Jesus have a preference of food inserting the divine into human history? There is this beautiful sense and recognition that God at that time now had hands to hold humanity, hands that felt pain, eyes that could see the dawn, but eyes that also had to be shielded from high noon sunlight and high noon.
So there there's a beauty in God recognizing and experiencing our senses for the first time. And there's this also beautiful vulnerable presence that God also being fully divine and fully human in the person of Jesus, God now has blind spots. God now has to shield God's eyes and maybe there was food Mary served that he didn't like and this kind of thing. It's just a fascinating idea of both the blessing and the limitations of the vulnerability of the gospel when we begin to recognize that Christmas is about the celebration of God now inheriting our senses. And I think that's a really interesting, and that's why I wrote the book. I think it's a really interesting idea to dive into. So what did Jesus see? What did Jesus hear? What did God taste in the person of Jesus? So that was really the inspiration of the book.
Crystal: I really appreciated that you invited the reader to ask those questions. Did Jesus have a favorite food? And I couldn't help but notice in reading the book that you did reference a specific food at least two, maybe more than that. You talked about figgy pudding and I just had to ask, is this a favorite, this favorite food or were you just getting us in the spirit of the season?
Matt: Honestly, I don't know if I've ever had figgy pudding. If I had figgy pudding. I think I had it by accident. But the idea of, and here's, and this is I think one of the beautiful things about United Methodism is one of the things I've asked people in study groups that have done this and have some online communities that have talked through this is can you explain why you have a favorite food? And most of the time there's no other explanation other than I enjoy it right now. There could be some nostalgic things like my mother used to make it or my dad used to make it on the weekends or during special occasions we would have turkey and dressing or whatever. But a lot of the time it's just my preference and there's no rhyme or reason to that. And one of the things I love about faith communities, especially United Methodism, is that in the same space you can have folks who love figgy pudding and folks who never want to taste figgy pudding again. And as Paul says, don't destroy the work of God over the sake of food in Romans 14. So I love that, at least here, certainly at Asbury (UMC) and hopefully in all of our United Methodist congregations, it's a place for both those who love figgy pudding and serve it often and those who would never taste it or serve it all worshiping Jesus together. And that's a really rad thing.
Crystal: Yes, the connectional is definitely alive across the figgy pudding spectrum.
Matt: That's right.
Crystal: I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I can get overwhelmed during Advent, and I miss it every year. I go into it with this, this is the year I'm going to take more time. I'm going to sit, I'm going to reflect, and I get caught up in the list. I get caught up in the "Let's go here. We need to get this done."
Matt: "We need wrapping paper. We need to get to the end of the school year concert." Yeah, yeah,
Crystal: Sure, yeah, all of the things. So how can we take what might be considered using my word too much or if my word cacophony, how can we transform that into a holy experience?
Matt: Yeah, I think one thing to remember, and I tell clergy this all the time, is regardless if you have the biggest Christmas ever or something simple, or maybe it was an awful Advent and nothing went right, Jesus is still born on December 24th, Jesus will still enter into the world. In chapter two, I talk about what we hear for Christmas, like Christmas music, as soon as Halloween's over or Thanksgiving, all of our radio stations, all the department stores, we seem to be inundated with music. But in the actual Luke chapter two, music is absent, which goes against our assumptions. We think that the angels appeared and they started singing hark, the Harald, this great Wesleyan hymn. That's what happened. They came out of heaven singing Wesley Hark, the Harald Angels sing, no, there's actually no music in the story. What is in the story however is this Greek word ino, which means to praise.
It says that the heavenly host, the whole multitude of heavenly hosts were praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven. This word ino, interestingly, in the gospel of Luke, that word in its different phrases or different tenses only happened three times in the gospel. The first time is when Jesus is born, they were praising the multitude of heavenly hosts were praising God. It comes back in the story on Palm Sunday or Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. It says, A multitude of disciples were praising when Jesus was making his way to the temple. That's intentional, that's an intentional word. And then the word pops up for a third and final time at the end of Luke's gospel, as you might imagine that after Jesus ascended and said they went to the temple praising God. And so whether we have the biggest Christmas ever, whether everything is working, whether things are broken and like, oh man, I forgot to set out the advent calendar.
Well now we don't have one for this year or whatever, or the Christmas pageant doesn't go. The point is praise. Time and time again, the markers in the gospel is for our ears and for the air around us to be saturated with praise. And that can take lots of forms. It can be magnificent with a symphony orchestra. It can be a prayer from a five-year-old kid. It can be super simple. It can even be silence. We had talked about that this past Sunday, the power of silence. So in terms of being inundated with all of these things, the thing to always remember is that it is about praise, or at least that's what the gospel of Luke seemed to suggest. This ieo, this praise of God happens in three distinct moments when Jesus is born, when Jesus enters in Jerusalem, heading toward the cross. And when Jesus is raised and sits at the right hand of the Father, as the creed tells us and reminds us. So at the end of the day, if we are praising, we are doing well in whatever way that we are celebrating,
Crystal: I really appreciate that because it gives us space to get it right, to not focus on what we haven't done, but we can get there.
Matt: I think the church, this is off topic, but I think the church would be, needs to take advantage and would really be a gift. The church would really be a gift to us humans. If it was a place where there was grace enough to fail, there was grace where there was space enough to fail to fail. Well, there's so much pressure in doing everything, whether it's evangelism or worship or your charge conference paperwork. There's all of these markers of perfection in the pastor and being the resonant expert in all things. And I think church becomes the gift it is intended to be when we fail. Well, when we fall upward to roar. Yeah, so exactly. So if we are praising, then we are mimicking the language of the angels, and we can do that on our knees. We can do that as we trip over the chancel rail. As long as praise is leaving our lips, we're in a good space.
Crystal: I'd like to talk about the difference between anticipation and expectation. I really loved that section of the book and how hope is the change agent here, which that feels like, I mean, goodness, Matt, that could just be its own book honestly,
Matt: Man, that's tattoo worthy. Yeah, exactly.
Crystal: That's right.
Matt: And that's chapter one, right? Yeah, we jump right in there.
Crystal: So just tease it for the audience.
Matt: So chapter one, and it's really where the book starts is the season. What do we see? Do you see what I see? And I was fascinated diving in actually into Jeremiah because advent, early in Advent, we're reading these prophecies from Jeremiah, Isaiah, this kind of thing, full run to what a child is born. And Jeremiah has this hopeful language of a messiah that is coming, and you can imagine him writing by candlelight, but what he sees in the distance, he sees Jerusalem burning because Jerusalem is being conquered. And how do you get from a burning city to a heart strangely warmed with the promise of a Messiah? Jeremiah was just seeing something different than the rest of us see, and that is the difference between anticipation and expectation. Anticipation is something learned. My grandfather was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1941 and he was drafted by the Air Force in 1942, so it was a pretty quick career, but baseball is kind of part of my family's story anyway, and baseball is built around anticipation.
You have zero time as soon as the ball is released from the pitcher's hand, you have to react, right? And it's a learned trait. When the ball is hit as a fielder, you know exactly how to move and there's muscle memory involved in it is a game of anticipation. And we learn this. There are a lot of things that we can teach and we can learn in the church, but anticipation only gets us so far. And here's the math equation for you, anticipation plus hope is expectation, right? So expectation is the hopeful work of the divine in our life.
One thing I like to say is for Christmas Eve, we anticipate seeing a baby, but are we expecting to see salvation? Those are two very different things, right? Expectation is something you can't anticipate because it is the activity of the Holy Spirit. You can create an environment which expectation can happen, but ultimately expectation is anticipation that is inundated with hope, and that's something that only the Holy Spirit can offer. So I think when we gather for Christmas, we anticipate a lot. We anticipate bigger crowds. So we have ushers at the doors and we anticipate more bulletins, and there are a lot of things that we anticipate about the season. But let's take a step back and let's inundate our activities with hope, the kind of hope that Jeremiah saw when a city was burning and he saw a Messiah, that kind of hope seeing something different this year.
So we anticipate seeing baby Jesus in the manger, but are we expecting or is there an expectation of salvation that night? And that means leaving room for the Holy Spirit to do what the Holy Spirit does. So yeah, so expectation is anticipation with hope, right? Because anticipation is kind of void of any kind of moral value or it's playing. Baseball is anticipating where the pitch is going to go, but hope is winning the game. There are things you can do, but ultimately it is this activity of the Holy Spirit that changes our anticipation into expectation.
Crystal: Yeah, I love what you just said about leaving room for the Holy Spirit to act, because I think sometimes in my wanting everything to be perfect in my head for our Christmas or throughout Advent, I forget that I have everything planned and I've got a very strategic outline of how things need to go. And I don't leave room.
Matt: Some would say, I leave too much room because Crystal, we would make a great team. I should probably plan more than I do. I love improv and I love improvising with the Holy Spirit. And also a natural consequence of that is that I'm exhausting to everyone around me, including my staff. I'll say this, the one thing that I'm, well, no, I was about to say the one thing I was obnoxious about, I know there's more than one, but one of the things that I'm super obnoxious about is candles for Christmas Eve, I and my admin assistant Casey, who's right outside my door, she knows this, that when the season when it starts to get cold, and it's almost time for Advent, she knows that I'm going to want all of the Christmas Eve candles in my office. I have to see them physically. There was one year where there was some kind, and this was not here at this church. There was another congregation that I lovingly served. We almost forgot to put out the Christmas Eve candles and the amount of anxiety that goes through a pastor's veins when you can't find the Christmas Eve candles. And it's like 4:45 for the five o'clock service. So ever since then, my office is full of candles starting December 1st. I mean, I have to have my eyes on that box of Christmas Eve candles, I don't plan much.
Crystal: But Matt, even without Christmas Eve candles, Jesus was still going to be born.
Matt: That's correct. Yeah. I love when the prophet's words get thrown right back at 'em. Exactly right. Jesus will be born anyway, right. Who said that? That's a good teaching.
Crystal: Yeah. So I want to talk about, we might not talk about the detailed into the see here, taste, feel, and smell, but I want to touch on a couple of them, especially a couple more. I want to talk about the sound because you about just, were talking about how the sound, we don't get that we've injected the angel singing, but when you make this, you remind us that in movies, in television programs, there's always this soundtrack under the bed, the soundtrack got under it that helps to connect the narrative. So how would you say that music helps us connect the narrative of Christmas?
Matt: So I've gotten in the habit of developing a lot of videos for social media, whether it's Facebook or Instagram and TikTok and this kind of thing. And one of the key elements of that is getting the right background music because the background music matters. I mean, it's one thing to have a dramatic moment in the strings you're playing and there's this beautiful crescendo, but if you have the main character coming out and it's a really dramatic moment and the background is, it's going to change the whole thing. So music is super important because it crafts an emotion the way that the human voice, and this is fantastic, and this is a study, and listeners don't quote me on this, but I believe that it's like a study out of Stanford that when our language is happy, you can look at the tonality of the human voice and you find major intervals like a major third, a perfect fifth.
Those intervals happen naturally in the human voice when our language is happy and when our language is not, when it's sad. And when we're saying something difficult, there are minor tonalities in our voice. I mean not to spend. I can spend another hour on how everything we experience is a symphony of God. I mean, even from the very beginning of creation, God spoke existence or spoke creation into existence and what is music but vibration? And it's fascinating to me to think that matter is sound is just sound that has cooled down and slowed down enough to become something physical. That is a beautiful thought to me. I was a music major, so I'm super biased in this discussion. But we are inundated with sound. And the point of that's not like make sure you do handles Messiah for Christmas. It's to recognize the power of music.
And not only in the worship setting, I would say pay attention to the kind of language we use. Pay attention to our tone as we talk to our neighbors, as we talk to our kids. And I'm super guilty of this because I'm working all the time and I'm tired, and sometimes I come home and there are minor tonalities and my voice when I come home and talk and talk to my kids, talk to my kids. So I would say Christmas music I think reminds us of the orchestra that we are physically in our own person. It's a season to be mindful of what kind of language we use. Music isn't just what happens in the sanctuary. It is a result of how we use our words with one another. Are we generous? Are we kind?
Are there major tonalities in our language? I think is super, super important. So I think music reminds us of that, and it's because music crafts an emotion and it's hard to resist when there's a sad song. It's hard to smile in the midst of a sad song. You know what I'm saying? And then conversely, it's hard to be mad when you're listening to Elton John. We were talking about Elton John earlier. When there's happy music, when it's fun, it's, it's hard, it's uplifting. And that also translates into the language we use right with one another. So I think the music of Christmas reminds us of the way that we speak with one another. Are our words full of charity are our words full of hope and generosity with our neighbor. Music reminds us of that. What is our neighbor hearing in us? That's what the music of Christmas reminds us.
Crystal: Before we were recording the podcast, in addition to talking about Elton John, we were talking about the sense of smell and how that just, I had read that there's no other sense that kind of brings back our memories as quickly as the sense of smell. So let's talk about that for just a minute. And I'd love for you to share a story that you were sharing.
Matt: And it's true that our sense of smell is really, really linked to memory, our memory. So at least here at Asbury, not only in our worship services do we craft sight with the screen backgrounds and this kind of thing. And not only do we pay close attention to what people hear in terms of our musical ensembles and sermon and preaching and our prayers, we also pay attention to smell. So at Christmas time, on the first Sunday of Advent, I spray the sanctuary with evergreen scent so that there's a decided difference between last Sunday, which was Christ the King Sunday to this Sunday, which is the first Sunday of Advent. It's one of those markers that this is a new year, this is the Christian New Year, right? Advent one. And everything is different. And I love when folks come into the sanctuary and it's like, oh, that's right.
There's this kind of nostalgia. There's this memory of evergreen and it's Christmas time, right? Generally speaking, and this is great, even though she's not a sponsor of this podcast, Nicole Nichols, one of my great friends, has a candle company circa 1955, and she does different Disney scents and also Harry Potter sent and all these, it's fantastic. So we a unique, we partnered with Nicole, we have a unique scent of our sanctuary that we developed with her. And this is not on video, but I have, it's this little vial. It says Asberry super secret lobby scent that she made. I love it
That she made for me. And I order it periodically in every Sunday I spray the sanctuary because when you come to this place, I want it to have a unique smell so that when you smell it, your memory is engaged and you already, before you have even entered into the sanctuary, you are primed and ready for worship. Because as soon as you get on campus and you take that first breath, you're ready. There's something in you that sets you into a prayerful mindset. There's a reason why incense is used during prayer. May our prayers be counted as incense before God. It's one of those ways that our environment sets our physical mood in an attitude of prayer. So yeah, we pay attention to smell when people are on campus. So our lobby has a particular smell. Our children's area has a different smell. It's much more fun. It's lively. And I think that's important. Part of why we worship is to do this in remembrance of me. A great way to reinforce that is for your worship space to have a particular smell. If we're engaging our memory, smell is super important. So I take full advantage of that beautiful gift of God.
Crystal: These are worship hacks.
Matt: That's right.
Crystal: I love it.
Matt: Yeah, for sure. Oh, absolutely. I remember the first time I did this, it was several years ago, I was preaching when "Ratatouille", and there's this beautiful scene in Pixar's "Ratatouille" where Anton Ego, who is this, I guess he's the antagonist, he's one of the villains. And of course they serve him this peasant dish of ratatouille, which is sliced eggplant. And he takes one bite and he's immediately transported back to his childhood home. So there's this connection between smell and taste. And I made the connection with the Eucharist and communion, but before that sermon, I had sprayed the sanctuary with apple pie scent so that folks were hungry. They started to get hungry during the service. I didn't announce it, I didn't tell anyone about it. I just did it. And it's fascinating that just because I was preaching about food and the importance of breaking bread at the table, and they were also hungry at the same time. So you're like triple enforcing your message on that day. So yeah, dear worship leaders take full advantage of this worship hack. It will not, but with great power comes great responsibility. So make sure you're enforcing all of the right memories.
Crystal: Some ministers are choosing their stole for the Sunday and you're choosing your scent. What you'll be spraying throughout the sanctuary.
Matt:
In like Dear United Methodist Publishing house, the next worship planner, because we have lots of worship planning helps there. We have visuals, we have suggested hymns. It tells you the color of the liturgical calendar. There needs to be a little section like, Hey, if you want to reinforce your message with scent, try these things out. That'd be fantastic. And that's for free. That's for free, UMPH. Just write that up. I think that would be, I mean, it can get a bit wonky when I'll make fishers of men. You don't want to do a fish scent, but we can get super creative with this and change the scent of our worship spaces based on the message. I think that'd be fantastic.
Crystal: I think in a year we're going to be back here on the podcast talking about the line of scents available.
Matt: Yeah. Can you talk to someone? Can you work on that? That'd be great.
Crystal: Yes. Matt, one of the things I really appreciated about the book is that you're asking us as the reader to look at advent through our senses, but you're also asking us to consider how Jesus might be experienced in the world. Jesus coming to earth as a human is experiencing the Earth and all of the people with the senses, how God is experiencing that. And it was like this dual, I don't know, there were kind of two messages going that you could plug into, oh yeah, I experienced it this way, but wow, I never even thought about how Jesus might be touching and feeling and Jesus' favorite food. Tell me about how those dual perspectives or those dual lenses
Matt: And the inspiration for that, because the book really ends in that kind of a place where we look up and say, Lord, do you see what I see? And I think when we describe that, God answers with our same question, but do you see what I see and the idea of that actually, so I was in my office and I was working on chapter three of the book, which is about taste, which is admittedly a bit difficult to write about. It's describing a color. How do you, because I almost laugh. Some of my friends go to wine tastings and stuff. I'm like, oh, I can taste the current. Like, no, you can't, man, it tastes like wine. Come on. At least my palate is not distinguished enough to taste caramelized oak or whatever. Anyway, so I was sitting in my office, I'm like, how do I do taste?
And it dawned on me, and it has taken me an embarrassingly long amount of time to come to this realization that first night that Jesus was born at some point, Mary nursed Jesus. And I'd never considered that, and that's embarrassing. I should have considered that one of my clergy colleagues has been pregnant during Advent before. And she was like, well, yeah, I mean, it was such a lived reality that for her was a huge experience of the advent season of this tenderness between parent and child. And I just never considered it. And I went and I wondered if there was some kind of official celebration of that first feeding of Mary nursing Jesus, or if there was some celebration of Jesus being weaned or some kind of acknowledgement. Because to me, that moment is really the beginning of the Eucharist. When we celebrate at the table, we are celebrating that Jesus's body nourishes us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And we come to that conclusion because first Mary's body nourished Christ, and there's this beautiful reciprocity of that, of how Mary's body nourished the body of he who nourishes us. And it's all this beautiful intertwined reciprocity that really got me thinking of how God experiences our senses. I actually went to, there's a Catholic church up the road because I surely, surely there's some kind of official recognition of this. And I met with the priest and he goes, who is this Protestant yahoo teaching me? He goes, because there's no official recognition of the first feeding or the first Eucharist or the weaning of Jesus. And he was like, there really should be like, who is this Methodist guy coming up the road teaching me about Mary? It was so great. And the really cool thing, the power of the Holy Spirit is the day that that happened that I went to the Catholic church and had this idea of the Eucharist.
The first Eucharist was on the day of the celebration of the enunciation of Mary's conception. And it was fantastic of the way the Holy Spirit was working in that moment, one, to help me realize something that I hadn't ever thought of. And like I said, it took me an embarrassing long time to even come to that conclusion, but the activity of the Holy Spirit to have me experience the story from someone else's perspective, right to consider. So what is it like to be a mother nursing during the advent season that on that Christmas Eve, certainly that's an image that goes through your mind. And we, especially guys who are leading worship, have done a terrible job of narrating that and calling attention to that and lifting up that holy moment. At least I've never heard a sermon in my small little world about the beauty of that reciprocity of maybe this is where the Eucharist begins, is Mary's body nourishing the one through whom we are nourished and how beautiful that is, and how that, when we talk about senses, let's not miss that. Let's not miss that beautiful reciprocity of the great Thanksgiving. And I'm thankful that I had that moment and the Holy Spirit gifted that to me. So I'm thankful, and Anna taught the Catholic church up the road. They've been some suggestions of what they can add to the missal in its next Vatican three, when they redo the missal, they can add that into the celebrations.
Crystal: That was definitely one of those aha moments. And I'll be honest, I went back and I had to reread it a couple times. It's like, okay, let me go back and see if I'm understanding here because it was a new thought. In your book, you're inviting us to pay attention to advent through the filter of our senses. Tell me, what do you think Advent can become for us when we make that shift?
Matt: Advent is a unique experience, and I say it this way, that we have a hard time imagining Jesus being born if we don't sing "Silent Night." Now,"Silent Night" is beautiful. I love "Silent Night." "Silent Night" feels like Christmas to me. In fact, we played with "Silent Night" for our Holy Thursday service as they were leaving Holy Thursday, we played "Silent Night" in a minor key, which was haunting and did another number of memory and like, oh, right, there's this, bringing the whole story full circle. We played instrumentally "Silent Night" in a Major Key, which was really moving as they went out into the Garden of Gethsemane and all of that. But I think there's a trap there that we don't change Christmas at all, that whenever in your community of faith, whenever Christmas had the most people attending, we tend to lock that in the time capsule, and that's Christmas Eve service here. There's some really beautiful things to that. And it's also an unfortunate trap that we forget to flex our muscles a bit of what that worship experience can be. So I think when we start to really investigate how our senses are at play, I mean, our senses change over time. The food I liked as a kid or not the food that I like now, and what does that mean?
So incorporating and diving into our senses, I think helps us take the beauty that is Christmas, but also add a new experiential element to that. So there's some really beautiful nostalgic things about Christmas. I mean, it is, it's strange to think that people worshiped on Christmas Eve without singing "Silent Night" because "Silent Night" hadn't been invented yet. Right? That's just crazy. That's just crazy to me. And I sure crazy to several people for sure. I mean, I did make the mistake one year of doing "Silent Night" differently one year, and I mean, that was a mistake. I like to say the Bishop's address is 527 North Boulevard, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 7 0 8 0 2. That was a mistake. It's not necessarily time to be rebellious with your congregation Christmas Eve for sure, but don't miss the opportunity of diving into a new experience
Crystal: And allowing the Holy Spirit to move
Matt: Exactly, allowing the Holy Spirit to give us something new to see, something new, to hear something beautiful, to taste even during our worship. Pay attention to holy communion. Should holy communion be just a touch different on Christmas Eve play with, because I think the senses, our own senses are a great source of inspiration of how to craft worship itself. And again, Christmas is about God putting on senses in the incarnation. So Christmas lends itself to leaning into sight and sound and taste and touch. And really because the book ends with the sense of touch, because touch is super powerful. It's super abused as well. There has to be good kinds of touch in the church. And there are two times in Luke's gospel where Jesus's full body is embraced. There are only two times where it's recorded. I mean, certainly Mary held Jesus, and certainly Joseph held Jesus and Aunt Susie held Jesus in these things.
But the only time when he's a child where his full body's embraced is with Simeon in the temple, Simeon held in his arms, the child and my eyes have seen your salvation, right? Let your servant depart in my peace. The second time where Jesus's full body is embraced is with Joseph of Arimethea. When Jesus's body is taken down from the cross, or at least it is suggested that Jesus' full body was embraced in that movement. So to embrace Jesus is to embrace the fullness of the story from the manger to the empty tomb and beyond. And our senses help us embrace a fuller picture of what it means to worship God for that ineo to infect our sanctuaries. So lean into your senses because that's really what, in large part, it's not the only thing in terms of, because I'll say this, there are lots of other advent books coming out this year too. So my recommendation is yes, get experiencing Christmas, but also get unlikely advent from Rachel Billups and Will Willem and Heaven sent. There are other books out there too. So our census remind us that Advent is bigger and leaning into our senses reminds us that there is more to the story we should incorporate that ineo, that praise of God through sight and sound and touch and taste.
Crystal: I'll tell you as I read the book, the section that caused me to tear up a couple times was that section about touch and because, well, one, there was a really poignant story that you tell about someone who reaches out to his father as he was passing away. But just to consider, I think you wrote, we cannot live without touch. It would be impossible. We must be able to fill the world around us. And that was just a really beautiful place to just kind of sit and ponder to, just to ponder that feeling that world around us, because that can be beautiful, but that also can be difficult.
Matt: Sure. Yeah. I mean, personal bubbles are a real thing. And touch can be tricky, right? Touch can be tricky. One of the things I find, or one of the things that I ask usually during the advent season is to do an inventory of touch. What have your hands held most often this week? Has it touched plastic meaning like a debit card or the keys of your keyboard? Have your hands been in the kitchen and preparing food for that? So what is occupying your hands most of the time? And how does human touch fall on that spectrum? When was the last time you offered someone an embrace or needed one needed an embrace? When was the last time that you held the hand of a stranger?
So I think it's really important when our hands know the touch of wrapping paper quite well and scotch tape and these other sensory seasonal markers of pointy ivy and the hay of a manger. Let's not forget that church, because we do passing the peace every Sunday as part of holy communion. And for some, that's the only handshake they have all week, is to do an inventory of how we are using God's gift of touch, really. And again, advent lends itself to doing that kind of inventory because God put on flesh and how do we use that in holy ways?
Crystal: Yeah, that's a really great practice to just remind us what are we doing not just with our touch, but with our time. I think that would reveal some of that as well. So as we finish up today, can you just tell us, I read the book by myself, I got so much out of it, but this is also developed as a group study. There are questions in the back and just tell us a little bit about how someone might experience experiencing Christmas.
Matt: Yeah, no, and I always try, every time we come up with another project, I try to make it super easy for the reader and the audience and pastors and churches to use these. So you have the book, the Trade book, experiencing Christmas. There's also a leader guide that's with that. There's also a worship resource flash drive that comes with it, and that has your graphics are already made. There are sermon starters. So you can take that and let that be your own version of chatGPT, I've already written it out for you. You can take that and use that as inspiration for your sermons. So there are lots of items that come along with it because I want to make it super easy. Look, there are things that are complex during Christmas. Let's not make experience in Christmas, one of those things that are complex.
So there's a lot of ways to take advantage of the series to do as a churchwide series from the pulpit to your small groups and beyond, because I mean, I'm doing an online disciple Bible study right now, which is super successful. There are about 30 folks in three time zones that are in that and do an experience Christmas online study that would be amazing. And you can find all of this one Cokesbury or Amazon or wherever fantastic books are sold. But it is meant to help you craft an experience. It's in the title right, experiencing Christmas. It is hopefully something that makes it super simple. Like here at Asbury, we use almost exclusively Amplify Media for all of our small groups. So amplify media.com and starting this week, well, I don't know when this is going to Air Crystal at the recording of this podcast, there are sessions online that you can see for free, and I'm sure that that will continue.
Chapter one, you can read online for free to check it out. So please check it out, look at it. If it works, great. And if you want other worship hacks like spraying your sanctuary with evergreen scent, get in touch with me, matt rawl.com. Reach out. I'd love to help you craft an experience with experiencing Christmas because we also, another thing that we've done is I've created a space in the Metaverse. If you have an Oculus on Facebook, there's a place, it's called Experiencing Christmas. So if you search in the Oculus for experiencing Christmas, I've created a world in the Horizon app called Experiencing Christmas. And there you can have a different kind of experience. There's a campfire there. You can actually chop wood and put wood on a fire that you can have a snowball fight. There's a microphone there for karaoke, there's a guitar you can play with just all these different sensory experiences in the metaverse that, again, God entered into our world. And now our world has some really interesting new spaces to consider in terms of how the church can be in experience in these places. So yeah, go on the Go Horizons app and search "Experiencing Christmas," and we'll have on Facebook have a group where we do meetups in the Metaverse. Again, it's another experience of how we can tell a good story, tell the best story. So yeah, amplifymedia.com. Cokesbury is a great space. And then find me in the In Horizons app, search "Experiencing Christmas." I'd love to see you there.
Crystal: And we will link to all of that on the episode page so the audience can go and check that out. That sounds really fun, Matt. Of course, we can't let you leave today's episode without asking the question that we ask all of our guests on "Get Your Spirit in Shape," and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Matt: Yeah, and normally I answer this question exactly the same every time, but I'm going to change it this time exclusively for you, Crystal. I'm going to change this because normally in terms of keeping my spirit in shape, I do a similar kind of prayer every day, and it's rooted in Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart of God and put new right spirit within me, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. I think that's a beautiful prayer. It's a humble prayer. And there's a breathing exercise that I do. Currently, however, I'm doing two different Disciple Bible studies. I'm doing one in person on Sundays, and I'm doing an online version on Thursdays, as I mentioned. And in order to do that, I'm constantly reading scripture, not only for the study in particular, and I've read these stories a hundred times.
I've read Abraham's cycle, I know Abraham's story. But every time I jump into this, I learn something new every single time. And I've taught the Bible Bible study for years, but through the reading of scripture, intentionally slowly looking at what words mean, looking up in the Hebrew, searching in commentaries. I think for me, reading scripture well enough in order to teach it changes the way that you read it. And for me at least, that certainly keeps my spirit in shape because there are other clergy in these disciple Bible studies, so I need to bring my A game. They will call me, they call me out and have called me out on these things. So almost not constantly, but every day, slowly and intentionally reading scripture with the idea of eventually I'm going to have to teach this. So I need to know it really well, has certainly kept my spirit in shape. And I'm thankful, and I'm thankful for that Bible study is one of my favorite things, and it certainly keeps my spirit in shape.
Crystal: That's awesome. Well, Matt, we are thankful that you are here today to tell us about your new book, "Experiencing Christmas: Christ in the Sights and Sounds of Advent." And it's always a pleasure to spend time together. So thank you so much.
Matt: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I appreciate it.
Epilogue
That was the Rev. Matt Rawle discussing his new book, “Experiencing Christmas: Christ in the Sights and Sounds of Advent.” To learn more about Matt's ministry, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you will find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners, [email protected]. If you enjoyed today’s episode, we invite you to leave a review on the podcast platform where you listen.
Thank you so much for joining us for “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” I’m Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we are together.
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary is a sponsor of today’s podcast. Garrett offers different degree programs including a master of divinity; master's degrees in counseling, education, public ministry and theology; doctor of ministry; and a doctor of philosophy. If you want to take the next step in your education, you can study in person or online at Garrett. Apply before November 15, and you could be eligible for a minimum 65% scholarship, up to 100% of tuition. Visit Garrett.edu/UMC. That’s Garrett.edu/UMC.
