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 #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.

Life in the pandemic XXI: Back to the future......

Back in September last year I asserted that no-one could predict the future, at least with any certainty or precision. This was at the time when there was lot’s of debate about scientific modelling that was showing new waves of COVID19 cases, with their attendant increases in hospitalisations and deaths. As we come towards the end of another UK lockdown, the models and the predictions flowing from them seem to be a lot less controversial than they were. The prediction that kicked off much of the controversy (500 000 UK deaths if nothing was done) doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable now, given that, even with the heroic efforts of so many, about 126 000 lives have been lost in the UK to the virus. The modelling did its job, informing (although some would still claim misinforming) decisions. But I also alluded to another source of information, providing an important perspective on our future. It’s this I want to return to.

I do so with a degree of trepidation. Despite the occasional claim to the contrary, prediction about really complicated things like society (and much else besides) is a mugs game, and always has been. History is littered with bold and completely unfulfilled predictions. Never mind duff predictions from remote history. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s declarations about the end of history and the triumph of Western liberal democracy in the early 1990s? Trouble is nobody told the new autocrats like Putin, Xi and Erdogan, or for that matter Trump supporters (who can still be found in depressingly large numbers all over the US). On a lighter note, you won’t be surprised to learn that the Star Trek franchise is an even worse guide to the future. Given that the “Eugenics Wars” should have happened in the 1990s (about thirty years after the making of the original series), I’m afraid we can have no confidence that first contact with the Vulcans and the first warp flight will take place only 42 years hence.

Christians also have a bad (and probably deserved) reputation for the same kind of thing, although we arguably have fewer excuses. As to our individual and collective future we should be comfortable entrusting ourselves to the God who knows the future, regardless of whether He provides us with the details or not. And my suspicion is that often He has not, and does not, because it would distort both our perspective and our priorities. There is perhaps a hint of this at the end of John’s Gospel. Jesus has just restored Peter (after Peter’s denial of Him before the crucifixion), and in conversation He then alludes to what will happen to Peter in the future. Peter then asks about John who is nearby, to be told (essentially) to mind his own beeswax – although that’s not a literal translation of the original (see John 21:21,22). Although Jesus could have gone into great detail about both Peter and John’s futures, He’s fairly cryptic about Peter’s, and doesn’t give away anything about John’s.

There is one particular event the precise timing of which Jesus is famously tight-lipped about – the time of His own second advent. Indeed, He goes much further than simply not saying when it will take place. While it might be possible to detect a trajectory towards His return in the shape of events, He says clearly “..concerning the day and hour no one knows” (Matt24:36). The problem was even the Apostles (as well as later Christian “leaders”) had a habit of not hearing what was being said to them. So just before His ascension they enquired about the timing of events, only to be told, as Peter had been told individually, that it was none of their beeswax (again, not a literal translation; Acts 1:7). They had other business to be about. So, of all the things that Christians might be expected to discuss, write about, seek to discern and fall out about, one thing we should not be exercised about is the precise time of His return. However, some of us still aren’t listening.

Perhaps the best known example of Jesus’ own words being ignored in this matter is that of the Millerites, the predecessors of the Seventh Day Adventists (although some would dispute this characterisation). From about 1818 onwards, William Miller prophesied that the world would end and Christ would return “around” 1843. By the 1840’s there were those within the movement prepared to get more precise. As the world staggered into 1844, and then through the early months of 1844, some in the movement, rather than draw the obvious conclusion, sharpened the prediction to 22^nd October 22^nd, 1844. Eventually Miller himself endorsed this date, and the rest, as they say is history. Miller, it turns out, was not an aberration.

Herbert Armstrong was a 1930’s equivalent of the modern TV Evangelist (ie a radio evangelist), who managed to accumulate many of the trappings of his modern successors with whom he overlapped (he died in 1986). Various sources report him predicting Christ’s return in 1936, 1943, the “end of the world war”, 1972 and 1975.  Harold Camping was another serial offender and radio evangelist, who is best known for his prediction that the rapture would occur on 21^st May 2011. To be fair, in 2012 he wrote: "We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing." He died at the age of 92 in 2013. More recently still we had David Mead’s prediction of the end of the world on September 3^rd, 2017.  You could easily add to this list from those who manage to keep just on the right side of Christian orthodoxy otherwise, to others who are either way over the line, or aren’t interested in any line at all.

History has demonstrated that none of these predictions were made by prophets, because the main qualification of a prophet is that they get it right (Deut 18:22)! And of course all of this is a dangerous distraction from two things that should occupy us. Jesus first advent was long prophesied, and probably just as long doubted, until it was largely forgotten about. When he came, it came as a shock. And His arrival was just the beginning. His exit (that we are about to remember again over Easter) was, and is, also a shocker. Here are truths worth focussing on and thinking about. We have plenty to go on. But the truth is that having delivered on the promises of His first advent, at some point He will deliver on the promise of His second advent. I should not neglect the reality of His promised return; it should have a bearing on both my thinking and my behaviour, it should both encourage and motivate. However, rather than stare at the sky (metaphorically for us, literally for the Apostles), there’s important business to be about here and now. He’ll take care of the rest.

Ignoring my own advice though, I do have one final prediction to make: somewhere, someone is factoring the pandemic into their calculations. Look out for an announcement sometime soon. See what I did there?

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.