Christmas 2020 (II): It was grim………

I’ve always struggled with “Christmas”. Don’t get me wrong, I can indulge in as much chocolate as the next man (more if it is Dairy Milk – apologies for the shameless plug). I enjoy the time off work, particularly after the last nine months of sitting in front of a laptop screen. It was nice to see the dinning room table revert to being a dining table on Christmas day. I do like the opportunity to get together with family and friends, although it is obviously somewhat restricted in current circumstances. But there is no necessary connection between any of these things and the most amazing event ever to occur in the history of this planet, not to say the universe. A big claim. But is seems bigger than it is because it is entirely subverted by what “Christmas” has become. Of course, this suits the culture at large. To my fellow strugglers I want to say that, on reflection, much of what occurred at and around that “first Christmas” is entirely appropriately remembered, meditated on and savoured this Christmas.

It was a short video by N.T. Wright that reminded me that the first Christmas emerges from “a very dark time when everything was pretty miserable”. So if you feel that things are grim now (and the pandemic hasn’t gone away), the true Christmas story, as opposed to the shallow jollity of the popular version, comes as a relief. It is fairly grim too. It is the story of the arrival of a young Jewish couple in the town of Bethlehem almost 2000 years ago. It should have been a happy time for them. Betrothal should have led to a happy marriage, soon followed by the birth of their first child. In that culture at that time, these twin events should have filled both them and their extended family with joy and excitement. And the  context would have enhanced this. The young woman concerned, Mary, had an older cousin named Elisabeth. Even although Elisabeth was well past having children, she had just produced a son. Everyone was cock-a-hoop. In fact the whole thing had caused quite a stir. There was talk of angels, miracles and prophecies and all sorts of things, but facts is facts, and Elisabeth and Zechariah were now parents. But for Mary and her intended (let’s call him Joe) life had become a tad complicated. And not in a good way.

Mary, although only engaged, was found to be pregnant. This was found, as opposed to announced, because Joe was not the father. A scandal was brewing and it was clear what should happen. Joe, for the sake of his own reputation should divorce her, and make a big thing of it. After all, by definition he wasn’t to blame for the situation. To make matters worse from the point of view of many observers, Mary went on about angels and not being pregnant because of any man. You can imagine the sneers. For cousin Elisabeth to talk in this way was bad enough, but at least she and her husband Zechariah were clear that the baby was theirs. For Mary to try and piggyback on this good news was just bad form. Everyone knew fine and well how babies were made. But Mary apparently stuck to her story, and then to cap it all, poor old gullible Joe had started talking about dreams and angels. Again, you can imagine the looks and sneers. You don’t need too much of an imagination to understand the pressure and unpleasantness all this likely caused. In our day and culture it would be bad enough. But in Mary and Joe’s time, grim would hardly cover it.

To social and psychological pressure was then added considerable physical discomfort. With Mary heavily pregnant, they had to travel from Mary’s home in Nazareth, south to Bethlehem. This was a journey of about 70 miles, that would take at least 4 days. While they didn't exactly travel under duress, it was in response to a legal edict. Neither the destination nor the timing were of their own choosing. It was an arduous journey by modern standards, uncomfortable and even dangerous. As well as the constant fear of miscarriage, they were travelling under a cloud of scandal, probably in a caravan with people who knew (and therefore could spread) the “story”. There was a far from warm welcome awaiting them. After all, do you suppose anyone really bought stories of angels and virgin births? Grim. And then there was a birth. The physical circumstances are unknown to us. We don’t know who attended Mary, we don’t know if Joe watched or helped (what was really going through his mind?). We do know that all that was available to put the new baby in was a feeding trough! Hardly an auspicious start. And from there things had a distinctly up and down feel.

Yes it is true that there was a visit from a group of strange, sweaty, but largely respectful shepherds not long after the birth. But, with all due respect, we’re hardly talking royal visit. And neither Joe nor Mary really knew what to make of them. They too had some story of angels, apparently lots of angels. A few weeks later when M & J went up to the temple at Jerusalem as prescribed by Jewish law, they had two encounters with rather sad characters, neither of which were particularly helpful or, at the time, illuminating. They had other things on their mind, like the embarrassment of only being able to afford the “poor people’s” sacrifice for their firstborn. However, one of the ups some months later, when things had begun to settle down, was the visit of well-heeled foreigners who actually brought gifts with them. Some of the gifts were quite valuable. But still, confusing.

Perhaps they thought that now things would calm down. They’d be able to settle, maybe in the civilized south somewhere around Bethlehem, or maybe in a Jerusalem suburb. Mary had recovered from the birth, and the child was healthy and growing well (always a relief in a time when infant and maternal mortality were much higher than they are now). Maybe some of the scandal was beginning to dissipate. But, again, things took a turn for the worse. The local government at the time was controlled by a paranoid brute called Herod. He had got wind of religious speculation that a “messiah” (ie a competitor) had been born. This started a train of events which meant that Joe and his (now) wife Mary, and the baby, had to run further south still, further from home and family, all the way to a foreign country (perhaps funded by the presents they had received). The child wasn’t yet two years old, and he was now both a political and religious refugee. Around the same time Herod sent his army into Bethlehem and the surrounding area to butcher male children aged two and under. Did Mary and Joe hear about this in exile? Was relief tinged with a certain guilt? Their exile only ended after Herod’s death perhaps months later. After another long journey they arrived back in Nazareth. Who knows what sort of welcome they received, if any welcome at all. They probably hoped for a quiet life. They were to be disappointed. Grim.

And yet the real event here is mind-blowing, with big implications for our here and now. A child was born in Bethlehem, in the midst of all that social and practical mayhem. But what only gradually emerged was that this was no ordinary child. It seemed as if He had lived before. Of course He had. Because while a child was born, the Son had been given. This was God becoming something different, the God-Man. What had been promised on the Old Testament, what is revealed in the New, is that there in Bethlehem “the Word became flesh”. It would take Christians about 400 hundred years to get their collective heads around this. They would have to find new concepts to put into words what had happened. But one of the things that can help us in our current circumstances is that it did not happen in a palace or in comfort or in safety. It happened in grubby and grim circumstances. It is in such circumstances that God often works out His purposes.

Never mind light at the end of the tunnel. This is light in the midst of darkness. It is light that we need now.

Christmas 2020: In the pandemic………

Twists and turns. Just a few days ago the exciting news of the roll out of COVID19 vaccinations had us all thinking that things were on the turn. Then came the twist: the virus has mutated in a way that makes it more transmissible, if not necessary more deadly. This has led to a tightening of restrictions in the UK around what we can and cannot do this Christmas. Arrangements made after the previous loosening of restrictions will have to be broken. We had one son in transit when the tightened restrictions were announced and a daughter north of the “closed” Scottish border in a quandary. I can think of worse places to be stuck, but it is an unwelcome and unpleasant quandary none-the-less. But all of this should remind us once again; life is fragile and we’re not entirely in control – any of us.

It should also prompt the asking of those big questions, what is going on and why? There are a whole load of different ways you could answer the first of those questions, depending on what you think is being asked. In recent months it has had, at least publicly for the politicians, a narrow focus. A pandemic has happened (as has frequently been predicted), but we are going to be fine eventually because science, technology and good logistics will come to our aid. There is a problem, but we can fix it, and most of us are going to return to some sort of  fairly acceptable “normality”. On this reading of the situation, the other question – why – also has a narrow focus. It distils down to a set of factual questions about what sparked the pandemic and how it developed. It can be answered with reference to wet markets in China (or even dodgy virology labs), and government inaction or incompetence. It can be padded out with reference to the proportion of the population infected and the number of lives lost. Economic damage can be quantified in the currency of your choice or in terms of the proportion of GDP lost. The methods used and the time taken to develop and deploy vaccines can be described and measured. In some ways this narrow approach has a lot to recommend it. At a time of stress and anxiety, it restores some sense of understanding and control. We have recovered from catastrophes before and life has gone on; it always does and it always has to.

Of course these narrow questions and their answers have the disadvantage that for most of us, even if we are comforted by them, we are also likely to be slightly disconcerted. They leave nagging doubts lurking in the recesses of our minds and imaginations. The narrow approach leaves out of the account other questions and answers, those that pertain to motives and values, deeper causes and their more troubling effects. This is where, as I’ve pointed out before, science is of limited help. Even before we get to what might be called questions of deep causation, we already have the questions raised by the crippling inequalities revealed by the pandemic. While some may fret because their Christmas skiing trip has had to be abandoned, there are parents wondering whether there will be food for both them and their children tomorrow lunchtime, or will they have to fast while their children eat? This is before we get to big cross-continent and cross planet issues like who gets which vaccine when and for how much. Are such inequalities inevitable? And even if they are, why are they? Why, in this world will the poor always be with us? It is easy to understand why the narrow approach is the more comforting one, even if the comfort it supplies is cold and tinged with guilt.

And yet, even this level of discourse still seems to miss something. Perhaps an outside perspective is needed. But where might we obtain a perspective which is outside all of humanity? The starting point is the realisation that we are not all there is, and we are not all that matters. To this end, it is this time of year that supplies some of the necessary resources. We should regard the appearance of the pandemic as a global signpost. But I’ve been obsessing about the signpost and not what it points to: precisely that humanity is in trouble and cannot fix itself. The world at all levels is neither what it could be, but beyond that is not as it should be. And of course there is somewhere I can turn that will explain this. The opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible are clear: this is a cursed world. In such a world, bad things happen. This implicates all of us, and we can do little but suffer the effects if we depend on out own resources. And yet into this cursed world, someone voluntarily comes who is Himself not cursed. That is what is going on in Bethlehem. But to stop at Bethlehem is to suffer from perpetual baby syndrome. Bethlehem was only a prelude to the main event in which Jesus, the man the baby became, was Himself cursed. That did not immediately remove the curse and its effects from the rest of us; pandemics obviously still happen. But it was the fulfilment of a long made promise that the curse would be dealt with and an escape provided. And at a time still future to us, it will be entirely removed in the establishment of a new (uncursed) heaven and earth. It is here that we find both the deeper questions, but also the answers to them.

Of course I know that my way of framing these issues is now somewhat counter-cultural (to say the least). In polite and educated circles, only "natural" questions and answers are allowed. Well, you can stick with the narrow, technical, natural approach if you wish. But in the promise delivered in Bethlehem is to be found the answer to both what and why whatever twists and turns lie ahead.

Life in the Pandemic XVI: The light at the end of the tunnel

The great sulk continues in the actual Whitehouse. The great contrast with the Bartlett Whitehouse continues (yes, I know it’s made up, but I’m still enjoying it). The great pandemic continues. Indeed in the land of the Whitehouse it is getting unbelievably worse. Each day in the US literally thousands are now dying, with the numbers still growing. No slick drama could cover this misery. Or the tearful frustration of healthcare workers at the end of their endurance pleading with people and politicians alike to do what can easily be done to ease the situation. We have our moments on this side of the Atlantic, and have endured our own share of political chaos and incompetence during the pandemic, but it does not seem to have reached quite the proportions of the Trumpian dystopia in the US. However, a light has now appeared at the end of the COVID tunnel.

Thanks to a remarkable effort and a ton of public money, there is now good evidence of no less than three effective vaccines, and slightly weaker evidence for at least two more. These have already been used on tens of thousands of people in various clinical trials. In the UK the first vaccine was authorised for use on the 2^nd December, and the needles were stuck in the first arms earlier this week. There are lots of people who deserve lots of credit for these achievements. Those who pioneered some of the underlying science behind the “Pfizer” and “Moderna” vaccines certainly deserve credit because they have come up with a new way of designing and producing vaccines which, at least in this case, appear to be amazingly effective. In the case of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (not far from approval now), science plus some inspired guesswork appear to have produced the most usable of these initial vaccines. Because of its simpler production, ease of transport and robustness, this is the one that will perhaps have the most global impact. (Some) politicians and the regulators deserve credit too. There appears to have been little haggling over funding to push forward with trials, and real cooperation to expedite both trials and approvals without compromising safety. If there has been a conspiracy, it has been to advance as quickly and safely as possible, and it has achieved something of real and lasting benefit. And for once those on the outside of the rich, industrialised and wealthy world have not been forgotten. Yes, I’m sure grubby politics and grubbier economics will soon reassert themselves, but for now it’s worth smiling about much of this. But, of course, it is just the start.

There is a world of difference between a vaccine and vaccination. The real value of the work that has been done will only be realised when the vaccines end up in peoples’ arms. There are lots of other people we will need to rise to meet a whole different heap of challenges before we approach the end of the pandemic tunnel. Manufacturing enough vaccine for close to the whole human population of the planet is hardly trivial. Production problems have already reduced the rate at which the newly approved Pfizer vaccine can be rolled out in the UK. And after making the stuff, it has to be transported, and then distributed. For the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines this is a challenge because they appear to be rather delicate requiring very cold transportation and storage temperatures, and minimal handling. That's why it’s the Oxford vaccine, which is slightly more robust and happy at roomish temperatures, will probably have the global impact. Once all of these challenges have been overcome, there is the issue of the population’s willingness to bare their arms.

This will all take time. So for at least the next few months most of us will need to do what the media claims we’re all sick of doing. The routine of facemasks, social distancing, handwashing and lots of working from laptops at home where we can, will all have to continue. Restrictions on activities we all used to take for granted will also continue. And if we don’t stick to this, more people will die than would otherwise be the case. Maybe, just maybe, next summer we might be returning to something akin to what we used to think of as normality. The virus won’t have disappeared of course. And we don’t know how quickly our new-found, vaccine stimulated immunity will. So care will still be needed. There remain many unknowns. In reality we have a distance to travel in the tunnel, and the light, while reasonably bright, isn’t stellar yet.

Which brings me to what I’ve been reflecting on. The COVID tunnel is far from humanity’s longest or darkest. COVID vaccines, impressive as they are, are no solution to our biggest problem. Indeed, although they are vital, it would be a great mistake to indulge in any collective hubris about our achievements, before moving on to some other issue. After all, it was almost certainly human activity that led to the pandemic in the first place. And before most of us adopt a smug attitude because we know whose fault it all is (or think we do), there’s plenty of collective blame to go around for all sorts of abuses that have exacerbated the pandemic. Some of the very same things may well lead to the next global disaster. And that’s all before we get to other things like the climate crisis. It turns out that the inevitable progress of humanity has never been inevitable at all. And sometimes progress is not as progressive as is claimed. In economics, poverty abounds and seems only to shift rather than decline (although statistically until the pandemic progress had been made). In health as we’ve seen, old diseases may be conquered (if not eradicated) but new ones emerge. Even although poverty, illness, war and famine are avoidable, we manage not to avoid them. There are lots of good things that we can now do which previous generations didn’t even dream about. But for all that we appear to be largely stuck.

Maybe this is because fundamentally humanity’s big problems aren’t intellectual or technical. Therefore the really big issues do not have intellectual or technical solutions. The nub of our problems are moral, and beyond that, spiritual. The real tunnel we’re naturally stuck in is that we’re just not what or who we are supposed to be. But particularly at this time of year, we remember a light that appeared. And it appeared not at the end of our tunnel, but in the middle of it. It would be hard to put it better than John put it at the beginning of his Gospel:

^9 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:9-13

Note to self: It’s time I stopped fixating on the pandemic, and considered again the events that culminated in the arrival in this very world of Jesus, who came to illuminate the way out of this very tunnel.