The World, the Flesh and the God Made Flesh (Advent #3)

John 1:1-18

I have spent a lot of time with the famous prologue to John's Gospel over the past few weeks. Somehow, I don't seem able to get past it. Each morning, when I have my morning devotional time over breakfast, I come back to what is perhaps the strangest opening to any of the four gospels, yet also perhaps the most rich of them all.

Yes, it is certainly rich, but it is also extraordinarily difficult to get your head around. Much easier to think about God as distant, or simply as human; much easier to settle for either extreme, rather than the strange, arresting, confusing fusion of the two that John so unequivocally presents.

A Unitarian friend of mine, whose beliefs exclude the possibility of Jesus being God, once said that he interprets the "Word" of John's prologue as being the plan of God, rather than Jesus. I had never come across this interpretation, and for a time it challenged me. But close inspection of the passage makes such a reading impossible. The Word is a person, the same as God yet somehow distinct. The Word does contain in it the wisdom, the clear, logical communication at the heart of God, but is also much, more more. The Word - lofty, sublime, beyond us, the creator of all things, yet...

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

How do you ever get your head around that? The Creator of the world, dwelling among us...An N.T. Wright sermon that I read this morning commented wisely on how much this truth challenges our very worldview, one which, for instance, likes to keep the secular and sacred apart, one which often would happily prefer to declare that there isn't a sacred at all. Quite apart from being the first sermon I have come across to truly fit the term "antidisestablishmentarian", it raised for me an important question: how much am I willing to let God infiltrate not only the public sphere of society but in fact every sphere? Because that is what He has done. Him coming to earth doesn't just mean comfort for the poor or divine understanding in our suffering, though it does certainly mean those things too. And it was not just a means of attaining salvation; if Jesus only came to earth to die, His thirty years on earth would seem a little redundant. No, though all of these things are crucial to our faith, there is something else that the incarnation shows, which I will certainly be trying to think about this Advent.

The incarnation shows us that God is utterly, intimately, uncomfortably, involved in our lives on earth. He has come to be here; He dwells among us. Are we prepared for that?

Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming...(Advent #2)

Isaiah 11:1-10

If you fix your eyes on the deadness of winter, if you dull and numb your brain to all other possibilities, then there is a reasonable chance that you will not be able to conceive of a rose.

If you spend your time among wild animals bent on survival, you may then not be able to conceive of peace.

If you spend your nights awake and staring deeply into the darkness, you may struggle to understand the hope of the light.

If you close your eyes to the hope that Jesus brought into the world 2015 years ago, then you will probably not be able to conceive of His return.

If you look at the history of the world that God has made, if you let yourself see how frequently He has turned hopelessness into hope, impossibility into possibility, tender stems into full and beautiful roses, then it just may be that Advent this year can give you hope beyond reason.

Lo, how a rose e'er blooming

From tender stem hath sprung...

Prepare Ye the Way (Advent #1)

Several years ago I found a magnificently tattered edition of a Christina Rossetti devotional journal in the now-no-longer-existent Keswick books (it got bought out by Word Bookstore). The book cost me all of about 90 cents, but would have been a steal at any price, both for its antique appeal and the wonderful quality of the contents. Rossetti was quite "high" on the Anglican spectrum and so not all of her theology resonates with me. But it did introduce me to something that I, a thoroughly low Anglican, have appreciated in the years since. It showed me the value of letting the liturgical calendar prompt reflection and focus, directing me, for instance, to let Lent be a time of particular reflection on Jesus' sacrifice. I have always liked to do something similar with Advent - to prepare my heart for what is to come, rather than just prepare my wallet for presents or my bedroom for the storage of new presents.

And so this year I have decided to expand on my Advent preparations - to use a series of Advent-related readings to help guide my thinking in this time. I make no guarantees about how regularly I will do this, but you should expect at least a few Advent-related posts per week.

Today's comes from the passage that was preached on in the church in Hobart that I visited yesterday - 2 Peter 3:3-14. Here is a verse from the passage that particularly stands out to me:

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." (2 Peter 3:3-4)

Last night, as I was waiting to fly back from my weekend in Hobart (my flight was delayed by an hour), I saw a small, devoted gathering of TV cameramen and photographers on standby - they had been there all day - waiting for the arrival of Princess Mary who was, they had heard, potentially going to be possibly arriving in Hobart sometime that day. Their hopes had clearly shrunk down to a soodling thread by the time I got there (my flight was the last one leaving the airport that night) and by the time that the only flight left to arrive was a Jetstar plane (hardly fit for a princess) the soodling thread was down to a single follicle. They went home before my flight left.

It isn't hard to see the connection to the passage from 2 Peter. There had been no guarantee that Princess Mary would arrive, but the devoted few (devoted more because of employment than any particular love of the Danish Tasmanian Princess) had stuck it out - in vain. Is this what believers in Jesus are - naive? petulant? stubborn in the teeth of reason?

Peter would say otherwise. He would say that God has already shown Himself to be a God who intervenes in human history, almost always when we least expect it; he would say that what seems to take a long time for us is a matter of seconds for God (a statement that is strangely in line with what Einstein took millennia to tell the science world about the relativity of time); he would also say that, rather than a source of frustration and impatience, the time it takes for Jesus to return should be seen as a blessing - time to repent; time to be watchful and share the good news with others.

So: this Advent, be hopeful, be steadfast, be thankful and be watchful. We are not naive; we are not clinging to misinformation and dodgy tip-offs. He who promises is faithful.

The Promised Land?

Now, although my blogging may not yet have fully demonstrated this fact, I love my new home. Kensington would certainly have to be the most beautiful place I have ever lived. The natural beauty is clear, the houses are charming, the laneways are suitably and rustically cobbled, the shops are convenient, the bookshop is nearby and everything a book-lover could hope for. There is excellent coffee. It is quiet, scenic, and twenty minutes closer to work.

But I regret to inform you all that it isn't perfect. No. In fact, last night there was a terrible traffic jam that made all access points to my home street rather difficult to...access. The major roads were terrible. The backstreets were no better. There was no option but to wait half an hour until I finally managed the extremely short distance from the racecourse to my house. I personally think it was some crime committed in Flemington, because those sorts of things happen over there, but all the same, there it is: traffic, in my beautiful suburb.

I'm speaking, of course, with a goodly portion of my tongue placed in my cheek, but in amongst all of this I am aware acutely of my own desire to find the promised land, the perfect home, on earth. And, of course, it isn't going to happen - nor should it. The consequences are not so good when you seek to find a fully realised heaven on earth. You may find yourself driven further and further away from social problems, seeking an ideal society, avoiding all that does not conform to your concept of perfection. History tells us clearly what happens when we think or act that way.

In the suburb next door, there are rows and rows of housing commission flats. There the social issues loom large. But in the quiet streets of Kensington they are no less present, just less visible. I could hide my eyes from them, focus on all that is perfect about it, or move further away from any hint of such problems. But where would that lead me?

The prerogative God gives us is clear: not to seek heaven on earth, but to fix our eyes on heaven and live out its values and glory now. Which means bringing heaven into the pain and heartache, not avoiding it as a means of making heaven.

So here it goes on record: I will try my best to do the former, and pray that I can avoid the former, and praise God for His grace when I fail persistently at both.

All the secrets of fitness

There's something that happens to a man when he has spent around 20 years, give or take a few, thinking of himself as inherently bad at physical activity, only to find that he can run quite well, quite fast and over quite a long distance. I believe the common expression is that it "goes to his head". Suddenly, he wants everyone to see him running, especially those who ridiculed him at school for his not-very-athletic physique. "Take that," he wants to declare. "Just look at my correct running form. Note my endurance." That sort of thing.

Then he starts working on his speed, partly with a healthy desire to keep improving, partly because, well, he can. So he does so, knowing, somewhere in his head (someone told him) that working on speed increases the possibilities of injuries. "Yes yes," he says to that part of his head. "Yes yes, I know that. But it isn't going to happen."

Perhaps you can guess the rest.

It isn't a bad injury; just a strained muscle or tendon somewhere between my calves and my Achilles Heel. But it stops me from running, and slows me down a little in my everyday life - in subtle ways, in a way that says, continually, "Remember, Matt, that you aren't actually invincible."

It's a good thing to be reminded of, I suppose. I should be thankful for it. But I'm not. I'm grumpy that I can't run.

Then I remember this song that comes onto my regular running playlist somewhere around one of the footbridges that cross over the Maribyrnong River. It's called "Don't Kid Yourself, You Need a Physician", by Anathallo, a band I love very much. I'm particularly chastened when I hear it, running or otherwise, by these slap-in-the-face words that form the chorus:

"All the secrets of fitness

All the fitness He requires

Is to feel your need for Him."

Ouch. Yes, that is true fitness. I had better remember that before I set out to run again.

Reason #75 Why I Love My Job

Where else but in teaching can you experience conversations like this?

Year 7 girl #1 (to me, while she is dancing with friends): What's up? We're gangsterising.

Me (quizzically): Gangsterising?

Year 7 girl #1: Yes, gangsterising.

Year 7 girl #2 (as if by way of explanation): We're singing a song from "Mulan".

Ah yes, that would be THE definition of "gangsterising". I can't think why it wasn't clear in the first place.

The Golden Age

I went through a stage while at Uni when I loved most things that Woody Allen made. I loved the unabashed neurosis of it all, and found myself quoting suitably intellectual or angst-ridden lines well after each viewing. Then I guess it all started to go downhill. I realised that Woody himself was a bit of a pervert, and got sick of films that suggested that no relationship can last and that "the heart has its own reasons" for abandoning one woman for another at regular intervals. Woody and I parted ways a few years ago, and absolutely nothing about "Vicky Christina Barcelona" made me remotely interested in rekindling the relationship.

Then came "Midnight In Paris", a film with so many things independently of Woody to recommend itself that I found it, in the end, irresistible: Owen Wilson; Adrien Brody (playing Salvador Dali); Rachel McAdams; Marion Cotillard; Michael Sheen; Paris; Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dali, Buñuel, Man Ray, T.S. Eliot and Gaughin all featuring as characters; did I mention Marion Cotillard?...I wouldn't be strong enough to pass all this up. And I'm glad I didn't. It was almost certainly enhanced by watching it at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, one of Melbourne's most iconic theatres in one of its most iconic suburbs. Somehow, walking out of the film into Ballarat St, Yarraville, felt rather like remaining in Paris. It wouldn't have surprised me at all to see Hemingway inviting me into a cab with him.

But what I think I liked most about it was that, while it contained many of the moral issues of a typical Woody Allen film - including a new application of his own reason for leaving Mia Farrow for their adopted daughter - it did not quite linger in the same neurotic space as his films used to. The resolution is still a little idealistic, as if the universe does still somehow conspire to make romantic love always come true, but it was, if possible, a wise, more knowing kind of romanticism that the film's protagonist, Gil, achieves by the film's closing credits.

If there is a message to this film, it is perhaps that there is no such thing as a golden age - that we have always been discontent with our own present, however glorious it might seem to others. I don't know exactly what Woody wants me to make of that message, but I know what I left the cinema wanting to do - to praise God for what I have now, and, just as the apostle Paul taught the church in Philippi to do, to replace anxiety with thankfulness.

To top it all off, it really was just a great film.

Ideas From the Slightly North-West

So a lack of internet access over the past few weeks has conspired to keep me from blogging since I last declared that Wendell Berry was awesome and I was about to move. Now I have moved, and the move, though short in distance (move a little south of Brunswick then go west of Royal Park and you've got me), has been big in impact: a shorter distance to work, a more peaceful state of mind, beautiful surrounds, a new and improved river to run alongside. I can't speak highly enough of Kensington, my new home.

A change like this can draw attention, though, to other changes: to the expectations that I now have of a dwelling place. Some of these are positive, I think, and some neutral. I have matured, in a way. Share house living has served its time in my life, and living in a smaller place with only one other person suits me better, I suspect. But in other ways I am concerned about the changes I perceive: am I starting to crave comfort more than I should? Am I reacting, still, to the burn-out I experienced in Malaysia, and wanting to retreat into a safer space? This may be reasonable while I heal, but it may not be the best option for the future - not if I intend to continue pursuing the path that Jesus sets out for all who follow Him.

The moral of the story? We never stop growing, and we never outgrow grace. We will see what new perspectives, new challenges, new visions this new window of mine shall bring.