Deeply unimpressive

It is hard to imagine anyone splashing the headline “Pregnant teenager has baby”. It’s just not that impressive. Teenagers have been having babies for about as long as there have been teenagers. Even when some tribal, cultural or legal norm is being breached, it is not an unheard of event, and therefore not that exceptional. Of course it could (and does) have major impacts on those immediately involved. It may be a personal tragedy or be accompanied by unalloyed personal and family joy. But what is very unclear is why the rest of us should be that interested in the specifics. I suppose today if the teenager concerned had famous or influential parents one could imagine the paparazzi camping out at the bottom of their driveway. Or again if the circumstances of the pregnancy were in some way controversial. But that says more about the state of contemporary tastes and culture (not to mention the bottom-feeding habits of some sections of the modern media) than it does about the intrinsic interest to the rest of us of such an event. As for “Pregnant teenager in the ancient world has a baby” – well, that’s an even more unlikely headline.

Yet all over the world today it is precisely such a story that is in the minds of literally billions of people. For so many of us this is such a normal and ordinary part of our annual routine it’s worth considering how remarkable this is given how unremarkable the circumstances of the original birth appeared to be, at least superficially. The mother-to-be in question is of course Mary, and she was indeed (probably) a teenager. The biblical accounts do not provide her age, but she was probably around 16 when she discovered she was pregnant. She was “betrothed” at the time, something that sounds a bit like modern, Western engagement, but was considerably more serious. There was a formal contract between families at the point of betrothal. A “bride-price” had been agreed and probably paid. If anything untoward were to happen (e.g. if she was found not to be a virgin when it came to the yet-to-happen consummation of the marriage) a divorce would be required to dissolve the betrothal. In fact, all that remained was for Mary to move in with her husband-to-be and the marriage to be consummated. This is where it gets interesting. If her betrothed had been the father-to-be there would have been no big issue with Mary being pregnant. But both she (and he for that matter) appeared to know that this was not the case. So when he heard Mary was pregnant Joseph did indeed intend to divorce her (quietly, because he was a decent soul). She, meanwhile, was making some unusual claims. But one can understand the psychology of the situation and of many of those involved. Why this should really be a story that would spread far beyond the confines of a first century Judean village is hard to fathom. It is hardly a pot boiler of great proportions.

The actual birth certainly had dramatic moments but is again fundamentally not that impressive. Joseph’s attitude to Mary had changed, so that now he was sticking by her. There is an account of a somewhat forced, and no doubt for Mary a difficult journey, necessitated by Roman bureaucracy. Mary and Joseph were almost certainly not the only people travelling, explaining why at their destination accommodation was at a premium. This is also why the baby, when it arrives, is to be found in that part of a first century Judean house normally used for animals. While this might sound odd or noteworthy to us, at the time it probably was more practical than strange. And not strange at all given the pressures and seemingly arbitrary obligations inflicted on an oppressed people by an occupying empire. In any case, not long after the birth, the usual rituals were being observed, and shortly thereafter things settled seemed to settle down for a while. All deeply unimpressive stuff. If there was a ripple of interest, it should have died away pretty quickly. Except it didn’t and it hasn’t.

As unimpressive as these events may have seemed to some, even to some of those fairly close to them, they happened in a particular context and were accompanied by some very odd goings on. First, there were the circumstances of the baby’s conception. One can understand a certain scepticism that probably met Mary’s account, perhaps initially garbled, of an angelic messenger who, while providing sparse biological detail in our terms, was very specific about who it was that was behind the events about to descend upon her. It is fairly unlikely that such an account would have been believed were it not for two accompanying facts. Firstly, something surprisingly similar had recently happened to her cousin Elisabeth. A baby who was angelically promised and then arrived to a couple (actually a well connected couple) who were beyond the baby stage. Secondly, Mary’s husband was apparently interdependently angelically informed that although the baby was not his, he was still to take Mary as his wife (hence the change in Joseph’s attitude). After the event, there were also strange visitors who sought out the baby, visitors who spanned time, distance and social standing. Early on there were working men, local shepherds, with yet more stories of angels. Later there were educated and wealthy men of social standing, (probably) Gentiles no less, who had travelled from the east. They were important enough to merit access to the local king, thinking they would find the child that they sought in a palace. Eventually they found him in much humbler, unimpressive, surroundings. But they focussed not on the circumstances of the child’s birth or on his current circumstances but on the child himself whom they deemed of such importance that they actually bowed before him and presented gifts.

I grant you, this all appears now to be building into something that might attract attention (it certainly attracted King Herod’s). But then steps were taken to damp that attention down. So, Joseph takes Mary and the child away for a time, far to south, away from the attention of the king. Only later do they hear that they had escaped potential disaster. Then they return to an obscure northern part of their own country famous for nothing, or at least for nothing other than being obscure, northern and the source of “nothing good”. It’s almost as though someone wanted all the odd things about His birth forgotten (did they really happen?) and the whole thing to look unimpressive. The baby would of course eventually grow up, and Scripture itself makes clear that there was much that would remain personally unimpressive about Jesus of Nazareth (as He would be known). For those without eyes to see He would have “no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). 

It is at this time of year we focus on the start of His human journey. But it’s what happens subsequently, all that He does and says, that indicates that something more is going on here at the beginning than just the birth of a baby to mixed up teenager. Jesus can only be deeply unimpressive to those without eyes to see and ears to hear. It turns out there is so much more to all of this than often meets the eye.

Deeply unimpressive? See for yourself.

I’ve decided to try and be constructive rather than just rant, even although the temptation to rant has been with me since mid-September. That’s when, once again, “X-mas Movies” started to appear on various TV channels, closely followed by adverts for assorted types of turkey roast, artificial fir trees, celebratory confectionery etc, etc, etc. And to cap it all, the contrast between Western commercialized end-of-year bonhomie and what is actually going on the world is perhaps starker this year than it has been for a while. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has bogged-down into a meat-grinding bloody stalemate. And more tragically still (if that were possible) in the part of the world where the events supposedly commemorated at “Christmas” actually occurred, bloodshed on an appalling scale is a daily occurrence. This is accompanies the reignition of an inter-ethnic war-for-land that had been reduced to a smoulder (or at least largely forgotten about by the Western media) and a widening of the conflict by Iranian proxies in Yemen and Lebanon (two failed states that promise more conflict for the future). None of this is to forget the tangling of Philippino and Chinese boats in the South China Sea (something of a misnomer - the tangle in question was much closer to the Philippine than Chinese coast), civil war in Myanmar (and several more in the horn of Africa), and political chaos in the Anglo-Saxon world. Oh, and then there’s the prospect of another Trump presidency. But no, I am not going carry on listing reasons to be (un)cheerful, rant, or even just sink into deep despair, tempting though all of those may be. Precisely because this is a cursed world, there is an amazing contrast to be drawn between what’s actually going on and an event actually worth focussing on, although often either missed or mythologized.

It is an event with even greater resonance because of what is going on in Israel and Gaza. Arguably today, as in the time detailed in the Gospels, Bethlehem is occupied territory. Precisely who is doing the occupying is at the centre of the current dispute. But the absence this year of anything worth celebrating is not. So there will be no Christmas tree or Christmas lights in Manger Square; the Church of the Nativity will be all but silent. And yet this is all similar to the circumstances that God Himself decided to enter in the person of His eternal son, Jesus. The Bethlehem in which Jesus was born was just as gritty as today, although a lot less famous. It was far from the centre of the world’s attention, but was an obscure location, within an obscure, conquered and occupied region of the world empire of the day. There was no Manger Square of course. And there was arguably no stable either; only a manger is mentioned in Luke’s account – the stable is inferred. There may well have been no inn, in which there was no room. Only Luke mentions what is usually translated as  “inn”, and it may have been a guestroom in the house of a relative. At no point in this story do we find all the other things that stand in the foreground of the contemporary Christmas – trees, presents and old men with white beards. All of this stuff was invented (and became “traditional”) relatively recently; the Santa with white beard and red coat is essentially the product of 1930’s advertising designed to sell a particular US soft-drink. I would suggest this stuff is the bit that’s worth forgetting. The earlier stuff, of much older provenance, is it turns out, much more relevant to our current hard-pressed circumstances.

At some point after the baby was born in Bethlehem (essentially to two homeless people who were about to become refugees in a country not their own), ugly politics intervened in the form of the local power-broker. Alerted by some unexpected visiting dignitaries to the fact that a potential rival for the peoples’ affections had been born, King Herod decided that power was more important to him than basic humanity. So he instigated the slaughter of who knows how many male children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem. Given this further sickening resonance with what is currently occurring in Gaza, it will be a brave pastor or minister that will include this little nugget in their nativity stories this Christmas. But these were the circumstances surrounding Jesus birth, and they contrast with the sanitized version that decorates the front of many a Christmas card. It was a world of poverty and suffering, of scandal, of refugees, political violence and curse. In other words, this world, our world, not a made up one.

And yet beneath the surface something important, joyful even, was happening. Jesus birth is not the whole story, but it was the beginning of something with staggering implications. Angels in the Gospel accounts are not always perceived to be good news, even if it’s good news they bring. The angel that came to Mary initially terrified her. And the news that was communicated to her was scary too. While no gynaecologist, Mary knew fine and well where babies came from, and so did her betrothed, Joseph. So it took another angel appearing in a dream, who also had to pacify Joseph and calm his fears, before telling him to continue with his plan to take Mary as his wife, notwithstanding the fact that she was pregnant, and not by him. All credit to him to reverting from Plan B (quietly divorcing Mary) to Plan A. The angel that encountered a bunch of Bethlehem shepherds initially terrified them too. Yet what they are told is “..good news of great joy..”: a long-promised rescuer had been born. Some rescuer, lying helpless in a feeding trough! Others also identified the baby as a deliverer of peace with significance way beyond the borders of Israel (Simeon in the temple at Jerusalem). Something was stirring in this world. It would be missed by the vast majority of those who lived at time, just as the Jesus’ significance continues to missed today.

So you could do a lot worse for yourself than forget about the made up man with the red coat and white beard, and focus on the real baby born in weakness, frailty and vulnerability in Bethlehem of all places. I wonder what became of Him?

The Christmas movie channels popped up, unbidden, in September. TV adverts for Christmas food started in early October, and the John Lewis ad appeared at the beginning of November. By the beginning of December lots of houses around here had begun to sport inflatable, flashing reindeer, and illuminated fat men with long white beards, who were dressed in red suits. At night, houses began to be lit up like ….. well, Christmas trees! Yes it’s that time of year again where I try not to yell at the telly “But it’s only September (October, November etc)! To quote Noddy Holder, “it’s Christmas”.

Even in an economic downturn there are presents to be hunted down and bought, and in the midst of a bird flu pandemic there’s turkey to be procured. It is about preparations and as there’s lots to do and it takes lots of time, it’s important to start early (apparently). In our house, a Christmas tree appeared early in December and various gifts have now begun to appear beneath it, suitably wrapped and labelled. Much of the activity going on, perhaps this year more than most, is part displacement activity, part distraction. I suppose it is richly ironic that Christians who originally hijacked the end of December from their pagan predecessors complain when the pagans reacquire it for their own purposes. But this time of year, at least notionally, does have something to do with certain events in the ancient world concerning the birth of a particular individual.

Actually, the relative importance of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth has always been a bit ambiguous. It turns out that even for some of the Biblical writers, what we call “the Christmas story” wasn’t that important, or at least was not important enough for them to write about it. In their gospels, both John and Mark don’t tell us anything of the birth narratives of Jesus. Matthew starts his with a genealogy, and covers the actual birth story in just eight verses, although he does go on to tell us about the subsequent visit of the “wise men from the east”. It is Luke who, as part of his project to provide a full account of the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and continuing activity of Jesus in the world, provides the most detail, including Gabriel and choirs of angels singing to shepherds (probably without the tea towels so beloved of small children). And it is also Luke who details some of the preparatory activity that preceded the events in Bethlehem. Back to preparations again. But when did God start preparing for Christmas, or rather the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity?

When you begin to think about it, this turns out to be a tricky question. That is because it has to do with time. Time is a given for us because we are creatures. We think and live in terms of, and in between, beginnings and endings and the change implied by a constant succession of events. This is all absolutely basic to our existence. It is written into our biology at a basic level, as well as into our psychology. The past has meaning for us, precisely because it is past and can be meaningfully contrasted with the present and the future. We are able to anticipate events, and given the current state of affairs be aware that there are things to do “now” that will  maximize the benefit to us of “then”. And all of this is so given that we don’t think about it and are hardly aware of it. It’s the way things are. It's the way we are. And there’s the problem - God is different.

He is different by definition because where we are creatures, He is the Creator who gives and sustains our lives. And it is not only that He precedes us. Nor is it just that He has no beginning. For even without a beginning, He could have been as time-bound as we are, subject to a succession of states and events and therefore also subject to change. But apparently He is not like that. I say apparently because we are at the point where we are quite close to getting stuck. Whenever we think about what God is like, because we are inevitably using the language of time-bound creatures, we are also inevitably limiting Him. The pictures that we paint with our words are inaccurate, maybe even wildly inaccurate, right from the start. The whole exercise would be futile were it not for the fact that God has used words to describe Himself in terms that we can understand. We cannot know everything, or know completely, but we can know certain things, and we can know them correctly.

And so back to time, or rather eternity. There isn’t a thing called time that exists outside of God to which He is subject. Indeed, as space and time are intimately connected, time did not exist until God created, so that He created both space and time. But clearly time exists for us and always has. How is this time, our time, experienced by God? All we really know is that if it is experienced by Him, it must be experienced in a fundamentally different way to our experience as creatures. Beyond that, it is difficult to say. The Bible writers used our time-bound language to illustrate this: “…. with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8). But this doesn’t really help me understand how God experiences the time He created any more that I can understand what it is like to be everywhere in the same instant (another feature of His being). But what is clear is that God does interact with us “in time”. So we read: “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4; i.e. “just at the right time”) Jesus was born.  Clearly this was an event that was not just a happy accident. It was planned. So when did God start planning?

Talk about one who was to come is easily found in the Old Testament. Although apparently it was just as easily missed, as Jesus Himself made clear to two of His early followers (see Luke 24:25-27). Passages from Isaiah will be read at many a carol service this year as every year, passages that date from long before Jesus’ actual birth (on which see this). These were written at the time Israel’s collective failure to live the way God had instructed them became apparent (particularly to them). Did God wait until a Plan A (Israel) failed before he began planning for Bethlehem? But then at the very start of the Bible, in words recorded thousands of years before the events that unfolded in Bethlehem, there are at least hints of what was to come, at least in terms of Jesus death, if not His birth (Genesis 3:15). Did God start planning Jesus’ entry into the world when things turned sour in Eden? Both seem unlikely. If God is eternal, He exists outside of time, even once He has created it. He knew about both Adam’s and Israel’s failure long before it occurred. Indeed, in a sense both were always before Him, as was the answer to this failure and the predicament that comes to all of us as a consequence. He knew that in the person of His Son, He would, amazingly, take on flesh and be born in time, at the right time. It was in eternity past that God began planning for the first Christmas.

Except that in eternity, there are no beginnings, because there is no time. He always was, and He always knew. And He accomplished all that was necessary for the events that we think of as Christmas, just at the right time.     

Christmas Reflections 2021 #2 Not just a baby…..

The world still spins on its axis and there are no obvious signs of it ending any time soon. Neither of these observations means that it won’t end any time soon. Mind you, given current conditions, the continuation of the world in its present state is not unalloyed good news. The virus continues to spread and kill, the planet warms, racism continues to exclude and oppress, poverty for many continues to grind, political tensions rise. None of this is good, even if the main impulse at this time of year is to direct our gaze away from these realities and coo contentedly as we imagine a well-fed infant, sleeping soundly albeit in a feeding trough wrapped in cloths (not clothes). But this infant will shortly become a refugee in another country to escape violence. He will grow up probably having the circumstances of His birth questioned (“his mother was unmarried when He was conceived, y’know”), and to be discriminated against because of the end of the country He apparently hailed from. And then a lot of other things will happen. There is a hard edge to the Biblical narrative that we think of as the first Christmas, and it gets harder as the story progresses. It is the history of a life very definitely lived in a world eerily familiar to us.

In reality, ours is a world of predicaments. Some are petty and trivial, and barely deserve the description. Some are excruciating and perplexing and admit to no obvious solution. Whether to wear or not wear a mask at an indoor gathering really should not be on the list. The fact that it is in many parts of the rich and educated world is one small sign of how ridiculous things are becoming. There are many reasons why some insist they will not wear a mask. Apparently for some it is a matter of demonstrating that they have an inalienable right to choose, and to demonstrate that they are possessors of such a right they choose to act nonsensically. It would be no denial of their right to choose to wear a mask, but apparently freedom is only demonstrated by wrong choices. Of course they feel free to choose because they don’t understand their predicament. The problem is dangerous, but it is invisible. The virus can’t be seen, smelt or touched. It is only revealed by one or more of a constellation of symptoms, and (in an admittedly small minority) an inability to breathe effectively even in an intensive care unit. As most of us don’t work in intensive care units, we don’t see the daily life and death struggle to breathe in such places. Numbers, rates, probabilities, statistics, just don’t communicate effectively enough the predicament. Not feeling in peril means things like mask wearing and vaccination come to feel like impositions rather than means of rescue. And this partly explains why what happened at Bethlehem is so easily misconstrued.

If you don’t feel the seriousness of a situation, you are unlikely to feel any particular necessity for rescue. If I tell you the baby born in Bethlehem was actually not just any old baby (not that there are such things) but one stage in a cosmic rescue mission, it’s unlikely to strike you as particularly relevant to you. So it is easy to accept the line that Christmas is a quaint cultural festival; a probable kernel of historical truth wrapped in multiple layers of myth, but nothing more. After all, a relevant rescue mission would suggest some level of peril, and you don’t feel in any way imperilled. And certainly not in a manner whereby a baby could possibly be of much help. But what if, as with the virus, you couldn’t see, hear, touch or even normally feel the threat that you face? Attempting persuasion with propositions probably just won’t cut it. Nevertheless, here goes.

The thing about the baby born in Bethlehem, in this world although admittedly some time ago, is that it provides a point of contact between two narratives. One is the narrative of the Living God, as He reveals it in the Bible; the other is a competing narrative that there is no such being and the Bible is a story book for children and the inadequate. But let’s stick with God’s narrative for the moment. Our world is spoiled and is not as it should be. This spoiling involves all of us as we are spoiled too (from His point of view). As He’s God, and we’re not, this rather matters. Because the problem – let’s call is S for short – is so fundamental, and because S is an outrage and an affront to God, the only real answer is to bring the current state of affairs to an end, and recreate things as they should be. Because He's God He can do this. But then what of you and me? That would mean an end of us (remember we’re part of the problem). But at some point, still in our future, that’s what is going to happen. And so that’s the predicament we face. Now we could rail against the injustice of it all, but that wouldn't solve the predicament. We could just ignore it and wish it away, it does all sound a bit remote and ridiculous. But if there were anything that could deliver us from our predicament, ignoring it wouldn't make sense.

For reasons fundamentally only known to Himself, and only partly revealed to us (but to do with His character as opposed to any external necessity), God has provided a means by which we can be rescued from this predicament. By fixing S in individuals, the process of being made fit for the world that will follow can be inaugurated. The baby born in Bethlehem is part of the mission that makes this possible. And this is where the two narratives collide. Because there really is a Bethlehem, and there really was a baby. To deal with S, there is a price, a cost that has to be paid. Being affected by S incurs an obligation that must be met before there can be any question of being part of the world that is to come. But self-help is not an option. After all, by nature we are all so caught up in the counter-narrative that there isn’t even a problem. Other than what is revealed in the Bible, God’s narrative, we would be unaware of our predicament, and therefore blissfully ignorant of our obligation. But the baby born in Bethlehem, grows to adulthood and takes that obligation on Himself as a substitute, and offers individuals freedom from the obligation, thereby fixing S. 

Thus, only to see a baby is to miss the bigger picture, to miss (and to miss out on) the rescue mission. Rescue offered to all, because all are in a predicament and facing disaster because of S. To substitute appropriate Bible words for S, Jesus becomes a Saviour to deal with Sin. More than a baby, a rescuer. All fine and good. Except you probably neither see it, or feel it. Even though the pandemic should have taught us all about our vulnerability, and the fragility of life as it is for all of us. All this talk of sin and rescue sounds much less compelling than sticking with stories of perpetual babies. Except that in due course Christmas will be followed by Easter. And that’s a whole different story.

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.

Christmas Reflections I – 1619 and all that…..

The year 1619 was a long time ago. Neither you nor I were around. It is well beyond living memory or even folk memory (if there is such a thing). It is a proper subject for historical research. Thanks to that research there are a number of things that have been recorded for us, and that we can be reasonably sure about. Perhaps most notably, in December 1619 the first Africans arrived as slaves in the Virginia colony, marking the start of North American slavery. The United States of America was not even a glint in anyone’s eye, but we all know what that arrival heralded, and how today it continues to have an influence on many lives. In central Europe, the reformation of the previous century was turning ever more political and the seeds of the “thirty years war” were being sown. Scotland and England had the same king by 1619 (James I/VI), the Tudors having given way to the Stuarts. James was happily propounding the theory of divine right to his son (the future Charles I), thus sowing the seeds of the English civil war. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the population in 1619 lived, worked and died in the countryside. London had a population of about 50 000, and the second city in England was Bristol with a population of about half that size. Obviously there were no smartphones (yes – life is still possible without them). There were also no railways and therefore no common time across the country; the main mode of transport involved feet. There was no industry (at least in the way we think of it today), and books were scarce. Formal education was rudimentary or non-existent for many. Probably fewer than 1 in 5 people could do what you are doing right now (ie reading), and fewer than that could write. It is a world so foreign to us that it might as well be another planet.

Imagine you were told that someone had written something in 1619 that had direct relevance to you in 2019, 400 years later. You could be forgiven for being a tad sceptical. Suppose it was a promise that something amazing would happen, although even in their own time, 400 years ago, the fulfilment of the same promise had already been anticipated for a while. After a further 400 years, you can understand why anticipation might turn to scepticism, then disbelief, and then disappear from general consciousness. How could we even be sure of the detail of something said or written 400 years ago?

I assume that by now you are asking what has 1619 got to do with Christmas?

Consider the opening of the Gospel of Luke which deals with a number of events preceding the first Christmas. Those events, which Luke claims are part of an orderly account of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, mark the continuation of, or arguably the restarting of God speaking directly to humanity after a silence of about 400 years. The Old Testament closes with Malachi, one of the “minor prophets” (called that because of their length, not their importance). Malachi wasn’t the last of the OT books to be written, but his is the last of “thus says the Lord” books. At the end of the OT Israel returned from exile much diminished. Jerusalem was re-established, the temple rebuilt and there was a “revival” of sorts. But it all somehow seems very low key; not like the “old days”. Malachi promises that God isn’t finished with either Israel, or the rest of us. A messenger will come to make preparations, and then the “Lord …will suddenly come to his temple”. And then ….. nothing. Hundreds of years of nothing. No messenger, no Lord, nothing.

History of course didn’t stop with Malachi. It wound remorselessly on. Some of it was good; much of it was bad (at least in Israel’s neck of the woods). They were ruled by Persians, they were ruled by Egyptians (or at least the Greek version of Egyptians), they were ruled by Syrians. They rebelled, were oppressed, rebelled again. Then they were incorporated into the Roman empire. All the time, it was as though their God had stopped speaking to them. 400 years of silence. The events recorded in the Old Testament became ever more remote. Abraham, Moses, Joshua and David had formed their history. But they became almost mythical (no doubt there were those who claimed exactly that). The likes of Ezra, Nehemiah, and yes Malachi, gradually shifted from memory, to history to ….legend? Myth? Certainly little more than words in a book. Gradually the book gathered dust. It was translated, reinterpreted, argued over. Did the words in the book matter? Perhaps it all seemed a bit esoteric. The sort of stuff to be left to the academics and scholars, historians and religious professionals. But then, just while everyone was quietly forgetting all that God had said and done through thousands of years of their history, things began to stir again. But quite obscurely at first.

To the average Jewish person around the time of Jesus birth, the promises of Malachi probably seemed as remote and irrelevant as things said in 1619 seem to us. That is, very remote and very irrelevant. So irrelevant in fact, that even quite educated people didn’t know about them. But it turns out that what is recorded in the OT is not myth and legend, and that a promise is a promise. God doesn’t make promises lightly, and once made they are kept. So, after 400 years, Luke records that messengers arrive, announcements are made, prompts and signs are provided. It is true that much of this would be missed by many then and now. But events would begin to unfold that would be hard to miss. Thanks to the likes of Luke (other Gospel accounts are available), who would compile an orderly record, neither those events or their meaning need be lost on us, 2000 years further on. They remain worth reflecting on.