Christmas observation is interpretation

All observation is interpretation; I’m sure someone must have said that before. It has certainly been widely discussed. We never simply “see”. Facts are never delivered to us neatly isolated from everything else and wrapped up in a bow. Or to change the metaphor, there is no truth tree that if shaken drops fully formed, ripened and reliable facts into our laps to be consumed. That’s just not how the universe is. That said, there is stuff to be known, observations to constructed and interpreted. And it is sometimes interesting to note when something that is knowable, is not known by folk you’d think would know better. I was surprised by the surprise of Melvyn Bragg this morning on the R4 “Today” programme (which he was guest editing) when he discovered that the Bible accounts of Jesus birth do not specify three wise men (there are three gifts, but the number of “magi” isn’t given). I would have expected Melvyn to know his Bible better than that. Slightly later on I was also surprised at the surprise of “the undercover economist” Tim Harford (presenter of “More or Less” a programme about numbers), who was confused both about the number of “wise men” and their status. He appeared to think they were kings, again something that isn’t claimed by the Gospel writers. What is actually stated in Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives is basic stuff and eminently knowable (if apparently widely unknown). However, even many of the “facts” about that first “Christmas” even if known could appear somewhat underwhelming (as discussed previously). So both before and after the key event (the actual birth of Jesus) help is provided for us to understand something of the significance of what is going on. To help us interpret what we can observe correctly. You wouldn’t want to get this wrong.

Luke lays out, in great detail and as part of his “orderly account”, many of the preparatory moves. After centuries of what seemed like divine silence (the theme of a previous post), and several degrees of confusion amongst the Jews of the period (was their exile over or not? had their God forgotten about them? why were they still under gentile rule not to say oppression?), things suddenly started to happen almost as though to tee up a coming main event. The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth (the parents of John the Baptist) never really figures in modern nativities, but Luke clearly sees it as highly relevant to the story of both Jesus birth and His later public ministry. But it also acts as a bit of a wake up call. And Mary’s older (and certainly more experienced) cousin Elisabeth provides her with necessary support when bizarre things also happen to her. But even having been alerted that something pretty amazing is going to happen, the significant facts of Jesus actual birth are so intrinsically unbelievable, that many at the time (and certainly since) assume a simple explanation for a) Mary being pregnant and b) Joseph not being the father. After all, the problem was not that Joseph (and everyone else) did not know where babies come from, rather the problem was that he did (hence his initial idea of quietly divorcing his betrothed). And yet, as amazing as Jesus conception and birth are, the climax of the story could simply be perceived to be what looks like a fairly ordinary baby, albeit laid in a feeding trough. To this extent, it is difficult to see what the fuss is about (particularly if we miss some of Gabriel’s hints and how they relate to the angel’s own personal history).

So, because all observation is interpretation, and because interpretation always requires subsidiary facts (or a network of background beliefs and assumptions), we’re given some help. This is aimed at helping us understand not so much the how but the who of Bethlehem. This is where the shepherds and the “magi” come in, and their focus is on who the baby is, not so much how or where the baby was to be found (although neither of these is unimportant). Of the two, the shepherds are perhaps given both the most and the most dramatic help to understand what they will be seeing when they look into that feeding trough. Like Mary they have a scary encounter with an angel (no doubt made scarier still by the “glory of the Lord” which also appeared). Like Mary they are told things that for them (as they would have been for any of us) are scarcely reconcilable. On they one hand they will find themselves looking at the Messiah (Luke uses the Greek equivalent “Christ”) who has indeed come to save or rescue His people (the clue was in His name of course). And there is a heavy hint as to His divinity too; in calling Him “Lord” (κυριος, kyrios) Luke uses the Greek word used for God’s name in the Greek translation of the Old testament). But on the other they’ll be staring at a baby! The magi make their way from the east (we aren’t told from whence or precisely when) guided by a sign in the sky and their own learning. They sought extra help from the very earthly source of King Herod of course. They think they are looking for a king, it is apparently Herod who works out they are looking for the Messiah. What is often missed about these (probably Gentile) men, is that when they see the baby they fall down and worship Him. Clearly they are not merely seeing a baby and being suitably appreciative. Nor is their action merely one of respect. It is one of worship – they too are looking on not just a baby, but a being who is worthy of their worship. But this was revealed, rather than worked out, just as it was for the shepherds.

It would take lots of other people a long time to work out what these two groups were told. Some never got it. Many still don’t. If you just observe a story about a baby (or perhaps several contradictory stories about a baby – something else I heard on the radio this morning) you will be seeing but yet not seeing. That too turned out to be true of lots of people who would see and hear the man the baby grew up to become, and lots of people who hear (or indeed read) about Him today. 

Happy Christmas.

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.

On Christmas plans….

What plans do you have for Christmas? Perhaps you have a particular present in mind for that special one (or have been thus instructed). But you’re leaving the actual purchase to the last minute (Christmas eve would be ideal). Imagine though. You turn up at a suitable retail outlet only to discover that they’ve sold out! You would just have to switch to plan B. Or perhaps you have a Christmas journey planned. The tickets have been bought, the hotel booked. Imagine though. You turn up on time at your favourite local airport to discover all flights have been grounded by a software glitch somewhere in Austria! No doubt about it. Plan B again. Such things don’t happen to us often. But the plans we make often depend on lots of other people and things over which we have absolutely no control. Lots of moving parts that we need to run smoothly. Usually they do, occasionally they don’t. And on those occasions when Plan A doesn’t work out, plan B has to be pressed into service. Some people seem to think about the first Christmas (i.e. the birth of Jesus – although that wasn’t any kind of Christmas) as a sort of divine plan B.

Why might such a thought occur to anyone? Because before any of the “Christmas” events transpired there was a whole series of happenings and history that had unfolded over the preceding centuries. Some of the players in this history thought they had a handle on what was going on, and indeed that they were central to God’s big plan. That a big plan was needed was clear from almost the beginning. Things were just not as they were intended to be, and that applied to people too (you’ll find the reason for this laid out in Genesis chapter 3). With a devastating flood and the destruction of the tower at Babel, things seemed to go from bad to worse to confused. But then, from around Genesis 12 (actually the hints are right there in what appears to be the unmitigated disaster of Genesis 3), a coherent strategy emerges. This involved the God who made everything calling an obscure man named Abram out of idolatry (i.e. the worship of things that are not God) and making extravagant promises about blessing coming to everyone on earth through him and his descendents. Gradually, from that man (eventually renamed Abraham), who took God’s promises seriously and trusted the God who made them, a people emerged and came to prominence. Not that it was all plain sailing. From a human point of view it seemed to take a long time and a circuitous route. And once or twice the whole thing seemed to be on the verge of complete collapse. At the time when Abraham’s descendents were numerically strong enough to be called a nation, they actually had to be rescued from slavery and oppression while residing far from the place they had been promised. Their whole rescue experience, in both symbol and reality, turned on God being faithful to His original promise even in the teeth of their consistent failure to live like Abraham (ie trusting God). But their very failure to be the people they were supposed to be pointed to a basic flaw within them that they shared with rest of humanity (the same flaw that affects all of us today). They were no more or less flawed than anyone else; in this respect they were representative of us all.

Eventually it looked like God had given up on them. Although they owed Him everything, they kept playing fast and loose with His, although He was constantly proving Himself true to that original promise. They even returned to the sort of idolatry that their ancestor had been rescued from. Eventually everything appeared to fall apart. It looked as though, like so many other ancient cultures, they were to be washed away by successive waves of history. So if ancient Israel, for that’s who we’re thinking about, was plan A, and it was through Israel the rest of us were to be blessed, the plan appeared to be in big trouble. The whole of the Old Testament of the Bible is their story. It is a story of repeating patterns, and of a promise which, while often forgotten, was never quite erased.

Out of the ruins something (someone!) long promised eventually arrived. His coming wasn’t new in the sense of something different (i.e. plan B because plan A hadn’t worked) because it fell precisely into those patterns and expectations set up by the whole of the Old Testament, something many of the writers of the New Testament go out of their way to demonstrate from Mark to Revelation. But it was new in the sense that when it happened it was simply not what was being looked for, to the extent that many, both at the time of the promised One’s arrival and since, completely miss what’s going on. All that had happened in Israel’s history, what appeared to be wasted time and effort, turned out to precisely illustrate what was about to happen and more besides. It all turned out to be part of one big plan (A).

Israel’s experience, real and excruciating as it was, actually served to reveal the magnitude of the problem. That was necessary because human beings don’t generally understand just how awful their natural predicament is and therefore the magnitude of the solution that is required. It turns out that promises, encouragements, rules, religious systems, all of which work from the outside of a person, can’t ultimately fix the problem, which for all of us, for all of time, has been on the inside (the unfixed flaw mentioned above). But it’s almost as though part of plan A was to illustrate that problem in detail, and how not to sort it, before the actual solution was presented.

Here’s the big difference between God’s plans and ours. We often need plan B because we don’t have the power to deliver plan A. There are always things outwith our control that can (and sometimes do) interfere. But the thing about God is there is nothing outwith His control or beyond His power. So there was never going to be anything to interfere with, or thwart, plan A even if looked to human eyes as though there was. Something amazing is happening when Jesus is born in Bethlehem. His birth isn’t a sign of the failure of plan A and the need for something new (plan B). It’s actually the next part of the unfolding plan, brining us closer to the crux of plan A.

I hope you Christmas plans work out. God's plan certainly is.

How come you can understand this….?

One of my 2024 reading objectives was to read Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” from cover to cover over the year. I managed it in eleven months. Obviously I was not reading it in the original 1559 Latin, nor the sixteenth century French translations. Fortunately for me it has been translated into English, and I was enjoying the fruits of Ford Lewis Battles’ labours (along with an army of Calvin scholars), originally published just over sixty years ago. The combination of Calvin and Battles has proved itself to be highly effective and in some places even entertaining. Although separated by over 500 years and a number of intellectual and cultural revolutions (and a lot else), I think I can claim to have understood more than the gist of what Calvin was on about. I’m sure that there are many allusions I missed (notwithstanding the copious footnotes), and no doubt some of the arguments he takes up have lost their force and relevance. Yet over the months it appears I was able to follow along reasonably well. And yet there are those who would have you believe that this really should not be.

We have lived through (and some may still be in) a period in which the claim has been made that communication, particularly by means of texts (which obviously lack some of the information that we have when speaking to each other), is a fairly ropey business, particularly if you want to claim that authors are routinely able to transmit the contents of their minds accurately to their readers. Additionally it has been claimed that communication of ideas is rarely what anyone actually tries to do; more usually they are trying to manipulate (dominate, oppress) you. But even this is fraught with difficulty as words on pages do not carry meaning. Meaning is to be found in interpretations inside heads. So it turns out that I can have no (or at least little) legitimate expectation that you are following what I’m writing, and therefore only a slim hope that you now understand my (admittedly sketchy) outline of postmodernist theory. One wonders in that case why I’m trying. My general persistence in such exercises (this blog now runs to 145 posts) hints at a potential problem. Any theory has to be tested against what actually happens “in the wild”. And when this theory is tested, it turns out that it doesn’t do too well.

I rather like the illustration given by Don Carson in “The Gagging of God” (p102), when he relates what happened to him when he got into conversation with a student after having delivered some hermeneutics lectures. She took him to task for being stuck in a 19^th century positivist mindset, and listed all the reasons why he should be more open to the new (ie postmodern) approach. He tried to defend his position (which it should be said was neither modernism nor positivism), but with no success. Then in a burst of what he calls “sheer intellectual perversity” he changed tack and congratulated her for using irony to demonstrate the “objectivity of truth”. She began to get rather exasperated, at which point he congratulated her further for adding emotion to irony. Close to incandescence she finally worked out what he was up to. He quietly pointed out that in practice deconstructionists (the spear-point of postmodernism and her own position) only thought that other peoples’ writing could not communicate the thought of authors in any meaningful way. The writings (and 'speakings') of the deconstructionists themselves were mysteriously exempt from any difficulty with the transmission of their meaning, which is why we were all expected to pay careful attention to them.

If communication of ideas (and other contents) were all but impossible, presumably we would have all given up trying to do it a very long time ago. And yet the opposite has been observed. Language is one of the defining features of human beings; we want to communicate, we must communicate. Once the spoken word was all that we had; we had to speak. Writing, communication of spoken work in written, symbolic, form, appears to have developed several times in history, independently in different human civilisations. In Mesopotamia and Egypt symbolic representation of information developed some time before 3000BC. Once a minority sport, with the invention of printing writing (and reading) exploded. And for all that technology is claimed to be the death of writing, who can resist a good written caption on their Tik Tok video (just so it's understood).

 It was a while after the invention of writing that  Moses, who lived around 1300BC (probably), started to record the history of a particular group of people who would come to be known as the Jews. He clearly did so believing his efforts were of some value, and, it turns out, lots of folk throughout history (if what they have said and written are to be believed) have tended to agree with him. Such communication is not perfect (no human endeavour is). What Moses wrote, and indeed whether he actually wrote it, is contested territory. As with me and Calvin, you’ll probably have to read it in translation. Some of it will seem very odd, some perhaps disturbing. But have a go at reading it. The first five books of the Bible are attributed to him. Decide for yourself whether he says nothing, or whether you can make that particular material mean anything. You’ll certainly find it considerably less obscure than Derrida.

In seeking to communicate truth, Moses was doing no more than reflecting the truth that he claimed he was writing: that he (along with the rest of us) was created in the image of God (recorded at the beginning of his writing in Genesis 1 – easy to find). God is a speaking god. He has communicated by means of the spoken word, and of course the written word. Many other words have been written (and not just by postmodernists) to explain why this can’t really be true. And yet, in the experience of many of us He continues to speak. And if written words don’t impress you, consider this. Here we are approaching another Christmas, full of the usual nonsense. But at its core is a celebration of the event that demonstrates that God is not limited to words, written or spoken. To quote some words written in the New Testament “..in these last days he has spoken to us by his (lit: in) son…” (Hebrews 1:2).

If you’ve understood anything so far, have a go at understanding that.

“Was Jesus a Jew?” (and other matters)….

I would like to stress that the above question is not mine, but one that was put to me this week. It was not asked by someone trying to be smart or make a point or start a debate. They simply did not know the answer and were curious. Being unclear about Jesus origins is perhaps forgivable given centuries of (mainly) European “Christian” art that has tended to portray Him as relatively light skinned, with shiny hair and a very well trimmed beard. Centuries of creating Him in our own image, in the same way that fallen humanity always does with God. The question cropped up in the context of a conversation about Christmas as we shared our mutual dislike of many of its contemporary features. Although this was, and for some of us still is, an opportunity to celebrate the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity (the Word being made flesh as John puts it), Christmas has all but completely morphed into a secular celebration of general niceness, bonhomie and wistfulness. And in this form it is built around various myths.

I am fairly sure that my friend is sure that these myths are myths. Small children, should any be in the vicinity, should perhaps be ushered out of the room at this point – you have been warned. But we all realise that the idea that the presents that appear on the morning of 25^th December, often laid under a fir or pine tree (whether real or synthetic) are not placed there by a stranger in a red suit and white beard on the basis of merit accumulated in the previous twelve months. He who shall remain nameless (but about whom many a parent lies to their offspring) is made up, as is the historical hinterland often attributed to him. Other inventions that appear at this time of year include three wise men and inns with sympathetic inn-keepers but no room. Given the accretion of this mythology, and the widespread Biblical illiteracy that is a feature of the culture, it is not really a surprise to find doubts arising about that other central figure of Christmas, and still the star of many a school nativity, Jesus.

Of course one can investigate who Jesus is, and I would argue that any educated person should. A sensible place to start would be the Biblical accounts of His birth. But here we find something that seems rather strange (as well as lots of things that are contested). Only two of four Gospel writers (Matthew and Luke) include birth narratives in their accounts at all. Mark (who was probably first to produce a Gospel) and John (who probably wrote after the others) both begin their accounts with Jesus’ baptism, when he was aged approximately 30. The most detailed birth narrative occurs in Luke, but he provides almost as much detail about the birth of Jesus' relative John the Baptist (whose birth we never celebrate). And yet for two or three months of every year, thanks to the relentless focus of advertisers and media, you might think that Jesus’ birth is a key event we should focus on. Apparently this was neither the view of 50% of the Gospel writers or, for that matter, the early Church.

For the first two or three centuries of the Church’s existence, more prominence was given to Jesus' baptism (celebrated in the Feast of the Epiphany in January) and His death and resurrection (celebrated at Easter – in spring, and for a while a literally moveable feast). In part this was because birthdays in general were yet to take on their modern significance. So it took a while for consensus to emerge as to when Jesus was born. And at the time there were much more important issues that had to be settled. Besides, precise dates were not much of a thing in the ancient world. So initially, estimates of His month of birth ranged from November to March. Only gradually was December 25^th adopted (at least for liturgical purposes) in part so that a celebration of Jesus birth might displace more dubious pagan celebrations.

Perhaps this Biblical and early Church disinterest in focussing on Jesus birth was also because while it was obviously necessary for what came next, and while it was surrounded by a number of heavy hints as to His significance, it was in some ways profoundly ordinary. And concentration on it, to the exclusion of the rest of what we’re told about Him, runs the risk of “perpetual baby syndrome”. In our minds He forever remains a cute and suspiciously quiet (according to “Away in a manger”) infant. Yet beyond his birth we need to understand the life He led, what He said and did, and not miss the significance of the death He died. However you view these things, cute would hardly be an adequate description. What He did outraged and astonished in equal measure. What He claimed, explicitly as well as implicitly, needs to be carefully weighed. For these are not mere matters of the historical record. The critical call that Jesus made (and makes) is not so much that we must reckon with His birth, but that His life and death having continuing personal as well as cosmic significance. And of this is validated by His resurrection perhaps the most significant event in history, at least so far.

Questions like the one my friend was asking can be answered. We can certainly establish where Jesus was born, and the circumstances surrounding His birth. We can be sure of His ethnicity (He was a Jew), and His heritage (with regard to His human descent He was from the tribe of Judah, though the kingly line of David), and see how his coming fulfilled ancient promises and patterns. I contend that none of this is myth, nor is it merely history, and all of it is significant. By all means enjoy contemplating His birth, but don’t get stuck.

Personally, I comfort myself with the thought that although it’s almost Christmas, Easter is just around the corner.

My new car has a dent in it….

Tis the season of stuff. Much of it will be welcome stuff - presents we’ve been looking forward to, perhaps that we requested or hinted at. Anticipation was increased by seeing them (or what we hoped was them), wrapped in fancy paper, sitting, waiting under a Christmas tree (maybe for weeks in the more organized households). And then it arrived - Christmas day. We got to tear away the wrapping paper to reveal… whatever. How long will or has the satisfaction of finally getting our hands on a much-anticipated present last? Did it live up to its billing? Perhaps. However, as I learned recently (or perhaps re-learned) we should be careful how we regard stuff.

A few months ago, we decided to replace our ageing car. It had been reliable for a long time (about thirteen years in fact) but was at that stage where it was starting to cost more to maintain and keep roadworthy than it was actually worth. We were in the fortunate position of being able to go to a dealership and pick a new (smaller) car. Eventually we plumped for a dark blue, sporty hatchback. It had some of the latest gizmos and gadgets. So now it bleeps when I reverse too close towards the much more expensive SUV parked behind us in the street outside our house. When on long journeys it nags us about the need to take breaks and drink coffee. Because it has sporty seats and natty red trim in various prominent places internally, one of our friends has taken our purchase as evidence of a mid-life crisis on my part. Whatever it is, this it cannot be as I am no longer in mid-life.

However, like everything else, our shiny new car is not immune to damage and degradation, whether accidental or malicious. We’ve already had a flat tyre that needed replacing. Interestingly, the combination of an actual flat and large alloy wheel rims had us constantly looking at our wheels and asking if we’d got another flat. It turned out that it is disconcertingly difficult to tell. But for the most part the car has sat outside our house, all shiny and new (complete with that “new car” smell). A delight to behold (and smell). And then it wasn’t. In a church car park of all places, what we presume was another car door was flung open with sufficient force to put a small but deep dent in one of our doors. One would hardly notice the dent on casual, uninterested inspection. The problem is that my observation of my shiny new car is neither casual nor uninterested. Because I know where the blemish is, my eye is attracted to it automatically, almost magnetically. Mechanically the car is fine, and still drives like a dream. It still has the natty red trim inside, and the gizmos all still work. And there’s even still a faint whiff of “new car” inside (although that may by now just be my imagination). But it is now blemished and therefore somehow less. What is disconcerting is that I care quite so much. And thereby hangs a tale and a moral.

Stuff, it turns out, is not neutral; it is sticky. We get overly attached to it. Admittedly cars are quite large and expensive items (even small ones). But much smaller bits of stuff can be quite as sticky as large objects, and exert a remarkable pull. And, as with my mechanically sound although marked car, this is about much more than the utility of the object in question. It seems to be some property of the stuff itself and how we relate to it. After all there are plenty of cars driving around with dents in them about which I care not a jot. It is this particular car that, it turns out, has an amazing ability to discombobulate me, presumably because it’s mine. Yet cars (phones, rings, boats, pens, computers etc) are not people. We might have a relationship of sorts with stuff (some people name their cars, never mind their pets), but it falls some way short of the relationships that should matter to us; those with spouses, children, parents and friends, even colleagues, bosses, employees. People should matter more than stuff.

Of course sometimes we use stuff to symbolize our relationships. I suppose this is what Christmas gifts (ie the stuff we give each other at Christmas) are really about. But in a way the stuff itself should be relatively unimportant. This explains why even stuff that has little monetary value can still be of great worth, if it serves as a sign and symbol of an important relationship. All well and good. But what a tragedy when the stuff, even gifted stuff, comes to matter more than it should. Even worse, when it is mistaken for the relationship that it is supposed to signify, or valued more than those relationships that should matter to us. When the stuff receives the attention that the giver of the gift should receive. This is to confuse signs and things signified. Because stuff inevitably becomes notably less shiny with time, not to mention when it gets dented, to be obsessed with it is also to miss so much of what really matters. And yet stuff, the obtaining of it, the possession of it, can do this to us. Warping our perception of what, or rather who, should be valued.

Consider one more intriguing observation. The greatest gift that was ever given was not stuff at all, but a person; a someone to be known not a something to be had. That is, when all is said and done, what (or rather who) lies at the heart of Christmas. Enjoy your presents.

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?

It’s Christmas on Sunday…….

You wouldn’t think it was that big a deal that December 25^th happens to be a Sunday. And for most of the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants it probably isn’t. Many will neither recognize or celebrate Christmas regardless of when it falls, including those with no Christian interest or history, and those who as a matter of their atheistic principles will not want to have anything to do with it (and quite right too). After all, the (nominal) Christian world only makes up about 30% of the world’s total population. Within that 30% one might reasonably expect that Christmas falling on a Sunday would not lead to any dramas. However it turns out that there has been a bit of a tiz going on. Apparently, because it is Christmas day some places of worship (I hesitate to call them churches) have cancelled their services. While the debate probably started on Twitter (don’t they all these days?), and spread to the “Christian” press and websites (e.g. see “The Christian Post”), it eventually reached the New York Times, hardly an evangelical rag.

I should mention at this point that I have skin in this particular game. I come from a theologically fairly conservative background, and remember at least one childhood Christmas that fell on a Sunday. Because of my aged state I’m afraid I can’t remember the details of that particular Christmas day. But I do remember having the distinct impression that this was a Sunday to be spent like every other Sunday. Same meetings (with perhaps the exception of the Sunday afternoon Bible class), same content. Jesus' birth may have been mentioned, but only as the necessary prelude to His life, death and resurrection. The world may have been celebrating with its trees and tinsel, but that was nothing to do with us. There was also perhaps a touch of if the world was happy we had to be miserable. None of us can entirely escape our backgrounds, so I still find myself in two minds about all the Christmas hullabaloo (ie the trees and tinsel) and still sometimes find myself wondering what it has to do with me.

As an aside, there are those who end up in roughly the same place but come at it from the opposite direction. Self-confessed “cultural Christian” Poly Toynbee, likes goodwill, the idea of the poor inheriting the earth and the way “the stable stands for the homeless and refugees”. The rest of it (by which I think she means biblical Christianity) she finds “loathsome”. And so she should too. The theology of carols (like “veiled in flesh the Godhead see”) should strike her as bizarre. And there are all sorts of reasons to be appalled at a Saviour born to die on a cross (a “symbol of barbaric torture”). Christmas comes with “religious baggage we should shed” she says. Although one might be forgiven for pointing out that this confuses carts and horses - without the religious "baggage" there would, of course, be no Christmas. Her main motivation, though, appears to be that she wants religious opposition to the “right to die” removed. It is far from clear that is a sure fire way to ensure goodwill to all men. Time will tell. But certainly I can see why, from her point of view, there are logical reasons for a degree of ambivalence about Christmas.

But for me there is no ambivalence that applies to Sundays. I know what Sunday is about. Albeit the English name goes back to pagan times, it’s clear what Christians are to make of the first day of the week. It is the day on which our priority is to come together to focus on and remember Jesus. Maybe Greeks have the right idea (and not for the first time), naming Sunday “Κυριακή”, which is derived from “Κύριος” Lord. The Lord’s day, one that affords that opportunity for fellowship with other believers, with Jesus “in the midst” (as He put it Himself). A weekly opportunity to be provided with fuel for our living as we take our minds of our twitter and RSS feeds and fill them with His word. All of this is mandated; it marked the early Church and should mark churches today. So, on the one hand a (Christmas) day of ambivalence and on the other a (Lord’s) day I’m fairly clear about. Seems like a no brainer as to which should have prominence when the two coincide.

We would, in any case meet as a church on Christmas day, not something I have ever found a chore. But it did lead to a degree of mental and chronological confusion because it meant that a Monday, Tuesday or whatever would end up feeling like a Sunday, without actually being one. At least this year there will be no need for such dissonance. It will be like killing two birds with the one communal stone. This helpful aspect aside, it does seem strange to me that some who claim to be Christians seem keen not to meet, and the suspicion arises that it being Christmas day is an excuse not a reason. A bit like those who think that things like cup finals in which their favourite team is playing is a reason not to meet. This is to put church on the level of a hobby or diversion; it’s really not. This coming Christmas Sunday those of us who followers of Jesus have an extra reason to be together (not a reason for not gathering) to focus with others on what, or rather Who, really matters. And indeed not just His birth, as remarkable as that was. But on His life, death, resurrection, ascension and return.

It was, after all, the Saviour, Christ the Lord, that was born, not just a baby.

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 Reflections 2021 #1 Grimness again……

Reflecting on last year’s reflections seemed like a good place to start this year. One of them centred on the grimness of the original events which eventually led to us celebrating Christmas (along with the advertising of the men from Coca Cola). You can obviously read that particular post again should you be so inclined. Here we are, our second Christmas in the pandemic, and things have taken a potentially ugly turn with the advent of the Omicron variant of COVID19. At least last year we had the effects of the vaccine campaign to look forward to. Then along came Delta, and now Omicron, complete with partial vaccine escape. Who knows how bad it will turn out to be? Apparently, at this stage, no-one. But once again we are facing restrictions - the Netherlands has just gone into “lockdown” again, with other European states perhaps about to follow. Some people are wondering what to do for the best in terms of how to celebrate Christmas with family and whether they can travel any distance or not. Meanwhile, protests are growing over restrictions (in Government and on the streets), and the antivaxxers are still making their voices heard. All of this is before we get to political instability and problems with integrity at the heart of UK politics, and stuff that really matters like Russian forces massing on the Ukrainian border and the growing climate crisis. In the face of all this, it is tempting to put one’s fingers in one’s ears and hum a happy tune before hunkering down with a stack of Christmas DVD’s, pigging out on mince pies and hoping that it will all turn out alright somehow. That would be naïve, and probably self-defeating. Eventually all the DVD’s would be watched, and a diet consisting of only mince pies is almost as unhealthy as a dose of COVID in a twenty-year-old. But funnily enough there is some Biblical warrant for an approach that, at least superficially, seems a bit like this (without the calorie count).

If you’ve been to many carol concerts, nativity plays or watchnight services, you will inevitably have encountered readings from Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah seemed to know an awful lot about both Jesus’ birth specifically, and His life and character more generally. This leads some to deny that the book of Isaiah could possibly been written when apparently it was written – hundreds of years before the events themselves. Of course if the Living God revealed things to Isaiah, things in his future which he may very well not have understood himself, that has big implications for how we understand the Bible and the events thus foretold. But puting that to one side, Isaiah Ch 11 vs 1-9 has been on my mind of late. Here, in what were probably grim circumstances, Isaiah invited his original audience to look up and look forward. While the bulk of Isaiah’s message was that things were going to get grimmer still for his nation of Judah, in 11:1 he writes about new life that will spring from what will look like a dead, inert tree stump.

It becomes clear in v2-5 that Isaiah is not referring to an event, nor to an institution, but to a person who is to come. He tells us that “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him” (11:2). Aspects of this person’s inward character are described: He will have wisdom, understanding , counsel, might and knowledge; all qualities singularly lacking from leaders in Isaiah’s day. And He will be marked by the “fear of the Lord”, a phrase that is repeated for emphasis. What was an aspiration for others, would be a daily reality for Him. Who could this possibly be? After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John, Matthew records the Spirit descending and “coming to rest on Him” (Matt 3:16). Shortly after this, as Jesus began his public ministry, He attended a synagogue on the Sabbath and read from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…”. And then He said “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Jesus was observed to be, and claimed to be, the one who was promised in Isaiah 11:1 – the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rested. He is the one who fulfilled the promise of Is 11 along with those other staples of carol services like Isaiah 7:14 “..the virgin shall conceive..” and 9:6ff “..for unto us a child is born..”. But then Isaiah goes a bit weird.

In 11:6-9 the scene shifts. A different world is portrayed, different from the time when Jesus lived, and different to our world. Wolves dwelling with lambs, and leopards lying down with goats! Whether the wolves and lambs, leopards and goats of v6 are metaphorical or literal hardly matters. In either case, where previously one was predator and the other prey, in this new world things are different. Lions will apparently be no longer interested in eating fattened calves. Indeed, at a basic, even biological level, things will be transformed: lions will eat straw (v7). And a particular enmity that has been present from near the beginning of humanity’s existence will be absent from this future world. In v8, the ancient hostility between snakes and even young children (we might call them “offspring”) will in that day no longer exist. Older children, who you would expect to have learned a thing or two, won’t develop a healthy fear of poisonous snakes, nor will they be at risk from them (v9). In this imagery, there are quite deliberate echoes Genesis 3:15 but with a twist. Gen 3 is the account of the fall of man, and the entry of sin into a perfect created order. As a result a snake is cursed because of its role, and one element of this is enmity between the snake and the “offspring of the woman”. But in Is 11:8 a world is described in which that enmity has been removed. But how to get from where we are to this new world?

If you’ve ever gone walking in the English Lakes, or the mountains of Wales, or in the Scottish Highlands, you’ll have had the experience of looking at distant peaks. It is often difficult to get a sense of the distance between them, and you can see nothing of valleys between them. Here, Isaiah has the same problem as he looks down the corridors of time and sees two peaks. We know that the first part of this chapter (the first peak) refers to Jesus – because Jesus Himself tells us. That was in Isaiah’s future, but is obviously in our past. The first advent was a promise made, and we know it as a promised kept. Jesus was born, lived as the one portrayed in Isaiah 11 vs 2-5, and died as the suffering servant Isaiah also tells us about in Ch53 – “pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (53v5). But there is a second peak, far off in the distance from Isaiah’s perspective. This is a renewed world, a world without sin and the enmity it produces, full of the knowledge of the Lord (Is 11:9). This is a world yet to come, lying in our future. Our response to Jesus and His first advent determines whether we will gain entry into that perfect world that is yet to come. Christ came before, exactly as promised. He will come again (as promised) to “judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31), transforming everything. The fulfilling of the first promise provides a rational basis for trusting the second.

When things are grim, the return of the celebration of Jesus’ first advent reminds us to look up and anticipate His second, and the world that it will inaugurate. Much better than DVD’s and mince pies.

Numbers game: Christianity in retreat…?

The end of December is an interesting time of year for all sorts of reasons, some more logical than others. It marks (although somewhat arbitrarily) the end of the year and so tends to be a time for reflection on the year gone by. Currently the memory-fest that is the BBC’s “Sports Personality of the Year” show is on the TV. And of course it is Christmas time, even although the Christmas movie channels went live in mid-October. But I shall try and suppress any further bah-humbuggery. One phenomenon that appears at this time of year is of course an upsurge in religious, specifically Christian, activity and imagery. And this apparently against a backdrop of a claimed precipitous decline in Christianity in the UK and the US – at least according to some headlines.

New figures from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) prompted the Religious Affairs correspondent of The Times to headline an article “Losing our religion:Christians poised to become a minority”. Similar stories appeared in various US news outlets similarly prompted by a Pew Research Centre report. In the UK the 2011 census “found that 59.3 % of the English and Welsh population were Christian”, but in updated 2019 figures on a much smaller sample this had fallen to 51% - hence the story. In the Pew data there had been a 12% drop in those self-identifying as Christians between 2011 and 2021. Mind you that drop was from 75% to 63%. Do these numbers mean anything? Well, no and yes.

The notion that as I walk around south Liverpool every second person I encounter is a Christian is laughable. I don’t mean in any way that I live among particularly evil, nasty or even generally unlikable people. By and large Scousers are a friendly and helpful bunch up close and personal. But, friendliness, helpfulness and general likability are not the key criteria that determine whether one is or is not a Christian (although one hopes they are observable characteristics in Christians). This of course simply raises the criterion question, one that always dogs self-report surveys. And here there is a really big problem. In a YouGov survey conducted in 2020 in a large UK sample (N=2169), only 27% said they believed in “a god”, and 41% neither believed in “a god” nor in a “higher power”. Only 20% believed that Jesus was “the son of God". In fact, in that particular survey, 55% did not regard themselves as belonging to any particular religion. Cleary somewhat at odds with the ONS numbers.

The problem here is of course we have to distinguish between the meaning of the word “Christian” in the Biblical sense, and the other senses in which the word is used, such as the ethnic or cultural senses. For what it’s  worth, my view is that it’s the Biblical sense that matters, because rather a lot hangs on it (big stuff like one’s eternal destiny). We have the first recorded use of the word in the New Testament. at Antioch in the first century AD (Acts 11:26). It was probably initially used as an insult; a label given to followers of the “the Way”, disciples of Jesus Christ. And probably few in their “right mind” would want to be thus  labelled. The people to whom the it was originally applied share a number of characteristics with those to whom it appropriately applies today. They made certain claims on their own behalf, and behaved (or aspired to behave) in certain ways. Their central claim (and for that matter my central claim) was (and is) that they (and I) knew (know) Jesus. That should be understood to be different to the claim to know about Jesus. Anyone can (and everyone should) read the Bible, which goes into considerable detail about Jesus, detailing His birth (hence Christmas), His death and resurrection, and His ascension. Knowing about Him is not difficult. But knowing Him is a personal, subjective experience to which individual Christians give witness. And I really do mean know Him in the same way as I know others – whether my wife, children, other relatives or friends.

It is this personal relational aspect that many of those self-identifying as Christians in surveys are probably a bit hazy about. This "knowing" is a two-way phenomenon, and He will only be known on certain grounds. To deny that God is, and to deny that Jesus is God is tantamount to denying that you know Him. It denies who He is, denies His own claims about Himself and completely undermines His central purpose in being born, living and dying the way He did. In His own day, Jesus had various interactions with religious people who by definition were not Christians. These people certainly knew about Him, and many of them in a much more direct way than is possible today. They knew other members of His human family, they knew the town He came from, and other people who grew up with Him, and they heard for themselves from His own lips what He had to say. But even although they stood in front of Him, and conversed with Him, it turned out they didn’t know Him (see John 8:19). And He clearly warned that He would say of many who would claim to know Him, and even do things in His name, that He never knew them (Matt 7:21-23).

Now with all due respect to many who would self-identify in a survey as being a Christian, they are not (and would not claim to be) Christ followers in this sense of knowing Him. They are claiming a far looser association with Jesus, or perhaps no association with Him directly at all. The only link is perhaps with some (human) institution or an even looser association by virtue of an immersion in a culture that is broadly still Christian-like. And if fewer respondents think this is a sensible basis on which to tick the “Christian” box now than previously, this tells us precisely nothing about the state of Christianity properly defined. But that doesn’t mean that it tells us nothing.

As Tom Holland goes to great lengths to show in “Dominion” (not exactly reviewed here), the cultural effects of Christianity are pervasive in the West even still, although probably in decline. Many of course will not lament such a decline. But some, including some atheists, are beginning to murmur that this could throw up lots of thoroughly unwelcome outcomes for society as a whole. Meanwhile, don’t worry too much on behalf of us Christians. We won’t be going anywhere for a bit yet (probably).

Missed metaphor......

Here was me thinking I would just do a quick search on the subject of metaphor and its uses (mainly because I heard Noel Gallagher talking about metaphor in song writing on the radio this morning). I know we all enjoy a good metaphor. I know we all often employ metaphors, including the famous  “sick as a parrot” overused by football reporters. How little I knew. Metaphors, and the discussion of them, are a seething ocean…. See what I mean?

The ubiquity of metaphors in language leads neatly to the notion that metaphor is somehow basic to how we think. Indeed, in what is considered by some to be a classic, paradigm-shaping book published in 1980, “Metaphors we live by”, Lakoff and Johnson claimed exactly that. Metaphors are not just features of language, ways we seek to communicate with each other. They are rooted in basic biology and baked into the way we think, allowing us make sense of the world around us. Indeed, there is empirical evidence that they might do more than this. Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2011) showed that by exposing participants to particular metaphors, it was possible to influence how they thought about particular scenarios. So, comparing a “crime wave” to either a “wild animal preying on” or “a virus infecting” a community, altered their views about how to deal with crime. It’s a short step from this to the idea of using metaphors as “dog whistles” in political discourse (another metaphor). Usually this a charge made against political opponents. But the politicians have worked out that using metaphors in this particular way provides the kind of plausible deniability that they can deploy against their opponents while stirring up (there I go again) their political base. It turns out that this is all hotly contested stuff.

But back to the business of sensible communication. In part, metaphors are useful because they can helpfully illuminate (like good prose), while having a degree of flexibility (they lack the precision of propositions). They can also be used to encapsulate something complex in relatively few words (usually by alluding to an image) and are therefore an economical means of communication. And they can help us grapple with things that are so complex that we cannot understand everything about them, while highlighting what we can understand. And they necessarily engage the imagination in a way other types of language often do not. When you get to thinking about it, Christians (or perhaps even religious-minded people in general) should be at home with them.

The Bible is replete with metaphors, and the reason for at least some of them isn’t too hard to fathom. If the Bible is the primary means of revelation by which a transcendent God, who is a completely different form of being from you and me, makes Himself known to us, then it is hardly a surprise that metaphor is to the fore (as it were). In fact most of our language about God must be metaphorical. Some metaphors are in the form of straightforward anthropomorphisms – Scripture speaks of God’s hands and eyes even although as a being who is spirit He does not literally possess hands and eyes. Others find their meaning within Scripture itself.

In the Old Testament history of Israel, we find the basis of many significant New Testament metaphors. For example, in order to be safe from the punishment that was to fall on Egypt as the climax to a series of plagues, the enslaved Israelites had to take a lamb and sacrifice it. The blood of this lamb, when applied to the doorways of their houses would protect them from what was to happen. This deliverance formed the basis of the Passover feast which was to serve as a reminder of, and pointer to, this great event in their deliverance.

When Jesus appears near the Jordan thousands of years later, John points at Him and calls Him the Lamb of God (John 1:29). In a sense that’s all he has to say. A whole host of images and associations immediately come flooding to those familiar with such language. But they are not looking a young sheep of course. As they look to where John is pointing they find themselves looking at a man. The power of metaphor. And even although this is early in Jesus’ public ministry, there is perhaps an even earlier allusion that employs this same metaphor. It is one that I had entirely missed.

It’s nearly Christmas, and all this week at Bridge we’ve been presenting “the Christmas Journey” to school children – basically a presentation of the Christmas story. I know that it’s only the first week in December, but to be fair we’ve been enduring Christmas movie channels since September. It has always struck me as odd that an angel tells a bunch of shepherds that a baby wrapped in “swaddling cloths” is a sign (Luke 2:12). I suppose it could simply have been that this is how they would know the baby in question was “the” baby as opposed to “a” baby (although presumably the fact that said baby would also be in a  feeding trough would also be a bit of a giveaway). But someone pointed out to me this week that it has been suggested that the shepherds weren’t just any old shepherds; they were “Levitical” shepherds. And they were specifically tasked with raising lambs for sacrifice up at the temple in Jerusalem, lambs that had to be perfect. These were not strictly speaking Passover lambs for the most part, but that’s where the flexibility of a good metaphor is useful. To increase the shepherds' chances of producing quality lambs (i.e. without “spot of blemish) and decrease their losses, lambs would often be birthed in special shepherds' caves in the vicinity of Bethlehem, and then bound in cloths (swaddling cloths) to prevent cuts, bruises and other damage. This, in effect, identified them as sacrificial lambs. So, now the direction to go and look at a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths takes on a whole new significance. These particular shepherds looking at that particular baby, triggers all those metaphorical associations that John would highlight about thirty years later.

We don’t know if the shepherds made all of these connections. Nor do we know when Jesus first disciples managed to get their heads around what John said. But this particular metaphor is worth bearing in mind for the next few weeks.