Author: admin

 

Over the centuries Christmas Eve has become encrusted with sentimental images and our own ideas about what was all going on, that mish-mash performed annually in nativity plays. So a gentle but necessary caveat: 

"Yes, plenty of angelic fireworks supercharge Luke's Birth Narrative, but these are more background special effects than bedrock significant events. The sign of God's salvation , the main event to see and know, is that of a flesh-and-blood infant boy swathed in cloth strips made from plant fibres and lying in a wooden feed-box for working animals. We cannot know God fully unless we know God there."¹

1. Luke. Two Horizons Commentary F Scott Spencer, (Eerdmans: 2019) page 69-70, emphasis original.

Yesterday at the Community Cafe Carol Service we were singing our way through the carol sheet. Asked for a favourite the pre-school contingent demanded 'Jingle Bells' – as antidote to the sacred stuff! 

Yes Jingle Bells lacks theological gravitas; yes Santa Claus and Jesus get a bit mixed up when you're four years old. But Advent is about surprise, expectation, excitement, and gifts. Because love really did come down at Christmas, we give presents celebrating God's presence here, now.

There is an adult seriousness that shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of believing in this God of inconvenient surprises!

A poem. Joseph wonders what in Gabriel's name he's got himself into!

 

I am Joseph

I am Joseph, carpenter,

Of David’s kingly line,

I wanted an heir; discovered

My wife’s son wasn't mine.

 

I am an obstinate lover,

Loved Mary for better or worse,

Wouldn't stop loving when I found

Someone Else came first.

 

Mine was the likeness I hoped for

When the first-born man-child came.

But nothing of him was me. I couldn't

Even choose his name.

 

I am Joseph, who wanted

To teach my own boy how to live.

My lesson for my foster son:

Endure. Love. Give.

(U A Fanthorpe)

Choosing carols for the Community Cafe was easy. Traditional, no unexpected alterations to well known words. No need for novelty or clever demythologising of such obvious eyebrow raisers as "Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes."

'Away in a manger' survives as an Advent and Nativity hit song not because of its theological precision, or historical verisimilitude. But because it evokes memories, provokes emotion, plugs in to those deep places of longing in danger of being disconnected by a culture that thinks such an inner ache should be erased by retail therapy. Advent validates aching hearts and hope long awaited.  

Election is about who is chosen, and who chooses, and means more than political decision-making. Mary is chosen, elect of God, as mother of the coming Messiah. 

"Hail Mary!" is the most outrageously empowering greeting to a young teenage woman. No wonder 'she was greatly troubled'.

"May it be to me as you have said." There are hinge moments in every relationship that push beyond the superficial now, pivotal points when choices are made that have forever consequences.

Advent is about that precarious moment of time, when an angel waited, what seemed like an eternity, for a young woman's 'Yes'.  

"Many poets betray in their work or their lives some original wound their art tries to heal."¹ Isaiah's Advent poetry displays 'original wounds' of exile and lost identity.

What do you say to people whose identity is being erased, their religious roots torn up, homes dismantled, and their gardens and fields left to waste? Now in an alien land, under foreign power, scared of God, afraid to hope? 

Something like this.  

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.

^{1. Lachlan Mackinnon, Obituary for Seamus Heaney.}

Advent joy is the powerful undercurrent which drives forward the history of God's love affair with the world.

Advent joy arises from the deep conviction that God is for us, and with us.

The Emmanuel promise refuels our hopes,transforms our worldview, and opens us to the risk of trusting God.

Advent joy is the default setting of the Christian heart towards Christ, the Prince of Peace. 

Advent joy has an air of defiance, teaching us to look on life at its darkest, knowing that out of the darkest hours in the life of God, came resurrection and new creation.

 

 

This Advent I've thought deeply about the carol Joy to the World. I've preached on joy during a period of personal sadness. 

'Heaven and angels sing', 'repeat the sounding joy', 'the wonders of his love'; three refrains that re-frame the world. Advent faith combines  notes of gentle defiance and urgent hopefulness.

I've come to realise that sorrow and joy are not mutually exclusive, and can co-exist in the same heart. It depends on the reason for the sadness and the causes of joy. In this case, both are because of love, divine and human, that dwells deep in the heart.

Poets understand economy of words. Advent is simultaneously mystery and divine revelation.The wonders of technology have created an appetite for novelty, intensity, and images that leave nothing much to the imagination.

For minds hungry but over-loaded by trivia and tedium, Advent is an invitation to renewal of wonder, imagination, and rediscovery of life's deepest resources of faith, love, peace and hope. 

Welcome! all Wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Summer in winter, day in night,

Heaven in earth, and God in man.

Great little one! whose all-embracing birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth
(Richard Crashaw)

Looking out the window it is cold, wet and dark. Daylight is still some time away. Living where I do, today will remain half light, overcast and gloomy. The political climate outside also feels like being 'in the bleak midwinter.'

And yet. Advent is the defining critique of power and politics. Power politics is about Herod's palace. Christian eyes look to Bethlehem. Redemptive love, not executive power is the way of God in Jesus. Emmanuel, God with us, is not cosy seasonal sentiment. Advent is God keeping his promises and delivering on them, lifting longing hearts from despair towards hopefulness.