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Galatians. Commentaries for Christian Formation, N T Wright, Eerdmans, 2021. 420pp, (Currently available approx. £23)

Reviewing the first volume of a new commentary series forces two questions. Do we need another commentary series in a market awash with options? If so, what makes this new series distinctive enough to contribute something new, significant and worth the price?

Eerdmans explain at the outset why they think this series will make a valuable and distinctive contribution.

“Commentaries for Christian Formation interpret Scripture in ways aimed at ordering reader’s lives and worship in imitation of Christ, informing their understanding of God, and animating their participation in the church’s global mission with a deepened sense of calling.”

Some commentary series on the New Testament are historical-critical, intentionally academic in style, and strictly exegetical in content, like the International Critical Commentary, Yale Anchor Commentary and the New International Greek Testament Commentary. Others are mid-range and combine scholarly exegesis with more accessible exposition, like the New International Commentary on the New Testament and the Paideia series.

Then there are those that aim at application, though still grounded in scholarly engagement with the text, such as New International Version Application Commentary and the Story of God Commentary.

A recently burgeoning field is theological commentary in which attempts are made to explore and expound the theological content of the text, with more or less attention to detailed exegetical foundations. The Two Horizons Commentary, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible are now well established series in this genre.

Each of these series has their Editor’s or Publisher’s preface indicating the level of academic engagement and critical style, the target readership and the justification for their particular series in an admittedly (over) crowded field. Having read some of those prefaces again, and several review essays on recent commentary activity, it would seem this new series while combining several of these approaches, does so on the way to fulfilling its more specific goal and authors’ remit.

Critical scholarship, exegetical details of grammar, syntax, literary and lexical analysis, historical and social contextual study, are all drawn together in the service of a theological and formative explication of the text. “Exegesis is itself a way of doing theology”, the publishers claim. Italics for emphasis is in the original. So this new series aims at a partial reversal of the aims in other series. It isn’t so much what the commentator does with the text, as what the text does to the commentator / reader. Information is put into the service of formation, for the purposes of personal transformation as the reader engages with, and is engaged by, the sacred text.

So how well does this inaugural volume of N T Wright fulfil those prefatory promises? “Paul wrote Galatians out of political and theological concerns.”(6) The political issue is, who should be reckoned as part of the new community of Jesus Messiah? To answer this, Wright goes through what is now a familiar exposition of his own ‘fresh perspective’ on Paul, compared with the ‘new perspective’ (now showing its age) and ‘the old perspective’ which many continue to hold as the most valid and viable interpretation of Paul.

Part two of this review will try to answer that question – I'll post it tomorrow. 

I am still looking forward to a time when we can gather in church, without worrying about Covid, and sing our hearts out. Christians have been singing the Faith since the earliest communities began to form after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Music is one of God’s gifts that helps us express our deepest human emotions – praise and joy, longing and hope, devotion and love, sorrow and grief, repentance and forgiveness.

When it comes to our worship together, shared music-making is one of the ways we join our hearts and voices in ‘a sacrifice of praise.’ If you want to start a lively discussion ask someone what their favourite hymn is. If you want to start an argument, rubbish someone else’s choice. I still remember a new minister (no, it wasn’t me) holding up the church hymn book and telling the congregation “this needs to go!” It wasn’t a good start.

There are lines and verses from hymns that lodge in our minds and become part of our prayers, they stay inside as resources for those moments when we need God’s help, guidance and grace. Here are several that do it for me:

“Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of Thy peace…”

“My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

“Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see…”

You will have your own personal hymn-prayers; those lines that you know by heart, and which nourish, strengthen or energise you at those times when, for no obvious reason they pop into your mind. Clue – the Holy Spirit knows the hymns you know!

At the start of another year, I think we are still suffering from what could be called subdued hope, and long haul weariness. A low-grade anxiety affects how we see the world. We look at how life is through Covid tinted glasses.

Habits of the mind can quickly become the habits of the heart. Which is why it’s important for Christians to take off the negative tinted glasses and look at the world as people who actually believe that there is no shadow of turning with our faithful God. Instead of morning by morning having our mood, our minds and our view of the world shaped and coloured in the grey emulsion of media news, hum in your head “morning by morning new mercies I see,” or pray for “the beauty of thy peace.”

In other words look at the world through the lenses of “Amazing Grace”, or “the Lord’s my Shepherd”, or “Lord the light of your Love is shining”, or “Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea” Get the idea? Remember what Paul urged the Roman Christians in chapter 12? Here are his words in J B Philips translation:

“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12.2)

Singing hymns is a process of re-setting our bearings, and changing the lenses through which we look at the world. Hymns are one way God “reclothes us in our rightful minds”, and “re-moulds our mind from within.”

Here’s a hymn often sung at the start of New Year. The first and last verse can become our prayer for 2022. It describes the mind-set that looks look at the world through the clear lens of faith in God’s faithfulness:

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.

 Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us –
self on the cross and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Singing our praise and prayers, alone, or when we are together, is a health giving spiritual exercise in Christian realism. We sing together to express our hopes and fears, to tell our love and devotion to the Triune God of love, to seek forgiveness for ourselves and others, to celebrate the faithfulness, goodness and mercy of God, and to give ourselves in love and service to God and others – all of these things. And every time we do we are refusing to let the world squeeze us into its mould. Instead we are allowing God to re-mould us from within to do God’s good, perfect and loving purpose for our lives.

As a boy I learned a lot from old Jimmy Welsh. (back row, centre) He was the stableman who looked after the last two Clydesdale horses on the farm, ploughman, fencer, dyke builder, ditch digger and all round one-man farm maintenance squad.

One day, I must have been about 7, I was standing watching him clearing the drains around the dung midden where the farm stored all that stuff later called more politely, farmyard manure. It was dirty work, which is about as descriptively inadequate as I can make understatement sound. 

Up to his ankles in slurry, using draining rods and a shovel, he just got on with it. At one point as the gurgling from the drain signalled success, he stood up, pushed his bunnet back and said something I'd heard him say before, and would hear often enough again. "Aye Jim, hard work's no' easy."

Two things about Jimmy Welsh. First, this gruff friendly giant, six foot of lean, weathered can-do and know-how, was kind and patient enough to let me go with him when he was working down the fields, up the woods, in the byre, barn or wherever his particular set of skills were needed. Second, the first bike I ever rode on my own was his huge framed bone shaker, which I could only ride by putting my leg through the frame, under the bar! That's another story, which ended remarkably well, given I still cycle so many decades later, in decent weather.

"Hard work's no easy." Jimmy Welsh could have written some of the shorter ripostes in the Book of Proverbs. Whether clearing midden drains, grooming a Clydesdale horse, repairing a drystane dyke, ploughing long straight furrows by the score, scything the edges of the cornfield after the binder had passed, Jimmy worked with an economy and efficiency that impresses me to this day. He got the job done. What we now call 'challenges' he took as part of the job. Patience wasn't so much a virtue as the word used to describe the determination of someone  whose job was to repair this particular part of the world, and to take great satisfaction in doing it. 

So what's the connection between Jimmy Welsh and a post which has Karl Barth in the title. This at least. Reading Karl Barth is hard work, and "hard work's no' easy." But like Jimmy Welsh's never-ending maintenance work around the farm, reading Karl Barth has that same mixture of tasks and demands, of challenge and achievement.

And yes, there are times when it's really hard going. Like when I have to wade through dense pages of smaller print, with long interminable sentences and names I've never heard of and may never again. It helps to think of the tolerance and kindness of Jimmy Welsh, and hear him saying, as a truth that is better accepted than resented, "Hard work's no easy."

So I read on.

Here is Barth in full flow on the grace of God.

"The only answer to Χάρις is εὐχαριστία. But how can it be doubted for a moment that this is asked of [each person.]  Χάρις always demands the answer of εὐχαριστία. Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like a voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning. Not by virtue of  any necessity in the concepts as such. But we are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and the gratitude of man as his response to this grace." (CD IV.1, 41) 

 (The photo is of Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. Barth's controversy with Brunner was a painful episode, and an unnecessary breach of friendship. That Barth wrote a conciliatory note on hearing of Brunner's impending death was an act too little celebrated. The story of that is for another time.)      

In 1952, the Methodist New Testament scholar, Vincent Taylor, produced a commentary on the Gospel of Mark which became a benchmark for thorough exegesis, a model of the discipline. Taylor took account of all aspects of the text including lexical, textual, grammatical, syntactical, intra-textual and theological, and the result was a near encyclopaedic and detailed exposition of the Greek text of Mark's Gospel. It is still not fully past its use by date.

He was once asked how he had completed such a monumental project. He told the parable of the topsoil and the wheelbarrow. Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 

Faced with any major task or project it's good advice. You get it done by doing it, the cumulative result of regular, disciplined work, bit by bit, day by day. Which brings me to Karl Barth and his Church Dogmatics. I want to read Volumes IV.1 and IV.2 – I've wanted to do this for years. That's 1620 pages. This too can be broken down to manageable proportions so long as they are regularly and faithfully completed. I've drawn up a reading schedule of 7 pages per day. So the first volume will be done by just after Easter. Both volumes will be completed by some time early August. After that I'll have a rest, I think. 

So, shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. By the way, Karl Barth also uses the wheelbarrow as a metaphor for how you tackle the gargantuan task of writing the Church Dogmatics, let alone reading them!

“The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at his trying to capture the truth about God in a book on dogmatics. They laugh, because volume follows volume, each thicker than the last, and as they laugh they say to each other: “Look! There he goes with his [wheel]barrow full of volumes on dogmatics.”

I'll check in at Easter and let you know how it goes – and perhaps a few posts with some reflection on what to make of sitting at the feet of the most influential theologian of the 20th Century. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

We all have our strange ways and peculiar tastes. While walking in the woods I am known to wander off the path and stare for a wee while at something that used to be. I mean something that used to be a tree.

That's right. I am fascinated by old tree stumps. Especially those that have been weathered and wintered for years, the elements carving and forming their strange architecture, often overlaid by lichen, moss and last autumn's leaves.  

Take this one, which sits in a forest recently flattened by Storm Arwen. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see in its circular broken walls and jagged peaks an inspiration for one of those spectacular mythical ruins that made the film version of Lord of the Rings such a memorable experience.

That this too, used to be a tree, is a thought that I find strangely poignant, a feeling on the verge of mild melancholy of the kind that makes you smile, briefly. Perhaps a generation ago this tree was felled, its wood harvested and used. For what? Furniture, fencing, a house frame? 

In any case once a tree is gone the roots become superfluous, no longer needed to pump nourishment and water up into this no longer gigantic living organism. 

Slowly the stump begins to decay, and a process of slow formation takes place. The serendipitous play of wind and rain, sunshine and ice, bacteria and fungi, insects and moss and lichen may seem random, explicable only as the contingent activity of environmental forces. Nobody makes a tree stump – they just happen.

Or so it may seem. For myself, I've come to appreciate the biological statement that is a weathered and sculptured tree stump. Aesthetics comes into it too – I think there is beauty and form in these old remains of a tree.

During these two years (almost) of Covid restrictions and constraints, of life overshadowed by widespread social anxieties and recurring uncertainties, I have discovered the significance of paying attention to what is there, and what attracts me. That means taking time to ask what it is about a landscape, a tree, a flower, a cloud formation, and yes, a tree stump, that summons our attention and affection. 

It may be that one strategy for dealing with Covid, or at least its impact on our social and mental health, is to look for beauty where we least think to find it, to form the habit of seeing beyond our own noses and beneath the surface of things. 

That's what happened on yesterday's slow meandering through the woods. An unhurried walk was interrupted by sunlight on a tree stump, a summons to acknowledge the persistence of nature's creative impulse, in the midst of a decimated forest. As a person of faith I've learned to trust those interruptions, and to sense in them a nudge away from niggling negativity towards gratitude, appreciation, and a hopeful trust in God's creative and recreative activity in our world.

But to be clear – avoidance of negativity doesn't invalidate sadness, poignancy, that instinctively human, and humane sympathy, with a living world where nothing is forever, where things get broken, and we discover that part of our calling is to care, to repair and where possible, to heal.

And yet, there are glimpses of glory that surprise us, moments of epiphany when we truly see, interrupting summons to pay attention and love the world as it presents itself to us – often in something as easily missed as an ancient sunlit tree stump.

(The tapestry is an original of my own, based on a Hebrew script which means "Tikkun Olan – To Repair the World")    

 

You know I like books. I have a lot of them. I’ve read or used most of them, and each one has its own story of how it came to be in my study. Some were gifts from various people, and several were gifts from those who wrote them. One of them is a commentary on the First Letter of Peter, written by my late friend, Professor Howard Marshall. For many years Howard was Professor of New Testament here in Aberdeen, and was the leading evangelical New Testament scholar of his generation.

I’ll come back to 1 Peter shortly. But thinking of Howard brings back several memories worth telling. When I moved to Aberdeen in 1984 this internationally recognised academic scholar spent his Sunday afternoons leading a Crusader meeting in the Methodist church round the corner. For years he helped at summer Scripture Union camps, and wrote the Scripture Union Bible Notes for children, and for adults.

His laugh was loud, his prayers simple and to the point. He was to be seen in all weathers cycling to and from University with a large bike panier stuffed with books and papers. He was loved by generations of students for his gentle and humble ways. His friendship was warm, constant and undemanding. He was the most practical of Christians, insisting that the fruit of the Spirit is about character made Christ-like by God’s grace. Howard taught that the witness of a holy life of practical love for others, is the overflow of the Holy Spirit in the transformed life of the believer.

And that brings me back to 1 Peter. Howard points out that this letter was written to Christians having a hard time. How to live in a world where your faith doesn’t matter to most folk? How to cope with anxiety and worries about our health? How to behave at work in a way that shows you are a Christian, but without annoying or antagonising those we work with? And what about church, especially our own church as we try to make our way through this pandemic responsibly, as safely as we can, and still try to hold on to a sense of community and our shared belonging in Christ?

Peter has excellent advice for Christians who are struggling, for whatever reason: Remember who you are, and remember whose you are.

You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  (1 Peter 2.10)

We are chosen, and as always in the Bible, election is a call to service – we are chosen for a purpose. Royal priesthood means we are children of the King of Kings, and also those invited into God’s presence bringing our prayers for ourselves and for this God-loved world. A holy nation means a people set apart, called to be holy and to live a life before the world that is light in darkness, love in the midst of hatred, and peace in places and times of conflict. God’s special possession, yes! We are the treasured property of God, ‘we are not our own, we are bought with the price of the precious blood of Christ.” 

So whatever we think about our future as a church, remember who we are and whose we are – Read 1 Peter 2.9 again, and often. Those words are God’s description of those who are in Christ, by grace through faith. Rest assured! God doesn’t desert those he chooses; as children of the King God calls us to boldly approach the throne of grace in prayer; we are called by God to be holy and enabled by the Holy Spirit to be light in darkness; we belong to God and God carefully looks after all that belongs to Him.

No wonder Peter goes on to say to those who are anxious, suffering, uncertain and struggling: “Those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good….Cast all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you”  (1 Peter 4.19, 5.7)

Going into another year, and still in the grip of a global pandemic, it’s hard not to feel down about how difficult, unpredictable and tied down life feels. But. Our future is in the purposes of God. Our resources are in the grace of God. Our strength is in the presence of God.  Our confidence is in who we are and whose we are. Our comfort is in our faithful Creator, who cares for us. Our trust is in God’s promises all of which are Yes in Christ Jesus.

As 2022 approaches may we find in God wisdom and strength for the way ahead. And may our faith be replenished and renewed as we cast all our anxieties on him, remembering who we are and whose we are. “This is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.” (1 Peter 5.12)

(Pastoral Letter to Montrose Baptist Church, Jan 2022)

(Photo of Westhill Community Church, taken on a late December afternoon.)

It was Walter Brueggemann who introduced me to two writers who have been intellectual companions ever since. The first was the poet Denise Levertov; the second was Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Over the years I have read and returned to these two writers, looking for wisdom, reassurance, challenging questions, timely reminders, moral insight and a resumed conversation with two voices that are now loved and familiar to me. 

Both have been treated by serious and scholarly biographers. Edward Kaplan's two volumes (1. Prophetic Witness;  and 2. Spiritual Radical), are the definitive study – Kaplan is the leading scholar of Heschel's writing and thought. The second volume is especially important to place Heschel in the context of post-Holocaust Judaism, and the America of the nuclear age, civil rights movement and the Vietnam war.

Levertov's life and poetry have been explored in two substantial studies. The first by Dana Greene, Denise Levertov. A Poet's Life; the second by Donna Hollenberg, A Poet's Revolution. The life of Denise Levertov. All three of those volumes are rich in detail, fully acquainted with their subject and their writing, and critically appreciative of the subjects of whom they write. The two Levertov biographies are sufficiently different in approach and content to be complementary studies that both repay reading. 

I mention this because I've been thinking about my own reading habits, and trying to understand why I have read what I have, and also why some writers become constant and significant companions, while others I can take then leave. Related to this I've been wondering too about my fascination with secondary studies, sometimes to the detriment of reading more of the primary sources of an author's work. Take Karl Barth for example. I've read Barth off and on for decades now, but not systematically and so far not in whole volumes. So much of his work in those fourteen volumes remains unread. On the other hand I've read much of the key secondary literature on Barth, and the truth is I have enjoyed and learned so much (Maybe more?) from some of Barth's finest expositors.

The same is true of Heschel and Levertov, most of whose primary works I have read, and some of them a number of times. But to read those who have made such writers as Barth, Heschel, Levertov a life study, is to be exposed to informed perspective, considered insight, critical thought, and an enthusiasm that at its best confers significance without the contrasting deficits of hagiography or hatchet job. I am an unrepentant fan of good secondary literature.

Back to Heschel. Brueggemann's early work on the Hebrew prophets' passion for justice within the covenant, owed much to two authors, Gerhard Von Rad and A J Heschel. But it was his engagement with Heschel that sent me looking for more.

Brueggemann is an admirer of Heschel's philosophy of religion and his insistence that to be human is to search for God and to be searched for by God. It doesn't take long for readers of Heschel to feel the force of his insistence that the human response to God is awe, wonder, worship, prayer, Torah obedience and radical trust. These are exactly the themes Brueggemann has spent a lifetime advocating as the strongest interpretive pillars of the Hebrew Bible. Those familiar with Brueggemann's essays and sermons, prayers and exegesis will recognise the longevity of those emphases in Brueggemann's own writing.

This photo of Heschel with MLK is evidence that the goodly fellowship of the prophets is not confined to the Old Testament. I find such personal connections fascinating. People whose lives have explored and expounded the prophetic themes of justice, righteousness and mercy as these are encountered in the God of faithfulness, and without injustice; People who have engaged persistently with the God of mercy and steadfast love whose care of creation and humanity has never ceased; the God who hears the cry of the poor, and sees the tears of the oppressed, and who calls for love of neighbour and radical compassion for life, human and creature. Brueggemann and Heschel, two very different people, but speaking with accents similar enough to place them in the same moral and spiritual regions, even if their theological traditions are from two tributaries flowing into the same river.  

   

A Very Mary Christmas

I was a teenager when we got engaged.

And yes, like every other Jewish couple,

we looked forward to marriage

Our own home, children, a normal family.

That word normal disappeared from my vocabulary

the day the angel came.

 

Hello Mary! Hey Mary!! Hail Mary!

You’re going to have a very Mary Christmas!

You’re going to have a baby.

Goodbye normal – hello Gabriel ,God’s facetime stand in.

Was I being asked or told, invited or commanded?

The announcement seemed to take me for granted,

Fait accompli, done deal, no is not an option.

 

And yet. God’s messenger was courteous and reassuring;

This was a blessing not a burden, a gift not a demand.

God was waiting for my Yes – but I had questions!

And I had anxieties, and I had all my own plans,

And I had Joseph – what would he think of me?

So I just told Gabriel, “Impossible.”

I’m a virgin. I’m Joseph’s beloved. Nobody else’s.”

 

Gabriel smiled, not because he hadn’t heard me,

But because he had.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

And the power of the Most High will overshadow you…

I listened to it all, dumbstruck, gob-smacked, scared,

For once silenced and subdued by a power

That brought tears of joy and sadness to my eyes,

A ringing in my ears as I heard in Gabriel’s voice,

the vibrations of heaven’s purposes,

my mind a whirlwind of hopeful wonder and …and

a fast scrolling of scary ideas.

A heart bursting to say the right thing,

but not knowing what that might be.

 

Gabriel wasn’t helping!

“The Holy One to be born will be the Son of God.”

The what? God’s Son born of a teenager?

You mean the Eternal reduced to now, this moment? To me?

What about Joseph? What about what people will say?

The gossip? The scandal? All the unpleasantness?

How can this all too human flesh become the home of God?

Why would God choose a woman’s womb as a way into the world?

 

I’m not sure what I felt the most.

Fear or faith, outrage or joy, resistance or surrender.

Why me? Why now? When? How?

Gabriel explained. I listened.

God, said Gabriel, has this sorted.

My cousin Elizabeth, he said, would have a baby as well.

Elizabeth, so much older than me, but pregnant too.

I thought when I first heard the angel say her name

Elizabeth, that she would be a touch of normality, you know,

Something from everyday, ordinary, routine, NORMAL.

But now she too was implicated in what God was about.

 

The biggest decisions we ever make are the ones

when we know nothing will ever be the same again.

I didn’t see this coming, but in that moment of surrender,

all my questions ignited and fused together into one word, YES.

“I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”

I went to visit Elizabeth, and it was if something new and powerful

And revolutionary and world-changing erupted from my whole being.

“My soul magnifies the Lord

And my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.”   

I sang words I didn’t even know I knew,

I said things that later caused trouble,

about rulers brought down and the humble lifted up,

about the hungry being fed and the rich sent away empty.”

 

Well less than a year later the rulers were still there,

As powerful, oppressive, greedy as ever.

Caesar Augustus, Chief Executive of the whole world,

ordered us to get our tax returns done.

So we returned to Bethlehem, Joseph’s home town.

Oh by the way, “the little donkey that carried Mary?”

Spare a thought for Mary, who had to sit on it in my state!

When I said Yes to Gabriel, it never occurred to me

I’d be on a road trip to an over-crowded village,

And staying downstairs in the animal living room.

When I said Yes to Gabriel, I didn’t know,

I couldn’t know what I was saying Yes to.

 

Jesus was a beautiful baby, wrapped in his shawl,

The one who is Immanuel, Saviour and Messiah,

crying mightily for milk and the arms of his mother.

When I said Yes to Gabriel, nobody said

there would be an alignment of the stars,

a whole orchestra of angels doing a Cosmic Strictly

to an earth shaking, ground breaking sound track,

"Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace

And goodwill to all people with whom God is pleased."

 

As I held him, swaddled and cuddled, settled and sleeping,

what was it I held so tightly in my arms?

The Eternal Word through whom all things were made,

now made flesh and blood, and breathing the air of earth.

That’s what I held.

The Royal Messiah, born of David’s line,

promised to his people since the beginning,

the one in whom all God’s promises are YES, and my child.

That’s what I held!

The Light of the world and the Light of the nations,

born into the darkness and dangers of the world,

with its Caesars and Herods, its cruelties and killings,

its refugees and casualties, its broken lives…

But the Light that shines on in the darkness,

The Light that can never be extinguished —

That’s what I held.

 

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”

That’s what I held.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us”

That’s what I held.

“Born this day in the City of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.”

That’s who I held.

I knew. Oh yes, I knew.

 

Maybe only a man could write words that ever doubted this.

"Mary did you know, that your baby boy is Lord of all creation

Mary did you know, that your baby boy would one day rule the nations."

Did I know? Seriously?

I’m a mother. I knew that a child born of a virgin is God’s doing.

Flesh of my flesh and gift of God.

Jesus my son, the Son of God…I knew!

 

Did I know then, in Bethlehem, what would happen 30 years later

in Jerusalem, on Golgotha, and in that early morning Garden?

Mary did you know? No. Not all of it.

But as I looked into the face of Jesus, wrinkled and newly born,

Gabriel’s words came back to me.

“Do not be afraid Mary, you have found favour with God.

You will be with child and give birth to a son called Jesus.”

 

I knew – this was God’s plan, God’s doing.

All the scandal, the gossip, the innuendos about Joseph –

All those long miles on that blessed donkey –

All the doors knocked before we got a space in the corner

among the animals

from whom there was no gossip, innuendo or rejection,

by the way.

 

The star, the light, the music, the shepherds,

the three travellers with their gifts –

it all fits together. So Yes, I knew.

As Gabriel said and God promised, the Holy Spirit came upon me,

And the shadow of the Most High overshadowed me,

 

And now this little holy one is born,

this utterly dependent, beautiful, vulnerable, fragile baby,

my son – held fiercely in my arms against the whole world –

and yet, in ways I don’t know, my son is God’s gift to the world.

My love and God’s love, a mother’s love and a Father’s love,

join together in this little bundle of eternal possibilities.

In Jesus, human motherhood and divine fatherhood

intersect in a plan and purpose made in heaven,

conceived in the mind of God,

and born and borne out of God’s faithful love

for all that he has created.

 

In my son Jesus, I enfold the One

Who is the mystery and miracle of God’s ways with each of us.  

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity…

Mary, did you know, when you kiss your little baby,

you kiss the face of God?

Oh yes, I knew.

But it would take a lifetime to understand,

years of treasuring all this up in my mind,

and pondering with a mother’s heart

The miracle, the mystery, the meaning..

But yes, I knew, and because of that

‘My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me –
holy is his name.