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.

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.