Category: Advent

 

 

 

For years U A Fanthorpe wrote a Christmas poem for her friends.

These and other Christmas poems are now gathered in the Collected Poems.

A favourite is the one about Joseph – not because it's great poetry, it isn't – but it is imaginative psychology with just enough theology to hold it together.

And Poussin's painting shows him suitably worried and wondering 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.

The BBC adaptation of the Nativity finished last night, and I thought it was a beautifully conceived mini-series. Written by Tony Jordan (Eastenders, and Life on Mars) who researched the historical and theological background over four years, it struck the right balance between the discourse of historical drama and soap opera. Tatiana Maslany as Mary was compelling and convincing, both in her confusions and then her growing certainty of the mystery that had engulfed her. The men, Joseph and her father, perhaps understandably rejected her story as fantasy, and their hostility was grudgingly tempered by enough humanity to send her away, and accompany her as far as Bethlehem. Herod was suitably psychotic, just the kind of egomaniac who would have children slaughtered to secure his own security! The Magi were an attractive combination of the comic and and the mystic, otherworldly and well versed in the real-politik of Herod. The portrayal of astrology as a life study and serious epistemology in its own right was sympathetic and I think an authentic depiction of the best science and mathematics of the time.

The climactic scene of the birth was a remarkable sequence of old, old story and original juxtapositions. Joseph, turned away in Bethlehem by his family so long as he insisted on staying with Mary; his frantic search in crowded streets for a midwife or at least a woman to help Mary; the accidental desperation of kicking in the door of the stable; the labour of Mary, lonely, primal and anguished, and the pivotal moment when Joseph took her hand as the baby is being born; the coincidence of the stars reflected in the convergence of Magi and shepherds; the midwife donating her blue outer garment, signifying much that would come to be revered in Mary. These are thoughtful interpretive moves that gave freshness to familiarity, and depth to a story often enough reduced to shallow thought and surface sentiment.

On the critical side I have a couple of serious reservations. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, and adviser to the BBC on religious themes, took serious exception to the portrayal of a Rabbi refusing sanctuary to Mary when she and her mother fled into the synagogue to escape a stone throwing baying mob. I think Romain is right. The Torah provides for places of sanctuary, and requires compassion and mercy be shown in sacred space – such a response of mercy would have been more typical of Jewish religious ethics of the time, at least at their best. Rabbi Romain saw the scene as anti-Jewish, and likely to have a negative impact on Jewish-Christian relations. I'm surprised if he is an adviser to the BBC that he wasn't shown the scene much earlier and asked to comment. The refusal to help two life-threatened women did jar, and for me was inauthentic, an unfair caricature of a religious tradition that has always understood mercy is woven into the very texture of law.

My other comment is about why there wasn't a fifth episode. The omission of the flight to Egypt, against the background of the Herod's mad power paranoia, and the Slaughter of the Innocents, sanitises a story in a way that is morally and theologically misleading. There are enough holocausts still happening in our world, enough recurring slaughters of the innocent, for us to be able to locate such atrocity within the very story that points to a promised end to such normalised cruelty. Not for nothing is the Wonderful Counsellor and Prince of Peace prophecy of Isaiah 9 contrasted in the same text with the burning of the trampling boots of the soldier and the blood soaked garments of war.

The birth of this child is a threat to the world's power structures, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, from Nazareth to Rome, from Washington to London, and beyond. The birth of this child is a statement by God, reiterated wherever innocent lives are rendered dispensable and redefined as collateral damage, from Bethlehem to Egypt, and from every site of murder and cruelty in the pursuit of power. The birth of this child triggered the ensuing political madness of power paranoia, and this also is part of the story. Not for Christmas cards of course, but for those who follow the One born in the stable, and do so with theological and moral seriousness, there is the call to see and name the cruelties and atrocities of inhumane power systems and unjust structures and merciless economies.

(The image above is from the pulpit of Siena Cathedral, a detail of The Slaughter of the Innocents.)

CHRISTMAS BELLS

 

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familar carols play,

     And wild and sweet

     The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

     Had rolled along

     The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

Till ringing, singing on it's way,

The world revolved from night to day,

     A voice, a chime,

     A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!  

 

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

     And with the sound

     The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

It was as if an earthquake rent

The heart- stones of a continent,

     And made forlorn

     The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no place on earth," I said;

     "For hate is strong,

     And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

     The Wrong shall fail,

     The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807- 1882)

The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his own vanity; God-like, he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis, completely expressible in words. To write or to speak is almost inevitably to lie a little. It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form; to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of compression, how Truth is mangled and torn.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Wave of the Future, Harcourt brace and Co, 1940, p. 6

Faith is not expected to give complete satisfaction to the intellect. It leaves the intellect suspended in obscurity, without light proper to its own mode of knowing. Yet it does not frustrate the intellect, or deny it, or destroy it. It pacifies it with a conviction which it know is can accept quite rationally under the guidance of love. For the act of faith is an act in which the intellect is content to know God by loving Him and accepting His statements about himself on his own terms…By faith one not only attains to truth in a way that intelligence and reason alone cannot do, but one assents to God Himself. One receives God. One says "yes" not merely to a statement about God, but to the Invisible,  Infinite God Himself.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, Burns and Oates, 1962, p. 98

Perhaps something of what Lindbergh and Merton were saying is captured in Paul's apophatic exclamation – "Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift" – generosity beyond articulation, the Word made flesh because the Word overflows the expressive capacity of words. When all our words are spoken, and all our thoughts are thought, the residue of meaning is immeasurable, infinite, eternal – but has become personal, "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him….and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth. And we have beheld his glory…. Gloria in Excelsis Deo! 

  
I owe this picture to the pointer from Iain who commented on the Annunciation post a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't seen it before and Iain's comments gives a helpful and telling comparison between this Rossetti picture and that of Poussin.

Not disagreeing with you Iain, but wonder if the idealised face of a super-saint, or the scared look of a young woman, could ever adequately capture in one image the mystery of the Annunciation. What would the human face look like, giving visual expression to an encounter that rewrote her life hopes and reconfigured the story of the universe.

The classic images are here – the blue curtain of heaven juxtaposed to a window looking our on a tree and the sky, the natural and the heavenly worlds. The white lilies, emblem of the Virgin and offered as gift and a seal of the providence of God and the permission of Mary. The angel stands on light, flames of light, purity and guidance, presence and transience. And the angel's face though not unkind, is held in the perfect poise of one for whom refusal would be impossible, and beside them the red panel of sacrifice, itself ornamented with lilies.

Rossetti captures the ambiguity of Mary, her hesitant yes, the inner turmoil of fear and trust, of tempting denial and kindled devotion, of adolescent uncertainty mixed with adolescent recklessness and risk. And there can be no doubting the reality and personal cost of that risk. Scandal, misunderstanding, family disgrace, unconvincing explanations citing angels, a hurt and angry betrothed, and a future of hope overshadowed with dread. The halos are prominent, definitive of holiness, symbols of divine calling and readiness to serve. By the time the baby is born, she will not have her troubles to seek. Like many a mother, then and now, the yes to new life means no to so much of her own life.

You can find out more about this remarkable painting here. David Goff explains the technique, the composition, and gives some comment on the biblical allusions. There are even several questions at the end, to encourage you to think, while you look at the painting. 

I suspect you love this painting or it does nothing for you. But here's why I think it's an important portrayal of what on earth was going on at the Nativity. It is otherworldly, eerily strange, fantastic like a dream, psychologically potent with symbol. It makes Christmas seem miraculous, unreal in any empirical everyday sense that can be captured by realistic paintings, digital photography or satellite imaging. Trees and angels merge in an archway over the forest; cave and Magi and Joseph arch over the Madonna and child, and the Virgin herself is protectively arched over the baby. All is in shades of blue, ethereal, luminous with presences strange to the earth; the world has never seen anything like this.

What is happening here is unprecedented in the universe, and all the ways of human communication will be strained and refashioned in order to tell the story. Logic and science, poetry and art, words and music, ideas and images, the entire spectrum of human knowing and communicating will only be able to convey some sense of this vast mysterious happening when the story unfolds in the life of the child, and human voices are orchestrated in praise of this tiny, vulnerable gift of Gods self – "the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us,… and we beheld his glory", "wrapped in swaddling cloths, and lying in a manger."

This painting rebukes both our tendencies to sentimentalise and our complacent disinterest; it laughs at our logic and questions our reliance on graphic realism; it pulls us out of our technologically obsessed worldview and ignores our lust for control of knowledge and mastery of the world around us. This is the Nativity as subversive theology, the silvery monochrome medium conveying mystery far more effectively than colour, and the artist choosing a way to bypass our expectations and habits of thought about what on earth God was doing, entering Creation as a mortal child.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence…….

The Pre-Raphaelite Burne Jones' "Angel Playing the Flageoloet" doesn't pretend to be theological. It doesn't need to be. An angel is a messenger from God, and the Christmas story wouldn't work without them. The annunciation to Mary, the sorting out of Jospeh, the cosmic orchestra at Bethlehem, the security branch facilitating the flight to Egypt, are all hinge points when heaven interrupts the earthly drama to redirect the plot.

Music is essential to the story – praise, joy, peace, – annunciation, communication, contemplation – these are almost the only words needed to define a good Christmas carol.

One of my occasional experiments is to look at a painting like this and decide which carol works best with it. "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is far too theologically and conceptually heavy for this one. The calypso carol too upbeat. Maybe "Love Came Down at Christmas"? Any suggestions for a carol that complements this rather gorgeous but not over-excited angel?

 
In 1505 Raphael painted one of the most beautiful religious images in all of art history. "The Madonna of the Meadow" is replete with devotional allusion, rich in symbolic theology and represents the highest level of aesthetic and creative genius in the service of the Christian story.

Though the dominant figure is the Madonna, the central foreground image is of Jesus and John, apparently playing a game with the cross – but John is kneeling and holds the cross steady as Jesus holds both the cross and his mother's arm.

The pyramid structure is repeated in several places. The Madonna is seated, indeed anchored as the supporting presence for Jesus and gazing downward at both infants. The two children make a second pyramid, and the city in the background a third. Whether or not this is a trinitarian allusion, it gives the painting a powerful sense of rootedness in earth. Raphael by this time was experimenting with a more realistically portrayed, earthed, this worldly approach. The Madonna is not in a holy building but of the world, the city, the rural landscape the sea.  Various commentators note that her smile is enigmatic, hesitant, somewhere between smile and frown, uncertainty suggesting contentment threatened by foreboding. Her head is framed against the sky and is above land and sea, a compositional statement that more than hints at transcendence.

The colours blue and red are painted with startling vivid boldness, redemption and eternity, sacrifice and heaven, enwrapped in the form of the Virgin. The contrasting greens, and they are multi-toned, again brings together the fertile and fruitful life of earth with the redemptive intentions of heaven. The two red poppies answer to the two children, both of whom will die in the outworking of the Gospel story and the redemptive purposes of heaven.

Once again beauty is in the service of theology, and theology shows itself fit subject for art. There are passages of sublime theology that bear repeated reading, analysis, contemplation, intellectual wrestling and spiritual surrender. Likewise those paintings which reveal what George Herbert prayed about his poems, "utmost art". Advent is a time for such richly provoked engagement, as beauty and truth combine.